White House joins social media platform Threads

The executive branch’s launch of the months-old platform has been in the works for weeks, according to a White House official. The official called the accounts “an additional way to communicate with the American people about this administration’s historic actions to create 14 million jobs, reduce prescription drug costs and protect freedoms, and much more “.

Days before the announcement, the White House publicly condemned X owner Elon Musk after he appeared to indicate support for an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

Musk was responding to an X user who claimed that the rise in online anti-Semitism was the fault of Jews supporting “hordes of minorities” and promoting “hatred against white people.” The user said he has no sympathy for Jews who face hateful comments such as “Hitler was right.”

Musk responded, “You told the real truth,” helping to amplify the user’s tweet to his vast online audience.

In a later post, Musk went on to criticize the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that fights anti-Semitism and extremism, saying it “unfairly attacks the majority of the West” for its hatred anti-Jewish rather than “the minority groups who are their enemies”. main threat. »

The White House called the billionaire’s comments “abhorrent promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred.”

Responding to the claim that he is anti-Semitic, Musk then job that “nothing could be further from the truth”.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed that the administration would continue to condemn “hateful” and “dangerous” comments. She would not say whether the White House was considering leaving X because of Elon Musk’s comments.

Another White House official told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the decision to join Threads was made regardless of activity on any other social media platforms.

X brought a legal action on Monday against the non -profit organization on the left Media Matters and his writer Eric Hananoki, for what he described as “intentionally deceptive report” on anti -Semitism on the platform. The report identified several large companies whose ads appeared alongside pro-Nazi posts on the platform. Several companies have pulled their ads from X following the report and recent posts from Elon Musk.

Along with the decline in advertising, the number of people actively posting on X fell by more than 30%, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.

Matt Viser, Amy B Wang, Will Oremus and Naomi Nix contributed to this report.