Media Bites On Trump-Chrissy Teigen Twitter Files Spat, Ignores Bigger Issue, Matt Taibbi Says

Greg WilsonFebruary 19, 2023

Twitter journalist, sleuth, and independent Matt Taibbi Big Media was criticized for not recognizing the social media platform’s collaborations with government officials to silence Americans. However, it made headlines after a clash between former President Trump (left-wing) and a celebrity.

Taibbi is a former Rolling Stone journalist and one of the handful of new Twitter owners Elon Musk has enlisted for the airing of the secret censorship of the platform. “produced exactly zilch in mainstream news coverage in the last two months.” But hearings before the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee earlier this month revealed that Trump had sought to have a tweet posted by Chrissy Teigen Eventually, it was removed Featured coverage.

“Purely to show the bankruptcy of media in this area, let’s introduce a pair of loud new data points, and see if any press figures at all cover either of them,” Taibbi wrote his latest Thread: Twitter Files. “If a president freaking out about one tweeter is news, surely a U.S. Senator finking on three hundred-plus of his constituents also must be?”

TWITTER FILE #16
Comic Interlude: A Media Experimenthttps://t.co/Knp0UjfaMp”>pic.twitter.com/Knp0UjfaMp

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023

Taibbi revealed that Maine Senator Angus King was an Independent voter who votes with Democrats. He tried to silence criticisms of him by telling Twitter moderators they were “suspicious.” Taibbi, however, noted that King’s evidence to the accounts should be taken out involved such mundane reasons. “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “Bot (averages 20 tweets a day),” Eric Brakey, King’s rival and one that only follows him “mentions immigration.”

“If Dick Nixon sniffed glue, this is what his enemies list might have looked like,” quipped Taibbi.

Trump tweeted about Trump’s 2019 request for the Trump White House. “boring” John Legend, musician and his “filthy-mouthed” wife, Teigen. Teigen Responded A crude reply that referred to Trump’s infamous tweets “Access Hollywood” tape.

While the White House asked Twitter for Teigen’s tweet to be removed, the platform didn’t.

Taibbi also cited Mark Lenzi, a State Department official who wrote Twitter on official letterhead in an attempt to get 14 accounts skeptical of Trump-Russia collusion allegations that Special Counsel Robert Mueller later found untrue.

“The below are some Russian controlled accounts that I think you will want to look into and delete,” Lenzi wrote.

Taibbi (whose Twitter Files reports had shown Rep. Adam Schiff,(D-CA), repeatedly sought to have tweets he disagreed from taken down), said that while the press is interested only in celebrity components, it misses the larger point about systematic violations of American citizens’ First Amendment rights.

“The fact that mainstream outlets ignored the Schiff story but howled about Teigen shows what they’re about,” Taibbi wrote. “Responses like this are designed to keep blue-leaning audiences especially focused on moronic partisan spats, obscuring bigger picture narratives.”