Twitter altered a tweet that was sent out by President Donald Trump’s account on Tuesday evening, citing its rules on copyright infringement as the reason why they had to take action doing so.
The tweet that Trump sent out included a campaign video that juxtaposed liberal icons in negative ways, while promoting the president at various campaign events and other activities, per reporting from the Verge. Audio for the video included music from the film “The Dark Knight Rises,” the third in the series of “Batman” films from director Christopher Nolan.
Warner Bros., the company that owns the “Batman” franchise of films, threatened legal action against the video, citing its unauthorized use of the music from the movie. Twitter removed the video but kept Trump’s tweet in place.
While the video disparaged former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, it also included celebrities Amy Schumer and Rosie O’Donnell, the latter of which Trump has had a long-running feud with, beginning prior to his presidential tenure.
Also included in the campaign video, which seemed to promote Trump’s run for re-election in 2020, was a handshake between the president and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, which occurred during negotiations between the two countries on the topic of that nation’s nuclear missile program.
It’s highly unusual that Trump’s campaign team would include that event. Earlier this year, talks between the two leaders on the topic of North Korea’s denuclearization broke down, a moment that some derided as the president failing to make good on his promise to broker a deal.
Twitter has taken action against the president in the past for tweeting copyrighted material, in February when he shared a video that included the song “Everybody Hurts” by the band R.E.M. But the social media site has been reluctant to take action against Trump’s tweets in other ways that violated their policies.
Before Trump decided to try negotiating with North Korea on the topic of denuclearization, he made what many considered to be a clear threat to Kim, calling him “Little Rocket Man” in a tweet and announcing he and his country “won’t be around much longer!”
In response, Twitter’s Public Policy account sent a series of tweets explaining why it wouldn’t delete that and other Trump tweets that threatened world leaders or other individuals, the Telegraph reported on at the time.
“We hold all accounts to the same rules, and consider a number of factors when assessing whether Tweets violate our rules,” Twitter explained. “Among the considerations is ‘newsworthiness’ and whether a tweet is of public interest. This has long been internal policy and we’ll soon update our public-facing rules to reflect it.”
Trump has faced scrutiny before for deleting his own tweets, as many legal experts consider his social media interactions as presidential records. However, the law is murky on the subject, and some say it’s unclear whether his tweets fall under the category of presidential or personal record, according to reporting from PolitiFact.