Florida GOP congressional candidate calls out Twitter for 'glitch' on eve of primary: 'Civil rights issue'
Dr. Drew Montez Clark joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss the incident and why he believes it is a ploy to interfere in the election.
One Florida Republican congressional candidate is slamming Twitter for what the platform called a "false positive" after it banned his account one night before what would have been his primary election.
Dr. Drew Montez Clark, who is running to flip the 20th Congressional District, joined "Fox & Friends First" to discuss the incident and why he believes the move is a part of a broader issue.
"I'm considering this at this particular point, a modern civil rights issue," Clark told co-host Todd Piro. "I went from being persecuted for the color of my skin, let's just say, because we know the history of the country, to now being persecuted because I happen to be a conservative. This should be protected."
"So the same reason you can't silence me because I have a different viewpoint, or I'm a conservative is the same way," he continued. "You can't silence me because of the color of my skin, because I'm happily married, because I'm a Black conservative. I have four daughters. That doesn't work, so neither should it work to silence me because I have a dissenting opinion."
FLORIDA PRIMARY ELECTION 2022: WATCH THE RESULTS
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Clark is running to unseat Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who won the seat in a special election last year. The GOP primary for the deep blue South Florida district was ultimately canceled since he was running uncontested.
Twitter banned his account without notification or warning, according to Clark, but reversed the move just hours after.
"I don't think anyone in my district believes that it was a glitch," Clark said. "I don't think anybody in the state of Florida believes that it was a glitch, and I would doubt that anybody watching this show thinks it's a glitch to silence a Black conservative on the eve of the election."
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"At this particular point, I don't know how we can allow this to happen, because this is an example of what I would call electioneering, interfering with the election, and we cannot allow that to stand," he continued.
Twitter responded to the suspension, noting the move was a mistake by their "automated system."
"Twitter uses proactive, automated systems to detect content that might violate our rules, part of our work to improve the health of conversations on the service," the statement read. "In the case referenced, our automated system detected a false positive. The account has since been reinstated."
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