The Biden administration got spanked by the chief judge of the of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on July 4 for working with Big Tech to censor social media content.
While that case makes its way through the federal court system, the administration has latched onto a scheme to continue censoring Americans — by using the Biden reelection campaign rather than the White House.
The First Amendment only prohibits the government from restricting free speech.
A political campaign is a private entity.
Biden deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty announced this week that he’s recruiting hundreds of volunteers and staffers to ferret out social media posts that are unflattering to the president and which they believe are misleading.
"The campaign is going to have to be more aggressive pushing back on misinformation from a communications perspective and filling some of the gaps these companies are leaving behind," Flaherty told Politico.
Katie Harbath, a Republican National Committee (RNC) staffer who was formerly Facebook’s public policy director, urged the campaign to proceed against social media platforms with caution — especially now that Republican congressional investigations are asking "very legitimate" questions about the White House’s past pressure on platforms to remove content.
"It doesn’t feel great to have anybody trying to threaten their control or force platforms to be making moves," she said.
The White House may also want to clean up its own act by examining its tendency to misrepresent facts, stretch the truth and outright lie to the American people.
There was the time two months ago when Biden bragged on Twitter/X that "One year after its launch, our Administration's 988 suicide and crisis hotline has helped 5 million Americans when they needed it most."
However, the 988 Hotline was established in October of 2020 — under the Trump administration.
Less than a week before that the White House bragged on social media that "Inflation-adjusted income is up 3.5% since @POTUS took office and low-wage workers have seen the largest wage gains over the last year – helping power our economy."
They added, "Bidenomics is growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up."
That claim earned a Twitter/X Community Note.
"The federal government’s data does not support this growth claim."
They explained that "Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings were $11.41 per hour in January 2021 when Biden took office (web.archive.org/web/2022022414 . . . ) and in its latest release (May 2023) is $11.03 (bls.gov/news.release/r. . . ).
"This is a decline of 3.3%."
Less than a month before that Biden went on Twitter/X to rail against his favorite boogeyman — guns.
"Guns are the #1 killer of kids in America," he claimed.
"More than car accidents and more than cancer. We can't let that become just another statistic," Biden added.
"Let's ban AR-15-style firearms and other assault weapons."
However, the government’s own data, as compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicates that accidents are the leading cause of death for children and adolescents.
Community Notes added that "the claim that guns are the leading cause of death for children would only be true if children under 1 are excluded and 18 and 19-year-olds are counted as children."
But the supreme disinformation campaign in recent memory may have been waged by the Biden 2020 presidential campaign.
After a laptop computer belonging to Biden’s son Hunter was found to contain information suggesting that Biden took in millions from foreign sources, 51 senior current-or-former intelligence officials signed a letter claiming that the laptop had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation.
They reportedly signed the letter at the request of then-senior Biden campaign staffer Antony Blinken. Biden later appointed Blinken as U.S. secretary of state. It pays to promote disinformation for Biden.
But the administration’s past practice of silencing Americans’ own speech are its most egregious activities.
Chief Judge Terry A. Doughty likened those efforts to something out of a George Orwell novel in his July 4 decision.
Citing "substantial evidence" of government censorship, he wrote that the "evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario.
He added, "the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth.'"
That case has since been appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Biden Justice Department is expected to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court over time.
In the meantime Biden has already made clear that he’ll continue his censoring efforts through his campaign, proving the adage that if you scratch a liberal, you’ll find a fascist.
We can’t let him get away with it.
If government invades our freedom of speech, all other rights, freedoms and privileges are also at risk.
As Ronald Reagan once observed that "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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