It would be an understatement to say that much of the media and a lot of the government is losing its crap at this hour as X, formerly Twitter owner Elon Musk engages in a free-form “conversation” with former President Donald Trump in an X “space.” Earlier today, the European Union’s commissioner for the internal market, some effete Frenchman who became a Senegalese in 2015, perhaps in honor of his efforts to turn Europe into a Third World sh** hole, named Thierry Breton. Breton warned Musk that the EU will punish him for allowing misinformation or hate speech; see EU Warns Elon Musk to Behave Ahead of His Donald Trump Interview and Musk Is Not Having It.
CNN’s Sara Fischer seemed to think that civilization as we know it would end if Trump and Musk talked without some semi-literate journalism grad “fact-checking” the conversation; see CNN Gets Supremely Triggered Over Donald Trump’s Interview With Elon Musk.
One of the more interesting entities in the “You Can’t Handle the Truth” sweepstakes goes to Washington Post reporter Cleve Wootson at today’s White House press briefing starring Karine Jean-Pierre. This would be the same press briefing where she denied Joe Bdien had a medical emergency in Las Vegas despite the audiotapes of the event being made public.
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The Washington Post’s Cleve Wootson: “One more, @ElonMusk is slated to interview [@realDonaldTrump] tomorrow — tonight on — on @X. I don’t know if the president is going to — feel free to say if he is or not — but I — I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign… pic.twitter.com/zKxJNF1zbf
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 12, 2024
WOOTSON: You’re fine. I have one more.
JEAN-PIERRE: No, go ahead.
WOOTSON: Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump tomor- — tonight on — on X. I don’t know if the president is going to tune in. Feel free to say if he is or not. (Laughter.)
But I — I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s a — you know, it’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of inter- — intervening in that?
Some of that was about campaign misinformation, but, you know, it’s a wider thing, right?
JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah, no, and you’ve heard us talk about this many times from here, about the responsibilities that social media platforms have when it comes to misinformation, disinformation. Don’t have anything to read out from here about specific ways that we’re working on it. But we believe that — that they have the responsibility. These are private companies, so we — we’re also mindful of that too.
But, look, it is — I think it — it is incredibly important to — to call that out, as you are — you’re doing. I just don’t have any specifics on — on what we have been doing internally.
As re- — as it relates to the interview, it’s not something that I’m tracking, and I’m sure the president is not tracking it either.
The idea that a reporter would think that the White House has any legal means to interfere with any American, particularly a candidate for the presidency in an election year, saying any damn thing they want to demonstrates how thoroughly corrupt and fascist-adjacent the mainstream press has become. The fact that a reporter from a newspaper that shared a Pulitzer prize for pushing a totally discredited hoax thinks he has any moral ground to protest “misinformation” is the official death knell of irony.
To the extent that ‘misinformation’ is a problem, Ground Zero of that problem is the mainstream press. They are the ones who insisted that an obviously demented and sometimes drugged Joe Biden was completely in control of his faculties. They are the ones who told us to wear masks. They push social distancing. They insisted that a vaccine that didn’t stop the transmission of COVID did so. They are the ones who pushed any number of hoaxes during the Trump administration. They are insisting that the Harris-Walz campaign is “joyful” and the Harris plan to not tax tips is great but the same plan by Trump causes deficits.
Not even herd animals are this flagrant about it. You tell me how and why corporate media constantly speaks from the same exact script this way, verbatim. #KamalaIsJOY pic.twitter.com/AHSE9Im1GL
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 9, 2024
Only sharp-eyed readers will be able to spot the difference in the coverage of the two proposals. pic.twitter.com/h9PMWCZzDX
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) August 12, 2024
Giving the yahoos in the press corps a license to police misinformation is like giving a three-year-old a can of gasoline and a lighter.
