As London Attacks Unfolded, Trump Was Busy Retweeting Matt Drudge

Trump’s White House is populated predominantly with political amateurs, dilettantes and professional yes-men who, themselves, do not produce any substantial informational content. They are by and large either misinformed and making things up or getting their facts from the low-tier media such as Fox News, Breitbart, tabloids or reality shows, who themselves are known to habitually make things up (their business model often based on fabricating “facts”). As a consequence, the mainstream press has been much better informed than the White House, both in terms of the area covered and the depth and quality of information.

— “Trump In Wonderland” courtesy of Notes From Disgracedland

On Saturday night, as the Western world was trying to sort through exactly what happened in London where seven people were killed by three assailants in what looks like a copycat terror incident, the official Twitter account of London’s Metropolitan Police Service was on the job.

And generally speaking, they did their best to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with the standards you’d expect from the government although their “run, hide, tell” tweet got mixed reviews.

Here’s one example, (note the highlighted bit):

London

Right. So basically, “this is a fucking terrorist attack and given that, we’re taking it pretty seriously because when it comes to people being murdered in the streets and keeping you from being murdered in the streets, we want our information to be accurate.”

Well in a pretty poignant example of the dynamic noted in the quote excerpted here at the outset, Donald Trump wasn’t following London’s Metropolitan Police Service Twitter feed in order to get accurate information.

Instead, he was following (and retweeting to 31.4 million Americans) the always reliable coverage available at Drudge Report.

No, seriously:

Trump

Do note he tweeted that a full two hours before tweeting his support for the UK and not only that, if you look at his feed it seems to be the only story about the attack he retweeted.

So of all the media outlets on the planet covering that story as it developed, the President of the United States used his Twitter account to direct 31.4 million Americans to coverage from Matt Drudge. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is absolutely insane. 

What’s even more insane is that everyone who criticized Trump for doing that seemed to largely miss the point. If you Google this, critics were trying to argue that Trump shouldn’t have retweeted Matt Drudge because the Drudge tweet was based on what, at the time, was incomplete information.

That misses the point. The problem isn’t Matt Drudge connecting the dots on a van hitting civilians and terror and then the President retweeting it before there’s any official confirmation (although that’s obviously problematic too), the problem is the President following Matt Drudge in the first place. 

And believe it or not, that wasn’t even the most egregious example of this administration directing Americans to batshit crazy news outlets on Saturday.

The Trump campaign also sent out a bulletin with a link to Alex Jones’ InfoWars.

And this where I get to say it again: “no, seriously”…

Trump4

Speak your mind

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

One thought on “As London Attacks Unfolded, Trump Was Busy Retweeting Matt Drudge

NEWSROOM crewneck & prints