Twitter executive who banned Trump cries after Musk takeover, Musk responds
Vijaya Gadde is Twitter’s chief legal officer and general counsel, but she is also the company’s public policy & trust and safety lead director.
This means she is instrumental in shaping Twitter’s policies, which many have criticized for being pro-censorship. In fact, Politico reports that Gadde is known “internally as Twitter’s ‘moral authority’.”
So, when the New York Post published a bombshell story in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election exposing deep corruption within the Biden family, Twitter moved quickly to run interference for Biden by blocking the story on the platform and suspending the New York Post for several weeks. Gadde is reportedly responsible for that decision.
Months later, when Americans protested the illegitimacy of the election results on January 6th, 2021, Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump from the platform. That decision, too, was Gadde’s.
According to Politico, Gadde broke down in tears in a Monday meeting after a deal was reached to sell the social media platform to free speech advocate Elon Musk.
“Gadde cried during the meeting as she expressed concerns about how the company could change, according to three people familiar with the meeting,” Politico reported. “She acknowledged that there are significant uncertainties about what the company will look like under Musk’s leadership.”
Responding to a tweet of the report, Twitter’s new owner responded to Gadde’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story.
“Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan's podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the @elonmusk takeover,” tweeted podcast host Saagar Enjeti.
Musk responded to Enjeti’s tweet, criticizing Gadde for censoring the story.
“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” wrote Musk.
The decision to gag the New York Post and the Hunter Biden story became a story in itself, ultimately resulting in then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey being subpoenaed to appear before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. During the hearing in November 2020, Dorsey admitted that the company had made a “mistake”.
Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth, who once called Trump and his team “ACTUAL NAZIS”, is responsible for the platform “fact-checking” tweets that threaten the company’s political agenda.
Roth told the Federal Election Commission (FEC) at the time that the story was censored because U.S. intelligence officials shared “rumors” that Biden would be the victim of a hack. Roth provided no evidence to back up his claim.
It is unclear if Musk will be retaining the current Twitter team, including Gadde and Roth. But if the Tesla CEO is serious about bringing free speech to the platform, speculation is that they will be terminated.
