@realDonaldTrump is gone, for now.

After more than 36,000 tweets in four years, with 88 million followers, the self-described "Hemingway of 140 characters" has been banned, perhaps permanently, by Twitter, his favorite social media megaphone, for what the company said was condoning the deadly riot at the Capitol by his supporters on Wednesday and preventing him from inciting further violence.

Calling Twitter's decision, which followed a temporary suspension by Facebook, "absolute insanity" Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that Twitter's life-time ban of his father meant that America was entering "Orwell's 1984." "Free speech no longer exists in America," he tweeted.

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When newly-elected President Trump escalated his attacks on journalists as purveyors of "fake news" and an "enemy of the people," Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron didn't take the bait. "We're not at war," he said. "We're at work."

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Terror attacks in France just keep on coming. In late September, two people were seriously wounded in a knife attack by a young Pakistani refugee outside the former office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had just republished cartoon caricatures of Muhammad. In 2015, the initial publication of the images sparked an attack that outraged much of the West—the massacre of 12 people at the magazine's newsroom. In mid-October, an 18-year-old Chechen Russian refugee who had grown up in France beheaded Samuel Paty, a teacher, for having shown the cartoons in a civics class devoted to free speech. Paty was slaughtered for "blasphemy" just outside his school in the Paris suburb of Yvelines. The country was still reeling from his brutal murder when, less than two weeks later, a 21-year-old Tunisian killed three people and injured many more at Notre Dame Basilica in the southern city of Nice. The assailant, who had been in the country less than a month, slit the church sacristan's throat, cut a woman's neck so deeply that the police described it as an attempt to decapitate her, and stabbed a third victim multiple times; she died after staggering out of the neo-Gothic church. Only four years earlier in that same city, another Tunisian had driven a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on July 14, killing 86 people.

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In what he had billed as a "big announcement" at the White House at 2:22 am Wednesday, President Trump could have chosen to highlight some of what he had achieved in his race for reelection. He could have boasted about having won more popular votes this year than in 2016. He could have talked about his campaign giving Republicans a strong showing in U.S. Senate races, where the GOP has a good shot at retaining its majority.

Trump could have talked about flipping possibly as many as six Democratic seats in the House. He could have gloated about his impressive appeal to Hispanic voters, especially in Florida, and his having helped some women Republican candidates secure House seats.

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The decision by Facebook and Twitter to block discussion of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's emails during his work for a Ukrainian energy company has become a bigger story than the article itself.

George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley called the social media giants' decision to limit distribution of the story "perfectly Orwellian" and "quite chilling" for free speech. George Freeman, on the other hand, the executive director of Media Law Resource Center, called it "responsible" and long overdue.

Which is it?

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