If there was any doubt that the Twitter Files have struck a nerve and deep fear in the Powers That Be, Thursday’s disgraceful behavior by Democrats in a hearing featuring journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger eviscerated it.
Taibbi and Shellenberger had not even uttered a word yet when the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary subcommittee Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-U.S. Virgin Islands, referred to the witnesses as "so-called journalists" in her opening statement. The pair glanced at each other, clearly surprised and confused by the utterly unprovoked attack.
From there it only got worse, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-TX, asked the pair of scribes if they were being paid to testify, again to an absolutely shocked response from them. She went on to try to force Taibbi to reveal information about his sources, a journalistic Rubicon he rightfully refused to cross.
Other Democrats accused them of wearing tin foil hats, and intimated in ugly language with clear disdain that they were only in it for the money, not to discover the truth about our federal government pressuring Twitter to censor Americans’ speech which was the reason for the hearing.
It was truly one of the rudest, most unethical, and unAmerican displays that one could ever hope to never witness in the halls of Congress. The pure character assassination was as swift as it was unfounded, the cruel smearing of the pair as deeply cynical as it was baseless.
But why? Why did every Democrat on this committee treat these two journalists, neither of whom are known to be particularly right wing, like lying dogs doing the bidding of their supposed evil master, Twitter owner Elon Musk?
It is true that Musk gave the email files to Taibbi and Shellenberger, along with a handful of other journalists. But the Democrats did not offer one iota of evidence that these writers were being controlled or used by Musk before attempting to destroy their characters and professional reputations.
The chilling message, and one meant for all journalists, was crystal clear: if you report uncomfortable facts that Democrats don’t like, they will attack you and try to discredit you and your work.
The irony of course is that it was just this kind of pressure and censorship of the media from the federal government that the committee was investigating with this hearing in the first place.
Just as the FBI and other federal agencies sought to shame and shut down the speech of journalists and scientists by directing Twitter and others to label reasonable dissent as disinformation, these Democrats, unable to make real arguments, maligned the messengers instead.
This is a wake-up moment in which Democrats made plain that they view censorship of journalism as not only a good thing, but necessary to protect us all from foreign election interference, or racism, or climate-change denial. First Amendment be damned, free speech thrown under the bus to "protect" us from these alleged emergencies.
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For their part, Taibbi and Shellenberger both described the blatant government overreach they found in the Twitter Files as "chilling," and as important a story as they have ever covered. There can be no doubt that the shameful behavior of the Democrats on the committee cements that contention.
Even if one is somehow underwhelmed by the expansive revelations of the Twitter Files, there is no justification whatsoever for the appalling treatment that these journalists received. In a just world, Democrats would apologize, instead Republican committee members did so for them.
The American people deserve a fair, and yes, bipartisan investigation into how our intelligence community is working with social media platforms to police our speech. But we did not get that today, instead we got a kangaroo court, something Democrats are getting quite good at.
At one point a clearly angry Taibbi looked squarely at Plaskett and said defiantly, "I am not a so-called journalist," he might as well have been saying, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency," because the McCarthy hearings had nothing on this mess.
He was speaking for all of us. Democrats can try, as they did today, to frighten the news media into compliance with their ever more absurd worldviews, but we are under no obligation to go along with it. We should thank Taibbi and Shellenberger for taking the insults, looking those Democrats right in the eye, and saying we will not be intimidated, and we will not bend the knee.
