Republicans embark on a misleading crusade against ‘cancel culture’
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan spent most of his time decrying “cancel culture.”
“The double standard has to stop, and frankly the attack on the First Amendment has to stop,” Jordan said. “Do you have a functioning First Amendment when the cancel culture only allows one side to talk? When you can’t even have a debate in this country … it needs to stop, because if it continues, it won’t just be Republicans who get canceled, it won’t just be the president of the United States, the cancel culture will come for us all.”
GOP Rep. Tom McClintock of California echoed Jordan, saying, “If we impeached every politician who gave a fiery speech to a crowd of partisans, this Capitol would be deserted … suppressing free speech is not the answer.”
He continued to say that the president “simply told the crowd” at his rally “to protest peacefully and patriotically, and the vast majority of them did.”
Fact check: At the January 6 rally, the president called on his supporters “to fight” and march to the Capitol, adding, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
It’s also unclear what Jordan was referring to when he said the president had been “canceled,” given that Trump has full access to the podium at the White House briefing room and a press corps dedicated to reporting out what he says to the public.
Republicans repeatedly claimed that social media companies want to “cancel” them in the wake of the Capitol siege, pointing to Twitter’s decision to permanently ban Trump from its platform, and Facebook and Instagram’s decision to block him from posting until at least the inauguration.
Twitter did not ban Trump to “cancel” him. In a statement announcing its decision, the company said it suspended the president because his supporters were actively using his tweets to plan domestic terrorist attacks on the US Capitol and state capitols across the country.
The far-right app Parler was also booted from the Apple and Google app stores and Amazon’s web hosting service after the companies determined that violent extremists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists were using Parler to plan more armed insurrections.