PITTSBURGH — When thousands of Trump supporters, in an estimated 2,000 cars and trucks, gathered for the “Interstate 70 Trump Train,” a road rally covering Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania last weekend, I asked many of them how they had learned about the event. Nearly every person said they heard about it on Facebook. That was especially important, they added, because there was little or no news coverage of such events.
This weekend, there will be another giant car and truck rally, the “Pro-Trump PA Turnpike Relay Parade,” this one across the highway that joins eastern and western Pennsylvania. I asked the organizer how he is getting the word out. The answer: Facebook.
In late September, there was yet another road rally that also included a traditional gathering in a square in North Huntingdon Township, about half an hour east of Pittsburgh. It was organized, of course, on Facebook.
Everybody sees Trump rallies. In the final days of the campaign, the president is flying around the country, holding big, raucous events at airports that create a striking contrast to the small, restrained gatherings held by Democratic challenger Joe Biden. But the heart of the Trump campaign has nothing, officially, to do with the Trump campaign. There is a pro-Trump movement that has grown up organically in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most important swing state in the 2020 election. All on their own, without the help of the campaign or the Republican Party, devoted Trump supporters are organizing for what they believe will be a Trump victory.
And they are doing it with Facebook. It is hard to imagine the level of organizing that is currently going on without the social media giant.
Yet, at the same time, the very people who are using Facebook to organize pro-Trump events in Pennsylvania are also chafing under Facebook’s restrictions on their ability to discuss politics with like-minded people in their own state and around the country.
“Facebook shut me down twice in two days,” said Ed Kroupa of Penn Township, who is organizing Sunday’s turnpike rally. “They disabled my ability to share and post in other groups.” The Facebook crackdown happened after Kroupa posted articles that did not meet the approval of Facebook’s censors. And when, because of that, he was denied access to the site, that meant he was also denied the ability to organize as well. And that means there are times when he has no access to his main organizing tool. When I asked about events coming up in the next couple of days, Kroupa said, “I don’t know, I can’t get on Facebook right now.”
Mike Destro and his friend Dan Sudsina organized the September rally, which attracted about 1,200 vehicles. They created a Facebook page called the Pro-Trump NHT Rally, with NHT standing for North Huntingdon Township. “Facebook was huge in [organizing] that,” Destro told me. “We would not have been able to get that many people involved in it if we had not had a platform like Facebook.”
Now, Destro wants to keep the page going — it is a private group with 3,488 members — as a place where people can discuss the news. But he is constantly running into Facebook’s censorship. “I would love to go in there and start a discussion about the Hunter Biden emails,” Destro told me. “But Facebook is going to take those pages down.” Destro has also found that his members cannot mention the name of the man widely discussed as being the whistleblower in the complaint that led to President Trump’s impeachment. “You still can’t say it on Facebook,” Destro said.
Belle Mulhern, 18 years old, of Westmoreland County, became something of a star of the WalkAway campaign last summer, when she published (on Facebook) an account of her earlier support for Bernie Sanders and her conversion to conservatism and support for President Trump. She is also helping Kroupa organize the coming turnpike rally, which inevitably involves Facebook. But she, too, has had to deal with Facebook’s suppression of political speech. She discovered that when she started a small group, “Dissecting the Fake News,” in which she and her friends post news articles and discuss them. “Every day, I get at least one notification that this or that post was taken down because it violates community guidelines,” Mulhern told me. “It’s irritating.”
It’s more than irritating for Trump supporters engaged in a determined bid to overcome the odds against Trump’s reelection. Some of the supporters most inclined to get involved in organizing for Trump (on their own, without the assistance of the campaign or party) are also the most likely to run afoul of Facebook’s censorship. When Facebook cracks down on them, and locks them out of the site, it cracks down on their ability to organize for Trump.
The censorship has brought the wrath of Washington Republicans down on Facebook and other social media giants (Twitter, especially, at the moment). But talks with pro-Trump activists in this key state show what a complicated issue social media is in today’s campaigning. Yes, Facebook infuriates them and infringes on free expression. But it also allows them to organize a 2,000-car rally for Trump. And right now, with the election just days away, that is critical.
