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NOTE: We are friends with Team Ban­non and the admins have all been demot­ed to mod­er­a­tors so no one can post on the Ban­non Face­book page. They have effec­tive­ly hijacked the account lim­it­ing their free speech on Facebook.

Face­book CEO Mark Zucker­berg on Tues­day said he won’t delete the account of for­mer White House advis­er Steve Ban­non for sug­gest­ing putting the heads of infec­tious dis­ease expert Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci and FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray ‘on pikes.’

Twit­ter banned Ban­non for the remark — made this month on his web­cast “War Room” — but Face­book only removed the video.

Sen. Richard Blu­men­thal (D‑Conn.) told Zucker­berg at a Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee hear­ing that Ban­non was call­ing for vio­lence and should be de-plat­formed. But the tech titan pushed back.

“Steve Ban­non in a Face­book Live video called for behead­ings of Dr. Fau­ci and FBI Direc­tor Wray for not act­ing more favor­ably toward Pres­i­dent Trump,” Blu­men­thal said. “How many times is Steve Ban­non allowed to call for the mur­der of gov­ern­ment offi­cials before Face­book sus­pends his account?”

Zucker­berg said that “the con­tent in ques­tion did vio­late our poli­cies and we took it down. Hav­ing a con­tent vio­la­tion does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly mean your account gets tak­en down.”

The Face­book CEO said peo­ple who post ter­ror­ist con­tent or child porn lose their accounts for a first offense, but that “for oth­er things it’s mul­ti­ple.” Zucker­berg report­ed­ly told his staff last week that Ban­non has not com­mit­ted enough infrac­tions to jus­ti­fy banishment.

“Will you com­mit to tak­ing down that account, Steve Bannon’s account?” Blu­men­thal pressed.

“No, that’s not what our poli­cies would sug­gest that we should do in this case,” Zucker­berg replied.