A hearing put on by The House Oversight Committee delved into chaos Wednesday as lawmakers interrogated former Twitter executives about the platform’s censorship, especially in regard to the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Notable events that day include Rep. Byron Donald’s (R-FL) questioning of Twitter executive Yoel Roth, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) complaints about the House probing into the censorship surrounding what she characterized as the “half-fake laptop,” and claims by another Democrat that the laptop is nothing but a “conspiracy theory.”
.@ByronDonalds FACT-CHECKS entire panel of former Twitter censorship bosses to their FACES with massive posters of evidence after they deny colluding with Biden team🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/edfX5XnpfH
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 8, 2023
Meanwhile, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) used his time during the hearing as an opportunity to suggest that censorship by the U.S. government and large corporations is an irrelevant matter.
“Instead of letting this trivial pursuit go my colleagues have tried to whip up a faux scandal about this two-day lapse in their ability to spread Hunter Biden propaganda on a private media platform,” Raskin said. “Silly does not even begin to capture this obsession.”
"Instead of letting this trivial pursuit go my colleagues have tried to whip up a faux scandal about this two-day lapse in their ability to spread Hunter Biden propaganda on a private media platform. Silly does not even begin to capture this obsession." @RepRaskin #TwitterHearing pic.twitter.com/UWaSV4HJM4
— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) February 8, 2023
Raskin asserted that the censorship had no significant influence, and falsely claimed it only last for a “two-day period.”
Miranda Devine of the New York Post pointed out that these statements are untrue — they actually lasted for over two weeks. She also took note of the timing, which was conveniently just before the 2020 presidential election.
Dems and Twitter execs keep saying Twitter’s censorship of the @nypost only lasted 24 hours. That’s false. They kept the @nypost account locked for over two weeks, until just before the 2020 election.
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 8, 2023
As RedState pointed out, the period of censorship lasted longer than two weeks, going from Oct. 14 to Oct. 30.
The account belonging to the New York Post was not the only one that was banned during this bout of censorship. Then-Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and others had their accounts suspended for daring to share the story.
Censorship does appear to strongly influence elections. A survey taken in August 2022 revealed that a significant portion of Americans — 79 percent — believed former President Trump would have won reelection if the American people had been properly informed about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
