The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing Thursday on the Twitter Files, which are exposing pervasive federal browbeating to suppress free speech.
Congressional Democrats championed the National Lampoon definition of censorship: Unless there is a photo of an FBI agent holding a gun to the head of a Twitter employee, the feds did nothing wrong.
Twitter Files reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were on the witness stand. Though both are bestselling authors with long records of excellent reporting, they were treated as shameless grifters who were basely smearing noble federal agencies.
Taibbi and Shellenberger labored under the misconception that congressional hearings seek to reveal facts.
Instead, Democratic members viewed them as sacrifices on the altar of boundless federal prerogatives. Democratic members continually cut off the witnesses, signaling that their role was to shut up and take a whupping.
Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI) kicked things off for the Democrats by ominously declaring the pair “pose a direct threat to people who oppose them.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) vilified Taibbi: “Elon Musk spoon-fed you his cherry-picked information, which . . . generates another right-wing conspiracy theory.”
She bizarrely accused Taibbi of unfairly profiting from his work because he now has more Twitter followers and Substack subscribers.
She concluded by casting Taibbi’s character into the abyss: “Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention.” (Wasserman Schultz was named the “most unethical politician” in Congress in 2017 by the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.)
Shortly after the hearing, Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) tweeted that “Republicans have launched a dangerous political circus that’s sole purpose is to inject extremist politics into our justice system” and promised to fight “outright conspiracy theories.”
But Garcia was the Know Nothing Poster Child at today’s hearing.
She pounded Taibbi on whether he disclosed the information in his latest Twitter Files to Twitter before publishing.
He was mystified by her questions: He had posted a series of tweets. Garcia couldn’t comprehend that tweeting is the same as simultaneously publishing on Twitter.
She interrogated Taibbi: “You posted on your umm I guess it’s kind of like a web page. I don’t quite understand what Substack is.” Where do the Democrats find these wizards?
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