Will SCOTUS Require America to Start Acting Like America Again?

While mainstream media are obsessed with Trump trials, eagerly awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, the court just ruled on actions by the Biden administration to stop Americans from speaking openly about the 2020 election and COVID-19. A ruling is expected any day on whether the administration, including the FBI, violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media sites to take down certain posts. I have a personal interest in the case because Google’s YouTube took down three episodes of my “Hidden Truth Show” podcast on COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic.

In the case, Murthy v. Missouri, the Superme Court will analyze the actions of the Biden administration to determine whether their communications to the social media sites rose to the level of coercion rather than simply attempted persuasion. The administration allegedly asked the sites to take down posts they deemed to contain false information about the pandemic and vaccines and about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

What makes the case particularly unique is that the communications were not just allegedly from National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), but from the Department of Justice and FBI. Missouri argues that a phone call from the FBI trying to persuade you to take down a particular post is inherently coercive. Most people operate under the assumption that when the FBI asks you to do something, it is a pretty good idea to do it. I was certainly taught to answer any request by the police with, “Yes, sir.”

When I first learned that YouTube took down an episode of my podcast, I was upset with YouTube. It did not occur to me at the time that the site may have been acting at the direction of the government. They banned three episodes of my show and almost took down the show entirely. The content of the episodes was exactly the type the Biden administration was allegedly targeting.

The first was posted in June 2021. My guest was Dr. Joel Hirschhorn, a former University of Wisconsin professor, congressional official and author of the book “Pandemic Blunder,” in which he dared to assert that the CDC and NIH bungled their handling of the COVID pandemic. He came on my show primarily to warn that if you have already had the virus, you should not get vaccinated. YouTube and the Biden administration apparently did not believe this was a medical opinion Americans should be allowed to hear.

The second episode YouTube took down was in September 2021. It was an interview with actress Sally Kirkland. She came on the show to report that she had vertigo soon after getting the vaccine, which caused her to fall and break her wrist (My mother also had vertigo for weeks after the getting the vaccine). She was not expressing a medical opinion, just sharing her personal experience. However, YouTube, perhaps driven by government pressure, did not allow her to share it with others.

Two weeks later it happened a third time when I dared to interview the attorney representing L.A. firefighters who were opposing a vaccine mandate in court. He came on to express the view that the vaccine mandate is unconstitutional. He was allowed to present this in court, but YouTube would not allow it to be presented on its site.

The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that similar mandates by the federal government are, in fact, unconstitutional.