Nina Jankowicz, the former director of the Disinformation Governance Board, made a video where she referred to herself as “The Mary Poppins of Disinformation.”
You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation 💁🏻♀️ https://t.co/eGV9lpctYn pic.twitter.com/WVQFA2bPmq
— Nina Jankowicz 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@wiczipedia) February 17, 2021
To be charitable, she should keep her day job.
Except her day job has disappeared after the most spectacularly inept rollout of a government concept since Gerald Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” (WIN).
The Disinformation Board will live on but it’s doubtful the next director will be as high profile as Jankowicz. She was a star in the disinformation industry and, as it turns out, opened her mouth far too many times.
Related: Disinformation Killed the Disinformation Board, Says Its Former Chief
Jankowicz complained that she was done in by “right-wing disinformation.” Indeed, most of the attacks on Jankowicz were about actions she may have taken in the future or the potential for abuse of free speech rights by the board.
It was important to highlight these potential abuses. Calling them “disinformation” is stretching the truth.
Her cable news appearance followed a Wednesday Washington Post piece which announced that the Governance Board, a Department of Homeland Security project, would be pausing its operations. The article blamed the “right-wing internet apparatus” and its “coordinated online attacks” for compelling the board’s decisions.
“Coordinated online attacks” by “right-wing internet apparatus”? I’ve been attacking this unAmerican board since it was announced and I haven’t been coordinating with anyone. So doesn’t that make the WaPo defense of Jankowicz a conspiracy theory and “disinformation”?
Why, yes. Yes, I believe it does.
Jankowicz appeared on CNN Tonight with host Laura Coates to vent about the end of her short-lived government appointment. She summed up her situation by telling Coates, “Unfortunately and ironically, we were undone exactly by a disinformation campaign coming from folks who apparently want to put our national security behind their own personal political ambitions.”
I would hardly call your job security, “national security.” But that’s what happens when you believe sinister forces are working against you.
There’s no excuse for the threats directed at Jankowicz from the crazies, and we didn’t need to dig into her personal life to defeat her. Her downfall was the direct result of her own hubris and a frightening lack of understanding of American freedoms.
The former executive director then scolded the people behind the alleged threats, stating, “I don’t think that that is something that anybody should be priding themselves on.”
She continued, claiming, “And frankly, the lies and falsehoods that were spread about the Disinformation Governance Board, as I said before, this childish behavior is putting the national security of our country behind this sort of partisan vitriol.”
The executive director of a government agency who calls herself “The Mary Poppins of Disinformation” complains about “childish behavior” by her critics? Really?
That kind of a lack of self-awareness automatically disqualifies Jankowicz from any job in the United States government.
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