Pro-Trump congressman claims Twitter won’t let him praise Republican governor despite doing exactly that

Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn has complained that Twitter is censoring him from praising Texas governor Greg Abbott while sending a tweet praising Texas governor Greg Abbott…

The right-wing “rising star” claimed he was blocked from praising the “state leadership” of the controversial governor - who recently attracted criticism for his decision to lift coronavirus restrictions in Texas this month.

Cawthorn had apparently tried to show support for Abbott’s hardline stance on immigration at the Texas-Mexico border.

“I’m trying to send this tweet right now which just says ‘Governor Abbott exemplifies state leadership’ but as you see something pops up right here which says ‘Something went wrong. But don’t fret, let’s give it another shot’,” the congressman said.

“This is our third attempt to do this. But my friends, let me tell you, they don’t want this kind of idea, that we can have state leadership, that we can have federalism inside of our country.”

The error message he received is also not an unheard-of phenomenon - here are two examples of users getting the error message for tweets which-do not reference Abbott:

As the congressman’s own tweet proves, you can praise Greg Abbott on Twitter without being censored so it’s unlikely that this is the reason for why his tweet didn’t work.

In fact, if you check in the “Tweets & replies” section of Cawthorn’s account you can actually see that he did manage to tweet the exact phrase he claimed he was being blocked from posting.

The tweet does not show on his main feed, but this appears to be because he used Abbott’s account name (@GovAbbott) at the start of the post so it was automatically moved to his replies section...

Nevertheless, Cawthorn is trying to use this odd (but not particularly significant) glitch as an excuse to attack social media companies - a favourite topic for right-wing politicians in recent years.

If you’re keen to know more about this shining young star of the Republican Party, you can read about how he has been accused of sexual harassment (which he denies) or you can enjoy a bizarre video of him punching a tree...

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