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‘How You Lose Your Democracy’: NBC’s Ben Collins Blames Elon Musk For The Viral ‘Lie’ About Paul Pelosi Attack

[Screenshot/Rumble/MSNBC]

Nicole Silverio Media Reporter
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NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins warned Monday on “Morning Joe” that Elon Musk’s now-deleted tweet about the Paul Pelosi attack is a threat to democracy.

Musk, who officially took over Twitter on Thursday, suggested Sunday there may be “more to this story than meets the eye” in a now-deleted tweet. The tweet linked to a Santa Monica Observer article alleging that Pelosi and his attacker, David DePape, may have been in a romantic relationship. His tweet responded to former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who posted an Los Angeles Times article alleging that DePape spurred QAnon and “right-wing conspiracies.”

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Collins accused the “pro-Trump internet” and Musk of fabricating reality, and warned that the tech billionaire’s alleged perpetuation of conspiracies on social media is a threat to American democracy.

“Those people in the QAnon spaces right now, those people are at the top of that sphere,” Collins said. “They’re at the top of that pecking order when it comes to believing conspiracy theories. I do want to stress this, right now, trending on Twitter is the lie about this guy … It’s trending on Twitter as we speak because Elon Musk pushed it yesterday … Lies on the internet move faster than the truth and that’s in part why there are all these safeguards that Elon Musk is trying to take down on Twitter right now. The lies that were pushed were from bad pieces of information.”

“If we don’t cut this out right now, not just the normalization of violence, but the idea that reality can’t even exist anymore because it cannot catch up to the lies on the internet,” he continued. “I’m not a scholar on authoritarian history … this is how it gets really bad … This is how it gets really, really bad. If you’re getting the guardrails off the truth, where it literally cannot catch up to the lies on the internet, because of how the pipes work, how the system works, because of the incentives of the richest people in the world, then that’s how you lose your democracy.”

DePape allegedly attacked the House Speaker’s husband with a hammer early Friday after breaking into the couple’s San Francisco residence, where he reportedly searched for his wife, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi was rushed to the hospital, where he is currently recovering from a fractured skull and injuries to his right arm and hands.

An initial report by KTVU asserted that the alleged assailant was in his underwear at the time of his arrest, though a correction was later appended to the article confirming the allegation to not be true.