In another premature and false claim of victory amid the heated United States presidential race, US President Donald Trump on Saturday, 7 November, tweeted that he had won the election and by a lot.
However, Trump’s tweet came just ahead of several US networks projecting Democrat Joe Biden as having won the presidential race.
News organisations reported that Trump had arrived at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia on Saturday morning shortly before his tweet.
In keeping with their policy of requiring atleast two sources for confirmation, Twitter promptly flagged his tweet, adding the message that official sources had not called the presidential race so far.
The message, which Twitter has been displaying on several tweets which talk about premature victory, redirects to a page where the status of the election is displayed.
In reality, Democratic nominee Joe Biden is ahead of Trump in terms of Electoral College votes, leading Trump 253-214. Biden is also leading in the key battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada, and some news organisations have also projected the former vice president as the winner in Arizona as well.
Twitter vs Trump
This is not Twitter first’s action against Trump amid the election race. The tech giant has been taking action against such tweets by the President and others to curb the spread of disinformation.
Earlier, without providing any evidence for the claim, Trump repeated what he had wrote on Twitter, “I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST.”
The tweet in question was labelled by Twitter for sharing information which is “disputed” or “might be misleading” in its effort to combat election disinformation on the platform.
Since then, with several of his tweets flagged by Twitter as containing content that may be 'disputed' or 'misleading', Trump has called Twitter 'out of control'.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)