In wake of President’s ‘shooting starts’ tweet, Rick Scott sides with Donald Trump

Image via AP.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott appeared on the Hugh Hewitt show Friday morning, where he defended the President against censorship on Twitter.

In the wee hours Friday morning, the President weighed in on the riots in Minneapolis, and Twitter promptly tagged the post with a disclaimer.

“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” the President tweeted.

For its part, Twitter said that while the words “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence …Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

Scott suggested that there may be a hearing of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee regarding whether Twitter was violating Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

And while his “heart goes out to the family” of George Floyd, beaten to the ground and killed by a rogue cop, Scott was irked by censorship only targeting the President.

“The President’s doing the right stuff,” Scott said. “The FBI, DOJ’s doing an investigation. I believe that the President will do everything he can to make sure that if someone did something wrong, they’re going to get held accountable.”

Scott pivoted quickly back from the injustice of a 46 year old man choked out by law enforcement to the iniquities perpetrated by Twitter.

“Why do they think it’s OK to censor the President but nobody else?”

“They’re deciding that the President, because they disagree with him, because they’ve become some left wing group that they can censor what he’s doing but no one else,” Scott said.

“What they’re doing now is wrong,” Scott added. “You cannot pick and choose who you censor. They don’t censor anybody on the left. Nobody!”

“They want to pick on the President. The left is just so mad that Trump won,” Scott continued. “And they’re furious he’s going to win again.”

“They censor nobody on the left,” Scott added, saying they “let murderers like [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro do what they want.”

Scott also had some words for the looters: “Why can’t you protest peacefully? Why do they have to go burn stores?”

The Senator’s comments come less than 24 hours after the President issued an Executive Order attempting to rein in social media.