Last Week Missouri Told The Supreme Court No Gov’t Should EVER Interfere With Speech; This Week It Sues Media Matters For Its Speech

Free Speech

from the andrew-bailey-wouldn't-know-the-1st-amendment-if-it-bit-him-in-the-ass dept

“[W]hether you call this coercion, if that’s the label you attach, you call it encouragement, you call it promotion, you call it inducement, whatever it is, if the government is attempting to abridge the speech rights of a third party, that has to be unconstitutional because that falls within the plain text of the First Amendment.” — Benjamin Aguinaga, arguing on behalf of the states of Missouri and Louisiana in front of the Supreme Court last week.

I know that hypocrisy is no longer a political liability, especially for the most egregious political grifters out there, but it should still be called out. This week’s example of extreme hypocrisy and nonsense is Missouri’s ridiculous Attorney General, Andrew Bailey.

Just last week, Missouri was before the Supreme Court, represented by the Solicitor General of Louisiana (the two states partnered up to bring this case). They claimed that under the 1st Amendment there were no situations where governments should ever seek to suppress anyone’s speech.

And this week, Missouri is now suing the group Media Matters over its speech. In December, we called out the taxpayer-funded, bullshit, censorial “investigation” into Media Matters that Bailey had started. Bailey was acting as the personal goon squad for Elon Musk, who was upset that Media Matters accurately showed how big company ads could appear next to neo-Nazi content. Notably, this is hardly the first time that Missouri AG Andrew Bailey has gone after organizations because he didn’t like what they had to say.

Andrew Bailey is a censorial dipshit who pretends to be a free speech supporter while exhibiting a pattern of abusing his position as Attorney General to subject organizations to nonsense threats, intimidation, and bogus investigations over their speech.

Well, apparently, Bailey sent a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to Media Matters and then immediately sued them, claiming that the organization was planning to ignore the CID. Technically, the lawsuit is for the future violation of failing to respond to the CID, but as Bailey makes abundantly clear, this is about two things and two things only: (1) sucking up to Elon Musk and (2) punishing Media Matters for its speech.

The CID is asking for all sorts of private information that Bailey has no right to. This includes a bunch of internal documents regarding strategy and donor communications. But also details on all donors from the state of Missouri. That alone is clearly an intimidation technique and an attempt to stop people from donating to Media Matters.

Just imagine how political grifters like Andrew Bailey would respond to a blue state filing a similar CID with a MAGA non-profit. He would be outraged. And he would be right in that case. This kind of censorial dipshittery has no business in any party.

Again, this is the same state that claims that the government simply sending information to social media companies saying things like “watch out for this kind of misinformation” is censorial. But attacking a company for accurately talking about ExTwitter… is fine and dandy?

Fucking hypocrite.

The complaint and Bailey’s laughably ridiculous press release make it quite clear that this is all an effort to make Musk happy.

Media Matters, a self-styled not-for-profit ‘progressive research and information center,’ envisions itself monitoring, analyzing, and correcting ‘conservative misinformation’ in the U.S. media. In fact, this description falls far short of reality for this political activist organization. Instead, rather than passively ‘monitoring,’ Media Matters has used fraud to solicit donations from Missourians in order to trick advertisers into removing their advertisements from X, formerly Twitter, one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America.

Notably, at no point in either the lawsuit, nor in the CID, does Bailey show anything even remotely suggesting “fraud to solicit donations.” The entirety of the accusation appears to be that Elon Musk thinks that Media Matters “fraudulently” created conditions which allowed it to find ads of big companies next to neo-Nazi content (which ExTwitter happily hosts). But there was no fraud. Media Matters simply did what the platform allowed (follow a bunch of neo-Nazis, who Elon Musk appears happy to have on his platform, and reload until they saw ads). No one denies that what Media Matters saw actually happened.

It’s just that Elon doesn’t like that there was an implication that some people read into the accurate report that big company ads regularly appeared next to neo-Nazi content.

Instead, ExTwitter wants people to know that it’s only sometimes that such ads appear next to the neo-Nazi content that it happily hosts on its platform.

There was no fraud. But Bailey is claiming that because Elon falsely thinks there’s fraud, that must mean that Media Matters is “fraudulently tricking” people into donating. Which is nonsense. There was nothing to trick donors or advertisers. Media Matters accurately reported something. Donors know who they’re supporting when they support Media Matters. Nothing Bailey has published suggests anything even remotely approximating “fraud” on Media Matters donors.

Elon Musk just doesn’t like what Media Matters found. And Andrew Bailey, a government censor, is seeking to punish Media Matters to suck up to Elon. The complaint is pretty clear that Bailey wants to punish Media Matters for being “progressive” in its politics:

Missourians will not be manipulated by “progressive” activists masquerading as news outlets…

The First Amendment called, Andrew, and it wants its ‘free speech defender’ merit badge back.

Look, I get it. Today’s Republican Party has lost all sense of principle beyond “it’s bad when Democrats do it, but it’s great when we do it, because we’re doing it to silence those woke progressive bastards.” But that’s not how this is supposed to work, and people should call it out.

And that, especially, includes those who supported Bailey in his arguments in the Murthy case. Anyone who supported Bailey in that case should be willing to call out his hypocrisy here. Otherwise, they’re saying their own principles are just as paper thin as Bailey’s.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, andrew bailey, cid, free speech, hypocrisy, missouri
Companies: media matters, twitter, x