Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee Threatens the First Amendment Rights of American Businesses

The Republican Party has long sought to be the torch carriers for corporations, spearheading their interests by slashing taxes and regulations to the detriment of the American people who are forced to take up the slack. But then, it was the GOP justices on on the Supreme Court who decided that corporations are, in their warped view, people.

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Donald Trump, Boycott

Somehow, that pro-corp bias on the part of the right has been flipped as Republicans are now feverishly engaged in battle with the businesses and lobbyists that they previously catered to. It isn’t a coincidence that this transformation took place during the era of Donald Trump, who has turned “retribution” for any ideological divergence from his doctrine into a political mandate. It’s framed as a “War on Woke,” whatever the heck that means.

RELATED: GOP Creates an ‘Anti-Woke’ Caucus to Take on the ‘Greatest Domestic Threat to America Today’

This diseased philosophy is bad enough when it is espoused by individual politicians and pundits. But it is significantly worse, and more dangerous, when the official gears of governmet are grinding it out. Which is precisely what happened on late Wednesday night when Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, tweeted this: “Bud Light. Disney. Target. Go WOKE. Go BROKE.”

First of all, if anything is “broke” it’s Jordan’s brain. The companies he is singling out are not remotely at risk for going broke. They are, in fact, among the most profitable businesses in the country/world.

More to the point, what Jordan is doing here is overtly threatening American companies with bankruptcy, or other financial vengeance dealt out by the government, for daring to exercise their constitutional rights under the First Amendment. In this case, the companies offended Republicans by expressing their support for their LGBTQ+ customers. Which is, of course, entirely legal, not that Jordan or the GOP care.

This is not merely an attack on American companies conducting business as they see fit. It is an attack on American workers who would be harmed if these companies suffered financially due to Jordan’s unlawful, autocratic bullying. It is also an attack on local economies that could suffer when businesses are forced to alter their growth plans. Just ask Ron DeSantis, whose feud with Disney resulted in the company canceling plans for an office – and 2,000 jobs – in Florida after he began retaliating against them for rejecting his bigotry.

These neo-fascist tactics by the Trumpian GOP are not new. Jordan recently threatened the anti-trust status of Major League Baseball. Not because that status may not be warranted as a matter of economic policy, but because the League scheduled a “Pride” night to honor their LGBTQ+ fans. And Trump himself has advocated for boycotts of dozens of American companies, including Apple, Coca-Cola, AT&T, Citigroup, Oreos, etc.

FOR INSTANCE: Trump is “The King of Cancel Culture” who “Hypocritically Calls for Boycotts.”

Jordan is not alone in his mission to tear down American companies. He is joined by the GOP’s misnamed “Freedom Caucus” and by, of course, Fox News. Yet all of these fatuous phonies persist in pretending to be pro-business and free speech. But their lies are on display where everyone can see them. They hate American business. They hate American workers. They hate America.

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Fox News ‘Demands’ that Media Matters Stop Publishing Leaked Videos of Tucker Carlson

The fallout from Fox News firing their Senior White Nationalist, Tucker Carlson, continues to cast dark shadows on the network that tolerated and embraced his hate speech and lies for so many years. Apparently terminating Carlson after agreeing to settle the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for 3/4 of a billion dollars was only the beginning of their problems.

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Fox News, Fake News

This week Media Matters acquired some videos of Carlson that further exposed his racism, as well as the animosity he had for his own colleagues at Fox News who he thought weren’t sufficiently repellent. These videos revealed Carlson maligning his former employer, saying “I don’t want to be a slave to Fox Nation. [and that] Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks.” Additionally, there were text messages wherein he complained about having been deposed by Dominion’s lawyers and criticized violent Trump supporters because “It’s not how white men fight.”

SEE THIS: Leaked Video of Tucker Carlson Bashing Fox Nation as a Site that ‘Sucks’ and ‘Nobody Watches’

On Friday Fox News sent Media Matters a “cease and desist” letter demanding that they stop publishing these videos. The letter said…

“We write on behalf of Fox Corporation to clarify any misunderstandings Media Matters may have had regarding previously unaired footage that Media Matters has published in a series of articles headlined ‘Foxleaks.’ That unaired footage is Fox’s confidential intellectual property; Fox did not consent to its distribution or publication; and Fox does not consent to its further distribution or publication. This proprietary material was given to you without Fox’s authorization. Fox demands that Media Matters cease and desist from distribution, publication, and misuse of Fox’s misappropriated proprietary footage, which you are now on notice was unlawfully obtained. We reserve all rights and remedies.”

Seriously? First of all, Media Matters is well within their rights as a journalistic enterprise to publish these videos. Fox’s threat is empty and unsupported by the law, and particularly the Constitution.

What’s more, Fox News is a frequent exploiter of what they have insisted is their First Amendment rights to publish similarly obtained materials. They have had no problem with publishing private emails from Hillary Clinton, or text messages of FBI agent Peter Strzok, or the sort of videos that Project Veritas produced by secretly recording people that they purposefully deceived. Consequently, it is more likely that the source of these videos is actually Fox News. They have to incentive to dirty up Carlson before he lands at some other media outfit and starts smearing Fox.

