CONSPIRACY JUDGE (CARTOON, COLUMN AND VIDEO)
When I go to my Twitter home page, the first people who show up are Donald Trump Jr, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Jim Gym Jordan, and an assortment of other Trump goons. What’s odd about this is that I don’t follow any of those accounts. But Elon, who’s also one of those who shows up in my feed despite the fact I don’t follow him either, is working to make Twitter a right-wing goon paradise. He has prioritized crackpot accounts so that I see them before I can even see accounts I actually follow. And since all these accounts belong to Trump goons, they’re always full of lies that are easy to debunk.
Republicans believe lying on a social media platform is a constitutional right. They believe anyone challenging their lies is attacking their free speech. Anytime a Republican cries that a post was removed, the post contained false information. But nobody has a right to post anything on a social media platform. The Constitution doesn’t grant that. What grants you the power to post on social media are the owners of the specific platforms, not the Constitution. If I, a small-time kinda obscure political cartoonist who’s a college dropout can understand that, then why can’t a federal judge?
A Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana ruled on Tuesday that the Biden administration could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
Why can’t they? What is this ruling based on? It’s not based on anything in the Constitution because nobody has a right to free speech on a social media platform. Isn’t it a violation of the Biden administration’s free speech by telling them who they can’t talk to and what they can’t talk about?
Why can’t government agencies contact Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc, and point out disinformation? The Trump administration did it, as in, they contacted Twitter about content. They did it a lot, though it was never about misinformation unless it was them wanting more of it. Contacting a social media platform about lies and conspiracy theories on the coronavirus and Hunter Biden isn’t suppressing free speech. When a social media outlet is contacted by the FBI, for example, the social media outlet can say no about removing any content.
And when the FBI did contact Twitter during the 2020, election, they were not specific. They said just to be wary of Russian disinformation. What’s wrong with that?
The Judge, Terry Doughty, said, “If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States history. The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.” Really? That’s hyperbolic and a bunch of bullshit. Calling out lies is NOT attacking free speech. Did I just attack Judge Doughty’s free speech?
The judge said, “if true” about the plaintiffs’ allegations. I’m sorry, what? The judge made a ruling on something that wasn’t proven as true? This is almost as bad as the Supreme Court ruling that a business can discriminate against LGBTQ people when there wasn’t even an incident to base it on.
When Republicans accuse judges of legislating from the bench, this is it. This is legislating from the bench. These are judges making laws, not ruling on them.
And the judge called this, “if true,” “the most massive attack on free speech in United States history.” No, that would be Ron DeSantis’ so-called war on woke, as he’s trying to outlaw thought in Florida.
The plaintiffs are attorneys general for Louisiana, Jeff Landry, and Missouri, Andrew Bailey. Guess which political party they’re members of. Some of the documents Elon released that were supposed to prove collusion between the government and Twitter (before he purchased it), yet didn’t prove collusion, were included in the plaintiffs’ arguments. This ruling is bullshit because it agrees with a bullshit argument.
Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said, “It can’t be that the government violates the First Amendment simply by engaging with the platforms about their content-moderation decisions and policies. If that’s what the court is saying here, it’s a pretty radical proposition that isn’t supported by the case law.”
Not only is the ruling NOT supported by case law, it’s not even supported by any evidence provided by the plaintiffs. There are no examples of the government having social media posts removed. None. Not one example. Nada. Zilch. Zero.
There are no examples or evidence, despite what pasty-faced goons like Elon Musk say, of the government forcing a social media platform to remove posts. Even in the case of The New York Post’s unsourced and unethical story on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the government didn’t force Twitter to remove any posts.
This ruling will be challenged in a higher court, and most likely struck down. A federal judge should not be basing his rulings on conspiratorial b.s. provided by two election-denying anti-vaccine right-wing goosestepping attorneys general.
And this judge has a lifetime appointment to make b.s. rulings like this.
Watch me draw:
Visit Clay Jones’ website and email him at Clay@Claytoonz.com.
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