Elon Musk Censors Journalism On X & Bob Menedez Begs Judge To Reduce Criminal Charges

Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein has been permanently banned from Twitter after publishing hacked documents from the Trump campaign, and now his material is being forbidden on Google and Meta. Plus, disgraced former Senator Bob Menendez is begging the court to toss out his recent felony convictions by claiming that he actually had the right to be corrupt as hell because of a Congressional rule called the “Speech or Debate Clause.” Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein has been permanently banned from Twitter after publishing hacked documents from Trump campaign, and now his material is being forbidden on Google and Meta. Is this gonna be what finally gets the left to care about tech censorship? I love this story. This story to me is so instructive. By the way, Jacobin, do you follow that writer?

I have.

I haven't.

I've interviewed people from there many years ago on the podcast.

This is brilliant writing.

Yeah, they're great.

It's brilliant writing. Hugely liberal left wing kind of organization.

More of a Bernie Sanders left.

Absolutely. Bernie Sanders left. But they're really good at what they do. He's a good writer. But here's what he says. He says, chickens have come home to roost. Now, what he means by that is during the Hunter Biden years, there was this refusal for Meta and really everybody to say, well, we're not gonna publish anything that we're seeing on the laptop issue because it's been hacked information and we think that it may not be accurate. Well, he comes and says, now this is the same thing. You had the left saying, oh my God, you can't publish that. You can't publish that because it's coming from the left. This is coming from the other side and they're saying, oh, wait just a second. Meta, how dare you not disclose? Facebook, how dare you not? It's all of them. Instagram, Meta, Facebook, all of them that have made this decision to say, well, we're gonna just, if it's information that we think is hacked, we're not gonna put it out there. What's your take on this? I think it's a good reasoning to tell you the truth.

Well, first of all, with the first suspension from Twitter, which is what happened initially, by the way, this is not the first time that Elon Musk has actually personally targeted Ken Klippenstein.

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

He had gone after him multiple different times. I believe this is not the first time he has suspended him, because Klippenstein has been very critical of him, and he is one of the best investigative journalists alive today.

No question. I totally agree.

And, so yeah, Ken's not taking sides here. He's just reporting on the facts. And he took it upon himself because all these other media outlets said, oh, we're not gonna touch the Trump materials. And Klippenstein said, oh hell, you are. This is journalism. This is what we do. Whether you like it or you don't like it, whether it was hacked or not hacked, we have a responsibility to do this, so I'm gonna do it. So permanently suspended, because Twitter says you published information containing personal information, which is not true. He redacted all of it. So it's total bs. But I appreciate his courage.

Do you see his point though? The point to Jacobin is this is the same thing that we saw with the Hunter Biden laptop.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

Deep State comes in and says, don't publish that. Don't do that. And then you have all of them fall in line. Everyone, Thread, Meta, Instagram, Facebook, all of them say, well, I'm kinda worried about the influence of the Deep State here. I'm worried about FBI, CIA, NSA, weapons industry saying don't do this, so we're not gonna do it.

Well, what was weird to me about the Hunter Biden thing, and I agree with this part, is obviously there was a lot of naked pictures. That you can't do.

I mean, he had prostitutes, he had naked pictures. He was snorting coke. Okay. That's who he is. I mean, if that's who he is, you don't hide it. You don't say, I'm not gonna allow the American public to see it.

Right, because they bought into the whole thing. They said, oh, well, this looks like Russian disinformation, and sure, Facebook says we're not gonna do it.