'Dangerous and chilling times:' Hannity slams the censorship of Silicon Valley media giants for banning Trump yet suppressing salacious stories about Hunter Biden
Sean Hannity has slammed Silicon Valley's censorship of conservatives as 'dangerous and chilling.'
The Fox News host last night drew parallels between Big Tech's ban on Donald Trump and the way it suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the general election.
Trump was banned by Twitter and Facebook last week following riots on Capitol Hill which left five people dead. The tech companies claimed that the president had incited violence.
Hannity said that emboldened by their gagging order on the leader of the free world, tech companies were now intent on a total purge of Trump's supporters.
'These are scary times, shadow-banning, erasing all conservative thought, all conservative opinion, these are dangerous and chilling times,' the anchor said.
Sean Hannity last night warned that the salacious contents of Hunter Biden's laptop will 'shock the soul of this nation' and devastate the President-elect's family
The computer, which lacked basic security measures, allegedly contained the personal numbers of senior political figures plus compromising photos that appeared to be of Hunter receiving a sex act and smoking what appeared to be a crack pipe
In the weeks prior to Hunter's appearance, Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's lawyer, allegedly obtained Hunter's old laptop after it was reportedly left at a Delaware repair shop and never collected
Hannity described how in the weeks leading up to November 3, Twitter, Facebook, and others 'tried to banish, not let you see what turned out to be an accurate report from The New York Post about the salacious materials on Hunter Biden's laptop.'
He said that it was impossible to place a monetary value on the colossal effect the suppression of the story had for the presidential candidate, Hunter's father.
At the time the story was dismissed as 'misinformation' by Democrats and the intelligence community who claimed that it stemmed from Russian election interference.
As well as homemade sex tapes and images which appear to show drug abuse, it is also alleged the laptop contains details of Hunter's business dealings with Ukraine and China.
But the contents of the computer, which is in the possession of the FBI, will blow Big Tech, the Democrats and Joe Biden out of the water, Hannity warned.
'Democrats, the media mob, Big Tech, buckle up,' he said. 'I have numerous, credible sources telling me the contents of this laptop will be devastating to the Bidens and the Democrats. I've been told it is beyond that bad.'
'We will see in the months ahead where all these groups stand on issues like law and order, impeachment,' Hannity said, 'and who knows, maybe even the 25th Amendment.'
Hannity said he was disturbed by the 'overwhelming support' among the media and liberals for the recent social media bans for the president and his supporters.
He pointed to the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, a body which called for the impeachment of Trump, but which has condemned the tech censorship.
In a recent statement ACLU senior legislative counsel Kate Ruane said: 'We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions – especially when political realities make those decisions easier.'
Hannity also decried how Parler - a conservative-leaning alternative to Twitter - was removed from the internet, with Amazon pulling the site off its servers.
The tech giant claimed that it had done so because Parler was not doing enough to clamp down on violent rhetoric among its users.
The concerted action wiped millions off the company's value and, in addition to censorship, it raises grave fears over antitrust violations.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to his supporters at the Save America Rally on the Ellipse on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 near the White House in Washington, D.C
Twitter and Facebook last week both suspended Trump's account, while online payment service Stripe said it would stop handling transactions on Trump's website following the riot in the Capitol.
Twitter also said that it had begun purging QAnon-linked accounts Friday, permanently suspending 'more than 70,000 accounts... with many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts.
'These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service,' Twitter said in a blog post.
The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory claims Trump is waging a secret war against a global liberal cult of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
Twitter said its decision to suspend Trump's account and others also factored in that plans for more armed protests have been proliferating on and off the service, including a proposed second attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17.
Parler, which launched in 2018, operates much like Twitter, with profiles to follow and 'parleys' instead of tweets.
In its early days, the platform attracted a crowd of ultraconservative and even extreme-right users. But more recently, it has signed up many more traditional Republican voices.
Trump supporters expressed outrage at the news the platform was being taken down.
Ahead of the shutdown, the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., complained that 'big tech has totally eliminated the notion of free speech in America.'
The platform drew fierce criticism in 2018 when investigators found that the shooter who killed 11 people in an attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue had earlier posted anti-Semitic messages on the site.
