Twitter files: Dismissing Censorship Won’t Work
Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden scandal to “protect the Biden campaign” was a “tragedy” for democracy that’s now ending in “farce, as the same censorship apologists struggle to excuse” it, sighs Jonathan Turley at Fox News. “The back channel communications between Biden campaign and Democratic operatives show a willing use of [Twitter] to suppress political discussion” before the 2020 election. Now, after the release of the Twitter Files, “many of these same figures have shifted to excuse the censorship.” But it won’t work — not any more than “efforts to suppress the story itself.” Twitter promises more files, and the House is expected to launch a probe. “Indeed, the increasingly shrill chorus that ‘there is nothing to see here’ may only prompt” folks to take a closer look.
Health expert: Bassett’s Missed Opportunity
With state Health Commissioner Mary Bassett now set to step down, her “tenure feels like a missed opportunity,” laments the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond. “Bassett was well positioned to lead a once-in-a-century rethinking and modernization of pandemic defenses.” Yet instead of looking to restore a battered and shaken public-health system, she “resisted the idea of unwinding past events — and made no obvious effort to better prepare the state for future viruses.” Tellingly, when Gov. Hochul finally “ordered a review of the pandemic response, she assigned her homeland security commissioner to coordinate it rather than Dr. Bassett.” Now “Bassett leaves behind a Health Department still in need of rebuilding.”
China watch: Apple CEO’s Cowardice
“Tim Cook has been taking a beating over his company’s coziness with Beijing,” observes The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn, and he’s responded “with silence” to a series of pointed media questions on China’s authoritarian policies and his company’s co-operation with them. “When coupled with his outspokenness at home, the accommodations on China make him look like a hypocrite,” since he “happily joined a chorus of corporate leaders who condemned” Georgia for non-existent voter suppression and “deeply rooted discrimination” post-Floyd. Cook can’t hold himself “up as courageous in places where the risk from speaking out is low while keeping quiet about real oppression in places where speaking out can really hurt the bottom line.”
COVID Journal: Scientists’ ‘Lab Leak’ Flip-Flop
Newly released emails show that during a February 2020 discussion among Anthony Fauci and other public-health officials of “how to frame a report discrediting the idea that the Covid virus . . . could have escaped from a lab,” two leading virologists overnight “shifted from concluding the virus was manufactured to arguing that this could not possibly be the case,” writes Nicholas Wade at City Journal. “Fauci . . . knew that his agency was funding” research in Wuhan. He surely didn’t want “the mother of all public inquiries into the possibility of a link between . . . research at Wuhan and the outbreak of the pandemic.” Remember, he and other bigwigs control “a huge chunk of the money” in virology. So the lab leak was “right scientifically” but “erroneous politically.”
Conservative: Beware Big Tech ‘Entreaties,’ GOP
The Federalist’s Rachel Bovard reminds Republicans, who now control the House, to enter discussions with Big Tech CEOs with “eyes wide open,” as their lobbyists offer “the sweetest of entreaties.” Apple’s future “is likely tied to how effectively” the corporation’s top brass can “cozy up to the new sheriffs in town,” as it faces “the specter of at least one antitrust bill that could curb its monopolistic practices.” Yet Apple’s removal of conservative social-media platform Parler from its app store, its lobbying against a bill “that would have effectively prohibited American companies from using slaves to make products” and its kowtowing to the Chinese government suggests Republicans should not be “easily swooned” by “minor pleasantries.” GOP voters “are watching closely” for how Washington deals with Big Tech and will punish the party “in the public square and at the ballot box for lacking a backbone.”
Compiled by The Post Editorial Board