Trump retweets someone calling him a ‘fascist’, deletes almost immediately

US President Donald Trump allegedly retweeted a tweet deeming him a “fascist” before deleting it swiftly from his account.

Twitter user Mike Holden was replying to a Fox News article on the potential pardon of Joe Arpaio. Arpaio is a former sheriff who violated an order to stop racially profiling Latinos, and Holden clearly disagreed with what could be Trump’s first pardon as president.

Dissent for the current president is not unusual on Twitter — but what is unusual is a retweet from a high profile user who predominantly uses retweets as a form of endorsement.

The validity of the retweet has been confirmed by several other screenshots.

Trump is no stranger to accidental tweeting — think the notorious “covfefe” slip-up — but a retweet requires two clicks to send, which usually keeps a user from making such an error.

It is also alleged that around the same time he retweeted a cartoon of an anthropomorphised CNN being hit by a train. The tweet was also in response to the Fox News article.

The debate on whether or not a president should be allowed to delete tweets has been heated, and Democrat Mike Quigley is working on a proposal to make it illegal to destroy a tweet. The argument is that any tweet put out to the public constitutes a presidential statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also filed multiple lawsuits against the governers of Maine, Kentucky, and Maryland who blocked citizens on the platform, effectively shutting down a major communication device between constituents and their political leaders.

Featured image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0, edited)

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