Shills For (Right-Wing) Social Media

The Media Research Center is an enthusiastic promoter of Twitter clones catering to right-wingers like GETTR and Truth Social -- and, like a good PR rep, hides their problems.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 4/6/2022

When Donald Trump started his website "From The Desk of Donald J. Trump" tweetable blog last year, the Media Research Center was quite excited about it -- if only because it could reboot some of those victimization narratives it has been pushing. A May 7 post by Alec Schemmel complained:

Twitter is now even restricting statements made by former President Donald Trump from being posted on its platform.

The social media giant has reportedly suspended accounts that have been sharing statements from Trump, which he has been releasing from his new website, From the Desk Of Donald J. Trump. A Twitter spokesperson reportedly told NBC News: “As stated in our ban evasion policy, we’ll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account.”

[...]

Trump’s new website, which was launched Tuesday, acts as a megaphone for the former president. Trump has been releasing his thoughts in short press release form or Twitter-like posts on the site which can then be shared by anyone to social media.

It turned out, however, that few people were particularly interested in listening to this particular megaphone: traffic to his website was miniscule compared with his pre-ban years. When Trump pulled the plug on his website roughly a month later, a June 2 post by Kayla Sargent sought to put such a pro-Trump spin on the situation that her post may has well come from the Trump Organization itself:

Jason Miller, senior advisor to former President Donald Trump, signaled that Trump may soon join another platform. “Stay tuned!” he tweeted.

Trump’s blog, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” may soon be replaced. Former Nevada GOP Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian tweeted: “‘The Desk of Donald J. Trump’ section of President Trump’s website has been removed and will not be returning per @JasonMillerinDC. Perhaps this is a precursor to him joining another social media platform?” Miller retweeted her post, saying, “Yes, actually, it is. Stay tuned!”

Miller also reportedly told CNBC that the platform “will not be returning,” and that it “was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on.” He added that he was “[h]oping to have more information on the broader efforts soon, but I do not have a precise awareness of timing,” according to CNBC.

Sargent made no mention of the abysmal traffic that presumably led to the decision to pull the plug. Instead, she repeated the lie that Trump was banned from social media "after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in which the former president called for 'peace.'"

MRC goes for GETTR

When a former Trump adviser launched a new social media platform last summer, Autumn Johnson was quick to gush over it:

Former Trump advisor Jason Miller will launch a new social media platform designed to “declare independence” from Big Tech platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

“GETTR,” which Miller says evolved from “getting together,” will launch on July 4. However, the platform’s app is already in the App Stores.

Miller says the new platform will be open to users worldwide.

"Let’s get together, we’re talking about a sense of community," Miller told Fox News. "We think it will ultimately be a global platform—not just conservatives in the U.S. We want people from all political stripes to join the platform."

"This ties in with Independence Day," Miller added. "Independent from social media monopolies, independent from cancel culture; embracing free speech—our launch on Sunday is very much intentional."

"We believe there needs to be a new social media platform that really defends free speech, and one that doesn’t de-platform for political beliefs," he continued. "This is a challenge to social media monopolies."

Because the MRC is much more eager to do free(?) PR for Trump than report the truth, it won't tell you the secret behind the app -- it was developed by a company owned by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, best known these days for being the benefactor of sleazy ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon -- or that its launch was completely amateurish: typos in the app page promoting it, filled with bugs and security holes, and even allowed a Hitler account. GETTR got rid of the worst of those accounts, which tells us that it may not be as pro-"free speech" as it and MRC want you to believe.

The MRC is also not going to tell you about Miller's sleazy personal life; as ConWebWatch has documented, this includes multiple extramarital affairs, a nasty fight over child support with one ex-mistress and an accusation that he had drugged another ex-mistress with an abortion pill, causing her to lose the unborn baby.

The MRC served as GETTR's crisis PR agent in an Aug. 2 post by Casey Ryan:

GETTR CEO Jason Miller fired back against Politico after the media outlet launched an attack against his new platform claiming that it is a hotbed for terrorist activity.

Politico reported that free speech alternative platform GETTR was “inundated with terrorist propaganda spread by supporters of Islamic State.” The liberal media outlet further reported that GETTR “features reams of jihadi-related material, including graphic videos of beheadings, viral memes that promote violence against the West and even memes of a militant executing [former President Donald] Trump in an orange jumpsuit similar to those used in Guantanamo Bay.” The story ended with a statement that Politico reportedly obtained from Miller. However, the GETTR executive said that Politico is “refusing to print [his statement] in its entirety.”

