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18 Nov, 4 tweets, 2 min read
How can Trump get away with his petty and dangerous refusal to allow the new administration to receive critical briefings? Because fanatical outlets like Breitbart will do anything he tells them to.

Right now, the main story over at Breitbart is a Gavin Newsom dinner party Image
The primary posture of conservative media as Trump creates conspiracy theories and endangers the nation has been to simply talk about other stuff.

They know Trump is wrong and won't win his suits. But they won't tell their audiences this. Here's Daily Caller Image
The less reputable right wing outlets have no problem helping Trump spread his easily debunked lies and whines.

WorldNetDaily is doing that like crazy, even going so far as to call wacko Trump attorney Sidney Powell "our own Joan of Arc" Image
And for the record, while Fox News TV is not supporting Trump's ridiculous conspiracy theories about his loss, FoxNewsDotCom is just pretending they don't exist. Instead, they're trying to touch viewers on their patriotic zones. Image

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More from @mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
19 Nov
"Reach Out to Trump Supporters," today's column from @WajahatAli, is important column that illustrates the difficulty of healing political divides. There will be no single way that will work and there are many that will never change. But... nytimes.com/2020/11/19/opi…
Change will be possible for some of them. Ultimately, the biggest divide in reaching Trumpers is that they see the world in religious terms. It's a continuation of Cold War propaganda in which Godly American capitalists were opposing Satanic atheist communists.
For decades, Boomer and Silent generation Americans were subjected to this propaganda from the government and from both parties. It has had a dramatic impact on them psychically.

Which is why outreach efforts will likely never work on them.
Read 16 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
16 Nov
One of the most little-known facts about the conservative media is that there's a lot of crossover w/ media outlets that cater to racists & extremists.

Ben Shapiro provided the best example of this when he bashed "Jews in Hollywood" on a white nationalist podcast
According to Shapiro, "secular Jews" are waging a "war on Christianity"
Shapiro also told his host, racist activist Lana Lokteff, that Jewish media executives were trying to "destroy the foundations of American society" by including more minority characters in films.

washingtonmonthly.com/2019/11/22/the…
Read 12 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
10 Nov
The next few weeks will be historic in this country. You will remember them.

Plenty of people at Fox News are doing the right thing. But the far right wants Trump to go "full fash" and fulfill their decades-long fantasy.
For a number of years now, right wing donors and media figures have been begging Trump to become a dictator. And not just random nobodies.

RW elites have been coming to the opinion that capitalism must be saved from democracy.
I've written before that right wing elites are far more radical than the MSM will report. There's no better example of this point than Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder and Facebook board member.

He wrote in 2009 that women being able to vote is a threat to capitalism.
Read 23 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
8 Nov
Joe Biden's first speech since his unofficial victory struck lots of the correct notes. We need unity and healing but it must be done correctly to work. Here's the link to the video and transcript if you missed it: npr.org/sections/live-…
The most important step in healing is to understand that the Trump/GOP coalition is not monolithic. And also, he should understand that the GOP elite does not act in good faith. Their goal is to do nothing.
Mitch McConnell figured out years ago that Americans don't support conservative economic or governmental views.

So instead of trying to pass laws to make that happen, his goal was to stop laws and use courts to push his agenda. I wrote about this in 2018 salon.com/2018/02/07/mit…
Read 11 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
7 Nov
Newsmax, a cable news channel premised on the idea that Fox News is for liberals, is making a big play for Trump fans angry about his projected loss.

Making money, regardless of the effect on the country is the motivation here.
Just to continue the point here, it's obvious that Biden and Harris being projected as winners by multiple sources is obviously the biggest news of the moment right now.

But if you read right-wing websites, you get a completely different reality. Here is Daily Wire:
Here is Townhall talking about Trump lawsuits instead of him losing:
Read 13 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
7 Nov
As a former conservative activist and journalist, it has been so frustrating to see my former compatriots spreading wild and unchecked claims about "voter fraud." @jacknicas of the NYT took a deep look at claims of "dead" people in Michigan voting. Link in next tweet.
While examining claims made by right-wing activists who are not credible individuals is a thankless task which elite media editors despise, this is vital and important work in this age of fake news. Here's the link: nytimes.com/2020/11/06/tec…
As the co-creator of NewsBusters, the most prominent anti-media website, I was part of a decades-long tradition of complaining about media elites being "unfair" to conservative views. There is still much to that argument, but eventually I saw that I was missing context.
Read 32 tweets

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