President Trump's Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, has been permanently suspended, the company announced. Twitter/Screenshot by NPR hide caption toggle caption Updated 10:05 p.m. ET Friday Twitter has permanently suspended President Trump's account over a pattern of behavior that violated company rules. The action was the most sweeping punishment any major social media company has ever taken against Trump, who has used his Twitter account to announce White House policy, attack rivals and widely disseminate misinformation. For years, Twitter has been under pressure from critics to limit the reach of Trump's falsehood-laced tweets. Calls for Trump to be banned from Twitter have also been long mounting. Yet officials at Twitter stood by his account, since the platform generally gives wide berth to accounts from world leaders whose posts have public value. Sponsor Message That all changed following the violent riots that overtook the Capitol earlier this week after a deluge of posts attempting to sabotage the result of the presidential election. Now, @realDonaldTrump is gone for good and attempts to evade the ban will result in enforcement, Twitter officials said. "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," the company said in a statement. Trump says Twitter silenced him and his supporters It did not take long for Trump to try to get around the ban. Trump tweeted four messages from the @POTUS account. All were swiftly taken down. In the posts, which Trump also shared in a written statement, he accused Twitter of banning free speech. He said Twitter silenced him and "the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me." He also echoed complaints about a legal shield, known as Section 230, that has long protected tech companies from lawsuits over what is posted on its sites. "Twitter may be a private company, but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long," the president wrote.