In all the fuss over Matt Taibbi's strange, boring, endless Hunter Biden mega-thread, people are still missing a key contradiction: 1) Taibbi didn't WANT to write that thread. 2) Taibbi is wealthy. He has no need to simp for billionaires. Ask: why did he do it? 1/
Just look at the writing: this isn't a reporter excited over breaking a great story. Taibbi's not a great stylist, but he's better than this. This reads like someone grinding through an awful assignment, desperately wishing he were done with it. Or worse... 2/
... when he skips over part of the thread, he talks like it's not even his own: "There was more throat-clearing.." Taibbi's clearly working from a draft, but when he posted he took minutes between Tweets. It's like he was delivering someone's script, tweaking it as he went. 3/
We all have to be a little less naive. When someone delivers Putin's talking points, who spent 10 drug-soaked years in Moscow while Putin was KGB head or Prime Minister - there's probably a reason. 4/
Who was in charge of that little stunt? We already saw how Elon's adviser David Sacks steered him toward Russia-friendly, anti-Ukraine messages. And there are others like him in Elon's circle. This isn't about Twitter - it's a national security issue. 5/
Correction: Putin became President of Russia in 2000, not Prime Minister. Taibbi simped for him in the pages of The Exile. In 2001: "Putin was quietly gaining high marks around the world for his 'brilliant' foreign policy maneuverings." Why should we think he's stopped? 6/
Taibbi left Russia in 2002, leaving the The Exile to his partner Mark Ames, who wrote about the joys of sex with a 15-year-old. By 2008, Ames was sharing articles with Taki's Magazine, led by the young neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who had recruited Gavin McInnes as a columnist...7/
Richard Spencer, future Unite the Right organizer, had just left Duke, where he & Stephen Miller hosted white supremacist Peter Brimelow. On Jan 6, 2021, Miller was in the Oval Office with Trump while Gavin McInnes' Proud Boys marched on the Capitol. That's Taibbi's world. 8/
Russia's been growing the US far right since the late 1990s, when Matt Taibbi ran The Exile in Moscow and KKK head David Duke made extended visits. Richard Spencer, published in The Exile, got a glamorous Russian wife, the propagandist Nina Kouprianova. 9/
thedailybeast.com/meet-the-mosco…
The whole thing is so comically blatant that the NYT Pitchbot is cracking jokes. Let's have some real investigative journalism too. 10/
Adding on an article by @areidross on Matt Taibbi's time at eXile, its ties to Richard Spencer and the alt-right, the rape culture and boorishness, and most insightfully, the way that the magazine supported Putin's ends despite a veneer of criticism..11/
medium.com/@areidross/fro…
Ross writes that Taibbi's eXile "deflected criticism of Putin back to the US and reflected Russia’s propaganda line". "Moscow’s clandestine social media influence operations..united left and right against liberalism.." Taibbi is not a bold independent voice. He's a stooge. 12/
When Taibbi's partner Mark Ames closed eXile, where did he go? First to Russian state media RT. Then to a site backed by Peter Thiel - who funded MAGA, then whispered in Elon's ear to buy Twitter. They're always linked: neo-Nazis, Silicon Valley 'libertarians', and Russia. 13/
Reporters: play offense, not defense. If the Hunter Biden story is a nothingburger, then don't waste any more time on it. Instead drill down on people like Taibbi who pushed it. Who are they, what drives them? Don't let them set your narrative - make them BE your narrative. 14/
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.