Tag: Conservatives

TRUMP JR.: Facebook, Twitter Using Power to ‘Manipulate’ 2020 Election

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

WASHINGTON — Left leaning social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are unfairly targeting conservatives, Donald Trump, Jr. said Tuesday, and something, he says, needs to be done about it.

In an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, Trump said the censoring of conservatives by major social media platforms is a violation of free speech.

“It’s people who are pro-life, it’s people who are pro-Second Amendment, the religious right, I mean it’s happened to me on numerous occasions,” Trump Jr. said. “I got targeted for hate speech, but it turns out I was right,” he said. “That didn’t stop the mainstream media from, you know, dragging me through the mud for three or four days but you know that’s what’s going on.”

Facebook and Twitter are “controlled by leftists … they all believe in one thing and it’s not free speech,” said Trump. “They only believe in their speech, you know, you can only be woke. If you’re not woke, again a cancellable offense.”

Trump went on to say that social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are also doing whatever they can to prevent his father, President Donald Trump, from winning re-election.

They’re “doing whatever they can to manipulate an election,” Trump claimed, by making sure “certain content is pushed and others’ is totally stymied and that’s not right … they gotta lose those protections and the liability that’s probably worth billions of dollars in terms of protection to them from our federal government because taxpayers shouldn’t be funding their own suppression.”

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CONSERVATIVES WARN: Feds Close to Spending More Than on Revolutionary, Civil War, WWI, II Combined

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

WASHINGTON (CNSNews.com) — A coalition of conservative leaders sent a letter to President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warning that the congressional spending in the coronavirus must stop because it’s getting very close to $10 trillion, which is more than the government spent fighting the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World War I and II combined.

The Save Our Country coalition, which is made up of conservative leaders, called on Trump and Republican congressional leaders to “Stop the Spending.”

The coalition consists of: Stephen Moore, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity; Adam Brandon, president of FreedomWorks; Jim DeMint, chairman of Conservative Partnership Institute; Lisa Nelson, CEO of American Legislative Exchange Council; Arthur Laffer, Laffer Associates; Casey Mulligan, University of Chicago; Jenny Beth Martin, Tea Party Patriots; Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform; William Bennett, former Reagan cabinet member; Brent Bozell, founder and president of Media Research Center; Scott Garrett, former member of Congress; Bob McEwan, Center for National Policy; Ed Meese, former Attorney General of the United States; Jim Miller, former Office of Management and Budget; and William Walton, Center for National Policy.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, they released new budget projections showing government spending is headed to 51 percent of GDP for the first time ever. The federal government has already spent trillions in stimulus funds, and the White House and Congress are considering plans to spend at least $1 to 3 trillion more.

“Congress has already spent more than $2 trillion on CoronaVirus relief packages. The irresponsible Pelosi bill that passed the House a week ago would raise that spending total to $5 trillion, which is on top of the $4.71 trillion that Congress already authorized,” the coalition wrote in the letter.

“We are getting very close to an unthinkable $10,000,000,0000,000 (ten trillion) federal budget, which is more money in one single year than the United States government spent, adjusted for inflation … to fight the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I and World War II – combined,” they wrote.

The coalition noted that for the first time in history, “more than half of all national income would flow through the government,” when you take into account state and local expenditures.

“The inside-the-beltway crowd falsely calls these trillions of dollars a ‘stimulus’ to the economy. But government can only give money to some people, as Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman taught all of us many years ago, by taking money from others,” the coalition wrote.

“Government spending – and policies such as paying millions of workers more money to stay unemployed than to go back to work, and paying states more money to enable them to stay shut down – is inhibiting the fast recovery we want in jobs and incomes, not stimulating it,” they wrote.

The coalition said that “runaway government spending is the new virus” afflicting the U.S. economy. They say that “the best way to supercharge a jobs recovery would be to repeal the payroll tax so that every working American would receive a 7.5% raise in the paycheck immediately, and every small business would see a reduction in their payroll costs of 7.5%”

“This incentivizes hiring and work. The economy desperately needs more of both of these and less debt spending,” they wrote.

