Just the Facts Jack In This Age of trumpian Bull

One of the more frustrating things about The Darkest Timeline has been how trump would take to his Twitter account to post and retweet nonfactual statements, wild accusations, and straight-up lies.

However over the past week or so, trump has gone overboard pushing a discredited conspiracy theory about former Congresscritter-turned-MSNBC-talking-head Joe Scarborough, a story involving a staff worker who died at a district office back in 2001. It's gotten so bad that the woman's widower sent formal letters to Twitter and the press begging for the social media outfit to use its authority to delete the offending tweet(s).

The public outcry against trump's abuse of Twitter's code of conduct had been an ongoing protest ever since 2017 - no previous President Loser of the Popular Vote has been so vulgar towards the general population the way trump has - but this moment seemed to have crossed a line even for the notoriously lax Twitter bosses.

The next time trump went to Tweet an outrageous falsehood - about the legitimacy of vote-by-mail - Twitter took the extraordinary step of adding a footnote that basically accused the Tweet (and trump) of being wrong. Let's refer to Gilad Edelman at Wired for the rest:

What prompted Twitter to finally break the seal was a two-tweet tirade about the supposed dangers of expanding vote-by-mail during the coronavirus pandemic...

Later that evening, Twitter added a note to the bottom of the tweet: a big exclamation mark and a message reading “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” which linked to a Twitter Moment fact-check. “Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud,” read the bold heading. Beneath it came some bullet points on vote-by-mail, followed by a curated feed of tweets picking apart Trump’s various recent claims about it...

The Twitter spokesperson said that flagging Trump’s vote-by-mail tweet was the debut of a similar policy to protect “civic integrity” by correcting false information about voting or the census. Twitter didn’t say so, but it surely helped that this particular tweet contained one nugget of rock-solid, certifiably false information: the claim that California was sending ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” In fact, ballots are going only to registered voters...

This is, for the most part, the first time trump has been contradicted in real-time pretty much to his face (nearly every other countering in the media has been indirectly through op-ed articles and pundit shows).

It's telling that Twitter still hasn't confronted trump on the personal attacks he's done on their service, which are offensive and wrong and deserve him getting his account suspended (AKA Twitter Jail). Still, any little bit helps... Because trump's response to getting punched back has been to lash out in full meltdown. Via Charlotte Klein at Vanity Fair:

Trump threatened to regulate or shut down social media companies the day after being fact-checked by Twitter. “Republicans feel that social media platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” the president wrote in a post on Wednesday. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.”

Funny thing about the First Amendment, it's not on trump's side here:

The president, notes the Associated Press, does not have the power to “unilaterally regulate or close the companies, which would require action by Congress or the Federal Communications Commission,” and Trump’s call to expand regulation on such tech giants “appeared to fly in the face of long-held conservative principles on deregulation...”

Anything trump tries to do to punish Twitter will likely lead to lawsuits taking years to resolve, by which time trump could be out of office (and fleeing for a country without extradition).

The facts, obviously, aren't going to slow trump down on this. he's threatening to issue an Executive Order (remember when Republicans attacked Obama for his EOs?) to compel Twitter and other social media outlets - Facebook and YouTube, both services facing increasing pressure to police their websites for disinformation over COVID-19 and other conspiracy nutcase theories - to bend to his will. trump doesn't have the legal standing but he has the ego of the bully to make life harder for the companies attempting to curtail his - and his cronies' - ongoing efforts to gaslight the world.

But the facts should matter. And these social media sites have an obligation, not only to the First Amendment but also to the common interest of properly informing the public. Forcing trump to confront his falsehoods in real-time, cutting off the Russian bots trying to overwhelm our attention with disinfo, and making sure Americans have the correct facts ought to be their agenda here on out.

Because as we've seen with three years of trump's gaslighting, lies and disinformation kills.