Ford Motor Co. Goes After Elon Musk in Bizarre New Ad

Bob Hoge reporting for RedState 

One would think that after Disney’s disastrous foray into the nation’s political controversies, companies would have learned their lesson. For a moment, it looked like they might have, as many major corporations declined to weigh in on the leaked SCOTUS opinion on abortion. Not the Ford Motor Company, however, which on May 1 released a new ad trashing Tesla founder and future Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Although the ad doesn’t reference Musk directly, it’s quite clear who Ford is referring to. A righteous-sounding narrator intones:

Right now it could seem like the only people who matter are the loudest. Those who want to tear things down and then fly away on their personal spaceships when things get hard. But we’ve got 182,000 people and they’re building.

The ad is available on YouTube now, but will first hit the national airwaves during this weekend’s Kentucky Derby, according to tech news site Gizmodo.

What’s odd about the commercial is that Elon Musk isn’t known for tearing things down; he’s known for building them. He founded Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the company X.com, which later became PayPal. His record of achievement is unparalleled, and he is currently the richest man in the world. Tesla is by far the most successful electric vehicle manufacturer, accounting for a whopping 75 percent of the US market so far in 2022.

By contrast, Ford‘s take was only 2.5 percent, and the company reportedly lost $3.1 billion in the first quarter of this year. Hardly a strong position from which to be taking potshots.

It’s unclear why Ford thinks now is a good time to go after Musk. After all, we’ve seen other disastrous marketing campaigns, including Gillette’s insane attempt to sell their razors by tying all men into the #metoo movement and questioning “toxic masculinity”:

Note to marketing department: know your audience. “The Best a Man Can Get” was actually a pretty good campaign; the “Best a Man Can Be” by contrast was one of the all-time worst.

The ad was roundly criticized, and Gillette promptly lost $8 billion. Gillette’ s parent company Procter & Gamble (P&G) blamed the loss on currency fluctuations and “market contraction.” (We believe you, P&G.)

Reaction to the new Ford commercial so far seems to be mostly negative. Here are some sample comments from the YouTube page airing the ad: 

• I was 3 weeks from buying a new Bronco… Elon Musk seems like a good man, maybe I’m wrong.
• This ad does not lift up your builders. Ford can do great things without attacking someone else. I’ve driven an F150 for years and I do NOT like the negative nature of this ad. In America all ideas are welcome. Competition is good.
• I own two newer Fords (New Ranger and Newer Escape EV)and this ad is very disappointing – why attack another great US innovator? If it wasn’t for Elon, Ford probably wouldn’t be making their so/so quality EV’s. This ad actually makes me want to buy a Tesla to support Elon. Ford, you can do better – please reconsider this ad. You can’t make positive vibes for your products by negatively attacking others for their success! Maybe create an Ad noting that you are building on Tesla technology with your own? Stand on his shoulders vs. kicking him in the knees! Very poor choice – probably the last Fords I will own if this keeps up. Very disappointed.
• Attacking another innovator is not the way to make your business look good…Coming from a family of ford owners. I’m not happy with the tone of this ad.
• Thank you for this ad. You are showing you are “woke” which has simplified my life. I will NEVER buy ANY Ford product again.

It’s hard to imagine what Ford hopes to gain from this ad. Are they going after Musk because he’s buying Twitter, and the wokesters are upset? There are many criticizing Musk right now, but there are also many fans. Ford just told those fans to take a hike. Or maybe they’re simply jealous that Tesla is kicking their behinds in the EV market?

Disney and Gillette found out the hard way that when you go woke, you go broke. This new Ford ad hasn’t yet brought the same level of controversy (as I noted, it officially airs this weekend), but I doubt it will bring Ford any new customers either. I drive a Ford Explorer, and when it’s time to trade it in… I’m certainly now going to think twice.

What the Left Hates Most

It should be obvious to all of us by now, if we want to “save democracy,” we need more free speech to uncover the truth, not less.

by Albin Sadar for American Greatness

When I graduated from college in the mid-1970s with a degree in speech, theater, and communication, I remember telling a friend that I thought the one thing liberals hated most was free speech.

