Now that President Donald Trump is president once more and flexing the might of the federal government to punish the press and pressure media companies, Democratic critics are crying foul and suddenly rediscovering the First Amendment. And to be fair, many nonpartisan, consistent free speech advocates have the credibility to challenge Trump on some of these oversteps. But the many Democratic elected officials suddenly singing the praises of the First Amendment and condemning government pressure on private platforms simply do not have a leg to stand on — and YouTube just reminded us why.

In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the platform admitted that they were extensively pressured by the Biden administration to censor Americans’ First Amendment-protected free speech on issues such as COVID-19 and elections, even when that content did not actually violate YouTube’s policies. 

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“Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to [YouTube] and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,” the platform admitted.

“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content,” the letter concludes. 

The company now says it will allow content creators who were banned from the platform under its old rules an opportunity to rejoin the platform. 

In some sense, YouTube was a victim here of inappropriate and undue federal pressure. But it also deserves criticism for how easily and willingly it served as an accomplice. As the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression pointed out, they would have had standing to challenge Biden’s actions in court, but instead caved to the pressure rather than fight to protect customers’ rights. In fact, then-YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki even bragged about how much the platform had censored Americans’ speech on COVID-19-related issues. 

This is beyond disappointing. But the biggest villains in this story are those in the White House who instigated it, not YouTube, which simply failed to meet the moment. 

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After all, it’s not just YouTube: This is just yet another example of the Biden administration using the federal government to pressure private platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to censor citizens. Yet, for some unknown reason, none of the prominent elected Democrats who have spoken out loudly against the Trump administration’s pressure to get Jimmy Kimmel off air have had anything to say about the latest revelations from YouTube. It’s almost like they only care about free speech and the First Amendment when it’s their side facing the censorship!

But if you only have double standards, you don’t actually have any standards at all. And Democratic complaints about attacks on free speech and the First Amendment under the Trump administration would carry a lot more weight with the public if they hadn’t gone along with the exact same kind of crackdown during the previous administration. 

Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.