Nevertheless, Fox News thinks they can intimidate Media Matters to prevent them from providing information that is relevant and important to the public regarding the state of affairs at Fox News. But Media Matters wasn’t intimidated. They released a response that brilliantly rejected Fox’s feeble threat.

“Reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that they’re a news operation. Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns.”

OUCH! It’s unlikely that even proving that Fox News is brazenly hypocritical will “alleviate their concerns.” That’s because Fox’s concerns are rooted in their deeply held, ultra-rightist biases, and not in any logic, reason or facts. Which is one of the reasons why Fox is currently suffering the worst downtrend in their ratings in more than ten years. And ridiculous measures like this to try to censor their critics isn’t going to make anything better for them. Just imagine what would come out in any trial if Fox followed through with this threat.

RELATED: With Lawsuits, Lost Hosts, and Lying Pundits, the Future of Fox News Has Never Been Weaker

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Fox News Blacks Out Story of Clarence Thomas Secretly Taking Luxury Gifts From GOP Billionaire

It takes a story of profound significance to bump the indictment of Donald Trump from the headlines. After all, when was the last time a twice-impeached, pathologically lying, former TV game show host, and aspiring dictator, was charged with 34 felonies for crimes ranging from election interference to tax fraud?

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Fox News, Censorship

The arraignment of Trump in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday afternoon was a historic event that saw Trump sitting feebly in the embrace of his lawyers at the defendant’s table like any other alleged criminal. It signaled the resilience of the American idiom that “no one is above the law.” It also triggered a typically psychotic “death and destruction” response from Trump, whose mental state in court was noticeably tempered, but wildly loosed online.

SEE THIS: Read Trump’s Raving Arraignment Response as Foretold By His Unhinged Truth Social Rants

On Thursday morning such a story was published by the investigative journalists at ProPublica. The story detailed how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from a right-wing billionaire without disclosing them as the law requires. According to ProPublica

“For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them.” […]

“[Thomas] has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.” […]

“These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts.”

For the record, Harlan Crow is a notorious conservative and Republican donor who often has cases before the court that would impact his business interests. What’s more, the “vacations” that Thomas enjoyed at Crow’s expense regularly included other conservative businessmen and politicos who would have reasons to want to rub elbows with a Supreme Court Justice.

This is a blatant breach of judicial ethics and federal law. Although it is not surprising that Thomas would stoop to violate the standards of behavior for a Justice, considering his long history of such ethical lapses. For instance, Thomas refused to recuse himself from matters that directly involved his wife, Ginni Thomas, and her efforts to undermine democracy in support of the January 6th insurrection and coup plotters. A story that Fox News didn’t bother to cover.

SEE THIS: Fox News Totally Ignores Story About Ginni Thomas Texting QAnon Nuttery to Mark Meadows

Similarly unsurprising is the fact that Fox News is ignoring this new Clarence Thomas story. In the past several hours most of the credible media has picked up the ProPublica report. But it has yet to appear on Fox News or their website.

This is their modus operandi for any news event that reflects poorly on Republicans and Trump. The revelations from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News (which Fox News initially refused to cover) exposed them as deliberate liars who placed their politics and greed above truthfulness and patriotism.

Even after the humiliation from the Dominion disclosures of the private communications of Fox executives and hosts, this censorship by omission is further proof that Fox couldn’t care less about honest journalism or holding the powerful accountable. They only care about disseminating right-wing propaganda and goosing their ratings.

RELATED: IT’S A CULT: Most Fox News Viewers Are Still Loyal After Dominion Lawsuit Discloses Their Lies

UPDATE I: Clarence Thomas pathetically and dishonestly responds to the charges that he secretly took numerous luxury gifts from a right-wing billionaire.

UPDATE II: ProPublica published a follow-up story that reveals that Clarence Thomas sold real estate properties to Harlan Crow (at inflated prices), that Thomas never disclosed. Which is a federal crime.

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Herr Trump Embraces Fascist GOP Threats to Regulate Twitter and Arrest Their Executives

During his brief but abominable occupation of the White House, Donald Trump distinguished himself from his predecessors by relentlessly expressing his aversion to the free press and the Constitution. He repeatedly referred to the media as “the enemy of the people,” and more recently literally called for termination of the Constitution.

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Donald Trump, QAnon, Dictator

On Wednesday the newly GOP-led House Oversight Committee held a hearing to finally get to the bottom of the Scandal of the Century, Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop. Specifically the Committee sought to prove that the pre-Elon Musk Twitter regime had deliberately skewed their policies to adversely affect conservatives and Republicans and, especially Donald Trump.

The Republicans staged a shamelessly shallow exercise in feigned outrage over imaginary offenses that was triggered by the embarrassingly ineffective attempt by Musk’s “Twitter Files” “exposé” to unveil political bias on the part of Twitter’s previous staff.

