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The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult


Hugo Stiglitz

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are Texas tax payers covering all these media trips on that dps boat ???

Yes. 100%. Because our state government is simply an apparatus of the GQP. And the GQP has only one purpose: create content for Fox News.

I’m not joking, not even a little bit.
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https://www.axios.com/gop-leaders-cheney-ouster-fc28f6c2-507e-4a69-b4c4-6af95cc734fc.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

 

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Top Republicans are turning on Rep. Liz Cheney, the party’s highest-ranking woman in Congress, with one conservative leader suggesting she could be ousted from her GOP post within a month.

Why it matters: The comments by Reps. Steve Scalise, the minority whip, and Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, carry weight because of their close relationship with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — who is openly feuding with Cheney.

Banks (R-Ind.), leader of the largest conservative caucus in the House, told Axios Friday that Cheney's continued criticisms are "an unwelcome distraction," and he questioned whether she would retain her leadership role in a month.

 

 

 

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Banks' comments were echoed more diplomatically by Scalise (R-La.), the No. 2 Republican in the House.

During an interview with Axios on Friday, he said of Cheney: "This idea that you just disregard President Trump is not where we are, and, frankly, he has a lot to offer still.”

Earlier in the week, McCarthy himself told reporters: "If you're sitting here at a retreat that's focused on policy, focused on the future of making American next-century, and you're talking about something else, you're not being productive."

 

 

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Cheney is toast. She’s not willing to pledge her life to the cult leader. And being that that’s ALL the party is now...well, that won’t work out for her.

The conversion to a death cult is complete. It’s just that the last pieces are still settling after the fall.

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So, accepting funds for early childhood education that was allocated under the Trump administration is no longer welcomed in Idaho.  Seems about right.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/01/idaho-childcare-battle-us-extremism-post-trump

 

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There is $6m from Donald Trump’s administration sitting on the table in Idaho, and trying to pick it up has caused an extraordinary uproar.

In the months since a Republican house of representatives member first brought the grant for early childhood education to the legislature for a vote, far-right opponents have insisted, despite evidence and assurances proving otherwise, that the grant would be used to “indoctrinate” children five and under, and turn them into social justice activists.

 

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Supporters of the grant include the state’s two Republican senators and its business lobby, but the most vocal opponents have pitched it as a “battle for the soul of America”.

The real battle, however, appears to be against the influence of fringe voices in Idaho politics. Though seemingly an obscure battle, the intensity of the fight in the state and the blood-curdling language used by its opponents reveals much about American politics in the post-Trump era.

 

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It is a place where conspiracy theories run amok and where even some Republican legislators are at a loss how to combat the extremism of many of their supporters, who have concluded that grant money for educating young children represents a dire threat to their way of life.

Mike Satz, executive director of a new effort to combat extremism in Idaho, the Idaho 97 Project, said: “The politics have really started devolving and the extremists have really started taking control of the Republican party in the state, and now the policies are not for the people – conservative or liberal or whatever the ideology is.”

 

Spoiler

When it comes to the early childhood grant, the people who would be affected by it are watching and waiting to see if the money will be available to improve access to care – a typical family in the state spends 25% of its annual income on care for an infant and a four-year-old.

A vote in the house on whether or not to accept the money is expected any day. The house initially rejected the funds in early March, but the state senate approved an amended version of the bill by one vote earlier this month.

Supporters have flooded local news with opinion pieces clarifying misconceptions about the grant and explaining exactly how the money would be used, but they face a mountain of misinformation coming from some rightwing lawmakers and the libertarian group Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF).

The Republican representative Charlie Shepherd provided an insight into this last week, when he told the Idaho Press that he approves of the amended version of the bill after voting against it in March.

Shepherd said that his earlier concerns about “indoctrination” had been addressed, but his constituents were not aware of that change. “And if I cannot educate them on what the bill actually does in time. At this point it’s almost political suicide for me to support the bill,” he confessed.

The amended version of the bill includes language that specifies that the appropriated money “shall not be used to dictate curricula for use by local collaboratives”. That was also true before, but the additional language makes it legally binding.

The executive director of one Idaho collaborative which could receive some of the funds, Andrew Mentzer, said the money would be beneficial for expanding childcare capacity and to help existing providers stay afloat in Valley County, a scenic, rural region in the west central part of the state.

