Valerie Plame Wilson’s on a mission to get President Trump off Twitter.
How?
By buying it, of course.
Wilson — best known for being revealed as a CIA operative because of a leak during the George W. Bush administration — has started a GoFundMe page to buy a controlling interest in Twitter, in order to delete the president’s account. The company is currently worth nearly $12 billion, with its shares going for around $16.
“Donald Trump has done a lot of horrible things on Twitter. From emboldening white supremacists to promoting violence against journalists, his tweets damage the country and put people in harm’s way,” Wilson wrote on the campaign’s page “But threatening actual nuclear war with North Korea takes it to a dangerous new level.”
If @Twitter executives won’t shut down Trump’s violence and hate, then it's up to us. #BuyTwitter #BanTrump https://t.co/HhbaHSluTx
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) August 18, 2017
The goal: $1 billion. That might be a stretch, though. Wilson has raised more than $3,000 since she launched the campaign on August 16.
“At the current market rate that would require over a billion dollars — but that’s a small price to pay to take away Trump’s most powerful megaphone and prevent a horrific nuclear war,” Plame wrote.
If they aren’t able to meet that goal, the plan is to buy a “significant stake” in order to push the proposal at the annual stakeholder’s meeting, Plame said.
Twitter has previously defended Trump’s use of the platform. Back in May, CEO Jack Dorsey said it was important for people to “hear directly from our leadership.”
Twitter did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
One analyst estimated that eliminating the president’s tweets would wipe out $2 billion of Twitter’s market value, according to Bloomberg News.
The president is known for going on tweetstorms. Wilson described his actions as “weaponizing Twitter,” and pointed to the president’s tweet that said the military was “locked and loaded” for a response to North Korea.
Military solutions are now fully in place,locked and loaded,should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2017
“Tweets like this are heard around the world,” Wilson said. “As he uses his biggest platform to escalate the crisis, this could all-too-easily spark a military confrontation that goes nuclear.”
