The story behind this video that Trump promoted today from his social media guy is Alice in Wonderland stuck in a "Matrix" simulation of "Inception." I wasn't planning a thread today but let's go down the rabbit hole...
So the montage that Scavino or whoever created is based on an initiative from the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group which took place in 2018. The company made a script and forced their anchors to read it in an attempt to criticize the media for being too liberal!
Thus it's the height of Orwellian propaganda for Trump & Scavino to use the clip to attack legit reporters for criticizing his dangerous attempts to undermine America's election system. For a background on the clips, see this from my friend @SophiaTesfaye salon.com/2018/04/01/sin…
Here's more info on the script: nytimes.com/2018/04/02/bus…
The irony of using this video to criticize the media for supposedly being left-wing fake news is *even worse* when you consider that Sinclair, a conservative local TV station owner, was fined in 2017 for airing advertising as actual news salon.com/2017/12/22/sin…
And furthermore, Trump himself has been a great friend to Sinclair. His administration officials have met secretly with its executives as they sought to make it easier to buy TV stations. salon.com/2018/02/16/fcc…
Trump personally has talked up about how much he loves Sinclair wants to help them make local news more conservative.

He's talked about it three different times: twitter.com/search?q=from%…
Beyond airing ads as news programming, Sinclair has also for years forced its stations to air entire shows that are intensely biased toward Republicans. It's currently doing this right now: mediamatters.org/search?search=…
I don't think you could find a more perfect example of how Trump and his acolytes distort the truth while also having no idea what they're talking about than this ridiculous Sinclair mashup. It is the apotheosis of right-wing information coprophagia.
Also, the montage that Scavino tweeted was originally created by @bubbaprog as a CRITICISM of Sinclair. The @Deadspin watermark is still on the video.

Since then, however, the clip has acquired the literal opposite meaning via QAnon and Gateway Pundit
In summary: 1) Sinclair forced its anchors to make rw propaganda, 2) It was criticized via a humorous/scary montage, 3) Trump defended Sinclair after clip was made, 4) Far right media stupidly thought the video had the opposite meaning, 5) Trump/Scavino shat out the turdburger.

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More from @mattsheffield

29 Nov
It's widely believed that Israel was behind the killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This action fits with the aims of Netanyahu, a close Trump ally who fears greatly a return to the prior Iranian nuke deal & would love to box in Biden. But it could be even more...
It's notable that the killing of Fakhrizadeh took place right around the time that Trump pardoned his ex NSA and staunch Muslim hater, Michael Flynn, who was arrested for lying about backchannel diplomacy before Trump took office in 2017. Could this be a trap for Biden?
The GOP is favored to retain control of the Senate after the GA runoffs, which could give the party a position to investigate Biden's administration for what it does with Iran right now.

Iran is probably going to be the next Benghazi.
Read 7 tweets
25 Nov
Conservatives love to complain that everyone is against them: professors, journalists, intelligence officers, social media companies, and so on.

I used to as well until I considered that maybe having problems with everyone else isn't their fault, it's yours.
I was reminded of that realization when I read this important NYT article about how Facebook keeps weakening news source quality controls because conservative content gets disproportionately effected by them. nytimes.com/2020/11/24/tec…
Unfortunately, this great piece of reporting by @MikeIsaac, @sheeraf, & @kevinroose didn't mention the greatest challenge in AI news signal processing: Humans can barely separate conservative & far-right content. Which means computers can't either.
Read 17 tweets
23 Nov
Townhall, one of the top supposedly mainstream conservative websites, is running an article claiming that Trump could've gotten 100 million votes, were it not for Dominion and the evil media.

This mentality is why it took so long to rein in Sidney Powell. Image
We'll see if it sticks, but the Sidney Powell distancing is actually the best indicator for a way forward against insane right wing media: tougher defamation laws.

A revived Fairness Doctrine will fail in court but better defamation laws will not. Powell's charges are slander.
Despite his raging about "fake news media" reports, Trump has actually been the biggest beneficiary of the US's laxer laws about defamation.

Far right media benefits from this even more. Public figures currently don't have many protections that private ppl do.
Read 6 tweets
20 Nov
Conservative media outlets utterly set the agenda for their audience. Trump keeps losing his ridiculous suits and is now trying to pressure state officials to throw voters' wishes away. So naturally, rw media is just ignoring the story. Here's Townhall: Image
Over at Fox News, for the second day in a row, Gavin Newsom is the lead story of the day Image
At Breitbart, Barack Obama is the lead story Image
Read 6 tweets
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 17 tweets
18 Nov
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
Read 4 tweets

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