President Donald Trump released a statement through White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino early Thursday, vowing an “orderly transition” just minutes after Congress certified Joe Biden’s win as president-elect.
“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!” Trump’s statement said.
Pence banged the gavel at 3:44 a.m. EST to conclude the session that certified 306 electoral votes for Biden and Kamala Harris, and 232 votes for President Donald Trump and Pence. The certification took place hours after demonstrators disrupted the planned session and overtook the Capitol with violence.
Scavino posted Trump’s statement to his own Twitter account after both Twitter and Facebook disabled the president’s respective accounts. Both platforms claimed Trump’s posts had multiple policy violations.
Twitter said that Trump’s account is permanently locked until he removes three tweets that “for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy.”
The platform further added, “Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.”
Facebook said it found two policy violations in Trump’s posts and enacted a 24-hour block on his account. However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later said that the ban was extended “indefinitely” and at least for the remaining two weeks of Trump’s term.
