Matt Taibbi something something Hunter Biden

[Crumpets]

This is a long thread that Elon Musk teased earlier today. I imagine it will get some traction on the very online portion of the right, but not really anywhere else.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598831212310601728

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1598830730963845123?s=20&t=qj0qvP...

[Hindsight was 2020]

Already thread got a thread for this 😉
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=338687.msg6997154#msg6997154

[7,052,770]

Womp, womp

https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1598864315075166209

[Benjamin Frank]

From the twitter on this, it seems there are a lot of stupid people on the right who think the then legal counsel for twitter should be charged with some crime over spiking the 'Hunter Biden story.'

You'd think they'd realize that if this were a crime that the publisher of The National Enquirer would have been charged with getting the exclusive rights to some anti Trump story (regarding somebody Trump raped or something) in order to intentionally bury it.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Matt Taibbi yesterday:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598833927405215744

Matt Taibbi six months ago:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1563259241489907719

[GeneralMacArthur]

So to be clear:

1)  The FBI did not do anything to censor this story, nor did any other government official.

2)  The Biden campaign itself did not do anything to censor the laptop story, even though it would have been well within their rights to do so.

3)  The only action taken by the Biden campaign was to request that Twitter take down five doctored pornographic pictures of Hunter.

4)  Twitter's decision to censor the Hunter Biden story from the platform had nothing to do with the Biden campaign or the government, but was instead based on a bunch of pundits and former intelligence people saying the story had many hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign (true then and also true today) and the company's general desire to not become a willing tool for Russian state intelligence in the way it was in 2016.  Which seems perfectly reasonable to me, although they should have just said that rather than using shaky claims to try to justify it within their existing, outdated TOS.

5  The Twitter internal e-mail on the Biden campaign's takedown request for the five pornographic images simply says that it was "handled."  Following the example of WikiLeaks and PizzaGate, since conservatives don't have anything tangible to go with, they're latching onto this one word and all mutually agreeing to pretend Twitter was caught confessing it "handled" the rigging of the entire 2020 election.

6)  Elon Musk is playing along with this.  See the tweet this morning where someone asked him what other elections Twitter "handled" and he said they also rigged the Brazil election.  And his pinned tweet is just the word "handled."  Since he paid $44B only to find out that there was no deep dark secret, just a bunch of information that's been public for years, he now has to save face by pretending he uncovered a grand conspiracy, even when he didn't actually find anything at all.  And the entire right-wing media sphere is just gonna go along with it, because they also want that to be true.



Did I miss anything?

[All Along The Watchtower]

When did he start loving Trump?

[they don't love you like i love you]

[Spectator]

So I see the GOP is intent on losing in 2024 by keeping this up

[Sestak]

Did I miss anything?

Well, I think your point (6) is missing the point. Elon Musk has no ideological attachment to the Hunter Biden story or anything related to it. Certainly it has nothing to do with his reasons for wanting to buy Twitter. The release of this story is merely to get people talking about it, and continuing to talk about Twitter, and preferably talking about these things on Twitter. Naturally, allowing as much confusion as possible to percolate is ideal to fulfilling this goal.

[BlueSwan]

When did he start loving Trump?

In fairness, he didn't.

But he is one of those former "leftist" reporters who kind of lost the plot in a delusion of edgy "both-sides"-ism.

I mean, he is right that some of the anti-Trump takes of the last 7 years have been over-the-top. But if he thinks some of the attacks on Trump have been unfair, how in the hell does he justify going all batsh*t hysterical over F-ing Hunter Biden - the most irrelevant "scandal" since Obama wore a tanned suit?

He is also right about the hysteria of the ultrawoke left, no doubt about that, but you can never equate some silly leftists on campuses that few people take seriously with one of the two major parties basically turning authoritarian.

Also, you just cannot compare leftleaning media with rightwing media. Rightwing media is basically alternate reality stuff at this point. Leftleaning media is just politically biased, but reports on actual facts.

[afleitch]

When did he start loving Trump?

In fairness, he didn't.

But he is one of those former "leftist" reporters who kind of lost the plot in a delusion of edgy "both-sides"-ism.

