Twitter users are having a field day today upon learning the social media giant has permanently suspended – aka, banned – the account of notorious far right wing conspiracy theorist, fraudster, and overall lying, Trump-loving troll Jacob Wohl.
Wohl, just 21-years old, had managed to do what others dream: become popular on social media, but by doing whatever it takes. He had 186,000 followers on Twitter.
USA Today had the unique opportunity to report on the ban, just hours after it interviewed Wohl, running a story titled, “This 21-year-old tweeted lies about Robert Mueller and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, he’s eyeing the 2020 election.”
“Wohl’s most prominent gambit was also his most disastrous: an apparent sloppy attempt to accuse Trump’s nemesis special counsel Robert Mueller of sexual misconduct days before the midterm elections in November. His actions were referred to the FBI for potential criminal investigation,” the paper notes.
The story includes a January 22 tweet from Wohl, which went viral, because of conservatives’ confirmation bias: basically, they are more likely to believe what’s on the internet than are liberals.
“Kamala Harris is NOT eligible to be President. Her father arrived from Jamaica in 1961—mother from India arrived in 1960,” Wohl tweeted. “Neither parent was a legal resident for 5 years prior to Harris’s birth, a requirement for naturalization,” he added.
“Kamala was raised in Canada,” he claimed.
Literally not a word of it was true, but, as USA Today noted, it got so much attention CNN covered it as a story.
“Wohl has claimed, without evidence, that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is secretly dead or in a vegetative state and that pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and media outlets were a left-wing ‘false flag’ operation,” USA Today reports.
Even former US Senator Claire McCaskill weighed in, before the ban was announced:
And now, he has had his Twitter account banned, reportedly for “multiple violations of the Twitter rules, specifically creating and operating fake accounts,” according to Mother Jones’ Ali Breland.
Why?
Perhaps it was this portion of the USA Today article that forced Twitter to actually take action – something users accuse the nearly 13-year old company of loathing to do:
Wohl disclosed a raft of schemes he says are in the works that he hopes will resonate in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
He says he plans to create “enormous left-wing online properties” – such as deceptive Facebook and Twitter accounts – “and use those to steer the left-wing votes in the primaries to what we feel are weaker candidates compared with Trump.” It’s a plot similar to what Mueller has charged in indictments that the Russians crafted in an effort to boost the 2016 campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein and hobble Hillary Clinton.
Another stated scheme: seeking to collect damaging information on left-leaning non-profits including Media Matters for America, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Right Wing Watch by offering their insiders “moral reconciliation,” and if that doesn’t work, “things of worth” – such as money.
Or perhaps those stated plans themselves are a ruse to fool the mainstream media, which he calls a “band of lying goblins.”
Wohl stressed that the accuracy of the information he spreads is “not the important part.” All that matters is how far those claims travel, and how many people believe them.
Here’s how many are responding – or celebrating – on Twitter:
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