Oopsie

It's always about the pocket

The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining, according to documents and four people familiar with the conversations. The deal was never finalized, but legal experts said the discussions alone, which occurred while Trump was still in office, raise legal concerns with regards to anti-bribery laws.

Talks between members of Trump’s campaign and Parler about Trump’s potential involvement began last summer, and were revisited in November by the Trump Organization after Trump lost the 2020 election to the Democratic nominee and current president, Joe Biden. Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company.

[...]

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale raised the idea to Trump of taking an ownership stake in Parler during a meeting last year at the White House, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. Parscale had taken an early interest in Parler, and reportedly considered creating an account for Trump on the site in 2019 as a bulwark against Twitter and Facebook.

[...]

Four sources told BuzzFeed News that Parscale and Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon met with Parler CEO John Matze and shareholders Dan Bongino and Jeffrey Wernick at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago in June 2020 to discuss the idea. But the White House counsel’s office soon put a stop to the talks, one person with knowledge of the discussions said, ruling that such a deal while Trump was president would violate ethics rules.

“The president was never part of the discussions,” Parscale told BuzzFeed News.

  Buzzfeed

I'm sure he knew absolutely nothing about it.

Discussions were revived in the weeks following the election, according to two people involved, but the deal fell apart after the Capitol invasion. Following that event, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores, and Amazon kicked the company off its cloud hosting service, forcing the site offline.

[...]

When reached by phone on Friday, Wernick, who called himself an adviser to the company, said that there had been discussions with the Trump Organization about bringing Trump onto the platform, but that the former president had not been involved in those conversations. He also said there were inaccuracies in what BuzzFeed News was reporting, but did not provide specifics on what, if anything, was inaccurate.

[...]

On Wednesday, Matze told the Wall Street Journal that the site had 15 million users, including the former president’s sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as various current and former members of Trump’s staff.

Donald Trump, however, never maintained a verified account on that platform. [...] Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, intervened to keep him off Parler during his last days in office, according to Bloomberg News.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner stopped an effort to sign up the president on fringe social media platforms such as Gab and Parler after Twitter suspended his account last week, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, also objected, two of the people said. The two men thought the alternative social media sites, which have catered to political conservatives by promising fewer restraints on speech, weren’t suitable for the U.S. president partly because they didn’t think they were well managed or could handle the traffic.

  Bloomberg

Russia and the alt-right grow more entangled

Parler, the social media platform favored by the US far right, has dismissed its CEO John Matze.

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“On January 29, 2021, the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision,” Matze said in a memo sent to Parler staff, originally reported by Fox News.

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This month, US lawmakers asked the FBI to investigated the role of Parler in facilitating and planning the attack on the US Capitol, citing reports that it was used to detail violent threats against elected officials.

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Parler, which was founded in 2018, has styled itself as a “free speech-driven” space. The platform saw rapid growth with conservative users who grew frustrated as more mainstream platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, increasingly cracked down on falsehoods and misinformation.

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[T]he site is facing an uncertain future after being essentially forced offline after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. Its website was subsequently dropped by Amazon’s cloud-hosting division, while Google and Apple had also suspended Parler from its app stores.

The site has since partially returned online with the help of a Russian-owned technology company.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Parler is back online

Hosted by Epik, who hosts GAB, 8chan and other far-right sites.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cancel culture

QAnazis may have to create and fund their own place online.

Amazon and Apple on Saturday took steps to cut off access to the social media app Parler after calls for violence on the platform have continued following the pro-Trump attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The app is a favorite of conservatives and extremist supporters of President Trump.

Apple on Saturday said it was suspending Parler from its app store, stopping iPhone users from being able to download the app. At around the same time, reports emerged that Amazon was cutting off the site from its web hosting service, meaning Parler will go offline unless it finds a new host.

[...]

Amazon said it would remove Parler effective 11:59 p.m. PT Sunday.

Apple left open the possibility of allowing Parler back if "they resolve these issues."

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Parler CEO John Matze responded with a post on the site, calling Amazon's action "an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet." He said Parler could be unavailable for a week "as we rebuild from scratch."

  NPR

Oh no! Cancel culture on Parler!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The worst of the worst

In case you don't know, Parler is where QAnon nuts and the ultra-radicals hang out.

Fox News guy taking his ball and going home

Too many people on Twitter disagreed with him apparently.

Snowflake.Maybe you ought to move to grammar school for some spelling lessons.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  And there goes dipshit D'Souza, as well.

Parler

Where Republicans can be their racist selves.

A group of Republican lawmakers and allies of President Trump are joining Parler, a social media app that bills itself as an "unbiased" alternative to platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and urging their followers to do the same.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) have also shared tweets about their move to Parler.

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) became the latest prominent Republican to announce the move on Thursday, saying in a video shared on Twitter and YouTube that he was "proud" to join a platform that "gets what free speech is all about."

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In a tweet shared Wednesday, the same day a judge ruled Nunes could not sue Twitter over content posted by its users, the congressman described Twitter as "hell" and said, "Parler is open for business!"

  The Hill

That's rich. Nunes wants to go to a platform that allows "free speech" because he's not allowed to sue another platform over someone else's speech.

Now they have their own TV network (OAN) and their own social media platform for their alternate reality. All these jackasses who call liberals snowflakes can live in their own echo chamber and inhale each other's toxic rants.

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