US Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, is responsible for the nuclear arsenal of the United States.
The article in question is a report about a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing by Pentagon correspondent Kristina Wong, who previously worked as a defense reporter for The Hill. The story was a straightforward report, without commentary, and featured statements made by Air Force Gen. John Hyten about his thoughts on the nuclear triad.
— US Strategic Command (@US_Stratcom) April 5, 2017
The article quotes Hyten stating, “at a time when our adversaries have significantly modernized and continued to upgrade their nuclear forces, nearly all elements of the nuclear triad are operating beyond their designed service life.”
Despite the story being rather neutral, and hardly scandalous, people absolutely lost their minds in response to the tweet.
— Joanne (@joanne_stocker) April 6, 2017
Liberal media also had a field day, using a string of bizarre connections to link Breitbart to Richard Spencer, pushing the narrative that there is always something nefarious about independent media.
— Jon (((Wolfsthal))) (@JBWolfsthal) April 6, 2017
“On Wednesday, the US Strategic Command tweeted out a story from Breitbart – ’the platform for the alt-right’ that was run by Steve Bannon before he started working for Trump last summer. ‘Alt-right’ is a euphemism popularized by Richard Spencer, head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI), one of the country’s leading contemporary advocates of ideological racism,” Think Progress wrote.
— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) April 6, 2017
Breitbart’s Twitter account manger seemed amused by the backlash, retweeting some of the most angry comments from verified accounts.
“The @US_Stratcom account unfollowed a bunch of accounts, many Tweeting bipartisan or anti-Trump messages and now they cite Breitbart …” a tweet from neuroscientist and photographer Bryan William Jones, retweeted by the outlet, stated.
STRATCOM is not making any apologies, either.
— US Strategic Command (@US_Stratcom) April 6, 2017
“US Strategic Command uses social media and web tools to inform the public about its missions, people and activities,” the STRATCOM account tweeted. “We routinely repurpose stories of interest via social media that contain factual and accurate information about the command and its mission sets. Our policy is that we do not endorse, nor discriminate against, any particular news organization.”
