Trump Files Ludicrous Lawsuit Against the Washington Post for Defaming His Truth Social Scam

Posted by Mark NC on May 22, 2023 at 12:53 pm. 3 Comments :

The only business activity that Donald Trump has ever demonstrated any commitment to is baseless and bitter litigation against other enterprises that he is unable to compete with honestly, or simply refuses to deal with fairly. His lawsuits are not much more than personal attacks on anyone he can’t bully into submission.

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Among the targets of Trump’s pathological litigiousness are media outlets that he believes have blasphemed him or failed to appreciate his divine infallibility. More often than not, his efforts have led to legal humiliation as the cases are dismissed or dropped or lost outright. Which is the likely outcome of his latest loopy lawsuit.

The Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, has just announced that it is suing the Washington Post for $3.7 billion dollars for defamation, a figure far in excess of what Trump’s anti-social media firm is actually worth.

Trump has no basis for this suit. For one thing, he is constantly claiming that his Pravda Social is a massive success, greatly eclipsing Twitter. Also, it’s hard to defame a business that began as a fraud and went downhill from there. Nevertheless, according to reports…

“The lawsuit, filed by Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (TMTG) in Florida’s Sarasota County, claims that a 13 May article that alleged the company may have committed securities fraud was false and defamatory, and posed an ‘existential threat.’

“The article titled ‘Trust linked to porn-friendly bank could gain a stake in Trump’s Truth Social’ alleged that the company had concealed key details about a proposed merger from the Securities and Exchange Commission and shareholders, citing internal documents provided by a whistleblower.”

Right off the bat, Trump’s lawsuit is invalid. He cannot claim defamation if the Post reported that TMTG, which is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), “may have committed securities fraud.” That’s an accurate presentation of facts. Furthermore, the Post is merely reporting what is happening as sourced to a whistleblower from within TMTG.

Among other things, the SEC is probing TMTG and Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), the shell company that TMTG is using to get a place on the stock exchange, for possible insider trading and stock fraud. Trump’s operation is also the subject of a Grand Jury investigation in New York. What’s more, it was recently revealed that Truth Social may have violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8 million in Russian funds connected to Vladimir Putin.

The litany of lawsuits by Trump & Co. have not only named the Washington Post, but also the New York Times, CNN, and others. He has even sued the board of the Pulitzer Prize committee to demand that they revoke awards given to the Post and the Times for their accurate reporting on his unsavory associations with Russia and Putin’s assistance during his presidential campaigns. For a primer on Trump’s legal maneuvers, see the following…

Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ Faces Legal and Financial Turmoil Amid Disclosures of Russian Funding
The report notes that the sources of the funding include the off-shore Paxum Bank, based in the Caribbean island nation, Dominica. It is notorious for “providing banking services for the pornography and sex worker industries, which makes it higher risk of engaging in money laundering and other illicit financing.”

Trump Sues the Pulitzer Prize Board for Honoring Accurate Stories of His Russian Collusion
The Pulitzer Board had an independent review conducted after receiving a demand from Trump to rescind the awards. That review found that “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”

After Goofy Lawsuit Against CNN, Trump Threatens More Suits, Including the January 6th Committee
The crux of Trump’s complaint is that CNN’s use of labels describing him as a “racist,” “Russian lackey,” “insurrectionist,” and comparable to Hitler are defamatory. Apparently his lawyers have not advised him that the truth is a solid defense against allegations of defamation.

Trump Attorney Announces Laughable Lawsuit Against CNN for Accurately Calling Trump a Liar
Lindsey Halligan, one of a string of Trump’s incompetent attorneys, appeared this week on recently convicted Steve Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast to announce a threat to sue CNN. The complaint is typically preposterous and offers more opportunity for comedy than for anything of any legal importance.

LOCK HIM UP: Trump’s TRUTH Social Scam is Being Criminally Investigated By a Federal Grand Jury
Digital World Acquisition Corp., revealed in a securities filing Monday that it became aware on June 16 that each member of its board of directors received subpoenas from a federal grand jury in New York.

Trump’s Lawsuit Against His Niece Mary and the NY Times is a Confession that She’s Telling the Truth
Trump announced his latest legal misadventure wherein he is suing his niece, Mary Trump, and the New York Times for, as stated in the filing, “tortiously breaching and/or interfering with his contractual rights and otherwise maliciously conspiring against him.” Because paranoid delusions are another of his known psychoses.

So this latest lawsuit stunt is just another in the series of Trump’s ridiculous and malicious legal misadventures. There is no plausible path for success in these suits. But since Trump is spending the money that he has conned from his cult followers, what does he care about it? He’ll just whine that courts are all rigged after he loses again.

