Mark Levin speaking at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr)
Conservative radio host Mark Levin, a prominent ally of President Donald Trump, became the internet’s punchline Tuesday after he complained publicly that he’d spent a whole day locked out of his AOL email account.
“Folks, I have spent literally the entire day trying to get someone at AOL to unlock my email,” Levin wrote on X Tuesday afternoon. “For the last eight hours, I have been told that the issue has been escalated to supervisors who would contact me. I haven’t heard a thing.”
“You would think that, since I’m one of the last human beings on the face of the Earth still using AOL, they would take care of this. You’d be wrong,” he went on. “So, once this gets resolved, hopefully before the next presidential election, I’m dropping them. (I kept them this long out of convenience, but now I have no reason to keep them.)”
Levin said he would “address this further” on his radio show that evening.
The post had more than 2.3 million views by Wednesday, and much of the mockery came from his own side of the aisle.
“Your AOL email address was promised to someone else 3,000 years ago,” wrote former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). In a separate reply, Gaetz added: “the antisemitism at AOL is unforgivable.”
“Probably an issue with your dial up connection,” wrote Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh. “Was someone using the landline when you were trying to access the internet? Have you asked anyone on your Buddy List if they’re having similar issues?”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) linked the outage to Levin’s foreign policy views: “The last man on Earth still using AOL is also the last man still arguing for endless Middle East wars. Coincidence?”
Conservative commentator Auron MacIntyre took a similar line, writing that “the man responsible for advising Trump and propagandizing your parents into supporting a disastrous war is crying about being locked out of his AOL email like it’s 1998.”
Critics on the left focused on Levin’s influence, too.
“This is one of the top 5 guys Trump listened to in making the decison to go to war with Iran,” wrote The Nation’s Jeet Heer.
“I’m not sure whether to laugh at the ridiculousness of this person, or cry that such a ridiculous person helped the president of the United States start a war in the Middle East that killed 120 kids on day one,” wrote journalist Mehdi Hasan.
Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim kept it short: “I refuse to believe this is real.”
Others went after the technology itself.
“It could be a problem with your browser. When was the last time you updated Netscape?” asked writer Charlotte Clymer.
“did you fax them about it,” asked economist Robert P. Murphy.
Not everyone joined in. Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone replied: “This is crazy!”
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