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Man considered the President's tweets to be undignified, ill-considered, impulsive, rude and even bullying. They were often made late at night or in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes they were used against him, as was the case concerning his tweets about a Muslim ban. These were successfully used in court applications to overturn travel restrictions from some Muslim-majority countries. He also used Twitter to attack federal judges who had ruled against him in court cases. He also used twitter to criticize officials in his own administration, including his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Tillerson was fired via a tweet by Trump. He also tweeted that the special counsel investigation of his was a "witch hunt" and that Attorney General Sessions "should stop" the special counsel investigation, calling it "rigged". In February 2020, Trump tweeted his criticism of the prosecutors' proposed sentence for former aide Roger Stone.
During the mid-2020 George Floyd protests, Trump sent a controversial tweet on May 25 which read, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Twitter restricted the tweet for violating the company's policy on promoting violence. Three days later, on May 28, President Trump signed Executive Order 13925, which sought to limit legal protections of social media companies.
In announcing the order, President Trump said, "We're here today to defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly. A small handful of powerful social media monopolies control the vast portion of all private and public communications in the United States." He criticized the tech companies, stating that they have "unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter". He called for the imposition of new regulations on tech platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
Critics of the order said it would be ineffective and called it "political theater" because it did not change existing federal law and did not bind federal courts. Twitter called the order "politicized" and warned that it may "threaten the future of online speech and Internet freedoms." By contrast, Trump had been critical of Twitter for placing fact-checking warnings on some of his tweets, comparing these to censorship and accusing the social media giant of stifling conservative voices.
At the time, the president had more than 80 million followers. He said that if he had the legal authority to do so, he would completely shut down Twitter, stating "I think I'd be hurting it very badly if we didn't use it anymore. We have other sites we can use, I guess, or we'd have to develop other sites."
President Trump's order directed the Federal Communications Commission to start a rule-making process to clarify when social media companies should keep protections under the law. Some of the members of FCC are expressed concern about the order. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told NPR that she was worried that the order sought to turn the agency into "the president's speech police."
One of the President' supporters, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, criticized Twitter for adding warning labels to the president's tweets, calling it an editorial decision that made Twitter to be more like a publisher. In a letter to Twitter's CEO, Hawley wrote, "It makes little sense to treat companies that publish their editorial comments about others' content as if they are mere distributors. Companies that act like publishers should be treated like publishers".
Conversely, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supported Twitter's decision to flag tweets that they claimed to be inaccurate. She said "Social media platforms have sold out the public interest to pad their corporate profits. Their business model is to make money at the expense of the truth."
Near the end of his Presidency, on January 8, 2021, Twitter announced that they had permanently suspended Trump's personal account. The said that the did so "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" following the storming of the Capitol Building. President Trump had announced in his final tweet before the suspension that he would not attend the inauguration of his successor Joe Biden.