UPDATE: Trump elaborates on his whining with a another post saying “So Dominion gets almost a Billion Dollars and I, after years of Fake News, Hoaxes, Scams, and Investigations, am entitled to NOTHING? Is that really the way it’s supposed to work? I don’t think so!”

Actually, that is precisely the way it works. Dominion proved their case in court. Trump has failed repeatedly, because he has no evidence and no case.

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Trump’s Truth Social CEO Whines that Shareholders in His Alt-Twitter Scam Are Being Wiped Out

Posted by Mark NC on April 22, 2023 at 11:56 am. 1 Comments :

The single most unifying characteristic of the cult of Donald Trump – aside from the brazen and shameless lying – is their pathetic penchant for victimhood. For people who relentlessly brag about personal responsibility and inner strength, they sure cry a lot about how persecuted they are by everyone who is out to get them.

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Among the worst dispensers of this dreary disposition is former GOP representative – and current CEO of Trump’s Truth Social – Devin Nunes. Ever since he resigned from Congress to head up Trump’s pitifully failing social media scam, Nunes has done little but complain that the platform that he and Trump launched to avoid what they falsely perceived as censorship has been suppressed by the forces of the “Deep State,” radical liberals, and George Soros.

On Friday Nunes visited Newsmax to swing open his tear ducts with mournful moaning about the catastrophic business for which he is the chief executive. Nunes complained bitterly about…

“A major scandal that’s brewing at the SEC. Their willingness to play politics and discriminate against people who, like our little company, our startup company, you know, we want to go public. We want to merge with a company. The shareholders that bought into that company are being wiped out.

Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes says the investors in Truth “are being wiped out” by the SEC blocking them from going public: “We want to go public. We want to merge with a company. The shareholders that bought into that company are being wiped out.” pic.twitter.com/eUASqEtkne

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 21, 2023

Awww. Poor thing. He’s been forced to admit that Truth Social is a total bust. The “scandal brewing” at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Nunes is whining about is actually an investigation into allegations of insider trading and stock fraud. It involves Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC), the shell company that the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) was expected to merge with in order to land a spot on the stock market.

However, that plan has not gone particularly well. DWAC has declined in value by 80% from its high mark last October. Trump and Nunes cannot access the millions of dollars of investments pledged unless and until the merge is completed. Which doesn’t look very likely at this point. And since the only purpose of this sham venture was to either exact vengeance on Trump’s enemies, or enrich him personally, he appears to have failed on both counts.

In addition to the SEC probe, Trump’s operation is the subject of a Grand Jury in New York, for which all of DWAC’s board members have been subpoenaed. What’s more, it was recently revealed that Truth Social may have violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8 million in Russian funds connected to Vladimir Putin.

SEE THIS: Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ Faces Legal and Financial Turmoil Amid Disclosures of Russian Funding

Meanwhile, Trump himself bailed on his crooked company. Just weeks before the Grand Jury subpoenas were served, Trump removed himself and Don Jr from the board of TMTG. While that doesn’t actually shield him from liability, it is further evidence that his business is a scam that never had any credible prospects for success. Which the hiring of Nunes, who had no experience whatsoever in media or technology, should have told everyone from the start.

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Trump Made Less than $200 on Truth Social According to His FEC Financial Disclosure

Posted by Mark NC on April 15, 2023 at 10:55 am. 2 Comments :

Two days after the January 6th insurrection that Donald Trump incited, Twitter permanently suspended his account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Elon Musk later reinstated Trump, but he has not posted on Twitter since the suspension was lifted.

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In the meantime, Trump launched Truth Social, a pitiful Twitter clone where he could mouth off interminably and unconstrained by facts or decency. Not surprisingly, it has become just another failure in the Trump stable of ego-driven business ventures. That, however, didn’t stop him and his minions from pretending that it was not only a success, but an Earth shattering advance in the evolution of the human race.

In reality, Truth Social has been a fiasco on every level. It has lost money, failed to attract users, betrayed its promise of free speech, stiffed its vendors, and is mired in multiple legal quagmires. Currently Truth Social’s corporate holding company, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), and Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), the shell company created to take TMTG public, are being criminally investigated by a federal Grand Jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. And DWAC’s stock has declined a whopping 87% in a little over a year.

On Friday Trump finally filed his financial disclosure report to the Federal Election Commission – a month late after three extensions – and it contained some interesting details. Among them, Truth Social is valued at between $5 million and $25 million. Which is curious considering that DWAC has allegedly raised pledges of more than a billion dollars. However, none of that funding will go through if the deal to merge DWAC and TMTG fails to materialize, which looks doubtful.

