The Twitter Dumps

C.I. filled in for Kat at Kat's site last week and weighed in on The Twitter Dumps:

 

 

The Twitter Dumps

C.I. (of THE COMMON ILLS) filling in for Kat.  She's tired, the roundtble tonight for the gina & krista round-robin ran hours.  So I'm filling in and  I'm going to cover something coming up in a few e-mails.  Today on CNN THIS MORNING (their new morning show), they had a segment that probably few saw.  Very few are watching the new morning program.  Elaine has rightly explained the problem is Don Lemon and that, if he can't adjust to mornings, he needs to be dumped.  In the morning, they want you likeable.  People are waking up, having their coffee, easing into their day if they're lucky.  He needs to stop thinking he's still anchoring a nighttime product.  When Katie Couric went from NBC's TODAY to THE CBS EVENING NEWS, she had to make adjustments.  Norah O'Donnell has had to as well.  If Don can't turn it around, CNN needs to find something else for him.

Oliver Darcy was on the segment.   He was making two claims.

The first was that The Twitter Files don't matter because there isn't any evidence Twitter and the government worked together to censor information.  The second was that Elon Musk was wrong to release the internal e-mails to Bari and Matt.  (I'm typing Matt for the first time.  I'm trying to honor a promise but I've got a feeling it's going to crash and burn.  My apologies, I kept it for nearly two decades.)  

On the first assertion.

Do The Twitter Files -- a series of Tweets -- actually several series of Tweets -- prove what Oliver says they don't.

I question the wording.  Is this how he speaks or was it trying to be cute?

Reality: The FBI -- in complete opposition of their charter as well as the Constitution (specifically The First Amendment) -- illegally went to Twitter and told them that a laptop (that was in their possession since December 2019) or hard drive might emerge in the lead up to the election and it would be Russian disinformation.  This reality is not dependent upon The Twitter Files.  Meta/FACEBOOK's Mark  Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan's program back in August and discussed the FBI coming by FACEBOOK ahead of the election with warnings.  

This was illegal.  Who ordered it?  

Donald Trump's an idiot.  I've always known that and it's why I've always avoided him in real life.  But one of the stupidest things he's done since The Twitter Files began being released (dumped) was failing to raise this issue, failing to note the actions were illegal and asking who ordered these actions?  That last one should especially concern him because he was President of the United States.

I don't believe in Richard Nixon's theory of the law, so let me be clear, if Donald had ordered the FBI to do it, it still would have been illegal.  But he did not order it.  So who did?

I don't believe field agents went rogue on their own.  They may have.  I don't believe that they did.  

I don't believe it because there's too much overlapping -- such as coordinating the warning to social media with the release from the 'intelligence' 'experts' who lied that the Hunter Biden laptop had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation -- as well as the media -- which NEWSWEEK 'forgot' in their fact check -- which immediately began removing any qualifiers or doubt from the statement.  

I don't believe a few rogue field agents could have pulled that off.

This seems to have the hallmarks of an organized campaign, of an actual FBI operation that was well planned. 

The Twitter Files highlight that.  But, again, that's backed up by other things including Zuckerberg's interview.

Should Elon Musk have released the e-mails to someone else?

He can release to whomever he wants, first and foremost.  Would there have been a benefit to releasing them to an organization the size of CNN?  Sure.  We might actually have a report -- a real report -- and not just Tweets.  Were there any drawbacks to handing them to CNN?  I would worry that anything related to Biden would be heavily censored due to CNN's history in the last six years (we can go back further but, certainly, in the last six years, CNN's reputation has been brutally destroyed -- by people like Don Lemon, in fact).  So there would be benefits to going with CNN and there would be benefits to avoiding CNN.  

Elon Musk made his decision.

There's also the secret agreement that Bari and Matt made with Musk for access.  We still don't know that agreement.  

Had The Twitter Files been offered to CNN and had Musk put the same condition on it, CNN might have had to refuse.  There are certain agreements that no journalist or outlet should enter into.  Did Matt and Bari?  We don't know because we don't what the agreement was.  

Again, it was Musk's to release and he made his choice on who.

Darcy looks like a whiney little kid stomping his foot.  It's not a good look.  It's also not a compelling segment.  They really need a producer and either a new camera operator or to free the one they have currently.  It feels like 1970s daytime TV.

For those of you (community members) who e-mailed regarding Tara Reade, I actually had her in today's snapshot but had to pull it because it was too long.  I'll try to work it into Friday's snapshot.  The snapshot, by the way, will continue to be called the "Iraq snapshot."  I'll try to always include something about Iraq in it.  There are days when Iraq will be the focus and days when it won't.  Even when it's just a little bit about Iraq, other topics will help the Iraq news be seen -- something Rebecca long ago proved at her site.  The hearing covered in the snapshot that I'm about to put below this will again be covered in tomorrow's snapshot.  Ava and I are also toying with a possible way to include it in our media piece for THIRD (we are including it in our piece for Friday's gina & krista round-robin).  

Closing with the "Iraq snapsot;"