Twitter announced Tuesday that it will not remove President Donald Trump’s tweets about Joe Scarborough’s dead intern.
Trump has often tweeted digs at Scarborough regarding 28-year-old Lori Klausutis, who died at her desk while interning for Scarborough’s congressional office in 2001. The president has suggested that Scarborough, currently an MSNBC host, had something to do with her death, which was ruled accidental.
Klausutis’ husband Timothy J. Klausutis wrote a May 21 letter to Dorsey begging Twitter to delete Trump’s tweets about his dead wife. Twitter responded Tuesday and said it will not be deleting Trump’s tweets. This response came after the letter was obtained by New York Times contributing opinion writer Kara Swisher. (RELATED: Scarborough’s Dead Intern’s Husband Begs Twitter To Remove Trump’s Tweets About Late Wife)
“We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Caller. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”
….about whether or not Joe could have done such a horrible thing? Maybe or maybe not, but I find Joe to be a total Nut Job, and I knew him well, far better than most. So many unanswered & obvious questions, but I won’t bring them up now! Law enforcement eventually will?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
Twitter did not elaborate on what the expansion would entail. It has launched a series of policies in 2020 to combat the spread of misinformation, which includes labeling deceptively edited photos and tweets as “manipulated media.”
Klausutis urged Twitter to delete Trump’s tweets about his dead wife, adding that he has “struggled to move forward” with his life because of the conspiracy theories.
“The frequency, intensity, ugliness, and promulgation of these horrifying lies ever increases on the internet,” Lori’s husband wrote in the letter. “These conspiracy theorists, including most recently the President of the United States, continue to spread their bile and misinformation on your platform disparaging the memory of my wife and our marriage.”