As for Trump, he was reported to own 90% of TMTG, which earned him less than $200 according to his financial disclosure. That’s hardly representative of the huge success that Trump has claimed Truth Social to be. To the contrary, it’s evidence that the platform is an abysmal failure, despite Trump’s utterly dishonest cheerleading.

SEE THIS: Trump Posts Hysterical Lie that ‘Everyone is Watching’ His Failing Twitter Ripoff, Truth Social

The rest of Trump’s financial disclosure wasn’t much better. It revealed that his income was mostly generated from grifting operations such as his digital trading card NFTs, that earned him between $100,000 to $1 million. He also claimed to have more than $5 million in income from speaking engagements. And he reported royalties of between $100,000 and $1 million for his old book, “The Art of the Deal.” Although he also reported that most of his other books drew royalties of less than $200.

Perhaps most troubling is that he claimed to have received $5 million in royalties from a Saudi real estate company to build a Trump hotel, villa and golf course in Oman. Note that he is not the builder. These are just royalties for the use of his name, for a project that may never get off the ground. So what are the Saudis really paying him for?

What this financial statement reveals is something that longtime Trump watchers already know: He is a conman and a grifter and a failure who has never been the business genius he pretends to be. It also proves that he is nowhere close to being a billionaire, as he claims. But not to worry. His most ardent cult disciples will continue to believe that he’s the second coming of the messiah. Because that’s what cult disciples do. The rest of the nation – and the world – will see him for the fraud is, and has always been.

Fox News Wonders What Horror Biden Is Up To By Communicating With Young People On Social Media

Posted by Mark NC on April 12, 2023 at 3:38 pm. 0 Comments :

The Biden administration is reported to be considering expanding its outreach to younger Americans by holding briefings for popular social media personalities, known as “influencers.” These briefings would be separate from those held in the White House Briefing Room for conventional media.

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Naturally, any new idea floated by President Biden or the Democratic Party is immediately pounced on by Fox News as something nefarious with an ulterior motive that Fox portrays as sinister. In this case, Fox News is very concerned that Biden is trying to communicate effectively with young people, Something that Fox News is particularly bad at.

To counter this malicious method of messaging, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum invited the Republican governor if Iowa, Kim Reynolds, to discuss the rumors. MacCallum is regarded by Fox to be one of their alleged “news” reporters. That has never been true, and she demonstrates why in this exchange with the Governor…

MacCallum: I think a lot of viewers, a lot of people, a lot of adults, don’t really understand the influence of TicTok. These folks on TikTok have huge followings. They tell people what they should eat, what they should buy, what they should wear, and more powerfully I think in the midterms, who they should vote for and what issues should be important to them regardless of any fact check going on what they’re saying. So how seriously do you take this is if the Biden team decides to really implement, use these people in 2024?
Reynolds: I think the hypocrisy that continues out of the Biden administration, and with Democrats across this country, is just ridiculous.

Fox News host Martha MacCallum appears to be describing . . . Fox News! https://t.co/W6I13DEbFD

— News Corpse (@NewsCorpse) April 12, 2023

Let’s set aside Reynolds’ response that totally avoids the question in order to fling the word “hypocrisy” around without any relationship to the subject. MacCallum’s concerns about social media “influencers” sound awfully familiar. Can you think of any other media enterprise that tells people how they should eat, dress, and vote?

If you said “Fox News,” congratulations. You’re not brain dead. Fox News also has a huge following (although mostly seniors), and regularly complains about what they call “woke” companies that you should refrain from patronizing. For instance, you must not eat M&Ms, or drink Bud Light, or wear Nikes, or visit Disneyland. And they spend 90% of their airtime advising their glassy-eyed audience to vote only for certified conservative Republicans.

Fox also tells their viewers what issues are important, or by omission, which are not. Recently Fox News buried the story of the Texas judge who ruled against the FDA approval of the abortion pill. From April 7 through 10, Fox provided all of 27 minutes to the story, while MSNBC and CNN each had seven hours of reporting. Likewise, Fox News minimally reported on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of undisclosed gifts from a right-wing billionaire.

The reports that the Biden White House is planning on having dedicated briefings for social media influencers are greatly exaggerated. White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre declined to confirm any such plans. But she did note that, informally, it’s “something that we do all the time, from the President on down, is talk to influencers and try to meet the American people where they are to reach them in a different way.” As examples, there were such briefings last year on the war in Ukraine, and on the Inflation Reduction Act.

