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Zeynep Tufekci’s Two Blind Spots Cross at DOGE
Zeynep Tufekci has a column at NYT scolding thousands of people on social media for taking glee in the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
I don’t care one way or another for the scold. I care about how she makes a remarkable claim and then uses it to engage in political nihilism.
Tufekci claims that she can’t remember any murder being so openly celebrated in the US.
I’ve been studying social media for a long time, and I can’t think of any other incident when a murder in this country has been so openly celebrated.
From there, Tufekci likens this moment to the Gilded Age, where social upheaval led to exploitation and political violence.
The Gilded Age, the tumultuous period between roughly 1870 and 1900, was also a time of rapid technological change, of mass immigration, of spectacular wealth and enormous inequality. The era got its name from a Mark Twain novel: gilded, rather than golden, to signify a thin, shiny surface layer. Below it lay the corruption and greed that engulfed the country after the Civil War.
The era survives in the public imagination through still-resonant names, including J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt; through their mansions, which now greet awe-struck tourists; and through TV shows with extravagant interiors and lavish gowns. Less well remembered is the brutality that underlay that wealth — the tens of thousands of workers, by some calculations, who lost their lives to industrial accidents, or the bloody repercussions they met when they tried to organize for better working conditions.
Also less well remembered is the intensity of political violence that erupted. The vast inequities of the era fueled political movements that targeted corporate titans, politicians, judges and others for violence.
But she suggests that rather than the reform that arose out of the Gilded Age, this moment will stumble because “the will among politicians to push for broad public solutions appears to have all but vanished.”
The turbulence and violence of the Gilded Age eventually gave way to comprehensive social reform. The nation built a social safety net, expanded public education and erected regulations and infrastructure that greatly improved the health and well-being of all Americans.
Those reforms weren’t perfect, and they weren’t the only reason the violence eventually receded (though never entirely disappeared), but they moved us forward.
The concentration of extreme wealth in the United States has recently surpassed that of the Gilded Age. And the will among politicians to push for broad public solutions appears to have all but vanished. I fear that instead of an era of reform, the response to this act of violence and to the widespread rage it has ushered into view will be limited to another round of retreat by the wealthiest.
So, unprecedented glee at a murder. And Tufekci’s judgment that there’s simply not the political will there was in the early 20th Century.
As a threshold matter, I find her claim that this is a unique moment of glee to be … forgetful. Just two years ago, after all, Donald Trump and Elon Musk — whose platform has encouraged such mob celebrations — both led their mob in vicious jokes about Paul Pelosi’s near-murder.
Indeed, Trump used attacks on Paul Pelosi at least twice in his campaign — most recently, campaigning with some cops in September.
How do you forget that the richest man in the world and the President-elect have engaged in just such celebration of political violence (and that’s before he pardons seditionists)? Donald Trump got elected by celebrating political violence.
And then he proceeded to install at least 11 billionaires, ready to start looting government.
Which is where Tufekci’s failure to find any will to push for systematic solutions gets curious. After all, Lina Khan’s efforts to rein in monopolies played a role in last year’s election. WaPo’s coverage of all the billionaires Trump installed quotes Josh Hawley along with Elizabeth Warren and Noah Bookbinder.
Trump’s team of rivals stands in stark contrast with President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, which had a combined net worth of $118 million in the first year of his presidency, according to Forbes. Trump’s picks have not yet released their financial disclosures, but his 2025 Cabinet is likely to be even richer than the first Trump Cabinet, which had a combined net worth of $6.2 billion.
[snip]
Trump’s selections may be more inclined to look out for the interests of their own businesses and their fellow billionaires than for working-class voters, said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
“It is hard to see how a Cabinet made up largely of the very, very wealthiest of Americans is going to have an understanding of what the needs of regular Americans are,” he said.
[snip]
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) expressed concern about the business backgrounds of some of Trump’s picks in an interview with Politico on Tuesday.
“All these Treasury secretaries, my point is, always end up being sort of Wall Street guys. Do I think that’s a great trend? Not really,” Hawley said.
[snip]
Democrats have roundly criticized Trump’s choices. The Democratic Party on Tuesday put out a news release that said Trump was “stacking his Cabinet with out of touch billionaires.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told The Washington Post that the choices suggest Trump’s presidency will “be one giveaway after another for the wealthy and well-connected.”
“He’s nominating his ‘rich-as-hell’ buddies to run every facet of our economy, corrupting our government at the expense of ordinary Americans,” she said.
(NYT’s version of the same story credulously repeats the Tech Bros’ transparently bullshit claim that “A core goal of Mr. Musk and the Silicon Valley set has been to improve the efficiency of government services.”)
And even beyond Khan’s work, the Biden Administration took efforts to reverse the kind of concentration that made Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg rich. They’ve even taken action against … United Healthcare.
The richest man in the world is about to come for VA Health Care and once that fails to make way for new tax cuts, Medicare.
No one knows where this moment of rage will go. The oligarchs have the means to exercise the power of the state against those complaining that Trump’s billionaires plan to use bullshit claims about efficiency to make things far worse.
But the people who brought us to this moment where mobs take glee at political violence are about to loot the government.
And I’m pretty sure Senator Warren will be ready at hand to explain what is going down.
Pam Bondi Offers a Platform to Expose the Consequences of Trump’s Past Corruption
Greg Sargent had a column proposing ways for Democrats to really challenge Pam Bondi at her confirmation hearing. He describes it as an opportunity to expose how badly she’ll be willing to politicize rule of law.
Democrats should start thinking right now about the opportunity presented by Bondi’s Senate confirmation hearings next year. This will be a major occasion to unmask just how far she’ll gladly go in corrupting the rule of law and unleashing the state on all the “vermin” he has threatened to persecute.
“The attorney general will be the weaponizer-in-chief of the legal system for Trump,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, told me.
While I agree with Sargent’s premise — Democrats should treat Bondi’s confirmation hearing as an opportunity — I disagree with his proposed approach (and that espoused by Jamie Raskin, whom he quotes at length).
Sargent’s focus is on how Bondi would act under predictable eventualities.
Trump has threatened to prosecute enemies without cause. How will Bondi respond when he demands such prosecutions? He has vowed to yank broadcasting rights to punish media companies that displease him and send the military into blue areas for indeterminate pacification missions. His advisers are reportedly exploring whether military officers involved in the Afghanistan mission can be court-martialed. Raskin says Bondi should be confronted on all of this: “Ask whether she thinks the First Amendment and due process are any impediment to what Trump has called for.”
But this is precisely the approach that failed with Bill Barr, who months after a contentious confirmation hearing, kicked off the process of politicizing DOJ.
Most tellingly, Barr was asked questions about the kind of foreseeable eventualities that Sargent describes (such as, pardons for January 6ers), and it did no good. Patrick Leahy, Amy Klobuchar, and Lindsey Graham all asked Barr whether pardoning someone for false testimony would amount to obstruction. Every time, Barr at least conceded the potential applicability of obstruction in that case. And then, just months after that hearing, when Barr wrote a declination memo for Robert Mueller’s obstruction charge, he simply ignored the pardons. He didn’t mention them at all. While it took years for us to learn how he had reneged on his own stated views (by simply ignoring them), those setting these expectations never found a way to hold him accountable for the dodge.
