I read “the math” there as doing something a little more figurative. It seemed to me like they led with circulation figures less because they care about their CPM efficiency or whatever, and more to use “views” as a kind of synechdoche for “the people who want to hear what we have to say.”

They're an advocacy organization. They should want people who don't want to hear what they have to say to hear what they have to say.

Brand reputation from staying on Twitter is part of the math.

How could you possibly lose reputation from that?

They lose credibility within their extremely narrow in-group.

Tweeting is easy. Managing the weirdos that respond to your tweets is hard.

I think they have it set so that only followers can respond. Prevents most of the horrible stuff, but also downgrades you on the X algorithm. At least there are no weirdo's on the other social media platforms :-)