Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said that Twitter suspended his account for speaking out against the folly of deliberately allowing illegal immigrants to cross the border freely in the time of COVID-19.
Gingrich appeared on Fox Business Mornings With Maria March 5 show to talk to host Maria Bartiromo about a bill before Congress. During the interview, he said that Twitter had just suspended his account. He explained that he was being punished by Twitter because he tweeted “that having illegal immigrants come in without any controls is a public health issue in the time of COVID.”
Standard Twitter policy has been to lock the user’s account so he or she cannot “engage in actions such as Tweeting, Retweeting, or liking” until the offending tweet has been deleted. Gingrich told Bartiromo that he would be appealing the decision in an effort to get Twitter to explain what was wrong with the tweet.
Bartiromo appeared astonished by Gingrich’s comments on censorship. She wondered, “Who put these companies in charge of being the arbiter of truth? What you tweeted is absolutely true.”
Gingrich explained that the result of Big Tech’s wanton censorship would be “a real populous backlash that will either make them liable to lawsuits, or have real controls over them or break them up.” Congress has been considering what to do about Big Tech for some time, with hearings and bills that so far have all gone nowhere.
Gingrich summed up the state of Twitter censorship, saying, “Twitter’s behaving as though it’s a dictatorship, and it’s not.”
Twitter began taking down what it deemed to be COVID-19 misinformation in April, and decided to censor dissent about vaccines starting this year. In October, Twitter flagged a post from President Donald Trump in which he said that COVID-19 was less lethal “in most populations” than “the flu.” Twitter also censored a separate post from Trump in which he said that he was “immune” from COVID-19 after he contracted the virus.
When reached for comment, a Twitter spokesperson said that Gingrich's account was "temporarily locked for violating our hateful conduct policy," though the spokesperson did not specify which tweet violated the policy or in what way.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter at (415) 222-9670 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