That said, January 6 Committee staffer Thomas Joscelyn, whom Sargent also quotes, gets a bit closer to the approach I’d recommend. Don’t ask Bondi whether she would do something; make sure you lay out her responsibility for inevitable consequences when things she’s likely to do have untoward effects.
“What happens if Trump pardons the Proud Boys leaders who were convicted for seditious conspiracy and instigating the violence?” said Tom Joscelyn, a lead author of the Jan. 6 Committee report, in suggesting lines of questioning for Bondi. “What about the dozens of defendants convicted of assaulting cops?”
Joscelyn adds that pardons for them would provide a major boost to violent far right extremist groups in this country and would “legitimize their cause.” Dems should confront Bondi with all of that. Make her own every last bit of it.
Where I’d add to what Joscelyn suggests is with Trump’s past history.
Rather than asking Bondi about something we know will happen going forward (political violence from freed militia members), ask her how she’ll avoid the negative consequences Trump’s past actions already had. Rather than asking Bondi whether she’ll be responsible for Proud Boy violence when Trump pardons them, instead note that Bill Barr treated threats the Proud Boys and Roger Stone made against Amy Berman Jackson as a technicality, only to have them plan an insurrection 18 months later. “Bill Barr’s coddling of Trump’s far right extremists led to a predictable increased threat, an attack on the Capitol. How will you avoid the same mistake?” It uses the confirmation hearing to lay out the consequences of past corruption.
You can use this approach with pardons more generally. “Because Trump didn’t properly vet his pardons the first time around, at least seven of them quickly returned to crime, with many of them beating their spouses. How will you ensure that Trump’s bypassing of normal pardon protocol don’t put violent men back on the streets?” You can pick some of the January 6ers — like hardened criminal Shane Jenkins, who almost had a fundraiser at Bedminster, or NeoNazi Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who did — to ask Bondi how coddling such criminals is consistent with the law-and-order promises she makes.
The difference, so far, is subtle: Using the hearing to show past consequences for Barr or Trump’s own failures, rather than generically predicting future woes.
But that difference becomes more important when adopting a more important focus for the hearing.
Like the legitimization of far right extremists that Joscelyn predicts, we can predict a number of other inevitable outcomes from Trump’s second term. The most important is that as billionaires like Elon Musk loot the government, government service will decline precipitously, only exacerbating the alienation of many of the people who voted for Trump. And when those same billionaires get impunity from Trump’s DOJ, consumers will have their lives ruined. But Trump will work hard to blame scapegoats: liberals, trans people, and unions, rather than the billionaires Trump chose to given direct control over the looting process.
Democrats need to build in accountability for the corruption from the beginning. They need to explain that a crash in life quality is the inevitable consequence of Trump’s corruption and — just as important because committed MAGAts are more likely to turn on others before they turn on Trump — his billionaire appointees and protected buddies.
And Pam Bondi offers a spectacular way to lay that out, because she has been involved in protecting the villains who harmed Trump supporters in the past.
“Ms. Bondi, these ardent Trump supporters who signed up for Trump University racked up debt but got nothing from their degrees. How will you avoid such abuse of consumers going forward?”
“Ms. Bondi, after you fired the attorneys who were investigating banks foreclosing based on dodgy paperwork, millions of Floridians lost their homes. How will you protect Americans from similar business fraud going forward?”
“Ms. Bondi, after you and Rudy Giuliani made false claims about the vote in Pennsylvania, many of them threw their lives away by attacking the Capitol. How will you ensure that such lies don’t harm Trump supporters going forward?”
There are similar questions she can be asked that will anticipate other actions she’s likely to take — like shutting down investigations into Elon Musk’s various stock manipulations and false claims. “Ms. Bondi, how will you protect consumers who purchased cars falsely sold as self-driving?”
There are other questions that might get at Bondi’s past complicity. “Ms. Bondi, why did you and Trump’s other impeachment defense attorneys claim Trump’s demand for an investigation into Burisma was a pursuit of corruption, when Trump’s own DOJ had just shut down a 3-year investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky’s corruption?”
But the most important questions can and should be framed in terms of the Trump supporters whom her past corruption has harmed.
Democrats are not going to prevent Bondi’s confirmation. They’re also not going to get reassurances that Bondi will protect the integrity of the Department; Bill Barr’s prevarications prove that’s futile.
But they can use the high profile confirmation process as a way to lay out what should be a relentless message going forward: corruption hurts the little guy. Trump’s past corruption has hurt his supporters. Bondi’s past corruption has hurt his supporters.
That’s what the Republicans who will confirm her should have to own: the inevitable consequences of her protection of Trump’s corruption and that of the other billionaires who will be swarming his administration.
Yes, Trump Plans to Flush NATO, But It’s Part of a Larger Whole
Note, 1:40 ET: Folks, I know this is bad timing, but in about 20 minutes, I’m going to temporarily shut down comments here, as we’re going to do some planned maintenance. Hopefully it won’t take too long.
When Donald Trump announced he had selected Matt Whitaker as his Ambassador to NATO, a bunch of people rushed over here to hear me say Big Dick Toilet Salesman* again.
Like most of Trump’s other nominees, Whitaker is wildly unqualified for the role. Actual diplomats may be able to exploit his inexperience. Likely, he’ll wander around Europe like Gordon Sondland did, doing personal errands for Trump, often involving grift. Unlike most of Trump’s nominees, Whitaker has at least been able to get and sustain security clearance in the past.
But I really think BDTS is not where our attention should focus.
Yes, there are reasons to focus on Trump’s five most outrageous nominees, but not always for the main reasons they’re wildly unqualified.
It matters that Russia keeps calling Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump wants to lead the entire Intelligence Community, their girlfriend. But just as important, Nikki Haley has made an issue of Tulsi’s nomination — focusing on Iran, not Russia.
It matters that RFK Jr would pursue policies that would kill more children, just like he did in Samoa. But it’s worth recalling that RFK made more pointed attacks on red states than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris ever did.
Pete Hegseth is unqualified both because of his Christian nationalism and the NDA he got with a woman who told police he had raped her (his attorney, Tim Parlatore, says the sex was consensual). But it matters just as much that Hegseth hid the alleged assault from Trump’s flimsy vetting process, raising questions among Trump’s team about his candor.
She said Hegseth took her phone and blocked the door with his body when she tried to leave. She told police she said “no” repeatedly. She said she was next on a bed or a couch and Hegseth was on top of her, with his dog tags hovering over her face. Hegseth, she said, ejaculated on her stomach.
Even the focus on evidence of Matt Gaetz’ alleged sex trafficking — something likely to be aired anyway in two month’s time, not least because JD Vance’s disclosure that Trump plans to replace Chris Wray means Wray will have no incentive to refuse Democratic Senators’ requests for more information on the investigation — distracts from the larger effort, focusing on sordid Venmo payments rather than Gaetz’ willingness to sustain conspiracy theories that have been debunked.
