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YouTube Reportedly Suspends GOP Senator Ron Johnson For Peddling COVID Conspiracy Theories

By News & Guts
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WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 05: Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) speaks at the start of a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the governments response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak on March 5, 2020 in Washington, DC. COVID-19 has taken hold in the United States and national and local governments are rushing to contain the virus and to find a cure. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Ron Johnson

Ron Johnson’s affinity for conspiracy theories just earned him a suspension from YouTube.

The Wisconsin Republican Senator, known for his penchant for misleading statements and amplifying debunked far-right theories, has been reportedly suspended by the video platform for at least a week. That means he won’t be able to upload videos to his official account. According to conservative outlet The Federalist, the video that got Johnson suspended featured a speech the Senator gave in which he criticized bureaucrats in the Trump and Biden administrations for “not only ignoring but working against robust research [on] the use of cheap, generic drugs to be repurposed for early treatment of COVID.”

One of the drugs Johnson was arguing in favor of was Hydroxychloroquine, which former president Trump encouraged the use of, despite many medical experts saying otherwise.

YouTube says it restricted the Senator’s account due to its “COVID-19 medical misinformation policy.”

Johnson, perhaps unsurprisingly, viewed the action as censorship and said as much in a twitter post.

That Johnson would be held accountable by a media platform is surprising only in how long it took. He has been perhaps the GOP’s most ardent supporter of outlandish and debunked conspiracies.

He’s been trying to undermine public confidence on COVID vaccines for months. He’s a climate change denier and in recent months, has worked especially hard to spread lies about the Jan. 6 Insurrection. Back in March, he tried to downplay the events at the Capitol that day, with remarks many thought were racist when he said if the protesters had been part of the Black Lives Matter movement, he would have been more frightened.

Of course, blocking someone from sharing baseless conspiracy theories won’t have any impact on how real doctors treat patients, as someone on twitter pointed out to the Senator.