Donald Trump Suspended From Twitch Over ‘Hateful Conduct’ Violations

Todd Spangler
·3 min read

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Twitch has temporarily kicked Donald Trump off the streaming service, citing violations of its policy against “hateful conduct.”

In a statement, Amazon-owned Twitch said, “Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed.”

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Twitch, a platform best known for hosting video game live-streamers, cited two video streams on Trump’s channel that violated its policy.

The first was from Trump’s announcement in 2015 that he was running for U.S. president, which was recently rebroadcast on Twitch.

In that video, he says, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you… They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They’re sending us not the right people.”

The other video broadcast on Twitch that ran afoul of the site’s hateful-conduct policy was from Trump’s June 20, 2020, rally in Tulsa, Okla.

In that one, he said, “Hey, it’s one o’clock in the morning and a very tough, I’ve used the word on occasion, ‘hombre,’ a very tough hombre is breaking into the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or whatever he may do. And you call 911 and they say, ‘I’m sorry, this number’s no longer working.’ By the way, you have many cases like that, many, many, many. Whether it’s a young woman, an old woman, a young man or an old man and you’re sleeping.”

Trump joined Twitch last fall, apparently in an effort to widen his 2020 reelection campaign messaging. Trump’s first Twitch broadcast in October 2019 was from a rally in Minneapolis, where among other targets he lashed out at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Somali refugees, Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

Twitch is owned by Amazon, which bought the site in 2014, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the e-commerce company have been frequent targets of Trump’s rantings. The president’s anger toward Bezos and Amazon stems from Bezos’ ownership of the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, Trump recently has grown irritated with his favorite internet platform, Twitter, after the social platform in the last several weeks slapped warning labels and a fact-checking tag on several of the former reality-TV star’s posts.

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