“I don’t quite understand what Substack is,” mutters Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) at one point, which underscores the idiocy you are about to watch. The House Weaponization Subcommittee decided to call Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger to discuss their publication of the Twitter Files, which apparently was so great a threat to democracy (according to Garcia and her fellow Democrats) that, er … none of them bothered to find out what Substack was, nor glean what and when both Taibbi and Shellenberger published and in what sequence.

Get ready for seven minutes of brain-warping idiocy on those points, on top of which Democrats apparently now think journalists have a duty to reveal sources to government. And if you think Garcia’s lack of research into Substack is the stupidest moment in this utter fiasco, just wait until she asks about Bari Weiss:

The winner of the stupidest congressional comment of the day, and hopefully the year, the decade, and the century, is this: “So you’re in this as a threesome?”

YGBFKM.

This is five-plus minutes of total non-sequiturs, bizarre demands for one-word answers when witnesses were willing to give full answers, and a smear campaign to paint Taibbi and Shellenberger as paid campaign activists. At no point in this does it appear that Garcia has the slightest comprehension of the subject matter, nor of the work that either of the witnesses do or have done. Or indeed even the work that they did in exposing the government attempts to suppress and censor dissent and debate, the evidence of which they exposed from Twitter’s communication files.

All Democrats did was attempt to smear them rather than ask anything substantive about the matter at hand. That brings us to the second dumbest thing said by Democrats today, courtesy of Debbie Wasserman Schulz:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accuses Matt Taibbi of profiting from authoring the GOP’s "Twitter Files":

"After the 'Twitter Files,' your followers doubled … I imagine your Substack readership … increased significantly because of the work that you did for Elon Musk." pic.twitter.com/8S01sqt1g8

— The Recount (@therecount) March 9, 2023

My goodness — Wasserman Schulz really blew the lid off of for-profit journalism! She completely destroyed, er … NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and practically every journalist studiously ignoring this story. How dare Taibbi make a living off of journalism!

And for the record, Taibbi and the other Twitter Files journalists didn’t get “spoon fed” leaks and second-hand information. As Taibbi and Shellenberger repeatedly tried to explain, they were given access to original records at Twitter directly and reported from that documentation. That’s the difference between journalism and shilling, especially since Taibbi and the others painstakingly disclosed the conditions to which they agreed to gain that access.

At least Wasserman Schulz knew what Substack was. I think. For some reason, Wasserman Schulz seems to think that subscriptions to publications provide an inverse ratio of credibility. Maybe she got that idea from the New York Times and Washington Post.

Getting a (dis)honorable mention in the stupidity sweepstakes is ranking member Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), who accused both Taibbi and Shellenberger of putting people’s lives in danger for, um … exposing government censorship and corruption:

Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) accuses @mtaibbi and @ShellenbergerMD of trying to kill the people who work at Twitter that they reported on in the Twitter files. pic.twitter.com/5oqKLQsnIm

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 9, 2023

Narrator: She was exaggerating. Greatly. And stupidly.

Perhaps Jonathan Turley recapped the action best:

…They have accused these two journalists as threatening the safety of others by disclosing government censorship efforts. It would all make Joe McCarthy blush.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) March 9, 2023

At the end of the first video, Jim Jordan can barely contain his amusement and disdain for Garcia’s line of questioning:

I do think it’s worth pointing out that, you know, I have co-sponsored — I think some of my colleagues have co-sponsored the Shield Act, in previous Congresses with Democrats, to protect [against] what we see them trying to do today. Protect journalists from having to reveal their sources to government. That used to be a shared position in the Congress. Unfortunately as we’re seeing now [on] multiple occasions, it’s not the position anymore.

Unfortunately as we saw today, Democrats don’t have a position outside of shooting the messenger. I seem to recall a time not long ago where attacking journalists for doing their jobs was a threat to democracy. Will other journalists stand up and point that out … or will they simply not care as long as their preferred narratives are defended? This is a time for choosing like no other. And to choose silence is to choose to surrender.