By Gage Klipper
Elon Musk’s X suspended left-wing journalist Ken Klippenstein on Thursday after he linked to an article of his that contained a document with sensitive information about Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance.
The 271-page dossier on Vance reportedly comes from an Iranian hack, and the regime has allegedly been shopping around to major media outlets all summer. Yet even the nation’s preeminent beacons of Trump Derangement Syndrome all had the common sense to refuse the offer. Klippenstein was the first to take the bait.
Retribution on X came swiftly, with Musk himself weighing in to call this “one of the most egregious, evil doxxing actions we’ve ever seen.” An X spokesman clarified that Klippenstein violated their policy against posting “unredacted private personal information,” including Vance’s physical addresses and part of his social security number.
Ken Klippenstein just published the Iranian dossier on JD Vance, which includes his private personal details, personal phone numbers, family details and more under the guise of “journalism.”
Klippenstein doxxed JD Vance.
Publishing information from a foreign adversary that was… pic.twitter.com/Hccb8SEO8r
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 26, 2024
Yet the left has a new-found love of free speech absolutism now that one of their own has rightly been shut down.
Left-wing Twitter mobs quickly drew comparisons to the Hunter Biden laptop story being censored in 2019. Others pointed out that Klippenstein simply linked to the dossier, but didn’t publish it. Most just saw an opportunity to dunk on Musk, now their #2 boogeyman after Trump himself, as a partisan hypocrite for supposedly betraying his commitment to free speech.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Obviously, this sort of personal information should not be published — and X would certainly hold the same standard for any Democratic politician who faced a similar hit. This doesn’t just put Vance in danger in some abstract sense; there have already been two assassination attempts against Donald Trump. And unlike the laptop story, it only makes it worse that the information seemingly comes from a hostile foreign government.
Of course, it’s the left that would freak out if they faced any of this themselves. They would call for sweeping censorship in unison — just like they baselessly did for the laptop story.
This doesn’t prove what liberals think it does about Musk. If they’re looking for hypocrisy, they should look in the mirror.
