Thread by @MattGertz

Good morning. The president was up before dawn this morning watching and tweeting about last night's episode of Fox's Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Left, Dobbs, 7:30 pm
Right, Trump, 5:24 am

Dobbs' take was that Google is "banning" and "suppressing" conservative news sites from appearing in their results. His source is a piece from PJ Media that sorted results based on "Sharyl Attkisson's media bias chart," which lists the Washington Post & the NY Times as far left.

During the segment, Diamond and Silk, identified as "President Trump's most loyal supporters," described this as "tyranny" and "a form of political lynching."

Diamond adds that "somebody's going to have to step in and take a look at this here." Watching the program this morning, Trump tweets, "This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!"

Left, Dobbs, 7:45 pm

Actually says "minorities," not "minority groups."

Right, Trump, 5:54 am

(Deleted last tweet and fixed am/pm. Apologies for suggesting the president was tweeting at a normal hour.)

Left, Dobbs, 7:53 pm

"The NASDAQ gaining 72 points, about 8,000 for the first time in history."

Right, Trump, 5:57 am

(Sigh, did it again.)

I'm pretty surprised Trump didn't tweet about the last Dobbs segment of the night, which was Mark Penn talking about how Trump's poll numbers are good and Trump is doing "basically the right things" in response to the Mueller investigation, which is corrupt & should be shut down.

Anyway, just to throw this out there, it's probably bad for the president's take on Big Tech to be driven by a PJ Media post as interpreted by Lou Dobbs and Diamond and Silk. That's perhaps not an ideal situation for policy-making.

The full segment, btw, is on Fox's website. If you're a journalist writing up the president's tweets, you should really explain where the president is getting his ideas. video.foxbusiness.com/v/5827523121001

(It also wouldn't kill you to cite me.)

A coda to this thread: I've spent the last 11 years here at @mmfa tracing conspiracy theories through the right-wing fever swamp up to Fox News, showing how ridiculous stories make their way into the mainstream press.

@mmfa The difference is that now those reports end, "and then the president of the United States saw the story and called for a federal response."

This is not a good development.

@mmfa The president is using his agenda-setting power to trumpet nutty conspiracy theories promoted by people who worship him like a god.

None of this will end well.