OPINION:
President Biden’s crackdown on free expression began well before he stood up the Disinformation Governance Board and placed at its head a Hunter Biden laptop denier and Christopher Steele promoter.
The state-sponsored speech police have been active since Mr. Biden took office. If you say something they don’t like, you’re in trouble. They’re taking names to shut up critics.
The irony is that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the DGB startup at an April 27 House hearing as he was spouting disinformation. The southern border is secure, he testified, as Mexican cartels funnel thousands in.
Another irony is that Mr. Biden himself should be reported to the DGB.
In his infamous Atlanta speech, while likening his opponents to segregationist Democrat Bull Connor, Mr. Biden talked of civil rights heroes, claiming to be one.
He told the audience, “Because I’m so damn old, I was there as well. You think I’m kidding, man. It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested.”
He was not there and didn’t get arrested.
He said he drove an 18-wheeler. He didn’t. He said he was a lifeguard at Lake Oswego in New York that doesn’t exist. He was a lifeguard at a Wilmington swimming pool.
In March 2021, he said the Afghanistan withdrawal would be “safe and orderly.” After American deaths, a U.S. airstrike on an Afghan family and airport chaos, Mr. Biden told ABC News, “But the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens.”
Mr. Biden said he never discussed his son Hunter’s foreign financial hauls. We know on two occasions he huddled with Hunter and his partners at an L.A. bar and D.C. restaurant.
He said his son’s incriminating laptop computer was created by Russia.
For the Democrats to set up the DGB after fostering the greatest political hoax in history — the anti-Trump Steele dossier — is ironic. Democrats tried to sabotage a candidate and presidency with Kremlin lies, using the FBI and press.
There are other Biden crimes against free expression — steps announced before left-wing propagandist Nina Jankowicz became the most important bureaucrat in D.C. A TikTok star, she now heads the DGB and can target you for anti-Biden speech.
In July 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki urged information technology firms to report the names of people who commit mis- or disinformation. This was a warmup for the DGB.
“We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team,” she said, describing the censoring process.
“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” she said. “We’re working with doctors and medical experts … who are popular with their audience with accurate information. So, we’re helping get trusted content out there.”
In February 2022, Ms. Psaki encouraged the Spotify platform to censor podcaster Joe Rogan, who presents guests with different COVID-19 views.
I’ll add this:
The federal government has been a prime conduit for wrong info. Mr. Biden said if you get the vaccine you won’t get COVID-19. False. The CDC pushed masks as a way to stop the bug, but later said cloth mask models have limited effectiveness. U.S. officials, such as virus czar Dr. Anthony Fauci, dismissed China’s Wuhan lab as the coronavirus source. Another false one. Meanwhile, China lies about the virus’s origin on American social media, absent any outcry from Biden people.
Ms. Psaki herself has put out some whoppers, such as the DGB was started by former President Donald Trump. She said this after Mr. Mayorkas testified before Congress that Biden appointees “just recently constituted” a “misinformation disinformation governance board.” In other words, it’s a startup. Not a Trump legacy. She gave out misinformation on her new disinformation panel.
Ms. Psaki also said Republicans led the way on defunding the police, the Democrats’ biggest political debacle of 2021. When Mr. Biden was told at a town hall event that Republicans blame Democrats for defunding the police, the president called them “liars.”
In March, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy ordered social media platforms to submit their collection of misinformation to the government. This means search engines, community postings and big social media sites. In other words, he wants names and content.
In May 2021, Mr. Biden unleashed the kind of censorship used by “woke” activists seeking to demolish someone. Mr. Biden directed federal agencies to assess how financial firms address climate change — a message he wants banks to limit financing of the fossil fuel industry.
His order came after executive orders to throttle energy exploration, an anti-Trump crunch that drove up the price of oil and gasoline sparking high inflation.
Mr. Biden adopted this financial coercion despite a letter from a dozen Republican senators to John Kerry, the president’s special climate envoy who worried Mr. Putin would be distracted from climate issues amidst his ruthless rape of Ukraine.
“We are concerned by reports you have been pressuring banks to make extralegal commitments regarding energy-related lending and investment activities,” said the letter, headed by Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. “These commitments would result in discrimination against lawful U.S. energy companies and their employees, higher energy costs for American consumers, and slower economic growth.”
They suggested Mr. Kerry had created a “whimsical and capricious administrative state.”
“Your recent comments about President Joe Biden’s forthcoming global warming executive order suggest a government that is not based on law, but on coercion,” the senators said, citing a Kerry statement that he wanted to rearrange how capital is distributed.
Around the same time the White House was ordering reports from social media titans and demanding fossil-fuel stinginess from banks, the woke-dedicated Pentagon began an unprecedented surveillance operation on what troops say online. Even a “like” could scuttle a career if the subject promoted “extremism” whose definition remains sketchy.
I asked the ACLU in an email if the group would comment on the DGB. I received no reply.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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