Posted on 04/29/2022 6:44:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
The announcement that Twitter’s Board of Directors accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter immediately sent shockwaves through leftist circles, but beyond the burst of satisfaction that right-wing Americans feel at dime-a-dozen pink-haired freakout sessions is their deep schadenfreude at the suffering of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has colluded with Big Tech and the mainstream media for years.
A politician’s actions should speak louder than his words, but it’s often laudatory mainstream media headlines that ring loudest. Senator Schumer has long enjoyed the benefit of a gaslighting, preferential press. They’ve particularly covered up his recent (successful) efforts to stall reform bills at the behest of his Big Tech masters.
We should hope that Musk’s surprise purchase of Twitter disrupts not only Big Tech but also its collusion with cronies like Schumer, whom the media, often itself influenced by Big Tech, ardently protects.
Too cynical? Maybe the 71-year-old New York Democrat is just super hip when it comes to technology. How else would we explain Big Tech’s hiring so many of his relatives or dumping nearly half-a-million dollars in donations to him since 2010? More on all that in a moment.
Media coverage, even from supposedly (or perhaps formerly, given the circumstances of the departure of its founder Glenn Greenwald) contrarian sources like The Intercept, of Schumer’s political games, should be called out first.
Look at the Intercept’s headline from Friday: Chuck Schumer “Working Closely With Senator Klobuchar” to Whip Votes For Antitrust Bills.
The Intercept hides cowardly behind quotation marks, but its already tarnished credibility is clearly for sale somewhere in its editing team. The truth is that Schumer would rather a floor vote on legislation reining in Big Tech never take place, no matter what his two-faced spokespeople instruct the media to print.
As the top Democrat in Congress, Schumer has wielded his power to forbid both the Open Apps Market Act and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act from getting Senate floor votes until he has a guarantee of 60 votes to pass them, according to TIME.
Plausible deniability is the game being played here; he situation Schumer has crafted lends senators an excuse to remain neutral or otherwise give a pretense that they are still studying an issue that is of paramount interest to their constituents until time runs out. Congress takes a vacation in August, and then it’s just running out the clock until the November midterm election.
And the reason why Schumer won’t force a floor vote on Big Tech regulation is obvious to anyone who’s followed mainstream reporting on the political environment surrounding this proposed legislation.
Sure, a keen reader must sift through the lies, like this one from Schumer in March to Politico:
“When we can be bipartisan, we will. But we’re not going to shy away from things that are important that Republicans won’t go for,” Schumer said. “And will there be some votes on the floor where we may not win, but at least we will see where each member stands on important issues, important to the American people? That will happen.”
That won’t happen.
Schumer won’t let it happen because, as the Washington Post reported in 2014, he is “the closest” and a “quiet but reliable Washington ally” to Big Tech. Politico echoed this in 2015, calling Schumer a “longtime Apple ally.” In 2018, the New York Post reported that Schumer had been “a strong advocate for Facebook.”
Coverage of current events reaffirms all those characterizations.
It is important to pass the Open App Markets Act, which among other things, keeps app stores with more than 50 million American users from requiring developers to use that platform’s payment system. Both it and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act have already been passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee this year.
Even as early as that 2014 WaPo article, mainstream media noted that Schumer had to “tread delicately” with Silicon Valley due to his “family connections to the industry.”
As recently as January of this year, Schumer’s daughter Jessica was an Amazon lobbyist. From 2017 to 2019, his son-in-law, Michael Shapiro, worked at Google’s Sidewalk Labs. In 2013, another daughter, Alison, was on Instagram’s Policy and Communication team before becoming a Product Marketing Manager at Facebook. She’d also previously worked for Airbnb, where she fought against regulation by communities that short-term renters decimated.
Since 2010, Big Tech companies and their employees have donated $487,085 to Schumer. Now that Musk is reforming Twitter, a major competitor and narrative shaper for the rest of Big Tech, will lining the pockets of Schumer and his political ilk still be worth it in another 12 years?
Schumer must also fear that Musk’s takeover will cost him politically as freedom of speech returns.
Just four years ago, Schumer told Vox, “Tech gives us [Democrats] the advantage. We don’t have a Fox News. We don’t have Rush Limbaugh, who gets 20 million people a day. It’s our antidote.”
Twitter will soon no longer be the antidote Schumer desires and the arms-length censorship hammer he needs. And the sort of collusion that so benefited the legacy social-media-political complex may soon be unworkable if interests fray under pressure from the fresh competition that Musk brings.
Watch Schumer carefully in the days, weeks, and months ahead. Will he outright attack Musk? Will he attempt to rally his Big Tech supporters against Twitter? The news of the day points to a brighter future for the internet, but never question the intensity and hatred of well-organized and well-heeled opponents of free speech.
Musk did something great, but even he won’t be able to take on all the opponents of the Big Tech censorship corps without a reinvigorated public prepared to vocalize the beliefs that made so many pinkos shudder at the Musk-Twitter announcement.
Come on mannnnn. Cuck chuck’s been a loser for decades.
There is no guarantee that Musk will buy Twitter. This may just be a billion dollar troll.
You’re right.
I’m sure there’s a lot of due diligence verbiage in the contract.
Tweater’s fake numbers on users could well nuke the deal.
“beyond the burst of satisfaction that right-wing Americans feel at dime-a-dozen pink-haired freakout sessions”
Admittedly, they are enjoyable.
No, it's your ticket to cheat..."Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything,"...the temporary fix until 3rd world inflow provides enough of a REAL electoral cushion.
...Fox News took a left turn even before election 2020, Rush is gone and there's no one replacing him anytime soon(if ever...different era influencer).
Dem's biggest advantage is they OWN the means of propaganda/brain-washing(new/old media, academia)and have an endless stream of finance...from enemies of "the Republic", both foreign and domestic.
Where were/are OUR cries for "affirmative action/justice"?
The only way THEIR power fortunes change is if everything, and I mean EVERYTHING goes to sh t under their watch.
People will stop buying the gruel they've been fed(by all institutions)when they own NOTHING...(and NOT "be happy")
...unfortunately by then "the pee-pole" will have no one to blame but themselves, for trusting cretins(from media/academia...and either side of the political spectrum).
If Musk's purchase of Twitter also causes suffering for Schumer, that's just another bonus.
Gawd, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, and the WaPo and the LAT are just not enough?!
.
“Rush is gone and there’s no one replacing him anytime soon...”
Basically Joe Rogan is the new Rush, in terms of influence with the public outside of the mainstream media control, even though he is not politically the equivalent of Rush.
But, his perceived political neutrality may actually help him reach a wider audience while he lets his guests make the political arguments themselves, free of censorship. It’s a very different model than Rush’s show, but I think it is still having a similar effect on the general public. I know a lot of Gen X and millennials who are not strictly conservative and who would never have listened to Rush, but they listen to Rogan and they have adopted a lot of right wing ideas from his guests.
Thought his offer was accepted.
IF Twitter has been faking subscribers-—an audit should show that.
Musk could still buy-—but at a reduced price.
Yes these deals have thousands of pages of due diligence clauses. Lawyers get paid by the hour LOL.
Schumer is even slimier on the snake scale than Harry Reid was, as hard as it is to imagine that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.