Donald Trump’s wildly inappropriate nominations taken one by one, like Nancy Mace’s grotesque attack on Sarah McBride (and Fox News’ lies that McBride, not Mace, started the fight), serve to distract from the larger issue: Trump’s wholesale effort to dismantle the Federal government’s commitment to serve Americans not named Donald Trump or African immigrants named Elon Musk — or Russians named Vladimir Putin.
That’s why Musk is an exception to my claim of distraction. Thus far, I am far less intrigued by claimed tensions around Musk than others like Gaetz — I think it is too early to tell whether Musk has enough leverage over Trump to withstand complaints that he is stealing the thunder from the boss. It doesn’t hurt to play them up, but I have a hunch they won’t work like they normally would. But Musk’s conflicts most readily convey the looting that is at the core of this effort. It should be easy to show how the selection of Brendon Carr as FCC head will not only pose a risk to the First Amendment in the US, but would also provide specific, personalized benefits to Musk’s Starlink. It should be easy to use Musk as an exemplar of the point of all this, which has nothing to do with “woke” or bathrooms or “free speech,” but is, instead, about looting.
Taken individually and as a whole, Republicans — at least the Senators — are in an awkward spot. They are being asked whether they support America, or whether they will irretrievably stop serving their constituents as their President dismantles decades of government benefits. Each instance of discomfort created by Trump’s picks, whether it is Trump’s own team’s belief that Hegseth hid something or Haley’s attack on Tulsi from the right or generalized loathing of Matt Gaetz, provides a discomfort that may lead Republicans to stand up. Each instance of an incompetent crony (and I include Whitaker in that list) being placed in a position where he’s more likely to seek personal benefit he’ll have motive to protect by dutifully implementing whatever Trump orders should be a way to show that Senators have sold out their constituents.
But thus far, Trump has brilliantly done what he always does: used a series of distractions to drown out any coherent discussion of the whole.
It is usually a good bet to assume Republicans will fail to exhibit the integrity or self-preservation when it most matters. But the stakes are too high not to do everything we can to try to change that.
And that starts by maintaining focus on the whole rather than the endless series of new outrageous distractions.
*Note, I did not make up this nickname, though it’s a good one. I merely helped popularize it.
Things the Legacy Media Found Less Important than Joe Biden’s Apostrophe
If Kamala Harris loses today, America’s media ecosystem will bear a great deal of the blame.
As I’ve said before, part of that is the hermetically sealed Trump propaganda industry, starting with Fox News. About 35% to 40% of American voters live in that world and believe Trump’s false claims of grievance. With Pete Buttigieg leading the way and a bunch of ad buys, Harris cracked that world just enough to elicit squeals about betrayal from Trump.
Part of that is the disinformation industry, led by Elon Musk. As more of America becomes a news desert, voters’ window on the world is often mediated by the algorithms of people, like Musk, who have a stake in debasing reason.
But a big part of it is the legacy media, which has gotten so addicted to horse race that it has lost interest in the reality of politics’ effects on ordinary people’s lives.
In an interview with Margaret Sullivan, Jay Rosen describes how reporters chose to chase Joe Biden’s alleged attack on Trump supporters rather than things that mattered to voters.
“But the horse race is too easy, too available — it has all these advantages,” he said.
How does this play out? This is my example, not Jay’s, but consider how the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with others in national media, gave such huge emphasis last week to the story about Biden’s verbal gaffe in which he used the word “garbage.” (He says he was describing the demonization of Puerto Rican people that was depicted at Trump’s appalling Madison Square Garden rally; others — especially on the right — heard Biden’s words as a description of Trump’s followers.)
If coverage is based around the horse race, this is a big story because it remind people of how Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was damaged after she described some Trump fans as a “basket of deplorables.” And indeed, that’s how they played it — both major newspapers led their home pages with that story, framing it as how Kamala Harris was being forced to distance herself from Biden and how it was giving “grist” to her opponents. Both papers also put the story above the fold on their Thursday front pages.
Huge, in other words. As Greg Sargent of the New Republic put it in a smart X thread: “The news hook is literally that it provided ‘grist’ to Republicans,” and this in effect “outsources the judgment about the newsworthiness of the event to bad-faith actors.” He’s right. It’s also classic false equivalence — as Trump devolves into simulating oral sex with a microphone, there must be something bad to say about Harris’s campaign, right?
If media coverage had been centered around the potential loss of American democracy, or really, anything other than horse race coverage, this Biden screwup wouldn’t have mattered much. Biden’s not the candidate, after all. There’s no actual consequence to this story.
But if your organizing principle is the horse race — neck and neck going into the home stretch! — Harris’s response is a much bigger deal. So the emphasis tells us a lot.
In a piece reminding that Rick Perlstein this childish practice of chasing bogus scandals has a long history — did you know that the press shamed John McCain for fighting back against Karl Rove’s black baby smear? — he also notes that sometimes voters just won’t play along.
Breaking en masse for Kamala Harris, Puerto Ricans just might be the ones who end up confounding that elite media’s desperation to end this race in a photo finish. If they do, they will have proved once and for all that the most malodorous garbage during this campaign was the stuff those elite journalists kept trying to shovel in our face.
Indeed, as Daniel Marans described, some Puerto Rican voters took renewed offense from Trump’s stunt of renting a garbage truck.
Nilsa Vega and Neidel Pacheco of Hellertown, a borough south of Bethlehem, both said they had never voted before, but Hinchcliffe’s remarks were the reason they planned to vote for Harris on Tuesday.
“That hit the spot right there,” Vega said. “They keep saying, ‘Oh, he’s only a comedian.’ It still hurts.”
Pacheco saw Trump’s decision to pose in a garbage truck at a campaign stop in Wisconsin the following day as an additional insult. “If he didn’t have nothing to do with it, what’s he doing in the garbage truck?” Pacheco asked.
Meanwhile, here’s a story about the Syracuse student who got one of the most impactful stories in a key swing district: whether Republicans will cut off job-creating funding from the CHIPS Act.
Back on July 17 — four days before Biden dropped out — I made a list of stories that the press was ignoring by instead focusing on Joe Biden Old. They were:
- Is Trump a Saudi Foreign Agent?
- What deals has Trump made with Putin and/or Orbán?
- What happened to the missing classified documents?
I’d add a few more:
- What is the state of Trump’s health and is he suffering ongoing symptoms from the shooting attempt?
- Who are the other business partners and backers behind the various means Trump has established, like Truth Social, to launder payments?
We are hours away from polls closing, and Eric Lipton is one of the few journalists (along with Forbes, which reported on a new loan Trump got in 2016 today) who has shown much curiosity about who actually owns Trump.
We literally don’t know the precise nature of the business relationship between the Saudis and Emiratis — to say nothing of Russia or Egypt — and the Republican candidate for President.
