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There was one supervillain in the story of the 2024 campaign that almost surpassed Donald Trump -- Elon Musk.

From the minute he bought Twitter in 2022, the leftists who aspire to complete messaging control were furious. They knew their 2020 jig was up, that they couldn't just suppress damaging stories like the Hunter Biden laptop. Reporters like Cleve Wootson of The Washington Post complained in the White House briefing that "misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue ... it's an America issue." Post columnists call it a "mind-polluting app."

Suddenly, "independent" agencies in the Biden administration unleashed their probes: the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Government was weaponized against Musk.

After the Democrats installed Kamala Harris, Musk became an explicit Trump supporter and super-PAC funder. Now the press warns he'll have a massive conflict of interest if he's brought on by President Trump as a "government efficiency czar." He has many millions of dollars in government contracts.

Musk's publicity stunt of handing over $1 million a day to Americans who signed his petition in favor of the First and Second Amendments drew all kinds of negative attacks from the press. On Oct. 21, "CBS Mornings" brought on their elections expert David Becker, who lusted openly about sending Musk to jail for five years for bribing voters.

On the last Saturday before the election, NBC News was warning that "at least nine of the 15 winners" of the big checks were either "registered Republicans" or "Republican-leaning." Is that really a surprise or a scandal, conservatives backing the constitutional amendments?

Then on the night before Election Day, MSNBC star Rachel Maddow went on a wild rant about how the federal government will have to shed all ties to Musk, everywhere. They are an "untenable" reality for national security.

The meltdown intensified as the votes piled up for Trump after the polls closed. CBS host Margaret Brennan railed at 1:30 a.m. that Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) warned, "no single person is more beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. Because of the business interests he has in that country."

Hunter Biden's thicket of business interests in China were never interesting to CBS and the Democrats. But now that Musk is helping Trump? Look out!

Warner and the Democrats are upset that the social media atmosphere isn't censoring conservative "misinformation" enough. It's not just X but Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Musk made censorship uncool.

Journalists like Brennan complain about Musk spreading misinformation willy-nilly and then insist, "The facts were in Joe Biden's favor on the economy. The facts were in Kamala Harris' favor on the economy." Liberals have this funny habit of declaring their opinions are facts. Therefore, dissenting opinions are "misinformation."

Liberals and conservatives alike feel that Elon Musk's billions have transformed the "information space." He made it ... more spacious. Our media elites want everyone to have a very limited diet under their control. In their strange minds, losing control of the narrative is equated with the loss of democracy.

This is why Musk is their Public Enemy No. 1. This is why conservatives should be emboldened to push the information that the leftists want squashed. The election demonstrated that a more liberated marketplace of news and ideas is what made democracy great again.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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