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Twitter says Trump's tweet doesn't violate its rules

<p>On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/881503147168071680" target="_blank">tweeted this</a> — an edited video that showed him beating up a caricature of CNN. Then, the reactions poured in.</p><p>"It is an incitement to violence. He is going to get somebody killed in the media," CNN commentator Ana Navarro said on ABC News' "This Week."</p><p><br/></p><p>BBC America anchor Katty Kay said: "We had Sarah Huckabee Sanders specifically coming out in the White House and, for a rare on-camera press briefing, saying that the president has never condoned or encouraged or promoted violence. That is exactly what he's just done."</p><p>The GIF <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-cnn-tweet-linked-to-reddit-user-hanassholesolo" target="_blank">appears to have originated</a> with a Reddit user who frequents /r/the_donald, a subreddit that's dedicated to posts about the president but also contains a lot of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/reddit-and-the-god-emperor-of-the-internet.html" target="_blank">hate speech.</a></p><p>It wasn't immediately clear what influenced Trump's tweet. But critics <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/06/29/trumps-mika-tweets-distracting/439824001/" target="_blank">have accused</a> him of using social media as something of a game of distraction before.</p><p>And New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush <a href="https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/881540163335323649" target="_blank">points out</a> this could be an attempt to get into a public squabble with CNN so gruesome, it rallies Trump's most ardent supporters.</p><p><b>SEE MORE: <a href="http://www.newsy.com/stories/rep-mike-quigley-trolls-president-trump-with-covfefe-act/">COVFEFE Act Could Prevent President Trump From Deleting His Tweets</a></b></p><p>While the tweet itself is abnormal for a person with Trump's job, it also got a lot of people talking about Twitter's <a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311" target="_blank">harassment policy</a>.</p><p>Those rules read, in part: "You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism."</p><p>Whether or not the president's tweet actually violates those rules is a gray area. Given no outside litigation, it'd be up to Twitter to make that call.</p><p>As of Sunday afternoon, the White House hadn't responded to Trump's tweet. But their responses to Trump's provocative tweets tend to be pretty uniform.</p><p>"I don’t think that it’s a surprise to anybody that he fights fire with fire," Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a press briefing. "He's not going to sit back and be attacked by the liberal media, Hollywood elites. And when they hit him, he’s going to hit back."</p><hr><b>Trending stories at <a href="http://www.newsy.com">Newsy.com</a></b><ul class="inline-related-links"><li><a href="http://www.newsy.com/stories/nevada-s-recreational-marijuana-law-goes-into-effect/">You Can Now Legally Buy Weed In Nevada</a></li><li><a href="http://www.newsy.com/stories/white-house-releases-staff-salary-information/">Here's How Much Trump's White House Aides Are Getting Paid</a></li><li><a href="http://www.newsy.com/stories/trump-meets-with-south-korean-president-moon-jae-in/">Trump Talks Trade, North Korea With South Korea's President</a></li></ul>
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Twitter says President Trump's latest anti-media tweet doesn't violate its rules.

Twitter told CNN on Sunday that the company reviewed the tweet, which features a WWE video that has been edited to show Trump beating up a man with a CNN logo on his face.

Twitter said it considered three factors: the political context of the conversation surrounding the tweet, the various ways it could be interpreted and the lack of details in the tweet itself.

According to its rules, Twitter may suspend an account for a number of reasons, including if the user makes violent threats; attacks people based on race, religion, gender and more; or engages "in the targeted abuse or harassment of others."

Trump's tweet has spread like wildfire across the internet. In six hours it received 185,000 retweets, about 300,000 likes and nearly 100,000 comments.

That's a lot, even for Trump, who has 33 million followers.

The tweet appeared to rally Trump's base of supporters. A chorus of Twitter users joined him in calling CNN "fake news," and some posted more violent images.

But not everyone was happy about the way Trump is using Twitter.

Seth Abramson, an attorney and an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire, called on Twitter to ban the president. His tweet racked up more than 2,000 retweets in less than three hours Sunday.

Michael Hawley, a digital media researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tweeted a copy of a complaint he sent to an MIT colleague who also works at Twitter.

In the letter to Twitter's chief media scientist Deb Roy, Hawley argued that Trump has become "the archetype of a cyber bully." He also said Trump should be kicked off the site.

The Sunday tweet was the latest example of the president's controversial line of messaging.

Last week, Trump lashed out at MSNBC co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. He called Brzezinski "crazy" and Scarborough "psycho."

Trump also claimed that he once denied to meet with Brezezinski because "she was bleeding badly from a face-lift."

That also elicited an outpouring of voices calling for the @realDonaldTrump handle to be banned.

Trump has defended his social media tactics. Last week he brushed off criticism that he isn't acting "presidential."

"My use of social media is not Presidential - it's MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!" he wrote Saturday.

Twitter has struggled to crack down on harassment on the platform for years. The stakes in this case are even higher: If Twitter were to block Trump, but miss other accounts acting similarly, the company would be accused of acting politically.