Throughout this election cycle, the Republican party has claimed that Democrats have the tech sphere and social media outlets in their pocket.
President Donald Trump's eldest son—Donald Trump Jr.—recently posted an Instagram video, claiming to watch his "algorithms get crushed" by the social media platform. A new Twitter feature prompting users to open an article before sharing it has the President's allies in a tizzy with claims of suppression.
Meanwhile Facebook's daily top shares are mostly from Republican pages and Twitter is Trump's signature platform for firing off messages to his supporters.
As absurd as the so-called Democratic dominance of tech sounds to critics, one analyst for the conservative Fox News network took his claims even further.
The Russia Hoax and Witch Hunt author Gregg Jarrett—whom Trump has retweeted over 100 times—floated on Twitter that his WiFi dying could be an effort to suppress a column he wrote that was critical to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
I find it odd, if not curious, that the moment I hit “send" on my column that's highly critical of Joe Biden my Wi-Fi service disconnected. Inexplicably, it will be out all day. Never happened before. Probably just a coincidence. I drove to the local store and sent the column .
— Gregg Jarrett (@GreggJarrett) October 23, 2020
Jarrett claimed he had to leave his house to send the tweet.
BTW... I had to leave the house to send this tweet.
— Gregg Jarrett (@GreggJarrett) October 23, 2020
I'm standing in the middle of the street, but will return home now. Don't want to get run over! So, I won't be getting communications. Sorry. I'm sure it's just a communications failure. Or not.
— Gregg Jarrett (@GreggJarrett) October 23, 2020
The conspiracy theory generated ridicule across the internet.
Oh my goodness. His wifi died and it's a conspiracy. Whew. I mean, hysterical but whew. https://t.co/HF4e9J7bIr
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) October 23, 2020
You're an idiot. https://t.co/5Rjtzqxc4n
— Reed Galen (@reedgalen) October 23, 2020
Fox News pays Gregg for broken brain thoughts like this https://t.co/BtoPzgaijy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 23, 2020
This is such a great tweet. It keeps popping up in my feed and it doesn't get less hilarious. https://t.co/zQHmV8FU3k
— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) October 23, 2020
I tried to open Fallout 4 and my internet service was wonky probably because The Institute reached back through time to forestall my pro-Minuteman choices. Also, I'm not saying it was aliens, but it might have been aliens. And squirrels tell me things about the stock market. https://t.co/rpRv8AHIXQ
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 23, 2020
I had a customer once tell me that fema kept cutting his cable because he knew the truth about the moon landing. It cool to see they let him tweet now. https://t.co/WmrdJnE47j
— Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough) October 23, 2020
Some jokingly played along with the allegation, pretending to have knowledge of the deep state entity suppressing Jarrett's wifi.
I caused this outage due to my magical powers.
Aww, I don't have magical powers.
But I am a recovering computer science major and Wi-Fi problems are not the result of someone monitoring your keystrokes for bad words about Biden & then shutting it off at just the right moment. https://t.co/2vKnDHNfGd
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) October 23, 2020
you call your internet provider to come fix it and Joe Biden in a wig and handyman costume from Spirit Halloween shows up https://t.co/xhZ9PUN12f
— JP (@jpbrammer) October 23, 2020
hello this is deep state police you have 30 minutes to delete this tweet or we will cut wires to gregg jarrett internet antenna https://t.co/CYFsDE6W2G
— kilgore trout, biden wi-fi switchman (@KT_So_It_Goes) October 23, 2020
[SOMEWHERE IN THE DEEP STATE] alert alert jarrett is about to be critical of biden dispatch a black-bag operative to switch off his router asap and thereby to foil him permanently https://t.co/E2REsU497N
— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 23, 2020
The presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is on November 3rd, but early voting is underway in at least 40 states.