Now, some 45 years later, we’re all finding out that the Left has gone far beyond just hating free speech to an unabashed hatred of “truth” itself.

Of course, there are some who might say, along with Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” But that’s the very point of free speech.

The worthwhile and educational idea of debate clubs, popular when I was in high school and college, was that a student or a team of students would take one side of an issue—say, “The First Amendment is essential to true freedom in America”—and another student or group would argue for the opposite idea i.e., that freedom can exist, and even thrive and expand far better without free speech.

If we heard both sides of a propostion, the argument went, we could decide for ourselves which proposal was the better of the two—or even if one was outright destructive. 

But, just as those on the Left have ended the debate on global warming, calling it “settled science,” the debate on anything at all is now considered “settled,” and if you even attempt to disagree, you will be canceled and shamed into silence. And eventually, if you continue to persist in challenging the official state narrative, something worse may be coming your way.

It’s not without coincidence that the new Disinformation Governance Board under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security has come into existence just days before the release of the powerful new evidence-soaked film, “2,000 Mules,” produced by the Salem Media Group. 

Building upon research by General Mike Flynn and Patrick Byrne at AmericaProject.com, “2,000 Mules” provides GPS cell phone data and security camera footage of “mules” in the act of stuffing ballot boxes in the wee hours of multiple mornings. And not just a few dozen ballots here, a few dozen there. We’re talking about thousands upon thousands, amounting to hundreds of thousands of ballots across the crucial swing states during the 2020 election.

These facts that focus on the legitimacy of the 2020 election need to finally be examined in the light of day, with no more squelching of viewpoints opposing the current, questionably legitimate administration’s “settled” view of things. 

The Left has told us that 2020 was “the most secure election in history.” They should be very confident in winning a debate about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. I mean, weren’t we told by the press on an almost-daily basis that it was Trump who suppressed freedom of the press during his administration? So, by that logic, this all-new Ministry of Truth sounds more like a Trump idea than the work of the pure and righteous Democratic Party. 

Or is the opposite true? Has the Left been labeling as “anti-democracy” those who disagree with them, by using democracy-killing tactics?

Imagine that. The same group of lefties that lied about the efficacy of masks and vaccine treatments to combat COVID, who lied about the authenticity of Hunter Binden’s laptop, who lied about Donald Trump’s Russia connection, this same group of bold-faced liars also lied about the 2020 election?

It should be obvious to all of us by now, if we want to “save democracy,” we need more free speech to uncover the truth, not less.

X22, And we Know, and more- May 5

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

Losing the People? Then Change the Rules ~ VDH

The Left sees success only through altering the rules of governance or changing the demography of the electorate—or both.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Court packing—the attempt to enlarge the size of the Supreme Court for short-term political purposes—used to be a dirty word in the history of American jurisprudence. 

The tradition of a nine-person Supreme Court is now 153 years old. The last attempt to expand it for political gain was President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed effort in 1937. FDR’s gambit was so blatantly political that even his overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress rebuffed him. 

Yet now “court packing” is a law school cause célèbre. It is hailed as a supposedly quick fix to reverse the current 5-4 conservative majority. 

Recently, a rough draft of an opinion purportedly overturning the Roe v. Wadedecision that had legalized abortion in all 50 states was leaked to the media by someone inside the court. 

That insider leak of a draft opinion was a first in the modern history of the Supreme Court. It violated all court protocols. Yet it was met with stunning approval from the American Left. 

The leaker either intended to create a preemptive public backlash against the purported court majority in the hope that one or two justices might cave and switch under pressure—or to gin up the progressive base to fend off a likely disaster in the November midterm elections.   

The recent leak, however, is consistent with a left-wing assault on the Court that has intensified over the last five years. Democrats have gone ballistic ever since George W. Bush and especially Donald Trump’s appointees solidified a conservative majority. 

