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.

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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.

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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

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@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.

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Trump Sinks Into an ALL-CAPS Psychotic Meltdown Over the Potential Criminal Referrals He Faces

Posted by Mark NC on December 12, 2022 at 9:57 am. 2 Comments :

On Sunday it was reported that the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Insurrection that was incited by Donald Trump met to discuss the prospects of issuing criminal referrals to the Justice Department based on the evidence they accumulated during months of hearings and testimony from hundreds of witnesses, including many who were Republican Trump administration insiders.

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While the Committee wasn’t releasing any particulars about the discussions, panel member Adam Schiff told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “we are all certainly in agreement that there is evidence of criminality here.” Sources say that the most likely targets of the referrals, other than Trump, would be former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, coup-plotting lawyer John Eastman, former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, and Rudy Giuliani.

The referrals would be largely symbolic as Attorney General Merrick Garland has already appointed a special counsel to probe Trump’s crimes related to the Capitol Hill riots, as well as the classified documents that he stole, hoarded, and lied to the FBI about, at his Mar-a-Lago hotel/home. His fear of Special Counsel Jack Smith was evident in his public rage over the appointment.

Upon learning of the potential criminal referrals, Trump posted a frantic rant on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, yowling about unrelated matters that only hold significance in his twisted and frightened mind. In that state of derangement, Trump blasted in all-caps…

“HOW CAN THE JANUARY 6TH UNSELECT COMMITTEE MAKE CRIMINAL REFERRALS WHEN THEY HAVE’NT SPOKEN ABOUT, OR STUDIED, THOSE THAT RIGGED THE 2020 ELECTION, THE TROOPS NOT BEING BROUGHT IN BY PELOSI, OR NOW, THE ELECTION FRAUD DETERMINATIVELY REVEALED BY TWITTER? THESE ARE THE REAL CRIMINALS!!!”

This is about as emotionally distressed a statement as any Trump has made since his legal tribulations have intensified. He is plainly suffering extreme anxiety over the probability of being indicted and prosecuted. Consequently he raises objections that have no basis whatsoever in reality.

Trump knows very well that what he childishly calls the “unselect committee” had no mandate to study his unfounded allegations that the 2020 election was “rigged.” His own studies into the subject produced nothing after two years and more than 60 court challenges. He also knows that there is no truth to his claim that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined an offer of troops to defend the Capitol – from his own supporters. And the fraud that he asserts was revealed by the recently released “Twitter Files” lies only in his imagination, and that of Elon Musk and other Trump cultists desperate to find proof that Trump was, as always, the victim of bias by a clandestine cabal of evildoers.

As if all of that weren’t enough, Trump posted another delirious comment that actually makes him look even more insane than ever. Joining Fox News and other outraged Republican gloomsayers, upset at President Biden for getting WNBA star Brittney Griner released from Russia, Trump raged that…

“I turned down a deal with Russia for a one on one swap of the so-called Merchant of Death for Paul Whelan. I wouldn’t have made the deal for a hundred people in exchange for someone that has killed untold numbers of people with his arms deals. I would have gotten Paul out, however, just as I did with a record number of other hostages. The deal for Griner is crazy and bad. The taking wouldn’t have even happened during my Administration, but if it did, I would have gotten her out , fast!’

First of all, the likelihood that any of that is true is somewhere between zero and one percent. However, if we were to amuse ourselves by pretending to believe it, then Trump is confessing to abandoning an American hostage incarcerated in Russia, and that he would do the same if it were a hundred Americans. What’s more, we would have to accept the notion that he declined that deal without ever mentioning it, or even uttering Whelan’s name during his occupation of the White House, or at any time thereafter, until the Griner release. [Update: Former Trump aide John Bolton says that Trump did turn down an offer to release Whelan. If true, then he did abandon an American in a Russian prison]

Despite his claim to having turned down a deal to free Whelan, Trump still insists that he “would have gotten Whelan out.” “Would have?” Well then, why didn’t he? He had two years to do so. He also asserts that Griner wouldn’t have been arrested if he were in office. But Whelan was arrested in 2018, when Trump was in office. And as for his bragging about not making deals to release dangerous people, he must have forgotten that he made a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan to release 5,000 terrorists in connection to the U.S. withdrawal, for a three month cease fire that the Taliban didn’t adhere to.

