In an unprecedented move today, Twitter Inc. asked readers to fact-check two of President Donald Trump’s tweets.

Twitter made good on the promise it made earlier this month to label disputed or misleading posts, although this is the first time that company has come down hard on Trump – a leader whose Twitter posts have caused controversy over the years.

In one tweet, Trump wrote that mail-in ballots would be “substantially fraudulent” and would lead to a “rigged election.” Trump also made the claim that those who can vote in California include “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” Twitter’s fact-check label says otherwise, stating that there is evidence that both claims are unsubstantiated.

….living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020

“We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters,” Trump’s 2020 election campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility. There are many reasons the Trump campaign pulled all our advertising from Twitter months ago, and their clear political bias is one of them.“

Yet more controversy surrounding Trump and Twitter also made the headlines today. That involved Trump’s tweets alluding that an intern of former Republican representative Joe Scarborough could have been murdered by him or his allies.

The intern, Lori Klausutis, suddenly died in Scarborough’s district office in Florida in 2001. Trump believes that there may have been a conspiracy to kill her, despite her death being ruled an accident.

“A lot of interest in this story about Psycho Joe Scarborough,” Trump tweeted. “So a young marathon runner just happened to faint in his office, hit her head on his desk, & die? I would think there is a lot more to this story than that?”

The widow of the deceased, Timothy Klausutis, sent a letter to Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, asking him to delete Trump’s tweets.

“I’m a research engineer and not a lawyer, but I’ve reviewed all of Twitter’s rules and terms of service,” wrote Klausutis. “The President’s tweet that suggests that Lori was murdered — without evidence (and contrary to the official autopsy) — is a violation of Twitter’s community rules and terms of service. An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.”

Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr