House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Twitter CEO Elon Musk met at the US Capitol in Washington on Thursday evening, according to sources for CNN.
When leaving the meeting with Musk on Thursday, Speaker McCarthy declined to comment other than to say, “He came to wish me a happy birthday. We’ve been friends for years.”
Speaker McCarthy turned 58 today.
In recent months, Musk has built a reputation as a political figure and free speech enthusiast.
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In December, Musk called out Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, asking if he approved “hidden state censorship” while chairing the House Intelligence Committee following the Part 7 release of the Twitter files.
“As (outgoing) Chair of House Intelligence, did you approve hidden state censorship in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States @RepAdamSchiff?” Musk tweeted Tuesday, days after Schiff threatened to repeal protections provided by Section 230 if tech companies didn’t censor enough.
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“We should absolutely take aim at that and other anti-competitive actions of Big Tech, and I think we’ve got a big problem right now with social media companies and their failure to moderate content and the explosion of hate on Twitter, the banning of journalists on Twitter,” Schiff said during an appearance on “State of the Union” hosted by Jake Tapper.
Musk’s tweet came the day after independent journalist Michael Shellenberger reported that the FBI paid Twitter about $3.5 million between October 2019 and February 2021 to reimburse expenses from complying with various requests.
Shellenberger and journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss published a series of reports on Twitter’s censorship based on the files since Dec. 2.
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