Far-right Newsmax reporter 'permanently banned' from Twitter for posting anti-vaxxer lies: report

Like many of her colleagues at Newsmax TV, Emerald Robinson has often gone out of her way to show that she is more extreme, more Trumpian and more MAGA than her competitors at Fox News and Fox Business — and in the process, she has gotten suspended from Twitter more than once. Now, according to The Hill's Sarah Polus, Robinson finds herself in the same position as former President Donald Trump: she has been banned from Twitter permanently for repeatedly violating the platform's terms of serve.

Specifically, Polus reports, Robinson (formerly of One America News Network) has been banned from Twitter for promoting lies and bogus conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines. On November 9, according to Polus, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that Robinson's account, @EmeraldRobinson, had been shut down.

Polus explains, "The permanent suspension follows a temporary seven-day Twitter suspension Robinson received last week in the wake of false claims she made about the COVID-19 vaccine. Social media users began noticing on Tuesday evening, (November 9) that Robinson's Twitter account had been shut down, just hours after she had been regranted access to the platform. After regaining access to her account, Robinson received her fifth violation, resulting in a permanent ban, the Twitter spokesperson said."

In one of her anti-vaxxer tweets, Robinson claimed that COVID-19 vaccines "contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked." Robinson had more than 440,000 followers on Twitter.

As stridently pro-Trump as Newsmax TV has been, its right-wing CEO, Christopher Ruddy, encouraged Americans to get vaccinated for COVID-19 in an op-ed published on July 20 — and surprisingly, Ruddy even praised the Biden Administration for its pro-vaccination campaign. President Joe Biden and his top White House medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have repeatedly said that the more Americans get vaccinated for COVID-19, the greater their chances of conquering the dreaded coronavirus — which, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has killed more than 5 million people worldwide and over 757,000 in the United States.

In the U.S., COVID-19 vaccination rates vary considerably from state to state. According to the Mayo Clinic, 81% of Massachusetts adults have been at least partially vaccinated for COVID-19 compared to only 51% in deep red Wyoming or 52% in Mississippi.