WAR ON CONSERVATIVES: Twitter on ‘Dangerous Path,’ Could Face Regulation, Says Gingrich

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

WASHINGTON — After years of complaints by users who claimed they’d been unfairly targeted for their conservative beliefs, social media giants like Twitter may finally be held liable, says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Responding to the backlash following Twitter’s labeling of President Donald Trump’s tweets about mail in ballots being a danger to democracy as being fact checked untrue, Gingrich said left leaning social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook could find themselves becoming a “regulated public institution” rather than a private company.

These companies are “going down a very dangerous path” Gingrich told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday. “What Twitter called fact-check is not true,” Gingrich said. “They went to left-wing publications to get a left-wing version.”

“The president is correct,” Gingrich in defense of the president’s argument. “We have seen a lot of theft of vote, we have seen a lot of mail being lost. There are all sorts of challenges with going through an all-mail program for voting.”

“You look at some of these people, and they are totally out of touch with everyday America,” said Gingrich. “I think that at some point they are going to run a real risk of having some interventions that I don’t want to see happen, but you can’t have a free speech dominated by an institution which is determined only to allow [one] side to speak.”

And it’s not just Twitter, or simply aimed at the president, Gingrich warned. “Facebook, Google, and Twitter have a track record of becoming more anti-conservative, so it’s not all about Trump.”

“It’s anyone in America who has a traditional value and a traditional sense of patriotism or a sense of American history,” said Gingrich. “All of them are under siege in the social media groups.”

‘ENOUGH!’: Trump Vows to ‘Close Down’ Social Media Platforms That Censor Conservatives

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

WASHINGTON — Fed up with what he declared efforts to “silence conservatives voices,” President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to shut down social media platforms that target Republicans.

The move comes after Twitter added fact-check labels to a pair of Trump’s tweets on Tuesday in which the president claimed there is no way “mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.” The labels Twitter attached claimed the tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes” and were put in place “to provide additional contest around mail-in ballots.”

“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016,” Trump tweeted in responses to the labeling. “We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”

High profile conservatives have long complained of unjust practices by social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, claiming that their accounts were censored, removed from view and unfairly banned.

In an appearance on Fox News, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley complained of special protections put in place to shield tech companies, many of which receive federal funding, from being sued for such practices. “They get this special immunity, this special immunity from suits and from liability that’s worth billions of dollars to them every year. Why are they getting subsidized by federal taxpayers to censor conservatives, to censor people critical of China?”

WAR ON CONSERVATIVES: Justice Department announces it will take on social media sites over alleged censoring of the right

by Breck Worsham, posted in law, news, politics

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Justice Department on Wednesday announced Attorney General Jeff Sessions will investigate claims that social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are censoring pages based on their conservative views.

The announcement came after a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was held in which top officials from Facebook and Twitter faced often intense grilling on whether or not they had ever targeted or “shadow banned” conservative pages for political gain, claims Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has repeatedly denied.

“The Attorney General has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms,” the statement said.

President Donald Trump has claimed that he, himself, has been the target of censorship and “fake news” by both the mainstream press and on social media and that he believes platforms including Facebook and Twitter often discriminate against conservatives based on their own left-leaning political bias.

“Maybe I did a better job because I’m good with the Twitter and I’m good at social media, but the truth is they were all on Hillary Clinton’s side, and if you look at what was going on with Facebook and with Google and all of it, they were very much on her side,” Trump said.

“What we’re concerned about is how Twitter has in some ways it looks like selectively, adversely affected conservatives,” Rep. Steve Scalise, (R)-La., said during Wednesday’s House hearing.

Scalise cited Rep. Marsha Blackburn, (R)-Tenn., who claimed her Senate campaign announcement video was taken down by Twitter as an example. In response, Twitter claimed that the removal of Blackburn’s campaign video was “a mistake” which was quickly corrected, and apologized for the “error”.