“We lost two childcare facilities in the past 15 months in our area and that put about 50 families in a pretty bad position, during a pandemic, with regard to how and when they can go to work,” said Mentzer, executive director of the West Central Mountains Economic Development Council.

“A lot of the families ended up with situations where they had to cut hours or had a parent who couldn’t go to work, and that’s food on the table at the end of the day for the individual families.”

Already, the community is short 400 childcare slots. “Those are 400 kids whose parents can’t go to work,” Mentzer said.

The people stirring the pot

The grant money would be distributed to local collaboratives like Mentzer’s by the not-for-profit Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children (Idaho AEYC). This group is separate from its national affiliate, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), a professional membership organization for people who work in education and childcare.

But opponents to the bill see a conspiracy between the two groups.

Their concern is that the NAEYC promotes anti-bias education and mentions critical race theory on its website and the Idaho AEYC partners with a local group, the Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICfL), that has received a grant unrelated to the early childhood money to diversify libraries. Many grant opponents have taken issue with resources for diverse books that the NAEYC and ICfL link to on their sites, though providing diverse books is not mandated by the early childhood grant.

When the Guardian called the Republican representative Lance Clow he was working on a document to educate his fellow legislators about what the grant actually seeks to do: provide local collaboratives with money to best address early childhood needs in their community.

Clow knows the ins and outs of the grant better than most: he is chairman of the house education committee and was involved with the first funding round used to assess the needs for early childhood education and childcare in the state.

“I don’t know if I would call myself an advocate, but I’ve been in the middle of it, and I don’t see the issues that have been raised,” Clow said.

He is sympathetic to his fellow Republicans’ concerns about critical race theory – he thinks some of its tenets are divisive – and last week voted for a bill that bans it from schools. He said the Idaho AEYC made a mistake in mentioning the national group on its website, something that provided material for the grant’s opponents, even though it was not actually connected to the money’s use.

“This is a conservative state, and local control, the family, the parents … there is a big emphasis on protecting their rights and allowing those kind of freedoms and the focus of this grant unfortunately has drifted into a concern with the national association,” he said.

He is not sure how receptive his colleagues will be to his attempts to clarify misinformation about the grant. He has noticed a difference in politicians: some will go out, speak to people and have a dialogue. Others show up to the statehouse, tell people about evils that must be stopped and stir the pot, he said.

Another force stirring the pot is IFF, which continues to oppose the grant. Its advocacy arm, Idaho Freedom Action, created form letters for voters to send to representatives this month asking them to vote against the bill, warning it is “a battle for the soul of America”.

“Senate bill 1193 would allow this radical group to teach toddlers and pre-school children to hate America,” the suggested letter reads. 

In response to interview requests from the Guardian, the IFF said it had a policy of not speaking to the media.

One of the most vocal opponents to the bill, the Republican representative Priscilla Giddings, has in recent weeks appeared in “Woke Story Time” videos for IFF where she reads diverse books, even though they are not required by the grant.

Giddings said in an email to the Guardian she still planned to vote against the money because it would be used to advocate for critical race theory. When asked to provide evidence of this, she said: “I have lots of evidence that I will discuss during debate when it comes up for a floor vote.”

‘People don’t want Idaho run by an armed mob’

Lori Fascilla, the executive director of the non-profit Giraffe Laugh Learning Centers, said she was “shocked by the lack of understanding in the statehouse of how important the childcare industry is to our state’s economy”.

Writing in the Idaho Statesman, Fascilla explained how the pandemic has seen 200 childcare providers in Idaho close since September, a problem reflected nationally: one in six childcare jobs has been lost across the country since the pandemic started.

“Our industry was already fragile before the pandemic and even more so now,” Fascilla wrote. “If it collapses, then so will our economy.”

The fear-based tactics influencing legislation in Idaho including and beyond the early childhood grant has prompted broader concerns about what is happening in the statehouse.

Earlier this month, the Idaho Statesman’s opinion editor, Scott McIntosh, published a reported two-part series titled: “Why even Republicans are calling this the ‘worst session ever’ for Idaho ‘legislature.” This series and other local media are littered with quotes from Idahoans including Republicans and business leaders concerned about the damage extremism is having on the state.

A co-founder of the Idaho 97 Project, Emily Walton, said she was moved to help create the group when a local health board had to cancel their vote on a Covid-19 public health order in December because anti-mask protesters had gathered outside the homes of some of the board members, including one commissioner whose children were home alone.

