‘Blocked’: Veteran Political Reporter Accuses Elon Musk’s X of Suppressing Video From Town Hall Critical of DOGE
Veteran political reporter Jamie Dupree accused Elon Musk’s X on Thursday of blocking posts from Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that included video of Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) being grilled by constituents about DOGE during a recent town hall.
Dupree started to notice something was off around 10 pm on Thursday and wrote on X, “Is this just my view, or is something amiss about tweets by @bluestein tonight from a town hall with Rep. Rich McCormick R-GA. Some of Greg’s tweets about DOGE have gone missing on my view. Maybe you can see them?”
Foreign policy journalist Laura Rozen replied to Dupree soon after, “just checked and there are several posts in original thread not visible to me. insane!”
Dupree later posted on the left-leaning platform Bluesky and added, “Over on X, simple tweets by my colleague Greg Bluestein of the Atlanta Journal Constitution have been blocked. They were nothing but video of a town hall held by Rep. Rich McCormick R-GA where he was asked questions about DOGE.”
Earlier in the week, Musk also vowed to “fix” the community notes on his platform, which often debunk his posts. “Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media,” Musk baselessly claimed of the crowd-sourced fact checking system, which Meta recently announced they would try and replicate. Since taking over Twitter and renaming it X, Musk has been accused of throttling critics and boosting pro-Trump voices and allies on the platformer — despite self-identifying as a “free speech absolutist.”
Video from the town hall that Bluestein covered showed Rep. McCormick being loudly jeered. One person at the event asked McCormick, “The people would like to know what you, Congressman, and your fellow congressmen are going to do to rein in the megalomaniac in the White House.”
The event went off the rails as the Georgia Republican was shouted down. “Hey, hey, hey, let’s restore some order! Let’s restore some order! Hey hey hey, let’s restore some order!” said the town hall’s moderator at one point.
“So yelling, yelling at me is not going to get any answer, okay?” McCormick told the crowd, which started chanting, “Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!”
“I’ve seen Game of Thrones, too. Thank you,” McCormick shot back.
