SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter boss Elon Musk took a verbal swipe at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez during an appearance Friday night on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” for her past remarks concerning what amounts to censoring political opponents.
Before Fox News decided to part ways earlier this week with long-time top-rated host Tucker Carlson, ‘AOC’ had been calling on the network to kick him off the air. When it finally happened, she gloated about it online.
“Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy. He’s the person who is arguably responsible for driving some of the most amounts of death threats, violent threats, not just to my office but to plenty of people across the country. Deplatforming works and it is important, and there you go, good things can happen,” she noted on Twitter.
.@AOC on @TuckerCarlson: “Deplatforming works and it is important.” pic.twitter.com/AZZj0wd3S9
— Donna, Independent ????? (@TruthFreedomPe1) April 25, 2023
During his interview with Maher, Musk addressed that kind of left-wing authoritarian mindset.
“I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment. There’s a reason for the First Amendment. People came from countries where they could not speak freely and where saying certain things would get thrown into prison,” he said, recounting American founding history better than many high school graduates can because they were never taught as much.
“My concern with Twitter was to that it is somewhat of the digital town square. And it’s important that there be both the reality and perception of trust for a wide range of viewpoints,” Musk continued. “And there was a lot of censorship going on and uncovered a lot of that with the Twitter Files, including a lot of government-driven censorship.
“It seems like that’s got to be a constitutional violation what was going on there. And since I’m an avid Twitter user, I could detect that, like, something’s not right here,” Musk said. “And so that’s really why I did the acquisition.
“It wasn’t because I thought this is an easy way to make money or something like that. I really can’t emphasize this enough,” he added. We must protect free speech.
“It’s only relevant when it’s someone you don’t like saying something you don’t like,” Musk noted, getting agreement from Maher.
“For those who would advocate censorship, just remember at some point that will be turned on you,” he added, to audience applause.
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