Analysis: President Trump’s tweet urging followers to give up Comast’s “abuse of power”.

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Analysis: President Trump’s tweet urging followers to give up Comast’s “abuse of power”.

People mostly just shrugged. Comcast CEOs barely bit their lashes. The company made no effort to comment. Google is also looking for “Comcast customer service” trends lower than in recent days.

Still, the president’s mission was another example of his longstanding effort to punish media outlets for following news he doesn’t like.

In June 2019, he proposed a boycott of the parent company CNN AT&T. Shares of the company rose on the day of his tweet.
In recent months, it has targeted Comcast, one of the country’s major broadband and cable providers, and the owner of NBC News and MSNBC. Nickname from “Concast” almost a dozen tweets from March. And MSNBC, known for its liberal programs, called “MSDNC” a reference to the Democratic Party.

Trump’s provocations rarely get much attention, even on Twitter, his platform of choice.

Saturday’s anti-Comcast post received less than 10,000 forwarded tweets at 10 p.m. On Facebook, where it was reposted, received less than 7,500 comments. One of the comments with the most reactions said, “You’re spending too much time on social media.”
Strange that his post was a reaction to a a three-year tweet former Arkansas governor and Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee, who wrote in 2017 that the mafia has “better service than Comcast”.

“They’re sure to shoot you, but it’s over with and they don’t charge you for a bullet,” Huffbee riffed.

It was unclear how the old tweet suddenly caught the president’s attention. But he wrote in response: “Concast is known for its awesome service. On top of that they provide FAKE NEWS on MSDNC & @NBCNews. Discard them and send to a good service provider!”

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So he linked his disapproval of Comcast’s news to a proposal to “drop” them.

While the public appears confident of the president’s use of his platform to disparage U.S. companies, it is still an abuse of power, said Norman Eisen, who the radio at the Obama White House as a special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform. Eisen is now a senior fellow in management studies at the Brookings Institution.

“The abuse of power for the U.S. president is to use the Oval Office’s formidable authority to target a U.S. company,” Eisen said Saturday. “It’s even worse because there is revenge here against the exercise of constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment.”

Eisen collaborated with Democrats during the investigation into the stronghold last winter, serving as special advisers to the House Justice Committee.

“In our intentions and trial, we pointed to the president’s tendency to abuse power for purely personal and political purposes, and we warned that this would continue,” he said. “This tweet is proof of both. History teaches us where it can lead when leaders send such signals.”

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