With the 177th U.S. Congress underway, the first week of committee hearings look more like a Saturday Night Live skit, rather than GOP Congressmen/women being paid $175,000.00 a year on behalf of the American people.
First there were the “Twitter File” hearings brought to the American people by the GOP lead Congressional Oversight and Accountability Committee.
The MAGA GOP hoped to show that the Biden campaign before the 2020 Presidential election had the FBI stop Twitter from publishing an article written by the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 General Election
MAGA GOP came out looking foolish.
What these hearings did show was the overwhelming hypocrisy and idiocy that is not only rampant in the GOP these days but is rather their base branding.
The GOP Congresswoman from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, used her time berating former Twitter executives instead of asking questions of the former Twitter executives.
Greene told the executives they were “cancelled” stating they were unable to speak, akin to her personal Twitter account being disabled due to her Covid-19 misinformation, robbing Greene of her voice, according to the Congresswoman.
Greene showed the American people that she is much more interested in using her newly acquired Congressional committee seated powers to further her own personal agenda, rather than work for the American people.
Speaking of personal agends, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) also used her committee time to yell and throw a temper tantrum like a ten-year-old that isn’t getting their way.
Boebert was up in arms over her Twitter account being “shadow banned” by Twitter due to violation of Twitter rules.
Boebert yelled at Twitter executives “who do you think you are?” as if they were one of her children, much like her fellow GOP Congresswoman Greene.
Boebert seemed to be using this televised committee hearing as a personal soap box to grandstand on and make it very clear she was there to hash out personal grievances she held with Twitter, which is not the point of holding Congressional committee hearings.
It really came off that it was the first time either Greene or Boebert had ever sat down and had to do any real work in Congress that benefited the American people. Neither woman could act like a professional Congresswoman that was elected to that position by their constituents to work for them. It is scary that those two women sit on committees.
Twitter executives did admit an error occurred with the blocking of the Hunter Biden New York Post article; an article that proved to be erroneous with the facts. Twitter then did publish the Post’s Hunter Biden article 24 hours later. The GOP led committee did all it could to force the narrative of the hearings that those 24 hours of the Post article, being banned on only Twitter, somehow swayed the outcome of the 2020 General Presidential Election in favor of Joe Biden.
The GOP did not foresee the spotlighting of Twitter during these hearings as a launching point for the minority Democrats to point out several flaws in their arguments. Democrats proved that if any Federal government agency actively attempted to censor the American people on Twitter, it was the Trump administration that proved to be guilty of said censorship through these hearings.
Freshman Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-Florida) opened the flood gates with his questioning of Twitter executives asking about a particular 2019 tweet from model Chrissy Teigen, wife of musician John Legend, where Teigen referred to then President Trump as a “p—y a— b—tch.”
The Twitter executives testified under oath that the Trump White House internally approached Twitter to remove Teigen’s tweet because the former president found it to be a derogatory remark towards him.
Twitter executives went on to testify that the Biden Administration did not ask for any preferential treatment from Twitter.
Twitter executives then went on testify that an entire new database had to be established to cater to all requests that would come from the MAGA Republicans concerning Tweets that wanted removed.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) pointed out how Twitter caters to the political Right wing in terms of changing its policies when it comes to derogatory/inflammatory tweets that come from political figures.
Ocasio-Cortez through her questioning of Twitter executives about former President Trump’s tweets about how certain Congresswomen, namely of The Squad, came from countries “who’s governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world,”and insinuated that said Congresswomen should go back to “those countries where they came from.”
At the time using language such as “go back to your country” was in direct violation of Twitter’s rules.
Twitter then changed its policy as a direct result of the 2019 Trump tweets to not include “go back to where you came from” or “go back to your country” as a violation catering to the racist rhetoric of the far Right.
Through effective, intelligent, and informed questions Democratic Congressmen/women taught a masterclass, to the likes of MAGA GOP extremists, on how proper behavior and decorum should be conducted during a Congressional Oversight Committee Hearing.
The Democrats were able to flip the script on the MAGA Republicans through rational, thoughtful, fact-based questions that exposed the truth, and at the same time exposed the fact that they only care about their own agendas and that facts only matter when it suits them.
The totality of these hearings was over a five-day period that the American people will have to pay for.
Not once throughout the five days of hearings and testimony given by Twitter executives did the far Right ever come close to making any substantial point in proving any part of the Biden Administration or 2020 Presidential Campaign weaponized its influence to censor any part of Twitter.
Taxpayer money well spent.
