- Facebook removed a post from President Donald Trump that falsely claimed COVID-19 is less deadly than the flu Tuesday, CNN first reported.
- In the post, Trump said COVID-19 is “far less lethal” than the flu and falsely claimed the flu kills sometimes kills over 100,000 Americans per year. In reality, the deadliest recorded flu season in the US killed 60,000 people.
- The post violated Facebook’s rules on COVID-19 misinformation, which bans false claims about the severity of the virus.
- Trump posted the same message to Twitter, which has not removed the post.
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Facebook removed a post from President Donald Trump on Tuesday that falsely claimed COVID-19 is “far less lethal” than the flu.
Facebook determined that Trump’s post violated its policies against COVID-19 misinformation, which ban false and misleading claims about the severity of the virus, CNN first reported.
In the post, Trump falsely claimed the flu kills sometimes kills over 100,000 Americans per year. In reality, the deadliest recorded flu season in the US killed 60,000 people. The COVID-19 death toll in the US this year has exceeded 210,000.
—Donie O’Sullivan (@donie) October 6, 2020
Trump’s post was removed from his page as of 11 a.m. Tuesday morning. Facebook did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Trump posted the same message to Twitter, which did not remove the post but instead added a warning label stating that it violates Twitter’s rules against COVID-19 misinformation. A Twitter spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While Facebook has previously added warning labels to Trump's posts containing misinformation, it rarely removes the posts entirely. The last time it took the extraordinary step of deleting a Trump post was in August, when the president shared a video of an interview in which he falsely claimed children are "almost immune" to the virus.