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Joy Reid Calls ‘Twitter Files’ Journos ‘Shills’ For Elon Musk’s ‘Narrative’ About Censorship

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Brianna Lyman News and Commentary Writer
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MSNBC’s Joy Reid criticized several independent journalists Thursday night who exposed the “Twitter Files” alongside Elon Musk.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing in front of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to learn about the “Twitter Files.” Both Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, who were given access to the files and reported on them, testified.

Reid first slammed Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for giving Daily Caller co-founder and Fox News host Tucker Carlson more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage, saying doing so allowed his “MAGA trolls, who effectively control him and the House” to use “a hearing of their government weaponization committee to drill down on the so-called ‘Twitter Files’ in an ongoing attempt to feed the right-wing fever dream that tech companies are conspiring to censor conservative content while hiding the, air quotes, truth about the Biden family.”

“They called up Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger, two of many chosen to shill Elon Musk’s narrative who complained Democrats were being mean to them,” she continued, before welcoming Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman. (RELATED: ‘State-Sponsored Thought Policing’: Matt Taibbi Tells Congress About Vast Online Censorship Network)

Goldman argued the committee has accomplished “nothing” and there has been a “misunderstanding of how the First Amendment works and how law enforcement works.”

Goldman, who sparred with Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on Thursday, said Jordan and the other members don’t understand how the DOJ or FBI works, before saying that the ‘Twitter Files’ whistleblowers were “essentially bought and paid for by Donald Trump’s allies.”

Taibbi reported that the office of Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff allegedly pressed Twitter to censor a post mocking then-Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden after former President Donald Trump retweeted it. The State Department also allegedly pushed for censorship of posts that promoted the lab leak theory.