Elon Musk’s new lawsuit against Media Matters, which X Corp. filed late Monday, has been dismissed by legal experts as a frivolous effort to bully a prominent critic into silence. But some Republicans apparently see this as a feature, not a bug: They are allying themselves with Musk’s effort for precisely this purpose.
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Musk’s suit charges that Media Matters deliberately and deceptively harmed X (formerly Twitter) with a widely-publicized investigation showing that posts containing pro-Nazi content appeared on X alongside advertisements from leading companies. That, along with a surge in antisemitic content, has advertisers fleeing the site, sparking a slide in ad revenue.
Republicans are eagerly rushing to Musk’s rescue — and not just rhetorically. Two GOP state attorneys general — Ken Paxton in Texas and Andrew Bailey in Missouri — have responded by announcing vaguely defined investigations into Media Matters.
Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller is urging Republican law enforcement officials to probe Media Matters for “criminal” activity. And Mike Davis, who is touting himself as Donald Trump’s next attorney general, has declared that Media Matters staff members should be jailed.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, doesn’t deny that the juxtapositions between ads and pro-Nazi postings are real. Rather, it accuses Media Matters of creating an account following only fringe content and endlessly refreshing it until it finally generated the juxtapositions. Those are “extraordinarily rare,” the suit says, but were deliberately engineered to disparage X, harm its revenue stream and interfere with its contracts with advertisers.
It’s a weak case, as experts point out. The Media Matters article said it had “found” the juxtapositions, which X calls “false,” insisting they were “manipulated” into existence. But even if you question Media Matters’s presentation of the facts, it still wouldn’t show that it did “all of this to harm X’s market value,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
“If Media Matters doctored the images and couldn’t replicate those results, then maybe there would be a claim here,” Vladeck told me, stressing that it did prove “possible to see those ads” alongside Nazi-related content. He noted that Media Matters plausibly wrote about these juxtapositions not to hurt X, but because they’re “newsworthy.”
When I asked Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, whether it’s misleading to say these images were “found,” he rejected the premise. He noted that Media Matters’s goal was to show that despite X’s assurances to the contrary, internal safeguards had failed to prevent those juxtapositions from actually happening.
“The point that we’ve been making is that the filters that they say exist are not working the way that they claim,” Carusone said of X. “Ads can and do run alongside extremist content.” That’s something those companies would surely want to know about — and avoid.
Discovery would also seek communications about Musk’s public antisemitism, Carusone said. Musk recently endorsed a posting that some Jewish communities are pushing “hatred against whites,” resulting in “hordes of minorities flooding” into Western countries — classic white genocide theory. Carusone noted that discovery could establish whether Musk’s “seeming endorsement of the white genocide worldview” was a major reason for “advertisers to reassess.”
Which brings us to a bigger point: Musk’s own antisemitic utterances — and his own website’s handling of antisemitic content — are plainly also key reasons companies are leaving. As First Amendment lawyer Ken White told me, it’s hard to imagine that the Media Matters report alone would have done this damage: “Much of the advertiser exodus resulted from Musk personally and eagerly endorsing explicitly antisemitic rhetoric.”
In this context, the GOP defense of Musk takes on an uglier cast.
Musk’s white-genocide moment is often dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” but it’s more than that. Between it, Musk’s elevation of great-replacement-theorist Tucker Carlson, his bashing of George Soros, his trafficking in white nationalist sentiment, his amplification of misinformation about Trump’s insurrection and more, what’s on display is a genuine worldview. As writer John Ganz notes, it reflects an ideological turn among certain tech oligarchs — Peter Thiel is another — that aims to place vast technological prowess at the service of reactionary and authoritarian politics.
So, when Republicans vow to use state power against critics of Musk, they aren’t merely promising to shield this billionaire’s business interests from his own expressions of antisemitism. They’d also wield state power to corruptly protect someone who is marshaling his immense power over our information ecosystem to privilege and elevate that worldview.
MAGA Republicans are now openly calling for the next GOP presidency to be staffed with lawyers willing to prosecute political opponents across the board. If you wonder what a future Musk-MAGA alliance might look like, this saga provides an unsettling glimpse.