Trump’s fear is thick enough to slice with a MAGA bumper sticker. He knows that he is guilty of crimes related to the January 6th insurrection, the classified documents theft, tax fraud, election interference, and obstruction of justice. That’s evident in the increasingly unhinged posts he continues to make, as well as his determined avoidance of telling his own story in public and under oath. That’s not the behavior of an innocent man.

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

Posted by Mark NC on December 11, 2022 at 12:28 pm. 1 Comments :

When Fox News gets their teeth into what they perceive to be scandal bait for their already brainwashed audience, they hold tight for absurdly long periods of time exceeding anything that could be considered rational. Whether it’s Benghazi, Hunter Biden, or Hillary Clinton’s emails, they clench down as if they’re afraid of it squirming free and escaping to reality.

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Among their most fevered fixations is anything having to do with President Obama or his wife Michelle. So on Sunday Fox News put out a story that reached back in time to malign the former First Lady for something she wrote nearly two years ago.

The story was an attempt to associate Ms. Obama with the pathetically shallow “Twitter Files” nothingburger that Elon Musk has been hyping as an “exposé” of the alleged liberal bias of Twitter’s prior management. Not surprisingly, they not only proved none of their baseless allegations, they actually revealed how responsibly Twitter’s Trust and Safety team acted to protect their platform – and the nation – from the deliberate incitements to violence of Donald Trump and his “Big Lie” confederates.

SEE THIS: The Sham ‘Twitter Files’ Exposé Actually Proves that Trump’s Coup Plot was Appropriately Muted

Fox’s story featured the sensationalist tabloid headline, “Twitter Files reveal Trump ban came after Michelle Obama, others pressured the company.” Needless to say, the files didn’t reveal any such thing. They merely made reference to a statement that Ms. Obama released the day after Trump’s insurrection on January 6, 2021. Fox’s story began saying that…

“Former President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter the day after former first lady Michelle Obama and others demanded the company ‘permanently’ remove him, according to the newest ‘Twitter Files’ installment.”

In reality, Ms. Obama never “demanded” anything of Twitter. She simply expressed her opinion about what should be done to prevent another atrocity like the one that occurred the day before. Here are some excerpts from her heartfelt and moving statement with the fragment that Fox News quoted in bold [the full statement is here]…

“The day was a fulfillment of the wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can’t handle the truth of his own failures. And the wreckage lays at the feet of a party and media apparatus that gleefully cheered him on, knowing full well the possibility of consequences like these.” […]

“I cannot think about moving on or turning the page until we reckon with the reality of what we saw yesterday. True progress will be possible only once we acknowledge that this disconnect exists and take steps to repair it. And that also means coming to grips with the reality that millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn our democracy down for his own ego.” […]

“I hurt for our country. And I wish I had all the solutions to make things better. I wish I had the confidence that people who know better will act like it for more than a news cycle or two. All I know is that now is a time for true patriotism. Now is the time for those who voted for this president [Trump] to see the reality of what they’ve supported — and publicly and forcefully rebuke him and the actions of that mob. Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technologies from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection. And if we have any hope of improving this nation, now is the time for swift and serious consequences for the failure of leadership that led to yesterday’s shame.“

Ms. Obama’s remarks were addressed to a nation that was in shock after having watched anti-democratic thugs desecrating the seat of our democracy, assaulting brave, outnumbered law enforcement officers, and threatening the lives of our representatives. She was speaking for millions of Americans who never thought they would witness such a despicable mob of traitors acting out their hostile treachery at the behest of a sociopathic, wannabe dictator, who couldn’t accept the fact that he’s a loser – which he still is, and still can’t.

What Ms. Obama was not doing was “pressuring” Twitter. She was exercising her First Amendment rights to express an opinion about what ought to be done in response to the horror we all saw on our television screens. Fox News offered no evidence whatsoever that she ever even spoke to anyone at Twitter. To the contrary, it was Trump and his cohorts who directly threatened Twitter in response to his well warranted suspension. And regarding the rioters at the Capitol, he is even now promising to pardon them for their heinous crimes if he were to return to the White House.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. After all, Trump recently called for the “termination” for the Constitution in order to have himself installed as America’s first authoritarian tyrant.