Months earlier in August, protesters against coronavirus restrictions shoved their way into the entry of the state capitol building and shattered a glass door, a small-scale preview of what was to come at the US Capitol on 6 January.

The Idaho 97 project’s name is a play on the Three Percenters – a rightwing militia group. “I believe that there are more moderate people in Idaho who don’t want things run by an armed mob, and that’s why we started,” Walton said.

The armed mob description is literal. Walton and other Idaho 97 members described how it had become common for individuals armed with assault rifles and dressed in fatigues to patrol the streets in Boise.

And at least four House Republicans have ties to extremist, anti-government militia movements including the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, according to the Idaho Statesman. One of these representatives, Chad Christensen, lists the Oath Keepers and the John Birch Society, also an anti-government extremist movement, as organizations he is a part of in his official legislative biography. All four voted against the early childhood grant.

Elizabeth Neumann worked in the Trump administration as an assistant secretary of homeland security for counter-terrorism and threat reduction. She resigned in April 2020 and has spoken about how the Trump administration ignored the threat of domestic extremism.

A lifelong Republican, Neumann is co-director of the Republican Accountability Project, which seeks to uphold democracy and hold those Republicans who attempted to overturn the 2020 election accountable.

Neumann said the uproar over childcare in Idaho was indicative of the times, where issues quickly become a part of the “constant outrage cycle” driven by far-right figures like Tucker Carlson and networks like One America News Network.

“Right now what we see in a lot of conservative or Republican circles is very fear-based,” Neumann said. “So you can almost take out the issues and in six months it will be something else and that’s because on the right, especially as a minority party at this point, they are being told that their values are not appreciated, they are no longer wanted, that they are being ostracized and cancelled.”

 

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38 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:

My boss lives in an Eastern Oregon county that votes on a regular basis to petition the state to let them join Idaho. She is quite happy that they are regularly rebuffed, because, and I quote, "Idaho is batshit crazy."

Rural PNW does have its own brand of crazy, united with disparate reaches of the country only by open borders and a cultivated, shared resentment. 

Dig the flag tho. 

F16168D6-C32C-494F-9036-E6A5EF9ACF82.png

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1 hour ago, Walden Ponderer said:

My boss lives in an Eastern Oregon county that votes on a regular basis to petition the state to let them join Idaho. She is quite happy that they are regularly rebuffed, because, and I quote, "Idaho is batshit crazy."

In another thread about cities that are "the next Austin," Boise gets a mention but the bat shittness of Idaho may slow that roll but then again, Northwest Arkansas has the same problem.

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On 4/30/2021 at 10:26 AM, Beau Vine said:

The people I see decrying socialism and accusing the Dems of being socialists most definitely do not send their kids to private school.  They're largely undereducated blue collar grunts, and their facebook pages are filled with pictures of their kids playing football or volleyball for San Marcos junior high school, and it really throws them for a loop when I ask them, "If you're so against socialism, why is your kid attending public school?"  

I usually get no response to that.  


They also frequently use "socialism" and "communism" interchangeably.  (see the "largely undereducated" part)

Which leads eventually to the "well, if I could afford it, I would send my kids to private churchy school  . . . .  But I can't afford it because of all these commanis and hommasekshuls that run things."

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1 hour ago, Walden Ponderer said:

My boss lives in an Eastern Oregon county that votes on a regular basis to petition the state to let them join Idaho. She is quite happy that they are regularly rebuffed, because, and I quote, "Idaho is batshit crazy."

It seems that any rural or even rural-ish place is exceedingly vulnerable to the stupid and Trumpy.

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Cheney is toast. She’s not willing to pledge her life to the cult leader. And being that that’s ALL the party is now...well, that won’t work out for her.

The conversion to a death cult is complete. It’s just that the last pieces are still settling after the fall.



When will they start wearing/displaying armbands to show their allegiance to Dotard and the GQP?
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17 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

It seems that any rural or even rural-ish place is exceedingly vulnerable to the stupid and Trumpy.

I live in a rural area that is not Trumpy. It is literally next door, though, to the Trumpiest rural areas you could ever hope to see. Hillsborough, NC is what Austin would be if it were a village. Graham, NC is 10 miles down the road, and is where the yards all have Trump signs still proudly declaring their allegiance, and the basements all have varying degrees of crimes in progress that you really don't want to ask questions about.

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20 hours ago, Pancho said:

Georgia is next to Mexico?

giphy.gif

 

13 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

I love that these pussies have to wear body armor on the border.

 

 

edit to add: I canoe and camp along the border on the Rio Grande whenever I can (which is not often enough), and the only Mexican nationals I ever see is the occasional and lone caballero, who always gives a friendly wave and a shout asking about "vacas solitarias".

 

Edited by High Plains Drifter
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2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

During an interview with Axios on Friday, he said of Cheney: "This idea that you just disregard President Trump is not where we are, and, frankly, he has a lot to offer still.”

Still has a lot to offer?  

Like an even bigger defeat in the voting booth?

Like siphon even more campaign donations away from the GOP and Republicans still in office?

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3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Cheney is toast. She’s not willing to pledge her life to the cult leader. And being that that’s ALL the party is now...well, that won’t work out for her.

The conversion to a death cult is complete. It’s just that the last pieces are still settling after the fall.

I’d be willing to bet a substantial percentage of my appendages that Cheney doesn’t make it out of the R primary in Wyoming, if she even wants to run again. 

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4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Cheney is toast. She’s not willing to pledge her life to the cult leader. And being that that’s ALL the party is now...well, that won’t work out for her.

The conversion to a death cult is complete. It’s just that the last pieces are still settling after the fall.

She is one of the last few with some semblance of a backbone (relatively, of course) and they are ousting her.  This doesn't bode well for anybody.

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1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’d be willing to bet a substantial percentage of my appendages that Cheney doesn’t make it out of the R primary in Wyoming, if she even wants to run again. 

I believe she will run again, because her not running for reelection is her running away from Trumpism.  If she goes down, she goes down swinging, so to speak.

Never thought I'd see the day that the daughter of Dick Cheney, someone who voted with Trump more than Matt Gaetz did is not deemed "conservative" enough for today's GOP.  I don't care for her at all, but kudos to her for having bigger balls than anyone else in the GOP.

 

 

 

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31 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

I believe she will run again, because her not running for reelection is her running away from Trumpism.  If she goes down, she goes down swinging, so to speak.

Never thought I'd see the day that the daughter of Dick Cheney, someone who voted with Trump more than Matt Gaetz did is not deemed "conservative" enough for today's GOP.  I don't care for her at all, but kudos to her for having bigger balls than anyone else in the GOP.

 

 

 

This shows exactly what has happened. These voters have no clue that in terms of actual voting, she is closer to Dotard than Gaetz. All they know is she doesn’t yell and scream conspiracies and insanity, so she must not be on their side. 

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This shows exactly what has happened. These voters have no clue that in terms of actual voting, she is closer to Dotard than Gaetz. All they know is she doesn’t yell and scream conspiracies and insanity, so she must not be on their side. 

That’s because there is no “policy” in the Trump GQP....only “content generation.” It’s just a loop of insane sound bites, and nothing more. Repeat them, and you’re a prophet...suggest anything else, and you’re a heretic to be excommunicated.
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15 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

This shows exactly what has happened. These voters have no clue that in terms of actual voting, she is closer to Dotard than Gaetz. All they know is she doesn’t yell and scream conspiracies and insanity, so she must not be on their side. 

You're assuming they would give the first scintilla of a shit about actual policy. They don't; they care about the spectacle. The show is the reason.

Edited by Walden Ponderer
Brisket beat me by a minute.
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1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:


That’s because there is no “policy” in the Trump GQP....only “content generation.” It’s just a loop of insane sound bites, and nothing more. Repeat them, and you’re a prophet...suggest anything else, and you’re a heretic to be excommunicated.

GOP Rep Anthony Gonzalez basically said as much. Paraphrase: you can’t lead the GOP if every word out of your mouth is NOT a lie 

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This is only going to get worse across all parts of the country at all levels of government. Some of the worst people imaginable are going to be governing you. 
 
 

You ain’t wrong.

