On Thursday, the White House hosted a summit of right-wing social media gadflies designed to highlight purported bias by major tech and social media companies. While this event seemed uniquely Trumpian with its inclusion of conspiracy theorists and peddlers of nutty ideas — people like Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe and social media provocateur Bill Mitchell — it is also a logical outgrowth of Republicans’ decades-long relationship with conservative media.
In fact, this historical bond between the GOP and entertaining pundits from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity paved the way for the Trump presidency. Now, Trump threatens to legitimize the very people (and organizations) who spread misinformation, thrive on dysfunction and threaten to deepen the divides fracturing our society. CONT.
Brian Rosenwald (U. of Pennsylvania), Washington Post