I think we can see where this is leading: “let them enforce it”
Ever since Justice it was understood that the ultimate interpreter of the executive’s “legitimate power” under the Constitution (specifically Article II) was the Supreme Court. I think we’re about to see that concept contested, which has kept our system more or less stable short of civil war, in a way we’ve never seen. It could be the whole ballgame.
By the way, Elon responded to that tweet:
The gall.
Somebody made a killing on Trump’s memecoin scam, somebody who obviously knew it was coming. Gosh I wonder who it might be?
The curious trade came a little past 9 p.m. on Jan. 17 — a $1,096,109 bet less than two minutes after the soon-to-be president of the United States posted on his social media account that his family had issued a cryptocurrency called $Trump.
In those first minutes, a crypto wallet with a unique identification code beginning 6QSc2Cx secured a giant load of these new tokens — 5,971,750 of them — at the opening sale price of just 18 cents each, starting a surge in the $Trump price that would soon reach $75 per token.
This early trader, whose identity is not known, walked away with a two-day profit of as much as $109 million, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times.
But the fast profits for early traders, whose names are unknown but some of whom appear to be based in China, came at the expense of a far larger number of slower investors who have cumulatively suffered more than $2 billion in losses after the price of the token crashed.
As of the middle of this week, more than 810,000 wallets had lost money on the bet, according to an examination that the crypto forensics firm Chainalysis performed for The New York Times. The total losses are almost certainly much larger: The data does not include transactions that took place on a series of popular crypto marketplaces that started offering the coin only after its price had already surged.
The price of $Trump hovered around $17 this week, less than a quarter of its $75 peak value.
Whether people made or lost money, it was stellar business for the Trumps. Nearly $100 million in trading fees have flowed to the family and its partners, although most of that has not yet been cashed out, the Chainalysis data shows.
Imagine that. And it’s all perfectly fine, apparently. It’s basically a vanilla Pump and Dump scheme dressed up in techno spin.
I think we’re supposed to feel pity for the victims:
In the days before Mr. Trump was sworn in, Shawn M. Whitson, 40, of Walnut Cove, N.C., owner of a small computer repair business, had celebrated Mr. Trump’s return to the White House. “Today, we take our country back!” Mr. Whitson wrote, with a photo of Mr. Trump, on Inauguration Day. He also expressed hope that $Trump would rise in price.But by the end of January, Mr. Whitson was fed up. “Done with this $Trump crap,” he wrote in a social media posting. Mr. Whitson, reached by The Times on Friday expressed disappointment. “That coin is a joke.”
I can’t say I feel sorry for him. Trump’s schemes are legendary. He should have known better.
How many Trumpers will lose their shirts on this one and come back for more?
Last week, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Mr. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, announced that it was moving into the financial services industry by creating a brand known as TruthFi that will offer investment products tied to Bitcoin.
Trump Media’s chief executive, Devin Nunes, called the offerings “a competitive alternative to the woke funds and debanking problems that you find throughout the market.”
He’s a real comedian:
Prince Harry can breathe freely in Montecito, because President Donald Trump has ruled out deporting the self-exiled British royal.
Harry’s immigration status is the subject of litigation in Washington DC, with the Heritage Foundation alleging that he may have concealed past illegal drug use that should have disqualified him from obtaining a US visa.
But the president told The New York Post Friday that he isn’t interested in throwing Harry out of the country.
“I don’t want to do that,” he said.
“I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”
If there was ever a reason for Harry to mend fences with his family this is it. I know Ted Cruz’s ilk are fine with the president of the United States crudely insuring their wives but there’s not reason for Harry to put up with it.
This is the schoolboy bully part of Trump that the right just loves which says everything about them. Look at the way they celebrated:
I didn’t realize they were thinking of deporting Harry over his past drug use. But Elon Musk using every drug in sight is just fine. GTK.
Bill Cohen at Puck surveyed some of the Masters of the Universe about Trump’s first moves and they are fine with it. Who are these jerks?
One Wall Street executive, who almost went to work for Trump this time around, artfully told me that the president was simply using the Oval Office and the media as his bully pulpit, itself a form of performance art. “Bullies love to see people cower in fear,” he said. “Why be a bully if you can’t do that? So how much of this is just, ‘Justin Trudeau, I’m gonna fuck with him,’ or ‘Mexico didn’t really do shit to stop immigration, time for them to shit their pants a little bit. Let’s get a reset’?”
