Twitter permanently suspends Trump's account

Twitter permanently suspended U.S. President Donald Trump's account on Friday, citing the possibility he could incite more violence, two days after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

In a statement, Twitter said: "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."

With the permanent suspension, Trump loses perhaps his most powerful megaphone with 88 million followers.

Twitter had temporarily blocked Trump's account earlier this week following the violence at the Capitol on Wednesday and warned that additional violations by the president's accounts would result in a permanent suspension.

After the 12-hour ban, Trump posted three times.

In his last tweet, Trump said he would not attend President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. Before that, he tweeted praise for his supporters saying: "They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"

And, on Thursday night, he released a video on Twitter, condemning the violence and coming closer than ever to conceding his loss to Biden, after more than two months of posting baseless claims about widespread fraud in November's election.

TRUMP: "Every time I put out a tweet that's, even if it's totally correct, totally correct, I get a flag. I get a flag."

Trump's angry speech to thousands of his supporters prompted an assault on Congress in which five people died, including a Capitol Hill police officer.

Meanwhile, Apple took aim at Parler, a social networking service where many Trump supporters have migrated after being banned from Twitter, threatening to remove the platform from its App Store unless the company changes its content moderation policies, citing instances of the service being used to make plans to descend on Washington, D.C. with weapons.