They’ve made a toxic cocktail of mentally unbalanced religious fundamentalist conspiracy theory utter fucking insanity....their core and EXCLUSIVE “belief system.” It is a completely insane death cult, and it will continue to get worse, because they’ve driven away anyone who could be a check on their insanity.
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4 minutes ago, Jack Straw said:

100% correct 

That is the issue. CNN had some R Senator who was also a doctor on to talk about his campaign to get people vaccinated. He was asked about certain crazy anti-vaccine statements from Ron Johnson and Tucker. He said he wasn’t going to get into that and just encouraged everyone to get vaccinated. That’s the main problem with the Republican Party. The good ones will not stand up to the bad ones. That is how evil wins. Bad people will always be in every party, but when the good ones no longer have the balls and common decency to stand for good, then we all lose. The R Senator could have easily said Ron Johnson and Tucker are mistaken, and vaccines are 100% safe. But no, he’s a pussy. 

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2 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

That is the issue. CNN had some R Senator who was also a doctor on to talk about his campaign to get people vaccinated. He was asked about certain crazy anti-vaccine statements from Ron Johnson and Tucker. He said he wasn’t going to get into that and just encouraged everyone to get vaccinated. That’s the main problem with the Republican Party. The good ones will not stand up to the bad ones. That is how evil wins. Bad people will always be in every party, but when the good ones no longer have the balls and common decency to stand for good, then we all lose. The R Senator could have easily said Ron Johnson and Tucker are mistaken, and vaccines are 100% safe. But no, he’s a pussy. 

So they’re like cops.

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Nutbags:

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Sen. Mitt Romney was lustily booed by the more than 2,100 Republican delegates who packed into the Maverik Center on Saturday for the party’s state convention.

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” said Romney trying to deflect the chorus of catcalls that greeted him as he took the stage.

“I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues,” said Romney as delegates attempted to shout him down. Accusations that Romney was a “traitor” or “communist” flew from the crowd like so many poison darts.

The cacophony of disapproval only ended after outgoing party chair Derek Brown scolded delegates to “show respect” for Romney.

“You can boo all you like,” said Romney. “I’ve been a Republican all of my life. My dad was the governor of Michigan and I was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.”


Romney wasn’t the only recipient of boos from the crowd. Gov. Spencer Cox also caught a measure of disapproval.

“I know some of you hate me for some of the decisions I had to make,” said Cox as he took the stage to a smattering of boos from delegates upset with COVID-19 restrictions. “But I want to point out that some of you haven’t been paying attention.”

Cox touted the state’s rapidly improving economy following the COVID-related downturn, noting Utah was one of two states to see net job growth during the pandemic. He also said the state did not go as far as some other states with virus-related restrictions.

“We banned government vaccine passports,” said Cox to cheers, referencing a bill passed during the 2021 Utah Legislature. But that bill only blocked the state government from requiring vaccines. Private businesses can still require vaccinations for customers.

“We’ve also had zero restrictions on religious gatherings since October, and after this school year ends, there won’t be any more masks in schools,” said Cox.

Sen. Mike Lee drew a standing ovation as he took the podium and, hand on his heart, he cheered delegates in attendance “for taking action! Thank you!,” he said, calling their presence “an act of faith in the future.”

In a hardline speech, he blasted Democrats and invoked the U.S. Constitution and Founding Fathers, whom he praised for constraining government power on behalf of the people. He underscored their guarantees of unfettered gun ownership and limited intrusion in the lives of private citizens.

Quoting George Washington, Lee said U.S. exceptionalism rested in faith in its citizenry, not the government. “It means freedom,” he said, adding that Democrats hated Republicans and decrying their new proposals under the Biden administration.

“Their whole agenda is wrapped up around one idea,” Lee said, “unquestionable trust in government.”


He also assailed proposals to increase the number of judges on the U.S. Supreme Court as “a bone-headed idea,” saying it “would destroy judicial independence.” New Democratic efforts to reform U.S. elections, Lee added said, were a move “to destroy local control.”

“There are some truths we can never betray,” Lee told the crowd. “We are the stewards of our own destiny.” He said Biden did not share that view.

“He wants us dependent on government,” Lee said, adding the president also wanted “to extend lockdowns. We want to end them!” The senator quipped that the Centers for Disease Control — responsible for guiding the nation’s health policies during the pandemic — “was less about disease and more about control.”

Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, too, underscored a perceived threat from Washington to Utah values, and she accused Biden of jeopardizing the state’s energy sector with recent limits on development on public lands. Henderson said the Democratic-controlled Congress wanted to raise taxes irresponsibly and that it had thrown trillions in pandemic relief funds at the states during the health crisis.

