Yoel Roth is the former head of Trust and Safety for Twitter who testified for GOP Rep. James Comer’s Kentucky Fried Hunter Biden Peener Investigatin’ Committee yesterday. During the hearing, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene baselessly smeared him as a pedophile right to his face. Why? We don’t know. Maybe she’s just a vile homophobic gutter trash scum of the earth person who doesn’t have the moral or intellectual capacity to do better.
She opened her snake mouth and uttered forth nasty accusations about Roth’s “inability to remove child porn” from Twitter. “Here’s something that DISGUSTS me about you,” she continued, as if what does or doesn’t disgust her is worthy of respect or consideration. “In your doctoral dissertation entitled ‘Gay Data,’ you argue that minors should have access to Grindr, an adult male gay hookup app!” She claimed Elon Musk had succeeded at getting rid of all kinds of child porn on Twitter. Surprise, she’s full of shit and Elon is a failure at that too.
Was Greene lying about or misconstruing what Roth said in his dissertation? Yes, though we should be fair to her and leave open the possibility that she’s simply too stupid to understand a doctoral dissertation.
Elon Musk was the first person to blatantly lie about/misconstrue Roth’s thesis. In December, Musk tweeted, “Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis.” Of course, Roth wasn’t making that argument, because it would be like arguing that water should be wet. Roth’s entire point, which any intelligent and/or honest person could understand, was that minors already use services like Grindr, and they’re going to keep finding ways to use them, so we should work to make them as safe as possible.
Entirely unobjectionable, unless you’re some kind of rightwing religious freak.
Elon Musk Dispatches Howler Monkeys To Drive Former Employee From His Home
So both Greene and Musk are being human garbage homophobes here. If this wasn’t about Grindr, the sneering wouldn’t be so vicious. In December, Musk also insinuated that Roth wasn’t removing child porn from the platform because he and his team were too busy doing woke ideology. (It’s worth mentioning that Roth is Jewish, considering the kinds of QAnon blood libel dogwhistles Greene and Musk are sending out here.)
The harassment Musk called down on Roth put his life in danger and forced him to sell his house, and put other Twitter employees worldwide in danger as well, as far away as the Philippines, as Roth testified yesterday.
So naturally Greene, because she’s a classless, hateful yokel, unleashed that vicious tirade on Roth to his face. Other members of Congress apologized for the unregulated sack of shit from Georgia.
Later on in the hearing, wildly stupid Louisiana Republican Rep. Clay “WHAR BOXES” Higgins threatened Roth and the rest of the panel with arrest.
Donald Trump Jr. got in on it last night, calling Roth a “predator” who was “fine with kiddie porn.” Here’s a screengrab, in case Junior’s lawyers encourage him to delete this absolute libel:
And then Marjorie Taylor Greene went on “Hannity,” wherein she baselessly suggested that Yoel Roth might also have secrets on his laptop that they should investigate, and that he should be worried.
GREENE: You know who else may have a disgusting laptop? That’s Yoel Roth. Because he’s on record with some very disturbing views about minors and child porn. […] Yoel Roth has a lot to be concerned about and I hope that we investigate him more.
Sean Hannity did not cut her mic or push back. We guess Fox News executives are cool with that, just like we guess they’re cool with Tucker Carlson’s QAnon-Nazi-style lies about Democrats killing and mutilating children.
We don’t know what legal options are open to Roth with these kinds of statements (especially with Greene’s status as a member of Congress) or if he would even want to put himself and his family through litigation over this. But if he decided to file some lawsuits over this, it would be hard to blame him.
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!
And once that doesn’t exist, I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@evanhurst@newsie.social) and at Post!
Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE!