Instead, we know that Republicans were able to bait the press into chasing an apostrophe for several of the last days of this campaign.
Batting Down Election-Day Conspiracy Theories
There is no truth to the rumor that Donald J. Trump wearing an apron while dispensing french fries at a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Pennsylvania was part of his preparation for a new career move should he lose tonight [Sunday, October 20, 2024. Photo by Doug Mills/AP.]
So let’s get right to it.
There is no truth to the rumor that the staff at Mar-a-Lago has put plastic sheeting over the walls, to make cleaning up any thrown pasta easier. If anyone tells you that the custodial staff is worried about Trump throwing his dinner around once results start coming in, do not believe them.
There is no truth to the rumor that JD Vance has prepared a concession speech filled with remorse for the things he said about Kamala Harris during the campaign, and there is absolutely no truth whatsoever that Peter Thiel is preparing to have JD Vance disappeared for his failure to win.
There is no truth to the rumor that Lara Trump is planning to move to Saudi Arabia should Harris/Walz win.
There is no truth to the rumor that Fox News has a contingency plan to have an intern shut down the power to the FOX studios and take them off the air on election night if the results come in putting Harris over the top.
There is no truth to the rumor that Ivanka and Jared are giving the Saudi’s back the money they were given to “invest” back in 2020.
There is no truth to the rumor that Elon Musk is shorting DJT stock.
There is no truth to the rumor that Mike Pence has a bottle of champagne on ice for he and Mother to share this evening, should Trump/Vance lose.
There is no truth to the rumor that Alito and Thomas are so despondent at the mere thought of Trump losing that their doctors are worried about them succumbing to heart attacks in the next 72 hours.
There is no truth to the rumor that Bill Barr is preparing a memo for Kamala Harris, laying out the rationale for her naming him as her new AG should Trump lose.
There is no truth to the rumor that Liz Cheney has practicing her sincerity in anticipation of making a call later this evening to Donald Trump, offering her solemn condolences at Trump’s loss, and absolutely no truth whatsoever that her practice sessions are not going well because she can’t get through two sentences without laughing.
There is no truth to the rumor that Gavin Newsom is planning a call to Donald Trump Junior and Kimberly Guilfoyle, offering condolences on the occasion of the loss of Trump/Vance.
There is no truth to the rumor that Ted Cruz already has purchased a new home in Cancun, and absolutely no truth whatsoever that in a gesture of bipartisanship, Colin Allred has already generously agreed to bring pizza and empty boxes to help him pack.
There is no truth to the rumor that Mitt Romney has laid in numerous kegs of beer for his watch party tonight at the Romney family home, and absolutely no truth whatsoever that Mitt’s sister niece Ronna McDaniel is planning to resume using “Romney” in her name again.
There is no truth to the rumor that Trump’s staffers are secretly preparing to call in sick this evening, rather than attend any watch parties or “victory” rallies, so that they can prepare to enter witness protection programs.
THERE IS NO TRUTH TO ANY OF THESE THINGS.
There is also a rumor that the members of Putin’s election interference unit are reeling in terror at the mere thought that Harris/Walz may win, resulting in an all-expenses paid one way trip to Ukraine for the entire group. This rumor we have been unable to debunk or verify.
If you have heard other rumors that need to be shut down, please add them in the comments.
Elon Musk’s Machine for Fascism: A One-Stop Shop for Disinformation and Violence
Just over a year ago, I described how Twitter had been used as a way to sow false claims in support of Trump in 2016 and 2020.
I described how, in 2016, trolls professionalized their efforts, with the early contribution of Daily Stormer webmaster Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer. I quoted testimony from Microchip, a key cooperating co-conspirator at Douglass Mackey’s trial, describing how he took unoffensive content stolen from John Podesta and turned it into a controversy that would underming Hillary Clinton’s chances.
Q What was it about Podesta’s emails that you were sharing?
A That’s a good question.
So Podesta ‘s emails didn’t, in my opinion, have anything in particularly weird or strange about them, but my talent is to make things weird and strange so that there is a controversy. So I would take those emails and spin off other stories about the emails for the sole purpose of disparaging Hillary Clinton.
T[y]ing John Podesta to those emails, coming up with stories that had nothing to do with the emails but, you know, maybe had something to do with conspiracies of the day, and then his reputation would bleed over to Hillary Clinton, and then, because he was working for a campaign, Hillary Clinton would be disparaged.
Q So you’re essentially creating the appearance of some controversy or conspiracy associated with his emails and sharing that far and wide.
A That’s right.
Q Did you believe that what you were tweeting was true?
A No, and I didn’t care.
Q Did you fact-check any of it?
A No.
Q And so what was the ultimate purpose of that? What was your goal?
A To cause as much chaos as possible so that that would bleed over to Hillary Clinton and diminish her chance of winning.
After Trump won, the trolls turned immediately to replicating their efforts.
Microchip — a key part of professionalizing this effort — declared, “We are making history,” before he immediately started pitching the idea of flipping a European election (as far right trolls attempted with Emmanuel Macron’s race in 2017) and winning the 2020 election.
They did replicate the effort. That same post described how, in 2020, Trump’s role in the bullshit disinformation was overt.
Trump, his sons, and his top influencers were all among a list of the twenty most efficient disseminators of false claims about the election compiled by the Election Integrity Project after the fact.
While some of the false claims Trump and his supporters were throttled in real time, almost none of them were taken down.
But the effort to throttle generally ended after the election, and Stop the Steal groups on Facebook proliferated in advance of January 6.
To this day, I’m not sure what would have happened had not the social media companies shut down Donald Trump.
And then, shortly thereafter, the idea was born for the richest man in the world to buy Twitter. Even his early discussions focused on eliminating the kind of moderation that served as a break in 2020. During that process, someone suspected of being Stephen Miller started pitching Elon Musk on how to bring back the far right, including “the boss,” understood to be Trump.
Musk started dumping money into Miller’s xeno- and transphobic political efforts.
Once Musk did take over Xitter, NGOs run by far right operatives, Republicans in Congress, and useful idiots coordinated to undercut any kind of systematic moderation.
As I laid out last year, the end result seemed to leave us with the professionalization and reach of 2020 but without the moderation. Allies of Donald Trump made a concerted effort to ensure there was little to hold back a flood of false claims undermining democracy.
Meanwhile, the far right, including Elon, started using the Nazi bar that Elon cultivated to stoke right wing violence here on my side of the pond, first with targeted Irish anti-migrant actions, then with the riots that started in Southport. I’ve been tracing those efforts for some time, but Rolling Stone put a new report on it out, yesterday.
Throughout, the main forum where right-wing pundits and influencers stoked public anger was X. But a key driver of the unrest was the platform’s owner himself, Elon Musk. He would link the riots to mass immigration, at one point posting that “civil war” in the U.K. was inevitable. He trolled the newly elected British prime minister, Keir Starmer — whose Labour Party won power in July after 14 years of Conservative rule — for supposedly being biased against right-wing “protesters.” After Nigel Farage, the leader of radical-right party Reform U.K. and Trump ally, posted on X that, “Keir Starmer poses the biggest threat to free speech we’ve seen in our history,” Musk replied: “True.”
