Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — who was specifically mentioned in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” — stated that he is “open” to holding congressional hearings in response to Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.
Khanna was the lone Democrat who appeared concerned over Twitter’s potential violations of the First Amendment after the social media platform suppressed the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
One email that was released as part of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” showed that Khanna had contacted former general counsel and head of Twitter’s Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde to express his concern over the censorship.
The Democrat congressman even pushed back against Gadde’s obvious support for censorship, arguing that if the New York Times were to publish an article containing “classified information or other information that could expose a serious war crime…I think the NYT should have that right.”
32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files: pic.twitter.com/Tq6l7VMuQL
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Appearing on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Khanna discussed the potential response to the revelations from the “Twitter Files” — noting that he was in favor of holding hearings on the issue.
“I have said I am open to hearings in Congress on this,” the Democrat congressman said. “There are two competing values. On the one hand, we don’t want censorship. We don’t want to have people censored or boxed out, or shadow-banned and removed from Twitter because of their viewpoint. On the other hand, we do want respect, and we don’t want accounts that are filled with anti-Semitism or just spewing racism or hate on these accounts. And I think Congress should have an honest, thoughtful conversation about how we uphold both of those values.”
Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo then asked Khanna about whether he believes the problem can be solved.
“So hearings would be good, talking about how this took place to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Do you believe this can get better? Can we take the politicization out of federal agencies as well as the media?” she asked.
“I do, Maria because I think if we want my hope of coming together as a country, the first thing we have to do is say people have to be able to express their view,” Khanna responded. “We can’t tell people we disagree with please be silent. We don’t want to hear you. We don’t want to engage with you. That’s going to create further polarization.”
