The Hill campaign reporter Reid Wilson said on Wednesday that Republicans will use allegations of bias against tech companies to rally their base ahead of November’s midterm election.
“This has become an interesting tension point within the Republican Congress on Capitol Hill. There’s a faction of very conservative members of the Freedom Caucus who want to make an example out of Twitter and Facebook, and the rest of them,” Wilson told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
“And there is more of an establishment faction led by Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon,” he continued. “He wants to talk more broadly about their relationship with the American economy, and therefore with conservative ideas.”
“So there are these fascinating factions within both the tech side and the Republicans on Capitol Hill, who are trying to make this as big a deal as they can before the midterms to fire up their own base,” he said.
Congressional Republicans, particularly in the House, have slammed tech companies, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google over allegations of bias against conservatives on their platforms.
The tech companies have denied the claims.
Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on election interference on Wednesday, is expected to face tough questions on the matter when he appears before the Energy and Commerce Committee.
President Trump has inserted himself into the debate, on Wednesday accusing social media companies of attempting to influence the last election in favor of his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
“The true interference in the last election was that — if you look at all, virtually all of those companies are super liberal companies in favor of Hillary Clinton,” Trump said in an interview with the right-leaning news site The Daily Caller.
— Julia Manchester
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