Don’t worry about the new disinformation governance board.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday defended the department’s new disinformation board amid pushback from conservatives who say the effort is Orwellian.
“It works to ensure that the way in which we address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence are addressed without infringing on free speech — protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right of privacy,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
That word salad sounds very reassuring indeed. Are you reassured?
But Mayorkas said on CNN on Sunday that while “we probably could have done a better job of communicating what it does and does not do,” the criticisms of the board “are precisely the opposite of what this small working group within the Department of Homeland Security will do.”
Really? Even the media couldn’t seem to get answers to what the disinformation board would be doing.
What will the board do? Where will the war be waged? Information on the Biden administration’s war on disinformation proved scarce. When the Associated Press asked DHS for an interview for details, the department stiffed them, according to the AP’s April 28 story. The next afternoon, a reporter asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki for more about the board at a presser, and she was pretty vacant, too. “I really haven’t dug into this exactly. I mean, we, of course, support this effort, but let me see if I can get more specifics.”
When your own boss’ top flack has no idea, that’s really saying something.
He clarified that the board is an internal working group that will gather best practices to address the disinformation threat from foreign state adversaries and cartels and “communicate those best practices to the operators.” He added that the board does not have operational authority and it will not monitor American citizens.
That might have been slightly more reassuring back before the Obama administration decided to treat American political opponents like foreign state adversaries.
Democrats have spent the last 8 years or so claiming that every narrative they don’t like is foreign state disinformation. Does Hunter Biden’s laptop ring a bell?
Americans rightly have no trust whatsoever in such a move.
Leave a Reply