For those who came in late, Trump seems to be having difficulty having lost the elections and ordered his paramilitary fanbase to storm the capital arrange a peaceful protest .  Yesterday a large armed mob with bullet proof vests tried to stop the US Senate from confirming the election result. They also sent two pipe bombs to Democratic HQ in an attempt to get them to surrender.

Five people have died and about 50 people have been arrested.  Of course, the vote went through.

Twitter seemed to blame Trump for the unrest.

"As a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, DC, we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump Tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy", the site writes. As part of the action, Trump will be locked out of his account for at least 12 hours. The account will remain locked beyond that, as long as the tweets are not deleted, the site adds. Beyond the current action, Twitter adds that future violations of its policies, "will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account".

The service has long contended that tweets from a prominent figure like Trump were in the public interest, in spite of breaking its stated terms of service.

According to Twitter guidelines: "A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable. With this in mind, there are certain cases where it may be in the public's interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules." The removed tweets include content that was early flagged by the service, "due to a risk of violence", all arriving in the wake of a violent storming of the US Capitol.