In a move that is no longer surprising coming from Democrats, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) asked federal officials if they had the means to censor social media postings to prevent runs on banks.
He was on a conference call with representatives from the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC) discussing the Silicon Valley Bank bailout. It was Republicans on the call who exposed his question.
EXCLUSIVE: Senator Mark Kelly Called For Social Media Censorship To Prevent Bank Runs
Democrats are demanding ever-more censorship in a widening social media panichttps://t.co/M0xEK0b2vb
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) March 13, 2023
According to sources, there were roughly 200 individuals on the Zoom call. Participants included Senators and House members as well as their staffers.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Public that a Democratic senator asked if a program exists “on social media to censor information that would lead to a bank run.”
The outlet reported Massie saying “he couched it in a concern that foreign actors would be doing this.” However, there was no stipulation that censorship should be limited to foreigners or even to false information.
Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted that while on the call, “a member asked if they were reaching out to Facebook and Twitter to monitor misinformation and ‘bad actors.’”
The Republican added that for the federal government to suppress free speech is “unacceptable.”
The reports by Massie and Boebert were confirmed by Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), who chairs the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability. Boebert’s office further acknowledged that the member calling for censorship was a Democratic senator.
Bishop told Public that the voice was that of Sen. Mark Kelly.
Democrats, of course, tried to spin the call for censorship as also coming from Republicans. A spokesman for the Senate Banking Committee noted that House Banking Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) made a similar statement.
Not exactly.
McHenry described Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse as “the first Twitter-fueled bank run.” That was it. Contrary to the Democratic claim, there was no GOP call for censorship from McHenry or anyone else.
There was a time when Democrats could be counted on to support free speech for the most outlandish of statements, but that time came and went. Now the party sees every social media posting as something that must be monitored and moderated to ensure it passes their inspection.
