SOCIAL MEDIA/SUMMIT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Trolling on the internet was once a thankless pastime. Make edgy jokes on the right message board, get your sarcastic memes noticed by the right people, and you might score some retweets and Reddit upvotes, but that was about the extent of it. For today’s right-wing trolls, though, there is a bigger prize on the table: a red-carpet visit to the White House. On Thursday [7-11-19], President Trump is assembling a group of his most ardent online supporters for a White House ‘social media summit.’ The guest list has not been publicly released, but a motley grab bag of pro-Trump influencers have taken to Twitter to brag about their invitations, including James O’Keefe, the right-wing founder of Project Veritas; Bill Mitchell, a pro-Trump activist who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory; and a pseudonymous Twitter user, ‘CarpeDonktum,’ who is perhaps best known for creating a doctored video of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that Mr. Trump retweeted.”
–Kevin Roose, “Trump Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Right-Wing Social Media Trolls,” The New York Times online, July 10, 2019