Evil Conspiracy Violated James Woods' Right To Put Hunter Biden's Dick On Twitter
Do we even HAVE free speech in this country?
For the past couple years, there has been a certain contingent of people who have really, truly believed in their heart of hearts that the Hunter Biden laptop story was the ultimate gotcha — the ultimate proof of an unfair conspiracy between Democratic elites and big tech to secure the election for Joe Biden by "censoring" the New York Post's story on Twitter and Facebook just because it had not yet been confirmed to be true.
The whole drama was ridiculous to begin with. At the time made absolute sense to hold off on a story like that for a variety of reasons — to this day, there are questions about the reliability of the laptop's chain of custody, whether people who were not Hunter Biden could have slipped things in there, etc. etc. That being said, it has been thoroughly searched and nothing on it was found to implicate Joe Biden in anything illegal or untoward. The story was supposed to be that Hunter Biden "leveraged" his father's name to earn more money at his job and promised meetings with him to his Burisma business partners, but there's no evidence that Joe Biden actually ever did meet with them. The most anyone ever even alleged was that he briefly stopped by a dinner that was possibly also attended by Burisma advisor Vadym Pozharsky, though no one remembers Pozharsky being there.
The big, controversial things on the laptop that were provably true were largely nude pictures of Hunter Biden smoking crack — which he had already admitted to doing. I don't personally know why anyone would have a laptop full of pictures of themselves smoking crack in the nude, but to each their own.
On Friday night, after Elon Musk gave him access to all of the internal emails on the subject, former journalist Matt Taibbi did a whole long, drawn out, dramatic Twitter thread revealing what went down behind the scenes at Twitter on the day the Hunter Biden laptop story came out. He called it ... THE TWITTER FILES.
As hard as Taibbi worked to present it as a real bombshell with all attendant dramatic flair, it just didn't reveal anything particularly shocking or compelling. His new right-wing acolytes also tried to act as aghast as possible, in hopes that other people would lazily just go along with them, but even they couldn't come up with much beyond claiming that things that did not violate the First Amendment violated the First Amendment.
It was less than a nothingburger. The big "reveal" was literally just that people from the Biden campaign (which was not, at the time, "the government") and the DNC requested that several tweets containing pictures of Hunter Biden's dick be taken down, and Twitter complied.
“9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party: ”
— Matt Taibbi (@Matt Taibbi) 1670024072
Now, sure — they went through direct channels, but pretty much anyone can request that nude pictures of them or their friends or loved ones posted without their consent be taken down. There's a whole button for it and everything!
One of those tweets belonged to James Woods, who subsequently called in to Tucker Carlson to announce that he would be suing the DNC for violating his right to free speech, which is not a thing the DNC can do because they are not the government.
“james woods has been ranting like this for 13 minutes”
— Kat Abu (@Kat Abu) 1670032224
There is not, however, a constitutional right to revenge porn, which is what this is. It is in fact illegal in almost every state, including Rhode Island where Woods often lives. Woods was not posting proof that Joe Biden did anything illegal, he posted a picture of a naked Hunter Biden smoking crack. Another person whose tweet was censored posted nude pictures of Hunter Biden and a woman, neither of whom consented to having those pictures published. Neither of the pictures could be considered especially newsworthy given that Hunter Biden's drug problem was already known and admitted to.
While Taibbi notes that both the Trump White House (the government) and the Biden campaign (not the government) made moderation requests that were honored. he claims without evidence that because Twitter employees as a whole leaned Democratic, that Democrats had more "channels" open to them to complain.
“11. This system wasn't balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. https: //t.co/sa1uVRNhuH”
— Matt Taibbi (@Matt Taibbi) 1670024072
He then claims that this is what led to what went down with the Post's story, again without any actual proof. The emails he published show people in the company having a healthy debate about what the site should do with regards to the story, based on the information they had available to them at the time and whether or not it violated their policy on hacked materials.
To be clear, Jack Dorsey and others at Twitter have said for years in the media that they think they went overboard in this instance. In light of that, nothing in Taibbi's THE TWITTER FILES really qualifies as a huge bombshell. It wasn't some grand conspiracy, it was literally just people trying to figure out the best course of action and perhaps overcorrecting to some degree. No one in any of these revealed emails was saying "Muahahahaha! We will censor this one particular story in order to help Joe Biden become president! And then we shall take over the world!" That's very clearly not what was happening. Indeed, the story conservatives concocted about Big Tech censorship and a coverup was probably 85,000 times worse for Biden than anything in his kid's laptop.
Importantly, these emails also do not show the Biden campaign or the DNC asking Twitter to censor the article. The complaints were limited tweets featuring pictures of Hunter's dick — which, again, seems pretty fair.
This still really only makes sense as a scandal when you understand that what the Right wants is for the things they believe with no actual proof to be considered just as valid as things that are factually, provably true. This is the underlying theme in at least 20 percent of the things they claim are "censorship scandals." They don't actually care about "censorship," as evidenced by how excited they have been to shut down libraries for loaning books they don't like, they care that they get to say that 2+2=5 and that everyone agrees with them and tells them they are wonderful and very good at math.
Both Musk and Taibbi say more is coming, and sure — if they come up with proof that someone from the United States government marched over to Twitter headquarters and demanded that they censor the New York Post story, I will happily walk all of this back. But it does not seem likely.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .
Wonkette is independent and fully funded by readers like you. Click below to tip us!
I had no idea. I guess Taibbi's fall into faux journalism makes sense now.
I have a college-educated friend who believes all the Hunter Biden laptop story is true, despite the obvious and enormous gaping holes in the RWNJ version of what happened.