In his response on GETTR, Miller attacked ISIS and called out Politico for its reporting:

“ISIS is trying to attack the MAGA movement because President Trump wiped them off the face of the earth, destroying the Caliphate in less than 18 months, and the only ISIS members still alive are keyboard warriors hiding in caves and eating dirt cookies. Buried beneath a misleading and inflammatory headline, however, even Politico acknowledges GETTR has a robust and proactive moderation system that removes prohibited content, maximizing both cutting-edge A.I. technology and human moderation.”

Politico’s hit piece against GETTR was headlined, “Jihadists flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda.” Several other media outlets also dogpiled GETTR and appeared to gleefully cover the story.

Ryan won't tell you that the thing Miller is complaining about is the exact same thing his MRC co-workers have regularly done in their attacks on "big tech" in the previous several months:

• On Jan. 8, Kayla Sargent grumbled that Twitter suspended Trump after the Capitol riot, but "it has ignored blatant pro-genocide propaganda from the communist Chinese government."
• On June 2, Alec Schemmel complained that "Facebook has had no reservations about censoring conservative accounts. Yet, it allows accounts of state-controlled propaganda outlets from the genocidal regime of China to flourish. Forty accounts on Facebook, amassing over 751 million followers, are managed by Chinese state-controlled media outlets."
• Schemmel wrote on June 16 that "Conservative lawmakers condemned Facebook for censoring former President Donald Trump while simultaneously allowing the Chinese Communist Party to post propaganda freely on its platform."
• Schemmel asserted on June 28 that "Facebook continues to allow China to lie to the world about its human rights violations against Uyghurs, while simultaneously banning the former president of the United States from its platform."
• On Aug. 1, Alexander Hall hyped that "Left-wing author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism Jillian C. York condemned former President Donald Trump for fomenting unrest in the past, but expressed wariness over Facebook’s ban of the infamous Taliban.
• On Aug. 26, Schemmel dutifully reported a complaint from the CEO of Parler that Taliban representatives have Twitter accounts. Of course, he failed to disclose that Mercer is funding both Parler and the MRC.
• The same day, Hall touted how "former Secretary of Defense Chief of Staff Kash Patel torched Twitter for hosting the Taliban, following horrific terror attacks on American troops in Afghanistan."

Ryan sounded like a paid employee of GETTR -- as all MRC employees do -- in trying to serve up some positive spin for Miller's benefit, touting how "the Washington Examiner previously reported that GETTR passed '1.5 million users in just 11 days.'" But that number appeared to be bogus; according to a report from the Stanford Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center (h/t Wonkette), GETTR didn't actually reach 1.5 million users until the first week of August. Ryan went on to insist that despite a claim from the Daily Beast that GETTR "has struggled to gain much traction," "several prominent personalities have joined the platform."

The MRC was so determined to serve as the PR division of GETTR, in fact, that it devoted a second post the next day to Miller's complaints about the Politico article. That article, by Autumn Johnson, is mostly a repeat of what is in Ryan's piece, though it added a bizarre accusation from Twitter that the Politico piece was "funded by GETTR’s competitors in the tech and social media marketplace." Johnson apparently made no effort to seek substantiation of this claim from Miller, for none is provided; instead, Johnson linked to a commentary by Miller at the right-wing National Pulse website, in which he complained that data for the Politico piece came from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue," which he ranted " is funded by a list of GETTR’s Big Tech competitors." Which, of course, proves nothing; Miller offers no evidence to further his conspiratorial claim.

Interestingly, neither piece noted whether or not GETTR took down the jihadi accounts after they were made public. Johnson rehashed GETTR's moderation policies as cited in Miller's National Pulse piece, but he too did not explicitly state that the jihadi posts have been removed. Miller did try to make excuses, stating that "To combat Islamic extremist content is a continuous battle, as our competitors can attest, and much of the objectionable content on our platform was posted before our official launch."

Again, the MRC's function here is PR, not fact -- just like it has been with Parler.

MRC touts another Trump venture

The MRC also served as the PR office for Trump's new social media operation. In an Oct. 21 post announcing the creation of the operation, Autumn Johnson put "BREAKING" in the headline even though she was breaking absolutely nothing but, rather, repeating a report from another right-wing website:

Former President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that his new social media platform will be coming soon, The Daily Wire reported.

