by Frank Holmes, reporter
Foreign powers posting political memes and tweets is supposed to be the biggest problem facing our country, according to the Democratic Party and the mainstream media – but both are awfully quiet when it turns out those foreign intelligence agencies are supporting Democrats.
Ever since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, her backers have said foreign Facebook posters are “undermining our democracy” and even perpetrating “an act of war!”
But the newest scandal has nothing to do with Russia – and the hostile foreign power behind it hates President Donald Trump almost as much as the Democrats do.
A new investigation has found that Iran spent a fortune setting up phony social media accounts to promote Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other liberals, and push a far-left anti-Trump agenda on American voters heading into the 2018 midterm electionb.
“Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram,” Facebook announced late last month.
Multiple doesn’t quite cover it. The social media giant booted 652 users or pages from its platforms for being Iranian foreign agents pushing an anti-American agenda.
The people behind the political influence game were “determined and well funded,” according to Facebook.
And the accounts spent $12,000 on ads on Facebook and Instagram – and they didn’t stop there.
Twitter soon deleted 284 accounts that engaged in “coordinated manipulation” – and then it dropped the bomb.
“It appears many of these accounts originated from Iran,” Twitter said.
Facebook also admitted, “Some of this activity originated in Iran.”
A group known as FireEye Intelligence tipped off the social media giants that Iran set up fake profiles in order to push “anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as well as to promote support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran.”
Guess which political party fits that bill?
“We have observed inauthentic social media personas, masquerading as American liberals supportive of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders,” FireEye said.
Iran’s trolls and bots also engaged in “significant anti-Trump messaging.”
But then the really big scandal came out.
Facebook admitted that it let the phony anti-Trump groups keep posting for months – at the direction of U.S. law enforcement officials.
“If we remove them too early, it’s harder to understand their playbook and the extent of their network,” Facebook said defensively.
But they added that they let the Iranian propaganda spread so they could “coordinate with law enforcement, who often have investigations of their own.”
Is it possible that rogue Deep State activists in the Justice Department told Facebook to let Iran’s campaign go on, in order to damage Trump and the Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections?
Iran’s pro-Democrat collusion is so undeniable that even ranking Democrats admit it’s real – and it’s a threat. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, tweeted —
We also learned today that the Iranians are now following the Kremlin’s playbook from 2016.
— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) August 21, 2018
But where is the rest of his party? Where’s the MSNBC wall-to-wall coverage, the media coverage of Iran trying to boost Bernie’s political campaigns, the call for sanctions against Tehran?
Where’s the outrage?! The silence is deafening.
It’s no surprise the Middle East mullahs hate Trump. He called the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”
Trump pulled out of the agreement in May and told Iran there would be “hell to pay” if they ever tried to develop a nuclear weapon or kept supporting terrorism.
So, now Iran is trying to back his political enemies online – and the Democrats don’t seem to care because it benefits them.
Republicans can make sure this subject comes up during special hearings into foreign influence and censoring conservatives on social media this week.
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg will be under fire during two separate House and Senate hearings, both scheduled for tomorrow.
The committees asked Google’s Larry Page to attend, but he refused to face their questions in person.
Watch for the Democrats to turn the hearings into “proof” that Russia stole the election from Clinton two years ago – and ignore the fact that their own online supporters are logging in from Iran.
Frank Holmes is a reporter for The Horn News. He is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”