The Trumps continue to prove just how full of themselves they are, either blissfully unaware of the way they’re presenting themselves or simply refusing to care about the long-term impacts of their behavior as long as it earns them another slot on the media circuit. This week on Fox & Friends — President Donald Trump’s often favorite program — Donald Trump Jr. discussed a supposed effort he’s facing from social media platforms like Instagram to silence him and other conservatives.
His “evidence” for this claim was that Instagram had removed a post he put up against actor Jussie Smollett, who’s been revealed to have faked a hate crime against him in a publicity stunt.
He thinks it’s absolutely marvelous that he took the brave — or whatever — step to put up that post in the first place, proudly telling the Fox hosts as if they were parents he was trying to win approval from:
‘Unlike most who were probably thinking the same thing — these days, it takes guts to actually go out there and question the narrative.’
Don Jr. thinks there’s no Trump supporters in downtown Chicago pic.twitter.com/9uKGh69D4w
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) February 25, 2019
He continued his egomaniacal ranting, discussing messages he supposedly got claiming that after he put the post back up, users were locked out of their Instagram accounts — for interacting with one or more of the Trump family’s “tweets.” He offered no note of how outlandishly conspiratorial that suggestion is, since besides the fact that there’s no evidence of a behind-the-scenes conspiracy at big tech companies against the Trumps, Twitter and Instagram are not even owned by the same company.
He continued:
‘To me it seems like there were many more hoax hate crimes than there were actual [hate crimes]… it feels like it’s a dry run where they’re trying to suppress any kind of right wing message, any kind of conservative message for 2020. I mean, they’re setting it up. They’re just seeing how far they can get away with it.’
Watch below.
Living in the bubble that allows one to assert there were probably more recent hate crime hoaxes than actual hate crimes doesn’t make you special or mean that big tech companies care enough to have it out for you when you’re suddenly hit with reality. Untold numbers of people have posts deleted from social media platforms as their existence drags on, and yet, only some of them decide that the deletions are evidence of a vast secret conspiracy against them.
Trump Jr. displayed his camp’s egomania during his Fox appearance by quipping that the conspiracy goes so far that:
‘If you wear a MAGA hat in downtown Chicago you probably wouldn’t last long — about two seconds until you get shot.’
Although again, it’s bizarre that Trump Jr. seems to think Instagram posts are called “tweets” or the platforms are connected in some behind-the-scenes fashion, Instagram did acknowledge that there was a temporary bug that flagged users’ accounts as engaging in spam-like behavior when they really weren’t. The platform said the recent bug, which would culminate in the accounts being locked down, affected users regardless of who they were or who they followed.
That’s not stopping the Trumps and their compatriots, though. Figures from online conservative commentators known as Diamond & Silk to President Donald Trump himself have claimed that tech companies are censoring conservatives. There remains, as in this case with Trump Jr., no evidence to suggest as much.
Featured Image via screenshot from the video
