In late 2020, a faltering, one-term, failed coup leader and washed-up reality TV host Donald Trump brought two climate deniers into his fact-adverse, racist, and violence-stoking administration: David Legates and Ryan Maue. The pair then did something incredible. When Legates and Maue slapped an official White House seal onto a bunch of climate denial pamphlets they’d produced, it proved a bridge too far into alternative facts-land, even for the Trump administration, and they became some of the only people to actually receive negative consequences from the Trump administration for being dishonestly anti-science.
When an administration is built on disinformation, being demoted for climate denial is truly an accomplishment!
And although that sort of stain would leave most unhirable for the rest of their lives, apparently Maue managed to impress someone at a social media company enough to get a consulting gig.
We say “apparently”, because it’s just an inference based on a recent tweet thread, in which Ryan says he provided “a news review for a social media company” about the recent tornado outbreak and climate science, because “some social media companies have expressed apprehension w/ their current fact checking networks especially on climate topics. One in particular is concerned that faulty fact checking may be labeling legitimate expert opinions as misinformation. Who fact checks the fact checkers?”
Now we could be wrong, but the only social media company with a fact checking network is Facebook. And they may well be doing some thinking about the rigor of their fact checking network, given that John Stossel is suing them because fact checkers debunked his Koch-funded climate disinformation. [Update/Edit: Facebook told us they don’t have any record of consulting with Maue.]
But why would anyone ever go to Ryan Maue for expertise on what consists of “legitimate expert opinions?” After all, Maue is a self-described “warrior for the conservative right” who tweets with date-rape-denying misogynists and has published at American Greatness, a website even the conservative Washington Examiner described as having “neo-Nazi intentions.”
Before it shut down its climate work, Maue was an adjunct scholar at the Koch-founded and -funded Cato Institute, giving him a personal stake in protecting the climate disinformation industry.
If Facebook, or any other social media platform is talking to Maue, it better be in the context of understanding someone who produces disinformation professionally, and not someone equipped to offer unbiased and objective scientific advice.
Unless, of course, you’d consider someone too anti-scientific for the Trump administration to be credible.
Sure, fact checks should be reviewed, but it definitely shouldn’t be by someone who was so eager to spread climate disinformation with the White House’s seal on it that he may well have broken the law to do so.
No one’s claiming fact checkers are infallible. We’re just saying they shouldn’t be judged by someone too dishonest for the Trump White House.
