‘Republicans Made Fools of Themselves’: House Oversight Hearing on Twitter Roundly Mocked
One commentator compared inquiry to the "Seinfeld" holiday of festivus
A Republican-led House inquiry Wednesday — which included a baseless threat to arrest former Twitter executives — is being widely ridiculed for indulging in nothing but right-wing grievance and fantasy.
The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the matters of supposed “censorship” at Twitter, as well as that perennial right-wing boogyman, Hunter Biden and his infamous laptop.
The session, however, accomplished nothing serious and served only to demonstrate how unmoored the new House majority is from reality.
Among the highlights — or lowlights, depending on your perspective — was Rep Clay Higgins' threat to have the former Twitter executives testifying at the hearing, arrested for interfering in the 2020 presidential election. The Louisiana Republican, however, made that allegation of interference baselessly and without evidence to back it up.
“This is like a word salad of right-wing craziness, right? I mean, and if you are just a normal person — 80 percent of the country by the way that is not on Twitter, and you're hearing things like [Trump-era special prosecutor John] Durham, ‘woke mobs,’ many of the sentences in Sarah Huckabee Sanders' speech the other night, you -- you tune in and you think I have no idea what you're talking about,” Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary for President Biden, said during an on-camera appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, referring to the Republican governor of Arkansas’ response to Biden's State of the Union address.
Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough compared the House hearing to the movie, The Other Guys, starring Will Farrell.
“Will Ferrell goes, ‘That didn’t really turn out the way you expected, did it?’ And neither did this hearing. Republicans made fools of themselves again,” said Scarborough, himself a one-time Republican congressman from Florida.
Wednesday's hearing was nothing but “nonsense,” according to technology journalist Kara Swisher, who made an appearance on CNN.
“I’m glad we got to the bottom of this nonsense. I mean, this is ridiculous. What it’s been shown here is that Twitter was not really pressured, but they were contacted by everybody who wanted to influence what they were doing,” she said. “But there was no conspiracy here. There was no anything except people trying to gain purchase.
“And in the case of this Hunter Biden thing, they denied it. They denied it. And so I think this was a waste of taxpayer money. It’s a lot of nonsense. It’s a lot of allegations that they just can’t prove,” Swisher added. “And so, hopefully, they’ll move along from this one and move on to another nonsensical idea, or conspiracy theory around these people. But I thought the [Twitter] executives did a great job.”
Tim Miller, writer for the online publication, The Bulwark, explained what the hearing was really about, in an on-camera appearance with MSNBC host Joy Reid.
“And I got to tell you, this is all about the self-important delusions of the Republicans on this committee. They want to be able to raise money. They want to be able to have little viral video clips that they can play in conservative media to help increase their fame and help increase their visibility among their base,” Miller said. “And then I think that the best case scenario, the cherry on top, is that one of these subpoenas they’re just papering the whole federal government with will turn over something that they can use in the 2024 campaign. Because they don’t have any basis for what they’re doing.
“I think there’s the additional element of this, which is the funniest part of it, I guess, is that they just want an airing of the grievances. It’s a little festivus,” Miller added, referring to the made-up holiday from the sitcom Seinfeld.
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