Anything Musk even slightly interacted with during the days of violence received a huge boost, due to the way he has reportedly tinkered with X’s algorithm and thanks to his 200 million followers, the largest following on X. “He’s the curator-in-chief — he’s the man with the Midas touch,” says Marc Owen Jones, an expert on far-right disinformation and associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. “He boosted accounts that were contributing to the narratives of disinformation and anti-Muslim hate speech that were fueling these riots.”
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, one of Trump’s most gleeful supporters, someone with troubling links to both China and Russia, has set up a one-stop shop: Joining false claims about the election with networks of fascists who’ll take to the streets.
With that in mind, I want to point to a number of reports on how disinformation has run rampant on Xitter.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (one of the groups that Elon unsuccessfully sued) released a report showing that even where volunteers mark disinformation on Xitter, those Community Notes often never get shown to users.
Despite a dedicated group of X users producing accurate, well-sourced notes, a significant portion never reaches public view. In this report we found that 74% of accurate Community Notes on false or misleading claims about US elections never get shown to users. This allows misleading posts about voter fraud, election integrity, and political candidates to spread and be viewed millions of times. Posts without Community Notes promoting false narratives about US politics have garnered billions of views, outpacing the reach of their fact-checked counterparts by 13 times.
NBC described Elon’s personal role in magnifying false claims.
In three instances in the last month, Musk’s posts highlighting election misinformation have been viewed over 200 times more than fact-checking posts correcting those claims that have been published on X by government officials or accounts.
Musk frequently boosts false claims about voting in the U.S., and rarely, if ever, offers corrections when caught sharing them. False claims he has posted this month routinely receive tens of millions of views, by X’s metrics, while rebuttals from election officials usually receive only tens or hundreds of thousands.
Musk, who declared his full-throated support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in July, is facing at least 11 lawsuits and regulatory battles under the Biden administration related to his various companies.
And CNN described how efforts from election administrators to counter this flood of disinformation have been overwhelmed.
Elon Musk’s misinformation megaphone has created a “huge problem” for election officials in key battleground states who told CNN they’re struggling to combat the wave of falsehoods coming from the tech billionaire and spreading wildly on his X platform.
Election officials in pivotal battleground states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona have all tried – and largely failed – to fact-check Musk in real time. At least one has tried passing along personal notes asking he stop spreading baseless claims likely to mislead voters.
“I’ve had my friends hand-deliver stuff to him,” said Stephen Richer, a top election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County, a Republican who has faced violent threats for saying the 2020 election was secure.
“We’ve pulled out more stops than most people have available to try to put accurate information in front of (Musk),” Richer added. “It has been unsuccessful.”
Ever since former President Donald Trump and his allies trumpeted bogus claims of election fraud to try to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, debunking election misinformation has become akin to a second full-time job for election officials, alongside administering actual elections. But Musk – with his ownership of the X platform, prominent backing of Trump and penchant for spreading false claims – has presented a unique challenge.
“The bottom line is it’s really disappointing that someone with as many resources and as big of a platform as he clearly has would use those resources and allow that platform to be misused to spread misinformation,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told CNN, “when he could help us restore and ensure people can have rightly placed faith in our election outcomes, whatever they may be.”
Finally, Wired explained how, last week, Elon’s PAC made it worse, by setting up a group of 50,000 people stoking conspiracy theories.
For months, billionaire and X owner Elon Musk has used his platform to share election conspiracy theories that could undermine faith in the outcome of the 2024 election. Last week, the political action committee (PAC) Musk backs took it a step further, launching a group on X called the Election Integrity Community. The group has nearly 50,000 members and says that it is meant to be a place where users can “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election.”
In practice, it is a cesspool of election conspiracy theories, alleging everything from unauthorized immigrants voting to misspelled candidate names on ballots. “It’s just an election denier jamboree,” says Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University, who authored a recent report on how social media facilitates political violence.
[snip]
Inside the group, multiple accounts shared a viral video of a person ripping up ballots, allegedly from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which US intelligence agencies have said is fake. Another account shared a video from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones alleging that unauthorized immigrants were being bussed to polling locations to vote. One video shared multiple times, and also purportedly from Buck County, shows a voter confronting a woman with a “voter protection” tag on a lanyard who tells the woman filming that she is there for “early vote monitoring” and asks not to be recorded. Text in the accompanying post says that there were “long lines and early cut offs” and alleges election interference. That post has been viewed more than 1 million times.
Some accounts merely retweet local news stories, or right-wing influencers like Lara Loomer and Jack Posobiec, rather than sharing their own personal experiences.
One account merely reshared a post from Sidney Powell, the disgraced lawyer who attempted to help Trump overturn the 2020 election, in which she says that voting machines in Wisconsin connect to the internet, and therefore could be tampered with. In actuality, voting machines are difficult to hack. Many of the accounts reference issues in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
This latter network includes all the same elements we saw behind the riots in the UK — Alex Jones, Trump’s fascist trolls, Russian spies (except Tommy Robinson, who just got jailed on contempt charges).
Now, in my piece last year, I suggested that Elon has diminished the effectiveness of this machine for fascism by driving so many people off of it.
The one thing that may save us is that this Machine for Fascism has destroyed Xitter’s core value to aspiring fascists: it has destroyed Xitter’s role as a public square, from which normal people might find valuable news. In the process, Elmo has destroyed Twitter’s key role in bridging from the far right to mainstream readers.
Maybe that’s true? Or maybe by driving off so many journalists Elon has only ensured that journalists have to go look to find this stuff — and to be utterly clear, this kind of journalism is some of the most important work being done right now.
But with successful tests runs stoking far right violence in Ireland and the UK, that may not matter. Effectively, Elon has made Xitter a massive version of Gab, a one-stop shop from which he can both sow disinformation and stoke violence.
On a near daily basis, DOJ issues warnings that some of this — not the false claims about fraud and not much of the violent rhetoric, but definitely those who try to confuse voters about how or when to vote — is illegal.
NBC describes that election officials are keeping records of the corrections they’ve issued, which would be useful in case of legal cases later. What we don’t know is whether DOJ is issuing notices of illegal speech to Xitter (they certainly did in 2020 — it’s one of the things Matt Taibbi wildly misrepresented), and if so, what they’re doing about it.
I am, as I have been for some time, gravely alarmed by all this. The US has far fewer protections against this kind of incitement than the UK or the EU. Much of this is not illegal.
Kamala Harris does have — and is using — one important tool against this. Her campaign has made a record number of contacts directly with voters. She is, effectively, sidestepping this wash of disinformation by using her massive network of volunteers to speak directly to people.
If that works, if Harris can continue to do what she seems to be doing in key swing states (though maybe not Nevada): getting more of her voters to the polls, then all this will come to a head in the aftermath, as I suspect other things may come to a head in the transition period, assuming Harris can win this thing. In a period when DOJ can and might act, the big question is whether American democracy can take action to shut down a machine that has been fine-tuned for years for this moment.
