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Amazon's Complicity
00:04:37
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| Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the weekly report. | |
| Protect the First Amendment, Impeach Joe Biden. | |
| Protecting democracy and the Constitution from Donald Trump and the MAGA extremists is a major theme of President Biden's re-election campaign. | |
| As is often the case in American politics, President Biden is just as, if not more, guilty of posing an existential threat to the Constitution as those he smears as extremists. | |
| For example, President Biden and members of his administration have waged a campaign to undermine the First Amendment by encouraging companies to suppress the expression of unapproved views online. | |
| The latest example of the administration trying to get a private internet company to censor Americans may be the most outrageous of all. | |
| Haas Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan recently released a series of emails between Biden administration officials and Amazon, the world's largest online retailer. | |
| The government officials wanted Amazon to remove from its online catalog books containing misinformation regarding the safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines, meaning anything questioning the government's pro-vaccine propaganda. | |
| While Amazon did try to push back some against the administration, it did remove at least one anti-vaccine book from its online category. | |
| Amazon also manipulated its search results to make sure books expressing skepticism of the vaccines were buried under books touting the pro-vaccine line. | |
| The company probably hoped that by burying these dissident books, Amazon could make the administration happy without actually removing all books that question the COVID vaccines. | |
| The company also promised the administration that it would expand use of a Centers for Disease Control warning for books promoting anti-vaccine narratives. | |
| Some libertarians say that Amazon should not be criticized for its decisions. | |
| These libertarians point out that as a private company, Amazon has the right to decide what books to sell and also has the right to decide to make it difficult to find books expressing viewpoints the company finds dangerous or distasteful. | |
| This is true, but ignores one important fact. | |
| Amazon's decision to suppress books critical of COVID vaccines was not done to attract consumers who would not shop at a site that sells anti-vaccine propaganda or conspiracy theories. | |
| Instead, Amazon acted at the behest of government officials who were seeking to prohibit Americans from accessing alternative views. | |
| Amazon may have been eager to cooperate with the government to avoid being subjected to antitrust litigation. | |
| At the very time the administration was demanding Amazon suppress COVID dissidents, President Biden was preparing to appoint Lena Kahn, an advocate for antitrust legislation against Amazon, to lead the Federal Trade Commission. | |
| It is clear that the U.S. government has been a major spreader of COVID disinformation. | |
| while those challenging the government's pro-mask, pro-vax, and pro-lockdown propaganda have been the main truth-tellers. | |
| COVID is an example of why protecting the First Amendment is vital to protecting not just liberty, but also our prosperity and health. | |
| Congress should prioritize its investigation into the Biden administration's efforts to silence Americans because of their views. | |
| Congress should then impeach all high-level federal officials, including President Biden, who took action to violate Americans' First Amendment's rights. | |