There are good reasons to implement an outreach program that caters to social media. Studies show that “Nearly 40% of Gen Z prefers TikTok and Instagram over Google Search, according to Google’s own internal data.” And it makes sense to try to reach citizens where they actually are. And for younger citizens who are wary of mainstream media, that’s on platforms like TikTok. But, not surprisingly, that’s too difficult a concept for the fogies on Fox to grasp. So they condemn it. Even though Donald Trump has his own pitifully failing social media platform.

SEE THIS: Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ Faces Legal and Financial Turmoil Amid Disclosures of Russian Funding

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Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ Faces Legal and Financial Turmoil Amid Disclosures of Russian Funding

Posted by Mark NC on March 17, 2023 at 11:59 am. 1 Comments :

Truth Social, the website that Donald Trump launched after Twitter suspended him “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” has had a rocky existence from its inception. It’s first days were marked by technical failures and user frustration. And it was all downhill from there.

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This week it was revealed that Truth Social may have been the beneficiary of millions of dollars of investments from Russian sources who are connected to Vladimir Putin. The Guardian reports that…

“Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter.” […]

“The expanded nature of the criminal investigation, which has not been previously reported, threatens to delay the completion of the merger between Trump Media and DWAC, which would provide the company and Truth Social with up to $1.3bn in capital, in addition to a stock market listing.”

The report notes that the sources of the funding include the off-shore Paxum Bank, based in the Caribbean island nation, Dominica. It is notorious for “providing banking services for the pornography and sex worker industries, which makes it higher risk of engaging in money laundering and other illicit financing.” These revelations compound both the financial and legal ordeals of Truth Social. It is already being investigated for various alleged corrupt activities.

What’s more, the shell company that Trump planned to use to get Truth Social’s parent corporation, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), on the stock market is itself being threatened with being delisted. Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) recently received a notice from NASDAQ warning them of the pending action. It’s stock price has declined nearly 90%.

In advance of that, Trump, hoping to avoid personal liability, removed himself and Don Jr from the board of TMTG. However, if the DWAC deal doesn’t go through, Trump won’t be able to pocket the billions of dollars that have been raised by his criminal cronies.

Trump’s interest in Truth Social has always been focused more on enriching himself and getting retribution for having been banished from Twitter. It was a scam that never had any credible prospects for success. That was evident in Trump’s hiring of former congressman Devin Nunes to run the venture. Nunes had no experience whatsoever in media or technology, and it shows. But he was and is a devoted Trump-fluffer.

Truth Social’s business model is based on advertising. However, it has utterly failed to build a viable stream of ad revenue. According to an exhaustive study by the New York Times, the platform has only been able to attract interest from “hucksters and fringe marketers.” “Ads from major brands are nonexistent on the site,” the Times found, and that instead “the ads on Truth Social are for alternative medicine, diet pills, gun accessories and Trump-themed trinkets.”

SEE THIS: Truth Social Disease: Ads on Trump’s Twitter Ripoff are Mostly Scams and Trump-Fluffing Merch

As an example of the bogus product pitches on Truth Social is an ad for a blatantly racist, and thoroughly worthless, Trump keepsake: A Trump-branded White Privilege Card:

Now for sale on Trump’s Truth Social. pic.twitter.com/7Mc9oGGBWw

— Ron Filipkowski ?? (@RonFilipkowski) March 17, 2023

UPDATE: In the midst of all this turmoil, DWAC has just fired their CEO, Patrick Orlando.

And that about sums up the decrepit state of affairs at Truth Social. For more on what is perhaps the biggest flop on Trump’s long resume of failures, see these related stories…

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Herr Trump Embraces Fascist GOP Threats to Regulate Twitter and Arrest Their Executives

Posted by Mark NC on February 9, 2023 at 1:08 pm. 6 Comments :

During his brief but abominable occupation of the White House, Donald Trump distinguished himself from his predecessors by relentlessly expressing his aversion to the free press and the Constitution. He repeatedly referred to the media as “the enemy of the people,” and more recently literally called for termination of the Constitution.

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On Wednesday the newly GOP-led House Oversight Committee held a hearing to finally get to the bottom of the Scandal of the Century, Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop. Specifically the Committee sought to prove that the pre-Elon Musk Twitter regime had deliberately skewed their policies to adversely affect conservatives and Republicans and, especially Donald Trump.

The Republicans staged a shamelessly shallow exercise in feigned outrage over imaginary offenses that was triggered by the embarrassingly ineffective attempt by Musk’s “Twitter Files” “exposé” to unveil political bias on the part of Twitter’s previous staff.

Notable during the avalanche of asininity on the part of Republican members of the Committee, were the remarks by Clay Higgins of Louisiana. When it was his turn to question the Twitter executives who were summoned before the Committee to testify, Higgins launched into an unhinged flurry of baseless accusations and culminating in outright threats:

“You, ladies and gentlemen interfered with the United States of America 2020 presidential election, knowingly and willingly. That’s the bad news. It’s gonna get worse because this is the investigation part. Later comes the arrests part. Your attorneys are familiar with that.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene said the same thing.

Clay Higgins tells former Twitter employees they are going to get arrested for rigging the 2020 election. pic.twitter.com/vyBoHb3UVl

— Ron Filipkowski ?? (@RonFilipkowski) February 8, 2023

What we have here is a member of Congress threatening to have witnesses arrested for unspecified crimes for which he has no evidence ever occurred. What Higgins is asserting as criminal is the exercise of the constitutional rights of a private social media company to moderate the content on its website. It is wholly inappropriate intimidation by a government official seeking to coerce the behavior of individuals to comply with his political beliefs.

That sort of authoritarian bullying is generally reserved for tyrants and dictators, and those who seek to emulate them. And speaking of Donald Trump… He was thrilled to see how Higgins browbeat the Twitter execs. He posted a video of Higgins along with with his approval on his pitifully failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, saying that…

“Finally we have people with courage stepping forward! The Election was Rigged and Stolen, in so many ways – A mockery of our fully weaponized ‘Justice’ system.”

[For the record, the tweet that Trump was so appalled by that he wanted Twitter staff arrested was by supermodel Chrissy Teigen, who called Trump a “PAB” (look it up) for being to cowardly to tag her in his tweet that insulted her]

Of course, there was nothing in Higgins remarks – or in the entirety of the hearing – that even hinted at any evidence that the “Election was Rigged and Stolen.” To the contrary, Democrats on the Committee conclusively proved that the only bias by Twitter was in favor of Trump and the GOP. Even worse, in questioning by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) it was affirmed that only the Trump White House ever attempted to direct Twitter to censor content. And it did so with an overt threat that, “We’ll shut you down. We’ll regulate you. We Will never allow this to happen.”

Twitter executives verify to the House Oversight Committee that the Trump White House tried to get Twitter to take down tweets from Chrissy Teigen that made fun of Trump. pic.twitter.com/gQU8YWT0kw

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 8, 2023

That is an example of unambiguous government suppression of a free press and a violation of the First Amendment. Nevertheless, Rep. Jim Jordan tried to turn the tables by accusing the Biden campaign of censorship simply because they made a request for Twitter to review certain offensive tweets. Jordan’s argument, however, was ridiculous. He claimed that asking Twitter to review whether tweets were in compliance with their own terms of service was censorship.

"My, my, my, what happens when you hold a hearing and can't prove your point?" pic.twitter.com/ibC1cQUDYl

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) February 8, 2023

Obviously, it’s not against the First Amendment to ask a company to review content based on the company’s own standards. What’s more, the Biden campaign not only didn’t accompany their requests with threats, they weren’t even in power at the time, so they had no clout with which to threaten. And yet this is the scenario in which Trump posted a comment urging his cult to “Watch the Twitter hearings going on right now in Washington. They admit that the Presidential Election of 2020 was RIGGED & STOLEN!”

Naturally Trump is lying. No such admission occurred in the hearing. But Trump’s flagrant dishonesty is precisely the sort of provocation that resulted in the riots in Washington on January 6th. And his continued presence on social media (both Twitter and Facebook recently reinstated his accounts) will predictably result in more violence.

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Fox News Says Biden is ‘Compromised’ Because He Revoked Trump’s Non-Existent Ban on TikTok

Posted by Mark NC on February 6, 2023 at 1:31 pm. 2 Comments :

In a time of political turmoil, there is one thing that everyone can rely on with the utmost certainty. Fox News is going to spend the next couple of years feverishly fabricating defamatory fiction about President Biden. Whether or not he runs for reelection in 2024, the Fox News Bullshit Factory will be running on full steam to malign Biden and undermine democracy.

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On Monday morning, Fox News contributor and former GOP congressman, Sean Duffy (whose wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, is a Fox News host), was the token male on Fox’s “Outnumbered.” The subject for one segment was what to do about the nefarious Chinese social media app, TikTok.

