A close reading of this image has much to teach us about disinformation, nepotism, & the contemporary American right. 
First, consider the retweeter, an editor (and founder) of The Federalist, one of the most cynical right wing organs of disinformation out there today. They are notoriously secretive about their funding source.
So yeah, someone from The Federalist expressing concern about the epistemological dangers of disinformation is a bit rich. But that's only the beginning....
The person we see conducting this interview with Esper is Alyssa Farah, a communications staffer at DOD. She used to work for Pence. She's the daughter of the guy who ran WND, one of the oldest & most successful right wing disinformation sites in the US. huffpost.com/entry/pences-p…
Obviously she and her father are different people and she's not responsible for what he's done. But it's clear that her path into politics was paved by her familial connections to the right edge of the GOP.
Here's a great piece on the rise and fall of WND. It was an early adopter of birtherism, and was basically a downmarket Breitbart back in the Obama era. You heard that right, it made Breitbart look like responsible journalism. mercurynews.com/2019/04/02/ins…
She's far from the only person in the Trump Administration with ties to WND. One of Trump's more recent hires, Jenna Ellis, is married to someone who was a frequent contributor.
To return to the original retweeter, right before he founded The Federalist he got caught taking money from the Malaysian gov't to write propaganda pieces for them. He's a real anti-disinformation warrior, that one. buzzfeednews.com/article/rosieg…
His father worked in the Bush administration. He's married to John McCain's daughter. You might have heard of her. Both of them like to position themselves as independent-minded mavericks fighting against the swampy DC bubble. Uh huh. Sure.
I'm not naive. I know that political communications is always about spin. Farah and the Federalist dude were socialized into the world of right wing politics and they are, I have no doubt, true believers in their cause. But there's a line where spin crosses into outright lying.
LIke, when you write an op-ed that's paid for by a foreign gov't and pass it off as your genuine opinion. Or when you grow up in a family whose wealth derives entirely from just making sh*t up to generate rage clicks from racists and xenophobes so as to support GOP politicians.
Neither The Federalist nor WND ever gave the impression that they knew what this thing called "a fact check" was. Because being accurate was never the function of those outlets. That's fine if your goal is entertainment and right wing rage production.
But if your goal is to fight disinformation so as to keep the citizens of a democracy well-informed, or to accurately understand the dynamics of an epidemic that threatens public health...then accuracy does matter.
The contemporary American right has lost the ability to distinguish between truth and winning. Any story that helps them win must be true. Any fact that weakens their chance to win, and any outlet that publishes such facts, must be mercilessly pilloried as "fake news."
No Democratic president could get away with that, because our entire media ecosystem, whether it be conservative or not, would call them out on it. So would many Dem politicos. But when Trump does it, conservative media outlets and GOP officials go into full "Dear Leader" mode.
I swear, every person who works in right wing media today who is over 45 spent the early 90s writing essays about Orwellian PC mind control on college campuses. And now they're writing contrarian "what if Covid is a Chinese hoax" pieces for The Federalist. For example.
So hey, Federalist dude and Esper...the disinformation is coming from inside the house. Like, from this person who is a frequent guest on Hannity...you know, the guy the President speaks with on an almost daily basis?
Or maybe the disinformation is coming from this right wing law prof whose idiotic and baseless "theories" about epidemiology influenced the WH response to and right wing media coverage of Covid-19? newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/t…
