Commentary

Regular readers will recall my frequent blog posts in which I insisted that individuals responsible for wrongdoing leading up to the 2020 election be identified and held accountable, and that I support the new House Republican majority effort to identify them.

I predicted that Democrats, fully aware that the FBI colluded with Twitter and other social media sources just before the election to suppress the story of Joe Biden’s family corruption, would criticize the Republican effort.  I wasn’t wrong.

The left couldn’t have picked a better antagonist than Maryland’s leftist Rep. Jamie Raskin, the sniveling member behind the impeachments of President Trump and the effort to refer criminal charges against Trump for the January 6, breaching of the Capitol.

Raskin accused the Republicans “of trying to whip up a scandal involving a private company rather than focusing on issues that matter to voters,” as if we citizens weren’t concerned with shady political dealings.

“The majority,” he said, “has called a hearing to revisit a two-year-old story about a private editorial decision by Twitter not to allow links to a single New York Post article,” that in his mind, “had no discernible influence on anyone or anything.”

Further, he sought to cut off the hearings, far from identifying accountability, with this ridiculous statement:

“The professional conspiracy theorists heckling and haranguing this private company have already gotten their precious apology.  What more do they want?  And why does the United States Congress have to be involved in this nonsense?  

Of course, the answers to those questions are obvious.

Democrat squad leader, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, used her position on the House Oversight Committee to press the left’s talking point, that “we could be talking about prescription drugs, abortion rights, civil rights, voting rights, but instead we’re talking about Hunter Biden’s half fake laptop story,” referring to it as “an embarrassment.”  That’s something she knows all about.

Of course, Jim Baker, who left the FBI as general counsel to join Twitter in a similar capacity, claimed not to be aware of any “unlawful collusion, or direction from, any government agency or pollical campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation, while asserting no wrongdoing on his part.

Timely Proof

In addition to the hearings, the GOP is benefiting from Elon Musk’s opening of the Twitter files to Matt Tiabbi and Bari Weiss, who have revealed evidence of FBI collusion and the social media’s effort to suppress news of the Biden family corruption in the weeks preceding the 2020 election.

In an outright manner to stifle free speech, agents met regularly with individuals in the social media outlets to control what was allowed to pass muster. 

That effort cast new light on those 51 former intelligence officers who, just days before the election, signed a letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop material had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

It was a perfect set up for candidate Biden, who didn’t hesitate to refer to their letter during one of the debates.

A number of the signees – Brennan, Clapper and Hayden – went on to be contributors at MSNBC, and to my knowledge, not one of the them has apologized for using their former positions to suppress knowledge of the Hunter Biden laptop by misrepresenting the laptop material.

A True Blockbuster

The media needs to be held accountable, too.

On February 4, 2023, the Columbia Journalism Review stunned many with its publishing of Jeff Gerth’s “The Press Versus the President,” described as a 24,000-word autopsy of the press during the Trump years. 

During the Trump era, we saw how the Fourth Estate attacked him from the outset.  With Gerth’s review, it will be difficult for members of the press to avoid accountability. 

As a subscriber to Taibbi’s TK News, I learned about Gerth, the investigative reporter who interviewed dozens of people – editors, reporters, and Trump himself to examine in granular detail the media’s coverage of Trump and Russia over a nearly two-year period.

“There’s a ton of grunt work involved.  Jeff Gerth is a worker.  He’s the prototype for the kind of reporter who makes a million phone calls and checks, checks, checks.”

I’m impressed.

Taibbi reported that the legacy press is still mostly trying to ignore the CJR article, suggesting that if Gerth’s compilation “doesn’t get picked up by MSM at all, it’s proof they will never reform.”

“To be fair,” Taibbi writes, “dealing with its implications would require a cleanup/retraction process on a scale the press has probably never seen.  Still, it has to be done.”

Gerth reminds readers that the U.S. media has lowest credibility – 26 percent – and notes a study that 83 percent of Americans saw “fake news” as a problem.

You have probably heard about the algorithms practiced by social media to help us determine what’s true, what isn’t, what is potentially dangerous, what isn’t, and so forth. 

For those who choose to use social media – I’m not one of them – I believe you should have the freedom to determine the truth. 

You don’t need big brother – Twitter, Facebook, or any other source, including the government – telling us what to believe.

Earlier this week, coincidentally, Fox News’ Brit Hume recalled this quote by Thomas Jefferson, that seems to apply to the freedom of thought and expression:

“We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, not to tolerate error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

May God continue to bless the United States of America.