OPINION
Oh, my! We knew Donald Trump had thin skin but we didn't know how paper thin until today.
Rather than tackle topics such as violence, education, health, foreign policy or immigration, Republicans, in the majority in the House in the 118th Congress, spent six hours grilling social media executives trying to prove collusion between Twitter and Democrats. Their uninformed efforts backfired spectacularly.
How the lawmakers are wasting taxpayers' money was on full display during a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday regarding Twitter’s supposedly left-leaning bias and the social media corporation's alleged politically motivated censorship at the social media site.
Among the GOP's goals is to expose President Biden's son;s, Hunter Biden, alleged business dealings in Ukraine and China while Biden was President Obama's Vice President and to expose the social media corporation's alleged left-leaning bias. the hearing took an awkward turn to Chrissy Teigen's tweet (See below).
Her tweet was in response to a series of 2019 tweets posted by Trump in which he called John Legend, Teigen's husband, "boring" and called her "his filty mouthed wife."
Trump's tweet was sent to his followers but did not send it to Teigen.
Trump's White House staff asked Twitter to eliminate the tweet from Chrissy Teigen, an Asian American model with 12.9 million followers on her Twitter account.
Twitter found that Teigen's tweet did not meet the criteria requiring a posting to be removed and left it online, angering Trump and his right-wing allies.
Responding to the televised questioning during which her name and tweet was brought up, Teigen tweeted only "I ... oh my god."
Despite Republican allegations, Twitter’s algorithm promotes tweets from right-leaning political parties and news outlets more than from the left, according to its own research which was recently peer-reviewed in PNAS journal. The authors of the study also found that content from right-wing news media was also amplified more than outlets with non right-wing ideologies.
In fact, prior to the Jan. 6 Insurrection, Twitter employees tried to ban the dangerous inflamatory tweets leading up to the attack on the Capitol. However, Twitter allowed the hate and conspiratorial tweets to fester and inflame uninformed radicals to the events of Jan. 6.
During the Congressional hearing, disputing the GOP's allegation of Twitter's bias against conservatives, Democrats on the committee which included progressive Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, found plenty of examples of Twitter's actions countering that allegation.
In questioning of a Twitter employee who was monitoring inappropriate tweets, the New York City Congressmember was able to confirm that Twitter actually changed its original criteria so that Trump's more outrageous tweets Including a posting on July 14, 2019, when Trump told Democratic congressmembers, AOC and Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, to “go back” to their countries in a series of racist tweets.
“So much for bias against the right-wing on Twitter.” Ocasio-Cortez concluded her remarks.
