It seemed unfathomable four years ago that the guy known for making electric cars and space tech would go on to play an instrumental role in shaping the discourse among the American electorate. Then again, nothing about U.S. politics is “normal” these days.

Amid the celebration of Donald Trump’s and Republicans’ election victories Tuesday night stands Elon Musk and his historic decision to purchase Twitter two years ago. What may have appeared as a trivial acquisition to some has been one of the most transformative decisions impacting freedom of speech in modern U.S. history.

Prior to Musk’s purchase, Twitter was just another weapon in the censorship industrial complex’s arsenal. The Big Tech company regularly colluded with the federal government to censor Americans whose posts — no matter how factually accurate — ran afoul of what regime bureaucrats found to be inconvenient to the dishonest narratives they pushed at any given time.

This unholy alliance knew no bounds, even going as far as to interfere in the 2020 election to the benefit of Joe Biden. When the New York Post dropped its infamous Hunter Biden laptop story documenting the Biden family’s foreign business dealings days before the 2020 contest, Twitter went into full-on censorship mode.

As documented in the Twitter Files, users were not permitted to share the story, even via direct message. The Big Tech company further removed links and posted warnings that the article may be “unsafe.”

It was only years later that Americans learned through testimony

Democrats and the media aren’t taking the election results well after former President Donald Trump made a triumphant White House comeback complemented by a new GOP majority in the Senate.

Leftist supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris posted videos of themselves crying about the results on the internet, while the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC reflexively blamed racism for the Democrats’ historic loss.

“I am profoundly disturbed,” said The View’s Sunny Hostin on Wednesday, “that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution did not prevent someone who participated in an insurrection from becoming president of the United States.”

“I’m surprised at the result, but I’m not surprised,” Hostin added. “As a woman of color, I was so hopeful that a mixed-race woman married to a Jewish guy could be elected president of this country, and I think that it had nothing to do with policy. I think this was a referendum of cultural resentment in this country.”

On election night, CNN’s Van Jones held back tears when he similarly characterized Harris’ loss as a rejection of the left’s victimized form of identity politics.

“It’s not the elites that [are] going to pay the price,” Jones said. “It’s people who woke up this morning with a dream and are going to bed with, with a nightmare.”

Left-wing podcast host Cenk Uygur screamed on air as Trump neared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the Oval Office.

“These Democratic leaders are the most useless people on

Enjoy this brief moment of self-reflection and candor from the media while it lasts. Regardless, they need to pay a heavy price this time.

We’re watching the immediate post-2016 election aftermath happen all over again. The news media are reluctantly conceding defeat to Donald Trump and finally admitting the obvious.

On the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast, reporter Astead Herndon was one such illuminating case. “I just feel as if, whether it is ‘democracy,’ whether it is lecturing Americans, saying inflation is actually not that bad, that there has been a tone coming from Democrats to tell people the problems that they had are not legitimate,” he said. “And I think that is at the core of their problems in this race. It’s hard for me not to go back to the fact that when these issues were most clear and they had a chance to speak to those concerns, they decided not to and they decided to double down on this administration, to double down on the incumbent.”

That’s true but not so fast, sweaty. The media don’t get to act like mildly concerned bystanders now positioned to offer a sober account of what just happened. Kamala Harris’s defeat is every bit theirs as it is the Democrat Party’s, arguably even more so. The media banked that they still had enough cachet, even just by a sliver, to do the impossible — insist to American voters that what they could see and feel wasn’t real in order to