Two Biden employees who yelled and cursed at Meta employees for refusing to censor accurate posts and memes have been named and shamed.
The House Judiciary Committee named former Senior Biden adviser Andy Slavitt and former White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty as those who demanded the company remove posts critical of vaccines.
The report, released last year, has been recirculated after Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, 40, told Joe Rogan last Friday about the bullying his staff endured at the hands of Biden’s lackeys.
The meme that infuriated Slavitt showed a photo using a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV in the movie “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.”
The communication between the two top mandarins and Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg was shared in the report on the post.
In it, Clegg described his efforts to explain the First Amendment to Slavitt, saying the latter was “outraged — that we have not removed this post.”
Slavitt and the government were outraged by the post’s caption, which said: “Ten years from now you will see an ad saying if you take a Covid vaccine you will be eligible for a payment.”
Clegg opposed their demands, saying, “I countered that removing such content would constitute a significant infringement of the traditional boundaries of free speech in the US.”
Slavitt and the government were outraged by the caption of the post which said it compared Covid vaccines to asbestos
Rob Flaherty, meanwhile, had lashed out at Facebook employees with an email full of expletives
The former deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom said Slavitt “responded that the post directly compared Covid vaccines to asbestos poisoning in a way that demonstrably undermines confidence in Covid vaccines.”
Zuckerberg says his staff was also bullied into removing anything that suggested Covid vaccines could cause injuries, despite that being true.
In testimony before the committee, Clegg said, “The White House certainly urged us to remove content and pointed out content that they felt should have been removed.”
Clegg also said the White House’s requests for more silencing were “quite persistent” and “at the core” of most of their interactions.
The report also highlighted an email exchange between Biden and Kamala that saw Rob Flaherty bullying Facebook’s team about technical issues related to President Biden’s Instagram follower growth.
After a Facebook employee replied to Flaherty that he couldn’t explain the problem, they noted that it was “fixed and shouldn’t happen again.”
Flaherty’s vile and insulting language makes for uncomfortable reading. In what was described as a “tone familiar to Facebook staff,” Flaherty responded, “Are you serious? I want an answer to what happened here, and I want it today.”
That email was dated July 15, 2021 and the next day President Biden came out and said Facebook was “killing people.”
Internal emails between Clegg and Meta Sheryl Sandberg show they were “furious” about the comments.
The meme in question was a photo that used a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV in the movie ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’, seen here
Clegg, seen here, said White House requests for more silencing were “quite persistent” and “at the core” of most of their interactions
Clegg said in one: “The behavior of the White House over the past 24 hours has been deeply cynical and dishonest. The Surgeon General has told us we are doing a good job. Furious.’
Sandberg responded: “We should consider, for example, speaking publicly about what they are saying. Happy to discuss.’
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also chimed in after the comments, saying, “Can we just mention that the White House pressured us to censor the lab leak theory?”
Sandberg responded that she believed the company was being used as a scapegoat to cover up missed vaccination rates and “a virus they can’t control.”
Zuckerberg responded, “That’s certainly true,” before adding in a follow-up that the attack on Meta was coordinated by the White House.
Leadership at Facebook also noted the double standard between reporting on statements made by Biden and former President Trump, saying, “Did Trump say such irresponsible things?
“If Trump had blamed a private company and not himself and his government, everyone would have gone crazy.”
Most recently, Flaherty served as deputy campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris’ failed bid for the White House.
The report, released last year, has been recirculated after Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, 40, told Joe Rogan about his company’s interactions with the White House.
Public records show he lives in Washington DC in a four-bedroom mansion worth more than $1 million.
Slavitt has since stepped down from his role helping lead the White House’s 2021 Covid response to a public health group.
He lives in Pasadena, California, in a home valued at more than $4 million and is also a public speaker, charging between $25,000 and $40,000 per appearance.
Zuckerberg’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast comes amid attempts by Meta to get through to the incoming Trump administration.
Earlier this month, they dramatically cut their own team of fact-checkers and also ended all DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs.
When he talked on the show about the meme that caused so much anger in the White House, he said it was “a class action lawsuit type meme” and personally thought it was little more than a harmless political joke.
After being told to remove the meme, Zuckerberg claims he and his team responded: “No, we’re not, we’re not going to remove the humor.”
Zuckerberg said the White House “pushed us super hard to destroy things that were actually true,” and “anything that said vaccines have side effects, you should take it down.”
“We actually got to the point where we thought, no, we’re not going to tear down things that are true,” Zuckerberg said. “That’s ridiculous.”
Zuckerberg recently donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, which is a complete reversal of previous relations between the two.
The policy change and donation came after Zuckerberg sat down with the president-elect for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in November.