Tucker Carlson’s New Twitter Show Announcement is a Steaming Mess of Incoherent Contradictions

Posted by Mark NC on May 10, 2023 at 10:35 am. 1 Comments :

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the Internet. Former Fox News Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson, has announced that he will be launching a new “show” on twitter. He doesn’t provide any details of how he will accomplish that, or what a Twitter show would look like, but he’s got an ego just big enough to believe that this will thrust him back into the media spotlight. He’s wrong.

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Carlson’s proposed Twitter show is his attempt to remain relevant after being banished from his perch on cable news. However, he might want to check with Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck to see if there is life after Fox for hostile purveyors of dishonest, right-wing propaganda. Like them, he would become a footnote in the cyber world hollering into the void to a diminished audience of drooling deplorables.

Undaunted, Carlson is marching ahead with his arrogant aspirations. He is reported to be pursuing affiliations with Donald Trump and Elon Musk to pump up his paltry prospects. And to that end, Carlson announced that he will take his canceled TV tantrums to Twitter. [NOTE: Musk claims that “We have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever.”] In the introductory video (posted below), Carlson said that…

“You often hear people say the news is full of lies, but that’s not exactly right. Much of what you see on television or read in the New York Times is, in fact, true in the literal sense.”

Okay. So Carlson is defending the truthfulness of most of what you see and read in the news. An interesting position from someone who has been proven to have lied brazenly and literally declared that “misinformation can be true.” However, Carlson followed that up immediately by saying that while most news reports would pass fact checks, “that doesn’t make it true. It’s not true.” According to Carlson, the news is both truthful and “At the most basic level, the news you consume is a lie.” He really needs to make up his mangled mess of a mind.

Carlson says that the media’s lies are the result of withholding “perspective.” And that, as a result, “You are being manipulated.” But perspective, by definition, is opinion. It is an addendum to factual reporting that may or may not be factual. It is opinion that is most likely to be the tool of manipulation. And it is opinion that is the core of what Carlson produces. It is Carlson who is, and always has been, manipulating you.

So after asserting that the media tells the truth, except for when it lies and/or manipulates you, Carlson proceeds to insist that the media is lying virtually all the time…

“That’s what the news media are doing. In every story that matters, every day of the week, every week of the year? What’s it like to work in a system like that? After more than 30 years in the middle of it, we could tell you stories.”

Indeed, Carlson could tell us “stories,” which, ironically, is a synonym for lies. He is effectively confessing that he has lied to his audience for 30 years. And given that confession, why should he change now? So he goes on to complain that there are “limits” to freedom of speech in the media, and that “if you bump up against those limits often enough you will be fired for it.” Here Carlson is obliquely referencing his firing from Fox News without saying so explicitly. And he offers no evidence that his firing had anything to do with the limits he is alleging. To the contrary, he was terminated for reasons that had to do with his own dishonesty and hostility toward his audience, colleagues, and bosses. Carlson is manipulating you.

Carlson continues by implying that his messy separation from Fox News resulted from some sort of censorship that was imposed upon him. “You can’t have a free society,” he warned, “if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true.” First of all, what you “think is true” is not necessarily the same as what is actually true. Once again, Carlson is confusing opinion with facts. Secondly, he had ample opportunity to say what he thought was true. In fact, that’s what got him fired. Carlson is manipulating you.

Finally, Carlson concludes with a blisteringly preposterous assertion about the state of free speech in America today:

“Amazingly, as of tonight, there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world, the only one, is Twitter [and that] Twitter is not a partisan site”

What the holy f**k? Can Carlson really believe that Twitter is the only platform in the world that allows free speech? And that it is not partisan? Under the horrifically biased mismanagement of Elon Musk, Twitter has become the platform of choice for racists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and a broad array of ultra right-wing conspiracy theorists. But before you claim that that is proof that it respects free speech, consider that other more reasonable and decent voices are suppressed, shadow-banned, and tagged with so-called “community notes” that disparage those views.

Despite Carlson’s ludicrous pronouncements of Twitter’s non-partisan free for all, he closes by contradicting himself and criticizing Twitter as a place where “for the most part, the news… comes from media organizations that are themselves thinly disguised propaganda outlets. [i.e. Fox News] The result may feel like a debate, but actually, the gatekeepers are still in charge.” So Twitter doesn’t practice free speech and isn’t non-partisan after all? Carlson is manipulating you.