Need something to talk about? Text us for thought-provoking opinions that can break any awkward silence.
Musk’s suit charges that Media Matters deliberately and deceptively harmed X (formerly Twitter) with a widely-publicized investigation showing that posts containing pro-Nazi content appeared on X alongside advertisements from leading companies. That, along with a surge in antisemitic content, has advertisers fleeing the site, sparking a slide in ad revenue.
Republicans are eagerly rushing to Musk’s rescue — and not just rhetorically. Two GOP state attorneys general — Ken Paxton in Texas and Andrew Bailey in Missouri — have responded by announcing vaguely defined investigations into Media Matters.
Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller is urging Republican law enforcement officials to probe Media Matters for “criminal” activity. And Mike Davis, who is touting himself as Donald Trump’s next attorney general, has declared that Media Matters staff members should be jailed.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, doesn’t deny that the juxtapositions between ads and pro-Nazi postings are real. Rather, it accuses Media Matters of creating an account following only fringe content and endlessly refreshing it until it finally generated the juxtapositions. Those are “extraordinarily rare,” the suit says, but were deliberately engineered to disparage X, harm its revenue stream and interfere with its contracts with advertisers.
It’s a weak case, as experts point out. The Media Matters article said it had “found” the juxtapositions, which X calls “false,” insisting they were “manipulated” into existence. But even if you question Media Matters’s presentation of the facts, it still wouldn’t show that it did “all of this to harm X’s market value,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
“If Media Matters doctored the images and couldn’t replicate those results, then maybe there would be a claim here,” Vladeck told me, stressing that it did prove “possible to see those ads” alongside Nazi-related content. He noted that Media Matters plausibly wrote about these juxtapositions not to hurt X, but because they’re “newsworthy.”
When I asked Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, whether it’s misleading to say these images were “found,” he rejected the premise. He noted that Media Matters’s goal was to show that despite X’s assurances to the contrary, internal safeguards had failed to prevent those juxtapositions from actually happening.
“The point that we’ve been making is that the filters that they say exist are not working the way that they claim,” Carusone said of X. “Ads can and do run alongside extremist content.” That’s something those companies would surely want to know about — and avoid.
The lawsuit might get dismissed. But if not, Carusone said, Media Matters would probably pursue discovery, seeking to learn whether Musk and X executives “knew internally” that these juxtapositions were happening, what they communicated with advertisers about this, and how Musk internally discussed procedures for handling extremist content.
Discovery would also seek communications about Musk’s public antisemitism, Carusone said. Musk recently endorsed a posting that some Jewish communities are pushing “hatred against whites,” resulting in “hordes of minorities flooding” into Western countries — classic white genocide theory. Carusone noted that discovery could establish whether Musk’s “seeming endorsement of the white genocide worldview” was a major reason for “advertisers to reassess.”
Which brings us to a bigger point: Musk’s own antisemitic utterances — and his own website’s handling of antisemitic content — are plainly also key reasons companies are leaving. As First Amendment lawyer Ken White told me, it’s hard to imagine that the Media Matters report alone would have done this damage: “Much of the advertiser exodus resulted from Musk personally and eagerly endorsing explicitly antisemitic rhetoric.”
In this context, the GOP defense of Musk takes on an uglier cast.
Musk’s white-genocide moment is often dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” but it’s more than that. Between it, Musk’s elevation of great-replacement-theorist Tucker Carlson, his bashing of George Soros, his trafficking in white nationalist sentiment, his amplification of misinformation about Trump’s insurrection and more, what’s on display is a genuine worldview. As writer John Ganz notes, it reflects an ideological turn among certain tech oligarchs — Peter Thiel is another — that aims to place vast technological prowess at the service of reactionary and authoritarian politics.
So, when Republicans vow to use state power against critics of Musk, they aren’t merely promising to shield this billionaire’s business interests from his own expressions of antisemitism. They’d also wield state power to corruptly protect someone who is marshaling his immense power over our information ecosystem to privilege and elevate that worldview.
MAGA Republicans are now openly calling for the next GOP presidency to be staffed with lawyers willing to prosecute political opponents across the board. If you wonder what a future Musk-MAGA alliance might look like, this saga provides an unsettling glimpse.