A former Wall Streeter who did a stint in Washington described the first two weeks of Trump II as “a giant blender” of “fog and chaos” stirred up to distract people from three of Trump’s near-term goals: getting his “idiot cabinet picks” through the Senate; positioning Russ Vought, Trump’s pick to head the O.M.B., to “take the shit out of the budget”; and getting congressional approval for the extension of the about-to-expire Trump I tax cuts. And, he said, Wall Street is on board. “[The tax cut extension] is what they really want,” he explained. “Until he can’t do that, they’re perfectly happy to back him and focus on the things that warm their hearts, like shutting USAID. But if this goes on too long and/or the stock market goes down, they’re not going to be so pleased.”
Oh really? What a great group of guys. They’re also as puerile and idiotic as Trump and Musk:
Wall Street doesn’t like or want tariffs, per se—“There are only losers with tariffs,” the banker said—but many accept them as part of the price of doing business with Trump. Indeed, many machers preferred Trump II over Biden or Kamala Harris. “To me, it was a prisoner’s dilemma,” this person continued before articulating the internal monologue in the highest ranks of the banking industry. “We had an anti-business Biden opportunity, or a pro-business Trump, who may put tariffs on, or may not. But if he puts them on and he realizes they’re bad, he may take them off within 24 hours. So they said, ‘We’d rather deal with Donald Trump because he’ll take our phone calls and we can tell him how bad these are, whereas Joe Biden won’t take our phone calls.’ Corporate America felt like we could sway Trump. We could get to him, and convince him that these tariffs are wrong.”
In fact, other than the blanket pardons for the January 6 offenders, and Trump’s press conference where he blamed the fatal helicopter-jet collision near the Potomac on D.E.I., the donor class on Wall Street is generally happy with Trump II, according to this banker, a reality that much of the media still refuses to comprehend. “There are very good reasons to criticize D.E.I., but in this context, it’s a little insane,” he said, referring to Trump’s post-crash commentary. “And insulting and in bad taste.” On the other hand, he continued, “everyone is thrilled” that the “apple cart” at USAID is getting turned over and that people are seeing who is getting paid what from the Treasury—“sort of all that DOGE stuff,” he said, which Wall Street types are giving “a standing ovation.”
Uh, that is not a prisoner’s dilemma. He must have been high on Adderall and Ayahuasca on the day they taught that at the Wharton School of Business. How much do you want to bet he’s the same guy who celebrated because he can now say the word “pussy” in the workplace again?
It’s not about money anymore:
But given the largely foreseeable chaos of the past few weeks, was there anything else that motivated the Wall Street donor class to lean so heavily into Trump last November, I wondered? “They don’t think being rich is enough,” one of my sources told me. “They think they need to be venerated for being rich, and Biden didn’t venerate them for being rich. The idea that wealth equals merit tends to be appealing to the wealthy. They want wealth accumulation to be seen as making them like Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci. These guys are trying to be Averell Harriman, but they’re going to end up being Bebe Rebozo.”
I think this is obviously right. Recall that after the financial crisis they were all whining like 5 year olds about being criticized for destroying the economy. At heart they’re all whiny little bitches.
Trump is one of those guys. He’s desperate to be loved and actually is by millions of people, cementing his grandiose delusions about himself and his personal power. Musk, on the other hand, has a slightly different need. He’s an edgelord, defined as “a person who affects a provocative or extreme persona, especially online — ‘edgelords act like contrarians in the hope that everyone will admire them as rebels.'” In another life, he could have been a mass shooter. I suspect more of those Wall St guys are like Musk than Trump — overgrown adolescent bullies.
We really have to do something about these people. We let it go way too far and now it may destroy us all.
Why Elon Musk’s 20-something vandals aren’t tagging federal buildings the way male dogs mark trees is a mystery. A major goal of the DOGE effort is to publicly demonstrate who’s in charge.
Donald Trump still thinks he is.
“It’s good to be the king,” said Mel Brooks as the king of France in History of the World, Part 1. Donald Trump thinks so too. He pretended to be a successful business tycoon on TV. Now he’s pretending to be king. As powerful as Trump’s job is, he’s still just the president.
The question is for how long? Trump has conferred on oligarch Elon Musk authorities the presidency does not have. Plus, Trump has been too busy playing king to have figured out he’s empowered Musk to usurp the presidency while he’s out ransacking Washington, D.C.
