RUTHFULLY YOURS

A video of MSNBC host Ari Melber on Monday fretting that SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk could use Twitter to “secretly ban” or “turn down the reach” of a major party’s candidate has gone viral, and for good reason. Never has there been a more glaring and pathological example of liberal projection on display—and many conservatives are reacting with stunned disbelief.

The “Rubin Report’s” Dave Rubin tweeted, “This is exactly what the Machine\Left\Democrats have done to their opponents for years, you absolute [clown]@AriMelber. Enjoy the ride into irrelevance . . .”

“He’s merely reciting what Twitter did to conservatives. But he doesn’t realize it or convinced himself it didn’t happen,” wrote radio host Jason Rantz.

Former diplomat Richard Grenell, who served as Donald Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, tweeted: “Breaking: @AriMelber was born yesterday. Happy Belated Birthday, Ari.”

During the Monday evening episode of “The Beat with Ari Melber,” the host perfectly described what Twitter had become before Musk’s takeover—a mechanism for narrative control benefitting one political party.

Melber argued that as the owner of Twitter, Musk does not have to explain himself: “You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate, or all of its candidates, all of its nominees!” he warned with wide-eyed horror. “Or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it til after the election.”

How is it possible for someone to be so lacking in self-awareness?

Leftists habitually use projection to accuse their political opponents of doing what they themselves are guilty of doing. In this instance, Melber accused Musk of potentially suppressing free speech to benefit one political party over another.

It is ironic that Melber would share these concerns, given Twitter’s egregious history of throttling conservative voices.

The social media giant hasn’t exactly been secretive about banning certain elected Republicans—most notably former President Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal accounts—for alleged violations of its terms of service. Countless conservatives have been banned from Twitter over the years, and of course, the suspensions seem to go only one way.

In one of its most egregiously partisan acts, Twitter suspended the New York Post before the 2020 election after the paper’s accurate reports on Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop threatened to torpedo Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

Twitter has also permanently banned respected doctors like Robert Malone, and journalists like Alex Berenson, because their accurate reports regarding COVID vaccines and treatments countered the public health establishment’s narratives.

Meanwhile, it’s no secret that Twitter for years has used its algorithms to “reduce the reach” or “shadowban” conservative users who used their platforms to counter ruling class narratives.

In January 2018, Project Veritas released a video showing Twitter engineers boasting about their use of “shadowbanning” to curb conservative speech.

Olinda Hassan, then the policy manager for Twitter trust and safety, was caught on tape admitting “we’re trying to ‘down rank’ . . . shitty people to not show up.”

Pranay Singh, then a Twitter direct messaging engineer, explained how they programmed the system against conservatives: “You have, like, 5,000 keywords to describe a redneck,” adding “the majority of [them] are for Republicans.”

Since Musk’s purchase of Twitter, conservative users have noticed that their follower counts are suddenly rising . . . almost as if opaque censorship algorithms have been deactivated.

Although Musk has been vocal about his desire to see Twitter return to its roots as “a platform for free speech” because he believes “free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Melber went ahead and questioned his motives anyway.

“Elon Musk says this is all to help people, because he is just a free speech philosophically clear, open-minded helper . . . Is that true? Should you take him at his word?” Melber asked.

Unlike his liberal detractors, Musk doesn’t have a history of censoring opposing voices, so Melber’s concerns seem ridiculously out of place. Melber’s embarrassing display was just a case of liberal projection on steroids.