Carlson then calls that “a bad system,” and says that he’s “sick of it.” But then abruptly flips gears to gleefully announce that he is “bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter.” The bad system that he is sick of?

Carlson’s proposed Twitter show could come at great cost to him. He would likely be breaching contractual agreements with Fox News. Dylan Byers of Puck News reports that “He will forgo at least $25 million owed to him by Fox Corp. in order to break non-compete clause.” And in anticipation of a bloody battle with Fox, Axios reports that Carlson has preemptively “accused [Fox News] Tuesday of fraud and breach of contract — and made a host of document demands that could precede legal action.” Although Fox has already lobbed some bombs of their own…

SEE THIS: Fox News ‘Demands’ that Media Matters Stop Publishing Leaked Videos of Tucker Carlson

The Fox News/Tucker Carlson divorce has hurt both of them. Carlson will lose money and access to Fox’s millions of viewers. And Fox is already bleeding those viewers. In the end, Carlson is just validating why his own Fox News lawyers defended him in a defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” would believe anything he said. Carlson is most definitely, deliberately, and dreadfully manipulating you.

We’re back. pic.twitter.com/sG5t9gr60O

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 9, 2023

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Tucker Carlson Has Been a Busy Bigot Since Being Booted From Fox News – Courting Trump and Musk

Posted by Mark NC on May 8, 2023 at 12:42 pm. 2 Comments :

It’s only been two weeks since Fox News canceled their top rated White Nationalist host, Tucker Carlson. But Carlson hasn’t been wasting any time engineering his comeback. He’s surely cognizant of the descent into wingnut oblivion that engulfed his predecessors Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck.

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It only took Carlson three days to post a video reaching out to his cult followers after his Fox downfall. However, that video was conspicuously devoid of any substance. It didn’t mention his Fox News, or his firing, or his next job. It was a hollow cry for attention that looked as if he had been muzzled by Fox and either afraid or unable to speak candidly. But that didn’t stop him from attacking Fox when he thought no one was listening…

SEE THIS: Leaked Video of Tucker Carlson Bashing Fox Nation as a Site that ‘Sucks’ and ‘Nobody Watches’

This weekend Carlson reportedly went further, threatening to wage an all out war against his former employer if they didn’t release him from contractual commitments to refrain from competing with or disparaging Fox. According to Axios…

“Tucker Carlson is preparing to unleash allies to attack Fox News in an effort to bully the network into letting him work for – or start – a right-wing rival, sources close to him tell Axios.

“Bryan Freedman, the high-powered Hollywood lawyer Carlson retained for the contract dispute, told Axios: ‘The idea that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous.’ […] But he needs Fox to let him out of his contract, which expires in January 2025 — after the presidential election.”

Carlson’s lawyer’s contradiction is “beyond preposterous.” If Carlson “needs Fox to let him out of his contract,” then he is actually letting Fox “silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience.” And Fox has good reason to do so, considering that a Carlson confidant says that Carlson “knows where a lot of bodies are buried, and is ready to start drawing a map.” To which a nation hungry for just such a a media melodrama shouts “Bring it on, Tucker!”

Axios also reported that “Carlson and Elon Musk had a conversation about working together.” Which affirms that Musk, despite his disingenuous claims of being a centrist, is staunchly aligned with Carlson’s brand of White Nationalism.

In addition to his budding relationship with Musk, Carlson is also pursing tighted relations with Donald Trump. The Washington Post published a reported that Carlson…

“…wants to moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system. The idea, which he has discussed with Donald Trump, the front-runner for the party nomination, would test his vaunted sway over conservative politics. And it would take a jab at his former employer.”

SEE THIS: Unemployed Racist Tucker Carlson is Talking to Trump About Hosting 2024 GOP Candidate Forums

Carlson does have plenty of family money, so he can sacrifice some his unpaid Fox compensation in order to satiate his craving for relevance and attention. And by doing so he will burn any bridges that might remain between him and Fox, a network that he once described as “a mean, sick group of people.” But if he thinks that trading down to Trump and Musk is going to be his pathway to media mega-stardom, he’s going to be sorely disappointed.

