X appears to be working with a well-known consulting group in the Republic, apparently overseeing the messaging about the suspension of the Brazilian social media platform.
When WIRED emailed X for comment about the rapidly evolving situation in Brazil, a response came from Michael Abboud, the managing director of the conservative consulting and public relations firm Targeted Victory. According to his LinkedIn, Abboud worked for the State Department during the last year of the Trump administration and as press secretary for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s campaign.
Target Success had contracts with several Republican campaigns and political action committees (PACs) this election season worth more than $75 million, according to OpenSecrets. The group’s largest client is the Republican National Committee, which spent $11,128,739 with the firm between January 2023 and May 2024.
In his email response, Abboud referred WIRED to a company statement from X about the platform’s suspension in Brazil, and said to be in touch with further questions.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, has been more outspoken about his personal political views in recent months. In July, following the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, Musk said he would support his presidential candidacy. He then said he would set up a PAC to support Trump at $45 million per month (he later backpedaled on the exact amount).
WIRED contacted Targeted Victory and Abboud directly, and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
X is not the first tech company to work with the group. In 2022, reporting from The Washington Post found that Meta had hired Targeted Victory to run a campaign to undermine public opinion on TikTok. The messaging campaign focused on framing TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, as a threat to Americans’ privacy and the mental health of youth and children.
An emailed response from Targeted Success on behalf of X is particularly noteworthy; when journalists contact the press team at X, they rarely receive a response. When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, one of his first steps as CEO was to lay off a large number of the company’s 6,000 employees. That move included not only the majority of the platform’s trust and safety team—those people who don’t escape hate speech and disinformation on the platform—but also the company’s communications team.
For about a year, the press email auto-response brought back the poop emoji. Recently, the auto-response says “Busy now, please come back later.”
But X and Musk have been having an unusually difficult time in the public eye over the past few weeks. After X violated a court order in April from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, which required the company to remove certain accounts and content that the court said spread disinformation about the integrity of the country’s elections , Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered access to the platform blocked in Brazil. The country is X’s third-largest market, and for months Musk has blasted Moraes online, calling him a dictator, accusing the court of censorship, and even comparing him to Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort.
Meanwhile, Nick Pickles, the head of the company’s global affairs, announced Thursday that he was resigning, and investors say their investments in the company are performing worse than anyone predicted.
