A former press secretary to newly-minted Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is now a top official at Twitter who announced that the social network would be censoring President Donald Trump in an unprecedented move for the company.
Fox News reports that “Nick Pacilio, a senior communications manager at the social media giant, drew attention to himself last week when he publically addressed Twitter’s spat with President Trump. The tech giant alleged the president violated its policies by sharing a video of a ‘Fox & Friends’ interview in which he downplayed the risk of children contracting the coronavirus.”
“The original Tweet from @TeamTrump is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation, and we’ve required removal,” Pacilio, whose Twitter bio expressly notes his former position in Harris’ office, wrote at the time.
The original Tweet from @TeamTrump is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation, and we've required removal. https://t.co/fDPcEa9hRe
— Nick Pacilio (@NickPacilio) August 5, 2020
With Tuesday’s announcement that Harris, a former primary rival to Joe Biden, had been selected as the presumed Democratic presidential nominee’s running mate, many drew attention to the fact that a man who once worked for her was now censoring Biden’s rival’s tweets while leaving his own untouched.
Twitter hired Kamala Harris’s press secretary to decide what the President of the United States is allowed to say on Twitter. https://t.co/mU4uHWAcfT
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 6, 2020
“Twitter has already removed debatable contentions by the president — or, contentions no more misleading than any number of Joe Biden allegations. The point of removing tweets, I assume, has more to do with being able to call Trump a liar than worrying about his spreading misleading information,” National Review’s David Harsanyi notes.
“But the optics are remarkably terrible for Twitter,” he continues. “It’s almost certainly true that whoever holds the job of senior communication manager at the social-media giant will be ideologically progressive like the company’s CEO.”
Fox News notes that, according to Pacilio’s Linkedin page, he was press secretary and deputy press secretary to the California Senator between 2011 and 2014, when she was serving as the Golden State’s attorney general.
In 2014, he joined Twitter as a senior communications associate where he would later move up to a manager position. As Brandon Borrman, the social media giant’s vice president of communications, clarified on Twitter, Pacilio is just a spokesperson and not involved in enforcement decisions.
“Just to make this clear, spokespeople at Twitter don’t make enforcement decisions. They aren’t involved in the review process. They share the decisions with the public and answer questions,” Borrman stated.
Harsanyi notes that, were the shoe on the other foot, there’s no doubt the left would be up in arms. He points to last year’s decision on the part of CNN to hire former Jeff Sessions spokeswoman Sarah Isgur, which resulted in a “full-court press to smear her professionalism” from “left-wing media types.” Even former Obama official Jim Sciutto, who now works for the network, was reportedly “demoralized” to be working alongside Isgur, apparently completely missing the irony of his complaining about such things.
“Could you imagine what the nightly reaction on CNN and MSNBC would be if Mike Pence’s former spokesperson was seen censoring Joe Biden’s tweets during a presidential election?” Harsanyi asks. “I have no doubt Democrats would be calling for congressional hearings.”
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