Duffy began his fairy tale spinning with a wholly unsupported assertion that it wasn’t TikTok, but members of Congress with access to classified information who are a “security risk.” His reasoning was that they are using two phones, one of which is personal and is disseminating info to China. Duffy doesn’t provide any evidence of this, but as a former congressman, he might just be talking about his own behavior when he served. And Fox and the GOP are mighty perturbed about China these days.

Following that, Duffy segues to an accusation that President Biden must be “compromised” because he “got rid of the Trump ban on TikTok.” “I’m a Joe Biden is compromised guy,” Duffy bragged, “otherwise he wouldn’t have done it.”

Fox News now pushing that President Biden is “comprised” by China. (Video: Fox News) pic.twitter.com/KFsV4jCnIO

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) February 6, 2023

There is, however, a small problem with Duffy’s accusation. While Donald Trump did issue an executive order calling for TikTok to be banned if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, didn’t sell it, the order was never implemented, and was struck down by a federal court. What Biden did was to revoke Trump’s invalid and illegal executive order, and issue another in its place that complied with the law. Biden’s order specified that a security risk would be considered when apps were owned or controlled by foreign adversaries, or if the apps collected sensitive personal data.

Duffy went on to contradict himself and his criticism of Biden by noting the risks of banning TikTok from the Apple and Google app stores. He correctly noted that if Apple ceased to offer TikTok, China might retaliate by shutting down Apple’s computer and iPhone factories in China. “If they take TikTok off their app store,” Duffy said, “China will retaliate and, all of a sudden, you may not be able to buy an iPhone or a computer.”

It’s difficult to figure out just what Duffy is complaining about. First he’s appalled that Biden might allow TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. Then he’s fearful of losing his iPhone if measures were taken to ban TikTok. So which is it? Is Biden compromised by China, or should Biden be compromising with China?

Don’t look for Duffy or Fox News to answer that question. They have never been particularly concerned about national security. Especially as it regards Trump, who was known to have used private, unsecured phones while he was president. Nor would they be covering for Trump who stole hundreds of classified documents and stored them at his hotel/home, Mar-a-Lago.

Yet somehow, to Fox News, Biden replacing Trump’s unlawful TikTok ban with a legally valid review process means he’s compromised by China – where Trump had a secret bank account while in the White House. And despite these facts, we can expect many more attacks on Biden between now and the 2024 election. It’s what they do.

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Truth Social Disease: Ads on Trump’s Twitter Ripoff are Mostly Scams and Trump-Fluffing Merch

Posted by Mark NC on January 29, 2023 at 11:07 am. 0 Comments :

Two years ago Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, suspended Donald Trump’s accounts. They correctly assessed that his relentless lies about election fraud were likely to incite more violence, and that his dangerous disinformation about COVID would result in more needless fatalities. As a result, Trump launched his own platform to seek the attention that his ego so desperately craved.

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Consistent with his prior business and political misadventures, Trump’s Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, has been a spectacular failure from its inception. Its buggy launch was plagued with crashes and frustrated users who couldn’t log in. Fake accounts and imposters overran the joint. It is the subject of criminal probes by the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Grand Jury in New York. And the shell company it partnered with to go public, Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), suffered an 85% decline in stock value over the past ten months.

So now that Facebook and Twitter have caved in and are restoring Trump’s accounts – which is profoundly ignorant, dangerous, and hypocritical – it’s not surprising that he is itching to resume tweeting.

SEE THIS: Trump is Said to Be Plotting His Return to Twitter, Affirming that Truth Social is a Flop

However, all is not well in Trumpville. The New York Times has done an exhaustive analysis of the advertising that appears on Truth Social that makes it look more like it’s contracted a Truth Social disease. Major advertisers are avoiding it like the plague.

Similar to what is happening on Twitter due to Elon Musk’s gross mismanagement, advertisers are afraid of their ads being juxtaposed with hate speech and other noxious content. Consequently, the only advertisers who are willing to shell out are sketchy scammers, conspiracy theorists, and junk peddlers. According to the Times, the site is rampant with…

“…many pitches from hucksters and fringe marketers […and…] Ads from major brands are nonexistent on the site. Instead, the ads on Truth Social are for alternative medicine, diet pills, gun accessories and Trump-themed trinkets, according to an analysis of hundreds of ads on the social network by The New York Times.”

The Times provided a collection of some of the bogus ads that appeared on the site. One particularly loopy example showed “Trump holding a $1,000 bill made of gold, which he was apparently offering free to supporters.” […however…] “The bill was not free, it was not made of gold, and it was not offered by Mr. Trump.” Another example featured a fake tweet of President Biden threatening to ban a $2.00 bill with Trump’s face on it.