I mean, he is right that some of the anti-Trump takes of the last 7 years have been over-the-top. But if he thinks some of the attacks on Trump have been unfair, how in the hell does he justify going all batsh*t hysterical over F-ing Hunter Biden - the most irrelevant "scandal" since Obama wore a tanned suit?

He is also right about the hysteria of the ultrawoke left, no doubt about that, but you can never equate some silly leftists on campuses that few people take seriously with one of the two major parties basically turning authoritarian.

Also, you just cannot compare leftleaning media with rightwing media. Rightwing media is basically alternate reality stuff at this point. Leftleaning media is just politically biased, but reports on actual facts.

Given that nearly everyone who decided that was an issue, by making it one, has either became Trumpist or a useful idiot for them, maybe that's always been bs too?

[Donerail]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

[BlueSwan]

When did he start loving Trump?

In fairness, he didn't.

But he is one of those former "leftist" reporters who kind of lost the plot in a delusion of edgy "both-sides"-ism.

I mean, he is right that some of the anti-Trump takes of the last 7 years have been over-the-top. But if he thinks some of the attacks on Trump have been unfair, how in the hell does he justify going all batsh*t hysterical over F-ing Hunter Biden - the most irrelevant "scandal" since Obama wore a tanned suit?

He is also right about the hysteria of the ultrawoke left, no doubt about that, but you can never equate some silly leftists on campuses that few people take seriously with one of the two major parties basically turning authoritarian.

Also, you just cannot compare leftleaning media with rightwing media. Rightwing media is basically alternate reality stuff at this point. Leftleaning media is just politically biased, but reports on actual facts.

Given that nearly everyone who decided that was an issue, by making it one, has either became Trumpist or a useful idiot for them, maybe that's always been bs too?

Not really though. Ultrawoke leftists are very real, they are just not anywhere near as important as people hysterically make them out to be. They are mostly confined to the internet and to university campuses. I'm mostly concerned about it because this is a winning issue for republicans and it just shouldn't be. Ultrawoke-ism has very little actual influence on the democratic party.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Matt Taibi was always a smug prick. But he totally went over to the Dark Side after the "Me Too" movement and the revelations that he was a sexual predator and serial harasser.

[BlueSwan]

Matt Taibi was always a smug prick. But he totally went over to the Dark Side after the "Me Too" movement and the revelations that he was a sexual predator and serial harasser.

Was he though? https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/matt-taibbi/the-destruction-of-matt-taibbi/

[DaleCooper]

Anyone who gets their news from Twitter should not be allowed to vote anyway.

[they don't love you like i love you]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

[Donerail]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

[Хahar 🤔]

gotta say, I understand literally none of this thread

[Crumpets]

gotta say, I understand literally none of this thread

Hence why I gave it the title I did.

[they don't love you like i love you]

The problem with whatever Taibbi is talking about is for it to make sense you had to pay attention to whatever the f[inks] Rudy Giuliani was raving about in late 2020.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I’ve mentioned this before but the Hunter story wasn’t “suppressed”, NYP wrote about it, Fox talked about it nonstop, and Trump even brought it up at the debates. This story was known to the public during the election. What Taibbi and the Trumpers obsessed with this story is mad about is that Twitter didn’t like bot and trolls spam about it nonstop on Twitter and dominate the discourse the way they did in 16 with the emails. And that is the hypocrisy of it all because Taibbi go to talking point during Russiagate was the idea that bots and trolls spamming Twitter could of influenced the public and hurt Hillary was absurd. Yet here he is now admitting he does think that Twitter spamming of can influence the public

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

When did he start loving Trump?

When his success as a legitimate journalist collided with the "me too" movement regarding his own accounts of his misogynistic behavior in Moscow in the 1990s. Ever since, he's been a reflexive contrarian, targeting the left without regard for truth or accuracy. As one example, yesterday he was falsely equating  Biden campign requests to take down Hunter Biden dick pics with Trump White House requests to encourage more coverage of the Hunter Biden "story" (itself a Trump smear campaign with indications of being a Russian intelligence operation).