SEE THIS: Trump Doubles Down on His Constitution Bashing and Misquotes Himself to Gaslight His Cult

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The Sham ‘Twitter Files’ Exposé Actually Proves that Trump’s Coup Plot was Appropriately Muted

Posted by Mark NC on December 10, 2022 at 12:24 pm. 22 Comments :

The new regime at Twitter has been engaging in what it calls an “exposé” of alleged censorship of conservatives in general – and Donald Trump in particular – on the part of Twitter’s prior management team. However, their efforts thus far have been pitifully underwhelming and have failed to prove any of their outrageous and unfounded allegations.

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When Elon Musk took control over Twitter he portrayed himself as a “free speech absolutist” who aspired to bring a dialogue to the service that was unfettered by bias and censorship. In reality, Musk just inserted his own personal biases and revealed that he has no grasp of what free speech really means. He also demonstrated that his absolutist approach only permits unfettered hate speech. Consequently, despite his instance that Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” that’s precisely what it became shortly after he took the reins.

Last week Musk put out the first of what he promised would be a series of revelations exposing the bias of Twitter. That first release was pathetically devoid of any of the bombshells they teased. Although it succeeded in doxing private citizens and putting them at risk for harm.

Now the latest release of Musk’s multipart melodrama was posted Friday night. It consisted of 67 tweets by his protégé/puppet, Matt Taibbi, that ostensibly unveiled a vast conspiracy against conservative tweeters. Suffice to say that it was another nothingburger that failed utterly to prove its predetermined point.

To the contrary, Taibbi actually proved that the staff at Twitter acted responsibly to prevent Trump from inciting further violence during the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C. For example, the seventh tweet explicitly laid out how carefully considered any decisions were to tag or suspend potentially violating tweets and users…

7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.

This tweet included a screenshot of the remarks by Twitter moderation staff…

“[H]ere is our quick take: the decision on whether to pull that particular tweet or use that as the last straw for trump depends on many factors including: (1) The overall context and narrative in which that tweet lives – we currently analyze tweets and consider them on a tweet-by-tweet basis which does not appropriately take into account the surrounding context – you can use the telling fire into a crowded theater example – context matters and the narrative that trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account.”

How Taibbi can regard this as evidence of bias is puzzling. It shows a respect for analyzing tweets that takes into consideration the context and the tweeter’s prior comments in order to fully understand their intent. It’s exactly how content moderation should be done. But Taibbi exhibits his bias in the tweets that followed…

8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days [6-8]. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.

9. Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As @BariWeiss reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.

10. As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.

Taibbi is making a wholly manufactured assessment about what he calls the preceding “intellectual framework,” whatever that means. Then he complains that Twitter responsibly employed “rules-based enforcement,” that he baselessly calls subjective, and he whines that their moderation tools were “thrown at Trump.” Maybe that’s because Trump had violated Twitter’s rule innumerable times in the weeks and months that preceded January 6th.

However, the worst part of this screed was Taibbi’s claim that when senior executives “began to speak of ‘vios'” [violations] it was “perhaps under pressure from federal agencies.” Really? He could have just as credibly have said that it was “perhaps under pressure from Martians.” He provided zero evidence of anything resembling pressure by federal agencies or any other entity, terrestrial or otherwise.

That is representative how carelessly and dishonestly Taibbi put together this sham. His only purpose was to create a store of material that Republicans and Trump cultists could link to in order to advance their crackpot conspiracy theories and yammer about conservatives being victims of evil “Big Tech” liberals. The truth is that Twitter long ago admitted that their algorithms favored right-wingers. And near the end of the 67 tweet harangue was one that expressly outlined the situation with regard to Trump’s hostile incitements…

“An update on actions we’re taking as a result of what’s happening in DC today. We have removed (bounced) 3 tweets from @realDonaldTrump on 6 January 2020 [sic] for making unfounded claims of voter fraud and election theft, which must be viewed in the context of the violence in Washington DC today and reasonably can be expected to continue to incite and inspire violent acts around the country. We are requiring a 12-hour timeout following the removal of these tweets. We also have tweeted so there’s transparency in our actions and making it clear that future violations of the Twitter Rules will result in permanent suspension.”

That message completely negates virtually everything that Taibbi had falsely framed prior to it. But he still maintains that his work proves there was a bias at Twitter against Trump and other conservatives. If there was, it was a bias against allowing a treasonous, twice impeached, wannabe dictator from staging a violent coup. And Musk’s rush to reinstate Trump’s account further affirms that he couldn’t care less about the welfare of this nation or its people.

