- Pro-Trump protesters were scheduled to demonstrate in front of
Twitter 's San Francisco headquarters on Monday morning after the company banned the president from its platform. - City police set up a barricade on the street outside the building, and organizers reportedly used the far-right online community TheDonald to plan the demonstration.
- But local outlets report that the
protest was a bust — at most, two protesters showed up, per one report. - Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made the decision to permanently suspend
Trump from the platform on Friday based on the president's response to the siege on the US Capitol carried out by far-right rioters.
Since Twitter banned President Donald Trump from its platform, his supporters began planning to protest the decision at the tech company's San Francisco headquarters on Monday.
Dozens of San Francisco police officers were called in for security. They erected a barricade outside of the Twitter building near the city's downtown area to prepare for what was anticipated to be a major demonstration in defense of the president. The Chronicle reported that $4, a far-right website that was once a Reddit forum until $4.
But the protest was a total bust - some outlets, like $4, reported pro-Trump demonstrators to be nowhere in sight, while others reported only some speaking out against Dorsey's crackdown on the president.
"I don't like being censored," one protester told $4 "And I feel conservative voices are being censored." $4 that two people showed up.
$4 was on the scene Monday morning, and at 9:20 a.m. local time, said in a video on Twitter that the protest was "a bust," and a police source told him they don't think anything is going to happen after all today.
The Verge video director Vjeran Pavic posted photos of the building before and after the protest was scheduled to take place.
—V (@vjeranpavic) $4
—Trisha Thadani (@TrishaThadani) $4
There were counter-protestors as well, like one man who brandished a sign reading "Impeach! Remove! Today!" Another held a sign reading "counter Trump's coup attempts."
—sarah holder (@sarahsholder) $4
On Friday, Twitter made the unprecedented decision to $4 Trump has been an ardent Twitter user throughout his presidency, posting regularly from his account @realDonaldTrump, whose page is now blank.
Trump's posts, which reached upwards of 86 million of his followers, often prompted Twitter to add warning labels due to the baseless claims of election fraud or other misinformation made therein. One of the first times Twitter did so was in May, when Trump tweeted that mail-in voting necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic would be "substantially fraudulent" and will lead to a "Rigged Election."