In case you missed it, social media is on fire over what has been dubbed the “Twitter Files,” and, after Friday’s explosive revelations regarding the censorship by pre-Elon Musk Twitter and certain, primarily Democratic, government officials of the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 presidential elections, the new owner is apparently just warming up.
Following a lengthy exposé in the form of a Twitter thread by journalist Matt Taibbi, in which Twitter users learned that just one Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), attempted to stand up for the First Amendment, Musk teased shell-shocked users with a follow-up tweet: “Tune in for Episode 2 of The Twitter Files tomorrow!”
Tune in for Episode 2 of The Twitter Files tomorrow!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2022
As a new day dawns and the reality of the scope of Twitter’s considerably biased influence on the 2020 elections sets in, one must wonder what Constitution-shaking revelations Saturday’s installment will bring.
Taibbi was given access to all the back-0f-the-birdhouse communications which prove employees were censoring tweets and taking down accounts under the direction of celebrities and politicians, most notably, for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
On Friday, we learned that then-White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her Twitter account for tweeting about the notorious “laptop from hell.”
19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.” pic.twitter.com/CcXTfsdzCT
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
We discovered that Twitter employees “handled” requests to “delete tweets” that came directly from Biden’s people.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
In response to this bit of news, Musk himself asked, “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?”
If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2022
And we found out there’s at least one Democrat in California who cares about the Constitution.
Rep. Ro Khanna fired an email to former Twitter Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde regarding the laptop story, stating “this seems like a violation of the 1st Amendment principles.”
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern. pic.twitter.com/TSSYOs5vfy
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files: pic.twitter.com/Tq6l7VMuQL
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Wrote Khanna, “I say this as a total Biden partisan and convinced he didn’t do anything wrong. But the story has now become more about censorship than relatively innocuous emails and it’s become a bigger deal than it would have been.”
Almost before Taibbi posted his last tweet in the first Twitter Files thread, the mainstream media began scrambling to spin the bombshells.
NBC’s senior reporter Ben Collins was torched after making snide comments about Taibbi’s reporting.
“Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world,” he tweeted. Humiliating sh-t.”
Speak* truth** to*** power.
*tweet
**selective leaks from the richest man in the world
***for— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 2, 2022
Apparently, NBC prefers journalists who craft their stories from narrative-supporting press releases.
Guy who pretends to be journalist on TV mad at scoop.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 3, 2022
I’m sorry his reporting is making you look bad
— Sean Agnew (@seanagnew) December 3, 2022
You can’t spin this and it infuriates you.
— Sean Medlock (@Sean_Medlock) December 3, 2022
Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson tried the “scare the pants off people” approach to censorship.
“If Musk is willing to weaponize internal Twitter ‘privileged and confidential’ docs for political purposes, imagine what he might to with y’all’s DMs…” he tweeted.
https://twitter.com/7im/status/1598931924915195906?s=20&t=VRly93wnuFQHGuNP6DOeew
And others attempted to make the argument that Twitter had the right to censor whatever it wanted to.
I don’t believe any civil rights have been violated
There’s no inalienable right to Twitter Twitter was/is a private company, which is rules based, as all companies tend to be, more or less
No rights are removed by your tweets being deleted
— Mike Symonds (@symmo1969) December 3, 2022
To those Twitter users, Musk had a pointed response: “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.”
Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2022
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