Its loss of relevance was obvious and its censorship, notorious

It's not useless. It helps create a certain perception of relevance. Now usually when this sort of thing happens there is an extra layer of indirection. Where a government agency or business entity wants to build a certain perception for a policy or product. They'll leak some information to the media on an anonymous basis. Someone in the media will parrot it in a sound bite with some hand-waving citation, a second media source will rebroadcast and then the original entity will point to it the media coverage and spin it to build the perception they want in their talking points.

So not useless at all. Unethical and manipulative..but far from useless.

It's actually sort of refreshing to see someone quoting themselves without the typical layer of indirection. It's a very Donald Trump sort of thing to do. And by that I mean "classy{tm}."

-jef