House GOPs Claim Democratic Censorship at Social Media Hearing
House Judiciary Committee Republicans accused Democrats of trying to censor testimony Thursday in a way that mirrors how they allege the federal government colluded with social media companies to censor legitimate news stories.
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Democrats failed to block the testimony Thursday of Robert Kennedy Jr., whom they accused of “hateful, abusive” and racist rhetoric in support of his opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine. Kennedy made “despicable antisemitic and anti-Asian comments” as recently as last week, said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. Wasserman Schultz made a motion to move to executive session and strike Kennedy’s “degrading” comments and testimony. The House Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee voted 10-8 along party lines to allow Kennedy’s testimony.
Subcommittee ranking member Stacey Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, claimed Kennedy said COVID-19 was targeted to attack white and black people. Kennedy said vaccines don’t work for black people because they have a “kick-ass kind of immune system," she claimed. She noted Kennedy implied Jews in Nazi Germany had more freedom than did unvaccinated individuals in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. Free speech “is not an absolute,” she said. Kennedy compared the COVID-19 vaccine to the Tuskegee syphilis study, said Plaskett. The study is considered a racist trial conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama against hundreds of black men, who were misled about medical care.
Kennedy accused Democrats of mischaracterizing his statements and argued he never advised African Americans or the public not to get vaccinated. Vaccines should be tested with the same rigor as other vaccines and medication, he said. Plaskett offered an NPR article on Kennedy’s documentary for the record. The documentary, “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid,” argues the U.S. is repeating mistakes made during the eugenics movement in the 1930s, said Plaskett.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, focused on alleged collusion between social media companies and Biden administration officials. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty for Western Louisiana in Monroe issued a decision July 4 blocking federal officials from contacting social media companies about online content requests (see 2307120065).
Jordan introduced legislation Thursday with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would require government agencies to disclose information about any communications between executive branch agencies and content providers. The Free Speech Protection Act would ban “federal employees and contractors from using their positions to censor and otherwise attack speech protected by the First Amendment,” they said.
Doughty’s opinion includes factual inaccuracies, said Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, during her testimony. Communication on platforms should be based on fact, not fiction, and hateful speech has real-world impact, she said. She said the injunction prevents government officials from collaborating with researchers and nonprofits on removing harmful content.
Jordan offered what he claimed were examples of the federal government directly collaborating with social media platforms to remove factual news stories about the COVID-19 vaccine and about Hunter Biden's laptop computer. He said a White House official emailed Twitter in January 2021 saying: “Wanted to flag the below tweet, and I’m wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP.” Jordan said the FBI met with Twitter and Facebook on the same day, where they reportedly discussed the Hunter Biden laptop story. FBI officials confirmed the veracity of stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Jordan said, citing testimony from Lauren Demlow, the head of the FBI’s foreign influence task force.
Emma-Jo Morris, now a journalist at Breitbart News, wrote stories about the laptop for the New York Post, told the committee the stories were based on verified emails from Biden’s camp that described his family’s business ties to Ukraine. The reporting was censored on all major social media platforms on the basis of Biden Administration claims that the laptop story was based on Russian disinformation, she said. She credited these claims of disinformation to ex-intelligence officials from the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Plaskett said Republicans want to give Kennedy, a potential Biden primary opponent, a platform. She called the Republican Party a “legislative arm” of the Trump campaign. You have a right to say what you believe, but you don’t have a right to a platform, she said.