During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018, protestors stormed the Senate chambers in protest. The Left rallied behind the now-convicted felon Michael Avenatti, who publicized crazy, wildly untrue charges about a teenaged Kavanagh. 

Later in spring 2020, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) whipped up a protest crowd right in front of the Supreme Court. He directly threatened Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”  

What exactly did Schumer mean by “you will pay the price” or “you won’t know what hit you”? 

Who or what would hit the two justices—and how exactly? 

But it is not just the Court the Left is targeting. Long-standing institutions and even constitutional directives are now fair game. 

At the 2020 funeral of Representative John Lewis (D-Ga.), former President Barack Obama crudely proposed bringing in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. as states—and with them likely four left-wing senators. 

Obama’s “eulogy” also damned the 180-year-old Senate filibuster. Yet as a senator, Obama himself resorted to the filibuster in an effort to block the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. 

The Electoral College is under continued assault, especially since George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 were elected without winning the popular vote. 

The founders’ arguments for the Electoral College are never mentioned. But the drafters of the Constitution felt it forced candidates to visit rural areas. They believed it would discourage  European-style multiple splinter parties. It made voter fraud more difficult on a national scale. And it emphasized the United States of America. That is, America today is 50 unique states that are represented as such in presidential elections. 

The Biden Administration also narrowly failed to push through a national voting law. Such legislation would have superseded the states’ constitutional rights to set most of their own balloting protocols in national elections. 

So what is behind leaking Supreme Court drafts of impending opinions, or seeking to pack the Supreme Court with 15 justices, or ending the Senate filibuster, or adding two more states to the 60-year-old, 50-state union, or curtailing states’ rights to set their own balloting procedures, or trashing the Constitution’s Electoral College? 

The answer to those questions also applies to Joe Biden’s promise to cancel millions of contracted federally guaranteed student loans simply by a pre-midterm election executive fiat. 

And how can Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas openly negate federal immigration law? How can he welcome millions to cross illegally the southern border? 

The answers are obvious. 

The hard Left has detoured from the mainstream of American voters onto a radical trajectory. So it will never find 51 percent public approval for any of its current extremist and crackpot initiatives. 

Instead, it sees success only through altering the rules of governance or changing the demography of the electorate—or both. 

Still, leftists should be careful about what they wish for. 

Latinos are historically transforming en masse into conservative voters. 

Leftists are also greenlighting powerful precedents for the next Republican president. He may follow their lead by simply changing any rules, laws, customs, and traditions anytime he deems them inconvenient.

Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board Is a Threat to Homeland Security

Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board Is a Threat to Homeland Security

Chris Talgo- The Heartland InstituteMay 04, 2022 3:00 PM ET

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government created a new Cabinet-level department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), tasked with the mission of “With honor and integrity, we will safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our values.”

One would assume that among the values DHS would safeguard would be Americans’ fundamental right to freedom of speech, seeing as how it is integral to the American experiment.

Yet, almost 20 years after its creation, it seems as if the Department of Homeland Security is not as concerned with safeguarding the American people and our values as it is with censoring the American people and running roughshod over our values via the creation of the Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board.

On May 2, DHS released a Fact Sheet titled “DHS Internal Working Group Protects Free Speech and Other Fundamental Rights When Addressing Disinformation That Threatens the Security of the United States.”

Per the Fact Sheet:

“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is charged with safeguarding the United States against threats to its security, including threats exacerbated by disinformation … Disinformation, which is false information that is deliberately spread with the intent to deceive or mislead, can take many forms … The Department is deeply committed to doing all of its work in a way that protects Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy. In fact, the Disinformation Governance Board is an internal working group that was established with the explicit goal of ensuring these protections are appropriately incorporated across DHS’s disinformation-related work and that rigorous safeguards are in place. The working group also seeks to coordinate the Department’s engagements on this subject with other federal agencies and a diverse range of external stakeholders.”

Pardon me, but I think that statement should be taken with a giant grain of salt.

