Facebook and the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) have quite a history. When Donald Trump in 2016 won the US presidential election defeating DNC candidate Hillary Clinton, it was the likes of Facebook that were swiftly identified in the ensuing damage control narrative as the true reason for the outcome – rather than any genuine choice of American voters.
It’s now three years later, the US is moving fast toward another election in 2020, and Trump is facing the possibility of an impeachment inquiry over the way his administration supposedly pushed to investigate suspicions of corruption concerning former Obama VP Joe Biden’s son dealings in Ukraine.
And now that it feels it might finally have a case against the Trump administration – who denies any wrongdoing – the DNC doesn’t seem willing to let go of any opportunity to obstruct its key political opponent.
The DNC doesn’t even want to allow Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) the chance to present their point of view by placing ads on Facebook.
In fact, the DNC is not missing a beat on its multi-year narrative, which prominently included building a case for “fake news” and “fact-checking” – as it now calls on Facebook not to allow Trump to argue his case.
“Yes, any false ad should be fact-checked and removed, including this one. Facebook owes that to its users,” ‘Deputy War Room Director’ at the DNC, Daniel Wessel said.
What’s false, what’s true, and what’s facts – this type of “minutia” may have long since been lost in the fog of America’s vicious political struggle. However, at least one clear fact in this case is that Trump and the RNC are spending $10 million on the Facebook ad campaign to prove that Biden senior was essentially a puppet master of Ukraine, able to advance his son’s business dealings in the troubled country all the way to attempting to get its prosecutor fired.
Talk about “meddling in internal affairs.” In any case – whether or not that’s what happened is still objectively unknown – but the DNC has ruled that it’s decidedly false. And for some reason, the DNC thinks Facebook should automatically share its “ruling” and ban the Trump campaign, right now.
But what’s Facebook saying?
“We don’t believe that it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny,” Facebook VP Nick Clegg is quoted as saying in a blog post published earlier this week.
