“[Twitter] is a cesspool [where] a lot of people who are genuine human debris have ‘credibility.’ They’re able to do great damage to people and businesses and enterprises, and they’re nothing but sickos.” — me, eib, 3/16/15

“I denigrate Twitter quite often, referring to it as a place that has very many sewers. And it does. But there is also value at Twitter, because Twitter allows us to see all of the mentally ill … professors and what they are teaching.” — me, eib, 7/6/15

“Democrats’ Astroturf army has taken over Twitter … to create the illusion that the vast majority of the country … agrees with them, and it’s not the case.” — me, eib, 3/6/13

I don’t do Twitter. We have a Twitter page, but it’s just to steer people to my website. Now, Trump loves tweeting, in order to cut through the media’s iron curtain, and that’s fine. But I think Twitter is a sewer. And it has ruined journalism.

Twitter dominates so much of today’s news coverage. Take the reaction to the recent New York Times op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R, AR). In a straightforward piece, Sen. Cotton supported lawful military intervention to deal with the Antifa-led riots destroying neighborhoods all over the country after the murder of George Floyd. Cotton called for a return to normalcy in communities that have suffered devastating losses from looting and arson due to failed Democrat governance.

The Times newsroom erupted in fury that the piece was allowed on their opinion pages, and they took to Twitter to express their rage. Politico reporter Alex Thompson quoted reporters in “open revolt,” like Times tech reporter Taylor Lorenz, who tweeted: “Running this [op-ed] puts Black [Times] staff in danger.” Millennial reporter Charlie Warzel tweeted, “I feel compelled to say that i disagree with every word in that Tom Cotton op-ed and it does not reflect my values.”

For days, similarly incensed reporters dominated the news, tweeting that the piece should never have been published, followed by articles reporting on the tweets, and so on. The larger left-Twitter mob descended on Times management like a pack of hyenas on a fallen antelope.

As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) put it on the Senate floor on 6/10/20: “One of our nation’s most storied newspapers just had its intellectual independence challenged by an angry mob, and they folded like a house of cards. A jury of people on Twitter indicted them as accessories to a thought crime, and instead of telling them to go take a hike, the paper pleaded guilty and begged for mercy.” Mercy was not given, and the opinion editor was forced out.

Folks, this is the sad state of journalism today: a bunch of drama queens on Twitter reporting on each other’s emotions and nasty one-liners after being triggered by conservative ideas. And have you noticed when you read the drive-bys or watch them on TV, how often tweets are cited as the major sources for whatever is reported? Instead of digging, investigating, or following leads, now lazy reporters just scroll Twitter to find out newsmakers’ quotes, then build a supposed “news story” around them. Or they just go to Twitter, see what other people are saying about the “trending” controversy du jour (which usually started on Twitter), find some snarky anti-Trump tweets, and compile them with some lame verbal padding under their byline. This is what passes as news reporting today, repeated over and over. No surprise that whenever I hear something has “gone viral on Twitter” or is “blowing up on Twitter,” my reaction is: so what? Who cares? It isn’t real.

Twitter gives nobodies — people who don’t have a life, a decent job, or a relationship — a 24/7 megaphone. They hide behind fake names and multiple fake accounts, all to deceive and exaggerate their following. As such, Twitter has become a stand-in for de facto majority public opinion that has allowed journalism to create the illusion that Twitter reflects America’s thinking. So if there’s a big news story that’s all the rage (literally) on Twitter for a while, journalists hype it as some kind of colossal cultural shift. Nope, it’s just hotheads tweeting at each other.

Despite the impression you get from reporters, Twitter is in no way a microcosm of America. A study from Pew Research found that only 22 percent of America adults even use Twitter. And most of them only post two tweets a month, while the top 10 percent of the miniscule group of prolific users — 65 percent of whom are women — are responsible for 80 percent of all tweets. Tweeters represent only a tiny segment (2 percent) of our society.

I found this out about Twitter firsthand when ten idiots (including a far-left former college professor and a mailman) were involved in an all-out effort to destroy the business of the eib Network. Using Twitter algorithms, this tiny cabal of miscreants were able to make themselves look like a hundred thousand angry consumers who were sending emails to businesses all across the country, pressing them to stop advertising on my show, calling it racist-sexist-bigoted-homophobic, you know the drill. Ten people! Twitter was a complicit actor, helping to create the algorithms in the first place.

