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November 3, 2022

Twitter fact-checks Joe Biden's White House

By Rajan Laad

The day before yesterday, The White House posted a tweet touting an increase in Social Security benefits for seniors and crediting Joe Biden for it.

The text of the tweet read as follows:

Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden's leadership[.]

By Wednesday morning, Twitter, which was recently acquired by Elon Musk, added context notes pointing out that the increase was tied to a 1972 law requiring automatic increases based on cost of living changes.

The context annotation noted that the record increase in benefits was linked to inflation, which is at its highest point in 40 years.

In other words, Biden's White House was bragging about what is an unfortunate situation that has arisen due to its mismanagement of the economy.

It was gravely insensitive to suffering citizens, but it would be unwise to expect compassion or empathy from Democrats.

This also an act of great foolishness, but what else can you expect from the Biden administration?

This was a political self-goal for the Biden administration, hence the tweet was deleted.  By Wednesday, the tweet no longer appeared on the White House's Twitter timeline.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred to the deleted tweet during a press briefing Wednesday, saying the following:

"Look, the tweet was not complete. Usually, when we put out a tweet we post it with context, and it did not have that context.

"So in the past, we've pointed out that for the first time in over a decade seniors' Medicare premiums will decrease even as their Social Security checks increase. That's a little bit of context that was not included."

This wasn't the only occasion when Twitter provided context for dubious claims made by Biden's White House.

Three days ago, Joe Biden's official Twitter account, @POTUS, claimed that 55 corporations made $40 billion in 2020 and "paid zero in federal taxes." 

Twitter then added context, noting that Biden's Inflation Reduction Act imposed a minimum tax on corporations with average pre-tax earnings greater than $1 billion. 

The context annotation also noted that of the 55 corporations mentioned by Biden, only 14 had earnings greater than $1 billion and would be eligible under Biden's tax law. 

The note cited a 2021 analysis by the Washington Post; Reuters; ITEP, which is a non-profit tax policy organization; and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) website for reference.

Biden's original tweet remains available. 

So why is this suddenly happening on Twitter, which was the bastion of the left?

Time for some context.

Back on October 14, 2020, the New York Post carried myriad reports on the shady business dealings of Hunter Biden, enabled by his father, Joe Biden, when the latter was vice president under Barack Obama.

The N.Y. Post also carried a report on Hunter Biden's laptop, which contained emails, text messages, and financial documents that proved that Biden, as vice president, had used his influence to reap large profits for his family.

The laptop also had photos of drug-addled Hunter and in flagrante delicto with a prostitute.  There were text messages of Hunter using racist language.

Upon these shocking revelations, various prominent Democrats who masquerade as journalists on MSNBC, NBC, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, CNN, and The New York Times joined forces to discredit the story.  NPR, which is funded by taxpayers, claimed there were "red flags" in the Post's story.  

Fifty-one former senior intelligence officials signed a letter claiming that the emails revealed by the N.Y. Post had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

Both Twitter and Facebook took extraordinary censorship measures to suppress these exposés.  Twitter baselessly claimed that the source was "hacked materials" as an excuse to suppress an inconvenient story.

Twitter users who clicked the link on Twitter were shown an alert  claiming that the web page may be "unsafe" and could contain content that would break Twitter's rules if it were shared directly on the platform.

Twitter blocked users from sharing the link to The N.Y. Post's reports.

Finally, on October 14, 2020, Twitter locked the N.Y. Post's account.  The official Trump campaign Twitter account was also locked after it posted clips relating to the N.Y. Post story.

The N.Y. Post account was eventually unlocked, on 30 October, but it was probably too late; the damage was already done.

This wasn't a traditional election, where a majority voted on Election Day.  For the 2020 presidential elections, an unprecedented 69% of voters cast their votes either by mail or before Election Day.

The blocking of this information obviously had an impact.

A NewsBusters poll revealed that 16% of Biden voters would have voted differently had they known of Hunter's laptop.

This suppression of key information was an act of meddling in the 2020 presidential election.  This was done purposefully and maliciously.  They may want to claim that it was erroneous.

After they had achieved their objective of installing Joe Biden in the White House, Twitter had to pretend to take remedial actions.

Hence, they introduced Birdwatch in January 2021, which allows users to identify information in tweets they believe is misleading and write notes that provide informative context.  In other words, this is a community-based fact-check or context-providing service.  This facility is available to U.S. users only.

The service hasn't yielded much output.

However, these recent fact-checks of Biden's and the White House's account show that things may be, just maybe, changing a bit.

Perhaps Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter contributed to this?

Twitter explicitly claims that is not the case.

However, Musk seemed to approve of Birdwatch's actions.

The action taken by Twitter was nowhere close to what was done to President Trump or the N.Y. Post.  Twitter didn't actually fact-check the accounts in question or suppress information or lock any account.  They merely provided context.  Twitter didn't compel either of the Twitter accounts to delete their tweets.

The White House voluntarily deleted it because it made Biden look bad.  In a strange way, the context actually helped the Biden administration.

But there were perhaps the first instances where Democrat-based Twitter accounts were receiving notifications about the veracity of their claims.

It was enough for right-leaning users to celebrate.

The reason is that when oppression becomes systemic and prolonged, even a slight semblance of equality and fairness seems like a luxury.

Freeing all social media platforms from the tyranny and the hegemony of the left should be among the priority items for the GOP when they take back the House and the Senate following the midterms.

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