That’s the sort of garbage you’re left with when a site is abandoned by reputable advertisers. The mass exodus was noted last year in a tweet by by GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-QAnon) who was appalled at what she bizarrely called “corporate communism.”

SEE THIS: UH-OH: Marjorie Taylor Greene Fears ‘Corporate Communism’ of Advertisers Leaving Musk’s Twitter

Some additional points made in the Times article include that…

Truth Social “is burning through about $1.7 million each month … And two federal investigations have put about $1.3 billion of much-needed funding in jeopardy.”
“Truth Social has a relatively small user base and many older users, who are less desirable for the brands.”
“Marketers have complained that Truth Social’s ad-serving technology … offers limited tools for tracking an ad’s performance […or the ability to…] prevent their ads from appearing near words or phrases that might upset customers.”
“In a reflection of the wariness that brands have over Mr. Trump and his politics, the word ‘Trump’ ranked as the 11th most common blacklisted term provided by advertisers in 2019.”
“Over time, the low-quality ads on Truth Social have irritated its own users, who have complained to Mr. Trump after repeatedly seeing the same disturbing images or after falling for misleading gimmicks. ‘Can you not vet the ads on Truth?’ asked one user in a post directed at Mr. Trump. ‘I’ve been scammed more than once.'”

So as Trump commences his pursuit of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he is simultaneously struggling with the dire prospects of the online platform that he hoped would juice his campaign. And those aren’t even the worst of his problems. He is also being investigated by multiple state and federal prosecutors for crimes related to his incitement of the January 6th insurrection, election interference, and financial and tax fraud.

Sean Hannity of Fox News provided a helpful list of many of the probes that are currently being conducted about Trump. In the meantime, here are some articles about the slow and painful demise of Truth Social…

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Trump is Said to Be Plotting His Return to Twitter, Affirming that Truth Social is a Flop

Posted by Mark NC on January 18, 2023 at 10:43 am. 4 Comments :

Last November Donald Trump announced that he is running for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. In the weeks that have followed he has done nothing to advance his candidacy except to post rancid comments attacking his enemies (especially Special Counsel Jack Smith) on his Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, and calling in to right-wing Internet programs to whine about having lost the 2020 presidential election.

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Tomorrow will mark two months since Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account. However, Trump has been insisting for months that he prefers his own Truth Social website and has not posted on Twitter since being unbanned. In fact, Trump has continued to attack Facebook and Twitter as “boring” and failing without his awesome presence. He has called it a “disgrace to democracy” that “shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country,” because they have “only a Radical Left point of view,” and are “hated by everyone.”

SEE THIS: Trump Orders His Cult To ‘Drop Off of Twitter’ and Calls For It To Be Outlawed

That may all change now that Trump is an announced candidate for 2024. His need to disseminate his singularly apocalyptic perspective of America might supersede his animosity toward Twitter for having rejected him. In the months that he has been posting on Truth Social, he has only managed to accumulate about 4.8 million followers. He had more than 88 million on Twitter. And his massive yet fragile ego simply cannot abide that shortfall. Consequently, he is said to be plotting his return to Twitter. As reported by NBC News…

“Mounting a comeback for the White House, Donald Trump is looking to regain control over his powerful social media accounts. […] Twitter planned a permanent ban, but new owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account on Nov. 19 and then criticized the company’s previous leadership for the ban.”

NBC is quoting an unnamed Republican insider who says that “Trump is probably coming back to Twitter. It’s just a question of how and when. He’s been talking about it for weeks.” This shouldn’t surprise anyone who has followed Trump’s behavior in the media. He demands constant attention and will do and say almost anything to get it.

Apparently that includes tacitly admitting that his own social media platform is a total bust. If Trump begins tweeting again he is not only conceding that Truth Social has failed, he might even be breaching his agreement to post exclusively on it for a specified period of time. Not that Trump is ever bothered by breaking contracts.

What’s more, Trump’s disappointment with Truth Social is warranted by the fact that it has failed to achieve any measure of success. Recent reports show that has seen a a nearly 30% decline in unique visitors over the past few months.

From the day Truth Social was launched it was mired in the sort of mayhem that can only be produced by incompetence. It repeatedly crashed and hosted innumerable fake accounts. It’s being criminally investigated by the SEC and a Grand Jury in New York. And the shell company it partnered with to go public suffered an 85% decline in stock value over the past ten months.

