Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz confirmed he does not believe the First Amendment protects misinformation and hate speech during Tuesday’s Vice Presidential Debate, advancing the Biden-Harris administration’s history of censorship.
Tim Walz previously came under fire for a resurfaced MSNBC clip where he stated there is “no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech,” and he appeared to reiterate that claim during last night’s debate.
Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance sparred with Walz over the Biden administration’s pattern of collaborating with Big Tech to censor political opponents, arguing Harris supports using the government to silence people.
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Tim Walz doubled down on his statement that the First Amendment is not absolute, says he’d criminalize “hate speech,” whatever that means.
— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) October 2, 2024
“The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment,” Vance stated. “You yourself have said there’s no First Amendment right to misinformation.” (RELATED: State Department Worked With Fact-Checkers, Academics To Censor Conservative Media, Report Says)
Walz interrupted him and added “or threatening, or hate speech,” apparently agreeing with Vance’s assertion.
The governor is not alone in his pro-censorship stance – his running mate has also expressed support for censoring certain viewpoints.
Harris told CNN the “same rule has to apply” for Facebook and Twitter. “They are speaking to millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation,” she stated. “And that has to stop.”
Kamala supports what Brazil just did to X. How do I know? She wants to do it here: pic.twitter.com/nb4QXRiI9v
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 30, 2024
“And the bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter,” she said. “The same rule has to apply which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power.”
The Biden-Harris administration infamously pressured Facebook to censor certain content about Covid-19, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan that senior officials in the Biden administration pressured Facebook to “censor certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire.” (RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg’s Overdue Admission About Government Censorship Could Offer Fuel For First Amendment Claims)
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg stated.
The conservative group America First Legal (AFL) recently published documents that revealed Facebook “streamlined” censorship for the Biden-Harris Center for Disease Control (CDC).
BIDEN: “The U.S. intelligence community has determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland.”
This is the elite bureaucracy redirecting the counter-terrorism tools of the War on Terror against American… pic.twitter.com/P3xIRVNCiu
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) August 28, 2023
Biden also claimed Facebook was “killing people” for not censoring covid-19 vaccine “misinformation,” The New York Times reported in 2021.
Federal officials also alerted employees at Facebook and Twitter of purported misinformation, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported. One official requested the removal of a parody of Anthony Fauci, and a CDC official reportedly requested to set up monthly meetings with Facebook.
Biden’s administration also pressured YouTube and Amazon to censor Covid-19 related content, according to a Weaponization Committee report this past May. YouTube, Amazon, and Facebook all modified their content moderation policies because of pressure from the White House, the report states. (RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg Admits Biden-Harris Admin Pressured Facebook To Censor Content, Expresses Regret)
Censorship ramped up during Covid-19, but that was not the only issue on social media the administration was scrutinizing. Biden-Harris launched the first-ever national strategy to counter domestic terrorism in 2021 and targeted claims about the 2020 election results – among other narratives – according to the strategy.
BIDEN: “The U.S. intelligence community has determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland.”
This is the elite bureaucracy redirecting the counter-terrorism tools of the War on Terror against American… pic.twitter.com/P3xIRVNCiu
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) August 28, 2023
The document claimed there was a “crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms.” An assessment published alongside the report included “narratives of fraud in the recent general election” in a list of developments that would “almost certainly” lead to attempts at violence in 2021. (X Shuts Down Operations In Brazil After Supreme Federal Court Justice Allegedly Threatens Legal Rep With Arrest)
The Biden-Harris administration’s pattern of censorship prompted AFL to launch investigations into whether the White House possessed knowledge or had a potential role in France’s arrest of Telegram’s CEO and Brazil’s censorship of Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter.