When billionaire President Donald Trump is successful in the social media game, the left either accuse him of Big Tech collaboration or want to censor him.
Yet when billionaire Democratic presidential candidate and owner of Bloomberg News Michael Bloomberg tries to solicit the help of Silicon Valley tech experts to boost his own chances, the outcry barely registers a cautionary blip for the left.
Lefty outlet Vox Recode reported on Feb. 10 that Bloomberg gathered “hundreds of tech leaders on a conference call and asked them to refer their most talented technical colleagues and friends to Bloomberg’s gargantuan election operation in New York.” [Emphasis added.] Recode noted that while Bloomberg’s Democrat rivals go “on the offensive against tech industry or downplaying their ties to it,” Bloomberg “is actively soliciting the industry’s help.” [Emphasis added.] And yet, liberal mega donor George Soros wrote a Jan. 31 op-ed fretting that “there appears to be ‘an informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between Trump and Facebook.’”
Making the Bloomberg sales pitch to tech leaders included none other than Gary Briggs (former Chief Marketing Officer of Facebook) and Jeff Glueck (former CEO of Foursquare), who “oversee Bloomberg’s digital advertising agency, called Hawkfish.” Rusty Rueff, a top fundraiser for the Obama campaign in Silicon Valley, was also part of the pitch. Recode noted that Rueff’s “new commitment to the Bloomberg campaign hasn’t previously been reported.” [Emphasis added.] No kidding?
“Glueck said he needed the tech leaders to pitch jobs on the Bloomberg campaign to ‘your most talented friends’ and ‘send them our way,’ especially those with expertise in data science, internet marketing, advertising buying, and analytics,” Recode reported.
But this seems to be a trend for Bloomberg. Alexander Hall reported Feb. 7 that “Mike Bloomberg is using Tribe, a talent pool of young ‘micro-influencers’ described as social media stars with between ‘1,000 to 100,000 followers,’ seemingly to make his presidential run look like it has grassroots youth support.”
It’s as if the left and their media cohorts are oblivious to their own side’s “informal mutual assistance operation” with Big Tech.
PBS’ Frontline, in a recent documentary, used multiple former Obama administration officials and Never Trumpers to hint that “both President Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin worked to use social media against the Democrats,” reported Corinne Weaver Jan.15.
Vox Recode’s co-founder Kara Swisher wrote an op-ed Feb. 4, for the liberal New York Times lamenting that “Sorry, Republicans Rule the Internet.”
The New York Times grumbled over Trump’s success with Facebook in October 2019. The Times claimed that Facebook “[f]ar more than any other platform” is the “focus for digital campaign spending, and it is in many ways even friendlier turf for Mr. Trump’s campaign than in 2016.”
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren slammed Facebook Oct. 7, 2019 for “helping to elect Donald Trump once.” She recently tweeted Jan. 9, that “Facebook is paying for its own glowing fake news coverage.”
MRC TechWatch's Senior Analyst Corinne Weaver and Staff Writer Alexander Hall contributed to this report.
