Sen. Kamala D. Harris on Wednesday defended her call to suspend President Trump’s Twitter account, saying it’s a matter of public safety.

“I think on this issue we all need to understand that if you talk with those families in El Paso, if you talk with the family of the whistleblowers, if you talk with the family members of people who have been at the receiving end of Donald Trump’s threatening remarks on Twitter, you will know this is no laughing matter — it is a serious matter,” the California Democrat said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“And it is a matter of the safety of those individuals,” Ms. Harris said. “You can look at the fact that the shooter in El Paso was influenced by the words that the president of the United States, unfiltered, uses through this medium on Twitter.”

“He has 65 million followers,” she said. “And we have to take seriously the implications that are about threatening witnesses, intimidating witnesses and obstructing justice. And this is a private company that has rules of engagement, terms of use, and the president should be treated just like anyone else.”

Ms. Harris had been asked about some of the online pushback she got for talking about the issue at Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate.

At the debate, she had called on Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to join her in saying Mr. Trump’s Twitter account should be shut down. Ms. Warren declined.

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