RELATED: OH-MY: Trump Unleashes Vile Threats in Tantrum Over Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Farce

Notable during the avalanche of asininity on the part of Republican members of the Committee, were the remarks by Clay Higgins of Louisiana. When it was his turn to question the Twitter executives who were summoned before the Committee to testify, Higgins launched into an unhinged flurry of baseless accusations and culminating in outright threats:

“You, ladies and gentlemen interfered with the United States of America 2020 presidential election, knowingly and willingly. That’s the bad news. It’s gonna get worse because this is the investigation part. Later comes the arrests part. Your attorneys are familiar with that.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene said the same thing.

What we have here is a member of Congress threatening to have witnesses arrested for unspecified crimes for which he has no evidence ever occurred. What Higgins is asserting as criminal is the exercise of the constitutional rights of a private social media company to moderate the content on its website. It is wholly inappropriate intimidation by a government official seeking to coerce the behavior of individuals to comply with his political beliefs.

That sort of authoritarian bullying is generally reserved for tyrants and dictators, and those who seek to emulate them. And speaking of Donald Trump… He was thrilled to see how Higgins browbeat the Twitter execs. He posted a video of Higgins along with with his approval on his pitifully failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, saying that…

“Finally we have people with courage stepping forward! The Election was Rigged and Stolen, in so many ways – A mockery of our fully weaponized ‘Justice’ system.”

[For the record, the tweet that Trump was so appalled by that he wanted Twitter staff arrested was by supermodel Chrissy Teigen, who called Trump a “PAB” (look it up) for being to cowardly to tag her in his tweet that insulted her]

Of course, there was nothing in Higgins remarks – or in the entirety of the hearing – that even hinted at any evidence that the “Election was Rigged and Stolen.” To the contrary, Democrats on the Committee conclusively proved that the only bias by Twitter was in favor of Trump and the GOP. Even worse, in questioning by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) it was affirmed that only the Trump White House ever attempted to direct Twitter to censor content. And it did so with an overt threat that, “We’ll shut you down. We’ll regulate you. We Will never allow this to happen.”

That is an example of unambiguous government suppression of a free press and a violation of the First Amendment. Nevertheless, Rep. Jim Jordan tried to turn the tables by accusing the Biden campaign of censorship simply because they made a request for Twitter to review certain offensive tweets. Jordan’s argument, however, was ridiculous. He claimed that asking Twitter to review whether tweets were in compliance with their own terms of service was censorship.

Obviously, it’s not against the First Amendment to ask a company to review content based on the company’s own standards. What’s more, the Biden campaign not only didn’t accompany their requests with threats, they weren’t even in power at the time, so they had no clout with which to threaten. And yet this is the scenario in which Trump posted a comment urging his cult to “Watch the Twitter hearings going on right now in Washington. They admit that the Presidential Election of 2020 was RIGGED & STOLEN!”

Naturally Trump is lying. No such admission occurred in the hearing. But Trump’s flagrant dishonesty is precisely the sort of provocation that resulted in the riots in Washington on January 6th. And his continued presence on social media (both Twitter and Facebook recently reinstated his accounts) will predictably result in more violence.

RELATED: Why Elon Musk Restoring Trump’s Twitter Account is Ignorant, Dangerous, and Hypocritical

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Trump’s Real ‘MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT’ Has Nothing to do with His Pathetic Trading Cards Scam

On Wednesday night Donald Trump posted a comment on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, teasing a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” coming on Thursday. The post declared that “America needs a superhero,” and included a picture of him as a Bizarro World cartoon crusader.

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Trump Trading Cards

Trump’s fantasies of himself notwithstanding, his big reveal turned out to be even more pathetic than anyone could have imagined. It was nothing more than another opportunity to pick the pockets of his glassy-eyed cult disciples with a sham offering of “Trump Trading Cards” at $99.00 a pop. But they are not even real cards, they are just digital NFT images. He starred in his own telemarketing ad to hawk his latest sucker bait…

“Hello everyone, this is Donald Trump. Hopefully your favorite president of all time. Better than Lincoln, better than Washington, with an important announcement to make.”

Whereupon Trump declared that he is selling NFTs – digital trading cards that “feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and my career. It’s been very exciting.” He further revealed that any purchase enters the buyer into a contest with “prizes” (?) like dinner with Trump, who regards himself as something just short of a messiah. However, it’s notable that these cards are produced by a third party that is not owned, managed or controlled by Trump. He is simply licensing his name and likeness in order to fleece his flock. Which is so like Trump…

RELATED: GRIFTER EXPOSED: Trump Campaign Scam Defrauds Hundreds of His Supporters

That said, there was another announcement posted on his website shortly after the trading cards pitch. And it actually has more of the “majorness” that he attributed to the digital card con. In a lengthy video, Trump laid out his plan to “shatter the left-wing censorship regime.” And he would do it by imposing his own totalitarian control of free speech. What follows are annotated excerpts of his uncomfortably high-decibel harangue. He began…

“If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. It’s as simple as that. […] That’s why today I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans..”

