America's Talking - ‘Taxpayer-Funded Censorship Campaign’ Under Fire at Congressional Hearing

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

The Biden administration's collusion with social media companies and others to censor speech related to COVID-19, election integrity and other issues "was far more pervasive and destructive" than initially thought, a key witness and sitting U.S. senator testified at a Thursday Congressional hearing. Republicans on the subcommittee called it "the largest speech censorship operation in recent history." “Their censorship has extended to critical topics like how best to respond to COVID-19 and even to elections themselves,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who leads the relevant subcommittee. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, the Center Square is Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. We are recording this on Friday, March 31st, ready for spring temperatures to arrive, hasn't here in the northwest suburbs of Chicago just yet, but I'm guessing it's just around the corner. Yeah, same here. We have the cherry blossoms here in D.C., and so the traffic couldn't be worse, but it's definitely beautifying the area. I will say, Dan, can you speak up a little bit? just Google is probably recording this. Twitter and Facebook want to get a good audio recording to see if we need to be censored here.

So just make sure you speak clearly into the microphone. I think that's what you call a lead-in or a team. Oh, is it? Yes. Of course, we're talking about government-supported censorship, which was discussed at a congressional hearing this week that you covered Casey. Of course, we know since Elon Musk, for example, took ownership of Twitter and released the Twitter files, that there has been under the Biden administration, there has been ongoing communications.

between the administration and social media outlets like Twitter to have certain speech censored. Tell us what you learned at this hearing this week. Yeah, I mean, so this has kind of been one of those stories that started off as a conspiracy theory and is now an established fact. And the initial criticism that wasn't really able to be validated was that the Biden administration is working with these big tech companies to censor Americans and have their opinions pull down, especially on controversial issues, most notably election integrity and also COVID-19. and in the vaccine, right? So this, actually,

former White House press secretary, Jensaki in 2021, the summer of 2021, actually admitted that the White House was working with some of these companies to flag posts that they thought, you know, weren't great. And so that was kind of controversial at the time, but it was thought to be, okay, well, the political wing of the White House is flagging for social media companies, things. It's like, okay, I guess, you know, that's not great. That could violate the First Amendment. But we thought that was where it ended. But the more and more that comes had on the story, kind of the more pervasive, that censorship actually was. Because now we know that, for example, the Department of Homeland Security was, has been working with these tech companies to flag

things. They have this whole like cyber security group that was working heavily and referencing a lot of Americans' posts that should be taken down. And there were posts that were taken down as a result of that. I believe there were even accounts that were banned, right? It's not just there, though, is actually the FBI was working with Twitter, for example, on the Hunter Biden story. So, of course, that's probably the most controversial example of, you know, big tech censorship in the last couple years. Just ahead of the presidential election, this big story breaks about Hunter Biden's laptop and how it could have compromised the president and how there's payments. And now we know a few years later that this Chinese firm, it looks like they paid all this money that went to Biden associates.

So that story was at first, though, discredited as misinformation and likely Russian misinformation. And that actually was from, you know, in large part the FBI. So the FBI went to the social media company. And he's like Twitter and Facebook and said, hey, yeah, by the way, it's October of 2020, right, for the election. They went to these social media companies and they said, hey, you're about to get this Hunter Biden story come out, but it's misinformation, don't allow it on your platform or whatever. So the story comes out, New York Post, you know, does it. And their Twitter account is like, is frozen. And right.

And so because of that, the story was kind of discredited. But now, you know, Biden went's election. And it turns out that a lot of that story is true. For example, the New York Times, which initially really kind of poo-pooed that story has since validated that the laptop exists. So that's just one of many examples, though, of censorship and the federal government is working hand in hand on it. And so now it's like, wait a minute, what do we do about this? Congress is looking into it. They're saying this could violate the First Amendment. But even if it doesn't technically violate the First Amendment, it's like, wow, your tax dollars are actually going to pay for your own censorship. Certainly concerning. And it all does seem to relate to conservative speech or speech of conservatives that's being suppressed or was being suppressed. COVID-19. was another huge topic, a huge thing that government was encouraging social media or persuading

social media to take down or suppress speech that the federal government said it was disinformation. But as we know, the COVID-19 narrative has developed a long way. And a lot of that stuff that was deemed misinformation in the first place was in fact not misinformation or disinformation. Yeah, that's right. And even, you know, Dr. Anthony Fauci has kind of contradicted himself. And we wrote about that at the center square.com, how he's really changed his tune on on how the vaccine, for example, and how strong it was or how strong it would be. And what this all comes down to is really Americans fearing that the federal government is going to abuse its power.

And those fears were only heightened because Matt Taibi, who is the journalist who broke a lot of these Twitter files, as you referenced, Elon Musk took over Twitter. And when he did, he just kind of released all the secrets of the company, which has been really fascinating to see come out. And Matt Taibi was the one who really broke that. and then testified before Congress about it. But while he was testifying before Congress, the IRS showed up at his home, this is media reports. IRIS showed up at his home for a house call. I don't know if you know, the IRS doesn't normally just do house calls like that. And so people are saying, wow,

the level of government intimidation that this could be is really alarming. And oh, by the way, it comes right when we just, you know, gave the IRS $80 billion to hire an army of auditors to increase revenue. So there's a lot of storylines intersecting here. It's hard to imagine that that was a coincidence that the IRS shows up at his house the same day he's testifying before Congress. It certainly seems suspicious. Listeners can keep up with his censorship story and more at thecentersquare.com. For Casey Harbour. I'm Dan McHale. Please subscribe. And thank you for listening. Freedom and liberty are important to all of us. If you're looking for civil,

intellectual conversations with those shaping the future of freedom, try the Future of Freedom podcast with me, Scott Bertram. We speak with leaders across the country in the greater conservative and libertarian movements. In-depth conversations about where the next intellectual battles will happen across the country. It's the Future of Freedom Podcast. Find it at America's Talking.com or wherever you get your podcasts.