Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ reveal internal debate to remove Mike Huckabee tweet including election joke



Members of Twitter’s 2020 election enforcement Slack channel considered removing a tweet from former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, including a joke about mail-in ballots, according to a new “Twitter files” thread.

“Stood in the rain for hour to early vote today. When I got home I filled my stack of mail-in ballots and then voted the ballots of my deceased parents and grandparents. They vote just like me! #Trump2020,” Huckabee tweeted on Oct. 24, 2020.

Substack writer Matt Taibbi revealed that in the Slack channel titled “us2020_xfn_enforcement,” employees at Twitter debated if the tweet should be removed.

“Hello <here> putting this tweet on everyone’s radar. This appears to be a joke but other people might believe it. Can I get your weigh in this?,” a Twitter employee wrote, linking to Huckabee’s tweet.

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Gov. Mike Huckabee visits “The Story with Martha MacCallum” in the Fox News Channel Studios on September 17, 2019, in New York City.
(Getty Images)

The revelation about Huckabee’s tweet was made during a “Twitter files” thread on Friday.

Twitter’s former Head of Trust & Safety, Yoel Roth, said in the Slack channel that while he agrees “it’s a joke,” Huckabee is “also literally admitting in a tweet to a crime.”

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Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City.

Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City.
( Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

“Yeah. I could see us taking action under ‘misleading claims that cause confusion about the established laws, regulations, procedures, and methods of a civic process’ but it’s not one that we could really label in a useful way, so it’s removal (of a stupid and ill-advised joke) or nothing. I’m maybe inclined not to remove without a report from voting authorities given it’s been a while since he tweeted it and virtually all of the replies I’m seeing are critical/counterspeech,” Roth said.

The last message of the screenshot from the Slack channel shows a Twitter employee saying that the tweet should be left alone.

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Billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over Twitter in late October and immediately fired several top executives.

Billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over Twitter in late October and immediately fired several top executives.
(Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto, Carina Johansen/NTB/AFP via Getty Images (Photo illustration))

“The thrust of the joke seems to be that mail-in ballots are for the fraudulent votes, so I could see an argument for our mail-in voting label, but absent confusion I’d also be inclined to leave the joke alone,” the Twitter employee wrote.