Democrats tried to censor one of their own, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after his passionate opening statement on Thursday at a hearing on censorship at the House Weaponization Subcommittee.
Kennedy had just defended his record on racism and antisemitism, disputing claims by 102 Democrats in a letter that he had allegedly “spread vile and dangerous antisemitic and anti-Asian conspiracy theories.”
He said that his remarks had been taken out of context, and noted his strong support for Israel. Waving the Democrats’ letter, “I know many of the people who wrote this letter. I don’t believe there’s a single person who signed this letter who believes I’m antisemitic. I do not believe that. There’s no evidence of that.”
He noted that he had been censored on social media platforms — not just on the topic of vaccines, but on ordinary issues.
Following his remarks, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who had used an earlier hearing to attack the practice of professional journalism itself, moved that the hearing be moved into “executive session,” ending the public testimony. She cited rule 11, section 2, of the House, which provides for an executive session if testimony “would tend to defame, degrade, or incriminate any person.” Republicans moved to table the motion.
Democrats then demanded a roll call vote, and used their votes to deliver short speeches, with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) calling the committee, without irony, a “Soviet politburo,” as he voted to censor Kennedy.
“This is a hearing on censorship that began with an effort .. to censor Mr. Kennedy!” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) later exclaimed.
As the hearing continued, Democrats attacked Kennedy, with the minority party ranking member, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), accusing him of trying “to target the black community” with vaccine misinformation.
Breitbart News’ own political editor, Emma-Jo Morris, testified at the hearing about the censorship of her reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop:
House Committee on the Judiciary / YouTubeDemocrats tried to dispute whether the FBI had verified the authenticity of the laptop at the time of her reporting, when the agency had reached out to Twitter and to other social media platforms to warn them that such stories could be Russian disinformation (which it was not).
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file
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