American law and years of effort to privilege Nazi speech have created the opportunity to build a machine for fascism. And I really don’t know how it’ll work out.
Update: Thus far there have been three known Russian disinformation attempts: a false claim of sexual abuse targeted at Tim Walz, a fake video showing votes in Bucks County being destroyed, and now a false claim that a Haitian migrant was voting illegally in Georgia.
This statement from Raffensperger, publicly asking Musk to take it down, may provide some kind of legal basis to take further steps. That’s the kind of thing that is needed to get this under control.
Update: I meant to include the Atlantic’s contribution to the reporting on Musk’s “Election Integrity Community;” it’s a good thing so many people are focused on Elon’s efforts.
Nothing better encapsulates X’s ability to sow informational chaos than the Election Integrity Community—a feed on the platform where users are instructed to subscribe and “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election.” The community, which was launched last week by Musk’s America PAC, has more than 34,000 members; roughly 20,000 have joined since Musk promoted the feed last night. It is jammed with examples of terrified speculation and clearly false rumors about fraud. Its top post yesterday morning was a long rant from a “Q Patriot.” His complaint was that when he went to vote early in Philadelphia, election workers directed him to fill out a mail-in ballot and place it in a secure drop box, a process he described as “VERY SKETCHY!” But this is, in fact, just how things work: Pennsylvania’s early-voting system functions via on-demand mail-in ballots, which are filled in at polling locations. The Q Patriot’s post, which has been viewed more than 62,000 times, is representative of the type of fearmongering present in the feed and a sterling example of a phenomenon recently articulated by the technology writer Mike Masnick, where “everything is a conspiracy theory when you don’t bother to educate yourself.”
A Tale of Two Pennsylvania Lawsuits
Both parties filed at least one lawsuit in Pennsylvania the other day. They suggest that Trump is seeking to create problems, not voters.
Trump and Republicans sued Bucks County for shutting down early voting (which in Pennsylvania amounts to filling out a mail-in ballot in person) three hours early the other day. As a result, the county was ordered to offer three more days of in-person early voting.
a) Declare that the Bucks County’s actions in turning away voters who sought to apply for a mail-in ballot and receive one in person before the deadline of 5:00 p.m. on October 29, 2024 violated the Pennsylvania Election Code,
b) Order the Bucks’ County Board of Elections to permit any persons who wish to apply for and receive a mail-in ballot to appear at the Elections Bureau office and do so during normal business hours before the close of business on October 30, 2024.
As a number of outlets have reported, Trump used this incident to claim voter fraud. But raising concerns and getting accommodations is, instead, how the system works.
Trump hasn’t complained about another problem in the state.
As Democrats allege in a suit against Erie County, one or two fairly major fuck-ups with their sent mail-in ballots, one stemming from their vendor, and another stemming from the postal service, have led to delays in a significant number of Erie voters getting their absentee ballots. The impact is significant: Erie’s 57% early turnout lags every other county save (gulp) Luzerne. And even though Democrats have returned their ballots at a much higher pace than Republicans — over 62% of Democrats as compared to 52% of Republicans, one of the biggest gaps in the state — there are still 9,000 outstanding Democratic ballots and 6,000 Republican ones.
Republicans may not be complaining because the differential still works out to a 3,000 vote advantage for them, in a bellwether county. Or maybe they’re simply not tracking their votes that closely.
Some of the boys purportedly in charge of Trump’s turnout have just discovered that women are voting at much higher rates than men, which has been evident for weeks.
In any case, the local Dems in Erie simply taking this in stride, finding a way to get their votes counted.
During an Oct. 24 public meeting of the Board of Elections, Sam Talarico, the head of the local Democratic Party, said his “only concern is about people who have not received their mail-in ballots yet. I’m one of them.”
In an interview on Wednesday, he said he had finally received his ballot on Monday and returned it the next day.
“I’m a little bit concerned, but I do know the county is doing everything they can to rectify the situation,” he said.
There’s a hearing on the Erie lawsuit today (though the most interesting Pennsylvania hearing will be the hearing in Philadelophia DA Larry Krasner’s effort to enjoin Elon Musk’s million dollar giveaways under Pennsylvania’s lottery law, for which Judge Angelo Foglietta ordered Elon Musk’s personal attendance).
Until then, it appears that Pennsylvania’s Democrats are simply going to work to turn out every single vote.
On the Legacy of Bill Barr’s Luzerne County Intervention
Somewhere, I have a half-finished post about the way that Bill Barr refused to cooperate with three different Inspector General Reports reviewing his actions — his actions during May and June 2020 protests in DC, his intervention in the Roger Stone sentencing, and his decision to seek out a voter fraud cause he could publicize. (There’s at least one more investigation, probably the one into subpoenas targeting journalists and Congress, that is ongoing.)
I hope to return to that if we still have a democracy next week.
But I want to review the third of these, because it hangs over DOJ’s ongoing investigation of a number of suspect election crimes, including the arson targeting ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington earlier this week.
As you may recall, someone — who turned out to be a mentally disabled man — threw away nine mail-in ballots in Luzerne County, PA in September 2020. The US Attorney for Middle District of Pennsylvania in Scranton, David Freed, big-footed into the investigation, in part (the IG Report discovered) because Bill Barr was looking for some case to talk about. Barr told Trump about the case and Trump made public comment.
…These ballots are a horror show. They found six ballots in an office yesterday in a garbage can. They were Trump ballots—eight ballots in an office yesterday in—but in a certain state and they were—they had Trump written on it, and they were thrown in a garbage can. This is what’s going to happen. This is what’s going to happen, and we’re investigating that. It’s a terrible thing that’s going on with these ballots. Who’s sending them, where are they sending them, where are they going, what areas are they going to, what areas are they not going to?… When they get there, who’s going to take care of them? So, when we find eight ballots, that’s emblematic of thousands of locations perhaps.
After which, Barr and Freed decided to release a public comment about the investigation, including that all nine of the discarded ballots had been cast for Trump (that turned out to be inaccurate; Freed issued a corrected statement days later). By the time Freed made that statement, it was pretty clear they weren’t going to charge the man involved; nevertheless, it wasn’t until the following January before the US Attorney’s Office revealed there would be no charges. Nevertheless, Freed also sent a letter to the county providing still more details from the investigation.
Barr refused to be interviewed for the Inspector General investigation, though his attorney kept providing new statements that didn’t answer all the questions about his behavior (one of my favorite Barr comments is that of course he didn’t advertise this case for political reasons because that would be inconsistent with his public statement on December 1 that there had been no decisive voter fraud). Barr spun the entire thing as an effort to reassure people.
