At 6:11 on Saturday, July 13, a bullet hit President Trump in the ear, only missing his brain by some 2 cm. Tragically, retired firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed and two other rally-goers were wounded. A couple of hours after the shooting I checked Twitter, now known as X, because I have realized it is no longer just a social media channel but rather a full-blown news source. (And for stories that are misleading or false, Twitter/X has robust “Community Notes” where contributors can add context or correct errors. On August 6 Elon Musk described it this way: “The same is not true for legacy media who lie relentlessly, but there is no way to counter their propaganda.”)
Within two hours of the J13 shooting, Twitter was full of news stories and commentary. Despite being that early, many of the posts had retweets numbering in the thousands if not tens of thousands.
By 6:44, a mere 33 minutes after the shooting, this post was already exposing CNN’s despicably ridiculous and dishonest headline, “Secret Service Rushes Trump Off Stage After He Falls At Rally.”
My 92-year-old mother had been watching the rally on TV and when she heard the shots and saw Trump drop to the stage, she called out “Trump’s been shot!” How is it possible for a woman in her nineties with no journalism experience to immediately recognize a shooting, while CNN did not?
That post among many others shows how the legacy media was immediately lying about what had clearly been an assassination attempt, trying to downplay it or even try to make Trump appear to be at fault. This column does a deeper dive into how corporate media initially lied about the event, until the story became too big to hide.
By 7:57 pm, less than two hours after the shooting, Twitter user Brad Parscale posted a video and tweeted: “Must watch. This is either one of the worst failures in Secret Service history or a deep state plot. There’s no way this should have ever happened.” It showed a BBC reporter interviewing a man who claimed to have been a bystander just outside the security perimeter; he said he and many others had seen a man on the roof with a gun, had warned police repeatedly, but to no avail!
this BBC interview with a guy outside the security perimeter who claims he saw the shooter before he fired is absolutely wild pic.twitter.com/vJpKZTxSAe
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) July 13, 2024
This post alone, by 7:57, was showing there was much deeply wrong about the whole event.
Transfixed by the free flow of information on X, I read post after post. Later, I was curious how Facebook was handling it, and I was shocked by the difference. Almost four hours after the shooting, on my facebook feed, I saw only two people referencing it. One was a friend in Richmond who had 2-3 posts asking for prayer for Pres. Trump and expressing gratitude that his life had been spared, and the second was some random stranger sharing his photo of a t-shirt he had made with the iconic image of Trump with fist in the air. That was it! Everything else in my feed was routine photos of birthday parties, anniversary trips, etc.
Shocked, I posted this to facebook at 10:04. “An attempt was made on the life of a former president and candidate, Donald Trump, just a few hours ago on live TV, yet on fb I have seen only TWO people reference it, one a friend, and one a stranger to me. Regardless of your views, this is huge news. On Twitter X, it’s all the news. Why the silence here on fb? Censorship? It’s unreal. How do you explain the silence?”
Several friends commented that they too had been shocked how little coverage they had seen on facebook. Some even went to friends’ pages and saw comments about J13 there, but those comments never showed on their feed. Adding insult, many of those friends’ routine posts showed up in newsfeeds but not much J13-related.
It’s called censorship.
Simply put, facebook infantilizes their users by censoring information. (On a related note, as many have pointed out, since facebook is “free” and makes money by selling personal information to advertisers, its users are not so much customers as they are products.)
In today’s world where screen-addiction is real and harmful, suggesting someone use a new social media platform may make as much sense as suggesting an obese person visit the new All-U-Can Eat Buffet. Still, if you’re looking for a (relatively) unfettered flow of information and are adult enough to stomach a variety of views, consider using Twitter/X.
In this election year, free speech may make the difference between liberty or tyranny.
–Scott Dreyer