X Slaps ‘Spam Warning’ On Links To NPR Story About Trump Team’s Arlington Altercation Fallout

Social media platform X slapped a “warning” on links to NPR’s follow-up reporting on the Trump campaign’s altercation in Arlington National Cemetery, stalling users who click on the story and suggesting the link is “unsafe” or “spam.”

The warning appeared on links posted soon after the story was published by the article’s author, NPR journalist Stephen Fowler . The warning page allows users to continue to the story if they so choose but details that the link has been identified as directing to “spam.” The page explains that the flagged link may fall into several categories that may result in theft of personal information or direct users to “violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm.”

Screengrab via X.

In a thread on X an hour later Fowler shared his follow-up story again using the same URL. Links posted after this time successfully forward to the article without issue, suggesting the link was no longer blacklisted, although the warning continues to present when users click through to the story in tweets posted before around 7.30am (ET).

Fowler’s story follows ongoing fallout from NPR’s original reporting on Tuesday about an incident at the cemetery on Monday, when former President Donald Trump attended the site to mark the anniversary of the 2021 Kabul airport terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 13 U.S. military personnel during the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

NPR reported that members of the campaign verbally abused and pushed a cemetery staff member who attempted to stop the team filming and photographing the ceremony. Federal law prohibits political campaign activities at all Army national cemeteries, including Arlington. Links to the original story are not marked with the same warning.

Trump campaign staff went on to berate the Arlington Cemetery employee as “mentally ill” and a “disgrace” to the “hollowed [sic]” military burial site.

Notably, the platform is owned by pro-Trump billionaire Elon Musk , who in April designated NPR as “state-affiliated media.” Disputing the label, a term typically used to describe propaganda outlets in autocratic countries, NPR announced it would no longer post content to the platform.

The blacklisting the article link comes in the wake of Musk’s public endorsement of Trump in July and the damage that the ongoing narrative around the cemetery visit is causing to the Trump campaign, which denies any wrongdoing and is “weighing” the release of its own footage of the incident.

This story has been updated.