Podcaster and NYU marketing Professor Scott Galloway joined Thursday’s CNN This Morning where he launched into a wild denunciation of the GOP-led hearing on Twitter, the FBI, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. Galloway labeled Republicans as “a conspiracy of dunces” and “idiots” while laughably claiming the fact that Twitter’s previous leadership was full of progressives is evidence they were biased in favor of Republicans.
Co-host Kailtan Collins led Galloway by suggesting that information learned in hearings undermines its central purpose, “You know, James Comer, who’s the House Oversight Chair, that we saw there was saying the other day that the FBI and Twitter were colluding on this when, you know, we said there’s no evidence of that, there’s no evidence that there is any directive they got on the Hunter Biden story and now we see it was actually Trump people who were also asking to remove tweets because of what it was saying about the president of the United States. So does this end this whole saga or what is your prediction?”
The correct answer would be no. Matt Taibbi’s original Twitter Files thread acknowledged all the way back on December 2 that the Trump White House also sought to have certain tweets removed, but Taibbi also claimed that the system was not balanced due to Twitter’s heavily left-leaning staff.
Galloway, however, responded in a serious tone with profoundly unserious analysis, “The only conspiracy here is a conspiracy of dunces that is our government right now as reflected in this hearing.”
Somehow, Galloway managed to get even crazier from there. Suggesting there are international ramifications to this hearing he claimed that “this communicates to every Chinese official, send more balloons.”
That makes no sense, but Galloway was there to inform viewers that it is Republicans who “are idiots.”
Moving right along, Galloway then claimed that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to Twitter and “the only real targeted assertion that they really need to defend was that they coordinated with the FBI. They did not coordinate with the FBI.”
Even if that is true, it ignores the indirect pressure they put on Twitter prior to the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story and other installments of the Twitter Files were the FBI did directly pressure Twitter to remove tweets.
Not quite done distributing hot takes, Galloway next claimed Twitter’s was actually biased in favor of conservatives:
If there’s any censoring going on, if there's any bias, it's towards letting the president organize an insurrection on their platform and that they weren't being as diligent as they should have been around censoring certain content. There is a certain both side-ism. I do believe the Twitter executives probably lean progressive and as a result they engage in both side-ism and let content and people on the right get away with things they wouldn't let people on the left, but it's a private company. They get to decide this.
Really? Twitters suspended The Babylon Bee for a joke about Rachel Levine and if Twitter was biased in favor of conservatives, then why did Galloway ask if Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech was because he wanted to “kill a puppy.”
This segment was sponsored by Fidelity.
Here is a transcript for the February 9 show:
CNN This Morning
2/9/2023
8:13 AM ET
KAITLAN COLLINS: Okay, but Scott, this has been the subject of so many conversations that I've had with Republicans and Trump officials that there was this conspiracy. You know, James Comer, who’s the House Oversight Chair, that we saw there was saying the other day that the FBI and Twitter were colluding on this when, you know, we said there’s no evidence of that, there’s no evidence that there is any directive they got on the Hunter Biden story and now we see it was actually Trump people who were also asking to remove tweets because of what it was saying about the president of the United States. So does this end this whole saga or what is your prediction?
SCOTT GALLOWAY: The only conspiracy here is a conspiracy of dunces that is our government right now as reflected in this hearing. This--this communicates to every Chinese official, send more balloons. These people are idiots.
First off, it begins from a place of idiocy because a private company has no fidelity to the First Amendment. It's like it's as if “are you going to have Ted Cruz on later today? Oh, no, you're censoring the government.”
The notion that the FBI, the only real-- the only real-- targeted assertion that they really need to defend was that they coordinated with the FBI. They did not coordinate with the FBI, as matter of fact, if there’s any censoring going on, if there's any bias, it's towards letting the president organize an insurrection on their platform and that they weren't being as diligent as they should have been around censoring certain content.
There is a certain both side-ism. I do believe the Twitter executives probably lean progressive and as a result they engage in both side-ism and let content and people on the right get away with things they wouldn't let people on the left, but it's a private company. They get to decide this.
