Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, dismissed Monday’s release by Elon Musk of the “Twitter Files,” calling it a “distraction” in a period when she claims the platform is experiencing a rise.

This exchange was made days after Musk acquired Twitter in October and released shocking revelations about why the tech giant suppressed a New York Post article on Hunter Biden’s laptop during the last weeks of 2020.

Musk shared his findings with Substack journalist Matt Taibbi, who published a long thread outlining the platform’s censorship practices and the internal decisions made. Twitter Safety claimed that the articles violated its “hacked material policy” at the time.

Jean-Pierre raised concerns about the timing of Twitter’s release when Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich, asked Jean-Pierre if the White House thought that Twitter’s decision was appropriate in light of what’s been revealed.

She said, “We view this as an interesting coincidence, please, that Musk would so haphazardly… push this distraction full of old news, if you think about.” “And simultaneously, Twitter is facing very real, very serious questions about how they are allowing the rise in hate, anger, and antisemitism to happen on their platform.

Critics of Musk’s Twitter acquisition claim that his stewardship led to a significant increase in hate speech. Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” stated that hate speech impressions (i.e. the number of tweets viewed) have declined “despite significant user growth.

Musk stated earlier this month that freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach. “Negativity should and will have less reach than positivity.

Andrea Stroppa (a data analyst who worked alongside Twitter’s Trust and Safety team as an independent researcher) tweeted Saturday that the daily suspension rate of accounts involved in child sexual abuse/exploitation material had “almost doubled” over the past few days.