Never mind that the only free speech deniers in American politics are Trump’s Republicans. They have literally banned books in schools and libraries, and have sought to silence critics of Trump in their ultra-biased MAGA media. And notice that he doesn’t provide a single example of alleged censorship by the fearsome left-wing regime. Undeterred by reality, Trump continued…

“In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, silicon tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed and it must happen immediately.”

What Trump is referring to here is the wholly manufactured and bogus “Twitter Files” “scandal” that was orchestrated by Elon Musk and purported to expose left-wing bias by Twitter when it suspended Trump’s account. After five data dumps, Musk and his cohorts failed utterly to achieve their goal of smearing the left. In fact, they actually proved that Twitter’s Trust and Safety team (who Musk recently fired) was exceedingly fair and conscientious in their deliberations and decision making.

RELATED: Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ Farce Fails Pitifully in Portraying Poor Trump as a Put Upon Victim

Then Trump gets to the meat of his whining with the articulation of his five-point plan…

First, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or disinformation.”

Who wants to tell Trump that the federal government is already prohibited from “imped[ing] the lawful speech of American citizens?” Trump is merely declaring his intention to issue an executive order that essentially repeats the Constitution’s First Amendment. Except, that is, for the last part where he proposes to punish those who exercise their free speech by alerting citizens to the dangers of mis- and disinformation. Trump, a major supplier of disinformation, wants to make sure he can keep on doing that. Moving on…

Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified. These include possible violations of federal civil rights law, campaign finance law, federal election law, securities law, and anti-trust laws, the Hatch Act, and a host of other criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses.”

Here Trump is threatening to force the Justice Department to – uphold existing laws? Yep. But let’s face it, when Trump makes this sort of threat, he intends that it be directed exclusively at his enemies. He and his administration are more prone to violating those laws, but he never bothered to hold any of those who violated them accountable when he occupied the White House. And there’s more…

Third, upon my inauguration as president, I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of the censorship business. From now on digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.

First of all, Trump has no idea what Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is or does. While there is room to refine it, it is basically a protection so that online services aren’t held accountable for comments made by the public. Without it platforms like Twitter and Facebook couldn’t allow people to post comments at all.

Furthermore, Trump’s idea that platforms should have to “meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination,” is an imposition on their free speech rights, as well as posing difficult questions about who sets those standards. The government? Trump wants to force private companies to allow all “legal” comments, even if they are racist, hate speech, or sufficiently vague incitements to violence. And he’s still not through…

Fourth, we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis- and disinformation.”

In other words, Trump wants to prohibit private Internet platforms from refusing to post purposefully false information that has the potential to cause real harm. He wants fake COVID cures and anti-vaccine propaganda to be readily available. He wants lies about election fraud to stir up civil unrest. He even explicitly brought up his own fixation with phony election fraud saying that “Once you lose those elections … you no longer have a country.” Which brings us to his fifth point…

Fifth, the time has finally come for congress to pass a Digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.” […] In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt-out of content moderation and curation entirely, and receive an unmanipulated stream of information, if they so choose.”

To be clear, Trump is proposing the first law that would allow government – with a court order – to censor content, which would be unconstitutional. Remember, this is his plan for free speech and to end censorship. And while the FBI did inform Twitter about certain content that was false (and so did Trump and the GOP), they never had the right to force it to be removed. That’s Trump’s idea. And so is his suggestion that adults can “opt-out of content moderation,” effectively forcing private Internet platforms to post content that they regard as harmful, offensive, or otherwise contrary to their standards. Then Trump closed saying…

“The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America and for the survival of Western civilization itself. When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won’t be anything left. By restoring free speech we will begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation.”

The problem with Trump’s initiative is that it produces the polar opposite of what he claims is his intention. It would permit censorship, allow the government to force private businesses to post content they disapprove of, and shred the First Amendment. Which is all pretty much precisely what is expected of an aspiring authoritarian tyrant like Trump who has openly advocated banning websites he doesn’t like, such as Twitter and Facebook. America would be better off if his “major announcements” were all about trading cards and other snake oil ventures.

RELATED: WTF? Trump Regrets Not Banning Facebook and Twitter When He Was President

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The Sham ‘Twitter Files’ Exposé Actually Proves that Trump’s Coup Plot was Appropriately Muted

The new regime at Twitter has been engaging in what it calls an “exposé” of alleged censorship of conservatives in general – and Donald Trump in particular – on the part of Twitter’s prior management team. However, their efforts thus far have been pitifully underwhelming and have failed to prove any of their outrageous and unfounded allegations.

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Donald Trump, Twitter

When Elon Musk took control over Twitter he portrayed himself as a “free speech absolutist” who aspired to bring a dialogue to the service that was unfettered by bias and censorship. In reality, Musk just inserted his own personal biases and revealed that he has no grasp of what free speech really means. He also demonstrated that his absolutist approach only permits unfettered hate speech. Consequently, despite his instance that Twitter would not become a “free-for-all hellscape,” that’s precisely what it became shortly after he took the reins.

RELATED: Twitter Tyrant Elon Musk Comes Out Against Free Markets and Free Speech

Last week Musk put out the first of what he promised would be a series of revelations exposing the bias of Twitter. That first release was pathetically devoid of any of the bombshells they teased. Although it succeeded in doxing private citizens and putting them at risk for harm.

