The Roundup: Week Ending December 3, 2022

Dec 3, 2022

This week has been… 🔥

If you’ve not been paying attention, then buckle up, buttercup. Here’s what’s happening:

Elon Musk made good on his promise and released information (and receipts) proving that Twitter intentionally suppressed stories - with Biden campaign and later administration influence - during the 2020 election campaign that would hurt President Biden. (aka, Hunter Biden’s laptop).
CNN announced new, massive layoffs that are impacting more of the network’s most well-known anchors and personalities.
The FDA is being sued for its suppression/influence of information about ivermectin during COVID
Dr. Anthony Fauci was deposed in court and could not cite a study supporting the use of facemarks to stop the spread of COVID
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Twitter is 🔥 - #TheTwitterFiles

Elon Musk announced this past week that he would be releasing information that demonstrated government-sponsored censorship and influence on Twitter during the 2020 election and beyond. He elected to do this through independent journalist Matthew Taibbi.

#Twittergate 1.0 dropped on Friday evening. You should read the thread to grasp its significance. Today, the social media website is ablaze with opinions left and right. Most importantly, it’s a free exchange of ideas, and voices of every stripe are being given equal opportunity to express themselves due to Musk’s un-banning of thousands of accounts earlier this week.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Here we go!! 🍿🍿

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

Government-sponsored censorship

I’ve been showing the heavy lifting that others have been doing against government-sponsored censorship in The Roundup for some time. The attorneys-general of Missouri and Louisiana are still pursuing their lawsuit against the federal government for censorship.

It was unsettling and disconcerting to see White House press secretary this past Monday announce that they were “keeping on eye on Twitter.” Elon Musk came under significant criticism and fire this week from many fronts. Did they know what was coming with #Twittergate?

At Monday's White House press conference, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed that the Biden administration is "keeping a close eye" on Twitter after Reuters' Andrea Shalal asked what is being done to prevent the platform from becoming a "vector for misinformation."
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Mind you, what was going on behind the scenes at Twitter was probably also going on at Google/YouTube and Facebook/Instagram as well as MSM outlets, academia, and with key celebrities/influencers.

Buzz Patterson @BuzzPatterson

Their world view doesn’t rely on truth. It relies on emotion and truth interferes with that. Freedom of speech interferes with them controlling the narrative. And here you are to flip that.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

@RubinReport Why are so many in the media against free speech? This is messed up.

CNN announced more layoffs

Speculation is rampant about why the network has lost such significant market share and viewership over the past two years, but most centers on the apparent “Trump factor.”

New head of CNN Chris Licht wrote, “it is incredibly hard to say goodbye to any one member of the CNN team, much less many.”

CNN on Wednesday informed employees that layoffs had commenced, a move that is expected to impact hundreds of staffers at the global news network and mark the deepest cuts to the organization in years.
Chris Licht, who took over as chief executive of the network in May, described the cuts in an all-staff memo as a “gut punch” to the organization…
Other media organizations have also cut costs as they work to best position themselves for the stormy economic climate. Disney (DIS) said last week the company needed to restructure, and AMC Networks (AMCX) announced Tuesday that it would cut 20% of its staff. Social media companies such as Facebook (FB)-parent Meta, which also rely on advertising revenue, have also executed layoffs in recent months.
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Fauci deposed this week and “can’t remember”

As part of the aforementioned lawsuit brought against the government for censorship, Dr. Anthony Fauci was deposed this week in court.

One shocker that emerged was that when asked to provide evidence and studies showing that masks were effective in stopping the spread of COVID, Fauci said he couldn’t cite a single study proving that.

The Case for Ivermectin

Things are heating up about the OTC medication ivermectin. It was maligned viciously during the pandemic as a “horse medicine.”

U.S. FDA @US_FDA

You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.

fda.govWhy You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19Using the Drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19 can be dangerous and even lethal. The FDA has not approved the drug for that purpose.

Now, details are emerging that its effectiveness may have been discounted due to the need to promote the vaccines. With the latest news showing that vaccinated people are dying from COVID more than unvaccinated, this is disturbing at the very least.

The FDA is being sued for its attempt to influence people from using a drug that has been evidentially proven to help treat COVID.

In response to the lawsuit, lawyers for the FDA claimed that its guidance for people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation; as such, they weren’t mandating against it.
However, in an interview that aired on NTD’s “Newsmakers” on Nov. 23, Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, confirmed that the FDA did, indeed, take an “unprecedented” approach against ivermectin and said that their defense amounts to the FDA trying to rewrite COVID-19 history.
7

If you’ve not heard of ivermectin, count it as a success of the FDA and CDC’s full-court press against providing that information to you. (Disclosure: I took ivermectin during my own bout with COVID and attribute my rapid recovery to it.)

The Truth About Ivermectin: Medical miracle or notorious lynchpin of misinformation?
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This didn’t age well

In a November 4 article, Bev Potter wrote, “Almost Nobody Uses Twitter And The Media Needs To Stop Inflating Its Importance.”

Alexa Corse at the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Mr. Musk has tried to frame demands for long hours of ‘hardcore’ work at Twitter in altruistic terms but it isn’t clear that they are motivating employees.”

And #RIPTwitter also may have been a too-early death pronouncement:

memezar