(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The GOP tried to do a hearing on Twitter and Hunter Biden and it totally blew up in their faces [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-13 Instead of uncovering evidence that the government had wrongly influenced Twitter to block a story about Hunter Biden (note: this was Trump’s government at the time) it turns out the Trump’s government tried to censor a tweet by model Chrissy Teigan who had called him a “Pussy Ass Bitch.” And that was just one example a many times that the Trump administration asked Twitter to take down tweets by various people for various reasons. AOC points out that the entire hearing is a waste of time talking about “Hunter Biden’s half-fake laptop story.” She says that the New York Post refused to share their information with other outlets, and failed to corroborate the information (which they had received from Rudy Giuliani’s lawyers). She then quotes a Tweet from Trump which attacks her and the rest of the squad saying they should “Go back to where they came from.” She questions the Twitter employees who stated that they found Trump’s tweet in violation of their policies, specifically because of the phrase, “Go back to where you come from.” Twitter then changed its policy after Trump violated it and allowed the tweet to stay up. Lauren Boebert whines about being “shadow banned” in that only her followers could see her tweets — which makes sense to me — and MTG complains that her personal account was blocked after she repeatedly violated Covid protocol restrictions. Then you had the fact that one right-wing Twitter poster — LibsOfTiKTok — who have posted false claims about Gender Affirming Care for youths leading to Bomb Threats being issued against Boston Children’s Hospital. Rep. Clay Higgins tries to threaten Twitter employees with arrest for something something to do with supposedly “interfering with the 2020 election.” Because they blocked a link to a New York Post article for 24 hours. Uh huh. Rep. Pat Fallon claimed during the hearing that based on a poll, that if only Democrats had known about the Hunter Biden laptop story 70% of the would have changed their vote. Really? I myself brought the entire Hunter Laptop story up here several times and I barely got a reaction. But anyway, here’s what they said. The survey from the Media Research Center found 49 percent of respondents said it was inappropriate for social media sites to suppress an October 2020 New York Post report that showed Hunter promised Ukrainian business partners access to his father. Twitter suspended the Post's account following publication and blocked users from sharing the link. Fifty-two percent of respondents said the blackout constituted election interference. Big tech has come under fire over the past year for censoring posts on hot-button issues. Facebook has regularly removed or suppressed content that suggests COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab. The platform also removed posts from a Gold Star mother critical of Biden's handling of the death of her son. Twitter this month suspended the account of Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) after he referred to a transgender Biden official as a man. The Media Research Center survey found that the ban on the Hunter Biden story also shaped voters' perceptions of Joe Biden. Almost 30 percent of respondents said they would have been less likely to vote for Biden if they had been aware of evidence Biden lied about "knowledge of his son Hunter's overseas business dealings." So Rep. Fallon actually LIED when he said 70% of Democratic voters would have changed their vote — the actual number from MRC was that (almost) 30% of respondents would have been less likely to vote for Biden over the Laptop story. That doesn’t mean they would have changed their vote. And this is somehow Twitter’s fault? Maybe it has to do with the fact that Democrats don't read the New York Post — because, Murdoch. Just for context, this is who the Media Research Center is: The Media Research Center (MRC) is a right-of-center media watchdog. MRC provides commentary on news reports published by mainstream media outlets and illustrates what it characterizes as implicit and explicit left-of-center bias in the metropolitan print media, cable news, and over-the-air television news. MRC was founded by L. Brent Bozell III in 1987 to expose liberal bias in the metropolitan media and encourage more balanced reporting. Over time, Bozell has grown more hostile toward the mainstream media and no longer believes it can be reformed. [1] Bozell was initially a fierce conservative opponent of Donald Trump, but became an outspoken defender of Trump against media attacks. MRC criticized the mainstream media’s treatment of Trump and released numerous reports showing overwhelming bias against him. MRC was established with funding from a single anonymous donor. It is currently funded by numerous major Republican and conservative donors, including Robert Mercer’s Mercer Family Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and Donors Trust/Donors Capital Fund. The Mercers and Sciaf — the people behind Breitbart and the Arkansas Project that hounded the Clintons for a decade. Nice. Anyhoo. Concerning “Weaponization” there was also the point that Trump’s DOJ under BIll Barr was the most weaponized it has been since the COINTELPRO period. Case in point, as mentioned by Jamie Raskin during his testimony, is the fact that Bill Barr used his power to re-imprison Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen in order to punish him for writing a book about Trump’s further crimes. That is Weaponizing the DOJ for political advantage. Republicans claim that they have dozens of FBI Whistleblowers, yet they haven’t provided any notes or transcripts of testimony from these Whistleblowers to the Democrats. Rep. Dan Goldman eventually gets to the heart of the issue. He points out that the entire allegation of wrongfulness against Joe Biden comes from an email by a Burisma employee thanking Hunter for arranging a meeting with his father. Yet, we know nothing about the substance of that meeting, and such a meeting does not appear on VP Biden’s schedule at the time. [Also, it should be pointed out that the IT Community who wrote the letter saying Hunter’s laptop may be part of Russian Disinformation pointed out that Burisma was hacked by the GRU — so none of the emails from Burisma can be trusted as accurate.] Reb. Debbie Wasserman-Schulz questioned Jonathan Turley and had him admit that he’s never worked for Twitter and that he doesn’t have any “inside” knowledge about the company. He’s only worked for the government as an unpaid Intern for the NSA, and then briefly as counsel for Congress. So he doesn’t have any real insight into Twitter or the Government and his entire testimony was merely a layman’s conjecture based on the selective release of Twitter documents by Elon Musk. Rep. Dan Goldman returned and pointed out that an FBI witness the GOP had brought had left the agency in 1999, two years before 9-11 and before the formation of Homeland Security — so exactly how is he an expert on how efforts against foreign and domestic terrorism are conducted now? That same FBI witness, Mr. Baker, then refused to state that the attack on the Capitol was an act of terrorism claiming instead that it was a “Riot.” “It was lawless, there was property destroyed, there was trespassing.” He maintained this even when pressed as he stated that terrorism is an “act of violence intended to influence political decisions.” !!! Like, I know. Lastly in the Meidas Touch clip, you have Jesse Waters on The Five freaking out about the hearings because he doesn’t think they’re going anywhere. “Can we throw someone in jail guys?” No. Nope, no you can’t. This is what they brought to the table. Jim Jordan himself admitted that this effort is all intended to pave the road for Trump’s 2024 presidential run. The government under the DOJ actually used its power to punish people, like Michael Cohen, who criticized Donald Trump. Twitter didn’t block the Hunter Biden post based on a push by the government. They made that decision on their own for 24 hours, then reversed themselves. They allowed Trump’s tweets to stay up even though he violated their policies. They allowed the LibsOfTIkTok account to stay up even though it had caused actually death and bomb threats against a Children’s hospital. The “experts” they provided weren’t experts on anything. The GOP hasn’t shared any of the information from the alleged FBI “Whisle-blowers.” Jesse Watters is having a melt down. So, can we call this shit show what it is now? [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/13/2152713/-The-GOP-tried-to-do-a-hearing-on-Twitter-and-Hunter-Biden-and-it-totally-blew-up-in-their-faces Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/