Trump rails against 'disgusting' Twitter for only featuring negative trending stories about him

President’s complaints caused #TrumpleThinSkin to trend on Tuesday morning

Donald Trump has lashed out at Twitter over what he called the “unfair” negative coverage he receives in the social media site's trending topics section, calling it “disgusting”.

The US president appeared to suggest in a Twitter post on Tuesday that the site was manipulating the section to make him “[look] as bad as possible”, calling this “illegal”.

He did not explain how he believed this was being carried out.

“So disgusting to watch Twitter’s so-called 'Trending', where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one,” wrote Mr Trump.

“They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend,” he added. “Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!”

Mr Trump’s complaint prompted users to respond with the hashtag #TrumpleThinSkin on Tuesday morning.

Another trend on Tuesday – #TrumpVirus – had seen more than 20,000 tweets commenting on the US president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with the US now recording more than 4.43m cases and more than 150,000 deaths.

Twitter says on its website that “trends are determined by an algorithm and, by default, are tailored for you based on who you follow, your interests, and your location.”

Mr Trump, whose 82 million followers on Twitter make him among the most popular accounts on the website, regularly appears on the site’s trending section.

His complaint on Tuesday comes amid an ongoing dispute with Twitter, who started warning users about “potentially misleading information” contained within the president’s posts in May.

Twitter also declared that a post about nationwide protests in June had broken Twitter’s own rules on abusive behaviour and threatening violence.

Mr Trump then warned social media platforms that he would “strongly regulate or close down” sites who “silenced conservative voices”.

“Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”, he wrote in another post.

The president and his campaign team have continued to condemn social media sites and media outlets who he deems unsupportive.

He tweeted on Monday that he would “win [November’s election] anyway” without the support of The Washington Post or Fox News, after the outlets ran polls show him trailing to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.