“The Other 98%,” one of the most popular left-wing pages on Facebook, has spent 24 hours mocking and celebrating the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Sunday afternoon.
Like “Occupy Democrats,” another left-wing page that is popular on Facebook, “The Other 98%” runs radical left-wing “engagement” posts and misinformation stories with impunity, insulated from the fact-checking that ordinary news websites must face on the platform.
Since Sunday’s assassination, “The Other 98%” has been drawing clicks and views with posts such as one depicting Trump wearing a menstrual pad on his ear and his body, referring to the bandage he wore for several days on his right ear after surviving a bullet wound in the first assassination attempt he faced in July. The caption reads: “After shots heard from 4 miles away…”; in reality, Trump was between 300 and 500 yards away from the gunshots on Sunday.
Other posts used the assassination to mock Trump, or implied that he deserved it for criticizing Taylor Swift.
Facebook has faced pressure from the left to remove hateful content from its platform, referring to right-wing groups.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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