It is clear that the Muskovites are bludgeoning anything and everything they perceive as left of center. It is also clear that they have little idea how government actually works and no regard for rule-following. They approach their federal targets with the kind of conspiracy mindset that spawned Pizzagate. (They’ll be searching sub-basements for evidence of child sacrifice soon enough.)
Musk’s behavior recalls another character who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know:
“America is the greatest country ever invented to be completely out of your mind,” Charlie Pierce wrote in 2015. Pierce was reacting to Ben Carson’s crank theories about the pyramids.
When Erich von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods?” was a best-seller (speaking of pyramids), Johnny Carson asked a NASA astronaut what he thought of von Daniken’s theories about aliens influencing human history. After a pause, the astronaut replied that when von Daniken looks around the world and sees something he doesn’t understand, he attributes it to aliens. And since there’s a lot in this world von Daniken doesn’t understand, he finds them everywhere.
Elon Musk is as childlike and tantrum-prone as the president he just purchased. So Muskovites are slashing and burning with abandon everything they don’t understand, especially anything that smells like order.
Subtlety is not something they grasp. Like USAID as a projection of U.S. soft power.
The Washington Post explains what the strength-obsessed Trump and his Muskovites do not seem to grasp about their freezing U.S. foreign aid:
Without U.S. support, humanitarian experts warn that already precarious global aid efforts could collapse, putting millions of lives at risk. Some former government officials said the sudden changes would undercut U.S. foreign policy and national security.
“We are not only less safe, but we have abandoned people all over the world,” said Brittany Brown, a former USAID official.
On Wednesday, Trump’s former USAID counselor Chris Mulligan condemned the funding pause. “Every minute that assistance is frozen weakens America, makes us less secure and costs us jobs,” he said.
U.S. foreign aid builds relationships. stems famines (that drive migration?), feeds red-state farm families by paying them for food sent as aid, and keeps competitor states at bay, etc. Not that the Muskovites stopped to ask.
A physician friend just yesterday asked me where her donations would have the most impact for stopping Musk-Trump. She was thinking of a couple of nationally known nonprofits. I didn’t have an answer but said I would try to get her one. There are likely many more of you who would send cash to fight the Muskovites if you knew best where to send it.
Here are two lists of pending court cases against the Musk-Trump self-coup:
Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions (Just Security)
Lawsuits Related to Trump Admin Executive Orders (Court Watch)
But the two long lists of court cases linked above are a diverse mix of governments not set up for directed donations and private groups that may be. The name-brand nonprofits my friend mentioned are not among them. There are too many NGOs, and it’s hard to know where to focus fire.
Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) spotlighted several groups involved in just one of the lawsuits launched against against the Muskovites, but also key players like Democracy Forward fighting behind the scenes:
Democracy Forward is part of a group, Democracy 2025, formed last year to challenge Trump’s assault on democracy.
So the plaintiffs are here because they have standing and because they’ll be able to tell compelling stories about the injury they’ve suffered. Democracy Forward will be doing the heavy lifting of fighting this legally.
One reason I’m making this point is to emphasize the import of civil society, including groups that have been preparing for these legal challenges for months. As I and others have pointed out, the battle over fascism often centers on the battle over pre-existing networks of civil society, networks that often are not themselves political.
And sustain or build your networks. Not just your political networks, the folks with whom you’ve worked to try to elect Kamala Harris or restore reproductive rights. But your other networks, too. Sometimes, after fascists break political networks, it’s the choirs or the knitting clubs where civic discourse can regrow.
The very first thing authoritarians try to break are the networks of civil society, because isolated people are easier to terrify. So make sure yours are as strong as they can be before the wrecking crew comes.
Here, civil society stood up, asserted its membership in a society linking small businesses in rural communities to aging LGBTQ people, and succeeded, for now, in pausing Trump’s attack on parts of civil society that Russ Vought and Acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth are attacking.
In those moments you’re feeling particularly helpless, you might focus your energy on shoring up the strength of civil society within your own local community, even if it’s no more than the knitting club.
Self care is going to be important to keep from burning out.
I read and post for maybe four hours each morning. Then I go to half a dozen social media sites to punch back against the failed Republican candidate and his attorneys who are in court trying to steal a state Supreme Court seat they lost to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, the Democrat. After that, I spend several miles walking it off. The end of the cold snap that kept me inside for weeks means a reduction in my stress level.
