Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) fought back hard against the narrative the so-called "Twitter Files" suggests of cooperation between Big Tech and the Federal government to censor conservatives, calling journalist Matt Taibbi a hypocrite and attention-addict in a recent Weaponization Subcommittee hearing.
The Hill provides wider context, as Democrats accuse Taibbi and journalist Michael Shellenberger of reporting "cherry-picked" emails out of context to build the narrative of anti-conservative censorship by Twitter.
Rep. Wasserman-Schultz states that Twitter CEO Elon Musk "spoon-fed" information to Taibbi that promoted a "slanted viewpoint."
"Elon Musk spoon-fed you information this cherry-picked information which you must have suspected promotes a slanted viewpoint, or at the very least generates another right-wing conspiracy theory," says Rep. Wasserman-Schultz.
"Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention" -- Wasserman Schultz does a great job exposing Taibbi's right-wing grift here pic.twitter.com/wn4iPi50AX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 9, 2023
She adds that Taibbi evidently "violated his own standard" and profited from the files, as Taibbi's social media presence increased significantly following the first Twitter Files drop.
"You violated your own standard and you appear to have benefited from it. Before the release of the emails, in August of last year, you had 661,000 Twitter followers. After the Twitter Files, your followers doubled, and now it's three times what it was last August. I imagine your Substack readership, which is a subscription, increased significantly because of the work that you did for Elon Musk," Wasserman-Schultz continues.
From here, Wasserman-Schultz laid it on thick towards Taibbi while taking a shot at former President Donald Trump, saying that Big Tech censorship is in fact false because Trump was allowed to tweet "incessant lies."
"Attention is a powerful drug; eyeballs, money, prominence, attention, all of it points to problems with problems of accuracy and credibility. And the larger point, which is social media companies are not biased against conservatives, and if anything, they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and other MAGA extremists to post incessant lies endangering public safety and even our democracy. Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention," Wasserman-Schultz concludes.
