I haven’t forgotten.
Or forgiven.
Last week, a Congressional committee released an massive
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But the government censorship isn’t the whole story.
The media has barely mentioned the Congressional report since it came out last week – even though it proves top Biden Administration officials pressed social media companies to censor true statements from Americans, if the White House thought those statements would reduce vaccine uptake.
Why?
Possibly because left-leaning – ie, “mainstream” – media outlets were themselves screaming in 2021 for anyone who spoke against the vaccines to be censored.
I was reminded of this when I rewatched a April 2021 piece from Tucker Carlson that the Congressional report names as particularly annoying to the White House.
Near the end, Tucker mentioned Brian Stelter, who at the time hosted the CNN media criticism show “Reliable Sources.” (In August 2022, as ratings for the show asymptotically approached zero, CNN canceled it, an act of mercy for both Stelter and his viewers.)
And Stelter’s face filled my computer, I thought what I always think when I see it: that guy* tried to get Substack to ban me.
(*Guy is not the actual word I think.)
He did, too.
On Sep. 26, 2021 – a month after the White House and Pfizer had forced Twitter to ban me – Stelter interviewed Chris Best, Substack’s chief executive, on his show – and named me as someone who was “peddling disinformation.”
Stelter went on, “When do you decide that Covid misinformation, or malinformation, is not acceptable on your platform? Where is that line?”
To his eternal credit, Best did not back down, saying that it was crucial that “dissent is allowed, and discussion of unpopular things [is not] suppressed, we just think that’s an important principle for anybody.”
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So after watching that clip from Tucker last week, I tweeted this:
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And a friend texted me, saying, Hey, don’t call Stelter “Fatty.” It’s not nice, and it undercuts your serious points.
To which I say: in September 2021, after my Twitter ban, this Substack was both my only real outlet to the world and my family’s primary source of income. Brian Stelter decided I wasn’t worthy of having a public platform. He tried to convince Substack to break as Twitter had broken and cut me off.
He was wrong, wrong on the facts, and wrong to try to censor. I was right, right about the mRNAs, right about Covid, and right to believe in free speech. Stelter wanted to silence me, and functionally to bankrupt me.
You stood with me, and Substack stood with me, and together we won. But it was close, back in the fall of 2021 – and a lot of you wound up getting jabbed against your will, to save your jobs, or under extraordinary pressure from friends and family. I know, because you told me.
I will never forget, I will never forgive.
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(And I will ALWAYS fight. Fight beside me.)
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So yeah, Brian Stelter is fat, and he’s one of the least attractive people ever to host a television show. Maybe I shouldn’t notice those realities, or comment publicly on them if I do, but I guess I’m not that good a person.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.