U.S. Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, speaks at a media event at the National Press Club on January 30, 2023 in Washington, DC.
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House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., effusively praised Twitter owner Elon Musk on Wednesday, saying Musk was “being transparent” about the tech platform.
“God bless Elon Musk,” Comer said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He called the controversial tycoon “a great American.”
Comer’s comments came just days after Musk visited Washington and met for over an hour with House Republican leaders, a group that included Comer.
They also came just a week before Comer is set to chair the first big congressional hearing on Twitter since Musk bought the company in October and since Republicans took control of the House.
On Feb. 8, the House Oversight Committee will hear from three former Twitter executives about what Comer called “the role the government played in suppressing the Biden laptop story.”
Notably, Comer did not say he would be investigating Twitter’s role in the alleged suppression.
Musk’s charm offensive on Capitol Hill appears to have been limited to Republicans and White House officials.
Musk initially claimed that he “met with” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York.
“Just met with @SpeakerMcCarthy & @RepJeffries to discuss ensuring that [Twitter] is fair to both parties,” Musk tweeted Jan. 26.
But an aide to Jeffries later said that this is not what happened.
Jeffries had merely bumped into Musk on his way out of McCarthy’s office and been introduced to him, the aide said. So while McCarthy and Republicans met with Musk for over an hour, Jeffries literally just “met” him.
Twitter’s decision-making during the 2020 presidential campaign has been a key subject of the so-called “Twitter files,” a series of unprecedented exposes of Twitter’s internal corporate communications that were authorized by Musk himself.
Musk hand-picked a group of independent journalists and gave them a curated set of Twitter’s internal messages from before Musk bought the company. The emails and Slack chats appeared to show Twitter executives debating how to handle the laptop story and other politically sensitive events.
Comer lauded Musk’s decision to publicize his company’s internal deliberations, saying Wednesday that “he’s done a great service to every American who cares about free speech.”
Republicans have been up in arms over…
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