First, the DHS has a very sketchy record of “safeguarding” Americans’ privacy. As the American Civil Liberties Union has documented, “DHS intelligence analysts have unfairly targeted non-violent protest groups from all sides of the political spectrum for scrutiny over the last several years with inappropriate and factually flawed intelligence products.”

Second, “disinformation” is totally subjective and should not be regulated by the government whatsoever, let alone by the Department of Homeland Security, which already has its hands full given that terrorists, who present an actual threat to the homeland, are traversing our wide-open Southern border willy-nilly.

Third, the person in charge of running DHS’ Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, has quite the sordid history of disseminating disinformation herself. For example, Jankowicz was certain that the Hunter Biden laptop story was “Russian disinformation.” However, we now know that is not the case.

Moreover, Jankowicz is on record as opposing free speech on social media platforms, especially after Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter. According to Jankowicz, “I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities.” In a nutshell, that would look like the First Amendment in action.

Surely, there are many more reasons to be wary of DHS’ Disinformation Governance Board, especially since almost every government department eventually experiences some degree of mission creep. Instead of censoring Americans under the banner of “disinformation,” DHS should stick to its original mission of preventing terrorist attacks on the homeland and other calamities.

Joe Biden, “This MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history”

The democrat narrative for 2022 is from the exact same playbook used against the Tea Party in 2011/2012.  Weaponizing the J6 committee to frame the construct this year, democrats are back to the playbook of calling their opposition “extremists.”

After resounding MAGA candidates won all the contested primary elections Tuesday, Joe Biden takes to the microphones yesterday and says:

…”this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history.”

WATCH (prompted):

[Transcript of Remarks]

No, It’s Not thé Putin Price Hike, …

No, It's Not the Putin Price Hike, 

No Matter What Joe Biden Claims

William L. Anderson - Mises.org 

Politicians love their buzzwords and talking points, and the Joe Biden White House and the Democratic Party use them as much or more than when Donald Trump and the Republicans ran Washington’s freak show. Last year, the mantra from the Biden administration was that inflation was “transitory,” meaning that the inflation would not last long. From Biden (when he could remember what his talking points were supposed to be) to Paul Krugman in the New York Times, the faithful repeated the newest word of life: “Transitory.”

As the hard reality has set in that this inflation will not be going away any time soon, we have new talking points and buzzwords from the house of Biden and his political allies, the renaming of inflation itself. No longer do the faithful dutifully repeat “transitory” when asked about skyrocketing consumer and producer prices; today the holy writ is “Putin’s price hike.”

Americans can be assured that inflation is the result of an unholy alliance between Vladimir Putin and American energy companies, claim the Biden administration and its supporters. How do we know this? We have it from the highest authorities of truth, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve.

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Warren informs her readers that all that is needed to control inflation is some tough talk from Biden along with a new regime of price controls. She writes:

We can also act quickly to rein in costs for middle-class families. In the very short term, that means stopping companies from jacking up prices to boost their profits. Price increases are driven by many factors, including pandemic disruptions to global supply chains and Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. But when the Kroger chief executive, Rodney McMullen, said “a little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” it is no surprise that, by a margin of two-to-one, American voters don’t buy the explanation that companies are just passing along costs. Instead, they blame corporations for raising prices to boost their own profits. Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell, a conservative Republican, acknowledged that giant corporations raise prices simply “because they can.”

Elsewhere, Warren claims that the answer for lower prices lies in enforcement of antitrust laws, echoing Joe Biden’s recent claim that our economy suddenly has become a nest of price-gouging monopolies. Warren goes on to say:

Congress should pass laws to reinvigorate competition and three quarters (of American voters) strongly believe that oil and gas companies should not make gobs of money off this energy crisis. Beefing up regulators’ authority to end price-gouging, breaking up monopolies, and passing a windfall profits tax is a good start.

