(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) Top Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde wept during a meeting with colleagues as she discussed the consequences of Elon Musk‘s takeover of the company.
Gadde, who once confessed in Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post that she was “seriously troubled . . . by those who are trying to silence healthy discourse in the name of free expression,” couldn’t hold back tears as she discussed impending changes to the company.
Gadde “holds the most controversial position at Twitter” — running the team that decides “how to moderate content” — and was behind both the decision to block the distribution of the New York Post‘s “laptop from hell” expose on Hunter Biden and to permanently suspend President Donald Trump’s account, according to Politico.
Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
After Musk claimed on Twitter that “suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” 10,000 liberal swords “leaped from their scabbards” in Gadde’s defense, with former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo leading the charge.
“What’s going on?” Costolo screamed. “You’re making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats.”
“Color me shocked SHOCKED that people are coming for two of our prominent female executives on day 1 of this thing,” another Twitter executive wrote in defense of a $17 million-per-year tech lawyer.
Perhaps the most devastating response came from Montana politician Reilly Neill.
“You need to step off this platform if you want it to retain any credibility, Mr. Musk,” Neill wrote. “You have zero journalism training.”
Gadde’s tears are the latest sign that the Left is coming unglued over the possibility of a genuine “free speech absolutist” operating one of its narrative engines.
At a meeting with frantic Twitter employees Monday — audio of which was leaked to Project Veritas — board member Bret Taylor acknowledged “all the emotions of today” as he explained the reasons for the sale.
“By law, we are required to act in the best interest of our shareholders,” Taylor said.
Current CEO Parag Agrawal added that “the role of our policies and the capabilities we’ve built around content moderation are fundamental to keeping Twitter safe and growing.”
Former President Barack Obama set the parameters of the Left’s commitment to free speech at a University of Chicago disinformation conference in which he described himself as “close to a First Amendment absolutist.”
It’s OK to have free speech, Obama said, as long as everyone agrees on “process,” and that process, of course, must include “a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms” that are inevitably enforced only against conservatives.
If they don’t run Twitter, however, the Left cannot silence conservatives.
As a result, as Business Insider reported, #LiberalMeltdown is now trending on Twitter.
“Twitter’s user base appears to be shifting politically to the right as a result of the news that Elon Musk is buying the company,” wrote reporter Ben Gilbert.
Tablet Magazine writer Jacob Siegel has cast Musk’s takeover as round one in “Elon vs. Obama,” a boxing match that sets “Musk and a merry band of fellow billionaires . . . committed to breaking the monopoly on public discourse held by our current ruling class” against “the forces of the bipartisan political establishment under the command of General Barack Obama.”
“Musk and other billionaires who are now coalescing into the counterelite are testing out what happens when they simply buy back the central institutions of public discourse,” Siegel wrote.