TRUTH Social will be released next spring under the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). The platform will compete with Facebook and Twitter, like Parler and GETTR.

Trump said he is excited about the new platform’s potential.

“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” he said in a statement. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon.”

TMTG concurred with Trump’s statement, adding that the “mission is to is to create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the “Big Tech” companies of Silicon Valley”:

Johnson added that "Trump was permanently banned on Facebook and Twitter following the Jan. 6 riot in Washington D.C.," but made sure not to mention why.

But Johnson is nothing if not an enthusiastic PR agent for Trump. In an Oct. 28 post on Trump losing a legal action against Twitter, she spent three paragraphs gushing over how he "just last week announced the creation of his own social media platform: TRUTH Social," linking to her earlier post.

Johnson returned to gush in a Dec. 5 post about the amount of capital TMTG claims to have:

A new social network being created by former President Donald Trump reportedly said it has $1 billion lined up in capital.

Trump announced his plan to create a new social network after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter. The network is a product of Trump’s new company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), and he is the chair of the company.

TMTG plans to become a publicly listed company by merging with Digital World.

Digital World reportedly said $1 billion in capital has been lined up for the venture, while the company itself plans to invest $293 million.

Johnson was curiously incurious as to how a company formed less than two months earlier and has, as one observer noted, "no product, no users, no publicly identified executives, and no revenue," has access to such an astronomical amount of money, though there appears to be much shadiness to be investigated. Instead, she quoted from a press release, blandly stating that "Other investors have not been identified, but Digital World reportedly said the money will come from 'a diverse group' of investors."

But never mind that, there was another hot scoop to gush over. This time, Alexander Hall did the gushy honors on Dec. 7:

Is this the start of a big conservative splash in the tech sphere?? Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) will reportedly resign from his position as a congressman to join former President Donald Trump’s burgeoning Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG.)

Trump is out of the presidency, but his company has the potential to be a major player in the social media sphere, and it just gained one major power-player. “Trump Media & Technology Group ('TMTG') today announced that Congressman Devin G. Nunes has been selected to join the Company as Chief Executive Officer,” TMTG declared in a Dec. 6 press release. “Mr. Nunes will be leaving the U.S. House of Representatives and will begin his new role as Chief Executive Officer of TMTG in January 2022.”

Hall did surprisingly suggest the cronyism involved here, noting that "Nunes has a history of backing up Trump in the most high-stakes times of crisis" and that Trump "awarded Nunes the Presidential Medal of Freedom," while Nunes was "one of the 147 House Republicans who voted to challenge President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory" on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Hall didn't however, mention Nunes' notorious litigiousness toward any critic on social media, including a parody Twitter account claiming to be Nunes' cow. Perhaps that litigiousness is the real skill Nunes is quitting Congress to bring to Trump's operation (that, and all the potential grift to cash in on). Hall will never mention that, either.

Hall ramped up the slobbering, with a headline declaring "FREE SPEECH!" for a Jan. 7 post cheering that a launch date had been announced:

Former President Donald Trump’s Big Tech alternative platform Truth Social will reportedly go online on Presidents Day in February.

Presidents Day will have a powerful new association with liberation for many Americans in 2022. “Trump Media and Technology Group, former President Donald Trump’s new company, indicated Thursday it’s planning to launch a social media platform February 21, more than a year after Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter,” Forbes reported Jan. 6. Truth Social is viewable in preview form on Apple’s online app store, including screenshots of a sleek interface very similar to Twitter, but touting inclusivity for all ideologies. Screenshots indicate a similar newsfeed structure and red check mark verification badges.

Far from being an exclusively conservative platform, Truth Social boasted of a “Big Tent” approach as a selling point and compared itself to the bipartisan public gathering both polarization and the pandemic have driven to near extinction:

[...]

The press release quoted Trump hailing the launch of his social media empire as a new era for the United States: “America is ready for TRUTH Social, and the end to cancel culture."

Of course, Hall didn't mention the whole inciting-insurrection thing that got Trump banned from Facebook and Twitter, or that none of the people involved in the venture are known for taking a "big tent" approach to viewpoints they disagree with.

When Truth Social finally launched, it was like Christmas Day for Hall, as he wrote in a Feb. 21 post headlined "Happy President's Day!" that reads not unlike a press release:

Former President Donald Trump’s Big Tech alternative platform Truth Social has gone online.

