Facebook removes Trump post, while Twitter bars his campaign account
Facebook has taken down a post by US President Donald Trump that it said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus.
The post contained a video clip, from an interview with Fox & Friends, in which Mr Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.
“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19, which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” a Facebook spokesman said on Thursday (US time).
A tweet containing the video that was posted by the Trump campaign’s @TeamTrump account and shared by the President was also later hidden by Twitter for breaking its COVID-19 misinformation rules.
A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump account owner would be required to remove the post before they could use the account again.
In the telephone interview with Fox and Friends on Wednesday, Mr Trump repeated his claim it was time for US schools to reopen.
“If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – almost immune from this disease,” he said.
“So few, they’ve got stronger, hard to believe, I don’t know how you feel about it, but they’ve got much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this.
“They don’t have a problem, they just don’t have a problem.”
Mr Trump, who is running for re-election in November, also repeated his claim that COVID-19 with “go away like things go away”.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said that while adults make up most of the known COVID-19 cases to date, some children and infants have been sick with the virus and can also transmit it to others.
The White House and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment. However, during a briefing at the White House, Mr Trump repeated his claim that the virus had little impact on children.
It was the first time Facebook had removed a Trump post for coronavirus misinformation, the company’s spokesman said.
It also appeared to be the first reported instance of the social media company taking down a post from the president for breaching its misinformation rules.
Facebook has taken plenty of heat from politicians and its own employees in recent months for not taking action on inflammatory posts by Mr Trump.
-with AAP
