CONCORD, N.H. – The campaign manager for Dean Phillips’ presidential campaign was plainly angry that the social media site X had blocked the Phillips campaign account. Turn the account back on, Steve Schmidt demanded. He was speaking to reporters in a thick fog outside the New Hampshire Capitol, where Phillips was scheduled to be launching his campaign. Schmidt called X a “public sewer” with lax restraints on what anybody posts. To ban a centrist Democratic presidential candidate from Minnesota makes no sense, Schmidt said. It’s an inexplicable affront to the free speech that X espouses, he said.
Verbatim
Schmidt: “The Dean Phillips Campaign would like to request the pubic sewer now known as X, formerly known as Twitter and its shambolic leader Elon Musk that that they please turn on the Twitter account or X account of a Democratic presidential candidate, given the fact supposedly ELon Musk is for free speech.”
Drizzly morning in Concord. Schmidt braves the heavy morning mist to light into X for blocking the Dean Phillips presidential campaign account. Under new owner Elon Musk, X has become chaotic and shambolic, Schmidt said.
Schmidt profile
Schmidt is a veteran politial strategist. He advised the residential campaigns of George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and of John McCain in 2008 and of the California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2002 and 2006. In retireent from his mountain retreat in Utah, Schmidt became one of Donald Trump’s most articulate and acerbic critics He was among the first to foresee the Republican Party becoming a Trump cult that couldn’t even develop a party platform on public policy issues. Schmidt left the party and registered as a Democrat. He became a frequent political analyst on MSNBC and HBO’s “The Circus.” In 2023 he was named campaign manager for the presidential campaign of Dean Phillips, a centrist Democrat from Minnesota. Phillip was preparing to challenge President Joe Biden’s expected run for a second term. Schmidt’s analysis of the 2024 campaign ahead: Trump would win the GOP nomination and defeat Biden in the general election. He saw Phillips as a stronger Democratic candidate against Trump.