Trump’s star fell when he launched his pitifully failing Twitter scam, Truth Social. And Musk seems hell bent on destroying what’s left of Twitter. But the three of them should enjoy each other’s company as they try to blast their hateful prejudices out to the shrinking population of deplorables who still give a damn what they say.

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HUH? Trump Demands ‘Equal Time’ from HBO for a ‘Woke’ Segment on Bill Maher’s Comedy Show

Posted by Mark NC on April 29, 2023 at 1:03 pm. 2 Comments :

It doesn’t take much to get Donald Trump to lash out at some perceived injury to his massive yet fragile ego. The slightest criticism will send him into a furious tirade aimed at the perpetrator of what he always regards as an unwarranted offense. And it doesn’t matter if the offender is a political ally or foe. He is, in short, a world-class crybaby.

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Trump exhibited this gaping character flaw again in a Saturday morning flurry of posts on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. It’s something of a mystery what precisely triggered Trump’s tantrum. But then again, does there really need to be a reason for unbridled bellicosity when you are, in your own words, the “most fabulous whiner”?

SEE THIS: Victim-in-Chief: Trump is the most Cowardly, Whining, Crybaby to Ever Be President

Trump began by complaining about something he saw on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” program on HBO Friday night. As usual, he doesn’t actually cite specifically what it was that upset him. He merely flings some disembodied bawling over whatever hurt his tender feelings. He raged that…

“Bill Maher should be considered a ‘campaign contribution’ to the Democrat Party, even though he’s boring, and has really BAD ratings. HBO SHOULD BE FORCED TO PUT ON COUNTER PROGRAMING, AND SO SHOULD OTHER FAKE NEWS NETWORKS!”

It’s a good thing that most people don’t expect Trump to make any sense, because that comment doesn’t. If Maher’s show is boring and no one is watching, why would Trump care what he says. And wouldn’t the value of it as a campaign contribution be insignificant? Also, Maher, whose commentaries often lean heavily to the right, is hardly an asset to Democrats

More to the point, Trump’s demand for equal time reveals his ignorance of what that means. The equal time rule applies only to content on broadcast networks involving competing political candidates. HBO is not a broadcast network, and there was no preferential content regarding any competing candidates on the program. But Trump never lets reality intrude on his hissy fits.

The featured segment on Maher’s show was an interview of Elon Musk wherein they both embraced the lunacy of the “Woke Mind Virus” rhetoric espoused by right-wing crackpots. They fear-mongered about it as being an imminent threat to civilization, rather than the vacuous ambiguity that Trump’s MAGA cultists resort to whenever they need an argument against something that they can’t craft from facts, logic or reason.

Musk invented his own definition of it as “the suppression of free speech” and synonymous to “cancel culture.” For the record, it was originally used in Black communities to describe a state of awareness and consciousness of reality. So it’s no wonder that Trump and Republicans find it repugnant.

Trump waited a full eleven minutes before demonstrating what a thoroughly hypocritical clown he is. That’s how long it took him to come up with his following post wherein he babbled that…

“Tammy Bruce was GREAT last night subbing for Sean Hannity. Something special about her – She’s got what it takes!!!”

What? No demand for equal time on Fox News? No complaint about in-kind campaign contributions? Trump’s tunnel blindness to his own hypocrisy is impressive. While he seethes over the nonexistent political partisanship he imagined on Maher’s program, he has no awareness whatsoever of the flagrant bias on Fox News every hour of every day. In fact, he embraces it. Which is just further justification for dismissing his didactic diatribes. And why is he even watching Fox News? Weren’t they supposed to be boycotting it because they fired Tucker Carlson?

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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. NO 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…

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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”:

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Fox News Spreads Blatant Lie that the ‘FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story’

Posted by Mark NC on December 21, 2022 at 1:51 pm. 1 Comments :

For the past couple of weeks Elon Musk has been dispatching his flagrantly biased and incurious yellow journalists to propagate obvious falsehoods about Twitter’s previous management. His intent has been to discredit them as disreputable Trump haters and submissive servants of clandestine FBI handlers.