Now the latest release of Musk’s multipart melodrama was posted Friday night. It consisted of 67 tweets by his protégé/puppet, Matt Taibbi, that ostensibly unveiled a vast conspiracy against conservative tweeters. Suffice to say that it was another nothingburger that failed utterly to prove its predetermined point.

To the contrary, Taibbi actually proved that the staff at Twitter acted responsibly to prevent Trump from inciting further violence during the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C. For example, the seventh tweet explicitly laid out how carefully considered any decisions were to tag or suspend potentially violating tweets and users…

7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways.

This tweet included a screenshot of the remarks by Twitter moderation staff…

“[H]ere is our quick take: the decision on whether to pull that particular tweet or use that as the last straw for trump depends on many factors including: (1) The overall context and narrative in which that tweet lives – we currently analyze tweets and consider them on a tweet-by-tweet basis which does not appropriately take into account the surrounding context – you can use the telling fire into a crowded theater example – context matters and the narrative that trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account.”

How Taibbi can regard this as evidence of bias is puzzling. It shows a respect for analyzing tweets that takes into consideration the context and the tweeter’s prior comments in order to fully understand their intent. It’s exactly how content moderation should be done. But Taibbi exhibits his bias in the tweets that followed…

8. The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days [6-8]. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.

9. Before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives. As @BariWeiss reported, the firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6.

10. As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.

Taibbi is making a wholly manufactured assessment about what he calls the preceding “intellectual framework,” whatever that means. Then he complains that Twitter responsibly employed “rules-based enforcement,” that he baselessly calls subjective, and he whines that their moderation tools were “thrown at Trump.” Maybe that’s because Trump had violated Twitter’s rule innumerable times in the weeks and months that preceded January 6th.

However, the worst part of this screed was Taibbi’s claim that when senior executives “began to speak of ‘vios'” [violations] it was “perhaps under pressure from federal agencies.” Really? He could have just as credibly have said that it was “perhaps under pressure from Martians.” He provided zero evidence of anything resembling pressure by federal agencies or any other entity, terrestrial or otherwise.

That is representative how carelessly and dishonestly Taibbi put together this sham. His only purpose was to create a store of material that Republicans and Trump cultists could link to in order to advance their crackpot conspiracy theories and yammer about conservatives being victims of evil “Big Tech” liberals. The truth is that Twitter long ago admitted that their algorithms favored right-wingers. And near the end of the 67 tweet harangue was one that expressly outlined the situation with regard to Trump’s hostile incitements…

“An update on actions we’re taking as a result of what’s happening in DC today. We have removed (bounced) 3 tweets from @realDonaldTrump on 6 January 2020 [sic] for making unfounded claims of voter fraud and election theft, which must be viewed in the context of the violence in Washington DC today and reasonably can be expected to continue to incite and inspire violent acts around the country. We are requiring a 12-hour timeout following the removal of these tweets. We also have tweeted so there’s transparency in our actions and making it clear that future violations of the Twitter Rules will result in permanent suspension.”

That message completely negates virtually everything that Taibbi had falsely framed prior to it. But he still maintains that his work proves there was a bias at Twitter against Trump and other conservatives. If there was, it was a bias against allowing a treasonous, twice impeached, wannabe dictator from staging a violent coup. And Musk’s rush to reinstate Trump’s account further affirms that he couldn’t care less about the welfare of this nation or its people.

RELATED: Why Elon Musk Restoring Trump’s Twitter Account is Ignorant, Dangerous, and Hypocritical

MORE ON “TWITTER FILES”:

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HUH? Senior Fox News Misinformer, Tucker Carlson, Declares that ‘Misinformation Can Be True’

Since it’s inception, the mission of Fox News has been to advance the propaganda and lies of the Republican Party and its ultra-rightist agenda. Their management, editors, and program hosts are all chosen for, and devoted to that mission. And in recent years their extremist political evangelism has fervently pledged to the Cult of Donald Trump.

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Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Bullshit Factory

Leading the wingnut evangelical crusade at Fox News is their top-rated host, Tucker Carlson. His program has become the most popular media destination for America’s white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, and many other hate groups.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson’s Race War Dreams are Evident in His Hateful Rant Against a Black MSNBC Host

On Monday’s episode of Carlson’s hate-fest, he joined the conservative media’s embrace of Elon Musk’s Twitter nothingburger that purported to reveal an ingrained bias in favor of Democrats and then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. Suffice to say that the entire alleged “bombshell” was a spectacular dud that produced nothing but rank speculation, fabrication, and the disturbing doxing of private Twitter communications and staff.

Nevertheless, Fox News and Carlson were determined to further brainwash their audience with flagrant falsehoods. And apparently aware that their deceits were too obvious to disguise, they endeavored to frame lies as truths. Carlson literally defined falsehoods as facts. And not even “alternative facts” as previously dubbed by his Fox News colleague, and Trump toady, Kellyanne Conway. Carlson confabulated that…

“Misinformation is a new word. It’s been around the intel world for a long time but it’s never been used in common conversation until recently. The distinction between misinformation and lying is that misinformation can be true. It doesn’t have to be untrue to be censored. It used to be truth is a defense. If you’re telling the truth, you can say it. Not anymore. With mis- and disinformation, if I don’t like it, if I’m in power, I can censor you.”

