I can’t pretend WH social media meet up isn’t hysterically funny. Overpaid conservative commentators gave Obama so much shit for doing a YouTube interview or some shit w/ a tween and now emperor trump is gonna surround himself with walking memes because he’s mad about his ratios — Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) July 11, 2019 For …
Open Thread: Trump’s (Anti-) “Social Media (Not-) Summit”Post + Comments (26)
Some underlying comedy here is that there are lots of conservative complaints about social media companies but Trump keeps talking about just one: how they are supposedly crimping his follower count (they aren't).
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 11, 2019
Happens to plenty of aging men, dude — talk to your urologist:
His tweets are no longer taking off like they used to, complains @POTUS, implying something unusual is going on.
"It used to be like a rocket shop when I put out a beauty." pic.twitter.com/H6lKuvp8eP
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) July 11, 2019
He also doesn't understand how he lost a million followers at a time.
Twitter was doing their bot purges.
— JJ MacNab (@jjmacnab) July 11, 2019
It’s nice, though, to get a preview of the Trump Presidential Library and Riverboat Casino Sponsored by DeutscheBank. https://t.co/rxs5vi5FcN
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) July 12, 2019
AP report:
… The president used the event to air grievances over his treatment by Big Tech, but also to praise some of the most caustic voices on the right, who help energize Trump’s political base.
“Some of you guys are out there,” he told them. “I mean it’s genius, but it’s bad.”
Trump singled out for praise James O’Keefe, the right-wing activist whose Project Veritas organization once tried to plant a false story in The Washington Post. In May 2010, O’Keefe and three others pleaded guilty in federal court to a misdemeanor in a scheme in which they posed as telephone repairmen in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans district office…
The meeting represented an escalation of Trump’s battle with companies like Facebook, Google and even his preferred communications outlet, Twitter, where he has an estimated 61 million followers. The president has claimed, without evidence, that the companies are “against me” and even suggested U.S. regulators should sue them on grounds of anti-conservative bias.
He announced Thursday that he is directing his administration to explore “all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech and the free-speech rights of all Americans.”…
Among the other conservative organizations participating in the White House meeting were Turning Point USA, a nonprofit; PragerU, short for Prager University, which puts out short videos with a conservative perspective on politics and economics; the Media Research Center; and the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank…
[Big Social Media: What he’s selling, we’re not buying.]
Representatives for Facebook, Google and Twitter have declined to comment specifically on the White House meeting. The Internet Association, the industry’s major trade group representing Facebook, Google and dozens of other companies, said online platforms “are the best tool for promoting voices from all political perspectives in history.”“Internet companies are not biased against any political ideology, and conservative voices in particular have used social media to great effect,” the group’s president Michael Beckerman said in a statement Thursday…
Or *some* kind of medical professional…
truly, this has taken years off my life https://t.co/stP4SxWmgZ pic.twitter.com/KBypECMRNa
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) July 12, 2019
SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE…
I’d like to exercise my freedom of speech to respond: Jesus fucking Christ. https://t.co/RXycnwfWic
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) July 11, 2019
Ignorant word salad, statements that are insufficiently coherent to be provably false statements of fact, and semi-communicative exhortations and cries such as "Yorp! Yorp!" are protected under the First Amendment.https://t.co/b0JZPZiAH6
— 1000/24thHat (@Popehat) July 11, 2019
The video, with context, does not make Trump's incoherent free speech comment better. It makes it much worse.https://t.co/U0i7Pu6fZ1
— 1000/24thHat (@Popehat) July 11, 2019
Trump was literally just found in court to have violated the free speech of dissenters on social media. pic.twitter.com/fHle4NVTaZ
— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) July 11, 2019
And then: The Afterparty!:
Key WH aides want Trump in Rose Garden more often—to look presidential.
Ex-aide Seb Gorka confronted Playboy magazine‘s Brian Karem.
Joy Villa chanted “Gor-ka.”
Mark Dice shouted at CNN’s Jim Acosta and said his book lasted just 2 weeks on bestsellers list, per @NikkiSchwab. https://t.co/K3UZEtBZL2
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 11, 2019
Striking image of a gutsy, hardnosed career professional standing his ground, and also Sebastian Gorka https://t.co/YojUxAOri7
— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) July 11, 2019
Sad trombone post-credit scene:
Being vetted for their Cabinet positions.
Just kidding, that’s preposterous. This admin doesn’t vet anyone.
— rakish finn; very legal, very cool ?????? (@AnthropObscene) July 11, 2019
The social media summit features Kellyanne Conway interviewing Diamond & Silk.
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) July 11, 2019