Releases of the “Twitter Files” have become the major catalyst for uncovering just how far Joe Biden’s censorship regime went in trying to violate the First Amendment, but what about the other social media companies?
Facebook has long been the most active site for political discourse in the United States, and according to newly released emails, Biden’s minions were busy at work pressuring its employees to do their bidding as well. Jeff Landry, the Attorney General of Louisiana who is currently suing the administration over its censorship regime, revealed the documents on Friday, and they show that even Tucker Carlson was caught up in the fray.
In the first email, we see Robert Flaherty, the Deputy Director of Digital Strategies for the White House, pressuring Facebook to censor Tucker Carlson. Here’s the comment that Carlson made on his show on April 13th, 2021, the day prior to Flaherty’s message.
If the vaccine is effective, there is no reason for people who’ve received a vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact. So maybe it doesn’t work, and they’re simply not telling you that. Well, you’d hate to think that, especially if you’ve gotten two shots. But what’s the other potential explanation? We can’t think of one.
At the time, that commentary set off a flurry of “fact-checks,” but in retrospect, Carlson was more right than he was wrong. The administration was far overplaying the efficacy of the vaccines, including their ability to stop the spread of the virus. Given the message being put out there that the vaccines were essentially full-proof, it was right to question their truthfulness on the matter. In fact, the White House recently proclaimed again that the vaccines can prevent “every COVID death in America.” That’s clearly a false representation of the available data.
Regardless, when dealing with free speech, the accuracy of a claim is irrelevant. The government is not supposed to use private companies as proxies to quash the First Amendment rights of Americans. That is supposed to be illegal. Yet, that’s absolutely what Flaherty was doing, and based on the second email shown in Landry’s post, Facebook was more than willing to play along.
Things didn’t stop with Carlson, though. Landry provided another example of the White House providing specific examples of materials that need to be censored due to “vaccine hesitancy.”
What’s even more incredible is that those headlines turned out to be true. Many European countries have stopped the vaccination of children from COVID-19 specifically because studies show the risks from the vaccine outweigh the risks from the virus itself.
So the White House was telling Facebook to censor content that was arguably true (including from major individuals like Tucker Carlson), almost certainly for political reasons, and the company was happy to oblige. Further, this was happening while Democrat officials were simultaneously making public threats against Facebook about the spread of “misinformation.” In other words, there was coercion involved in this, and if that doesn’t add up to a violation of the First Amendment, then it no longer has any meaning.