'Conspiracy of dunces': CNN panel torches 'idiot' Republican narratives about Twitter
Congressman Jim Jordan speaking with attendees at the 2021 AmericaFest. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
February 09, 2023
A CNN panel on Thursday roasted House Republicans for their decision to hold a hearing on Twitter's "censorship" of their COVID-19 and 2020 election conspiracy posts.
During the hearing, it was revealed that the Trump White House made a call to Twitter to ask them to remove an obscene post that Chrissy Teigen made about the former president, which blew up House Republicans' narratives that only Democrats were regularly hounding Twitter to take down posts as part of a campaign to silence political foes.
Tech journalist Kara Swisher said that this revelation should put a stake into the heart of any GOP conspiracy theories about Twitter.
"Twitter was not really pressured, but was contacted by everybody who wanted to influence what they were doing," she said. "There was no conspiracy here... I think this was a waste of taxpayer money, it's a lot of nonsense, it's a lot of allegations that they just can't prove."
READ MORE: Ex-Trump official squirms when Morning Joe hosts corner him on Jan. 6 insurrection
Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, was even more blunt in his assessment of the House GOP's hearing.
"The only conspiracy here is a conspiracy of dunces," he declared. "This communicates to every Chinese official: 'Send more balloons, these people are idiots."
Among other things, Galloway noted that a private company had the right to decide which content to allow onto its platform, which he argued meant that conservatives had no grounds to argue that their First Amendment rights had been violated by running afoul of Twitter's policies.
He also noted that Twitter repeatedly carved out exceptions to its rules for former President Donald Trump, whose use of violent and incendiary rhetoric finally got him banned from the platform after his supporters staged a deadly riot at the United States Capitol building.
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