Democrats who insist on censoring "disinformation" do not seem to understand the First Amendment or what free speech is, journalist Matt Taibbi told Newsmax on Thursday.
Taibbi, having testified before the U.S. House's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government earlier this year about the Twitter Files, censorship, and the First Amendment, told "Eric Bolling The Balance" that it felt like "dejà vu" watching Democrat presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. testify at Thursday's hearing before that same subcommittee.
"I had dejà vu watching the video because I obviously sat in that very same chair and testified in front of that same committee and met a lot of the same hostility from the same members who, similarly, didn't want to hear anything about censorship, didn't engage in the topic at all," Taibbi said.
Taibbi noted that he grew up as a "traditional kind of Democrat," and that he was an ACLU donor for most of his adult life, but "the idea that the Democrats are now proponents of censorship is just mind-boggling to me," Taibbi said.
"This would never have happened once upon a time, and particularly this idea of RFK is so noxious that we can't even hear this opinion of his that we disagree with, that's precisely what the First Amendment is for, it's to protect speech like that, and they don't seem to understand that."
"Judges over the years have specifically made the bar for intervention, government intervention in speech extremely high ... the standard is incitement to imminent lawless violence, which Robert F. Kennedy is nowhere near that, he hasn't even gotten anything wrong," Taibbi said. "As he points out, he's being criticized for something called 'malinformation,' which the Department of Homeland Security talks about, which is true information, but has a message they don't like very much.
And the First Amendment definitely protects that. It's absolutely crazy that we're coming out against that," Taibbi said.
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