For the record, misinformation cannot be true. It is, by definition, untrue. If it were true there would be nothing amiss in it. And only in the perverse world of Carlson and Fox News could such a ludicrous contention be made or taken seriously. But then again, it was Carlson who was actually defended in a defamation lawsuit by his own Fox News lawyers who told the court that “no reasonable person” would believe anything he said.

RELATED: Fox News Court Ruling: No ‘Reasonable Viewer’ Takes Tucker Carlson Seriously

In the same program, Carlson elaborated on his adoption of the Musk Twitter files non-scandal. He complained about Twitter’s decisions to moderate the content on their platform in order to prevent Russia from spreading propaganda that was intended to benefit Trump and to sow distrust of American elections. Never mind that Musk’s pathetic exposé failed to reveal any wrongdoing or bias. Carlson was outraged at what consumed his imagination, or at least what he wanted to consume the imaginations of his viewers. He huffed that…

“Twitter did this with the help of the FBI committing censorship on behalf of one candidate while working to hurt the other candidate. It is hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy than this. This is not how our system is supposed to work. In fact, it’s illegal. What Twitter did is in violation of the First Amendment, as well as established campaign finance law. They never declared those contributions to the Biden campaign. That’s a crime.”

First of all, Twitter didn’t do anything with the FBI. The internal messages that Musk published proved that all of the decisions about what disinformation to suppress were made solely by Twitter “safety and trust” staff. No government entity or personnel were involved, other than to flag tweets that potentially violated Twitter’s rules. And those came from both Democrats and Republicans. Also, at the time, Biden wasn’t president. It all took place during Trump’s administration with his appointees heading the FBI and the Justice Department.

Yet Carlson thinks that there was something nefarious going on for which he found it “hard to imagine a more brazen attack on our democracy.” Really? More brazen than the attempt to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021? More brazen than trying to undermine the election for two years and install the loser as dictator? More brazen than calling for the “termination” of the Constitution.

RELATED: Trump Literally Calls for Termination of the Constitution and FREAKS OUT Over Bogus Fox News Story

Carlson also appears to have no idea what the First Amendment says. It is a constraint on government from imposing censorship. It has no authority over private individuals or businesses, such as Twitter.

Finally, Carlson really needs to think twice before bringing up in-kind contributions to political campaigns. Because if that were a concept that were upheld, Fox News would have have to declare billions of dollars in donations that it made to Trump and other GOP candidates for the past quarter century.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Trump Literally Calls for Termination of the Constitution and FREAKS OUT Over Bogus Fox News Story

The unsettling totalitarian tendencies of Donald Trump have long posed an imminent threat to American democracy and freedom. From the outset of his political pursuits he has demonstrated a sinister aspiration to tyrannical rule. It’s a symptom of his malignant narcissism that puts the nation – and world – at risk.

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Donald Trump, Constitution

Now, more than two years after he was unceremoniously evicted from his occupation of the White House by the American people, Trump continues to peddle his “Big Lie” that the election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him. And although it’s a flagrantly false figment of his diseased imagination, he persists in pushing it out to his glassy-eyed cult disciples, despite his rapidly declining approval and influence.

RELATED: Donald Trump is The Biggest Loser: Post-Midterm Poll Affirms What Everyone Already Knows

However, if you thought that he had exhausted his store of preposterous allegations and infantile rage, you don’t know Trump. On Saturday morning he unleashed an avalanche of absurdity in service of his severely acute psychosis. This temper tantrum manifested in multiple posts on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. The tedious tirade culminated in the following hysteria

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

REALLY? So Trump is now insisting that the Constitution be terminated in order to satisfy his election fraud fantasies and his voracious lust for power. It’s not especially surprising that Trump would hold that view. But it is unusual for him to so forthrightly express it.

The story that Trump regards as a “revelation,” and is so frantically flustered by, came from Fox News. It concerned a couple of Republican attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana who are suing the Biden administration alleging censorship and suppression of speech by “Big Tech” and the FBI. Their complaint is wholly based on reports that the FBI held regular and normal meetings with the media to alert them to Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2020 election. But even Fox’s reporting doesn’t assert what Trump and the GOP AGs are twisting these facts to conclude…

“During the deposition, [FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis] Chan said that he, along with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials, had weekly meetings with major social media companies to warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election, according to a source in the Missouri attorney general’s office. […] According to a source, Chan testified that in those multiple, separate meetings, the FBI warned the social media companies that there could be potentially Russian ‘hack and dump’ or ‘hack and leak’ operations.”

So even according to Fox News there was no conspiracy between the government and “Big Tech” to censor or suppress free speech. It was all just an effort to keep the social media outlets apprised of the Russian disinformation campaign. Also, it’s interesting that Trump is readily accepting this reporting based on allegations by an unnamed source when he has previously dismissed them all as fake.

