Biden campaign: Twitter, er X, is ‘an increasingly hostile place'

The Biden campaign and White House increasingly see the site formerly known as Twitter as a sewer. They just can’t quite leave the mess alone.

In recent weeks, aides have ramped up their criticism of X, admonishing its owner Elon Musk for promoting anti-Jewish content, and launching accounts on its Meta-owned competitor, Threads. They say they no longer see the platform as a place where they can actually build useful voter relations or even engage in level political discourse.

“We look at it as an increasingly hostile place,” Rob Flaherty, a deputy Biden campaign manager, told POLITICO. “It was initially a place that its value was for communicating with elites and reporters and high-information people. But it was also a place where politics could move into culture in a real way and access discreet communities like Black Twitter or Latino Twitter or all these sorts of places where things could happen and bubble up.”

Now, he added, the site is dominated by “a lot of hate right wing actors and disinformation.”

But even as they trash the site, they aren’t ready to quit it either.

Aides continue to tweet — as does the president. They debated, internally, the merits of leaving the platform, but determined it would be a mistake to leave even the crass political debates unattended. As Flaherty put it: X “remains as valuable as the reporters who remain on it let it be.”

Instead, they are adapting to the bare-knuckled nature of X by trying to shape it. Largely, they’ve used X to try and drive the conversation and slam their likely general election opponent. But aides to the president have begun more aggressively using the platform to call out reporters and news outlets, mock pundits and try to influence the news cycle.

One recent example came this past weekend, when aides to both entities took turns admonishing Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson after he posted that President Biden, while in Nantucket over the weekend, “was asked by a reporter if he is too old to run for re-election.” Tomlinson didn’t disclose that he was the reporter. White House press aide Andrew Bates tweeted about it five times.

“Take a bow, @LucasFoxNews,” Bates posted. “Several reporters called out Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson for claiming that Biden ‘continues to face questions about his age’ while citing as evidence only a question he himself asked the president.”

Biden’s aides and allies have long viewed Twitter and X as a type of sandbox political culture that didn’t come close to resembling how most of the country consumed news. But they still saw larger benefits to it. Under Musk’s reign, those views have become more jaded. They now see X as less of a place to engage communities and more as a gym for political combat.

To that end, the campaign has not advertised on the platform since the company reversed its ban on political advertising earlier this year. A recent database of political advertising on the platform, provided by X on Wednesday after POLITICO requested the data, had no advertising from the @JoeBiden handle.

They’ve also begun looking to other avenues and sites to build the type of online relationships that proved useful in the past. The decision to launch accounts on Threads, which was made over several weeks, was done with an eye toward that. Even people who have worked for X concede that, under Musk, the site is no longer geared toward community engagement.

“It’s still the best place to share quick, targeted information to media and politics professionals, which is very useful,” said a former Twitter employee, granted anonymity to speak candidly about their former employer. “But that’s rapid response, and inside baseball, not mass marketing.”

POLITICO reached out to X’s press email for this story and received what appeared to be an automated message: “Busy now, please check back later.”

The White House has stressed that its decisions have been driven by internal political calculations about the utility of X and not as a personal rebuke of Musk. The recent criticism of X’s owner reflected the administration’s ongoing efforts to combat a rise in antisemitism, said four aides granted anonymity to speak freely about internal discussions.

A number of prominent advertisers have fled X after Musk affirmed in a tweet his support for a conspiracy theory that Jews were stoking hatred against white people. Musk has responded by filing a lawsuit against Media Matters, claiming the progressive media watchdog organization manipulated search data to suggest advertisers were having their ads placed alongside antisemitic content.

While Democratic officials have largely soured on X over the years, they’ve found it difficult to find a replacement platform that serves similar reach and utility. And a number of prominent Democratic lawmakers — including California Rep. Adam Schiff and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman — continue to advertise on X.

Some also fear that leaving X could create a vacuum of misinformation, disinformation and bad news that would go unchecked.

“Given the stakes of this election, I just think that you have to be part of the conversation wherever it's playing out, even if in the long run you would like to see platforms that facilitate healthier political discourse,” said Jesse Lehrich, a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and cofounder of Accountable Tech. “When democracy is on the line, you don't want to lose democracy for the sake of taking a principled stand.”

For now, Biden campaign officials are trying to determine what platform may be best poised to divert their efforts. It’s unlikely the @JoeBiden handle on X would ever be deleted, they said, but rather, the campaign would simply stop posting.

In the meantime, they are opening up the conversation to voters who use Threads and other sites.

“I think that what you'll see is that the campaigns will spread out their effort and see what works,” said Nu Wexler, a former Twitter employee.