Matt Taibbi scorched in hearing for skipping Trump push to censor Chrissy Teigen in Twitter expose
A House lawmaker criticized journalist Matt Taibbi Thursday for omitting Donald Trump's push to censor model Chrissy Teigen on Twitter in Taibbi's attack on the government over its alleged left-wing pressure on the social media platform.
Taibbi — armed with files released to him by CEO Elon Musk — late last year tried to make a case in his so-called "Twitter Files" expose that the imagined deep state was censoring right-wing content on the site. The most dramatic situation, however, turned out to be Trump's demand to remove Teigen's 2019 tweet calling the then-president a "p*ssy a** b*tch."
Taibbi was asked by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) in the hearing on Twitter documents and content moderation: “My question in the Twitter Files, did Elon Musk or Twitter provide you with that exchange with Chrissy Teigen?”
Taibbi began to reply: “No, but that’s probably because the searches that I was making…”
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Connolly interjected: "Probably because it didn’t confirm the bias that this is all about." While the allegation is that "'the left’ is attempting to control content" on Twitter, "in fact the evidence is the Trump White House most certainly attempted to control content — and Twitter,” he added.
Taibbi noted earlier in the hearing that he had revealed the Trump White House had "requests" about Twitter content, which "had been honored." But he offered no details on those requests.