Published
5 years agoon
Rep. Devin Nunes’ lawsuit against Twitter might have taken a big hit Tuesday from President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.
Though Nunes claims to have been damaged politically and personally defamed by the tweets, he retained his congressional seat — albeit by a much closer margin than he is accustomed. He continues to maintain two Twitter handles: a personal account and a congressional account.
Even though Nunes is one of President Trump’s most loyal defenders, the Trump campaign might have inadvertently made it harder for Nunes to prove his point in court.
Reacting to Google’s decision to not allow political advertisers to target voters beyond basic traits like gender, age, and location, Team Trump voiced its objections with a long tweet.
“Google’s latest arbitrary rule changes are a blatant attempt to suppress voter information, knowledge, and engagement in the 2020 election,” the tweet stated. “These actions will lead directly to suppressing voter turnout.”
In the sixth paragraph of the seven-paragraph tweet, Team Trump and the RNC turned their attention to Twitter, which banned political ads on Oct. 30.
“Much has been made of Twitter’s equally concerning decision to ban political ads and suppress speech, but because advertising on that platform is ineffective and only a tiny percentage of Americans use Twitter, their impact is insignificant. Google, however, is a serious platform with very deep reach across the entire country.”
Full text: pic.twitter.com/gPU18Cc9Bn
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) November 26, 2019
A Google spokesperson told CNBC, “We know that political campaign strategists on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about how our changes may alter their targeting strategies, but we believe the balance we have struck — allowing political ads to remain on our platforms while limiting narrow targeting that can reduce the visibility of ads and trust in electoral processes — is the right one.”
According to Politico, Facebook is deciding whether to limit targeted political advertising as well.
Bill McEwen is news director and columnist for GV Wire. He joined GV Wire in August 2017 after 37 years at The Fresno Bee. With The Bee, he served as Opinion Editor, City Hall reporter, Metro columnist, sports columnist and sports editor through the years. His work has been frequently honored by the California Newspapers Publishers Association, including authoring first-place editorials in 2015 and 2016. Bill and his wife, Karen, are proud parents of two adult sons, and they have two grandsons. You can contact Bill at 559-492-4031 or at Send an Email
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Paul Cromwell
December 7, 2019 at 5:52 pm
It is absolutely absurd that politicians are so terrified of losing their position and income, and of course power that no matter how big a lie,. is by someone in their party, they seem forced to defend it. If they don’t defend the untrue statement, they may lose the next election. Sad that truth and honesty are so rare these days.