Daily Signal: Amazon Bowed to White House Pressure to Suppress Books Skeptical of COVID-19 Vaccines

Tyler O'Neil : Feb 6, 2024
The Daily Signal

Andrew Slavitt, then a senior adviser on Biden's COVID-19 response team ... became notorious when Elon Musk released the internal files of Twitter in 2022 and 2023 after he purchased the company in October 2022. Slavitt appears to have repeatedly pressured social media companies into suppressing opposition to COVID-19 vaccines.

[DailySignal.com] FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Amazon yielded to pressure from ...Joe Biden's White House to suppress books that opposed COVID-19 vaccines, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Signal. (Image: Unsplash-Marques Thomas)

The House Judiciary Committee obtained the emails, which demonstrate the White House's pressure on Amazon to suppress "anti-vax books" and the company's decision to take action against the books.

Amazon employees strategized for a meeting with the White House on March 9, 2021, openly asking whether the administration wanted the retailer to remove books from its catalog.

"Is the [a]dmin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?" one employee wrote.

Andrew Slavitt, then a senior adviser on Biden's COVID-19 response team, had previously asked, "Who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation [on] Amazon?"

Slavitt became notorious when Elon Musk released the internal files of Twitter in 2022 and 2023 after he purchased the company in October 2022. Slavitt appears to have repeatedly pressured social media companies into suppressing opposition to COVID-19 vaccines.

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Slavitt on Nov. 30.

The committee told Slavitt that it "obtained documents that demonstrate the central role you played in communicating the Biden White House's censorship efforts to social media companies, including the White House's demands to censor true information, memes, satire, and other constitutionally protected forms of expression."

The White House instructed Slavitt not to appear, the Washington Examiner reported on Friday. "Everything is on the table," a Judiciary Committee spokesman told The Daily Signal about Slavitt's refusal to abide by the subpoena.

Slavitt had also been involved in discussions with Facebook. That social media company admitted to suppressing "often-true content" because it contradicted the White House's narrative on COVID-19 vaccines.

On March 2, 2021, Slavitt complained to Amazon staff that "If you search for 'vaccines' under books, I see what comes up."

"I haven't looked beyond that, but if that's what's on the surface, it's concerning," he added.

Amazon decided that the company would not do a "manual intervention" on March 3, noting that a move against books expressing hesitancy on COVID-19 vaccines might undermine the company.

"The team/[public relations] feels very strongly that it is too visible, and will further compound the Harry/Sally narrative (which is getting the Fox News treatment today apparently), and won't fix the long-term problem [sic] because of the customer behavior associations," the Amazon staffer wrote.

The "Harry/Sally narrative" refers to Amazon's controversial decision to remove "When Harry Became Sally," Ryan T. Anderson's book on the transgender movement, in February 2021. Amazon said the book violated its content policy. Anderson serves as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and had previously served as a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

The Amazon employee had moved to "widen the search light flag for COVID-19 [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] website re-direct so that it comes to the top of the page on more search keys," however... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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Tyler O'Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center."