What Trump, and most of the right-wing echo chamber, is distorting into another pseudo-scandal is an already debunked story. It featured false claims that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, told podcaster Joe Rogan that the FBI had ordered him to suppress news about – what else – Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop. Which is not what Zuckerberg said, or what the FBI was doing at all.

In reality, the FBI was doing their job to protect social media platforms, and thus the nation, from Russia’s election interference and fake news manipulation. Which is precisely what Russia was, in fact, doing. But that didn’t stop Trump from demanding that 2020 election be declared invalid, and that he be “declared the rightful winner.”

RELATED: Wannabe Dictator Trump Decrees a Delusional Demand that He Be Anointed American Messiah

The Fox News story also reported that “the FBI regularly sends social media companies lists of internet URLs and social media accounts” that distribute “disinformation” from “malign foreign influence operations.” The story falsely implies that this amounts to censorship. Except that the evidence shows that the FBI never imposed any actions to be taken on the social media sites. They merely supplied the sites with information and let them determine for themselves what to do with it. In other words, free speech and the free markets prevailed. Not that Fox News or Trump would recognize it.

Ignoring the obvious facts in this affair, Trump ranted furiously in half a dozen successively incoherent posts that it represented “total corruption” and demanded that someone should “DO SOMETHING as our Country Melts!!!” He didn’t say who, or under what authority, this alleged melting should be halted. It was just more of his now familiar impotent whining and pathetic victimhood. And if the past is any indication, we should expect it to continue – and escalate – as he sinks farther into despair and desperation.

UPDATE I: Trump followed up his alt-tweet storm with another post saying that “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!” He doesn’t specify what that “cure” is, but considering that a short while ago he called for terminating the Constitution, it’s hard not surmise that he’s now calling for another coup attempt or other violent upheaval on the part of his treasonous cult.

UPDATE II: Two days later Trump denied ever calling for the termination of the Constitution, despite his words calling for exactly that, verbatim.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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UH-OH: Marjorie Taylor Greene Fears ‘Corporate Communism’ of Advertisers Leaving Musk’s Twitter

There appears to be a congenital defect in conservatives in general, and in the Donald Trump brand of wingnut Republicans in particular. They seem to have an inability to express a thought that doesn’t exhibit profound ignorance. And they do it without the slightest hint of shame.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene, Gun

On Sunday morning Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-QAnon) displayed some of the notable symptoms of this defect in a tweet that aimed to malign both liberals and the world’s biggest corporations, because she believes that they have so much in common. But what’s truly troubling is that her steaming stupidity is taking over the Republican Party as it prepares to assume the majority in the House of Representatives.

RELATED: Fascista Marjorie Taylor Greene: If I was Speaker of the House I Would Reign with an Iron Fist

Instead of landing a blow on her targets, Greene succeeded only in embarrassing herself, as usual. In her crackpot commentary she sought to defend Elon Musk as he endeavors to destroy the $44 billion toy he bought by permitting rampant hate speech and disinformation. She is very upset that, as a result, many companies that advertised on Twitter are temporarily declining to do so. So in that vein she unleashed the following lunacy…

“This is Corporate Communism. Corporations using their economic power to force their political agendas. They need to go back to the ‘Customer is King’ mentality, not corporations are king. @elonmusk opening Twitter for everyone’s speech doesn’t promote one side.”

WOW! That’s quite a shipload of cow manure. To begin with, the phrase “Corporate Communism” makes no sense. There are no corporations in a communist economy, where all means of production are controlled by the state. That’s not an agenda advocated by liberals. She might be thinking of fascism, which is also known as corporatism, where corporations have power over the government. Which is precisely the agenda of the Republican Party.

Greene is also criticizing private corporations for exercising their right to conduct business in a manner that best serves the interests of its customers and shareholders. And for some reason, she thinks that linking to a list of fifty of America’s biggest companies that are repulsed by overt expressions of hate, supports her argument.

If a company chooses not to advertise on a certain platform because it doesn’t want to be associated with the repugnant people and ideas that it promotes, that’s their prerogative. Generally, when a company makes such a decision, it’s because of, not contrary to, what their customers want.

Elon Musk has promised to restore all suspended accounts, except those that violated the law or disseminated spam. That means that accounts that engaged in overt bigotry and dangerous disinformation regarding pandemics and elections, are free to resume their hostile activities. Never mind that the American people have communicated to Twitter’s advertisers that they will not patronize businesses that support such maliciousness. Greene doesn’t believe that companies should have the right to accommodate their customers wishes.

In Green’s world – and in Musks’s – “opening Twitter for everyone’s speech” is simply free speech. But that absolutist standard as referenced in the Constitution only applies to the government. And even there it isn’t absolute. Private companies can set there own standards, and be driven by the values of their customers. But Greene would rather the government force companies and other institutions to advance her values and those of the ultra-right GOP.

