Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has rejected a suggestion from a Democratic senator to block President Donald Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon for threatening to decapitate top U.S. infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI chief, Christopher Wray.

Bannon suggested in a Nov. 5 Facebook video that Fauci and Wray should be beheaded, saying they had been untrustworthy to U.S. President Donald Trump.

"I'd put their heads on spikes...put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats," Bannon said in the video. "You either get with the program or you're gone," Reuters reported.

Zuckerberg said at a Tuesday Senate Judiciary hearing that Bannon's beheading comments weren't a serious enough violation of the company's policies to warrant a suspension. "No...that's not what our policies suggest that we should do," The Independent quoted Zuckerberg as saying. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal had asked if Bannon should be permanently banned from Facebook for his comments.

Twitter deleted Bannon's account on its platform for his comment, made this month on his War Room webcast, but Facebook only took down the clip.

Asked how many times Bannon would be allowed to call for the murder of government officials before the social media platform blocked his account, Zuckerberg said the content in question did infringe on the platform's rules and that they removed it. However, Zuckerberg said that having a content breach "doesn't automatically mean your account gets taken down."

While Zuckerberg thinks the infraction "came close to crossing that line, they clearly didn't," he reportedly told his staff during an all-hands meeting, as reported by CNBC. The CEO said the company had specific policies on how many times Facebook users needed to violate rules before their accounts get deactivated.