When part three of the scandalous Twitter Files came out, it was entirely devoted to the internal debate which went on whether to ban President Trump from the platform. It all came down to “context.” The context being the Make America Great Again president and his unbridled nationalism was incredibly dangerous to the Deep State. He simply had to be silenced.
Trump banned by ‘context’
Former Twitter honchos “decided to ban then-President Donald Trump from their social media platform,” over what one executive called “the ‘context‘ of actions by him and his supporters.”
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi posted redacted messages in a series of tweets, on Friday, December 9. The “internal debate” is now out for public inspection.
The whole problem they had with censoring a sitting president was that he didn’t do anything to violate Twitter rules. They decided to do it anyway, and think up a good reason later.
1. TWITTER FILES, PART 4
The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7
As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022
According to one message, “we currently analyze tweets and consider them at a tweet-by-tweet basis which does not appropriately take into account the context surrounding.” That was the beginning of yet another Trump witch hunt.
The reasoning used was “you can use the yelling fire into a crowded theater example.” That is a case where context matters.
“The narrative that Trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly last 4+ years must be taken into account.” He was banned, not for what he said on Twitter but what his supporters said elsewhere.
Standards ‘eroded’
As Taibbi points out, “the messages showed how Twitter’s internal standards eroded during the months leading up to January 6, with high-ranking executives violating their own policies while interacting with various federal agencies.” The FBI and Biden campaigns were on speed dial. As Donald Trump was soon to learn, “before J6, Twitter was a unique mix of automated, rules-based enforcement, and more subjective moderation by senior executives.”
“As the election approached, senior executives — perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed — increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of ‘vios‘ [violations] as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.”
The day before, fellow journalist Bari Weiss disclosed that Twitter “used secret tools to ‘shadow ban‘ certain users and suppress their posts on the platform.” By the time Musk seized control of Twitter, such high profile celebrities of the Clinton cabal were on the payroll as James Baker and Leslie Podesta, John Podesta’s niece.
63. A few last notes about January 6th. Roth at one point looked and found Trump had a slew of duplicate bot applications: pic.twitter.com/7dvgQS3Tss
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 10, 2022
She was a bigwheel in the Trust and Safety team while Baker managed to get a peek at the first set of Twitter Files before they went live. The former Trump hating lawyer representing the FBI in court was “Deputy House Counsel” at Twitter but nobody, not even Musk, knew that.
Censoring President Donald Trump and banning him for life was just another day at the shop for the Twitter censorship team. While giving child pornography a free pass, they put Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on a “Trends Blacklist” for questioning COVID-19 lockdowns.
Conservative personality Dan Bongino was on a “Search Blacklist,” while Charlie Kirk with Turning Point USA got a “Do Not Amplify” designation. These are only 3 high profile examples from the thousands of affected accounts. All seemingly conservative. Censored, banned and blocked for speaking their mind.