Elon Musk owning Twitter has led the left to lose its collective mind, at least what mind there was there to begin with. As Leah recently highlighted, Alexander Vindman got into it with Musk over Twitter, and those of his followers who also responded raised concerns about spam bots in the process. Vindman doubled down though, when yucking it up with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace days later, who gave him a platform to warn he's going to hold Musk (and Trump) accountable, as our friends at Twitchy highlighted.
"Trump and Musk have something in common: they do not want to be held accountable. They believe they can act with impunity. That's not gonna happen with me." - @AVindman w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/9K1HlzlHDz
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) November 29, 2022
A few weeks later, Vindman has been at it again, as Twitchy also highlighted. While Vindman touted the amount of followers he had accumulated to justify why he was remaining on the platform when asked by Wallace, he really seems to just hate Musk, and Twitter overall.
.@Twitter is dying. That’s okay. If anything it needs to be killed off soonest. @elonmusk cannot be allowed to promoted dangerous radical views… hate speech. Imagine Geobbles with a bigger platform and wider reach.
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2022
Move to Post, Mastodon, anything. @Twitter is dead.
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2022
.@Twitter @Tesla @SpaceX , and all of @elonmusk ‘s holdings are all extremely exposed to his toxicity. It’s just a matter of time before he drags those assets down. Advertisers, investors, stockholders, etc. must be getting very nervous.
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2022
Stop #muskytwitter #stoptwitter
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2022
The tweets above are just a general musing from Vindman. They don't contain retweets or quoted retweets of something Musk specifically did for Vindman to compare him to the Nazi propagandist.
For context, though, more editions of the "Twitter Files" have been released, as Musk tweeted and retweeted about. He also has tweeted clever memes and had some particularly triggering tweets about bots and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Cool, the bots are so far unable to swarm to the top of my replies!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022
It's worth noting that Vindman's tweet came hours earlier, though, so he must have been feeling increasingly incensed as the day went on and brought only more tweets from Musk. Vindman was indeed incensed, as evidenced by how he did quote retweet Musk and mention his tweets about Fauci in other ways.
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I’d put Fauci’s reputation up against this fool @elonmusk any time.
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2022
My pronoun is prosecute @elonmusk ! https://t.co/tR2apC6jW0
— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2022
Vindman gave no such reason why he was calling for the prosecution of Musk.
Vindman and his hatred for Twitter were referenced in an NBC News article by Alex Seitz-Wald that same afternoon, "Why liberal Washington can’t quit Twitter," as was his equally if not more insufferable wife, Rachel Vindman. Seitz-Wald dedicates quite a few paragraphs early on, in fact:
“I’m just coming up with coping mechanisms for how I can still use this thing,” said Alex Vindman, the former Army lieutenant colonel and National Security Council official who was at the center of former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
Vindman first joined Twitter while working in the Trump administration because it was often the way his then-boss, the president, made policy.
But he’s now become a pseudo-celebrity on the platform, with almost 850,000 followers interested in his views on Trump and the war in Ukraine, where he was born. His wife, liberal activist and podcaster Rachel Vindman, has almost 400,000 followers, making them a progressive Twitter power couple.
Vindman sees Musk as a “purveyor of hate and division” and has exchanged personal attacks with the world’s richest man on the social media platform he now owns. But Vindman says he and his wife are likely not leaving anytime soon.
“If there’s an alternative, I’m happy to go there,” he said. “It’s just that there aren’t any real alternatives.”
"Vindman is hardly the only one with that view among like-minded tweeters," Seitz-Wald also mentioned, going on to mention many Democratic politicians, including Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), as well as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). Others mentioned include Molly Jong-Fast, Norm Ornstein, and Peter Sagal.
The shared sentiment seems to be that such figures don't want to leave the social media platform due to their reach, influence, and follower count. "Some political tweeters say they’re addicted, only half-jokingly. Others say it’s too vital a source of information to give up. Others cite higher-minded reasons, arguing they can’t cede the ideological battlespace. And all of them have personal brands to maintain, though few will acknowledge that," Seitz-Wald wrote.
Gareth Tyson of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is also mentioned, when it comes to the humorous reality of those threatening to leave Twitter:
A new academic analysis of more than 140,000 Twitter accounts that used phrases or hashtags like “#ByeByeTwitter” found that only 1.6% actually left the social media platform entirely. “I’m not hugely surprised, because I’m one of those people that still posts on both,” one of the researchers, Gareth Tyson of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told New Scientist, referring to Twitter and rival Mastodon.
As it turns out, Rachel Vindman took note of Seitz-Wald tweeting out his article and was none too pleased. She too mentioned her follower count, as did so many of the names mentioned above.
Are you attacking me because I have so many more followers than you? Sorry that makes you sad.
— Rachel Vindman 🌻 (@natsechobbyist) December 11, 2022
You know nothing about me which is apparent by your description of me as a “liberal activist.” Pathetic journalism, bruh. https://t.co/mftQCGw61z
What's likely "apparent" is that Vindman did not read much else of Seitz-Wald's piece, and neither did her followers who backed her up in their own tweets, with Twitchy highlighting some examples.
There were plenty other replies, though, including from Noam Blum who shared that that description is quite telling, given that Vindman was part of a group of liberal activists and social media influencers who visited the White House in late October, not long before the midterm elections.
Look like a liberal activist to me... pic.twitter.com/NuxeXDWOLz
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) December 12, 2022
Then again, this is the kind of vindictive woman who went after Rep. Elise Stefanik's (R-NY) infant son, so we sadly can't say we're surprised that she'd flip out in such a way over her husband's own tweets and her own political activism coming back to bite them.
