Screenshot via Twitter, @ProjectLincoln.
When Rick Wilson tweets, “I’m in a goddamn mood,” you know something is a-brewin’. What got the Florida-based political strategist and writer fired up on this particular Thursday was a decision by Facebook to censor the “Mourning in America” video ad produced by the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC founded by Wilson and several other prominent Never Trump former Republicans.
The video takes a highly critical view of President Donald Trump‘s leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, and already has been viewed nearly eight million times on Twitter and on nearly two million times on YouTube alone.
The Lincoln Project also aired the video on cable news stations, attracting the president’s attention — and fury. As Mediaite reported earlier this week, Trump spent the wee hours of Tuesday morning angrily tweeting insults about Wilson and some of the other co-founders of the Lincoln Project, including George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Jennifer Horn, and Reed Galen.
Trump’s Twitter tantrum, along with another rant in response to a reporter&
Then along came PolitiFact.
The “fact-checkers” analyzed the ad and took issue with one of the claims — that “Trump bailed out Wall Street, but not Main Street” — calling it “inaccurate.”
You can read PolitFact’s analysis for yourself here, but the foundation of their argument is that some of the CARES Act funds did go to small businesses, so therefore saying “Trump bailed out Wall Street, but not Main Street” is worthy of a red-light alarm PolitiFact rating of FALSE.
But the ad doesn’t actually claim that small businesses received zero help. Rather, it makes the point that Main Street America is still seriously struggling as the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic continues.
How much you agree or disagree with the ad’s claim likely depends on how much you support or oppose Trump, but the bottom line is that it is a subjective, rather than an objective issue.
After PolitiFact’s rating, Facebook began taking punitive action against the Lincoln Project video, placing warning labels on the video, marking it as “Partly False.”
Screenshot provided courtesy of The Lincoln Project.
Screenshot provided courtesy of The Lincoln Project.
This is a uniquely aggressive stance by Facebook. The social networking behemoth has previously taken a much more hands-off approach to political ads, with their own stated policy saying that “people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”
Unsurprisingly, Wilson was displeased with Facebook’s move.
Speaking exclusively to Mediaite, Wilson called the decision “the typical fuckery we’ve come to expect from both the Trump camp and their tame Facebook allies.”
“Facebook is perfectly content to allow content from QAnon lunatics, anti-vaxxers, alt-righters, and every form of Trump/Russian — but I repeat myself — disinformation,” he pointed out. “This is a sign of just how powerfully ‘Mourning In America’ shook Donald Trump and his allies. Their attempt to censor our ad isn’t a setback for us;
Jennifer Horn, former New Hampshire GOP chair and another Lincoln Project co-founder, pushed back hard against the accusation that the group’s ad was false. She sent Mediaite a long list of citations used to produce the ad and back up each claim, including articles published at Bloomberg Businessweek and Common Dreams making the same point: that small businesses across America have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, and the aid provided so far was wildly insufficient to sustain them.
“The Lincoln Project stands firmly behind every claim made in all of our ads,” said Horn, “including the devastating truths laid out in ‘Mourning in America.’ We will continue to take every available avenue to share the truth with the American people that the narcissistic, dangerous failures of this President have left America sicker, weaker and poorer.”
Wilson tweeted once more about the controversy on Thursday night:
Editor’s Note: The author is a former political colleague and long-time friend of Rick Wilson.