Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is applauding efforts from Elon Musk to shed light on efforts by Twitter employees to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, insisting that the first round of the “Twitter Files” is information previously known to conservatives and only the “tip of the iceberg” as she urged unity within the party ahead of America’s 2024 elections.
“I wish I could say that I’m surprised to learn that this was happening at Twitter, but we knew it. We knew it back in 2018. We were talking about it publicly,” McDaniel told Fox News Digital in an interview. “The press did not take it seriously, and it’s only with Elon Musk coming in and actually revealing the truth of what we knew was happening at Twitter — they’ve put their thumb on the scale, they have become a political entity.”
McDaniel, along with former President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale, sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2018 lamenting the “suppression” of conservative speech on the two popular social media platforms. At the time, McDaniel asked for “explanation” of how the companies planned to ensure “content is managed equally and fairly” across political groups.
“It’s not just Twitter, it’s other social media sites,” McDaniel told Fox. “This is why we need better governance. We need legislation. They are the public sphere, and they should not be working on behalf of the Democrat Party.”
The “Twitter Files” were a bombshell Twitter thread from Substack journalist Matt Taibbi revealing the internal communications of Twitter employees and U.S. lawmakers surrounding the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.
(Getty Images)
McDaniel, who has served as chair of the RNC since 2017, said she believes the initial release of “Twitter Files” is only the “tip of the iceberg.”
“We filed an FEC complaint against Twitter for doing an in-kind donation to the Biden campaign for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. We did it before the election in 2020 and the FEC dismissed our complaint. We are looking to refile that complaint with this new information, and we need to hold these entities accountable when we are getting proof and evidence that they absolutely colluded with the Biden campaign and the Democrat Party to suppress truth and information and stories from the American people.”
“Enough is enough,” she added, vowing that the RNC will “look at every avenue” to hold accountable the social media platformsthat have become a revolving door for Democrat operatives.“
Following a rocky midterms cycle — in which Republicans failed to take back the Senate and gained control of the House by a slim majority — McDaniel said the party must “get back to making sure that we’re voting absentee, and we’re banking our votes long before Election Day.”
RNC CHAIR MCDANIEL SEEKING FOURTH TWO-YEAR TERM STEERING GOP
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, addresses an Election Night party at The Westin Washington hotel on Nov. 8, 2022.
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“We can’t depend on Election Day only to get out all of our vote and this was a habit that changed in 2020,” she said. “We need to make sure that if Democrats are getting ballots in for a month, we need to be doing the same. I will say, some of that is going to come down to state governments and funding. A lot more funding goes to urban areas than rural areas. So urban areas are able to keep more locations open for early voting and I know in Georgia this was a huge issue. There just wasn’t enough funding in those rural areas, and they did not have many locations open during early voting.”
McDaniel urged Republicans nationwide to “vote early and then sign up to be a poll watcher” and touted the RNC’s “extensive Election Day operations,” which included “100% poll watcher coverage throughout Georgia.”
“This is critical, and we need everybody to be talking from the same songbook on this because it is a factor that the Democrats are collecting ballots for a month, and we have people in our party saying, no, wait until just Election Day,” McDaniel said. “Well, what if you can’t get to the polls on Election Day? What if something happens in your family? What if it’s bad weather? We can’t wait.”
While she prefers “one day of voting,” McDaniel insisted that Republicans have to “play by the same rules the Democrats are” in order to win elections in the future.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel speaks at a rally in Newport Beach on Sept. 26, 2022.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
As for bringing the party together to present a united front ahead of the 2024 elections, McDaniel insisted that infighting among Republicans weakens the party’s overall efforts.
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“One of the things that we’re seeing in the initial review of this election is that there were many Republicans that didn’t vote for Republican candidates,” she said. “We have to recognize that if we’re fighting each other, we’re only helping the Democrats and the Democrats are destroying our country. So we have to come together and put whatever differences we have aside if we’re going to be successful in 2024.”
McDaniel announced last month that she would seek a fourth two-year term steering the national party committee.