So that’s how I found out firsthand how inaccurate, how totally devoid of reality the Twitter outrage universe is. And Twitter has done absolutely nothing to halt this type of behavior, these harassment campaigns directed at conservatives.

Can you imagine if, instead of scouring Twitter, journalists today scoured my radio show and reported public opinion based on what the callers to my show are saying? It would never happen, because journalists don’t have respect for my show or for you, the people in my audience. And yet everyone calling the program at least has a name, and they get screened. They are more accredited as sources to represent public opinion than anyone ever is on Twitter.

Yet on Twitter it’s President Donald Trump who gets slapped with fact-checking links rather than random anonymous nuts who constantly post inflammatory disinformation. “Facebook and Twitter Must Do More About Trump’s Tweets,” demanded New York Times editorialist Greg Bensinger, advocating for a “special team to personally review the President’s daily posts and cut loose those that violate their rules or even just good taste.” Voilà, that assignment went to Twitter’s “Head of Site Integrity,” Yoel Roth, the Pajama Boy at Twitter who tweets garbage like “we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.”

As Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale writes in an op-ed at The Daily Caller on 6/1/20: 

Twitter attached ‘warning labels’ to President Trump’s tweets opining that mail-in ballots expose our election system to new forms of fraud — a demonstrable fact. Twitter posted warnings to the tweets, asserting that Trump’s comments were false, citing ‘fact-checkers’ from cnn and The Washington Post. Not only is Twitter wrong to dismiss the factual issue of voter fraud, it’s an egregious abuse of power to specifically target President Trump while allowing others, including Joe Biden and the Communist Party of China, to repeatedly post clearly erroneous tweets and propaganda.

And at the same time Twitter is flagging Trump’s tweets and squelching conservative opinions, it has no warning labels on tweets that appear to be posted by looters coordinating their crimes. During the Black Lives Matter riots, tweets ostensibly inciting violence remained on the platform for days. As reported by Breitbart, dozens of Twitter users encouraged others to target and loot an upscale shopping district in San Jose, CA. One said, “loot and protest santana row. eat the rich,” while another tweeted that Santana Row “deserved to get looted.” Another tweet by an instigator urges, “please do not protest in Downtown LA. Instead, protest in Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood, and Santa Monica. Like them white folks say, what’s the point of destroying our neighborhood. lets destroy theirs!” As I go to press, that tweet is still up, with no warning label.

Reports One America News:

Antifa groups — declared domestic terrorist groups — are now organizing, sharing tactical information, and connecting with one another [using Twitter]… It is a company that employs Antifa members and Antifa sympathizers. You can go through multiple Twitter employees’ accounts and profiles and find that they sympathize with Antifa and are presumably members of Antifa because you see “Antifa” in their bios … [as] an identifier.

Twitter has gotten so bad that even a few on the left are wising up. On Medium, Mike Monteiro, a decade-long social-justice-warrior Twitter fanatic, now calls the site “toxic.” He explains why he walked away: “Twitter is working exactly like Twitter’s leadership team wants it to be working. The constant outrage, the hatred, the anxiety, the harassment — it’s all by design. It’s engagement.”

No kidding, Sherlock. Glad you escaped the sewer, though it’s too bad it took ten years.

Somebody once told me that Twitter is like graffiti, which has always been around; if you don’t clean off graffiti the moment it starts polluting your neighborhood, it will overrun and destroy it. I understand that, but the graffiti I’ve seen doesn’t come close to the depths of vile sewage on Twitter. Some graffiti, you could even say, is artistic. There’s nothing artistic about the revolting content of much of Twitter.

Now, I’m not condemning all of Twitter or suggesting it be censored. That’s not me, folks. I’m a big First Amendment, free-speech guy. I’m just telling you to be skeptical of everything that comes from that cesspit. There’s only one reason the media loves Twitter: they’re able to commandeer online mobs and aim them at individuals or businesses they want to target for destruction. Do not doubt me.

Photomontage created by The Limbaugh Letter; original photo of the sewer pipe ©2020 Ashadhodhomei/Shutterstock