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After seven tediously long document dumps of what were private, internal communications, Musk and Company pitifully failed to prove their predetermined conclusions, or whatever they imagined was their point. To the contrary, these much ballyhooed excretions of mostly random and irrelevant emails actually proved that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team acted responsibly to protect the website – and the nation – from documented propaganda and disinformation by Russia and other hostile foreign actors.

Musk’s minions only succeeded in showing that Twitter’s staff was not biased against Trump. In fact, they were decidedly fair in their analysis and decisions. But that didn’t stop the right-wingnut echo chamber from latching onto Musk’s muckrakers, especially Donald Trump…

The latest batch from the “Twitter Files” trash heap (Part 7) continued in the tradition of the previous six. This episode’s author, Michael Shellenberger, promised that he would “present evidence” that the FBI sought to “discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden.” Not only did he present no such evidence, he actually presented evidence of the opposite. Such as one email wherein “Twitter debunked false claims” of foreign influence. And another wherein “Twitter’s [Yoel] Roth has pushed back against the FBI.”

Despite that demonstration of fairness and good judgement, Fox News ran with a particularly deviated narrative. The headline for their “reporting” said that the “FBI Paid $3.5M To Suppress Hunter Laptop Story.”

You have to go through a LOT of hoops to conclude that the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The email in question says Twitter collected $3,415,323 since Oct. 2019 to process legal requests made by the FBI. pic.twitter.com/i0yTCEDcCD

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 21, 2022

To the surprise of no one who has watched Fox News for more than a few minutes, that headline – and the accompanying story – was just plain untrue. What Fox News used to craft their false framing was one of Shellenberger’s points where he claimed that “The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.” He elaborated with a quote from an unnamed Twitter staffer who reported that “we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019.”

Fox News is deliberately misinterpreting that as the FBI paying Twitter to get them to suppress a story about Hunter Biden. In reality, the FBI is reimbursing Twitter for the time they spent working on requests for information by the FBI. That is a legally mandated payment that requires that “a governmental entity obtaining the contents of communications, records, or other information … shall pay to the person or entity assembling or providing such information a fee for reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary.”

As if that weren’t enough, there isn’t even any connection in the emails that were released between the FBI reimbursements and any story about Hunter Biden. Musk and Fox News just totally manufactured that.

Furthermore, the reports that the FBI “demanded” certain actions be taken by Twitter, and that Twitter obediently complied, are also untrue. And, once again, the facts were tucked away in Musk’s own document dump that disclosed that the FBI’s requests could not be remotely characterized as demands. They were merely notices about “accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms and Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.” (emphasis added)

This is the sort of manipulation that Fox News engages in on a daily (hourly) basis. They have no regard for the truth. They are only interested in disseminating distortions that advance their ultra-conservative agenda. It’s how they can take mundane irrelevancies and magnify them into explosive pseudo-scandals.

FOR INSTANCE: Fox News Lies: Falsely Accuses Michele Obama of ‘Pressuring’ Twitter to Ban Trump

UPDATE: The FBI responds: “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements. […] As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. […] It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

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OH-MY: Trump Unleashes Vile Threats in Tantrum Over Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Farce (Part 6)

Posted by Mark NC on December 17, 2022 at 11:04 am. 10 Comments :

For the past couple of weeks Elon Musk has been hyping a series of pathetically shallow “Twitter Files” document dumps. He has characterized it as an “exposé” of Twitter’s prior management’s alleged cabal against aspiring tyrant and insurrection inciter, Donald Trump. Now episode 6 continues to expose only Musk’s own craven biases and dishonesty.

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Consistent with the previous episodes, the latest installment only manages to prove that prior content moderation decisions were actually responsible and that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team (who Musk recently fired) acted in good faith to protect their platform – and the nation – from the deliberate incitements to violence of Donald Trump and his “Big Lie” confederates.

Teasing the release of the sixth batch of what were private internal communications, Musk tweeted “And soon, ladies & gentlemen, the coup de grâce,” followed the single word “KABOOM,” which ironically is an accurate descriptor of his latest bomb. It is hardly the “coup de grâce” that he is bragging about.

