White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany highlighted on Thursday actions that Twitter has taken against the Trump administration that the administration says proves that the social media company is applying political bias in its content moderation decisions.
The remarks from McEnany come as President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on Thursday that took action against social media companies through a variety of means including seeking to strip them of the legal and liability protections that they receive under Section 230, a law that protects tech giants from being liable for content that users post on their platforms.
“If we were to judge the bias of Twitter and its top employees by their own words, the case would be an easy one to make,” McEnany said. “Twitter’s head of site integrity has tweeted that there are, quote, ‘actual Nazis’ in the White House, and no fact-check label was ever applied to this absolutely outrageous, offensive, and false claim made against the White House and its employees.”
“But let’s judge Twitter based on their actions, not based on the words of its top employees. And its actions are no better,” McEnany continued. “President Trump recently received a so-called ‘fact check’ label for a tweet. It was a false fact check, an inaccurate fact check, but nevertheless, Twitter moved forward with it.”
“Dan Scavino, the Deputy Chief of Staff here, was the first user in the history of Twitter to receive a so-called, quote, ‘manipulated media’ label for posting a video that played a verbatim clip,” McEnany continued. “It is no coincidence that these two unbelievable interventions by Twitter were targeted against the President of the United States and one of the President’s top advisors. This is bias in action.”
McEnany noted that while Twitter is quick to take action against the Trump administration, they have been reluctant and slow to respond to false claims from the Chinese Communist Party.
WATCH:
.@PressSec Slams Twitter for their repeated bias against Conservatives including allowing Verified users to incite violence against the Covington Catholic students and only giving them a slap on the wrist. pic.twitter.com/Aswn8FBmzr
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) May 28, 2020
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TRANSCRIPT:
I wanted to address what has been going on on Twitter and with social media. I believe it is time to, quote, “get the facts” about Twitter and other social media platforms targeting their bias against President Trump and conservatives online.
If we were to judge the bias of Twitter and its top employees by their own words, the case would be an easy one to make. Twitter’s head of site integrity has tweeted that there are, quote, “actual Nazis” in the White House, and no fact-check label was ever applied to this absolutely outrageous, offensive, and false claim made against the White House and its employees.
But let’s judge Twitter based on their actions, not based on the words of its top employees. And its actions are no better. President Trump recently received a so-called “fact check” label for a tweet. It was a false fact check, an inaccurate fact check, but nevertheless, Twitter moved forward with it.
Dan Scavino, the Deputy Chief of Staff here, was the first user in the history of Twitter to receive a so-called, quote, “manipulated media” label for posting a video that played a verbatim clip. It is no coincidence that these two unbelievable interventions by Twitter were targeted against the President of the United States and one of the President’s top advisors. This is bias in action.
And while big tech is quick to censor the President, quick to censor some of his top employees, they — they are very reluctant, it seems, to label some of the actions by Chinese officials, some of the misinformation that has been spread by China. For example, to move off of Twitter and move to Google, they created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party, which blacklisted searches for human rights and allowed for easy surveillance.
Facebook and Twitter have both taken paid advertising that spread disinformation about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities. And Twitter has allowed Chinese officials to use its platforms to spread misinformation about the coronavirus, undermine the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and more.
And then, back in March, a Chinese official began spreading a conspiracy theory on Twitter — an egregious one — that our U.S. military was responsible for the spread of the coronavirus. And that tweet, that disinformation, it took all the way until today, when we raised concerns about it, to get a fact check.
So they appear to be very hastily eager to censor President Trump and some of his employees but a little reluctant when it comes to China. It’s a bit befuddling.
But no one believes in the First Amendment more than the President. The President will take action to ensure that big tech does not stifle free speech and that the rights of all Americans to speak, tweet, and post are protected.
And finally, I just want to note one other action of Twitter that I learned just before walking out here: that, on the Mueller report, their anti-Trump headlines were anti-Trump by a ratio of 76 to 1. That’s extraordinary. And it’s not just bias aimed at President Trump and his employees, it’s also aimed at everyday Americans. It’s aimed at the movie “Unplanned,” as Twitter suspended their account and then came up with an excuse in the aftermath.
And then, just another example that liberals are allowed to incite violence against the Covington kids who were, in the end, proven right and their video was taken out of context, and yet these individuals were led — were allowed by Twitter to incite violence. It’s very disturbing to see.