To read Warren, one would have to believe that the Federal Reserve’s policies of pumping trillions of dollars directly into the hands of consumers to offset the covid lockdowns and restrictions really had nothing to do with what we are seeing now. Instead, we are expected to believe that suddenly (and for absolutely no reason whatsoever) greedy capitalists started to raise prices because they wanted higher profits. Even though they had not raised prices when Trump was president (even though Trump himself was a greedy capitalist who would not hesitate to raise prices), they decided to pounce when a hostile regime took over the federal government.

Interestingly, neither Biden nor Warren is willing to lay the blame on Powell and even the Trump administration despite the fact that both men have played a huge role in the inflationary chaos we currently are experiencing. They have chosen, instead, to blame private enterprise and call for the kinds of price control regimes that even the Jimmy Carter regime refused to implement even though the official inflation numbers under Carter were higher than they are today. In the three graphs below, it is not hard to observe the culprit: a huge spike in the money supply, all underwritten by the Fed, which went on an asset-buying spree to finance the unholy mess.

The second and third graphs show the growth of the Fed balance sheet, and one can see that, like the spike in money growth, the balance sheet exploded during the covid lockdowns and is still metastasizing to the point where Fed asset purchases are consisting of about 40 percent of US gross domestic product. Jeff Deist explains what happened:

First, consider the two covid stimulus bills passed by Congress in 2020 and 2021. These pumped more than $5 trillion directly into the economy in the form of payments to government, payments to households, unemployment benefits, employer payroll loans, cash subsides to airlines and countless other industries, and a host of grab-bag earmarks which had nothing to do with covid. This new money injected itself straight into the veins of the daily economy.

Second, supply chains remain degraded because politicians around the world didn’t think through their lockdown policies. The deeply interconnected global economy does not have an ON/OFF switch. Idle resources and idle workers don’t simply spring to life and produce goods and services on command. But our policy makers have no conception of a structure of production, its temporal elements, or the ravages of malinvestment created by their political decision to shutter businesses.

Third, covid allowed the Fed to justify yet another spasm of “extraordinary” monetary policies beginning in March 2020. This gave central bankers an easy out, in a sense, because real trouble was already on the horizon back in September 2019. The repo market, which commercial banks use for short-term (overnight) financing of their operations, suddenly seized up and sent rates spiking. These paroxysms embarrassingly forced the Fed to inject billions of dollars into its “standing” (i.e., permanent) repurchase facility and to consider yet another round of QE (asset buying) even after it had promised to shrink its balance sheet, still bloated with the detritus of the 2007 crisis. 

When one understands the extent of the economic intervention of both the Fed and governments at all levels in the past two years, the real question one should ask is not why we are having inflation, but rather why prices have not risen further. Moreover, ever since September 2008 (as is clear from the second and third graphs), the Fed has gone on an unsustainable buying binge that has propped up the mortgage markets, repos, and long-term government bonds (Operation Twist).

One must emphasize that the economy simply cannot absorb the dollars that the Fed has flushed into it. Furthermore, despite what the so-called ruling classes are telling us, stuffing dollars into the hands of people who lost their jobs due to wrong-headed covid lockdowns and production restrictions and paying other people not to work are not a perfect substitute for producing real goods and services.

Even if Putin were to call off the Ukraine invasion and agree to sell Russia’s oil and natural gas at steep discounts, the current consumer price increases in the USA would remain near unchanged. While no doubt the invasion has affected current gasoline and oil prices (and European natural gas prices), it has been irrelevant in the overall inflation picture in this country.

Biden and the ruling classes never will admit to such a state of affairs, and we can be sure that Krugman, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other mainstream journalism outfits will blame Putin, climate change, corporate profits, and whatever else crosses their paths. Meanwhile, the Fed will continue its unsustainable practices and everyone else will watch inflation erode their personal assets.

