After a Utah man was killed by FBI agents Wednesday during an attempted arrest after he allegedly made death threats toward President Joe Biden and other officials, right-wingers on social media almost instantly took the side of the apparent Trump supporter.
As the progressive media watchdog Media Matters noted in a report Friday, “some extremist right-wing media figures are now spinning the incident to claim the federal government is willing to kill any critic of Democrats.”
But it was former President Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, that reportedly flagged the Utah man to the FBI months ago. As CNBC’s Dan Mangan explained:
The social media company owned by former President Donald Trump in March tipped off the FBI about threats made by a Utah man who was fatally shot Wednesday by FBI agents as they attempted to arrest him for threatening to kill President Joe Biden, NBC News reported. Truth Social notified the FBI after Craig Deleeuw Robertson posted a threat to kill Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., according to a senior law enforcement official who spoke to NBC.
Authorities said Robertson was killed after pointing a weapon at federal agents and refusing to comply with their demands, NBC News reported.
In other words, Trump’s own social media platform seemingly snitched on one of his own supporters, effectively notifying the government about the danger this person might pose.
To be abundantly clear, this is how such platforms should handle threats. Trump supporters may disagree, given how many of them tend to frame content moderation as a nefarious ploy to censor conservatives. But this Truth Social revelation seems to undercut the MAGA movement’s claims that this incident was part of some Biden-led conspiracy. It seems possible the feds wouldn’t have even known about the activity on Trump’s struggling platform if the company hadn’t tipped them off.
Here, I see shades of Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter who was fatally shot while storming the Capitol.
Here, I see shades of Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter who was fatally shot while storming the Capitol. Babbitt and Robertson are alike in that they both appear to have engaged in violent extremism on Trump’s behalf. But like many others who hitch their wagons to Trump — Robertson reportedly had referred to himself as a “MAGA Trumper” — they’re the ones to pay the price for actions in his name.
While Trump (for now, at least) walks freely — and continues life as though they never existed.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.