Throughout his testimony, Dorsey pushed back several times, denying claims that he nor anyone to his knowledge at Twitter had ever targeted conservatives to further a political agenda.

“I want to start by making something clear: we don’t consider political viewpoints, perspectives, or party affiliation in any of our policies or enforcement decisions. Period,” he said. “Impartiality is our guiding principle.”

The Justice Department did not set a date for the upcoming meeting and it has not yet been revealed how many attorneys general will attend.

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SOCIAL MEDIA SHOWDOWN: ‘Diamond and Silk’ take on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over ‘anti-Conservative discrimination’

by Breck Worsham, posted in news, politics

MENLO PARK, CA — As if it needed any more bad press, social media giant Facebook has found itself facing a new round of woes, courtesy of Conservative commentators Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway and Rochelle “Silk” Richardson.

The outspoken sisters, who self-proclaim to be two of President Trump’s “most outspoken & loyal supporters” took to Fox News on Sunday to blast Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for acts they claim discriminatory toward Conservatives after the pair’s work was removed from Facebook’s platform for content deemed “unsafe to the community”.

“They gave us no rationale,” the duo told “Fox & Friends”. “The only thing they told us is that we are unsafe for the community. We are two women of color, how are we unsafe? We don’t sell drugs, we don’t belong to no gangs. It’s offensive, it’s appalling, it taints our brand. Why are you censoring two black women? Why are you not allowing our viewers to view our content?”

The pair added they first suspected they were being censored several months ago when they “noticed that there was a pause on our page, one day we were doing good and then it just dropped. People were not receiving notifications, our posts were not showing up on their feed.”

In a statement posted to their Facebook page, Diamond and Silk updated their
1.2 million Facebook followers of the latest developments, writing:

“Diamond And Silk have been corresponding since September 7, 2017, with Facebook (owned by Mark Zuckerberg), about their bias censorship and discrimination against D&S brand page. Finally after several emails, chats, phone calls, appeals, beating around the bush, lies, and giving us the run around, Facebook gave us another bogus reason why Millions of people who have liked and/or followed our page no longer receives notification and why our page, post and video reach was reduced by a very large percentage.

Here is the reply from Facebook. Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 3:40 PM: “The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community.” Yep, this was FB conclusion after 6 Months, 29 days, 5 hrs, 40 minutes and 43 seconds. Oh and guess what else Facebook said: “This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in any way.” (Note: This is the exact wording that FB emailed to us.)

So our questions to Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg) are:
1. What is unsafe about two Blk-women supporting the President Donald J. Trump?
2. Our FB page has been created since December 2014, when exactly did the content and the brand become unsafe to the community?
3. When you say “community” are you referring to the Millions who liked and followed our page?
4. What content on our page was in violation?
5. If our content and brand was so unsafe to the community, why is the option for us to boost our content and spend money with FB to enhance our brand page still available? Maybe FB should give us a refund since FB censored our reach.
6. Lastly, didn’t FB violate their own policy when FB stopped sending notifications to the Millions of people who liked and followed our brand page?”

In a released statement a Facebook spokesperson said, “We are aware of this issue. We are reaching out to the creators of Diamond & Silk to try and resolve this matter.”

The Diamond and Silk matter is just the latest in a string of bad PR for Zuckerberg, who is expected to testify this week as to how the social media giant allowed a data-mining company to obtain personal information from at least 87 million Facebook users without their consent.

Calls to Zuckerberg’s personal spokesperson for comment were not immediately returned.

Courtesy Diamond and Silk

 

FIRST AMENDMENT UNDER ATTACK: PayPal targets conservative websites; Patriots call for boycott

by Breck Worsham, posted in Uncategorized

Palo Alto, CA — Online payment servicing giant Paypal was targeted for boycott on Monday by outraged Republicans who hit back against the company’s discontinuation of at least two accounts run by conservative organizations.

PayPal discontinued the accounts belonging to Jihad Watch and the American Freedom Defense Initiative on Monday after receiving complaints from ProPublica, a left leaning investigative journalism group.

