Jeh Johnson: Social Media, Internet ‘the Biggest Danger’ to Our Democracy

Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson warned of the threat posed by the internet and social media to the United States.

According to Johnson, technology is “the biggest danger” to the nation’s democracy because of the misinformation on the internet.

“[I]n my judgment, the biggest danger we face as a country right now is the very problems we’re having with our democracy,” Johnson advised. “Social media, the internet, enables us to hold the world in our entire hand.”

“On the other hand, the internet enables us as Americans to believe what we want to believe,” he continued. “We go to sources, and you know this problem, we go to sources for information that do no more than validate our own prejudices, our biases and so forth, which is how you end up in situations and surveys that show that a very, very large percentage of Americans, of Republicans, believe that the election was stolen. One-sixth of America apparently ascribes to the Q-Anon theory, which is frightening to me.”

“And there are a lot of Americans out there who believe that somehow this vaccine, which is saving lives, is dangerous, which is how we end up in situations like the one we’re in now where we’re seeing a spike,” Johnson added. “I looked at numbers on your show a minute ago, and it’s actually worse now than it was a year ago when we were still in lockdown. This is a surge of the unvaccinated. It didn’t have to be this way if we were all science and fact-based in making our decisions about our personal lives. So … the problem that we’re having with Americans get their information and make decisions about what to do.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent