President Joe Biden's campaign is aiming to fight alleged "misinformation" on social media during the 2024 presidential race, all while Republicans raise heightened censorship concerns over how Democrats have coordinated with platforms on content moderation.
The initiative, partly spearheaded by Biden's deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty, has involved recruiting hundreds of volunteers and staffers, as well as purchasing advertisements, Politico reported. Its revelation comes days after the Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to halt an order from an appeals court restricting the White House from unconstitutionally pressuring social media companies to remove content.
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"The campaign is going to have to be more aggressive pushing back on misinformation from a communications perspective and filling some of the gaps these companies are leaving behind," said Flaherty, who the Washington Examiner reported initiated contact with platforms like Facebook to flag "disinformation" posts as a White House staffer.
Flaherty, for instance, emailed a Facebook employee in May 2021 a widely-shared post by an account named Dee Roy showing a man in a mask with a sign slamming masks and vaccines, and claimed it showed how the platform wasn't adequately moderating COVID-19 content, documents show. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and conservative groups, including America First Legal, later launched public records investigations to uncover Flaherty-tied communications on fighting purported "disinformation," some of which were unearthed through a Louisiana lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general.
"It's all horsesh*t," Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), who sits on the Judiciary panel, told the Washington Examiner of the new Biden initiative. "Let's save America."
Biden's campaign plans to contact social media companies and flag examples of content it deems skirt their company policies, but will also aim to "publicly shame" platforms that don't enforce their misinformation policies, according to Politico, which noted the campaign would run paid ads on Facebook to counter "false messages" from Republicans. Campaign officials said the initiative will require working alongside the Democratic National Committee, as well as other parties, like grassroots organizers and volunteers.
Specifically, Biden's campaign is reportedly intent on fighting content on social media from Republicans, including Donald Trump, related to the 2020 presidential election and the former president's claims of victory. The campaign also aims to fight conservative attacks against Hunter Biden and slam Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for his alleged "anti-vaccine rhetoric," Politico reported.
Two sources close to the Trump campaign slammed the new "misinformation" initiative when reached by the Washington Examiner.
"Team Biden knows that in 2024 Joe can’t win in a fair fight, which is why they spend so much time trying to censor anyone who deviates from their propaganda," one source said.
The second person, who was also granted anonymity, said, "I’m looking forward to seeing the Biden campaign’s response to the misinformation that the border is secure and the economy is thriving."
In June, Jordan sent a letter to Flaherty asking him to sit for a transcribed interview as part of the Judiciary's inquiry "into the role the White House played in colluding with big tech companies and other intermediaries to censor disfavored speech." Flaherty has not yet appeared, and he was given a July 7 deadline, according to a source familiar. Jordan
"Documents made public earlier this year demonstrate that in the course of your employment at the White House, you facilitated direct communications between the Executive Office of the President and large social media companies regarding the moderation of content related to topics such as COVID-19 and vaccines," Jordan told Flaherty. "These direct and frequent communications with these companies included instructions and demands to remove certain content, which, in numerous instances, appear to have been followed by the social media companies."
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Biden praised Flaherty upon his leaving the White House in June as someone who "operated with unparalleled creativity, innovative spirit, and a bias toward action."
Biden's campaign did not return a request for comment.