On an almost daily basis, President Trump makes headlines for his tweets. And although Kellyanne Conway grumbles about the amount of press coverage for Trump’s 140-character-or-less jumblings, it’s hard to make the case that they should be ignored when Trump’s proposing transgender military bans via social media. However, Conway’s complaints (on that subject, at least) could be alleviated if former CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson gets her way. She’s currently attempting to crowdfund money to purchase a controlling stake in Twitter, after which she hopes to ban Trump from the site.
Plame, of course, rose to notoriety before the proliferation of social media — during the so-called “Plamegate” scandal, which saw her outed as a CIA spy by columnist Robert Novak. It was a complicated affair involving alleged leaks by the Bush administration, supposedly in retaliation for remarks by Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, regarding weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq invasion. She authored a memoir (that was adapted with limited box-office appeal), and because she feels so strongly against Trump, she’s returned to the public eye, although she never really left it.
Her crowdfunding efforts are ambitious. Plame started a GoFundMe page and asks those who are tired of Trump’s tweets to donate a whopping $1 billion. She cites his tweet-baiting of North Korea and mistreatment of journalists as reasons to support this campaign:
“It’s time to shut him down. The bad news is Twitter has ignored growing calls to enforce their own community standards and delete Trump’s account. The good news is we can make that decision for them.
“Twitter is a publicly traded company. Shares = power. This GoFundMe will fund the purchase of a controlling interest in Twitter. At the current market rate that would require over a billion dollars — but that’s a small price to pay to take away Trump’s most powerful megaphone and prevent a horrific nuclear war.”
So far, the results over six days of donations haven’t been stellar. Plame has raised a mere $8,437 so far, and although she’s celebrating the campaign’s newly trending status, her efforts may go to waste unless a big donor or two arrive. However, this may not be an entirely impossible happening if, say, Paypal founder Peter Thiel opens his wallet. The former lukewarm Trump supporter, who spoke at the Republican convention, has decided that this presidency is likely to end in disaster. So, perhaps Thiel would want to give the timeline a nudge, which could happen if Trump isn’t able to tweet. He’d probably go bonkers from withdrawal and forget all about winning.
Plame’s GoFundMe campaign can be accessed here.
(Via Go Fund Me & Washington Post)