It was obvious from the outset that the media didn’t think much of Donald Trump’s social media summit.
Before
yesterday’s White House event got under way, a New York Times news
story declared: “The guest list has alarmed critics who fear it is
bringing together people who disseminate threats, hate speech and actual
fake news, and who sometimes have their messages elevated with the
velocity of a presidential tweet.”
That was mild compared to the
Times’ savvy tech columnist, Kevin Roose, who scoffed at the red-carpet
treatment for “right-wing trolls,” calling the guests “a motley grab bag
of pro-Trump influencers (who) have taken to Twitter to brag about
their invitations.”
But the president, in his morning tweets,
didn’t exactly convey that this was some fair-and-balanced look at the
problems of Big Tech.
He said the purpose is to examine “the
tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by
certain companies. We will not let them get away with it much longer.”
He added: “The Fake News Media will also be there, but for a limited period.”
It’s
rather odd, to say the least, to hold a summit and not allow reporters
in to draw attention to the issue at hand. The White House later decided
to grant access to the press pool, but never released a guest list. So
the event was shrouded in a bit of mystery.
So
you have the establishment press saying that POTUS is catering to
purveyors of fake news, and Trump saying he’s limiting the ability of
fake news to cover the summit. The grand fake-off sort of crystallizes
the complete lack of trust on both sides.
The president offered what he viewed as high praise, telling his guests that “the crap you think of is unbelievable.”
Trump
complained that he was getting less engagement on his tweets, which he
found suspicious. “I used to watch it like a rocket ship when I put out a
beauty,” he said. “Remember I said somebody was spying on me? That was
like a rocket.” (That was his 2017 tweet that Barack Obama had
wiretapped him, for which there remains no evidence.)
A prominent
attendee was Sebastian Gorka, a White House official until he was pushed
out. When Trump moved the show to the Rose Garden, where he talked
about the census and citizenship, Gorka walked past the press pool and
got into a high-decibel exchange with liberal CNN contributor Brian
Karem, with Gorka calling him a “punk.”
Several of the guests began chanting “Gorka!”
The
theatrics belie some serious issues. It’s not that Twitter, Facebook
and Google—which weren’t invited--don’t deserve a ton of criticism. The
companies all lean left. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack
Dorsey have acknowledged this is a problem. They apply their so-called
standards inconsistently, in a number of instances against
conservatives, and sometimes have had to apologize for that. And they’ve
done a lousy job of policing hate speech, disinformation and Russian
propaganda, fueling calls for government regulation.
Still, the
White House invited some controversial characters, as the press was all
too happy to point out. They include James O’Keefe, whose conservative
outfit does surreptitious taping to embarrass liberals, and who once
pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in a case involving Mary Landrieu for
entering a building under false pretenses.
They include Ali
Alexander, who recently tweeted that Kamala Harris had falsely implied
that she was descended from “American Black Slaves.” The biracial
senator has been quite open about her parents being from Jamaica and
India.
And they include a Trump supporter using the screen name
Carpe Donktum, who tweeted an obviously doctored video of Joe Biden’s
shoulders being massaged by a second Biden at a time the former veep was
being accused of inappropriately touching women.
There’s
an important debate raging in the country about the Silicon Valley
giants, once among America’s most admired companies, and whether they
are biased and allowed their platforms to become a toxic cesspool. The
White House session may have scored some points, but mainly from one
side.
