‘Wow’: Trump shares parody Biden news story claiming Twitter is blocking negative stories

Spoof article said Twitter shutdown on Thursday to stop negative Biden news being shared

Donald Trump appeared to have retweeted an article from a spoof magazine which claimed  Twitter had shut down its site to stop negative news about his election opponent, Joe Biden. 

The article, which was titled “Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News", was published by the satirical news site Babylon Bee, whose website crashed following the president’s tweet. 

He told his followers: “Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this."

Mr Trump did not seem to be aware that the article was a parody, which claimed that “Twitter shut down its entire social network Thursday,” when the president himself had tweeted throughout the day. 

Twitter users soon commented on the president’s apparent slip-up, with American historian Diana Butler Bass writing: “Trump thinks The Babylon Bee is real news and is rage tweeting one of their stories. The Babylon Bee is a “Christian” satire site.”

The parody article goes on to say that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey “smashed a glass box in his office reading ‘Break In Case Of Bad Publicity For Democrats.’ ”

“Dorsey ran downstairs and started smashing as many computers as he could, but he did need to ask for some help, as the hammer was pretty heavy,” added the mock report.

Coincidentally, Babylon Bee’s motto reads"Fake news you can trust". 

Mr Trump’s remarks follow action taken by social media sites including Twitter to censor content deemed “misinformation”, leading to the suspension of the Trump campaign’s official Twitter account on Thursday.

Twitter cited a tweet about a New York Post story from Wednesday that contained alleged details of Mr Biden’s connections to a Ukrainian businesses via his son, Hunter Biden, whilst vice president.

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement that despite the story’s claims, no meeting had taken place between Mr Biden and a Ukrainian energy firm.

At the same time, the 77-year-old had been cleared of any wrongdoing over the matter by Republican-led Senate committees. 

A Twitter spokesman said earlier on Thursday that the @TeamTrump account, as well as the accounts of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and the New York Post, had been blocked from tweeting because they had violated the company’s policies on hacked materials and posting private information. 

Mr Trump described Twitter’s decision as “terrible”.