On Tuesday, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson and guest Harmeet Dhillon slammed Twitter for allowing communist regimes to spread misinformation while censoring scientific debate about the cure for COVID-19.
Carlson acknowledged that there is room for debate concerning the best course of action to solve the coronavirus pandemic. He and Dhillon, who serves on President Donald Trump's 2020 advisory council, agreed that free speech to debate is critical during a time like this.
Dhillon observed that Twitter was “censoring people for reporting that a drug that had been approved by the FDA is a hopeful alternative to suffering and dying from this disease.”
She also noted that Twitter has allowed the Chinese government to spread “absolute gaslight propaganda about this disease originating not in Wuhan where we all know that it did but actually by the United States military bringing it to China. Thats A-OK in Twitter's worldview.”
Twitter announced that the platform is “expanding our safety rules to include content that could place people at a higher risk of transmitting COVID-19” on March 18. The platform said that it would restrict content that “increases the chance that someone contracts or transmits the virus.”
Carlson acknowledged that while hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, is still being examined, “some doctors and researchers on the front lines think it works, and they are treating patients with it right now. The FDA just approved it. Yet because the media are partisan and stupid, their position is hydroxychloroquine doesn't work and could never work, and if you disagree with that, we’ll make you shut up.”
The FDA issued on March 28, 2020, “an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] to allow hydroxychloroquine sulfate and chloroquine phosphate products donated to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) to be distributed and used for certain hospitalized patients with COVID-19.”
Twitter has allowed Chinese government officials to point a finger at the United States for the Wuhan virus on the platform. Lijian Zhao, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, for example, speculated in a tweet: “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.”
Brazillian President Jair Bolsonaro appears to have not gotten the same level of protection from Twitter. The platform “took down two tweets from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, citing its policy against misinformation related to the Chinese coronavirus,” reported Breitbart.
Tucker, who has cautioned before that the virus is not to be taken lightly, still defended Bolsonaro’s right to ask questions concerning the drug: “Now, of course, Bolsonaro could be completely wrong about that. He might also be completely right. We don't know. Nobody does. But Big Tech does not believe you should be allowed to think about this.”
Tucker elaborated that advice from institutions has been suspect in recent months, from the U.S. Government “telling you that masks don't protect the public from coronavirus” to the World Health Organization telling citizens “that China had determined that the virus couldn't be spread from person-to-person.”
Why is Twitter allowing this double-standard? Dhillon says to follow the money. “The answer is big dollar signs,” she said. “These companies are desperate to break into China” she observed, before adding “these American corporations want to -- they’re globalist, they’re pushing a globalist agenda, and they want to make sure that when the time comes for China to be open to them, they aren't on the wrong side of China's propaganda arm in the Chinese government.”
Twitter and other Big Tech companies’ actions on this “could have health consequences,” she warned.
