Twitter CEO Elon Musk made an unannounced visit to Capitol Hill last week where he held a number of high-profile sitdowns.
He had a meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and stopped in to visit newly empowered GOP Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) among others.
He met with a few others in Congress and talked with White House officials about electric vehicles and his car company Tesla.
But according to Politico, one thing Musk didn’t do was meet with congressional Democrats.
He snubbed them after being on the wrong side of their attacks for bringing free speech back to America.
Schiff and company got used to ordering social media companies to censor conservatives and Musk put an end to that, at least on Twitter.
He did speak briefly with House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) but according to Politico, that was an unscheduled run-in as he bumped into him outside McCarthy’s office.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) was not impressed with the snub, saying: “I think it’s seriously a mistake and I think it would be a good thing to have him come in and explain himself.”
“I am deeply concerned with how he’s running that company into the ground,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
“It seems like a vanity project that is going wrong with an explosion of hate speech on that platform.”
The reason for the snub became clear when he met Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY), who is hauling in ex-Twitter executives to talk about past censorship.
According to Politico, Musk waived attorney-client privileges so Comer’s hearings will have more bite than bark, which is not the norm on the Hill.
Politico reported:
In fact, during the meeting Musk waived attorney-client privileges for some information that Comer had requested for his upcoming hearing, Comer said in an interview.
“That was my only ask,” Comer said.
One of the expected witnesses is Twitter’s former chief legal counsel Vijaya Gadde who Comer requested to testify about her decision to remove the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Accommodating the GOP is in keeping with Musk’s current political outlook.
He endorsed the GOP ahead of the midterm elections, welcomed former President Donald Trump back to Twitter and obligingly dumped a series of “Twitter files” to make the case that Democrats and previous company executives colluded to restrain speech on the platform, along with several other conservative-friendly moves.
In all, Musk has in recent months aligned himself with Republicans in ways that are relatively unusual for a tech billionaire — but could prove beneficial when it comes to potential GOP oversight, or lack thereof.
“It just shows the Elon approach to Washington. When you think of all these things that tech execs did to avoid the appearance of impropriety and then Musk blasts through this and is like, ‘I don’t care,’” said a former Twitter communications officer who also worked on the Hill and asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely.
“That’s the type of stuff that is just a complete change. It’s just a huge departure from congressional norms.”
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