Missouri AG's Latest Sweaty Headline Grab Earns Cheers From Elon Musk

Andrew Bailey is now using his office to target a left-wing nonprofit that came after X (previously Twitter)

Mar 25, 2024 at 4:05 pm

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is sidling up to Elon Musk. COURTESY MISSOURI GOVERNOR'S OFFICE

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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit today against a left-leaning media watchdog group that he says is guilty of defaming Twitter (now X) and Elon Musk.

The lawsuit, however, is not a defamation suit — but rather a “petition for order to enforce civil investigative demand.”

Back in November, Bailey's office began investigating the nonprofit Media Matters for America, which Bailey believes manipulated Twitter's algorithm to create a report showing advertisements for normal companies on the platform appeared next to not-normal content, or what Bailey calls "contrived controversial posts." The advertisers subsequently pulled their ads, Bailey says, causing Twitter "astronomical financial losses."

This matters to Missourians, Bailey claims, because Media Matters “used fraud” to solicit donations from Missourians and used that money to bully advertisers into pulling their ad spends off Twitter. Plus, you know, lawsuits like this one are an easy way for Bailey to get media coverage (like this story you're reading right now) because he needs to get elected to the job he was appointed to.

Bailey's lawsuit today asks a judge to force Media Matters to turn over documents related to his investigation. (The organization filed their own lawsuit to block a similar demand from Texas last year.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, today's move from Bailey has won praise from Musk. who wrote on his own social media platform, "Much appreciated! Media Matters is doing everything it can to undermine the First Amendment. Truly an evil organization."

What is surprising is that Bailey's press release today includes an aside that Twitter is, in his opinion, "the last social media platform dedicated to free speech in America."

This would seem to imply rather directly that Donald Trump's Truth Social is, to Bailey's mind, anti-free speech or at least insufficiently pro-free speech.

That has us clutching our pearls.

Let's hope word of the slight doesn't reach Trump. Bailey's opponent in the upcoming AG's race is already on Trump's legal team. We hope the attorney general's insouciance of language here doesn't cost him an endorsement.