YouTube Suspends Rand Paul Over Facemask Claims

Google’s YouTube division has banned outspoken US Senator Rand Paul for seven days, over claims he made about facemasks.

The Republican US Senator from Kentucky ran in trouble after he uploaded a video questioning measures to combat Covid, and even urged Americans to “resist” them.

A YouTube spokesperson told The New York Times that the Republican Senator had violated rules on Covid misinformation.

Paul ban

“We apply our policies consistently across the platform, regardless of speaker or political views,” the spokesperson reportedly said, “and we make exceptions for videos that have additional context such as countervailing views from local health authorities.”

Senator Paul in a three-minute video made many baseless statements, and alleged that many “of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection,” and that scientists were “trying to shape human behaviour”.

“They can’t arrest all of us,” the Republican senator was quoted as saying. “They can’t keep all of your kids home from school. They can’t keep every government building closed – although I’ve got a long list of ones they might keep closed, or might oughta keep closed”.

“We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and feckless bureaucrats,” he went on. “We can simply say no, not again.”

Rand Paul is known for his hostile approach to vaccines and facemasks in the US, and recently clashed with Dr. Anthony Fauci in a heated exchange in the US Senate.

During that exchange, Rand Paul even alleged that Dr Fauci had funded a study at a Wuhan lab that had started the Coronavirus pandemic, leading to an exasperated Dr Fauci to respond “Senator Paul, you don’t know what you are talking about.”

Dr Fauci also accused Rand Paul directly of lying, as the Paul continued to make serious allegations against Dr Fauci.

What makes all of this worse, is that Senator Paul is actually a doctor, although he studied ophthalmology (basically he is an eye doctor).

Republican bans

YouTube’s banning of Rand Paul for a week comes after Twitter this week also opted to suspend the account of Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

She was suspended after she once again violated the platform’s policies, for a second time in the space of a month.

Trump supporter Greene is a believer of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, and has previously called for the execution of Democratic officials.

Earlier this year she blamed jews for the space lasers that she said had started damaging wildfires in the United States.

Her controversial tweets have breach Twitter’s policies on at least two separate occasions for misleading information about Coronavirus, causing Twitter to suspend her account for 12 hours each time.

Twitter also permanently banned Donald Trump from its platform in January for his role in inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol building on Wednesday 6 January, which resulted in the deaths of five people (including one police officer who was beaten to death).