Truth Social’s problems have been festering from the start. And now that Trump is reportedly considering dissing it by re-embracing Twitter, it’s prospects are unlikely to improve. Here are a few of the pot holes it has encountered on the way to its demise…

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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Another ‘Twitter Files’ Doc Dump Fails to Make Its Government Censorship Case: COVID Edition

Posted by Mark NC on December 27, 2022 at 12:22 pm. 4 Comments :

Since his $44 billion fiasco to take over Twitter, Elon Musk has demonstrated just how idiotic a wealthy narcissist can be. He has fumbled every step of the way, antagonizing the most critical components of success in social media: users and advertisers.

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Among his many missteps, Musk dispatched a crew of crackpots on a mission to malign Twitter’s prior management and to contrive a conspiracy theory that they were colluding with the government to bring down Donald Trump and censor conservative opinions. But after ten releases of what he calls the “Twitter Files” (which are actually improperly disclosed private communications by Twitter staffers), Musk has not only failed to prove his allegations, he has effectively proven that Twitter’s previous content moderation practices were entirely appropriate and fairly considered.

The tenth episode of the “Twitter Files” fairy tales focuses on how Twitter conducted content moderation with regard to the COVID pandemic and the misinformation that erupted from rightist virus deniers. As usual, the contention by Musk’s designated toady, David Zweig, is that the U.S. government applied untoward pressure on Twitter to suppress the opinions of pro-COVID nutcases and anti-vaxxers. He began with the explicit claim that…

“The United States government pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19.”

Nowhere in the subsequent 41 tweet discharge did Zweig support that claim. To the contrary, he repeatedly posted emails that showed Twitter’s Trust and Safety staff acting appropriately. In tweet #9 Zweig noted that…

“In the summer of 2021, president Biden said social media companies were “killing people” for allowing vaccine misinformation. [Alex] Berenson was suspended hours after Biden’s comments, and kicked off the platform the following month.”

Zweig’s apparent purpose here was to associate Biden’s remarks with Twitter’s actions. But he offers nothing to support that inference. Biden was quite right that the COVID deniers, led by Trump and hacks like Berenson (who is not a doctor or scientist) were indeed inflating the mortality rate of the pandemic. Zweig followed that up by saying that…

“[Twitter exec Lauren] Culbertson wrote that the Biden team was “very angry” that Twitter had not been more aggressive in deplatforming multiple accounts. They wanted Twitter to do more.”

Once again, Zweig is making an unsupported connection between the rational opinions of the Biden administration and the actions by Twitter. It isn’t the least bit surprising that public health officials would want social media to help reduce the harm of a deadly pandemic. Which is all that Culbertson was saying. However, in the very next tweet Zweig contradicts his government overlord allegations by conceding that Twitter didn’t “capitulate” to the Biden team. In other words, there was no evidence of government/Twitter censorship collusion.

A few tweets later Zweig attempted to provide an example of government censorship, but once again, his example was utterly devoid of any relevant substance…

“Exhibit A: Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, tweeted views at odds with US public health authorities and the American left, the political affiliation of nearly the entire staff at Twitter.”

Setting aside Zweig’s biased and baseless view of the political affiliations of Twitter’s staff, his “Exhibit A” was based on a thoroughly biased source. Kulldorff was an advocate of herd immunity (allowing people to get infected, which would lead to more fatalities) and was affiliated with ultra-rightist think tanks. He opposed proven mitigation efforts such as masking and social distancing, and claimed that vaccines caused more harm than good. Zweig continued praising the quack doctor saying that…

“But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines.”

Apparently Zweig thinks that opinions, just by being in line with unnamed other countries, makes them scientifically valid and equivalent to the determinations of U.S. experts who, by the way, consider valid science from experts worldwide. Then Zweig wrapped up his tweetstorm by concluding that…

“Twitter made a decision, via the political leanings of senior staff, and govt pressure, that the public health authorities’ approach to the pandemic – prioritizing mitigation over other concerns – was ‘The Science'”

Once again, Zweig failed to establish any “political leanings of senior staff” or the presence of any “govt pressure.” But he does seem to be dismissing the value of “prioritizing mitigation over other concerns.” What “other concerns” might he be thinking about? Corporate profits? Political exploitation? For the record, “prioritizing mitigation” means curtailing the spread of the virus and saving lives. Which are objectives that neither Zweig, nor Musk, nor Trump, seemed to care very much about.

Finally, Zweig asked “What might this pandemic and its aftermath have looked like if there had been a more open debate on Twitter?” By which he means more dissemination of misinformation. And it’s pretty clear that it would have looked a lot worse to those who were lucky enough to survive.

MORE ON “TWITTER FILES”:

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse
on Facebook and Instagram.

And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.

Thanks so much for your support.

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