Twitter’s fall was caused by its own appetite for ideology over fact and substance; Musk is changing everything
Sometimes lost in the Elon-storm following his purchase of Twitter, is the article in the New York Post about Hunter Biden, which ran October 14, 2020, that led to the Post’s Twitter suspension and the blocking of tweets by others of the Post link to the article.
It was likely the beginning of the end of the ideologically oriented executive staff at the social media giant. Only Elon Musk can tell us his precise reason for becoming interested in the purchase but that is the point that many people (even some on the left) condemned about Twitter.
The Post’s article by Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge is a damning blast of the son of President Joe Biden, but that is not why it is worth a second look.
It’s Joe Biden’s conduct and participation that deserves attention and two reasons point to its importance.
First, it is of note because in the Post article there is a link to yet another article that demonstrates that the President himself lied to the American public about his knowledge of Hunter’s business activities.
He said he never discussed his son’s business with him. As many conjectured at the time, that was a lie. No vagueness here, it was indeed a lie that the American people had a right to know about. The fact that an outlet supposedly committed to the public square in its publishing actively and forcefully blocked information is not understandable. While it is true that link was not blocked, its importance grew with the revelations in October 14th article.
An email in the October 14th article demonstrated that Vadym Pozharskyi, a Burisma executive, thanked Hunter for allowing him to spend “some time together,” with Joe Biden. Hunter Biden was at one time a member of the Burisma board of directors. Are we to believe no business was discussed in that meeting?
As further evidence, an email shows that Joe Biden is the “big guy” referenced in an email from the laptop that indicate Joe Biden was to receive 10 percent of one of Hunter’s deals. The finding in this email deserves additional investigation and Congressional scrutiny.
For his part, President Biden has never rescinded his obvious falsehood and most media has given him a complete pass on the statement.
The other primary fact was that Joe Biden may also have taken actions as Vice-President to enhance the power of Hunter’s businesses in Ukraine by threatening to cancel a $1 billion loan guarantee unless a Ukrainian official was fired who posed a threat to a company to which Hunter was linked. This fact also deserves scrutiny.
Twitter eventually unblocked the New York Post article (and the Post’s Twitter account). Interestingly the New York Times wrote about the unblocking but referred to the Post article as “unsubstantiated.”
As each day passes since Elon Musk began releasing internal Twitter documents that were created contemporaneously at the time the decision was made to permanently suspend then-President Donald Trump from the platform.
The facts behind both reasons should be decided in a court and Congress but despite a considerable amount of evidence in the hands of the FBI, there is no hard indication that anyone is doing anything and almost every major news outlet has declined to pursue the story further.
In reading this opinion piece some readers will dismiss it because most of the sources linked are considered right wing.
Readers should at least consider that the New York Times (March 16, 2022) the Washington Post (March 30, 2022) and CBS News (November 21, 2022) belatedly confirmed the central elements of the New York Post article. As consumers of their product, it is fair to ask why it took so long, but by now we know the probable reason.
Their reporting was conducted long after dismissing the October 14th Post article and their reporting was given very little mention other than the correction stories. In sports parlance it was a “one and done.”
The bosses at Twitter were clearly intent on stamping out reporting that did not comport with their overriding belief that they know better than the millions of their account holders about virtually everything.
The power of ideas carries strength only if they are allowed to be heard.
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James Hutton is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. Follow him on Twitter @jehutton.