In the 45 tweets of Episode 6 Musk’s “correspondent” (aka puppet), Matt Taibbi, began by making a couple of wholly unsupported conclusions that were supposedly based on the messages he posted. However, there was nothing in those messages that affirmed his predetermined conclusions. He began…

3. Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
4. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.
5. Some are mundane […]
6. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation.

What Taibbi is portraying as “constant and pervasive” is 150 emails sent in a period of three years. And many of those were, by Taibbi’s own account, “mundane.” So, doing the math, there were likely only one or two a month that were relevant. That’s a rather tortured definition of “pervasive.” Particularly when considering the fact that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were rightfully concerned about disinformation being spread by hostile foreign entities. Consequently, they stayed in touch with the social media platforms that those entities were exploiting to keep them apprised of the situation. That is, in fact, their job.

Taibbi later grossly misrepresented an email from the FBI to Twitter, saying…

[13] “HELLO TWITTER CONTACTS”: The master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter comes through in this November 2022 email, in which “FBI San Francisco is notifying you” it wants action on four accounts:

Taibbi’s characterization of the FBI being the “master” of the “canine” Twitter staff was invented by Taibbi and not reflected in any actual message. What’s worse is how Taibbi deceitfully edited the FBI’s email to imply that they were demanding “action.” The unedited email actually reads…

“FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms and of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.”

So the FBI explicitly stated that the accounts they referred to Twitter only “potentially” violated Twitter’s rules, and then merely asked Twitter to take appropriate action, or none at all, as per Twitter’s policy. How is that by any stretch of the imagination a demand or reflective of a “master-canine” relationship? That is only reflective of Taibbi’s intent to deceive.

Taibbi closed his tweet storm with a Trumpian reference to the “deep state” as a “tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors.” Which is just another biased conclusion that is unsupported by his own “evidence.”

For his part, Trump went bonkers over the latest episode of the “Twitter Files” nothingburger. He posted on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, that…

“This (the FBI’s wild and crazy relationship with Twitter) is absolutely a coordinated effort to change Election Results! Rachel Campos-Duffy…and it worked, but they got caught. This is why people protested in Washington. Our 2020 Presidential Election was Crooked, Rigged, and Stolen, and yet the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks & Thugs didn’t spend any time investigating this outrage!”

And that…

“Our Country is SICK inside, very much like a person dying of Cancer. The Crooked FBI, the so-called Department of ‘Justice,’ and ‘Intelligence,’ all parts of the Democrat Party and System, is the Cancer. These Weaponized Thugs and Tyrants must be dealt with, or our once great and beautiful Country will die!!!”

Naturally, Trump is continuing to whine about having decisively lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. But in more than two years and 60 court cases he has failed to provide a shred of evidence that the election was “rigged” or “stolen” from him. He nevertheless maligns the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection in his typically infantile and patently dangerous manner.

More worrisome is what exactly Trump means by demanding that members of the justice and intelligence communities, as well as Democrats, “must be dealt with”? Especially when combined with the warning that if they are not “our once great and beautiful Country will die!!!” It comes off as an unambiguous threat and/or a command to his StormTrumpers to take action.

This is why Trump must be held accountable for his crimes as expeditiously as possible. He is still inciting violence and fomenting an insurrection against the United States, whose Constitution he recently said should be “terminated.” The longer that accountability is delayed, the greater the risk.

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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Trump’s Real ‘MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT’ Has Nothing to do with His Pathetic Trading Cards Scam

Posted by Mark NC on December 15, 2022 at 2:36 pm. 4 Comments :

On Wednesday night Donald Trump posted a comment on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, teasing a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” coming on Thursday. The post declared that “America needs a superhero,” and included a picture of him as a Bizarro World cartoon crusader.

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Trump’s fantasies of himself notwithstanding, his big reveal turned out to be even more pathetic than anyone could have imagined. It was nothing more than another opportunity to pick the pockets of his glassy-eyed cult disciples with a sham offering of “Trump Trading Cards” at $99.00 a pop. But they are not even real cards, they are just digital NFT images. He starred in his own telemarketing ad to hawk his latest sucker bait…

“Hello everyone, this is Donald Trump. Hopefully your favorite president of all time. Better than Lincoln, better than Washington, with an important announcement to make.”

