The Media Research Center tried to run a Trump template on an election in Romania. P.J. Gladnick complained in a Jan. 3 post:
“Democracy Dies in Darkness” according to the Washington Post, but when democracy is annulled in broad daylight Politico thinks it is no big deal as long as it is the election of a candidate they oppose that is being cancelled.
Such is the attitude of the European edition of Politico towards the Romanian presidential election that was cancelled by that country’s Constitutional Court due to what they claimed was interference by Russia on social media.
On Wednesday, Politico’s Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing gleefully reported in a six-paragraph brief that “Romanian appeals court upholds scrubbing fishy presidential election.”
[…]See how that works? Just allege that Russia helped a candidate and then if a court agrees simply annul the election. Many liberals in America probably now wish they had come up with that election annulment shtick after their shock over the 2016 election results. The problem for Politico is they invoked the name of the runner up candidate in that annulled election and hyped her as the preferable alternative to the nasty “far right” candidate who came in first place.
Gladnick didn’t explain why it’s a good thing for a candidate to express support for a right-wing authoritarian who is currently waging unprovoked war on a neighboring country, or why that authoritarian’s alleged interference in the Romanian election should be overlooked.
Gladnick got Trumpier in a March 11 post:
You could almost think that it is perfectly rational for a supposedly democratic country to bar a leading presidential candidate from appearing on the ballot if you read Monday’s Reuters report, “Far-right candidate Calin Georgescu barred from Romania presidential election re-run.”
Here is Reuters acting as if it is normal to destroy a democratic election in order to save it.
[…]Yes, because the leading candidate in America, Trump, was also subjected to lawfare in an attempt to keep him off the ballot in several states, which helps explain his interest in the lawfare used in Romania to keep their leading candidate off the ballot.
Yes, Gladnick thinks enforcing election laws and prosecuting people for the crimes they commit are “lawfare,” and he doesn’t explain why he thinks a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist deserves to be president.
Tom Olohan played the bogus “censorship” card in a May 12 post:
Member of the Assembly of Deputies of Romania George Simion told Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec what free speech on social media means to his campaign and his country.
Simion credited social media with ending mainstream media’s ability to ignore and silence disfavored candidates during a Friday interview on Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec. Simion, the winner of 41% of the vote in the May 4 first round of Romania’s presidential election, praised Elon Musk for striking a blow against censorship on social media. “It is important that you have a platform that doesn’t exercise censorship like [Big Tech] they did, like banning the account of President Trump,” he said.
Simion’s comments follow Romania’s Constitutional Court’s cancellation of a separate first-round electoral victory by candidate Calin Georgescu. The court based its decision on questionable claims that Russia manipulated not voting machines or election officials but what Romanians saw on TikTok.
Olohan offered no evidence that claims of Russian manipulation were “questionable.” He also didn’t ask why a Romanian candidate is doing an interview with an American like Posobiec, who’s best known these days for calling for the death of President Biden, nor did he tell his readers that Simion is a far-right politician like Georgescu.
When Simion lost the May 19 runoff to centrist candidate Nicușor Dan, Olohan followed up with a conspiracy-promoting May 20 post:
The creator of a social media platform with a billion monthly active users warned that the same country prosecuting him for speech on his platform pressured him to interfere in a European election.
Telegram CEO and Founder Pavel Durov said that France pressured him to “silence conservative voices” in Romania during a redo election for an election in which the anti-European Union candidate won. France arrested Durov in August 2024. He is facing up to a decade in prison and is currently only allowed to leave the country with special permission. Nevertheless, Durov turned down this reported request from his captors. In a May 18 post on X, Durov wrote, “I flatly refused. Telegram will not restrict the freedoms of Romanian users or block their political channels.”
Strangely, the full version of this story is no longer available on the Free Speech America site where Olohan normally writes; its apparent deletion has not been explained. As a fact-checker found, Durov has offered no evidence to back up his claim, and French officials have denied it.