Social platform X (formerly Twitter) suspended the “White Dudes for Harris” account after a fundraising video call that drew almost 200,000 people in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid.
The account, @dudes4harris, was suspended on Monday night “due to user reports” for violating the X rule, according to a screenshot from one of the account’s administrators, Mike Nellis. As of Tuesday morning, @dudes4harris was still suspended and in “permanent read-only mode.”
“Tonight we scared @elonmusk and @DonaldJTrumpJr so much that they suspended our accounts and prevented us from letting them back in,” Nellis wrote on his X page, using the handles for X owner Elon Musk and the son of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. “They are scared of our success tonight, but we will not give up.”
Celebrities such as Jeff Bridges, Josh Groban, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Lance Bass attended White Dude for Harris fundraisers, which raised $4 million for Harris’ Democratic campaign. On X, the White Dude for Harris account describes itself as “a couple of guys who support Kamala Harris.”
When HuffPost reached out for comment, Company X sent an automated reply saying, “We’re busy right now, please check back later.”
Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and later renamed it X, has previously been accused of silencing critics after his platform suspended the accounts of several journalists who wrote critical articles about him. Their accounts have since been reinstated. While Musk describes himself as a defender of free speech, X has sued organizations including Media Matters for America and the Center to Combat Digital Hate, which investigated X and published a report on the social media site. The lawsuit against the latter group was later dropped.
Earlier this month, Musk announced he would “wholeheartedly” support Trump for president in 2024, and over the weekend called Harris an “exterminationist” for saying he understands why young people are hesitant to start a family.