With only 12 days left in his presidency, the sitting American president has been permanently removed from his favorite late night, all-caps messaging platform.

On the behalf of the “enemy of the people” American free press, it is SFist’s proud pleasure to inform you that President Trump has been banned from Twitter permanently. The deletion of his account, and all previous tweets since long before his presidency, was carried out at 3:22 p.m. Friday, after he incited an insurrection at the US Capitol Wednesday. Twitter locked Trump out of hs account for 12 hours that day for tweets that amplified lies and stoked further violence, then Facebook locked his account indefinitely the next day, and now Twitter has forever booted Trump “in the context of horrific events this week.”

You can confirm with your own two eyes that the @realdonaldtrump account has been deactivated with an “Account suspended” message. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the White House right now.

Twitter says the following in a Friday afternoon blog post entitled Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump:

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.

In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.

However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.

The post is lengthy and quite reasoned, and says Trump violated Twitter’s Glorification of violence poliicy. Twitter assessed that Trump’s tweets “could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021."

Among the justification the company has, Twitter cites:

• The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.
• Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.

You can say Twitter dragged its feet on this one, but this is a watershed moment for a Silicon Valley company to permanently ban the most powerful person in the world. Facebook merely blocked Trump for the remainder of his term.

Youtube and Twitch removed a video or two from his account, but those accounts remain largely intact. Shopify removed his merchandise from the platform, but Twitter is different.

Twitter is Trump’s oxygen, his lifeblood, his favorite method of fomenting rage to the American public since before this whole horrible stunt began, and many credible analysts think that without Twitter, the Trump presidency may have never happened.

The champagne is probably popping at right-wing troll sites like Parler and Gab right now, because Trump’s 88.7 million followers will stick with him with Branch Davidian-style loyalty and migrate to those platforms. And this will surely escalate the “conservatives censored by Big Tech!!!1!” histrionics over a private company’s mere enforcement of their own terms of service. But after Trump’s loss and  Wednesday’s DC ghoulishness, two very important things are clear. Tech platforms genuinely fear what Trump can incite people to do, but they no longer fear Trump himself.

Which can only be described as — and we will get this last one out of our system —  SAD!!!

Related: Pelosi Invokes Nixon, Presses Republicans to Secure Trump's Resignation [SFist]

Image: @realdonaldtrump via Twitter