trump trains
<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">why are i/we not using alt rt tag anymore?</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">maga hatters?</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/disinformation-coronavirus-and-the-2020-presidential-election/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/disinformation-coronavirus-and-the-2020-presidential-election/</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">trump trains?!</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/disinformation-coronavirus-and-the-2020-presidential-election/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/disinformation-coronavirus-and-the-2020-presidential-election/</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix twet</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The term disinformation tends to conjure up images of Twitter bot armies with thick Russian accents, but the disinformation landscape in 2020 is a lot more complex. While Russia has great expertise in roiling U.S. political waters, it isn’t the only foreign actor in the disinformation and trolling games. The Oxford Internet Institute issued a report finding “evidence of organized social media manipulation campaigns which have taken place in 70 countries, up from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017.”<b> Social media companies have removed content with disinformation campaigns originating in Saudi Arabia, China, and Iran.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iranian Facebook post targeting Americans. (Source: Facebook)</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But homegrown disinformation is a much bigger problem, starting with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and extending into a vast network of pro-Trump super PACs, right-wing media outlets, and an organized army of MAGA warriors happy to amplify every lie, false conspiracy, and misdirection online. Domestic disinformers have adopted tactics deployed by Russia and other hostile actors in 2016, optimizing them for 2020.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lessons of 2016 haven’t been lost on the legions of far-right, pro-Trump conspiracy theorists who have their own web-based video and audio shows. With the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout posing threats to Trump’s reelection, the president’s <b>online far-right boosters have taken up disinformation messaging designed to discredit the judgment of public health officials and scientists on the severity of the pandemic and the resulting COVID-19 disease.</b> For instance, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rodney Howard-Browne, a Florida megachurch pastor who convened large church services in defiance of social distancing orders, claimed that the pandemic was “planned” at a 2019 New York event hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And Rick Wiles, a religious-right broadcaster and font of anti-Semitic lies, suggested that the coronavirus emergency may have been “staged” to shut down the U.S. (Despite ample documentation of Wiles’ conspiracy-mongering and anti-Semitism, he is regularly granted press credentials by both the White House and the Trump campaign.)</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In fact, MAGA-world influencer Brenden Dilley,</b> whose YouTube channel has more than 12,000 subscribers, laid bare the MAGA disinformation playbook last year when he baldly asserted, “<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">It doesn’t have to be true; it just has to go viral</span>.” In that episode of his show, he used the example of the false claim that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was then running for the Democratic presidential nomination, had a racist knick-knack on display in her kitchen. On a more recent edition of his YouTube show, he reiterated that reasoning when explaining why he was advancing a false story about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right Wing Watch</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@RightWingWatch</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>MAGA life coach Brenden Dilley </b>praises Trump for baselessly suggesting that Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of an intern: "It doesn't matter if it's true. This is how you fight back against people who are trying to destroy you."</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">177</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11:14 AM - May 4, 2020</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">180 people are talking about this</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Trump campaign and pro-MAGA super PACs have made it clear that the old rules of politics no longer apply, and their base now largely believes in an alternative reality. The president spreads and amplifies so much disinformation on his Twitter feed that it’s nearly impossible to keep up, and GOP elected officials for the most part now follow suit. Republican operatives have built disinformation tactics into their strategies.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Campaign Facebook ad with misinformation.<b> Facebook refused to take this ad down per their policy not to fact check political ads on their platform.</b> (Source: Twitter, Judd Legum)</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Trump’s online supporters can’t merely be dismissed as bots. His online fanbase is overamplified but made up of actual individuals happy to spend considerable time and resources getting pro-MAGA messages out into the ether. Social media researcher Erin Gallagher has a fascinating piece on</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">#TrumpTrains, self-organized cells of Trump fans working in Twitter direct messaging groups to spread Trump’s rhetoric and recruit new supporters to the cause</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Gallagher was able to get a #TrumpTrain “conductor” to go on the record about</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> how the #TrumpTrains are organized, recruiting volunteers or “riders” to tweet pro-Trump content in large volume at the direction of “conductors.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Facebook groups and pages are another<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> hub</span></b> for pro-Trump disinformation. Writing for Media Matters, social media researcher Natalie Martinez details how the far-right propaganda machine operates on Facebook, “On Facebook, right-wing meme pages play a vital role in condensing and recycling far-right talking points and keeping the MAGA base engaged online. These pages regularly post extremist content, arguably violating Facebook’s hate speech content policy, and often exploit tragic events in the news cycle, images of veterans, and violent anti-immigrant rhetoric for likes and shares.” Multiple candidates running for office as Republicans have been caught participating—some as page administrators—in right-wing Facebook groups.</font></div></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></p></div>