A “thermonuclear” lawsuit by the world’s richest man against a media outlet over a series of tweets? To quote Westly from The Princess Bride: “Get used to disappointment.”

Oh, it sounds like lots of fun, especially with Media Matters as a target. But for Elon Musk, it sounds like very expensive fun without much hope of a payoff. You know … like buying Twitter for $44 billion. I kid, I kid …

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is threatening to file a “thermonuclear” legal action against Media Matter for America, claiming the organization “completely misrepresented the real user experience on X” in an attempt to harm the social media platform.

The issue stems from multinational corporation IBM’s decision to pull ads from the platform after Media Matters for America claimed ads from the tech giant and pro-Nazi X posts had shown up adjacent to each other. The non-profit said other company’s ads had similar experiences.

Musk outlined the complaint early this morning on Twitter — er, X. He also added that he would name “their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them …” in the suit (ellipsis in the original). Given the nature of Media Matters, that sounds like a great idea under most circumstances.

But will it work in this situation? Media Matters had reported that the “pro-Nazi” content (presumably not related to the actual genocidal-Nazi Hamas terrorists) had organically appeared adjacent to IBM’s ads and those of other sponsors. Musk claims that Media Matters deliberately posted the “pro-Nazi” content and manipulated a false account to generate that random juxtaposition, which amounts to fraud.

But does it?

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company pic.twitter.com/55vl7PspaQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023

Far be it from us to defend Media Matters, but this sounds more like ‘sting’ journalism than fraud, or even tortious interference. It’s certainly a dishonest kind of ‘sting’ journalism if one accepts Musk’s version of events, but note that Musk doesn’t claim that Media Matters made their story up out of whole cloth either. He’s conceding that Media Matters actually did produce those results, but only through large-scale manipulation and highly selective reporting. That concession will likely make this a difficult lawsuit to win, “thermonuclear”-style or otherwise.

In form, at least, this isn’t all that different than having someone operate under cover to expose fetal-tissue sales by abortionists, or posing as an underage pregnant girl to expose failure by abortion providers to comply with reporting laws. Those efforts got cheered on the right for the last couple of decades, and for good reason: they went after actual lawbreaking and other abuses. Of course, on the first example, David Daleiden and others have spent the last several years fighting off criminal and civil complaints for their journalistic efforts to uncover that illegal trafficking in aborted babies. Lila Rose and James O’Keefe risked similar legal liabilities for their efforts to expose Planned Parenthood, and O’Keefe later would use that same kind of strategy to target other political operations, occasionally crossing the line and ending up in legal hot water. “Journalism” isn’t a perfect shield, legally speaking, even when it is actual journalism.

Complicating Twitter’s legal warfare is the fact that Musk himself appeared to promote an anti-Semitic tweet a few days ago. That wasn’t just in the form of a ‘like,’ but in a reply that endorsed the idea that “Jewish communities” have pushed “dialectical hatred against whites”:

At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one's influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories. #NeverIsNow pic.twitter.com/vVlyOeoS5x

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 16, 2023

Two months earlier, Musk had threatened to sue Greenblatt and the ADL for defamation over their complaints about anti-Semitic content:

To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2023

Sounds familiar, no? No word on whether Musk intended that defamation suit to be “thermonuclear” too or perhaps just “sub-atomic,” but apparently it never got filed. It seems at least somewhat likely that these exchanges and other such complaints inspired the Media Matters project to which Musk objects now, as well as their general hostility toward the libertarian turn Twitter has taken under Musk’s ownership.

Could Musk still prevail in a lawsuit? Maybe, but it sure looks like a long shot. He certainly has the resources to pursue it for as long as he likes though, and he could easily outspend Media Matters on that score, and probably their board and donors too. That might suck up so many resources that Media Matters might throw in the towel, but that seems unlikely too. They’ll get support from other activist groups on the Left, especially those who might salivate at the prospect of discovery at some later stage of the fight.

Go long on popcorn stock, in other words, if this “thermonuclear” lawsuit ever actually launches.

The only solid prediction one can make from this fight is that advertisers will be even more skittish about New Media platforms. Attacks on advertisers by the Left have largely succeeded in starving conservative sites, which is one reason why our VIP/VIP Gold members are such a blessing to us. One has to wonder whether Media Matters might end up damaging advertising support for its allies with stunts like this, though. Add in the fact that the institutional Left now has a much bigger problem with neo-Nazis in the form of Hamas sympathizers and outright calls for Jewish genocide on college campuses and street protests, and advertisers will soon use Media Matters’ lesson to pull ads from sites promoting those rallies and slogans — or which even might do so. If all it takes for corporate advertisers to dump Twitter is a handful of manipulated impressions over alleged “neo-Nazi” content, best of luck to the port side of the online commentariat after October 7.

Finally, I do think Musk has done the most to promote free speech on social media since the industry launched, but that doesn’t make him perfect. Musk has occasionally had an arbitrary and capricious relationship to free speech, and sometimes acts as his own worst enemy. His three-point summary at the end of his declaration today is still largely accurate, though, and Musk’s exposure of the government/Big Tech censorship regime is priceless to our ability to defend and protect our First Amendment rights, and Musk spent $44 billion to expose those abuses. For that alone, Musk deserves our thanks …. even when he’s wrong on other issues and actions.

Update: There’s a good discussion in the comments among our VIP members, with most of them disagreeing with me. Beege is more enthusiastic about this lawsuit threat (see her headline this afternoon). I’d be happy to be proven wrong by a jury, of course; Media Matters is a malevolent activist organization, IMHO. But I remain skeptical that there’s an actionable tort in the complaint as laid out by Musk for the reasons I explained, and I also doubt whether a lawsuit will restore his standing with advertisers in the near term. I think they’ll return in the longer term regardless.