One of Mitch McConnell’s official Twitter accounts just got suspended

| 9:10 pm EDT August 7, 2019
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Mitch McConnell has two official Twitter accounts. He most often tweets from his @senatemajldr account, but he also has a second official account known as @Team_Mitch which technically belongs to his campaign – and lately it’s become more infamous by the day. Now McConnell’s @Team_Mitch account has been suspended from tweeting.

Let’s be clear here: Mitch McConnell’s primary @senatemajldr account has not been suspended; he’s still free to tweet from it if he wants. His secondary @Team_Mitch account has not been removed entirely, as sometimes happens when Twitter suspends people. Instead, the @Team_Mitch account is still visible but it has been suspended from posting any further tweets, according to the USA Today network, for an unknown amount of time. As is so often the case when it comes to McConnell these days, the suspension is rife with controversy.

The @Team_Mitch account came under fire after it posted a cartoon which celebrated the “death” of his 2020 Democratic opponent Amy McGrath, which was widely seen as a vague call to violence against her. McGrath made a point of calling out McConnell over the tweet. But McConnell’s camp is claiming that Twitter actually suspended the @Team_Mitch account because it posted a video of someone calling for violence against McConnell.

In any case, what stands out here is that, best we can tell, Mitch McConnell is by far the highest ranking United States government official to have been suspended from Twitter. That’s noteworthy. Again, his primary Twitter account is still intact. But when the Senate Majority Leader has two official Twitter accounts, and one of them has been suspended from tweeting, it’s a big deal.