Matt Taibbi, a journalist, rebuffed Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s claim that he had “cherry-picked information” from Elon Musk and made a profit off the Twitter Files.
Wasserman Schultz charged Taibbi with being Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s “handpicked reporter” in the Twitter Files. This revealed details about former Twitter executives’ political biases as well as FBI correspondence with them in the run-up to the 2020 election.
In December 2021, Taibbi told Joe Rogan that a source would hand a journalist information. But a reporter should not be in the hands of just one source.
“Do you still believe the things you said to Mr. Rogan?” Wasserman Schultz posed the question: “Yes or no?”
Taibbi replied, “Yes.”
She continued, “Now you’ve crossed the line with Twitter Files.”
Taibbi replied, “No,”
She said that Elon Musk had given her his cherry-picked information, which you must have believed promoted a biased viewpoint or generates a rightwing conspiracy theory. This violated your standard and you appear to have benefited from it. You had 661 000 Twitter followers before the August emails were released. Your followers increased by three-fold after the release of the Twitter Files. Your work for Elon Musk has made it so that your substack readership (which is a subscription) increased substantially.
He was allowed to answer whether he made any money from Musk’s Twitter Files collaboration. Taibbi stated that he has spent and made money that he didn’t have before.
Wasserman Schultz claimed that social media companies were “not biased” against conservatives, by “allowing” ex-President Donald Trump and other “MAGA extremeists” to threaten public safety and U.S. Democracy.
She said that Hypocrisy was the result of an addiction to attention.
Taibbi published the first batch Twitter Files in December to explain Twitter’s role as a suppressor of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop that was left in a Delaware repair shop. He revealed the FBI’s warning to Twitter executives about a possible hack-and-leak by “state actors” in order to influence the 2020 presidential elections.
He also disclosed communications between Twitter executives during the period leading up to Trump’s ban from the platform in January 2021. According to internal messages, Twitter had been monitoring Trump’s account closely and using “a vast array” of tools to manipulate visibility.
