Happy Tuesday!

Two notorious Sams had a very bad day. But first …

#TwitterFiles Five: Trump Banned Even After It Was Determined His Tweets Were No Violation

Donald Trump was banned from Twitter despite lower level Twitter workers determining that his tweets had not violated Twitter policy concerning the instigation of violence. That’s the story laid out in the fifth #TwitterFile drop.

Here’s the entire thread.

THREAD: THE TWITTER FILES PART FIVE.

THE REMOVAL OF TRUMP FROM TWITTER.

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

After January 6, Twitter had an eye on Trump — itching for a tweet it could use to send him packing. On the morning of January 7, Trump tweeted “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

He also tweeted that he wouldn’t be going to the Inauguration.

Staffers rationally determined that neither of those tweets incited violence, not even in a “coded” way. Oh, but the barbarians and former first ladies and the employees of Twitter were pounding at the gate.

26. Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.” pic.twitter.com/llJRMfpOPi

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

So higher ups concocted the idea that when Trump said “American Patriots,” that was code for the rioters, the insurrectionists. Not the 75 million people who voted for him.

Worse, Twitter’s “scaled enforcement team” came to, in the words of internal documents, “view him as the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.”

(As Julie Kelly reminds us, “the only people killed on January 6 were the four Trump supporters either partially or wholly due to excessive force that day.”)

So though Twitter couldn’t point to any tweet of Trump calling for violence, he was permanently banned “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” And thus the leader of the free world was silenced.

Twitter Flagged ‘My Pillow’ as Misinformation?!

Meanwhile, journalist Kristen Ruby has obtained documents showing the phrase “My Pillow” was tagged as “misinformation” on Twitter’s “Political Misinfo Detection AI List.” Yeah, “My Pillow.”

And it isn’t because My Pillow won’t give you “the best night’s sleep you ever had.” It’s another subtle way of slowing the spread of information about 2020 election fraud. My Pillow founder Mike Lindell is a very vocal and generous backer of efforts to show the 2020 election was fixed.

But let’s end with the good news. Elon Musk has disbanded Twitter’s notorious “Trust and Safety Council.” They were the merry band of censors responsible for the silencing of conservative voices and influencing the 2020 Election on behalf of Joe Biden.

All while letting child exploitation fester on Twitter unencumbered.

FTX Chief Sam Bankman-Fried Indicted, Arrested in Bahamas.

Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas after being charged with a slew of federal crimes connected to the spectacular collapse of his FTX crypto scheme. The U.S. is expected to request extradition from the Bahamas.

Bankman-Fried had been expected to testify today in front of the House Finance Service Committee about the collapse of FTX. It would have been quite a show. As the Washington Times notes, Bankman-Fried had bankrolled the campaigns of nine committee members, seven of them Democrats.

Luggage Stealing Gender Fluid Biden Energy Department Official is Out … and May Be a Fraud

Sam Brinton, Joe Biden’s gender fluid, fetish promoting, drag queen moonlighting head of nuclear waste disposal, is out. The Department of Energy announced Briton is “no longer a DOE employee.”

It’s not clear if he was fired or quit.

Brinton has been charged in two separate incidents of stealing woman’s luggage at two different airports. (Anyone really believe it has only happened twice?)

Now that he has been exposed as a brazen thief, perhaps people will pay attention to longtime allegations that he’s a fraud. Seems a dozen years ago Sam Brinton’s tale of being woefully abused by a Christian conversion therapist was highly influential in efforts to not only ban conversion therapy, but to bolster legal efforts to prevent people with unwanted same-sex attraction from getting professional help.

A psychotherapist warned that Brinton’s account did not add up, that his story kept changing, and was likely a fraud.

Tyler O’Neill has the story in “Psychotherapist: I Warned About Sam Brinton, But Nobody Listened.”

Dr. Michael Brown also touches on it in his brand new “Sam Brinton, the ‘Gender Fluid,’ Drag Dressing, Biden Appointee, Really Needs Jesus.”

Merchant of Death Wants In on Ukraine War

“If I could share the skills I have I would readily volunteer.” So says the Merchant of Death. Just freed Viktor Bout says he approves of Russia’s war with Ukraine and wants in on the action. And when you’re the world’s most notorious arms dealer, that means one thing. More Ukrainians (and possibly Americans) will die. But hey, as long as Brittney Griner is free to drive the lane and take a knee against America, why complain, right?

The two were swapped last week in what is the most lopsided deal since the French sold us the Louisiana Territory for $3 million.

Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream, chief barista for The Brew and co-author, with John Zmirak, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration. You can follow him at @StreamingAl at GETTR, Gab, Parler, and now at TRUTH Social.