RELATED: Rachel Maddow Unmasks the Virulent Racism of Marjorie Taylor Green and Christian Nationalism

Greene went on to condemn Democrats as the party that “mandated unnecessary vaccines [and] drag queen shows in schools.” That’s the sort of asinine speech that she wants to permeate online dialogues. And if anyone disagrees with her they are communists who favor censorship.

However, it is Greene’s positions that hew more to those allegations of censorious state tyranny. Furthermore, she must not have noticed that corporations have “[used] their economic power to force their political agendas” for as long as there have been corporations. Many of them donate to her campaigns. And let’s not forget the Citizens United decision that defined corporations as “persons,” allowing them to advance their political agendas with unlimited amounts of funding. None of that never seemed to bother her.

Now Greene wants to prohibit companies from freely conducting their own business, and to muzzle the American people who want to express their opinions to those companies. But she is too stupid to recognize just how hypocritical she is. And sadly, as Greene goes, so goes the GOP.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly.

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Why Elon Musk Restoring Trump’s Twitter Account is Ignorant, Dangerous, and Hypocritical

Nearly two years ago Twitter suspended Donald Trump’s account due to his reckless and relentless lies about election fraud. Twitter imposed the ban on January 8th, two days after Trump’s deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill, saying that “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Now Elon Musk has personally intervened to restore the account.

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Donald Trump

Musk has contradicted his prior promise not to restore Trump, or anyone else, until after his “content moderation council” (whatever that is) met. But this reversal is wrong for many reason: 1) It’s pitifully ignorant. 2) It’s predictably dangerous. And 3) It’s flagrantly hypocritical. Let’s drill down into each of these reasons…

IGNORANT:
Musk tweeted that Trump’s account would be restored because “The people have spoken.” He was referring to a poll that he previously posted asking whether the account should be reinstated. The results were pretty close, with “Yes” besting “No” 51.8% to 48.2%. However, it is extraordinarily idiotic to take such a poll seriously. For one thing, Musk knows that the votes could be rampant with bots.

In addition to that, it isn’t a scientifically valid survey with a representative sampling of either Americans or Twitter users. It is merely the opinion of people who happened to come across Musk’s tweet and chose to click on a response. And with only 15 million votes, it isn’t even a representative sample of Musk’s 117 million followers. If Barack Obama (who has 5 times the followers of Musk) posted the same poll, you would have a completely different outcome. So for Musk to revive Trump’s account on the basis of this poll proves that he doesn’t have even the most basic grasp of what it means in reality when “the people have spoken.”

DANGEROUS:
When Twitter suspended Trump’s account, they did so in recognition of the imminent threat that his tweets posed to the country and the American people. He was openly and repeatedly inciting violence and encouraging the hostile tendencies of his cult followers. His toxic rhetoric contributed to the anti-American riots on Capitol Hill on January 6th that resulted in more than 140 law enforcement officers being injured.

Trump’s advocacy of such violence continued on other platforms after he was booted from Twitter. Apparently Musk believes that fomenting violence is acceptable free speech and protected by the Constitution. It isn’t. And given Trump’s predilection for sedition and bigotry, Musk clearly doesn’t care who gets hurt.

HYPOCRITICAL:
Musk pretends that his intention is to bring free speech back to the masses by relaxing the moderation policies of Twitter. However, it’s notable that the only accounts Musk has seen fit to restore are those of well known politicians, celebrities, and others in the elite class. He is demonstrating that his true intent is to pander to wealthy right-wingers, like himself. So while he reinstates only privileged conservatives like Trump (and Kanye West, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas), the accounts of all the non-aristocrats remain shuttered. That’s hardly a restoration of free speech for the masses.

[Full Disclosure: News Corpse is one of the banned commoners. And another appeal to be reinstated was denied just prior to this article being published]

Adding more soap to this opera, is the fact that Trump has stated repeatedly that he would not return to Twitter even if his account were restored. Earlier this year Trump told Fox News that “I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH.” That’s his shorthand for his own floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social. He reiterated his rejection of Twitter as recently as yesterday in post wherein he linked to Musk’s poll and said “don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special!”

Trump’s animosity toward Twitter is complex and extends way beyond his stated reluctance to rejoin the platform. That’s partly because he has an obligation to promote Truth Social. Although it’s hard to imagine that Trump wouldn’t jump back into the Twitterverse where he had 80 million followers. He has only about four million on Truth Social. His ego would compel him to reconcile, despite having previously raged that “Twitter is a disgrace to democracy. They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country.” And he has sued Twitter, albeit without any legal basis or coherent allegation to support his case. Which is why it was so quickly thrown out of court.

This is the guy that Musk is going out of his way to suck up to. Perhaps it’s because Musk is so badly managing Twitter that he is desperate for the (intensely negative) attention that Trump would produce. Since his acquisition of Twitter a couple of weeks ago, Musk has fired half its staff. Hundreds more have resigned. Advertisers are fleeing in droves. Hate speech has skyrocketed. And the operation is struggling just keep from falling of its own weight.

Meanwhile, Musk has been posting some bizarre and offensive tweets, including one that promoted a callous conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. So, good work, Elon. You’re doing a great job of proving how superior you upper-crusters are to the rest of us.

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