Come for the claim that Trump was a better president than Washington and Lincoln, stay for the "Trump digital trading cards" pic.twitter.com/qEKWYpgXL7

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) December 15, 2022

Whereupon Trump declared that he is selling NFTs – digital trading cards that “feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and my career. It’s been very exciting.” He further revealed that any purchase enters the buyer into a contest with “prizes” (?) like dinner with Trump, who regards himself as something just short of a messiah. However, it’s notable that these cards are produced by a third party that is not owned, managed or controlled by Trump. He is simply licensing his name and likeness in order to fleece his flock. Which is so like Trump…

That said, there was another announcement posted on his website shortly after the trading cards pitch. And it actually has more of the “majorness” that he attributed to the digital card con. In a lengthy video, Trump laid out his plan to “shatter the left-wing censorship regime.” And he would do it by imposing his own totalitarian control of free speech. What follows are annotated excerpts of his uncomfortably high-decibel harangue. He began…

“If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. […] That’s why today I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans..”

Never mind that the only free speech deniers in American politics are Trump’s Republicans. They have literally banned books in schools and libraries, and have sought to silence critics of Trump in their ultra-biased MAGA media. And notice that he doesn’t provide a single example of alleged censorship by the fearsome left-wing regime. Undeterred by reality, Trump continued…

“In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, silicon tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed and it must happen immediately.”

What Trump is referring to here is the wholly manufactured and bogus “Twitter Files” “scandal” that was orchestrated by Elon Musk and purported to expose left-wing bias by Twitter when it suspended Trump’s account. After five data dumps, Musk and his cohorts failed utterly to achieve their goal of smearing the left. In fact, they actually proved that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team (who Musk recently fired) was exceedingly fair and conscientious in their deliberations and decision making.

Then Trump gets to the meat of his whining with the articulation of his five-point plan…

“First, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or disinformation.”

Who wants to tell Trump that the federal government is already prohibited from “imped[ing] the lawful speech of American citizens?” Trump is merely declaring his intention to issue an executive order that essentially repeats the Constitution’s First Amendment. Except, that is, for the last part where he proposes to punish those who exercise their free speech by alerting citizens to the dangers of mis- and disinformation. Trump, a major supplier of disinformation, wants to make sure he can keep on doing that. Moving on…

“Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified. These include possible violations of federal civil rights law, campaign finance law, federal election law, securities law, and anti-trust laws, the Hatch Act, and a host of other criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses.”

Here Trump is threatening to force the Justice Department to – uphold existing laws? Yep. But let’s face it, when Trump makes this sort of threat, he intends that it be directed exclusively at his enemies. He and his administration are more prone to violating those laws, but he never bothered to hold any of those who violated them accountable when he occupied the White House. And there’s more…

“Third, upon my inauguration as president, I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of the censorship business. From now on digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.

First of all, Trump has no idea what Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is or does. While there is room to refine it, it is basically a protection so that online services aren’t held accountable for comments made by the public. Without it platforms like Twitter and Facebook couldn’t allow people to post comments at all.

Furthermore, Trump’s idea that platforms should have to “meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination,” is an imposition on their free speech rights, as well as posing difficult questions about who sets those standards. The government? Trump wants to force private companies to allow all “legal” comments, even if they are racist, hate speech, or sufficiently vague incitements to violence. And he’s still not through…

“Fourth, we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis- and disinformation.”

In other words, Trump wants to prohibit private Internet platforms from refusing to post purposefully false information that has the potential to cause real harm. He wants fake COVID cures and anti-vaccine propaganda to be readily available. He wants lies about election fraud to stir up civil unrest. He even explicitly brought up his own fixation with phony election fraud saying that “Once you lose those elections … you no longer have a country.” Which brings us to his fifth point…

“Fifth, the time has finally come for congress to pass a Digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.” […] In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt-out of content moderation and curation entirely, and receive an unmanipulated stream of information, if they so choose.”

