OPINION:
President Obama isn’t letting the unsolved terrorist attack in Boston stand in the way of his public relations battle to pass gun-control laws.
The White House is running a social media campaign on its official website to get people to sign up for a blast post to support Mr. Obama’s agenda. The Senate started debating gun legislation written by the Democrat majority on Tuesday.
The whitehouse.gov site has a a banner at the top of the page for the issue “preventing gun violence” that screams: “LET’S MAKE OUR CALL FOR ACTION SO LOUD IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE.”
Citizens are asked to “add your voice” and then linked to a page in which they can “pre-set a post to Twitter and/or Facebook that will publish simultaneously with thousands of others.”
The White House does this with an application called Thunderclap, which posts the same message simultaneously from people’s social media accounts in a “single mass-shared, flash mob-style.”
The message that will be sent out automatically after reaching 25,000 participants is: “I support common-sense steps to reduce gun violence. #NowIsTheTime to act. Share this if you agree.” The post automatically adds a link to the Thunderclap page so others can add to it.
So far, the White House has signed up 17,409 people, whose joint accounts equal amount a social reach of 15,545,706.
Twitter shut down Thunderclap last year for violating its policy of not posting duplicate content over multiple accounts. After negotiations, Twitter let the application back onto its service, seemingly because it is not blasting commercial ads.
During the Obama administration, the White House website has evolved from a government service to a tool of the Democratic party. This latest gimmick is so inappropriate that it ought to be taken down.
Taxpayers should demand that their money be used for a website with nonpartisan information, rather than a propaganda machine for a president who can’t stop campaigning.
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