By Daniel Stefanski|
An Arizona Republican lawmaker’s videos from a recent border visit appeared to have been deleted from Twitter.
Last week, freshman Representative Austin Smith traveled to Cochise County and stopped by the border to gain first-hand knowledge about the crisis created by the Biden Administration’s policies. He posted two pictures and two videos from his visit to his Twitter account, writing, “Eye opening experience down here on the border. Joe Biden and Mayorkas are derelict in their duty to our country. Absolutely shameful. God bless the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. They are doing everything they can to keep Arizona and the United States safe. FINISH THE DANG WALL!”
Soon after his media went live to the social media site, the two videos seemed to have disappeared. AZ Free News viewed the post and observed that in place of the videos were the captions “This video has been deleted.”
Smith also noticed the deletion of his videos, sending a public message to Elon Musk to inquire why this had occurred.
He then reposted the videos on a separate thread, where they remain accessible to the public to view.
The videos Representative Smith published were generic commentaries about the state of the border according to his on-the-ground experience. In the first video, Smith is stationary by the border wall and talks about the number of ‘gotaways’ crossing into the country and the lack of Border Patrol agents around to detect and apprehend any illegal crossers in that area. He states that “the Biden Administration is truly derelict in its duty to protect the United States of America,” and he spends much of his time comparing and contrasting the differences in border security under the Trump and Biden Administrations. He also pleads with his viewers to make political changes with the presidency and the U.S. Senate in the 2024 election in order to effect real change at the border.
In the second video, Smith compares the size of walls before the Trump administration and from the Trump administration, showing that President Trump’s administration built taller infrastructure along the United States-Mexico border.
The first-year Arizona Representative was in Cochise County for the May 20th County Republican Club Lincoln Day Dinner, where he was the keynote speaker. Smith has quickly built out a profile for himself at the Arizona Legislature, focusing, in large part, on stopping Ranked Choice Voting from entering the state.
After the dinner, he tweeted a picture of him and his fiancée at the event, writing, “Thank you to the great grassroots of @realcochisegop for having @amyesamuel and I tonight! Fantastic group of southern Arizonans!”
Daniel Stefanski is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send him news tips using this link.
