Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) ripped into former Twitter executives for censoring her personal account for nearly a year during a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday.
Greene began her allotted five minutes of questioning by making it clear the witnesses would not say anything while she aired her grievances with Twitter, telling them, “You can consider your speech canceled during my time because you canceled mine.”
The hearing was the third held by the Republican-led Oversight Committee and titled “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG): “You permanently banned my personal Twitter account and it was my campaign account, too…You abused the power of a large corporation, big tech, to censor Americans…I’m so glad you’ve lost your jobs. Thank God @elonmusk bought Twitter.” pic.twitter.com/EoyjJb29Qe
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 8, 2023
“You abused the power of a large corporation, Big Tech, to censor Americans,” she told the panel. “Guess what? I’m so glad that you’re censored now, and I’m so glad you’ve lost your jobs. Thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter.”
The witnesses included former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy Legal Counsel James Baker, and former Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth. Roth’s role in tamping down the Hunter Biden laptop story became clear when new Twitter CEO Elon Musk released thousands of internal communications. Greene pointed her attack at Roth for failing to rid Twitter of child pornography.
“It’s amazing to me, Mr. Roth, as the head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, your ability, or say inability, to remove child porn. Here’s something that disgusts me about you. In your doctoral dissertation titled ‘Gay Data,’ you argued that minors should have access to Grindr — an adult male gay hookup app. Minors? Really?” she said, adding, “You banned my personal Twitter account, but you allowed child porn all over Twitter.”
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Roth has said that part of his thesis was taken out of context, and Musk’s tweet implying he condoned sexualizing children resulted in a “wave of homophobic and antisemitic attacks” against him. Greene’s personal Twitter account was permanently banned in 2022 for promoting alleged COVID-19 disinformation and reinstated in November after Musk bought the platform.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), at the hearing, apologized to Roth for Greene’s “homophobic rant,” which he condemned as “shameful.”
Scrutinizing the relationship between Big Tech and government actors is one of the top priorities of the new Republican House majority and was spurred by Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
