3 Stories You Should Read 6/27/2019: Julian Castro, Twitter, Putin

June 27, 2019 Confluence

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In the category of: Actually, it is our business…

Trump on Putin talks: ‘It’s none of your business’

Donald Trump is in Japan for the latest G-20 summit, and a Kremlin official confirmed yesterday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with his American counterpart during the gathering. By some accounts, the two are expected to speak “for at least an hour.”

And what, pray tell, will the two discuss? As Politico reported, the Republican apparently doesn’t want to talk about it.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday his lips are sealed about what he and Russian President Vladimir Putin say to each other behind closed doors.

Ahead of his expected meeting with Putin on the sidelines of this weekend’s G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, the president told reporters that while he expected to have a positive conversation with Putin, he would not divulge whether he will press the adversarial leader about election interference.

“I will have a very good conversation with him,” Trump said, adding, “What I say to him is none of your business.”

In context, the president was speaking specifically to a White House reporter, but the larger problem is that Trump doesn’t seem to think his Putin chats are anyone’s business.

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In the category of: Terms of Service

Twitter says it will label tweets from Trump and other leaders that break its rules

Twitter plans to place a disclaimer on future tweets from world leaders that break its rules but which Twitter decides are in the “public interest,” the company said in a blog post Thursday.

This policy change could face its most prominent test in President Trump. Trump has repeatedly tested Twitter’s community standards with his regular tirades on the platform and some of the president’s tweets have run afoul of Twitter’s rules.

Twitter (TWTR) has in the past allowed tweets from Trump and other world leaders to remain online, even though they broke the company’s rules, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to CNN Business, because it believes the tweets are in the public interest.

But putting a disclaimer on one of Trump’s tweets would almost certainly bring a firestorm of criticism down on Twitter’s head. Republicans in Washington, including Trump, often claim without real evidence that technology companies are biased against conservatives. Such a disclaimer on a Trump tweet, even if he had clearly violated Twitter’s rules, would provoke a new cycle of such complaints at a time when Washington is increasingly investigating Big Tech over concerns about antitrust and privacy.

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In the category of: Built-in body-double

Julián Castro had a very good night at the first Democratic debate

Have we all been paying attention to the wrong Texan?

The first night of the Democratic debates was big for one Texan in the race — just not the one you probably thought it would be six months ago. Instead, it was Julián Castro.

The former housing and urban development secretary and mayor of San Antonio, who announced his presidential bid in January, delivered a breakout debate performance in Miami on Wednesday. He seized the opportunity to talk about his immigration plan and highlight how he’s shifted the conversation about people who enter the United States without papers, gave a nod to reproductive justice and the trans community, and delivered a moving response about police brutality when he listed victims’ names onstage. He also has perhaps the most viral line of the night: “Adios to Donald Trump.”

Debate viewers, it appears, took notice: Google searches for Castro spiked by 2,400 percent (though most of those people were simply searching for who he is). According to Twitter, he was the third most tweeted-about candidate in the entire 2020 Democratic field during the debate, behind just Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker.

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