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In the category of: Is anyone surprised it took this long??
Trump calls on AG Sessions to end Mueller probe ‘right now’
Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s tweets about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe got a little manic, with the president tweeting a series of semi–coherent rants about the probe. It offered compelling evidence that the pressure is starting to take its roll.
This morning, Trump’s missives took on an even more hysterical tone, culminating in rhetoric we haven’t seen the president use before.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further,” the president said in a morning tweet.
It was part of a series of related messages in which Trump lashed out at Peter Strzok, pretended former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort played an unimportant role on his team, and wrapped up with, “Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign, one of the most successful in history, is a TOTAL HOAX. The Democrats paid for the phony and discredited Dossier which was, along with Comey, McCabe, Strzok and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, used to begin the Witch Hunt. Disgraceful!”
In the category of: Seriously worth considering.
Ignore the president
President Trump uses his public utterances, and especially his tweets, not to rally the country as a whole but to rally his base of far-right voters, to encourage a cult of personality around himself, and to troll everyone else. To accomplish these goals, he exaggerates, insults, lies, and spreads transparent nonsense in the hope of provoking a reaction — adulation among his supporters and anger in his opponents.
At this point, there’s no good reason why we should lend credence to this miasma of presidential BS. If the president wants to engage in base maintenance and mobilization by denouncing “fake news” or the special counsel’s investigation of his campaign’s myriad ties to a hostile foreign government, he can go ahead and do that. But journalists shouldn’t be complicit in spreading or legitimating the message.
In the category of: Heads up.
2016 Déjà Vu: Facebook Uncovers Disinformation Campaign Targeting Black and Latinx Groups Ahead of Midterms
Facebook has taken down dozens of Facebook and Instagram accounts it says were part of an effort to sow disinformation and manipulate social media users ahead of the 2018 midterms.
As the Washington Post reports, the pages were specifically centered on drumming up opposition to Trump. Just as in 2016, the accounts tried to rally Facebook users behind racial, gender and social issues to spread disinformation and manipulate their followers.
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