Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem is crediting Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, after Twitter suspended his account for no apparent reason on Oct. 31 and the company restored it less than an hour later.
He said it looks like Musk came to his defense.
“He said, ‘Let me look into it.’ Forty-five minutes later, he posted that our Twitter feed was back on,” said Finchem, the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state.
However, it wasn’t clear whether Musk directly intervened on Finchem’s behalf. Musk began firing top executives after he finalized the purchase of the social media platform for $44 billion last week.
Finchem said it appeared that some “leftist” at Twitter shut his account down just eight days before the Nov. 8 midterm election.
He said “of course” it was politically motivated.
“I didn’t even know what we did to offend the political sensibilities of whoever the leftist was that decided to interfere with free speech,” Finchem told The Epoch Times. “I’m very thankful Elon Musk took action, which is what he said he would do when he decided to acquire Twitter.”
Finchem said Musk appears to be “getting rid of people who hate this country’s First Amendment.”
“[There’s] no place for people like that,” Finchem said. “Because here’s what ends up happening: You start seeing these social media platforms becoming regulated public utilities.
“I don’t want to go there. Because any time a government puts its hand on something, it never quite turns out the way you want it to.”
He said he prefers a private-sector solution to the online censorship of conservatives, “and I think that’s what Elon Musk has done here.”
“He’s restored free speech—plain and simple—and he gets the credit for that.”
By Allan Stein
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