Former US President Donald Trump has praised Nigeria's government for banning Twitter in the country following his ban from the platform.
Per BBC News, Trump issued a statement on Tuesday, June 8, addressing Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's temporary outlawing of the social media site after Twitter removed one of Buhari's tweets.
Per TechCrunch, the 45th POTUS wrote: "Congratulations to the country of Nigeria, who just banned Twitter because they banned their President."
Donald Trump Jr. recently asked Elon Musk to build a new social media platform for his father:Trump continued:
"More COUNTRIES should ban Twitter and Facebook for not allowing free and open speech — all voices should be heard. In the meantime, competitors will emerge and take hold. Who are they to dictate good and evil if they themselves are evil?
"Perhaps I should have done it while I was President. But Zuckerberg kept calling me and coming to the White House for dinner telling me how great I was. [sic]"
TechCrunch reports that Buhari’s tweet was deleted for violating Twitter's abusive behavior policy after the president threatened punishment on secessionists in the southeastern part of the country.
On Monday, June 7, the Nigerian government ordered all state broadcasting media to delete their Twitter accounts and stop using the platform as a news source; allegedly in a bid to curb the spread of misinformation.
Trump himself was banned from a number of prominent social media platforms following accusations that he incited the January Capitol riots and then publically condoned the mob of pro-Trump supporters responsible for the violent insurrection.
In a statement posted to Twitter's blog site, a spokesperson for the social media giant wrote: "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them - specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
As a result of this, Trump later launched a new blog-style website called 'From The Desk of Donald J. Trump' on Tuesday, May 4, in an attempt to circumvent his social media bans.
However, this website shut down not long after launching, with the URL donaldjtrump.com/ now redirecting visitors to a webpage where they can sign up for email and text alerts from the ex-POTUS.
In a post made on May 24, Trump wrote that: "This [blog] is meant to be a temporary way of getting my thoughts and ideas out to the public without the Fake News spin, but the website is not a 'platform'.
"It is merely a way of communicating until I decide on what the future will be for the choice or establishment of a platform. It will happen soon. Stay tuned!"