MORE ON “TWITTER FILES”:

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Poor Trump is Oozing Fear Over the Looming Legal Consequences of His Treasonous Crimes

Posted by Mark NC on December 9, 2022 at 12:04 pm. 6 Comments :

December 2022 is turning out to be one of the most harrowing months for Donald Trump. It follows a disastrous November that saw his electoral toadies crash and burn as Democrats outperformed all expectations, leaving the Trump-endorsed candidates licking their wounds and worming their way back to obscurity.

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Compounding those catastrophes, Trump has recently lost court decisions that place him at greater peril than ever. For instance, the Justice Department is seeking to hold Trump in contempt for failing to comply with subpoenas to turn over the classified documents he stole. The special master that a friendly Trump judge appointed has been dismissed. He lost a challenge to a court ruling ordering him to turn over his tax returns. He lost a bid to block testimony from his former White House lawyers before a federal grand jury investigating his unlawful interference in the 2020 election. A New York Jury found his business guilty of tax fraud. And there is a Special Counsel breathing down his neck with investigations of his inciting the January 6th insurrection and his theft of classified documents.

As a result, Trump woke up Friday morning in a particularly foul mood. He posted several comments on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, exposing just how frightened he is of the legal peril that is engulfing him. In fact, he was so scared that he posted the same comments three times in a fit of fearful frenzy, forgetting that he had already posted them. He began with this all-caps derangement…

“WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE FBI & ‘JUSTICE’ DEPARTMENT? THEY SEEM TO BE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL! THERE IS, RIGHT NOW, A ‘WEAPONIZATION’ OF JUSTICE THE LIKES OF WHICH OUR COUNTRY HAS NEVER SEEN BEFORE. THE TWITTER AND FACEBOOK SCANDAL HAS ALREADY PROVEN TO BE, WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN,THEIR MOST SINISTER ACT IN HISTORY. EVEN THE RINOS & THE WEAK ARE OPENLY ADMITTING THAT THE 2020 ELECTION WAS RIGGED, BUT IN A DARKER WAY THAN EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE. SO MANY LIVES DESTROYED!”

You know Trump is triggered when he repeats his frequent and utterly bizarre assertion that whatever he’s complaining about is “THE LIKES OF WHICH OUR COUNTRY HAS NEVER SEEN BEFORE,” and/or the “MOST SINISTER ACT IN HISTORY.” The vaguely attributable target of this tirade is the pathetic “Twitter Files” nothingburger that Elon Musk is pretending to have exposed. Not only was nothing exposed, no one but certified Trump flunkies are “ADMITTING THAT THE 2020 ELECTION WAS RIGGED.” But Trump was just getting started. He continued…

“ELON: The Twitter releases are a revelation in that they show, in a very powerful fashion, the FBI and ‘Justice’ illegally colluding, proving conclusively, in one more very powerful way, that the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged & Stolen. What everyone is REALLY waiting to see, however, is the Twitter information and thought process leading up to the time of the so-called ‘Election,’ and ultimately the ‘Deplatforming’ of the President of the United States. Big moment in history. Thank you!”

Once again, the only revelation in the Twitter sham is that nothing untoward occurred. It was all merely conventional and appropriate content moderation. And nothing in the documents Musk released even mention any government involvement. Also, it’s cute that Trump reposted this comment with a “Thank you” to himself. He then proceeded with the this nonsense…

“Under the Presidential Records Act and the very well established Clinton Socks Case, the raid of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, and the taking of documents and many other items, was ILLEGAL. Everything should be returned, at once!”

Clearly Trump doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about. The Presidential Records Act explicitly says that “Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.” And his hysterical demand that “Everything should be returned,” only affirms his guilt in having taken the documents in the first place.

