On The Social Media Pivot by The White House

The White House Official Twitter account uses plain data to suggest GOP hypocrisy on the President’s Student Loan debt cancellation policy.

Is the administration pivoting towards a more hard-edged social media strategy as the midterms draw nigh? The Official White House Twitter account clapped back against several Republicans in Congress who used the microblogging site to attack the President’s Student Loan debt cancellation policy by simply stating the facts. It was an edgy strategic maneuver that stated the amounts of PPP loans forgiven six sitting members of the House, while allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about whether or not there is hypocrisy involved.

As the dog days of summer drag on, the rumors of a near immanent Republican red wave are beginning to evaporate. Republican overreach — on issues like abortion, for example — has buoyed Democrat hopes. The Official White House Twitter account in pushing back with the data reflects the new political reality of Democrat competeiveness in November.

The Official government account (Blue check mark and all) has 7.5 million followers and thus made news, amplifying the administrations point. The account mentioned some outspoken Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, for their arguments, contrasting their rhetoric with the data of their own forgiven PPP loans. Congresswoman Greene, for example, who immediately took a negative take on the policy, had $183,504 of her own PPP loans forgiven by the government (Averted Gaze).

It being social media during a very polarized time, all hell broke loose in the Twitterverse.

Partisans on both sides responded with jabs and right hooks. The Center for American Progress, responding to a tweet by the House Judiciary GOP account, sent out an even longer list of Republican Congress members who had PPP loans forgiven. Thirteen GOP Republicans were listed, including Georgia’s aforementioned Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the amounts of their PPP loan forgiveness. The others in the Tweet: Florida’s Matt Gaetz ($476,000 in PPP forgiveness), Indiana’s Greg Pence ($79,440), Florida’s Vern Buchanan ($2.8M), Oklahoma’s Kevin Hern ($1.07M), Texas’s Roger Williams ($1.43M), Kentucky’s Brett Guthrie ($4.3M), South Carolina’s Ralph Norman ($306,520), Louisiana’s Ralph Abraham ($38,000), Pennsylvania’s Mike Kelly ($974,100), Missouri’s Vicki Hartzler ($451,200), Oklahoma’s Markwayne Mullin ($988,700) and West Virginia’s Carol Miller ($3.1M).

The right, predictably, pushed back. Newsweek contributor Joel M. Petlin bemoaned the lack of “civility” on Twitter. Sebastian Gorka made no such arguments about the amount of civility in the policy because, quite frankly, he has none. Instead, Gorka, who took an oath of loyalty to a Hungarian neo-Nazi organization, whined aloud if the official tweet violated the Hatch Act, which limits the political activities of certain government employees. The sound of crickets was his response.

If the goal of the tweet was to publicly shame the legislators using simply the facts as amunition, it is a new social media strategy for this particular administration, a sharp-elbowed approach that echoes some of the hard-charging politics seen on the campaign trail. Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman is at present winning a closely-watched scorched earth meme war on social media against Dr. Oz, who peddled “magic” fat burning pills. And Texas Gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke has drawn kudos on social media for his unapologetic and sometimes profane Progressivism on the camapign trail.

Election Day for midterms is a little over two months away.