Manage yours as best you can. Send money. I’ve got to text my friend.
(h/t DJ, MW)
Why not kick off Superbowl Weekend by watching some sports movies? I’ve put together a list of 10 personal faves for you. Hey…save some of that guac for me (no double dipping).
Bend it Like Beckham – Writer-director Gurinder Chadha whips up a cross-cultural masala that entertainingly marries “cheer the underdog” Rocky elements with Bollywood energy. The story centers on a headstrong young Sikh woman (Parminder Nagra) who is upsetting her tradition-minded parents by pursuing her “silly” dream to become a UK soccer star. Chadha weaves in subtext on the difficulties that South Asian immigrants face assimilating into British culture. Also with Keira Knightley and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.
Breaking Away – This beautifully realized slice of middle-Americana (filmed in Bloomington, Indiana) from director Peter Yates and writer Steve Tesich (an Oscar-winning screenplay) is a perfect film on every level. More than just a sports movie, it’s an insightful coming of age tale and a rumination on small town life.
Dennis Christopher is outstanding as a 19 year-old obsessed with bicycle racing, a pretty coed and anything Italian. He and his pals (Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern and Jackie Earle Haley) are all on the cusp of adulthood and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Barbara Barrie and Paul Dooley are warm and funny as Christopher’s blue-collar parents.
Bull Durham – Jules and Jim meets The Natural in writer-director Ron Shelton’s funny, sharply-written and splendidly acted rumination on life, love, and oh yeah-baseball. Kevin Costner gives one of his better performances as a seasoned, world-weary minor league catcher who reluctantly plays mentor to a dim hotshot rookie pitcher (Tim Robbins). Susan Sarandon is a poetry-spouting baseball groupie who selects one player every season to take under her wing and do some special mentoring of her own. A complex love triangle ensues.
Downhill Racer – This underrated 1969 gem from director Michael Ritchie examines the tightly knit and highly competitive world of Olympic downhill skiing. Robert Redford is cast against type, and consequently delivers one of his more interesting performances as a talented but arrogant athlete who joins up with the U.S. Olympic ski team. Gene Hackman is outstanding as the coach who finds himself at loggerheads with Redford’s contrariety. Ritchie’s debut film has a verite feel that lends the story a realistic edge. James Salter adapted the screenplay from Oakley Hall’s novel The Downhill Racers.
Fat City – John Huston’s gritty, low-key character study was a surprise hit at Cannes in 1972. Adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, it’s a tale of shattered dreams, desperate living and beautiful losers (Gardner seems to be the missing link between John Steinbeck and Charles Bukowski). Filmed on location in Stockton, California, the story centers on a boozy, low-rent boxer well past his prime (Stacey Keach), who becomes a mentor to a young up-and-comer (Jeff Bridges) and starts a relationship with a fellow barfly (Susan Tyrell).
This film chugs along at the speed of life (i.e., not a lot “happens”), but the performances are so fleshed out you forget you’re witnessing “acting”. One scene in particular, in which Keach and Tyrell’s characters first hook up in a sleazy bar, is a veritable masterclass in the craft.
Granted, it’s one of the most depressing films you’ll ever see (think Barfly meets The Wrestler), but still well worth your while. Masterfully directed by Huston, with “lived-in” natural light photography by DP Conrad Hall. You will be left haunted by Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make it Through the Night”, which permeates the film.
Hoop Dreams – One of the most acclaimed documentaries of all time, with good reason. Ostensibly “about” basketball, it is at its heart about perseverance, love, and family; which is probably why it struck such a chord with audiences as well as critics.
Director Steve James follows the lives of two young men from the inner city for a five-year period, as they pursue their dreams of becoming professional basketball players. Just when you think you have the film pigeonholed, it takes off in unexpected directions, making for a much more riveting story than you’d expect. A winner.
North Dallas Forty – Nick Nolte and Mac Davis lead a spirited cast in this locker room peek at pro football players and the political machinations of team owners. Some of the vignettes are based on the real-life hi-jinks of the Dallas Cowboys, replete with assorted off-field debaucheries. Charles Durning is perfect as the coach. Peter Gent adapted the screenplay from his novel. This film is so entertaining that I can almost forgive director Ted Kotcheff for his later films Rambo: First Blood and Weekend at Bernie’s.
