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DeSantis Calls Out Apple For Threatening to ‘Nuke’ Twitter From its App Store; Says it Merits a Response From Congress

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday urged Congress to look into Apple Inc.’s alleged threat to remove Twitter from its App store, calling it a “raw exercise of monopolistic power.”

“Chief Twit” Elon Musk first revealed that Apple had made the threat on Twitter, Monday, noting that the company had not given any reason for the hostile move.

As soon as Musk took over the platform in late October and began enacting free speech policies, a slew of companies, including Apple, cancelled their advertisements in protest. The billionaire has taken the woke exodus in stride, but appeared to be concerned about Apple’s threat on Monday, because the removal of Twitter from iPhone’s app store would cripple the platform, as it did when Big tech took the same punitive actions against Parler.

In response to Big tech’s hostility toward free speech, Musk has expressed a willingness to do whatever it takes to save the platform.

Conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler noted in a tweet last week that if Apple and Google removed Twitter from their app stores, Musk could respond by producing his own smartphone. “Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android,” Wheeler wrote. “The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?”

In response, Musk said he might be forced to do just that. “I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone,” he tweeted back.

DeSantis on Tuesday characterized Apple’s alleged threat to ruin Twitter as an attack on free speech, during a press conference on Florida’s infrastructure improvements at Cecil Airport in Jacksonville.

“Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the App store because Elon Musk is actually opening it up for free speech and is restoring a lot of accounts that were unfairly and illegitimately suspended for putting out accurate information about COVID,” he said.

Last week, Musk posted a poll asking Twitter users if he should grant amnesty to all of the accounts that had been suspended by Twitter. Respondents overwhelmingly voted to restore the accounts, and Musk said in a subsequent tweet that the amnesties would begin this week.

Musk also revealed that Twitter enforced its rules almost exclusively against conservatives, displaying bias that was blatant and undeniable.

“The more I learn, the worse it gets,” he tweeted following the poll. “The world should know the truth of what has been happening at Twitter. Transparency will earn the trust of the people.”

In a subsequent Tweet, he wrote: “It is objectively the case that “conservative” political candidates were more negatively affected than “progressive” candidates. Anyone using Twitter knows this. Question is simply one of magnitude.”

During the presser Tuesday, DeSantis pointed out that many people were suspended from Twitter after they countered COVID narratives promoted by public health experts that turned out to be inaccurate.

Indeed, throughout the pandemic, numerous esteemed doctors, nurses, researchers and medical scientists—like Drs. Peter McCullough, Clair Craig, Mary Talley Bowden, and Robert Malone—were booted from Twitter for questioning the regime’s narrative on masks, lockdowns, vitamin D, hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, natural immunity, and the safety and efficacy of the COVID shots.

The governor noted that under Twitter’s former ownership, “their response was to just suffocate the dissent and Elon Musk knows that’s not a winning formula, so he’s providing free speech.”

DeSantis added: “If Apple responds to that by nuking them from the APP store, I think that that would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.”

He also chided Apple for doing the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) bidding by restricting its AirDrop feature in its products in China, to prevent protesters from  being able to share content without being censored by the regime.

“Don’t be a vassal of the CCP on the one hand, and then use your corporate power in the United States on the other to suffocate Americans and try to suppress their right to express themselves,” DeSantis said.

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About Debra Heine

Debra Heine is a conservative Catholic mom of six and longtime political pundit. She has written for several conservative news websites over the years, including Breitbart and PJ Media.

Photo: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 19, 2022. (Photo by Wade Vandervort / AFP) (Photo by WADE VANDERVORT/AFP via Getty Images)