HENRY: “All right, Kayleigh, let’s move on to what we talked about at the top in terms of Twitter and other social media platforms, this executive order. There’s a lot of speculation about it so let’s just cut through that and get to the facts from you. What will this executive order actually say and what do you hope will be the impact?”
MECENANY: “So I won’t get ahead of the president on that. He hasn’t signed the executive order yet, it still in the works so I don’t want to point to exactly what actions he will take. But what I do want to point is the reason for this executive order. We have seen some egregious actions by Twitter, for them to single out the president’s tweet, which is a very truthful tweet, you’ve got to ask yourself what kind of political motivation was there in them doing that, when they were not signaling, until minutes ago — minutes ago before I walked out here, they were not fact-checking Chinese propaganda that was blaming COVID on the United States military. There was no fact-check of Chinese propaganda, but they managed to fact-check in a wrong way the president of the United States. And you’ve got to ask when they are hiring people like this man right here who is the head of the site integrity, Yoel Roth, who’s tweeted that members of this administration are Nazis, he’s the one making a determination on fact-checks, he’s part of that team, that’s pretty egregious, and Twitter needs to answer for this and for their behavior.” [crosstalk]
SMITH: “But Kayleigh — Jack Dorsey takes on that very point; the White House, you, Kellyanne Conway yesterday singling out employees of the company. In a new tweet he says this: ‘Fact-check, there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that’s me. Please leave our employees out of this. We will continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.’ He says, ‘This does not make us an “arbiter of truth.” Our intention is to connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves. More transparency from us is critical so folks can clearly see the why behind our actions.’ So what does the White House have to win when it comes to singling out employees at that company, Kayleigh?”
MCENANY: “So interesting. So Twitter wants this to be the standard. They get to, quote, ‘fact-check’ the president of the United States in an untruthful way not fact-check Chinese propaganda until we pointed out, and they started doing it moments ago. But yet we don’t get to ask who the fact-checkers are. That’s an untenable proposition and that’s an unfair proposition, and we will ask who the fact-checkers are. And let me just note that there are two models here. You have Facebook and you have Twitter. And you — you have Mark Zuckerberg who said it’s not my job to be the arbiter of truth. You have that motto, and then the Dorsey motto which is completely incoherent in the way it’s deployed and not fact-checking Chinese propaganda until minutes ago but fact-checking the president in a way that is untruthful.”