Senate Democrats once again showed that they only care about censorship when it suits them. During an Oct. 8 hearing, they played the victim and actually tried to justify the handiwork of the Biden administration's censorship cartel, which colluded with Big Tech.
Last Wednesday, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee convened a hearing titled “Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech Into Silencing Americans.” While Republicans used the hearing to platform testimony and discussion about joint Big Tech-government censorship, several Democratic Senators took turns downplaying or outright denying the Biden administration’s utter disregard for the First Amendment.
This comes after Google and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg each admitted recently to caving to pressure to censor from the Biden administration, in addition to Elon Musk previously revealing how Twitter (now X) similarly collaborated with censorship demands. MRC has previously reported on how the Biden administration led 57 distinct initiatives to censor rival political speech, using a variety of techniques from direct pressure to grants.
Continuing a theme started by his Democrat colleagues, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) devoted his speaking time to playing up the purported threat President Donald Trump poses to free speech, while claiming Republicans were wasting time over a “false” narrative:
"We've heard a lot today about the Biden administration supposedly censoring conservatives by talking to social media companies about misinformation. Republicans have wasted an enormous amount of time and resources over the past few years attempting to prove this theory correct, only for it to be repeatedly proven false."
Following Markey’s malarkey, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) audaciously claimed that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was not used as a tool for censorship:
"And I'll say that I simply don't agree that CISA, the agency, has worked in a coordinated effort to censor American speech. And the Supreme Court has basically agreed with that finding."
Despite mountains of evidence, from internal documentation handed over to the House Judiciary Committee, or recent disclosures made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Democrats are still claiming that there is no evidence of any government entity (CISA included) directing censorship. In a bid to distract from previous censorship, Peters continued his thorough denial by calling it “backward-looking” and attempted to pivot to apparent censorship conducted by the Trump administration:
"So, it's concerning to me that the committee would choose to focus on a backward-looking claim at a time when today, currently, we're seeing unprecedented efforts to weld government power as a tool to suppress free speech and stifle legitimate criticism and legitimate political discourse."
Similarly, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) did her best earlier in the hearing to take attention away from the egregious censorship regime the Biden administration perpetrated, calling it “old political scores.” She specifically claimed:
"Rather than providing us with a forum that will evaluate truly harmful government censorship — this has become increasingly commonplace under the Trump administration — we're undertaking an effort to settle old political scores against an administration that is no longer in power."
Even earlier, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) defended COVID-era censorship in the name of health, in the ultimate twist of irony:
"I will just note that during this debate, this committee and this body passed a public health emergency language related to deceptive practice language. It was unlawful to engage in deceptive practices related to the treatment, cure, prevention, mitigation, or diagnosis related to COVID. Why did we do that? Why did we give that extra power? Because there were a lot of crazy things online like take bleach or what have you, and we wanted to make sure that we were protecting consumers against deceptive practices..."
As a matter of fact, what was considered deceptive during COVID included legitimate discussion about vaccine side effects. For example, it led to the Biden White House demanding Twitter censor now-HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for discussing Hank Aaron’s death.
It’s clear that no matter the evidence and no matter the public opinion, Democrats will continue to carry water for their own debunked and disproven theories of censorship. Protecting the public from “misinformation” and “disinformation” is important, but not when Democrats perpetrate them.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