Democrats Are Pressuring YouTube To Censor Spanish-Language ‘Disinformation’ Ahead Of Midterms

Congressional Democrats are pressuring YouTube to increase censorship of Spanish-language content they deem disinformation in a bid to influence Hispanic voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist

Congressional Democrats are pressuring YouTube to increase censorship of Spanish-language content they deem disinformation in a bid to influence Hispanic voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Last week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), which is comprised of all Democrats, held a meeting with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki to “discuss the urgency of addressing Spanish language dis/misinformation, content moderation, and YouTube’s initiatives and policies addressing dis/misinformation,” with the group arguing that “[a]ddressing the rampant spread of Spanish-language dis/misinformation remains an urgent priority for the CHC as Hispanics across the country increasingly turn to social media for vital information.”

“We appreciate Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, for meeting with CHC Members today to answer our concerns on Spanish-language dis/misinformation,” CHC chair and California Democrat Rep. Raul Ruiz said in a press release. “Lies cost lives, and the CHC continues to call for strengthened oversight and to push social media companies to bolster their infrastructure to combat dis/misinformation on their platforms.”

Illinois Democrat Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García echoed similar sentiments, saying that “[t]he spread of misinformation remains an existential, urgent threat to democracy” and that “social media platforms like YouTube must be included in efforts to prevent the spread of lies and distortion of the truth.”

As a result of the meeting, YouTube has purportedly agreed to take significant action. According to CHC member and New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Wojcicki allegedly “committed to releasing core internal accountability metrics at YouTube,” which includes the company’s “Violative View Rate, for Spanish-language content.” VVR is a metric utilized by YouTube to assist the company in determining “what percentage of views” come from “content that violates [their] policies.”

Google did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment on what specific actions YouTube plans to take on the matter.

In a statement provided to The Washington Post, however, YouTube spokeswoman Elena Hernandez confirmed that the Big Tech platform “had a productive meeting” with the caucus, “where [they] shared the work [they] do at YouTube to combat harmful misinformation in Spanish.”

Other Big Tech companies slated to meet with the CHC about “Spanish disinformation” in the coming months include Twitter, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), and TikTok, according to the Post.

YouTube has routinely censored scientific facts it considers to be “disinformation,” with Covid-19 being a prime example. In Sept. 2020, for instance, the video streaming platform removed a 50-minute interview of Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist and former coronavirus task force member under the Trump administration, in which he argued that the risk of children spreading the virus is “not impossible, but it’s less likely” than adults. Such a claim was scientifically well-supported, with a study from the American Academy of Pediatrics proving so as early as August 1, 2020.

“YouTube does not allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts the World Health Organization (WHO) or local health authorities’ medical information about COVID-19,” a statement from the company said.

The pressure campaign by congressional Democrats to increase censorship of Spanish-language content comes amid disastrous poll numbers for the ruling party ahead of the 2022 midterms, which show Democrats bleeding support among Hispanic voters.

As documented in a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, if the 2022 midterms were held today, 52 percent of Latino voters said they would cast their ballot for the Republican candidate, compared to 39 percent who said they would vote for the Democrat. Moreover, the same poll found President Joe Biden’s approval rating with Hispanics underwater by 15 points, with 40 percent approving of his performance as president and 55 percent disapproving.

Similar numbers were also found in a March poll from The Wall Street Journal, which found Hispanic voters opting for the “Republican candidate over a Democrat by 9 percentage points on the generic congressional ballot.”

While Democrats have routinely censored and labeled facts they disagree with as “disinformation” for years, the advocation for governmental involvement in the sphere of public discussion has notably increased under the Biden administration. Most recently, the White House announced the establishment of a Disinformation Governance Board, whose objective is “to crack down on what it considers to be online disinformation.” 

Set to head the board is a woman named Nina Jankowicz, who in October 2020 insinuated that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian misinformation.

“Back on the ‘laptop from hell,’ apparently- Biden notes 50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op,” she wrote in a tweet. “Trump says ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.'”

Other disqualifying actions taken by Jankowicz include the spreading of “misleading claims about the Christopher Steele dossier” and seemingly voicing support for “contextualizing speech into a law enforcement frame.”

