All right. So on Monday, Jankowicz would have us believe that she had hoped to spend her time as chief of the Disinformation Governance Board, which was part of the Department of Homeland Security, countering alleged disinformation that had “become entrenched in domestic politics.” Now, wait a minute. On May 1, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Mayorkas, “Will American citizens be monitored?” Mayorkas’ answer was unequivocal and reassuring: “No. The board does not have any operational authority or capability. What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries from the cartels and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years.”
Jankowicz fired back with a claim that Bier and Blum were — you guessed it — spreading disinformation: “The thread you’re citing—which you’ve removed the initial context to—is in reference to a paper about *hostile state disinfo.* You can disagree w/ my assessment that it affects domestic politics/discourse, but the strategy described in the paper is the work I’m referring to.” Blum, however, was having none of it, responding, “I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘context’ means. Speaking of something being entrenched in domestic politics necessarily means combating domestic sources of disinformation, which is not what you were hired to do. Not to mention that by disabling replies to your tweets, you are preventing people from introducing any context that might show you are wrong or otherwise refute your claims, so please don’t lecture me on the best practices of informational discourse, Nina.”