There is surprising unity in Congress following the announcement by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that he has created a board to battle “disinformation.” Both Democrats and Republicans believe the board is a terrible idea.
Mayorkas later said it wouldn’t target American citizens and that the board would concentrate on combatting Russian disinformation and other foreign influences on American elections.
But Mayorkas’s vagueness in explaining the basic purpose of the board as well as any other details has lost him any support he might have gotten from Democrats who realize that Republicans have gone ahead and defined the board as a “Ministry of Truth” no matter its structure or mission.
Fox News:
“I still have yet to be explained what this thing is,” Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., told Fox News Digital at the Milken Institute 2022 Global Conference. “The one thing that’s unquestionable is this is terrible communication.”
Meijer added that he believes the board has a “questionable mission” and should be disbanded.
“I have implored the Biden administration to just cancel this whole thing,” he said. “Before we even get to what this questionable mission is — is so ham fisted and just off base that they should just cut their losses on this thing.”
There’s already an effort to remove funds from the Homeland Security Budget that would fund the disinformation board, but most Republicans don’t think that goes far enough.
And neither do some Democrats.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said he is looking at the board “from a position of deep skepticism whenever any government gets involved in managing information, identifying disinformation.”
“As far as I’m concerned, the government has no business saying that this is disinformation and this is information,” he added.
Rep. Meijer points out that the State Department is already dealing with the disinformation problem.
Rep. Meijer added the mission of the board is already being completed by the Department of State, and focusing on disinformation has taken the Department of Homeland Security away from its other core missions, namely, securing the southern border.
“I don’t know fully the problem they’re trying to solve and they haven’t explained it,” Meijer said. “Meanwhile, on the southern border, we have a very clear and dramatic problem that needs to be solved.”
“They definitely shouldn’t be taking on new extracurriculars when they’re failing at their fundamental objectives,” he added.
Is it an accident that the controversy over the disinformation board comes at the same time that DHS is readying the implementation of a plan to deal with 18,000 illegal aliens a day trying to cross the border? It’s a safe bet that once Title 42 restrictions are lifted, the controversy over the disinformation board will disappear in lieu of the outrage over the tidal wave of illegal aliens trying to cross the border.
At that point, Mayorkas and his disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz will be free to create any kind of board targeting any kind of information, using any criteria they see fit.
Such strategizing would attribute a subtlety and breadth of intellect to this administration that they have not shown previously. For that reason alone, it’s not possible.
Source: PJ Media
