YouTube suspends 'Louder with Crowder' over video featuring Arizona GOP candidate Kari Lake, says it included 'false claims' about 2020 election



BlazeTV host Steven Crowder has been temporarily suspended from YouTube again for a video featuring Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who said President Joe Biden is in charge of an "illegitimate federal government."

On Wednesday, Crowder announced that his Aug. 11 video featuring Lake as a guest was removed from YouTube because of comments she made advancing disputed claims about the 2020 presidential election. He shared a screenshot of an email from YouTube that said his video violated the platform's "misinformation policy."

"Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube," the company said.

Crowder said he will be unable to livestream on YouTube for two weeks.

\u201cWow. Won\u2019t be able to steam to @YouTube because of comments from a CURRENT GUBERNATORIAL candidate. On a show with all references provided. \nIf this isn\u2019t suppression of political speech, then nothing is. \nSee you tomorrow on Rumble and #MugClub with updates. \nWar.\u201d
— Steven Crowder (@Steven Crowder) 1660771218

During an interview on "Louder with Crowder" that was posted to YouTube last week, Lake said that the Biden administration is "illegitimate" and stated she does not believe that Biden did not win the 2020 presidential election.

"I don't believe Joe Biden won the election," Lake told Crowder. "And we had problems with the 2020 election, I've talked about that. They've criticized me for that. But I've looked at the facts, I have looked over our forensic audit, I've looked over all kinds of evidence. We had a botched, corrupt election in Arizona and in many other states."

Crowder's video was subsequently removed from YouTube.

YouTube's misinformation policies prohibit content that calls the results of any past U.S. presidential election illegitimate or fraudulent. Content that violates this policy will be removed from YouTube, which implements a strike system to punish accounts that repeatedly violate its policies. Any channel that earns three strikes for repeatedly violating YouTube's policies will be terminated.

Lake reappeared on Crowder's show Thursday and discussed YouTube's actions.

"It's insane," she told Crowder, adding that if elected, she will enact a law to constrain the ability of social media companies to censor content.

"I"m going to do what Governor DeSantis did. You're not going to take away people's freedom of speech in Arizona," Lake said.

She was referring to a law Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed last year that permits state residents to sue Big Tech companies and creates transparency requirements for content moderation policies on social media platforms. A federal appeals court blocked the law from going into effect in May, finding it unconstitutionally violated the First Amendment.

Lake, a former local news anchor who became the Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee on Aug. 5 , has previously said she would not have certified Biden's 2020 victory in Arizona and repeatedly claimed the election was fraudulent. She has cited a "forensic audit" conducted by Republicans in the Arizona state Senate to support her claims — but that ballot review said a hand recount of ballots confirmed the election-night results in Maricopa County, where Biden defeated Trump by about 45,000 votes.

The Kari Lake campaign was reached for comment but did not immediately respond.

Blaze Media CEO calls out New York Times for 'ominous framing' of Glenn Beck quote ripped out of context



Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon called out the New York Times on Wednesday for using "ominous framing" in an article about "election falsehoods" that took comments from BlazeTV host Glenn Beck out of context.

The Times article, "Election Falsehoods Surged on Podcasts Before Capitol Riots, Researchers Find," reported on a study by researchers at the Brookings Institution who reviewed transcripts of nearly 1,500 episodes from 20 of the most popular conservative podcasts looking for election misinformation leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

In the opening paragraph, the article by reporter Stuart Thompson claimed that Beck made a prediction about the election in which he suggested President Donald Trump would appear to be winning early in the evening but would have his lead erode after questionable mail-in ballots were counted, giving Joe Biden an advantage.

“No one will believe the outcome because they’ve changed the way we’re electing a president this time,” Beck is quoted as saying.

In several tweets, Cardon called attention to how the Times article left out important context surrounding Beck's remarks.

"Read this opening paragraph from New York Times piece about "election falsehoods" that published yesterday. Note the ominous framing. Apparently, on a random day in September, big bad broadcaster Glenn Beck outlined his prediction for Election Day in a single sentence," Cardon wrote.

"But the quote they pulled was from a segment in which GB was reacting to a report by the Transition Integrity Project, which got a ton of media coverage largely because it predicted the end of the Republic in all scenarios except a Biden landslide," he continued, providing a partial transcript of Beck's remarks from the Sept. 16, 2020 episode of his radio program.

But the quote they pulled was from a segment in which GB was reacting to a report by the Transition Integrity Project, which got a ton of media coverage largely because it predicted the end of the Republic in all scenarios except a Biden landslide. Here's what Glenn said: 2/pic.twitter.com/DV6fmSu9RE
— Tyler Carditis (@Tyler Carditis) 1641413057

Beck was discussing an Aug. 3, 2020 report by a bipartisan group of experts convened by the Transition Integrity Project to run table-top simulations of the 2020 presidential election. The report predicted it was highly likely "that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape." The report urged policy makers to prepare for a contested election and presciently predicted how Trump would contest the results of the election by alleging there was voter fraud.

The researchers ran four hypothetical scenarios with opposing teams representing the Biden and Trump camps. Two of the scenarios ended with close elections, which both resulted in what Beck described as a "nightmarish" situation where the election is contested. In a third scenario where Trump clearly won the Electoral College vote but Biden won the popular vote, "game play ended in a constitutional crisis," the researchers said.

Only the fourth scenario of a decisive victory for Biden in both the Electoral College and popular vote resolved without a major crisis. Reacting to this information, Beck agreed with that assessment and said it would take a "landslide" victory by either candidate to convince a majority of Americans the election was legitimate.

"Where's the lie?" Cardon asked Wednesday. "You need to look no further than the TIP report itself to find support for GB's 'prediction' here. The only difference is that GB is more generous to the Dems by assuming they'd accept a Trump landslide. In the report, this resulted in 'constitutional crisis.'"

Supporting his case, Cardon shared a video montage of "prominent politicians" — including many Democrats — expressing their doubts about the integrity of the electoral process leading up to the 2020 election.

For further support, here's a montage of prominent politicians expressing sincere concern about the integrity of our elections process before all such concerns were solved by mail-in ballots, relentless sloganeering, and fairy dust. 4/pic.twitter.com/LCyl6LEtam
— Tyler Carditis (@Tyler Carditis) 1641413065

"The NYT (and other dusty, legacy media outlets) are desperate to connect every effective dissident voice in today's media landscape to some flavor of 'dangerous misinformation,' not because it's true, but because they're losing influence & want to silence their competition," Cardon said.

The New York Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment.