President Trump on Tuesday gave further credence to Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) conspiracy theory that Twitter is shadow-banning conservatives, telling reporters in the Rose Garden that the situation was “dangerous” and that he’s noticed “names are taken off” of his account.
“Well, we have to do something. I tell you, I have many, many millions of followers on Twitter and it’s different than it used to be,” he said in a joint press conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. “Things are happening, names are taken off, people aren’t getting through. You’ve heard the same complaints and it seems to be if they’re conservative, if they’re Republicans, if they’re in a certain group, there’s discrimination and big discrimination. I see it absolutely on Twitter and Facebook which I have also and others I see, but I really focus more on the one platform and I have many different platforms.”
Ever the collusion-denier, Trump suggested that there actually is “collusion” between Twitter and Democrats before launching into a diatribe about TV networks and fake news.
“I get to see first hand what’s going on and it’s not good, and we use the word collusion very loosely all the time and I will tell you, there is collusion with respect to that because something has to be going on,” he said. “It’s collusive and it’s very, very fair to say that we have to do something about it and if we don’t, you know, the incredible thing is that we can win an election and we have such a stacked deck and that includes networks, frankly. You look at the networks. You look at the news and you look at the newscast. I call it fake news.”
Trump: Twitter, you've changed pic.twitter.com/YukUkpbPjO
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) March 19, 2019
The whines they are a changin’…
Trumpets are nothing more than a bunch of insane fundamentalist clowns. This unquenchable urge to wage battle against the forces of outsiders is how fundamentalists draw clan boundaries.
You are either in their circle or not.
Trump provides living proof that fundamentalists are not actually motivated by religious doctrine.
“Many people are saying…”
Yeah, Twitter will occasionally do the right thing and ban a Nazi or two.
He is amp-ing up the rhetoric. And Nunes is part of the same process. It is easy to see him wanting to control the message wherever it occurs. Putin is doing it right now at this moment. So Trump wants to as well. Trump is a dufus, but he is also a symptom of what lies beneath him.