House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., warned the White House about its anti-Elon Musk stance due to their political ideology, calling it "offensive."
"That is offensive to me: Government's going to go after someone who wants to have free speech?" McCarthy told reporters Tuesday outside the White House. "What do they have to look at Twitter about?
"Do they want to go after the America public about whether they can have an opinion on something? I think the American public had spoken on this: I think our First Amendment stands up, and I think they should just stop picking on Elon Musk."
Musk has been remaking the ideology of Twitter after buying it for $44 billion, standing up for free speech and granting amnesty to conservatives banned by the social media platform, including reinstate the still dormant account of former President Donald Trump.
McCarthy's remark about the White House "picking on" Musk comes after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration is "monitoring what's currently occurring" with Twitter.
"Social media companies have a responsibility to prevent their platforms from being used by any user to incite violence, especially violence directed at individual communities, as we have been seeing," Jean-Pierre said Monday.
Musk and McCarthy have been close, and Musk attended a Wyoming event the GOP leader hosted in August. Musk's SpaceX also has operations in McCarthy's Bakersfield, California-area district.
"Elon Musk is somebody who has succeeded in many places," McCarthy said Tuesday. "I'd bet on him more than government going after you, and one thing I would say when we talk about accountability, we'll no longer let government go after people simply because of their political views."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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