The Twitter Files series revealed details about collusion between the social media giant and compromised government agencies to distort the narrative to favor the Democrats leading up to the 2020 elections.
Elon Musk along with independent journalists such as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, etc. had done their job exposing the corruption within Twitter.
Now it was the GOP's responsibility to place former Twitter executives and their actions under the spotlight at yesterday's House Oversight Committee hearing
The following are the highlights of the hearings
We first focus on the GOP.
The Committee chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky began the hearing by detailing the cover-up of Hunter Biden's laptop by Twitter, the intelligence community, and the media.
Comer also called out former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth for a specific Tweet where Roth referred to the Trump administration as Nazis.
Roth claimed to regret his language and denied he thought conservatives are Nazis
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1623357220187475976
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio called out the Twitter executives for having weekly meetings with the FBI and for colluding with the agency to suppress the New York Post article about Hunter Biden.
https://twitter.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1623358976581681158
Jordan
and Comber questioned former Twitter deputy counsel James Baker whether he
spoke with anyone at the FBI about the Hunter Biden laptop.
Baker
claimed to not recall speaking with anyone at the FBI.
https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1623356959998058496
https://twitter.com/alx/status/1623358054103240704
Rep Nancy Mace of South Carolina challenged Vijaya Gadde, the former chief legal officer at Twitter, for censorship of alternative medical perspectives from highly qualified doctors on COVID-19 treatment and vaccines.
Gadde claimed that Twitter only censored information that contradicted CDC guidelines.
Mace cited her own adverse reaction to the vaccine to highlight how important it was to allow all information to be available.
https://twitter.com/RepNancyMace/status/1623374516855443475
Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado questioned Roth, and Gadde if her personal Twitter account was “shadow-banned” in 2021.
When Roth and Gadde denied suppressing the congresswoman's account, Boebert countered the claim saying that Twitter staff informed her she had been shadow-banned for a tweet for 90 days which prevented her from communicating with her constituents.
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1623436399449108480
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia took a similar route. She chided the former executives for banning her personal account without basis and pointed out their dual standards.
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1623370535634669577
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1623397896962859008
Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana informed former Twitter executives to prepare to be arrested for criminal interference in the 2020 elections for colluding with the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story the month before the 2020 election
The hearings also moved into darker territories.
Rep. Gary Palmer of Alabama questioned Twitter executives about the dual standards of allowing supporters of terror such as Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei on their platform while banning President Trump.
The moment the congressman uttered the words, "Ayatollah Khameini," the room mysteriously went dark.
https://twitter.com/FreedomWorks/status/1623383056055672844
How
did the Democrats do?
The
White House dismissed the committee hearing as a “bizarre political
stunt”
The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, blasted the hearing as a “trivial pursuit” about a news article (the NY Post's piece on Hunter's laptop) that had “no discernible effect on anything”.
He
even pushed the “Russian propaganda and disinformation” claim as did other
Democrats.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1623347875114524672
AOC
claimed that the Hunter
Biden laptop story is ‘half fake’
During
the hearing, one of the
Twitter executives claimed that Trump’s White House demanded Twitter remove
a foul language attack on President Trump's post from uncouth Chrissy
Teigen.
Many Democrats on Twitter celebrated this revelation as if this was a self-goal for the GOP.
Democrat mouthpiece NBC News claimed “Teigen's Trump diss takes
center stage at House hearing meant to discuss Hunter Biden” many other
Democrat outlets followed this.
The
goal was to paint a false equivalence i.e. if Democrats requested deletion and
suppression so did Trump.
But
there was a difference.
Teigen’s
Tweet was not deleted or suppressed, in fact, it still remains.
Even if Teigen’s
expletive-ridden tweet was deleted, it would have no impact on the election.
Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed a history of abuse of power, corruption, and immorality in the Biden family. This is crucial information that voters use while making their voting decisions. Suppressing this information was an act of interference in the 2020 elections.
A news
buster poll revealed
that 16% of Biden voters would have voted differently had they known
of Hunter’s laptop. Another survey showed that 79
percent of Americans think Trump would have won reelection if voters
had known facts about Hunter's laptop.
So what does one makes of the hearings?
The
witnesses were well coached, Gadde and Roth repeatedly stated that hindsight
indicated the suppression of the New York Post’s legitimate reporting was
a “mistake,” as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also indicated in
2021.
They
also claimed to regret their previous utterances or actions, but that is pointless because the damage has already been done.
They
used the standard method of falsifying at any hearing, the when asked the
witness just claims to have no recollection.
The
Democrats and their PR Wing i.e. the news media were predictably in denial.
How did the GOP do?
Some GOP House members did better than others.
Some did manage to expose Twitter for their bias and collusion with government agencies.
Some focused on their own Twitter accounts being suppressed and suspended which is important since they are elected members and others are focused on their adverse reaction to the vaccine.
Instead, they should have focused on the overall trend of suppressing and banning conservative voices and cited the accounts as examples.
Perhaps
they could have invited regular Twitter users, members of the NY Post team, and others
impacted by Twitter’s manipulation.
These individuals should have been referred to during the hearings or even invited to narrate their experiences.
A lot of it was theatrics.
The hope members on either side have is that the clips go viral on social media and it enables them the prominence in the House member to ensure reelection.
But
citizens must be cautious not to confuse tough words and loud voices for tough
actions.
Twitter is already an improved platform.
Yesterday
after Biden’s catastrophic State of the Union presentation Twitter was replete
with trends calling out Biden’s lies and mocking his presentation. This never
ever happened before to any Democrats, because the executives were controlling
the narrative.
The goal of the hearings was not to fix Twitter but to address the meddling in the 2020 election.
Unless these Twitter executives suffer punitive actions for meddling with the discourse leading to the 2020 elections and information related to the treatment of COVID-19 and vaccine, these hearings are futile.
'Destroying' or 'owning' Twitter executives during a hearing should be the first step towards achieving the objective and not the objective.
Also, appear on American Thinker
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