NEW YORK — Editor's note: The video above is from a previous story.
Twitter suspended the account of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary for violating rules on “abusive behavior” after The Associated Press said her conduct led to a reporter receiving threats and other online abuse.
The DeSantis aide, Christina Pushaw, saw her account locked for 12 hours, a Twitter spokeswoman said.
Earlier Friday, incoming AP CEO Daisy Veerasingham wrote to DeSantis, asking him to end Pushaw’s “harassing behavior.”
“This is unacceptable behavior from a government employee, especially one whose job it is to work with the media and communicate with the public,” Veerasingham said in the letter, The Washington Times reports.
According to AP, they are seeking to fight online bullying against journalists, a growing trend that is often triggered by public figures.
Pushaw denied trying to direct the governor’s followers to target AP’s reporter despite retweeting his article and writing “drag them” in a now-deleted post.
Pushaw had objected to Tuesday’s story by AP’s Tallahassee, Florida-based reporter Brendan Farrington, which pointed out that one of DeSantis’ multimillion-dollar donors invests in a company making the COVID-19 treatment drug Regeneron, reports AP.
She says she deleted the tweet because she did not mean “drag them” as a threat.
The Urban Dictionary defines “drag them” as to roast, make fun of or mock, someone very hard. Its use seems to imply or encourage people to go on the attack, in a way that’s just shy of being direct, PEN America's Program Director for Digital Safety and Free Expression Viktorya Vilk said to AP.
The Washington Times reported that Pushaw received a message Friday from Twitter saying that the platform “determined that you have violated the Twitter Rules," and her account would be fully restored in 12 hours.