Donald Trump, who has used Twitter as a direct and immediate tool to whip his adherents into a frenzy, was permanently banned from the service on Friday night. It was the climax to a series of suspensions after Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat removed him, and the r/DonaldTrump subreddit got blocked.
When his @realDonaldTrump handle got axed, Trump quickly jumped to his seldom used @POTUS handle. While that account hasn’t been deleted (it was inherited from Barack Obama and will soon transition to Joe Biden), Twitter stuck to its guns and deleted messages that came directly from him. (These messages included the usual Trump bluster, including a promise to create a new social media platform.)
The messaging whack-a-mole continued, with the President of the United States heading to the authenticated @TeamTrump campaigning account. It, too, was quickly shut down.
Finally, Trump digital director Gary Coby publically offered his account to Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino , changing the name and image (but not the handle). It, too, was quickly removed by Twitter.
This scorched earth approach delighted some celebrities who hang their digital hats on Twitter, and the reactions were many.
Cutting right to the chase was Chrissy Teigen.
Mark Ruffalo thanked the board at Twitter, and Sacha Baron Cohen, who has made a mission out of convincing Big Tech to demonetize hate speech, took a deserved victory lap.
Bette Midler went all-caps in her celebration, and Sarah Jessica Parker, Zach Braff, Questlove, and Bob Saget were right there with some jokes.
Jeffrey Wright laid in with a simple “boom” and Mark Hamill played it coy, but Billy Eichner made a case for more removals direct to Twitter head Jack Dorsey.
Ice-T gave a signal boost to someone else’s zing with an added “I’m DONE,” and Hillary Clinton allowed herself a callback to one of her earlier comments.
And though this wasn’t a new tweet, Yoko Ono resurfaced a small piece of Internet perfection from November 2016. (Sound way up on this one.)
Still, of all the jokes out there, the gold medalist, at least from where we’re standing, is this beauty from James Urbaniak.
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