“I am contacting you to let you know that we are including your website in a list of sites that have been designated as hate or extremist by the American Defamation League or the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the reporter, Lauren Kirchner of ProPublica wrote to administrators of both organizations.

Kirchner made both publications aware that she had identified “all the tech platforms that are supporting websites on the ADL and SPLC lists,” including PayPal, Newsmax, Revcontent and Amazon.

“Can you confirm that you receive funds from your relationship with those tech companies?” the reporter asked in a veiled threat. “How would the loss of those funds affect your operations, and how would you be able to replace them?

Robert Spencer, who heads Jihad Watch, was quick to respond, making it clear that he nor his site would in no way be intimidated.

“The intent of your questions, and no doubt of your forthcoming article, will be to try to compel these sites to cut off any connection with us based on our opposition to jihad terror. Are you comfortable with what you’re enabling? Not only are you inhibiting honest analysis of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, but you’re aiding the attempt to deny people a platform based on their political views. This could come back to bite you if your own views ever fall out of favor. Have you ever lived in a totalitarian state, where the powerful determine the parameters of the public discourse and cut off all voice from the powerless? Do you really want to live in one now? You might find, once you get there, that it isn’t as wonderful as you thought it would be,” Spencer posted to the group’s website (https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/08/leftist-journalist-lauren-kirchner-of-propublica-threatens-jihad-watch).

Pamela Geller, who heads the American Freedom Defense Initiative, was also quick to respond.

“Once you start shutting down people on the claim that they operate “hate groups,” you have made the use of such platforms contingent upon holding certain political opinions. Beware, because in doing so you will be setting a dangerous precedent: one day your own opinions could be out of favor, and you will find yourself cut off,” Geller replied to her website (https://pamelageller.com/2017/08/paypal-bans-geller.html/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook).

Within hours of being contacted by Kirchner, both Jihad Watch and the AFDI were notified that their accounts had been terminated by PayPal.

“We have recently reviewed your usage of PayPal’s services, as reflected in our records and on your website,” an email to both online publications read. “Due to the nature of your activities, we have chosen to discontinue service to you in accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement. As a result, we have placed a permanent limitation on your account.”

Geller and Spencer both took to social media to spread the word about their being targeted and patriots around the nation almost immediately called for boycott.

“Hi, I’ve been using paypal for close to 20 years. I am reading on social media that PP is shutting down accounts of conservative commentators based on hate speech, and SPLC recommendations,” one PayPal user wrote on the company’s website (https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Payments/Question-about-Paypal-s-silencing-of-conservative-politics/td-p/1293775). “I am not overtly political, but I do know that SPLC is not a politically neutral organization. I am considering shutting down my account as a result. The 1st amendment is important to the US. Regardless of what people say, we need to respect this freedom. What is paypal’s stance?
Thanks.”

The online backlash seemingly worked as within hours both parties were notified that their accounts had been reinstated.

On Monday, Spencer posted another message he said he received from PayPal notifying him that the group’s account had been “reinstated.”

“Effective 08/21/2017, the limitation applied to your account associated with (your website) pursuant to our User Agreement was removed. Your services are being reinstated,” an email from PayPal to both parties read.

However, the payment processor closed with a direct threat to shut them down again should either party step out of line.

“If we become aware of a website or organization using our services that may violate our polices, our dedicated team of professionals conducts a thorough review,” the email stated. “Ultimately, a decision is made and communicated to the organization. In this instance, we have made the determination to lift the limitation applied to your account associated with the Acceptable Use Policy.”

Despite PayPal’s reconsideration, Spencer said he will no longer do business with PayPal.

“I have no intention of restoring the PayPal buttons on Jihad Watch. I know where they stand now, and do not intend to place myself at their mercy again,” Spencer wrote Monday on JihadWatch.org. Regardless, Spencer went on to thank his supporters for their efforts, calling PayPal’s second thoughts a “victory” for conservatives and the First Amendment.

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