To be clear, Trump is proposing the first law that would allow government – with a court order – to censor content, which would be unconstitutional. Remember, this is his plan for free speech and to end censorship. And while the FBI did inform Twitter about certain content that was false (and so did Trump and the GOP), they never had the right to force it to be removed. That’s Trump’s idea. And so is his suggestion that adults can “opt-out of content moderation,” effectively forcing private Internet platforms to post content that they regard as harmful, offensive, or otherwise contrary to their standards. Then Trump closed saying…

“The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America and for the survival of Western civilization itself. When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won’t be anything left. By restoring free speech we will begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation.”

The problem with Trump’s initiative is that it produces the polar opposite of what he claims is his intention. It would permit censorship, allow the government to force private businesses to post content they disapprove of, and shred the First Amendment. Which is all pretty much precisely what is expected of an aspiring authoritarian tyrant like Trump who has openly advocated banning websites he doesn’t like, such as Twitter and Facebook. America would be better off if his “major announcements” were all about trading cards and other snake oil ventures.

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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Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Farce Fails Pitifully in Portraying Poor Trump as a Put Upon Victim

Posted by Mark NC on December 13, 2022 at 10:40 am. 2 Comments :

From its outset, Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” Soap Opera purported to expose the social media platform’s content moderation staff as biased against Donald Trump. However, after four episodes it utterly failed to achieve its own blatantly biased objective. Now the fifth and latest installment flops in a similarly humiliating manner.

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Episode five was a 46 tweet spray by conservative author Bari Weiss that sought to disparage the decision makers at Twitter. She accused them of being predisposed to banning Trump merely due to “the risk of further incitement of violence” that he represented following his January 6th insurrection. However, the messages that were cited actually show a team that was conscientious of the complexity of the situation and committed to fully and fairly deliberating the choices available to them.

As has been the established practice by the previous installments, Weiss posted a slew of screenshots of private internal communications that failed to advance her premise. Then she closed with a rather muddled observation that only illustrates how poorly she understands the concepts of free speech and public discourse.

Musk introduced episode five saying that “Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules.” That admission, aside from disparaging the free speech of hundreds of Twitter employees, is an inadvertent validation of Twitter’s team because it shows that they had not prejudged Trump. Weiss elaborated on that in several of her tweet quotes. For instance, these three tweets contradict the whole premise that Twitter insiders were bent on banning Trump from the start…

4. For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate.

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.

12. But the Twitter staff assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies.“I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,” wrote one staffer.

That is not the discourse of a biased cabal of Trump haters intent on banishing the coup-plotting, sore loser. To the contrary, it’s evidence of a diversity of opinion and a commitment to an open dialogue. And most of the rest of Weiss’ tweet storm was more of the same. However, when she got near the end she summed up her harangue with a couple of tweets that show how little sense she makes…

43. Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company.

44. They’re about the power of a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.

So Wiess is lamenting the wholly contrived “concerns” that Twitter censored and blacklisted news, and was intent on banning Trump. Then she claims that those concerns “aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company,” but they are about “the power of a handful of people at a private company.” How exactly are those two things different? It’s like saying that the sky isn’t blue, it’s actually blue.

What’s more, Weiss appears to be oblivious to the fact that lots of private companies “influence the public discourse and democracy.” The media, for instance, and virtually every major corporation that has vested interests in how their industries are regulated. Does she think that oil or banking or pharmaceutical companies (to name just a few) don’t try to exert such influence?

In fact, Twitter itself is trying to exert such influence by releasing these messages that were sent by people who had an expectation of privacy when they were communicating amongst themselves. In at least one case a Twitter employee was driven from his home due to threats as a result of Musk’s inappropriate exposure of these people’s identities.

In addition to his callous recklessness, Musk is being flagrantly hypocritical by pretending that he’s interested in free speech or transparency. The inescapable fact is that he’s releasing this limited batch of pre-selected messages through his hand-picked, right-wing biased puppets. Meanwhile, he’s refusing to make all of the messages available to the news media and the public so that everyone can see everything that was discussed and all of the relevant context.

In other words, Musk is limiting what the public can know, and he is delegating his power to “a handful of people at a private company to influence the public discourse and democracy.” Go figure.

What’s worse is that increasingly those people are repugnant cretins who promote racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-fascism, such as most of those whose Twitter accounts Musk has restored, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kanye West, Project Veritas, Roger Stone, neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, and especially Donald Trump.

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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