Personal Best – When this film was released, there was so much ado over brief love scenes between Mariel Hemingway and co-star Patrice Donnelly that many failed to notice that it was one of the most realistic, empowering portrayals of female athletes to date. Writer-director Robert Towne did his homework; he spent time observing Olympic track stars at work and play. The women are shown to be just as tough and competitive as their male counterparts; Hemingway and (real-life pentathlete) Donnelly give fearless performances. Scott Glenn is excellent as a hard-driving coach.
Slapshot – Paul Newman skates away with his role as the coach of a slumping minor league hockey team in this puckish satire (sorry), directed by George Roy Hill. In a desperate play to save the team, Newman decides to pull out all the stops and play dirty.
The entire ensemble is wonderful, and screenwriter Nancy Dowd’s riotously profane locker room dialog will have you rolling. Newman’s Cool Hand Luke co-star Strother Martin (as the team’s manager) is a scene-stealer. Perennially underrated Lindsey Crouse (in a rare comedic role) is memorable as a sexually frustrated “sports wife” . Michael Ontkean performs the funniest striptease in film history, and the cheerfully truculent “Hanson Brothers” are a hoot.
This Sporting Life – Lindsay Anderson’s 1963 drama was one of the “angry young man” films that stormed from the U.K. in the late 50s and early 60s, steeped in “kitchen sink” realism and working class angst. A young, Brando-like Richard Harris tears up the screen as a thuggish, egotistical rugby player with a natural gift for the game who becomes an overnight star. Former pro rugby player David Storey adapted the screenplay from his own novel.
Here are 10 more recommendations:
Any Given Sunday
Bang the Drum Slowly
Cool Runnings
Field of Dreams
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
The Longest Yard (1974)
The Natural
Raging Bull
Rocky
When We Were Kings
Previous posts with related themes:
Play oddball: Top 10 off-the-wall sports films
Put me in, coach: A top 10 mixtape
More reviews at Den of Cinema
— Dennis Hartley
The Trump bump in consumer confidence is already over.
Tariff threats, stock market swings and rapidly reversing executive orders are causing Americans across the political spectrum to feel considerably more pessimistic about the economy than they did before President Trump took office.
Consumer sentiment fell about 5% in the University of Michigan’s preliminary February survey of consumers to its lowest reading since July 2024. Expectations of inflation in the year ahead jumped from 3.3% in January to 4.3%, the second month in a row of large increases and highest reading since November 2023.
“It’s very rare to see a full percentage point jump in inflation expectations,” said Joanne Hsu, who oversees the survey. Republicans have come off a postelection surge in confidence, she said, and Democrats and Independents also seem to believe that economic conditions have deteriorated since last month.
Morning Consult’s recent index of consumer confidence, too, fell between Jan. 25 and Feb. 3, driven primarily by concern over the country’s economic future.
“I don’t like the turbulence. I don’t like the chaos in the market,” said Paul Bisson, a 58-year-old, who writes proposals for a flight safety company and co-owns a dog daycare in San Antonio. Bisson voted for Trump, but feels “his policies have led to that chaos.”
Bisson is hoping to retire in the not-too-distant future, and is worried that won’t be possible if Trump follows through with his tariff threats rather than just using them as a negotiating tactic.
“That will make the economy worse, and that’s not what we signed up for.”
Yes it is what you signed up for you moron. He said tariffs were his favorite word in the English language! He talked about them incessantly! They aren’t a negotiating tactic as we just found out when he backed down once Canada and Mexico told him they agree to do what they’d already planned to do before he became president. He just likes to throw his weight around and, in his mind, they’re a way to make the country rich like it was in the 1890s. Whether he follows through on any of them time will tell but you can bet he’ll be issuing more threats and causing more turmoil in any case.
If these people like Trump and voted for him because he owns the libs (which is the real reason they like him) they should just admit it. Saying they didn’t sign up for him to wreck the economy is ridiculous. That’s exactly what they signed up for — and much, much worse. he didn’t try to hide it.
Apparently it’s now illegal for the press to cover live events that the government doesn’t want them to cover. Good to know:
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating San Francisco-based KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions in San José last month, sparking concerns from press freedom advocates and drawing right-wing backlash to the radio station.
In an interview on Fox News, Trump-appointed commission chair Brendan Carr said he opened the investigation after KCBS shared the live locations and vehicle descriptions of immigration officials on Jan. 26.