Truth Social has met the ambitious President’s Day headline and is currently the #1 most popular app in the Social Media category on Apple’s app store. “An alternative social media platform backed by former President Donald Trump went live on Monday, becoming available for download on Apple's App Store — but access to the service appears limited for now,” CNN reported Feb. 21.

“Truth social begins today! It’s very cool,” former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declared on Twitter. “They are limiting the number of signups per day at first - so be patient and sign up early. No more silencing our voices!”

Hall went on to tout an endorsement of the site from one of the most divisive and inflammatory right-wing activists out there:

Other popular Trump supporting commentators celebrated the launch as well. “I’m on Truth Social! As the only Member of Congress to have had my personal @Twitter account banned, I understand what millions of conservatives have gone through having their personal freedom of speech stolen from them by Big Tech for not parroting the approved messaging,” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) explained in a tweet.

Greene condemned the political powers that be for failing to prevent the rise of censorship on legacy platforms, lamenting that “when it comes to freedom of speech, Congress has failed and stood by while Big Tech & Big Media reigns over information with an iron fist.” She appeared to imply that Truth Social may provide a “competition in the market place” in the same way that “a restaurant with bad food & service will go out of business when a new restaurant with good food & service opens.”

The MRC loves to portray the extremist Greene as a victim for her repeated violations of good taste, sanity, and the terms of service of other non-right-wing social media platforms.

Hall concluded with another PR-rep-worthy outburst:

Truth Social reportedly has a massive waitlist of people who are all signing up to have their own profiles on the platform. CNET reported that the platform has been strained by its massive popularity in its first day, as many users have been “placed on a waitlist after signing up. ‘Due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist,’ read the message, which included a waitlist number. People who preordered Truth Social had the app automatically downloaded to their iPhones.”

As to be expected from Hall, all this PR hype is highly divergent from the truth. The back end of Truth Social is a mess; the day before the launch, a reporter was able to get the @realDonaldTrump handle (it has since been stripped from him). The massive backup in signups on launch day is actually a bug, not a feature. And far from being the "big tent" site Hall told us it would be, its terms of service censors users who "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site"; in practice, that meant an account under the name @DevinNunesCow -- the same handle that mocks former congressman and current Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes, who actually sued Twitter in an attempt to shut down that particular form of free speech -- was banned.

A couple weeks later, Truth Social was still having trouble getting people signed up, making it a fairly lonely place, even Trump's inner circle has demonstrated little interest in the platform, and Trump himself isn't even using it. But Hall's readers don't know about any of this because he (nor anyone else at the MRC) hasn't written about Truth Social since launch day.

Apparently, even he knows it's a dog and that all the mindless PR he serves up isn't going to change that.

Pulling the plug on Parler

After months of hyping the drama around Parler and its eviction from Amazon servers for letting its users plot the Capitol riot and make violent threats -- while still refusing to disclose that chief funder Rebekah Mercer is also its chief funder as well -- the MRC started to get board with Parler. In April 2021, the MRC welcomed Parler back to the Apple app store in April, reframing its new moderation policies as something Apple was forcing it to do and insisting that Parler would never engage in "censorship."

Meanwhile, the MRC stayed silent about other drama happening at Parler. Last March, former CEO John Matze filed a lawsuit against Parler, Mercer, and others claiming he was unjustly fired and his stake in the company stripped away. Even though it happened nearly a year ago, the MRC has yet to report that news to its readers (let alone disclose the fact it shares a funder with Parler).

Following the welcome back to the Apple store, the next time the MRC devoted a post to Parler was Aug. 26, when Alec Schemmel gushed over a new Fox Business appearance by Parler CEO George Farmer, who complained that Twitter has hosted "accounts run by actual dictatorships like the Taliban and the Chinese Communist Party' while continuing to suspend Donald Trump. Host Maria Bartiromo touted how Parler "has no qualms about banning the Taliban," but she didn't ask how that jibes with Parler's minimal-censorship policy.

From there, you have to jump all the way to Jan. 9, when Autumn Johnson promoted new funding for the website:

According to a federal securities filing and reporting last week from Axios, conservative social media app Parler has obtained $20 million in funding as it continues its push as an alternative to Big Tech giants Facebook and Twitter.

While it's unclear who provided the funds, Rebekah Mercer, a Trump supporter and frequent donor to Republicans, was the founding investor of Parler and listed in the filing as a director and executive officer of Parler.

Needless to say, Johnson was silent about Mercer's shared MRC funding and the lawsuit she remains embroiled in with Matze. Bad PR and all that.