UPDATE: Trump warns of ‘big action’ after Twitter begins ‘fact checking’

President Donald Trump continued his attack on social media Wednesday morning after Twitter, for the first time, began flagging the president’s tweets with a fact-check warning.

On Tuesday, Twitter added a warning phrase to two Trump tweets that called mail-in ballots "fraudulent" and predicted that "mail boxes will be robbed," among other things. Under the tweets, there is now a link reading "Get the facts about mail-in ballots" that guides users to a Twitter "moments" page with fact checks and news stories about Trump's unsubstantiated claims.

Early Wednesday, Trump fired back with a tweet of his own:

Later, the president promised “big action” against the social media giant.

Trump has recently issued a barrage of tweets suggesting a television host he has feuded with committed murder. The husband of a woman who died by accident two decades ago in an office of then-GOP Rep. Joe Scarborough is demanding that Twitter remove the president’s tweets suggesting Scarborough, now a fierce Trump critic, killed her.

“My request is simple: Please delete these tweets,” Timothy J. Klausutis wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

The body of Lori Kaye Klausutis, 28, was found in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach, Florida, congressional office on July 20, 2001. Trump has repeatedly tried to implicate Scarborough, a host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, in the death even though Scarborough was in Washington, not Florida, at the time.

Klausutis wrote in his letter that he has struggled to move on with his life due to the ongoing “bile and misinformation” spread about his wife on the platform, most recently by Trump. His wife continues to be the subject of conspiracy theories 20 years after her death.

Klausutis said in the letter, sent last week, that his wife had an undiagnosed heart condition, fell and hit her head on her desk at work. He called her death “the single most painful thing that I have ever had to deal with” and said he feels a marital obligation to protect her memory amid “a constant barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo and conspiracy theories since the day she died.”

Trump’s tweets violate Twitter’s community rules and terms of service, he said. “An ordinary user like me would be banished,” he wrote.

At Tuesday’s White House briefing, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly refused to say why Trump was pressing the unfounded allegations or whether he would stop tweeting about them. Instead, she focused on remarks that Scarborough made about the case that she said were inappropriate and flippant.

Dorsey did not reply directly to Klausutis’ letter and has not taken any action on the president's tweets. In a statement, Twitter said it was “deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family.”

But the company didn’t say it would do anything about Trump’s tweets and didn't even mention them directly, although it did reference vague plans for future policy changes. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly,” Twitter said.

The proposed changes include labeling false or misleading tweets with fact checks “crowdsourced” from Twitter. It recently started labeling such tweets when they are about COVID-19 and is looking to expand more broadly.

But the company hasn’t said when this tool would be available. Based on history, it’s also not clear if these strictures would apply to Trump and other world leaders.

Over the weekend, the president also sent out tweets calling into question the legality of mail-in-ballots. The storm of tweets followed the president’s Facebook and Twitter posts last week that claimed Michigan’s secretary of state mailed ballots to 7.7 million registered voters. Trump later deleted the tweet and posted an edited version that still threatened to hold up federal funds.

These are the sorts of tweets that Twitter could remove or label under its policy against sharing “false or misleading information intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in an election or other civic process.”

In general, Twitter has taken a hands-off approach to political leaders, contending that publishing controversial tweets from politicians helps hold them accountable and encourages discussion. Last year, it said it would consider slapping warning labels on some tweets by world leaders, noting that such individuals “aren’t entirely” above the rules.

Medical officials ruled Klausutis, who had a heart condition and told friends hours earlier that she wasn’t feeling well, had fainted and hit her head. Foul play was not suspected.

Trump, however, tweeted this month: