Bestselling author and conservative columnist Ann Coulter mocked the notion that Russian Facebook ads swayed the 2016 elections and slammed attempts to shut down conservative speech in her recent appearance on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.
Speaking with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, Coulter first mocked the indictment of 13 Russian nationals for allegedly “interfering” in the American elections by, among other things, buying a small number of Facebook ads.
“The Special Counsel’s Office knows less about social media than even the senators questioning Marc Zuckerberg,” Coulter said, referencing the much-maligned hearing in which the billionaire Facebook CEO testified before Congress on the matter. “The idea that these trained spy masters, their idea for flipping an election to Trump is … 13 Russians will put up Facebook ads and that will sway, we’ll be putting our finger on this election more than the entire media in the United States. No match for 13 Russians and their Pizzagate conspiracy on Facebook!”
Marlow complimented Coulter’s anaylsis, pointing out that for all their complaints about “influence,” the left dominates the news media, entertainment industry, and academia, while the right makes due with only “talk radio and some blogs.”
“And boy do they want to shut that down!” Coulter replied. “They have K-12, they have the universities, they have all of the media, they have Silicon Valley, they have Hollywood. The one little place, the tiny little area where there is still free speech and you can get an alternative point of view is on the internet and look at what the social media [companies] are doing.”
Coulter has been at the forefront of the backlash over leftists in Big Techs’ attempts to stamp out dissent from the right on their platforms. She reiterated her call for Republicans and the Trump administration to treat social media as the modern public square. “If Trump would do anything useful, that’s where he’d apply the First Amendment to these public square social media companies,” she told Marlow.
Coulter was less than enthused when Marlow brought up President Donald Trump’s latest overture on the matter, a series of tweets acknowledging the problem:
“Well let’s just hope he didn’t say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll never forget you,’ as he said to the angel moms for 18 months during the campaign,” Coulter said.
Ann Coulter examines the media, the Russian “meddling” narrative, and more in her new book Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost its Collective Mind, in bookstores now.