By Matt Orfalea
Kamala Harris’s call to ban Donald Trump from Twitter initiated a period of unprecedented social media censorship against the American President and the American people.
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During her previous failed run for President, Harris promised her government “will hold you accountable” for “misinformation”, threatening tech companies with consequences if they don’t “police” their platforms for “hate” and “misinformation”.
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The next month after then-Senator Harris threatened the tech companies, Twitter announced it would start labeling tweets with “additional context and clarity”. (Trump’s tweets would later become the first labeled in this way as “Manipulated media”.)
But promises of added context and algorithmic suppression weren’t enough for Harris. On 9/30/19, Harris told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Donald Trump’s Twitter account “should be suspended”. Because, she said, “there is evidence to suggest he is irresponsible with his words”.
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Harris’s tyrannical call to remove her political opponent from Twitter raised even the eyebrows of CNN’s most reliable establishment mockingbird, Brian Stelter, who reported that contrary to Harris’s suggestions, Trump’s tweets had not violated Twitter’s policies.
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On Oct. 1, 2019, Harris wrote a letter pressuring Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to ban Trump from the platform. In addition to claiming Trump’s tweets were “targeted harassment” and “glorification of violence”/7, Harris argued Trump’s voice should be silenced because his Tweets were “an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice”.
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Harris’s letter forwarded false information, stating that “Alex Jones was permanently banned from the platform in 2018 for spreading disinformation”.
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None of Jones’ Twitter violations involved disinformation. Jones was banned for comparing a CNN reporter to “a rat”, not “spreading disinformation” as Harris falsely stated.
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CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Harris how banning Trump wouldn’t be a violation of free speech. Harris repeated her false argument that Trump “clearly violated the terms of use”. But he hadn’t, as Twitter refused to take action on any of the tweets cited in Harris’s letter to Twitter.
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Harris kept the pressure on Twitter, in the Ohio Democratic Party primary debate, attacking Sen. Elizabeth Warren for not joining her call to censor the sitting President of the United States from Twitter.
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Harris continued her call to moderate Trump into permanent silence but refused to be moderated herself. When a debate moderator tried to let another Democrat speak, she yelled, “I’m not finished! I’m not finished! I’m not finished!” and continued unabated. See this video.
After the debate, Harris told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that Trump’s words were responsible for a mass shooting in El Paso. The President of the United States having free speech, she said, “is like a two-year-old having a machine gun.” See this video.
Harris said it’s too dangerous to let the President speak “unfiltered, direct to the American public” because “he is not responsible enough to self-regulate…he is not responsible enough to edit what he says,” implying the POTUS needs to be edited by some higher authority. See this video.
Later in the evening, Harris told CNN’s Tapper that free speech online “has to stop”.
HARRIS: “These social media sites are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.” /17 See this video.
She continued to claim, without evidence, that Trump’s criticism of a whistleblower was a “crime”—”You are not free to threaten the life of a witness! That is a crime!”
“But how did he threaten the life of a witness?”, asked Tapper.
“The way that he has talked,” Harris said. See this video.
When asked why—of all issues—she discussed a censorship agenda at the debate, Harris replied, “Because it came up,” laughing and repeating, “Because it came up.” But it was Harris who brought it up months earlier, two weeks prior with her letter, and that night in the debate. See this video.
For the 2nd time, Harris’s pressure nudged Twitter to respond, reiterating its plan to add “context” to tweets. “This is largely new ground”, Twitter wrote the same day as the debate. “The actions we take and policies we develop will set a precedent around online speech.”
Harris’ pressure seems to have directly led to Twitter’s decision to label tweets. According to WaPo, after Twitter execs decided to label tweets, it took several months to build the code. Harris’s pro-censorship campaign would have a huge impact on American politics.
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Several months later, in the middle of the 2020 election, Twitter began labeling Trump’s tweets, “manipulative”, first labeling Trump’s retweet of a Joe Biden clip, and then labeling Trump’s tweet of a harmless CNN parody, clearly attributed to satirist Carpe Donktum.
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Trump’s claims of mail-in ballot fraud were “fact-checked”, labeled, and algorithmically suppressed, while Harris’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud from Russian interference were not.
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A year after Harris first petitioned Twitter to ban Trump, he was removed for “glorification of violence” that he explicitly condemned. “No violence!”, “Stay peaceful!”, he tweeted, after telling January 6th protesters to “Peacefully” make their voices heard.”
Twitter—and virtually every other major tech platform—Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch—banned Trump for “glorification of violence” in tweets that no reasonable person would consider “glorification of violence”. (Read Twitter’s ruling and see for yourself.)
The worldwide censorship of their political opponent wasn’t enough for Biden/Harris. Their administration pushed Big Tech to censor more, including verifiably true information that conflicted with Biden/Harris administration policy.
This still was not enough for Biden/Harris. They pushed Facebook to censor “more”. David Zweig’s #TwitterFiles report shows Biden/Harris also pressured Twitter in a “very angry in nature” to censor “more”. And now it appears Harris seeks to terminate Elon Musk’s Twitter/X altogether.
Harris is now being advised by the founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a shady organization, whose secret agenda according to newly leaked documents is to, not just kill the Trump account revived by Musk but to “Kill Musk’s Twitter” entirely.
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