Barr told the OIG in his letter to the Inspector General that he “favored and authorized putting out information along the lines of [MDPA’s] September 24 statement,” and Freed told the OIG that Barr specifically approved inclusion of investigative details in the statement, including the fact that “all nine ballots were cast for presidential candidate Donald Trump.” Barr stated in his letter that he favored including “the basic facts that prompted the investigation” in the MDPA statement as a way to quell public concerns about election integrity. Specifically, Barr stated: “Due to the involvement of local officials and county witnesses, I thought that further revelations of information about the incident were likely, potentially could come at any time, and could be mistaken.” Barr further wrote:
…I was concerned that the vagueness of the local officials’ statement, coupled with the Department’s silence, was contributing to undue speculation and potentially unsettling the public more than necessary about the election’s integrity. I considered this was a matter in which the public interest could likely be best served by getting out in front of the story by recounting the basic facts that prompted the investigation. Among other things, doing so would help dispel needless mystery and speculation by delimiting the nature and scope of the issue being investigated.
Barr’s letter went on to assert that a public statement would “have a salutary deterrent effect” and serve as “a reminder to election administrators” of their responsibility to safeguard election integrity. Barr ultimately stated that he had determined, in his judgment, that “a strategy of remaining silent” about details of the Luzerne County ballot investigation “would have ended up doing more harm to the public interest than getting out in front with a more forthcoming statement in the first place.”76 Freed, for his part, told us that he believed releasing details about the investigation was important because it was the “best way” to keep the public officials running these elections “honest,” and because it would alert military voters that their ballots may have been discarded.77
In comments submitted to the OIG after reviewing a draft of this report, Barr stated that it was important at the outset to reassure the public “that there was a legitimate basis for the federal government to take over the investigation.” Barr continued: “The key fact that justified the federal government taking over the investigation was that only Trump ballots—no Biden ballots—had been found discarded.” Barr added that this fact was a “red flag” for investigators and “suggested that the discarding of ballots was not random or accidental, but potentially intentional.” In comments submitted after reviewing a draft of this report, Freed’s counsel echoed this sentiment, stating: “Had the statement not included [that the discarded ballots were all for President Trump], it would have omitted the operative fact that provided the predicate for federal involvement and would have left the public completely confused.” We found that this concern expressed by both Barr and Freed about federal involvement could just as easily have been satisfied by stating that all of the ballots were for the same presidential candidate, rather than identifying a particular candidate, which would have avoided injecting partisan considerations into a public statement by the Department. Moreover, the MDPA statement includes no information about the choices of the voters in the district’s congressional race, which would have been equally relevant to establish federal jurisdiction in the matter.
76 We were struck by the similarity between the justifications presented here and the explanation former FBI Director James Comey gave during our review of his conduct in advance of the 2016 election. In explaining why he announced to Congress that the FBI had resumed its investigation of then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton less than 2 weeks before the 2016 election, Comey told the OIG that he had determined, in his own judgment, that “there was a powerful public interest” in commenting on the Clinton email investigation, and that it would have been “catastrophic” to the Department and the FBI to not do so. DOJ OIG, A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election, Oversight and Review Division Report 18-04 (June 2018), https://oig.justice.gov/reports/review-various-actions-federal-bureau-investigation-and-department-justiceadvance-2016, 365.
77 Neither Barr nor Freed, nor any witness we spoke to, suggested that § 1-7.400(C)’s second exception—permitting comment on investigations when “release of information is necessary to protect the public safety”—applied here.
Ultimately, DOJ IG found the whole thing to be wildly inappropriate, but because of the discretion afford the Attorney General to share information with the President and make public comment, it said that it could not find that Barr had engaged in misconduct; it did find that Freed had engaged in misconduct, both by blabbing about an ongoing investigation and doing so without consulting with Public Integrity before doing so.
DOJ referred both Barr and Freed to the Office of Special Counsel for a review of whether this was a Hatch Act violation.
We concluded that the MDPA statement did not comply with the DOJ policy generally prohibiting comment about ongoing criminal investigations before charges are filed; however, we did not find that either Barr or Freed committed misconduct because of ambiguity as to the applicability of Barr’s authority to approve the release of the statement pursuant to 28 C.F.R. § 50.2(b)(9). We found that Freed violated the DOJ policy prohibiting comment about ongoing criminal investigations before charges are filed when he publicly released his letter to Luzerne County officials. We found that Freed also violated DOJ policies requiring employees to consult with PIN before issuing a public statement in an election-related matter and requiring U.S. Attorneys to coordinate comments on pending investigations with any affected Department component—in this case, the FBI. Finally, while we were troubled that Barr relayed to President Trump investigative facts about the Luzerne County matter, we concluded that Barr’s decision to provide that information to President Trump did not violate DOJ’s White House communications policy because the policy appears to leave it to the Attorney General’s discretion to determine precisely what information can be shared with the President when a communication is permissible under the policy, as we found was the case here.
We make a number of recommendations in this report. First, as DOJ policy does not address what information Department personnel may include in a statement that is determined to be necessary to reassure the public that the appropriate law enforcement agency is investigating a matter or to protect public safety, we recommend that the Department revise this policy to require that the information contained in a statement released pursuant to JM 1-7.400(C) be reasonably necessary either to reassure the public that the appropriate law enforcement agency is investigating a matter or to protect public safety. Second, we recommend that the Department make clear whether the Justice Manual’s Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy, Justice Manual § 1-7.000, applies to the Attorney General. Third, we recommend that the Department clarify its policies to address whether any of the provisions of 28 C.F.R. § 50.2 remain Department policy in light of the existence of the Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy contained in the Justice Manual. Fourth, if 28 C.F.R. § 50.2(b)(9) remains valid Department policy, we recommend that the Department require that requests to the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General for approval to release information otherwise prohibited from disclosure and any approval to release such information pursuant to § 50.2(b)(9) be documented. Lastly, we recommend that the Department consider revising its White House communications policy to clarify what information can be disclosed to the White House in situations where the policy permits communication about a contemplated or pending civil or criminal investigation.
As noted above, the federal Hatch Act prohibits executive branch employees from using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the results of an election.”89 The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has sole jurisdiction to investigate Hatch Act violations.90 Because the circumstances described in this report raise a question as to whether these former Department officials’ actions violated the Hatch Act, we are referring our findings to the Office of Special Counsel for its review and determination of that issue.
It’s not entirely clear how many of DOJ IG’s recommendations DOJ has implemented since this report was released in July.
But one way or another, the conduct described in this report would look indistinguishable from the investigations currently ongoing. That is, weighing in to talk about whether specific election crimes were being committed by Trump or Harris supporters (or none of the above, as was the case in Luzerne and may be the case if the Northwest arsonist really is motivated by Gaza, as the incendiary devices imply) would be deemed a violation of DOJ guidelines.
DOJ is only supposed to make comments to reassure people that something is under investigation. DOJ has done so, formally, in Washington.
“The US Attorney’s Office and the FBI want to assure our communities that we are working closely and expeditiously together to investigate the two incendiary fires at the ballot boxes in Vancouver, Washington, and the one in Portland, Oregon, and will work to hold whoever is responsible fully accountable,” US Attorney Tessa M. Gorman and Greg Austin, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office said in a statement Tuesday.