Trump’s temper tantrum is typical of his infantile response to fear. He knows what he did, and he knows that he isn’t going to get away with it. So he’s lashing out incoherently and, ultimately, impotently. His criminal acts are being documented by prosecutors in New York, Georgia, Florida, and Washington, D.C. Hell, they were even documented inadvertently by Sean Hannity…

SEE THIS: Sean Hannity Thinks He’s Helping Trump By Scrolling a Long List of His Crimes on Fox News

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HUH? Senior Fox News Misinformer, Tucker Carlson, Declares that ‘Misinformation Can Be True’

Posted by Mark NC on December 6, 2022 at 12:19 pm. 9 Comments :

Since it’s inception, the mission of Fox News has been to advance the propaganda and lies of the Republican Party and its ultra-rightist agenda. Their management, editors, and program hosts are all chosen for, and devoted to that mission. And in recent years their extremist political evangelism has fervently pledged to the Cult of Donald Trump.

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Leading the wingnut evangelical crusade at Fox News is their top-rated host, Tucker Carlson. His program has become the most popular media destination for America’s white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, and many other hate groups.

On Monday’s episode of Carlson’s hate-fest, he joined the conservative media’s embrace of Elon Musk’s Twitter nothingburger that purported to reveal an ingrained bias in favor of Democrats and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. Suffice to say that the entire alleged “bombshell” was a spectacular dud that produced nothing but rank speculation, fabrication, and the disturbing doxing of private Twitter communications and staff.

Nevertheless, Fox News and Carlson were determined to further brainwash their audience with flagrant falsehoods. And apparently aware that their deceits were too obvious to disguise, they endeavored to frame lies as truths. Carlson literally defined falsehoods as facts. And not even “alternative facts” as previously dubbed by his Fox News colleague, and Trump toady, Kellyanne Conway. Carlson confabulated that…

“Misinformation is a new word. It’s been around the intel world for a long time but it’s never been used in common conversation until recently. The distinction between misinformation and lying is that misinformation can be true. It doesn’t have to be untrue to be censored. It used to be truth is a defense. If you’re telling the truth, you can say it. Not anymore. With mis- and disinformation, if I don’t like it, if I’m in power, I can censor you.”

"Misinformation is a new word. … The distinction between misinformation and lying is that misinformation can be true." pic.twitter.com/eYzadS2d2w

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) December 6, 2022

For the record, misinformation cannot be true. It is, by definition, untrue. If it were true there would be nothing amiss in it. And only in the perverse world of Carlson and Fox News could such a ludicrous contention be made or taken seriously. But then again, it was Carlson who was actually defended in a defamation lawsuit by his own Fox News lawyers who told the court that “no reasonable person” would believe anything he said.

In the same program, Carlson elaborated on his adoption of the Musk Twitter files non-scandal. He complained about Twitter’s decisions to moderate the content on their platform in order to prevent Russia from spreading propaganda that was intended to benefit Trump and to sow distrust of American elections. Never mind that Musk’s pathetic exposé failed to reveal any wrongdoing or bias. Carlson was outraged at what consumed his imagination, or at least what he wanted to consume the imaginations of his viewers. He huffed that…

“Twitter did this with the help of the FBI committing censorship on behalf of one candidate while working to hurt the other candidate. It is hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy than this. This is not how our system is supposed to work. In fact, it’s illegal. What Twitter did is in violation of the First Amendment, as well as established campaign finance law. They never declared those contributions to the Biden campaign. That’s a crime.”

Tucker: It is hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy than this… pic.twitter.com/rIxVLyFRQg

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 6, 2022

First of all, Twitter didn’t do anything with the FBI. The internal messages that Musk published proved that all of the decisions about what disinformation to suppress were made solely by Twitter “safety and trust” staff. No government entity or personnel were involved, other than to flag tweets that potentially violated Twitter’s rules. And those came from both Democrats and Republicans. Also, at the time, Biden wasn’t president. It all took place during Trump’s administration with his appointees heading the FBI and the Justice Department.

Yet Carlson thinks that there was something nefarious going on for which he found it “hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy.” Really? More brazen than the attempt to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021? More brazen than trying to undermine the election for two years and install the loser as dictator? More brazen than calling for the “termination” of the Constitution.

Carlson also appears to have no idea what the First Amendment says. It is a constraint on government from imposing censorship. It has no authority over private individuals or businesses, such as Twitter.

Finally, Carlson really needs to think twice before bringing up in-kind contributions to political campaigns. Because if that were a concept that were upheld, Fox News would have have to declare billions of dollars in donations that it made to Trump and other GOP candidates for the past quarter century.

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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And check out my books on Amazon:

Fox Nation vs. Reality:
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