A GOP With Backbone Would Support Elon Musk, Punish Apple, And Fight For Free Speech On Twitter

Apple’s threat to remove Twitter from its App store for the crime of being a slightly more open forum for free speech under Elon Musk has been met with a chorus of outrage and substantive threats of congressional action by Republican leaders.

Just kidding. Republicans have barely said anything about it, and establishment Republicans have said nothing at all. With the exception of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who offered his opinion on a matter outside his purview as a governor, Apple’s threat to crush Twitter has been met more or less with silence, even from members of the GOP who consider themselves conservative. (Sen. Mike Lee, to his credit, tossed out a tweet saying Apple’s threat makes the case for the Open Apps Markets Act. But he’s the exception to the rule.) And though Apple leaders apparently smoothed over the “misunderstanding” with Musk on Wednesday afternoon, we have all seen this pattern: Big Tech’s anti-speech aggression always turns out to be a “mistake” or “misunderstanding” as soon as enough people notice.

This is why I’ve argued that actual conservatives, those who want to save the country and restore republic self-government, should stop calling themselves conservatives. At this point, the label amounts to an admission of failure and defeat, and might as well be the official title of those who desire above all to be the controlled opposition for a permanent leftist regime. 

WATCH: Ron DeSantis says Apple removing @elonmusk‘s Twitter from app store warrants Congressional response

“That would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.” pic.twitter.com/VNjG6GuBcd

— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) November 29, 2022

The Apple situation perfectly illustrates why conservatives need to swap out their old labels for new ones even as they swap out old ways of thinking about government power for a candid recognition of new realities and new imperatives.

In this case, Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, are squarely on the side of authoritarianism, here and abroad. They are certainly on the side of communist China, which right now is trying hard to suppress mass protests over the CCP’s draconian “zero Covid” policy. Chinese President Xi Jinping sent tanks into the eastern city of Xuzhou this week — not that you’ll read much coverage about it in the corporate press.

As it happens, China is working to quash protests and suppress free speech with Apple’s help. Earlier this month, news broke that the company eliminated the AirDrop wireless file-sharing on iPhones in China after the feature was used by protesters to coordinate and share information. For their part, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote a letter to Cook, branding Apple’s operations in China “unconscionable” and calling on the CEO to work toward halting them; Florida’s Marco Rubio, who is a co-sponsor on the Open Apps Markets Act with Hawley, chimed in with an anodyne tweet; and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, echoed what’s been abundantly clear: “Apple is fully in bed with

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