“We have sent a letter of inquiry, a formal investigation into that matter, and they have just a matter of days left to respond to that inquiry and explain how this could possibly be consistent with their public interest obligations,” Carr said.
First Amendment advocates worry the FCC investigation will have a chilling effect on news organizations reporting on the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.
“Law enforcement operations, immigration or otherwise, are matters of public interest,” said David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition. “People generally have the right to report this on social media and in print and so on. So it’s very troubling because it’s possible the FCC is potentially being weaponized to crack down on reporting that the administration simply just doesn’t like.”
Loy worried that the move could deter other news organizations from pursuing reporting critical of the Trump administration.
Ya think?
This is certainly an infringement on the First Amendment but that doesn’t matter. It’s being done to intimidate the media into second guessing its coverage of the Trump administration, and Carr is particularly focused on the local press. He knows that’s a place where he can throw his weight around and get to the TV and radio stations that the FCC actually regulates.
These creeps are everywhere.
Musk has a lot of opinions lately about things he’s never expressed any interest in or knowledge of before. Via CNBC we find out why:
Until recently, Elon Musk seldom posted about the U.S. Agency for International Development on X, where he is wont to share his thoughts on nearly every subject.
Then on Sunday came a flurry of posts wherein the world’s richest person, the Trump-appointed head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, described USAID, the foreign humanitarian assistance agency, as “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,” “evil” and “a criminal organization.”
“Time for it to die,” Musk posted. […]
Most of Musk’s more than 160 posts about USAID have been responses to a handful of small but influential verified accounts, many of them using pseudonyms. The most popular — including posts from Wall Street Apes, Kanekoa the Great, Chief Nerd and Autism Capital — have been viewed hundreds of millions of times, amplified by Musk and his 216 million followers, according to X metrics. As the theories spread, they are repackaged, and in many cases added upon, to further the claims.
A review of the accounts’ profiles reveals how a lengthy crusade to paint USAID as a malevolent force built up in recent years in relatively fringe internet circles, only to be suddenly elevated and acted upon by Musk. The pattern is similar to one that played out with the so-called Twitter Files in 2022, when selectively framed narratives and out-of-context internal documents were weaponized to fuel allegations of a grand government censorship conspiracy. And it is one likely to continue under Trump and Musk, who have histories of trafficking in falsehoods.
[…]
A key voice behind both the Twitter Files and the USAID conspiracy theories is Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official-turned-conservative researcher whom Musk has promoted and interacted with on X more than 40 times in the past week.
Benz, a self-described cybersecurity expert who briefly worked as an assistant deputy for international communications for the State Department under Trump, started tweeting about USAID in 2022. He framed its funding of a handbook on disinformation from a nonprofit democracy consortium as evidence of an agency-run global internet censorship program.
Over the next two years, he posted waves of tweets and dozens of hours of video presentations marked with highlighted texts and red notes, scribbles, circles and arrows, flicking at a sprawling narrative of USAID as a covert operations division of the CIA in which staff members sought to enrich themselves, spread leftist ideology at home and abroad and harm Trump. The theory alleged that USAID was behind the mass censorship of Americans, as well as global efforts to manipulate social media, rig elections and quash dissent.
“Benz runs the same playbook every time,” said Renee DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University and author of a book about how fringe creators, including Benz, increasingly influence public opinion. “He picks a villain, pretends it has ties to the CIA or some ‘deep state’ and acts as if he has inside knowledge when he’s really just decontextualizing public content. The remarkable thing is that the masters of the universe seem to repeatedly fall for it.”
Few seemed to question Benz’s qualifications, and fewer still seemed to be aware of his identity as a former alt-right vlogger, a self-described white identitarian who posted videos under the alias Frame Game alleging a mass censorship conspiracy against white people, with links to Jewish organizations, the U.S. government and social media companies. (After NBC News published an article connecting Benz, who is Jewish, to Frame Game in 2023, he said the account was a covert effort intended to somehow combat the antisemitism it espoused.)
This guy is now making big bucks on the wingnuts freak show circuit. So Elon Musk is destroying the US government on the word of some conspiracy hustlers on Twitter who are little better than QAnon.
It would still be terrible if Musk were the genius he pretends to be and was doing what he was doing. But it’s worse that he’s actually a drug-addled fool who’s gone down the idiotic Twitter rabbit hole. To see a country destroyed by such puerile bullshit is almost too much to bear.
From the book, “Character Limit” about Musk’s takeover of Twitter:
