Twitter’s ‘Biden Protection Rule’
The social-media giant applies different standards to Trump and Biden campaigns.
Twitter has labeled a Trump campaign video as “manipulated media” in line with a new standard the company recently introduced in its attempt to cut down on “fake news.” The video in question featured a clip of Joe Biden at a campaign rally stumbling over his words as he appears to inadvertently give an endorsement for President Donald Trump. The clip shows Biden saying, “We can only reelect Donald Trump,” but it’s cut off before Biden goes on to plug himself as the answer to Trump.
Trump’s campaign team quickly blasted Twitter for its biased and uneven application of its new standard, which it called the “Biden protection rule.” The Trump camp specifically noted several Biden campaign videos that are clearly “doctored and deceptively edited” yet untouched by Twitter. “The Biden campaign is scared as hell that voters will see the flood of unedited and embarrassing verbal stumbles that will continue to go viral if ‘Status Quo Joe’ is the nominee,” said Andrew Clark, the Trump campaign’s rapid-response director. “Twitter shouldn’t be an enforcement arm of Joe Biden’s campaign strategy, but if they choose to police every video clip they must hold his own campaign to the same standard.”
In fact, Biden’s campaign has produced a slew of deceptively edited and manipulated video clips of Trump that clearly run counter to Twitter’s new standard. One in particular truncates and splices Trump’s comments to make him say things he didn’t say. Yet Twitter has failed to label them as “manipulated media.” To any objective observer, it sure seems that Twitter is actively assisting and protecting Biden.
This news comes as no surprise to conservatives who have long blasted Silicon Valley’s social-media giants for blatant politically leftist bias and active suppression of free speech. Twitter’s refusal to hold both political campaigns to the same standard only serves to once again underscore the fact that social-media giants aren’t interested in fairness or freedom. Instead, they’re concerned only with forcing their perspective onto the entire population.
