(LifeSiteNews) — Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden argued in a new interview that the relaxation of censorship on X, formerly Twitter, under self-professed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk is contributing to online misinformation that can spur potential political violence on the right.
In an interview with left-leaning journalistic organization ProPublica that aired Sunday, Biden agreed that Musk’s purchase of Twitter/X and subsequent decision to remove onerous curbs on free speech were putting Americans in jeopardy.
In a far-ranging interview that touched on avoiding “another January 6” and addressing the “specter of violence” from right-wing individuals allegedly fearful of changes within the country, Biden responded in the affirmative when asked whether Elon Musk’s loosening up on restrictions on the social media platform X have added to the problem.
“What about what Elon Musk has done to Twitter, lowering guardrails against misinformation? Does that contribute to [the ‘specter of violence’]?” ProPublica interviewer John Harwood asked.
“Yeah, it does,” Biden responded. “Where do people get their news? They go on the internet. They go online. And you have no notion whether it’s true or not.”
Biden and his allies have made a habit of decrying online “misinformation,” particularly right-wing information that cuts against the prevailing government and corporate narratives on issues like COVID-19 and election integrity. The Biden administration has been fighting in court for the ability to continue urging social media companies to censor so-called “misinformation.”
In an interview with then-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson in April, newly minted Twitter owner Musk said the U.S. government had access even to private messages sent on the platform.
“The degree to which various government agencies had effectively full access to everything that was going on at Twitter blew my mind,” Musk told Carlson at the time. “I was not aware of that.”
But online “misinformation” and censorship weren’t the only topics covered during Biden’s interview with ProPublica, an outlet that has earned attention in recent months for suggesting pro-life Catholic Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas engaged in corruption by accepting payment of travel accommodations from big-ticket Republican donors (Thomas has said he and wealthy Republican Harlan Crow are simply friends and that he has “always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines” of the Court).
READ: Democrats demand Supreme Court investigate Clarence Thomas over friendship with Republican donor
The Sunday interview, which touched on alleged “threats to democracy” posed by former president Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans,” also included an explicit suggestion by Harwood linking white, male, rural, Christian conservatives present with a threat of political violence.
“There are millions of Americans who think the country is changing in ways that are harmful to whites, men, social conservatives, small-town, blue-collar America,” Harwood said. “A poll by the Public Relation Research Institute showed that 40% of the people who call themselves ‘Christian Nationalists’ think that patriots may need to use violence to save the country. Is that fear of change where the ‘threat to democracy’ comes from?”
Biden responded by repeating a previous remark about having believed that “you can defeat hate, you can bury it, you can kill it,” but later learning that “you can’t.”
“All you can do is, you can drive it underground. And when you breathe oxygen under the rock, it comes roaring back out again,” he said.
Biden said he “represent[s] all those people” referenced by Harwood and that blue-collar workers ought to be “treated with respect,” but that “the world is changing.”
“The world’s changing, John,” he said. “The fact is, we’re going to be very shortly a minority white/European country.”
Biden argued that changing demographics will not alter the way the country is governed, despite previously endorsing the far-left opinion that America’s structures are fundamentally marred by “systemic racism” and the fact that immigrants are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans.
The president has also presided over an explosion of illegal immigration, with record-shattering numbers of undocumented individuals from across the globe flooding into the country during his presidency.
RELATED: Elon Musk is right: Biden’s border crisis is ‘insane’ and America needs to end it now
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded 1.72 million illegal border crossings during fiscal year 2021 and a staggering 2.76 million in fiscal year 2022, NBC reported.
Critics assessing the impact of widespread illegal immigration point out that the phenomenon increases America’s crime rate, and that failure to assimilate new immigrants leads to cultural balkanization, LifeSiteNews has noted.