There\u2019s a throughline between two New York Times stories released Friday that needs to be drawn.<\/p>\n
In one, reporters detail how Elon Musk is using his fortune and social media platform (X, once known as Twitter) to benefit former president Donald Trump\u2019s campaign. In the other, the paper details how Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), refused to acknowledge that Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020.<\/p>\n
And the throughline is that Vance is pretending Trump\u2019s loss was driven by something that his own campaign with Trump actually did.<\/p>\n
Vance sat down for an interview with the Times during which he was asked the same question that came up in the vice-presidential debate: Did Trump lose in 2020? This question has been portrayed as a \u201cgotcha,\u201d an unfair attempt to knock Republicans back on their heels. But it\u2019s actually a very useful proxy for a question that nearly any Republican would otherwise sidestep, one centered on their willingness to prevent Trump from attempting to subvert the results in 2024. If they can\u2019t say Trump lost the 2020 election even now, we can\u2019t be confident they\u2019re going to oppose Trump should he attempt similar machinations later this year.<\/p>\n
Vance couldn\u2019t say Trump lost. Instead, he reverted to a version of the same response he presented during that debate.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?\u201d he was asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n
This is his parry, the idea that one couldn\u2019t say the 2020 election was fair because there was an effort to censor this determinative story. It is, as we\u2019ve noted in the past, a way for people unwilling to echo Trump\u2019s wilder election-fraud claims to instead point to something less easily falsifiable, this idea that anti-Trump forces put their thumbs on the scales.<\/p>\n
But what Vance says here is falsifiable. It is not the case that tech companies censoring a story \u2014 specifically, a New York Post story about an email attributed to a laptop owned by Joe Biden\u2019s son Hunter \u2014 cost Trump the election.<\/p>\n
This, too, has been explored at length in the past, but it should immediately fail the smell test anyway. The 2020 election was a referendum on Trump, on his presidency and particularly on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It is ridiculous to suggest that this would have changed had Twitter (as it was then known) not briefly limited the sharing of a New York Post story about how one of Hunter Biden\u2019s business partners sent him an email thanking him for getting him in the room with his father.<\/p>\n
The \u201cindependent studies\u201d which Vance mentioned presumably refer to one poll conducted on behalf of the right-wing Media Research Center after the election. It presented respondents with a sweeping claim linking Biden to foreign business interests, asking whether awareness of that purported link would have led people to reconsider their votes. A chunk of self-reported Biden voters said they would have.<\/p>\n
Setting aside the vast inaccuracies inherent in having people assess what they would have done had the conditions of their decision-making been slightly different, the question didn\u2019t even center on the New York Post story! It was about purported Chinese investors and used the same \u201cBiden family\u201d framing on which the failed Republican impeachment probe depended.<\/p>\n
On the right, though, this poll became \u201cpeople would have voted Trump if they knew about Hunter Biden\u201d and then \u201cthe left\u201d \u2014 here represented by Silicon Valley liberals \u2014 \u201ccensoring the Hunter Biden story handed Biden the election.\u201d Despite that \u201ccensorship\u201d \u2014 driven by concerns that the information was the product of a Russian interference effort \u2014 lasting only a brief period and almost certainly helping draw more attention to the story.<\/p>\n
And now the throughline: The Times\u2019s Elon Musk story notes that the Trump campaign had a direct hand in now-X limiting a story about Vance.<\/p>\n
Hackers linked to Iran reportedly obtained the briefing book compiled as Trump was vetting potential running mates. (His former vice president, Mike Pence, needed to be replaced on the ticket for noteworthy reasons.) The hackers shopped the briefing book around, finding few takers.<\/p>\n
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein bit, however, publishing the document on his website. And in short order, X banned Klippenstein\u2019s account, purportedly because the linked document included personal information about Vance.<\/p>\n
But also because the Trump campaign wanted it to be limited, according to the Times\u2019s Elon Musk story.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a reporter\u2019s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month,\u201d the story notes, \u201cthe campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter\u2019s account.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2020, Twitter blocked the New York Post story after warnings from the federal government \u2014 then run by Donald Trump! \u2014 that foreign actors might disseminate stolen information. They soon lifted that limit. In 2024, X blocked Klippenstein\u2019s story in coordination with the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n
The former, Vance identifies as an unfair attempt to harm Trump, one that purportedly cost him the election. The latter? It seems unlikely he\u2019ll be similarly incensed.<\/p>\n
It is not the case that the vetting document published by Klippenstein would have shifted the election any more than it was the case that the block on the New York Post story did. But here we see how the same action, taken at different times and with different motivations, are presented in starkly different terms.<\/p>\n
And at each point, in service to Trump\u2019s ambitions.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a throughline between two New York Times stories released Friday that needs to be drawn. In one, reporters detail how Elon Musk is using his fortune and social media platform (X, once known as Twitter) to benefit former president Donald Trump\u2019s campaign. In the other, the paper details how Trump\u2019s running mate, Sen. JD […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}