But you are not going to hear more than that unless and until DOJ charges someone.
On September 4, at the very press conference where he rolled out the indictment against the useful idiots being secretly paid by RT, on the very last day before the election blackout would go into place, Merrick Garland discussed the Election Threats Task Force that Lisa Monaco put into place back in June 2021.
DOJ has made statements about specific crimes — including the one Elon Musk is suspected of committing, as well as more general efforts to prosecute Election Fraud.
I promise you, that’s all you’re going to get unless charges are filed.
If Putin Is Running Musk, Trump Should Be Terrified
WSJ’s report that Elon Musk has had a number of communications with Vladimir Putin and other top Russians is unsurprising. Musk has obvious buttons to press (not just his narcissism, but also his insecurity about trans women arising from being dumped for Chelsea Manning and his daughter transitioning). And Musk has increasingly parroted obvious Russian propaganda of late.
I want to pull the passages of the story that describe the when, what, and who, because they’re important for understanding the import on the race.
As the story describes, Musk was originally supportive of Ukraine’s plight after Russia’s invasion. But then Musk’s provision of Starlink to Ukraine became one of what seem to be a number of complaints Russia raised about Elon’s businesses. And that period of pressure is when Musk’s public comments about the war began to change.
Later that year, Musk’s view of the conflict appeared to change. In September, Ukrainian military operatives weren’t able to use Starlink terminals to guide sea drones to attack a Russian naval base in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow had occupied since 2014. Ukraine tried to persuade Musk to activate the Starlink service in the area, but that didn’t happen, the Journal has reported.
His space company extended restrictions on the use of Starlink in offensive operations by Ukraine. Musk said later that he made the move because Starlink is meant for civilian uses and that he believed any Ukrainian attack on Crimea could spark a nuclear war.
His moves coincided with public and private pressure from the Kremlin. In May 2022, Russia’s space chief said in a post on Telegram that Musk would “answer like an adult” for supplying Starlink to Ukraine’s Azov battalion, which the Kremlin had singled out for the ultraright ideology espoused by some members.
Later in 2022, Musk was having regular conversations with “high-level Russians,” according to a person familiar with the interactions. At the time, there was pressure from the Kremlin on Musk’s businesses and “implicit threats against him,” the person said.
But the most interesting ties have to do with Russia’s exploitation of Xitter for propaganda. The piece describes how Musk published Tucker Carlson’s simpering “interview” with Putin.
Earlier this year, Musk gave airtime to Putin and his views on the U.S. and Ukraine when X carried Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with the Russian leader inside the Kremlin. In that interview, Putin said he was sure Musk “was a smart person.”
And Musk’s contacts with other Russians include some with Sergei Kiriyenko, who is in charge of the Doppelganger effort.
But more conversations have followed, including dialogues with other high-ranking Russian officials past 2022 and into this year. One of the officials was Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, two of the officials said. What the two talked about isn’t clear.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department said in an affidavit that Kiriyenko had created some 30 internet domains to spread Russian disinformation, including on Musk’s X, where it was meant to erode support for Ukraine and manipulate American voters ahead of the presidential election.
As for the contacts with Putin? Those are sourced to intelligence sources, suggesting that US — or possibly foreign — spooks are aware of the contacts.
One current and one former intelligence source said that Musk and Putin have continued to have contact since then and into this year as Musk began stepping up his criticism of the U.S. military aid to Ukraine and became involved in Trump’s election campaign.
But those contacts are not broadly known.
Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in government. Several White House officials said they weren’t aware of them.
If spooks or the FBI are tracking these ties, you would closely guard details, not least to protect the coverage they have on Putin himself.
Both the Pentagon’s official comment and that of an anonymous source suggest the government is acutely aware of all this, but thus far measuring it in terms of leaks, not whether Musk’s reported Ketamine abuse or his open embrace of anti-American conspiracy theories make him unfit to retain clearance.
A Pentagon spokesman said: “We do not comment on any individual’s security clearance, review or status, or about personnel security policy matters in the context of reports about any individual’s actions.”
One person aware of the conversations said the government faces a dilemma because it is so dependent on the billionaire’s technologies. SpaceX launches vital national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA relies on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
“They don’t love it,” the person said, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. The person, however, said no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk.
And that’s sort of the underlying problem: Until Musk does business with a sanctioned entity or leaks information, these contacts would only be illegal if you could prove Musk were acting as an agent of Russia.
If this concerns you any more than Musk’s long-standing public Russophilia already should, then the best thing to do in the short term is to use Musk as a way to attack Trump’s campaign (as Tim Walz did the other day, though mostly just attacking Musk for being so dorky).
But there are three things not included in this story that make it more interesting.
First, Justin Trudeau testified last week that Tucker was being funded by RT.
Conservative political analyst Tucker Carlson and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson were among those who were funded by the Russian state-owned news outlet RT to boost anti-vax claims in 2022, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed while under oath during testimony delivered Wednesday at the Foreign Interference Commission.
I’m genuinely a bit confused by Trudeau’s claim — whether he means Tucker himself was being funded or his promotion was. In any case, he was discussing 2022 activities (notably, the trucker protests that I hope to hell DHS keep in mind as potential election or post-election disruption).
But Tucker was mentioned in the RT indictment. One point I made about how DOJ unrolled it is that it disrupts or criminalizes ongoing funding from RT, and can be used as a basis for ongoing investigation and/or charges.
Relatedly, Tim Pool recently announced he is shutting down his podcast.
The more important detail not included in this story, given WSJ’s mention of Kiriyenko, is the involvement of Russian entities in magnifying the conspiracy theories behind the Southport riots in the UK.
“While all the action is happening on the ground and people in Britain are dealing with the consequences of this misinformation,” says Al Baker, managing director of Prose, “the people stoking the violence, the people flooding Telegram and other platforms of misinformation are largely based outside the UK.”
What it shows is the nature of the new far-right – not a tightly organised hierarchy based in a specific location, but an international network of influencers and followers, working together almost like a swarm to stir up trouble.
In the UK riots, you had both Musk and possible Russian bots stoking anti-migrant violence in a foreign country. If Musk has facilitated that — or even just if Kiriyenko used his contacts with Musk for ostensibly other reasons to optimize interference efforts on Xitter — that would be a grave concern (though the latter hypothetical involves no criminal exposure for Musk).
But by far the most important thing excluded from this story (it is admittedly tangential to the description of these contacts, but not to the import of them) is JD Vance.
Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign cannot be separated from Trump’s pick of JD Vance as his running mate, someone who is even more pro Russian than Musk, and someone whose regressive Catholic ties have aligned neatly with Russia in the recent past. Donald Trump has been an exceedingly useful idiot for Putin, but he was unreliable as to Putin’s immediate policy goals like eliminating sanctions.
There’s abundant reason to believe that JD’s selection was the price of Musk’s support (though it was a pick Trump was inclined to make anyway).
If Russia is using Musk to affect the election, it’s not clear whether the primary goal would be electing Trump or placing JD in the position where he would become President.