JEFF CHILDERS

Something weird has gone wrong with the narrative. Yesterday, I reported an unexpected, even if half-hearted, defense of Twitter/X and free speech appearing in the weekend’s Economist. Now it has happened again. Yesterday, the Washington Post’s full editorial board ran its op-ed under the unlikely headline, “In this free speech fight, Musk’s X has marked the right position.”

image 10.png
My best guess is the polls show strong support for Elon in his battle with Brazil’s unhinged Supreme Court and its villainous, Darth Vader-like mouthpiece, Alexandre de Moraes. So instead of attacking Musk this time, they’re siding with him. Consider this astonishing paragraph from WaPo’s editorial board:

In contrast with the Economist’s weak defense, the WaPo didn’t mince its words. It even agreed, and I am not making this up, Elon has the right to speak his own mind:

WaPo may someday regret admitting Elon has the right to speak his own mind. But how could this happen? Maybe it’s because Brazilians seem to be ignoring Justice Moraes’s recent Twitter ban. Despite the threat of apocalyptic $10K/day fines, X remains the top downloaded app on the Brazilian app store. If most Brazilians defy their Supreme Court, as Musk has done, the lawfare system will fail as a practical matter, and the court will lose its authority.

After all, de Moraes can’t lock them all up for tweeting.

Maybe de Moraes went too far? True, banning all Twitter posts in Brazil with a single judicial order is much more economical than censoring them one by one. But was it a stretch too far, even for the Washington Post? Have the narrative spinners declared defeat, retreating to fight again another day? Is Constitutional common sense winning the day? (Haha, not likely, I know.)

What do you think caused all this unexpected Elon support?