Kara Swisher Throws Down With Scott Jennings On Hunter Biden Laptop Story: ‘You Don’t Know What You Are Talking About’

Tech journalist Kara Swisher sparred with CNN contributor Scott Jennings this week over whether or not Twitter colluded to hurt Donald Trump’s chances in the 2020 election, responding to a comment from Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

The Wednesday night segment began with host Abby Phillip playing Vance’s remark at a rally, in which the GOP vice presidential candidate said he does not believe the 2020 election was free and fair.

“On the election of 2020. I’ve answered this question directly a million times. No. I think there are serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use. Okay. What the media will do, they’ll focus on the court cases or they’ll focus on some crazy conspiracy theory. What I know what verifiably I know happened is that in 2020, large technology companies censored Americans from talking about things like the Hunter Biden laptop story. And that had a major, major consequence on the election,” Vance claimed.

After some cross-talk on the panel, conservative writer Coleman Hughes said, “I’ve noticed the past two years there’s a certain kind of Republican that knows Trump lost the election but is uncomfortable saying that outright so pivots to the very real issue. He’s correct that the Hunter Biden laptop story was nerfed on social media, and that’s something that should absolutely be taken seriously.”

“But they pivoted to that to say, actually, it’s not so wrong that he lost the election when really it is wrong. He lost the election. But also there was this really–” Hughes added as others jumped in.
Swisher finally got a word in and said, “This is what they are doing with the idea of a truthful lie. This is, there is no proof that tech companies colluded to do this. This is nonsense. And he knows it. No, I’m sorry–” she continued as Jennings jumped in.

“I have been one of the biggest critics of tech. This is nonsense. Absolutely nonsense. And when he just sort of discounts, ahh the court cases, dozens and dozens of them,” Swisher said as Jennings interjected, “Wasn’t the New York Post thrown off Twitter?”

“They were. And then they– Scott, let me try again to explain to you what actually happened. They made a mistake,” Swisher replied, clarifying that her point was that Twitter acted alone.

As Jennings continued to press, Philip said, “She’s done some actual reporting on this.”

“I know. And I lived through it too,” Jennings shot back.

“You literally don’t know what you are talking about. It’s really hard to deal with,” Swisher hit back.

“You wanna insult me? Go ahead,” Jennings replied.

“No, I’m not insulting you. You’re you– I don’t know why you keep repeating things that aren’t true,” Swisher replied.

“Did they get thrown off Twitter?” Jennings asked again.

“They did. And then they said that we made a mistake and they put them right back,” Swisher said, adding:

That was just like CNN does, just like The New York Times does. It wasn’t after the election. It was during the time before. And they switched Jack Dorsey, switched it. So I think what the issue is, is you think Twitter is the government. You think Twitter is running things and there is not this wide collusion. And JD Vance knows that because he’s worked in tech, he knows there are, there is no such thing as big tech. There are big tech companies. They do not collude on this.

Notably, the New York Post story was blocked on Twitter for only one day. During a House hearing in February 2023, Yoel Roth, former head of safety and integrity, said, “I’ve been clear that in my judgment at the time, Twitter should not have taken action to block the New York Post’s reporting.” ABC News reported at the time that Roth “said the company made the decision because the Biden laptop story was reminiscent of the 2016 Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee.” ABC added :

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, echoed Roth by saying that Twitter admitted that “its initial action was wrong” and changed its policy within 24 hours.

“The New York Post chose not to delete its original tweets, so Twitter made an exception after two weeks to retroactively apply the new policy to the Post’s tweets,” Gadde said. “In hindsight, Twitter should have reinstated the Post account immediately.”

Many critics of Vance’s claim have noted that the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop became a must-read story once Twitter blocked it, resulting in many more people reading it than otherwise would have, which is not to justify it being blocked but argue against the point its contents were suppressed from the public ahead of the election.

Watch the clip above via CNN.