“We all know there’s nothing more expensive than free money,” she said.


And like other speakers, she urged party members to put aside divisions. “We are at a crossroads,” she said. “There is much at stake.”

Congressman Chris Stewart called the Biden administration’s approach “radical socialism,” criticizing its leaders — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he said “kind of sucks” — and he singled out the New Green Deal, proposed in some Democratic circles to address the climate change emergency.

“You’d think they’d run out of dumb ideas, but they don’t,” Stewart said, to cheers from the audience. He then accused that the media of intentional bias, echoing a common theme struck by former President Donald Trump.

“They are actively deceptive,” he said. “They lie to you.”

Congressman Burgess Owens offered deep gratitude for Utah’s focus on family, sense of volunteerism and respect for racial diversity. “We’re the least racist state in the country and the least racist country in the world,” he said.


“We do not apologize for who we are,” said Owens. “We love family, God, country and we respect women. That is who are.”

 

Edited by Beau Vine
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Mike Huckabee criticizes Obamas for letting daughters hear Beyonce’s ‘mental poison’

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/mike-huckabee-criticizes-obamas-allowing-daughters-hear-beyonces-mental-poison
 

Josh Duggar: Mike Huckabee Defends the '19 Kids and Counting' Star

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Entertainment/josh-duggar-mike-huckabee-defends-19-kids-counting/story%3fid=31236959

 

 

Child molestation is forgivable. Listening to Beyoncé is not. These are the values of RW Konservative Khristian Kooks.

Edited by Willfully Horn
Correcting links
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One of the nation’s largest states is taking on Big Tech. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign into law a bill that would prevent social media companies Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube from “deplatforming” politicians like former President Donald Trump from their platforms.

The bill was approved Thursday by the Republican-controlled state legislature.

It orders social media companies to publish standards with detailed definitions of when someone would be censored or blocked and makes companies subject to as much as $250,000 daily fines for deplatforming a Florida candidate. The bill also requires a social media company to notify users within seven days that they could be censored, giving them time to correct the posting.

Republican lawmakers in Florida say legislation is needed to curb the influence the nation’s leading social media companies have over the national conversation. 

 

"What this bill is about is sending a loud message to Silicon Valley that they are not the absolute arbiters of truth," state Rep. John Snyder, a Republican from the Port St. Lucie area, said Wednesday, according to NBC News.

 


"What this bill does is send a loud message that the Constitution does not have an asterisk that says only certain speech is free and protected," he said. 

The legislation is likely to face industry opposition. Trade group NetChoice says the bill violates free speech protections. 

“This bill abandons conservative values, violates the First Amendment, and would force websites to host antisemitic, racist, and hateful content. Content moderation is crucial to an internet that is safe and valuable for families and Floridian small businesses, but this bill would undermine this important ecosystem,” Carl Szabo, vice-president and general counsel of trade group NetChoice, said in a statement to USA TODAY. 


Szabo also argues that the legislation would only make it more difficult for conservatives to get their voices heard. 

He told Florida lawmakers earlier this month that “conservative speech has never been stronger.”

“No longer limited to a handful of newspapers or networks, conservative messages can now reach billions of people across multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Gab, Parler, Rumble, and MeWe,” Szabo said. “We’ve seen the rise of conservative voices without having to beg for an Op-Ed in the Washington Post or New York Times, or a speaking slot on CNN. Social networks allow conservative voices to easily find conservative viewers.”


Conservatives have intensified attacks on social media companies after the ejection of Trump and other conservatives following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

DeSantis, a Republican and a Trump ally, has condemned the “oligarchs in Silicon Valley” for deplatforming Trump and other conservatives.

Without citing evidence, DeSantis said Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are using their size, advertising power and global reach to influence thought and play favorites – being tougher on those who comment from the political right than left.

DeSantis revived his criticism recently after a roundtable he held in March was taken down from YouTube because the governor and scientists he invited were accused of airing COVID-19 misinformation.

If conservatives want to remain on social media platforms, they should follow the rules, State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando area Democrat, told NBC News.

"There's already a solution to deplatforming candidates on social media: Stop trafficking in conspiracy theories. That's the solution. Stop pushing misinformation if you're a candidate or an incumbent elected official. Stop retweeting QAnon. Stop lying on social media," Smith said. 

 

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