Trump has been locked out of his Twitter account for 12 hours

Instead of deleting outgoing President Donald Trump's account like it ought to, Twitter has given the coup-inciter-in-chief a slap on the wrist in the form of a 12-hour ban, and a warning that if he steps out of line again the service will "permanently suspend" his account.

UPDATE (8:35 p.m. ET): Facebook has announced on Twitter that it's suspending Trump's account for 24 hours. The post reads: "We've assessed two policy violations against President Trump's Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time." Instagram has done likewise.

Earlier today, Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol Building in a move that left one person dead and the seat of U.S. administrative power on lockdown. Following the insurrection, Trump posted a one-minute-long video to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, asking supporters to go home, but not denouncing their actions, and continuing his baseless claims that the election — which he lost to Joe Biden with similar numbers to those with which he beat Hillary Clinton, and which he called a "landslide" in 2016 — was riddled with irregularities.

Facebook and YouTube swiftly removed the video, but Twitter let it accrue tens of millions of views, choosing to only limit the ability of users to retweet it with added commentary or like it. Twitter eventually caved and removed both the tweet with the video and a follow-up praising today's acts of domestic terrorism.

Trump's ongoing dog whistles — The now-deleted video saw Trump doubling down on his position that the election was stolen from him and half-heartedly calling on the thugs who overran the Capitol to "go home." His follow-up stuck to the same theme: "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"

A temporary solution — Twitter has threatened to ban Trump if he violates the company's terms and conditions again and locked his account for 12 hours. But in doing so, it's preventing him from another, all-but-certainly ban-worthy transgression and given him time to regroup. What it should do, of course, is removing his account immediately and leave him to rant on sympathetic (and sycophantic) echo chambers like Parler and Gab.

Technically, Donald J. Trump remains the President of the Republic for 14 more days, but after today's display of outright insurrection and his repeated calls to ignore the rule of law, he doesn't deserve to ride them out. When an animal turns rabid you don't give it another chance to bite.