Update: Two weeks after the shutdown, Donald Trump's official Twitch channel has been reinstated. The reinstatement was expected: two weeks is a fairly standard timeout period for channels that violate Twitch's guidelines, which is what led to the suspension in the first place, and was announced to be temporary at the time the suspension was imposed.

Twitch declined to comment on the status of Trump's channel, other than to say that "the offending content has been removed," as it did when the suspension was imposed, which appears to be the case. Both the video of the 2016 campaign rally that accused Mexico of "sending" drug dealers and rapists to the United States, which was cited as the reason for the suspension, and the replay of the June 2020 rally that repeated this claim, are no longer viewable. However, in the video rerun of the Tulsa rally, one can see him claiming that China has "sent a plague [on America]" to disrupt the U.S. economy. One audience member near the camera says "China, China" in a racist fake accent.

Original story In October 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump launched his official Twitch channel. Today, the channel was temporarily suspended for violating Twitch's rules against hateful conduct and harassment.

"Hateful behavior will not be tolerated on Twitch," a Twitch spokesperson said in a statement." In keeping with our policy, President Trump's channel has been temporarily suspended by Twitch for comments made on the stream and the content in question has been removed."

Twitch cited two examples of content on Trump's channel that violated the rules: in a speech at a 2016 campaign rally recently replayed on Twitch, Trump accused Mexico of "sending" drug dealers and rapists to the United States and demonized immigrants.

"Hey, it's 1:00 a.m., and a very tough, I use the word sometimes, very tough hombre is breaking in through the window of a young woman whose husband is away as a traveling salesman or something," Trump said; when she calls 911, she is told, "Sorry, this number is no longer available. It's not available." By the way, there are many such cases. Whether you are a young woman, an old woman, a young man, or an old man, you are asleep."

Also, according to a spokesperson, Twitch issued a statement to the president's team when the channel went live last year, warning that content violations would not be tolerated.

"Like everyone else, Twitch politicians must abide by our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines," Twitch said at the time."

"We make no exceptions for political or newsworthy content, and we will take action when content that violates our rules is reported.

Twitch has recently taken a more aggressive approach to policing and banning content and creators on its platform in response to a spate of allegations of harassment and sexual assault in the video game industry. as a result of its review, Twitch has decided that its policy has not stated whether the suspension was imposed as a result of the changes made.

The length of Donald Trump's Twitch suspension has not been announced, but it came on the same day that Reddit banned r/The_Donald, the largest pro-Trump sub-Reddit, as part of its own crackdown on hate speech.

"All Reddit communities must adhere to our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because r/The_Donald failed to do so at every opportunity," wrote Reddit CEO Steve "spez" Huffman. The "r/The_Donald community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations.

Trump is still active on Twitter.