National Review Falsely Accuses Ex-Kamala Harris Spox of Being Enforcer of Twitter Content Bans on Trump

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National Review‘s David Harsanyi falsely accused former Kamala Harris spokesman and current Twitter executive Nick Pacilio of being in charge of censoring President Donald Trump‘s tweets before adding a correction that still defended his article.

In the NR column posted on Wednesday morning, Harsanyi sought to connect Pacilio with the removal of Trump Twitter content that violated the company’s policies, such as tweets containing misinformation about the coronavirus.

Entitled “Kamala Harris’s Former Press Secretary Is The Face of Twitter Censorship,” the piece alleged that Pacilio — who was a press secretary for then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris from 2011 to 2014 and is now Senior Communications Manager at Twitter — “is now in charge of deciding what the president of the United States can and can’t say on Twitter to his 85 million followers.”

He cited a tweet from Federalist co-founder Sean Davis, who retweeted Pacilio’s announcement of such a deletion and wrote “Twitter hired Kamala Harris’s press secretary to decide what the President of the United States is allowed to say on Twitter.”

Twitter hired Kamala Harris’s press secretary to decide what the President of the United States is allowed to say on Twitter. https://t.co/mU4uHWAcfT

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 6, 2020

This is inaccurate on its face, since Twitter hired Pacilio before Trump was elected, so that could not have been the purpose of the move. But as Twitter informed Harsanyi and the universe, Pacilio’s responsibilities do not include “deciding” which Trump content is banned.

The piece is 100% incorrect. Though I suppose they got his name and the fact that he works here correct. He’s a spokesperson and plays no role in enforcement decisions.

— Brandon (@bborrman) August 12, 2020

This prompted Harsanyi to update the relevant paragraph, and to append a note that generously stated he “should have been more careful” about falsifying the central fact in his piece:

*Twitter says Pacilio isn’t involved in the removal decisions himself. I have updated the post to reflect his role — though Pacilio’s definitive tweets give users no clue as to how the process plays out or who makes these decisions. I don’t think the optics are any better for Twitter, but I should have been more careful.

But Harsanyi crucially did not label his correction a “correction,” or explain how, absent Twitter’s potential secret possession of a flux capacitor, Pacilio’s 2014 hiring could possibly be poor “optics” for the company.