Getty
- Twitter will not let the US National Archives preserve Trump's tweets on his banned personal account.
- Twitter said it is because "we permanently suspended @realDonaldTrump" in January.
- The NARA still has a copy of tweets from that account and intends to publish them off the platform.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Twitter will not be allowing former President Donald Trump's personal account and its thousands of tweets to be archived because of his suspension from the platform, Politico reported.
In a statement to Insider, a Twitter spokesperson said, "given that we permanently suspended @realDonaldTrump, the content from the account will not appear on Twitter as it did previously or as archived administration accounts do currently, regardless of how NARA decides to display the data it has preserved. Administration accounts that are archived on the service are accounts that were not in violation of the Twitter Rules."
Twitter said it is working with the National Archives and Record Administration on preserving Trump's tweets "as is standard with any administration transition."
Those tweets won't reappear on Twitter, but a National Archives spokesperson confirmed to Politico that the agency has an exported copy of tweets posted from the @realDonaldTrump account. NARA intends to make that record publicly available, "including any blocked or deleted Tweets that have been transferred to us," the spokesperson said.
NARA told the outlet it could display those tweets in downloadable form on the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library website. NARA did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Trump was only the second US president to hold office and use a Twitter account, with President Barack Obama being the first. It became custom for NARA to archive and manage the social media accounts of official government figures as a way to preserve communication.
For example, the personal Twitter account of former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is currently archived on the platform, meaning anyone can view her past tweets. An "archived" label is next to her name.
Trump more frequently used his personal account rather than his official presidential account, @POTUS45, while he was in office. That account was archived on Twitter as it was not in violation of Twitter's rules like his personal account was.
Twitter banned Trump on January 8, two days after pro-Trump extremists held an insurrection at the US Capitol. The company permanently de-platformed him "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" and has since said he will stay barred from the website, even if he decides to run for office again in 2024.
Twitter began adding fact-check labels to Trump's tweets last May. Some of his posts contained misleading information surrounding the 2020 presidential election while others were deemed to be glorifying violence.
Twitter's actions, and others made by the company's social media peers, have fueled an ongoing belief held by some Republicans that tech platforms are trying to silence conservative voices, though research has shown that social media platforms don't exhibit anti-conservative bias.