These Are The Two Key Moments That Showed Biden Administration Censoring Speech: Matt Taibbi

2 days ago

At today's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Thomas Kean (R-NJ) spoke to Matt Taibbi about the "censorship industrial complex."

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00:00The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Cain, is recognized for five minutes.

00:05Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today.

00:11Mr. Weingarten and Mr. Taibbi, what is the clearest evidence that each of you can cite to show

00:19that the censorship industrial complex was an attack on the First Amendment by the Biden administration?

00:28The discovery in Missouri v. Biden, which has been dismissed here, both at the district court level,

00:35Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals level and among three Supreme Court justices,

00:39showed massive pressure from the federal government for social media companies to censor American speech,

00:45whether it's the Hunter Biden laptop story, COVID-19, election integrity matters or beyond.

00:50District Court judge said this was arguably the most massive attack on free speech in U.S. history.

00:55Again, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had that same view.

00:58Three Supreme Court justices did as well. And while it's been dismissed, that case,

01:03the fact of the matter is that the Supreme Court specifically did not rule on the underlying merits,

01:08the thousands of pages of discovery which blew the lid open on this entire regime.

01:14Thank you, Mr. Taibbi. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. I would do two quickly.

01:19There's another case after Murphy v. Missouri involving former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson,

01:28Berenson v. Biden, who was removed from Twitter after repeated pressure from White House officials for a tweet that was true.

01:36He said that the COVID vaccine does not stop infection or transmission.

01:41And for that tweet, he was summarily removed from the platform after pressure from White House officials.

01:48The other one was an instance in which a friend of mine, Aaron Mate, who is no Republican,

01:56the the Ukrainian Secret Services passed on a request to the FBI to have him removed from Twitter.

02:03And the FBI did it. They passed that request on to Twitter.

02:07And we found that ask in Twitter's files.

02:13Thank you, Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Weingarten.

02:17Can you please explain how the Global Engagement Center and the federal government as a whole use coercive power to censor Americans?

02:28Well, Mr. Congressman, first of all, I would say that the Global Engagement Center and this entire effort is based on a fundamental

02:36and a misunderstanding of the American system and the First Amendment.

02:42The American government has no role in protecting citizens from speech.

02:48The whole idea of the system that was designed by Jefferson and Madison is that the American people view each other as adults who are capable of sorting out the truth for themselves.

02:58They do not need a nanny state or a guardian or a law enforcement agency to decide for them what's true.

03:04We don't need a truth squad. And that's exactly what GEC was designed for.

03:09It was designed to suppress any information that countered national policy and to identify people who may have had opinions that were controversial or unwanted as foreign inspired,

03:32when in fact they had no connection whatsoever to foreign governments, which is both slanderous and detrimental to the First Amendment.

03:41Thank you, Mr. Weingarten. I would simply say that when the government comes to you, pressures you directly using the bully pulpit.

03:50The government has its awesome resources, obviously, in terms of its funding streams, its regulatory powers.

03:56When it comes to the social media companies, specifically Section 230, antitrust enforcement, et cetera.

04:03When the government comes to you and says, please take down this American speech, we'd really like you to do so.

04:08Or in the case of some of the Biden administration, actually browbeats people, curses them out.

04:13And a president goes on camera and says, your social media platform is killing people.

04:19The government does so with the most awesome power possible.

04:23Government, at the end of the day, ultimately is force, and that force should not be turned on Americans in our speech.

04:30Thank you to all of our witnesses. I yield back my time.

04:32Will the gentleman yield?

04:33Yes, I yield back my time.

04:35As vice chair of the Financial Services Committee, I can tell you, Mr. Weingarten, you are hitting on the exact thing that regulators do repeatedly.

04:45You can go and do whatever you want, but here's what we would like you to see you do.

04:51And it's that threat, it's that cudgel that they have that's over those that they are making the, quote, request to, that compels them to follow the government request.

05:03So with that, I yield back to the gentleman from New Jersey, and time has expired.

05:08With that, Representative Jayapal is recognized for five minutes.

These Are The Two Key Moments That Showed Biden Administration Censoring Speech: Matt Taibbi

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