CNN Not Asking Kamala Harris About Pressuring Zuckerberg To Censor Americans Is Inexcusable | Bobby Burack

Kamala Harris sat down with CNN anchor Dana Bash on Thursday for her first interview since emerging as the presumptive Democratic nominee 40 days prior.

Bash asked Harris the expected range of questions, from Joe Biden's bowing out of the race to the Southern border, from Donald Trump questioning Harris's skin color to the rising cost of living.

The predictability of the questions led to a remarkably dull interview, during which voters learned little about the Democratic ticket. The plot to hide the Real Kamala continues. 

And that onus falls on Bash and CNN. 

Not only did Bash often fail to follow up when Harris repeatedly provided meandering non-answers, but she also had an opportunity to challenge Harris on the most significant news story of the week: Mark Zuckerberg's letter to the House Judiciary Committee.

On Monday, Zuckerberg admitted that the Biden-Harris administration pressured Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) in 2021 to censor COVID-related content that it deemed disfavorable to the White House.

"Senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our team for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our team when we didn't agree," Zuckerberg wrote to Republican House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan.

"I believe the government pressure was wrong and I regret that we were not more outspoken," Zuckerberg wrote. 

"Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.

The gravity of Zuckerberg's letter cannot be overstated.

The government cannot legally censor Americans due to the First Amendment. But what we have here is the White House subverting the First Amendment by pressuring a third party, one beholden to government protection in the name of Section 230 of the Communications Act, to censor Americans on its behalf.

We referenced earlier this week a Wall Street Journal legal analysis from 2022 that explained that a court can consider a "private company" a "state actor" if it provides the government with a workaround to the Constitution. Zuckerberg admitted Meta did that.

Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro argued the same point in an interview with OutKick in 2021:

"The Democrats should not be pressuring Facebook to take down information. Stop that now. The fact that you now have the media and the Democrats pushing to police Facebook is ugly authoritarianism," said Shapiro.

"We need to be pushing back on that level because that actually is, in some cases, government-sponsored action. We have the White House telling Facebook to take things down. Now you're looking at Facebook as an agent of the government. That's a First Amendment case."

SAVANNAH USA - AUGUST 29: Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Savannah GA, United States on August 29, 2024 (Photo by Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images)

While the US-Mexico border, the economy, and crime are the most important issues to voters, censorship ought to be right there.

Censorship is, by definition, an existential threat to democracy. 

And the Democratic Party has proudly morphed into the party of censorship. To understand the severe consequences of that, consider that Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – three lifelong Democrats – credited the fight against censorship for turning on the party and endorsing Donald Trump.

Politics aside, censorship is un-American. The foremost right of every American is their right to speak, to speak out against the government. You are not American if you do not have that right.

As any book about the horrors of totalitarianism can confirm, censorship is the first step.

Kamala Harris was second in command in the most censorship-hungry administration in modern American history. Yet CNN didn't bother to question Harris about Zuckerberg's letter two days before her interview.

OutKick questioned CNN on Friday about its decision not to ask Harris about her and Biden's unconstitutional approach to censorship:

"I am writing a story about CNN/Dana Bash not asking Harris about Zuckerberg admitting that the Biden/Harris White House pressured Meta to censor content – a seemingly timely question given it was just days ago. Does CNN have a comment on that?"

The network did not respond.