Political Fiction vs. Reality: Twitter’s Alleged Help For Dems vs. Rupert Murdoch’s Real Help For Trump

I know, I know, there are no room for facts in the modern GOP, just feelings. But, still, it’s kind of remarkable just how much they seem committed to the bit that Twitter was actively trying to suppress Republicans to help Joe Biden. There remains zero proof of this. Zero. Over the course of the various “Twitter Files” all we’ve seen is Twitter literally pushing back on anything that suggests political bias, and instead trying to review things based on whether or not they legitimately broke the rules.

But, still, Republicans are insisting that Twitter unfairly benefited Democrats, and they already held a ridiculous hearing on it (with more on the way!) that highlighted (repeatedly) that Twitter did not, in fact, try to help Democrats, but rather that they bent over backwards to give Republicans extra chances after they broke the rules, even when the Trump White House demanded Twitter block his critics.

During that hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin highlighted something I’ve been saying for a while: that if Democrats had held the same kind of hearing regarding Fox News and its editorial choices, many people (and not just Republicans) would rightly be up in arms about the 1st Amendment implications of demanding a media company explain its editorial choices.

Separately (and this will become important in a moment), in 2021, the Federal Election Commission conducted an investigation to see if Twitter’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story represented an illegal “in-kind contribution” to the Biden campaign. The FEC concluded that here was no evidence, and specifically that there was no evidence of Twitter working with the Biden campaign:

As discussed below, Twitter has credibly explained that it acted with a commercial motivation in response to the New York Post articles rather than with an electoral purpose. With respect to its actions concerning Trump’s tweets, there is no evidence that Twitter coordinated its actions with the Biden Committee, and as such, the actions did not constitute contributions. Finally, the remaining allegations that Twitter limited the visibility of Republican users, suppressed distribution of an interview, and limited coverage of election lawsuits are vague, speculative, and unsupported by the available information. Therefore, the Commission finds no reason to believe that Twitter violated 52 U.S.C. § 30118(a) and 11 C.F.R. § 114.2(b) by making prohibited in-kind corporate contributions; finds no reason to believe that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, and Brandon Borrman, Twitter’s Vice President, Global Communications, violated 52 U.S.C. § 30118(a) and 11 C.F.R. § 114.2(e) by consenting to prohibited corporate contributions; and finds no reason to believe that the Biden Committee knowingly accepted or received and failed to report such contributions in violation of 52 U.S.C. §§ 30104(b)(3)(A), 30118(a) and 11 C.F.R. §§ 104.3(a), 114.2(d).

I bet you can guess where this is going, right?

Last week in the ongoing lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, among many other things that were in Dominion’s latest filing was this fascinating tidbit.

During Trump’s campaign, Rupert provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy. Ex.600, R.Murdoch 210:6-9; 213:17-20; Ex.603 (providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public)

In other words, for all the talk of Twitter supposedly helping the Biden campaign, Fox News, via the chairman of its parent company, Rupert Murdoch, was literally taking proprietary information regarding the Biden campaign, which it only obtained because of its position as a news channel on which the campaign was advertising, and feeding it directly to Trump’s campaign via one of Trump’s most trusted advisors.

It sure looks like Fox actually was potentially engaged in providing an illegal in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign. I’m assuming, though, that the House Judiciary Committee won’t be hosting a long series of day-long hearings about this?

This pattern is getting frustrating. Each and every time we see Republicans making nonsense, unsubstantiated claims about what companies are doing, it turns out it’s because it’s exactly what the GOP itself is doing. Each accusation is more of a confession, both about what levels they’ll stoop to, but also the inability to comprehend that the other side isn’t so lacking in ethics, and wouldn’t stoop to the same level.