Elon Musk’s decision to publish internal company files around Twitter’s censorship of media reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was “not healthy”, the White House said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday called the decision a “distraction” and “old news”.
“What is happening — it’s frankly, it’s not healthy. It won’t do anything to help a single American improve their lives,” she said.
“And so look, we see this as an interesting, you know, coincidence, and you know, it’s a distraction.
“We see this as an interesting, or a coincidence, if I may, that he would so haphazardly — Twitter would so haphazardly push this distraction that is full of old news, if you think about it.
“And at the same time, Twitter is facing very real and very serious questions about the rising volume of anger, hate and anti-Semitism on their platform and how they’re letting it happen.”
The Twitter communications that took place before the Tesla billionaire’s takeover of the company were billed as a bombshell expose by Mr Musk, and came as part of his promise to increase the social media platform’s transparency.
The details were released to and reported on by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who claimed Twitter took “extraordinary steps” to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about alleged ties between Mr Biden when he was vice president and an energy company.
The documents showed Twitter officials were unsure whether or not to suppress the story, which claimed to be sourced to a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden, but which they feared could be the result of Russian hacking.
However, views remain divided over how the files should be viewed. Twitter eventually decided to suppress the story under its Hacking Policy.
