After Elon Musk made Twitter’s internal fight for the last presidential election public, Donald Trump is now reacting. He rises to radical demands.
It was a show Elon Musk liked. With a popcorn emoji and the addition “It’s going to be great” he announced the release of the so-called “Twitter Files”. They deal with the question of how the short message service dealt with potentially problematic news reports. Although the findings are ultimately small, he fell on fertile ground with Donald Trump.
The documents that have now been released show “various forms of government fraud, especially electoral fraud,” the ex-president claimed on his network Truth Social in response to Musk’s action. And rose to a radical demand: “Massive fraud of this type and severity allows all rules, regulations and articles to be suspended, even those in the Constitution,” said Trump. In doing so, he left no doubt that he knew what he was just asking for. “An unprecedented fraud requires an unprecedented countermeasure,” he added in a reply to himself.
Also read: Because of Twitter withdrawal, Trump writes insults on pieces of paper – and forces them on others
attack on the constitution
This attack on the basis of the American state was linked to Trump’s usual demand: the election results of the 2020 presidential election, which he had lost, should be revoked and he should be declared the winner, he openly demanded. In the end, it was about his assertion, repeated for two years, that he actually won the election. To demand the end of the United States as we know it is a new level of escalation, even by Trump’s standards.
It is quite remarkable that he wants to justify this with the Twitter leaks of all things. If you take a close look at the revelations, there is relatively little left of Trump’s – and Musk’s – claims about the explosiveness of the content. And: The interventions by a government alleged by Trump did exist. But it came from Trump himself.
allegations untenable
From the point of view of Musk and Trump, the Twitter documents leaked by Musk to the journalist Matt Taibbi are primarily intended to prove that the short message service specifically suppressed an alleged conspiracy story about a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in order to support Biden in the election . But the scandal and even the news content of the documents is surprisingly low given the hype surrounding it.
The fact seems that the moderators initially suppressed the initial report of the “New York Post”, preventing the sharing of the link and even screenshots of the report. However, internal debates quickly arose as to whether this decision was the right one. And: The then Twitter boss Jack Dorsey seems to have found out about the decision quite late. In addition, according to the documents, Biden’s election team was not the only one who approached the short message service about alleged fake news. But also the Trump administration.
The reasoning of the ex-president cannot be justified from this. The documents neither show that – as he claims – the “tech industry” specifically helped with election fraud, nor can the allegation of government fraud against Trump be upheld. When Biden’s team reported the report as problematic on Twitter, he was not yet part of the government. So the only government interference came from Trump.
ammunition for the charge
The attack on the Constitution could still prove a disservice to Trump. In its final report, the congressional committee for the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 wants to concentrate fully on the ex-president’s role in the violent protest. He is accused of personally inciting the uprising, which is commonly understood as an attack on US democracy. Demanding an end to the constitution would hardly diminish this impression.
Sources: Twitter, Truth Social
Also read:
Donald Trump forced Apple to support his fight against the Democrats
Why Donald Trump’s ancient smartphone became a threat to the United States