 

Article by Abby Liebing in The Western Journal

Elon Musk Sets His Sights on Groups Backed by Soros and Clinton Operatives: 'Let's Investigate'

With Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, there has been a call for major brands to boycott the company if Musk goes through with his plan to end content policies, which are supposedly meant to limit hate speech and misinformation.

But when Musk became aware of this call for a boycott, he tweeted that he wants to investigate who is behind the idea.

 

Who funds these organizations that want to control your access to information? Let’s investigate …https://t.co/dBFsGjOMC8

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 3, 2022

 

In a letter sent to major brands, like Coca-Cola, Disney, Kraft and others, more than 20 civil society groups said that marketers should secure commitments from Twitter that the social media platform will keep its policies on civic integrity and hateful conduct on the platform, CNN reported.

These civil society groups said that if Twitter refuses to do so, the brands should pull funding and advertisement money from the platform.

“As top advertisers on Twitter, your brand risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, health misinformation and conspiracy theorists,” the letter said.

“Your ad dollars can either fund Musk’s vanity project or hold him to account,” the letter added.

Twitter told advertisers in an investor filing on May 2 that “we have no planned changes to our commitment to brand safety” but that the company “cannot speculate on changes Elon Musk may make post closing.”

Musk, however, began tweeting that he wants to find out who exactly is behind this boycott movement.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” the billionaire tweeted.

When one Twitter user suggested that an organization related to George Soros will likely be one of the groups behind the boycott, Musk replied, “I will call him and ask.” 

 

Few names will sure come up, like Open Source Foundation, George Soros amongst others

— Prabhat Chaturvedi (@PrabChats) May 3, 2022

 

 

Related:

Elon Musk Sends a Warning from the Met Gala: 'I'm Definitely on the Warpath'

Musk then tweeted again, “George, please slide into my DMs!”

The New York Post reported that the organizations behind the letter are also backed by “former Clinton operatives,” the European Union and the Canadian government.

“Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized,” the letter said.

They also warned that Musk will turn Twitter into a place for disinformation to thrive.

“Under Musk’s management, Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformation, with your brand attached, polluting our information ecosystem in a time where trust in institutions and news media is already at an all-time low,” the letter said.

Musk has been vocal throughout his process of buying Twitter that he wants to make changes to the platform and promote free speech.

In a statement after officially buying the social media giant, Musk said that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” NPR reported.

The billionaire also said that Twitter has “tremendous potential” he can’t wait to unlock, CNBC reported.

But clearly, not everyone is thrilled about how Musk may go about unlocking Twitter’s potential. It remains to be seen how major brands will respond to changes on the platform and what they will do about their advertising on the platform.

 

https://www.westernjournal.com/elon-musk-sets-sights-groups-backed-soros-clinton-operatives-investigate/ 

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Putin sorry for Lavrov's claim Hitler was part Jewish - Israel PM

 

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has apologised after his foreign minister said that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had "Jewish blood", Israel says.

Mr Putin made the apology in a call with Israeli PM Naftali Bennett, his office said in a statement.

Russia's account of the conversation did not mention an apology.

Sergei Lavrov made the initial comments to try to justify Russia's portrayal of Ukraine as "Nazi" despite the fact that its president is Jewish.

Mr Lavrov spoke to Italian TV on Sunday, days after Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day - one of the most solemn occasions in the Israeli calendar.

When asked how Russia can claim that it is fighting to "de-Nazify" Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish, Mr Lavrov said: "I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews."

The comments sparked outrage in Israel. Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust in World War Two.  

Israel had demanded an apology, with Mr Bennett saying shortly after that "such lies are meant to blame the Jews themselves for the most terrible crimes in history and thus free the oppressors of the Jews from their responsibility".

In Thursday's statement, Mr Bennett's office said that he had accepted Mr Putin's apology and "thanked him for clarifying his attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust".

Russia said the two discussed the Holocaust, but did not say Mr Putin apologised.

According to a Kremlin read-out, Mr Putin said that he was confident that Russian-Israeli relations based on the principles of "friendship and mutual respect" would continue to develop.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61339749