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- [00:01]
Michael Knowles
We have all talked for months and months and years and years about the threats that Big Tech is posing to free expression, to the First Amendment, to our public square, to self government itself. Now finally, the government is taking action. The Department of Justice is suing Google on the grounds of antitrust. The US Senate is going to subpoena Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, the heads of Twitter and Facebook. Big Tech is finally being called to account. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, joined as ever by Senator Cruz. Senator, I like to think that on this show we predict the future and I guess sometimes actually maybe affect the future because we're talking about laws that could be passed and big moves that could be taking place in the federal government. Last episode we talked about this crazy story with Big Tech censoring a New York Post investigation into Hunter Biden and possible corruption involving Joe Biden. Big Tech suppressed the story, shut it down. We all saw it going on for days. Now it appears the federal government is taking action. All I've seen are the headlines, Senator, that the DOJ is going to try to break up Google and that the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to subpoena the other heads of Big Tech. What can you tell us about what is actually going on?
- [01:29]
Ted Cruz
Well, sure, this has been a big and momentous week on multiple fronts, as you just noted, concerning Big Tech. Let's start with Twitter and Facebook. And last week during the confirmation hearing on Judge Barrett, we had one story that came out Wednesday night. That was the New York Post blockbuster story on Ukraine based on Hunter Biden's emails and alleging on its face corruption by Joe Biden and that he had lied in saying that he had not met with these Ukrainian oligarchs. The next day, Thursday. And we recorded a verdict podcast with that information that night because both Twitter and Facebook blocked that story. If any individual user tried to tweet out that New York Post story, you got a warning sign that said you couldn't tweet it, you couldn't post it. And Twitter said that this was potentially harmful. Well, the next day, Thursday morning, the story actually it got worse because the New York Post broke a second blockbuster story. This second one was again from the same trove of emails on Hunter Biden's laptop, allegedly this one concerning Communist China and an offer from Communist China to pay not only Hunter Biden millions of dollars, but to pay Joe Biden himself millions of dollars. The emails refer to Joe Biden as the big Guy. And it's an offer of serious cash directly to Joe Biden. So once again, Twitter blocked that. And I have to admit, I saw this. So I'm sitting on my phone during the Judge Barrett confirmation hearing, and I'm up at the dais and I'm on my phone and I'm looking at the story and I'm like, wow, this is unbelievable. And so I put together a tweet, you know, will Twitter block this one too? And I hit send and boom, Twitter's blocked it and I can't send it. And I'm like, furious. And so I get up and called Lindsey Graham over, and he and I stepped out back. And so the public hearing room where we do the hearings is in the Hart Senate Office Building. And there's an area back behind that's like the anteroom. So I pulled Lindsey back and I was worked up. I said, you know what? Let's subpoena Twitter right now. We're meeting. The Judiciary Committee is here. Let's do it right now. Get Jack Dorsey to come right here and explain what in the hell he is doing. So I gotta admit, Lindsey's staff was very worried about this. And look, to be fair, they're sitting there saying, well, let's not do anything to screw up the Judge Barrett confirmation. And I understand that. And I'm like, well, look, obviously I don't wanna do anything to screw that up. And so they were nervous. Let's not do anything else. Let's just do Judge Barrett. But this was so absurd. I told Lindsey we gotta do something. So what his staff has said is, well, look, we can notice a hearing for next week and vote on subpoenas next week. And I said, great. And Lindsey said, you know, if you want, you and I can go announce it to the TV cameras right now. I said, great, let's go. We both walk out. It's during a break in the Judge Barrett hearing. So it's just there was a kind of a five minute break. Lindsey and I walk out to the TV camera out there, and we both announced together that the Judiciary Committee will be voting on subpoenas to subpoena Jack Dorsey to testify in front of Judiciary. And that blew up the news that was literally just on the fly. Lindsey and me talking in the ante room. And we agreed. Let's go announce it. And now this week, we'll be teeing it up.
- [05:25]
Michael Knowles
This is something that I realized during impeachment, and I suppose probably the listeners and viewers realized it too, that I didn't understand before in my mind. The way the government and especially the Senate works is that everything is preplanned and nothing happens on the spur of the moment. And you just know what's going to happen. And that's that. What I realized was that's not really what happens in the moment. I mean, as you described during impeachment, you'd hear a question, you'd hear Adam Schiff say something, you'd go into the cloak room, you'd talk to Senator so. And so you guys would make a plan to do this, that or the other thing. And obviously that's what's happening here as well. Twitter's decision to censor this information, to suppress it, led directly to Jack Dorsey getting subpoenaed on the fly in the moment. And we'll get into the legal issue, I suspect, in a moment. But I think it is important for listeners to consider just the way that our political system is structured right now, that a US Senator in a hearing trying to post new information that has just come out from the oldest continually published daily newspaper in the country, founded by Alexander Hamilton, the New York Post, trying to put that out there in the public square, could be censored by a tech oligarch in Silicon Valley. That is the regardless of the legal question, that is the political situation that we're looking at now as we head into these subpoenas.
- [06:43]
Ted Cruz
So look, you and I and on verdict, we've been talking about tech censorship a long time. And a lot of us have been very concerned about tech bias and censorship for years. It's been getting steadily worse. It's been escalating more and more and more. Last week was a dramatic escalation. Last week. It's one thing for Big Tech to silence individual Americans speaking. They're doing far too much of it. It's wrong. And I am leading the fight to stop it. But last week represented something very, very different, which is they silenced a major media publication. The New York Post has the fourth highest circulation of any newspaper in America. And not only could you or I or any American, you couldn't tweet their story. Twitter actually blocked the New York Post itself, prevented the New York Post from posting their own story and silenced the media from speaking. And it actually, you know, Politico, certainly not a right leaning publication, to put it mildly. A politico journalist sent out some tweets about the New York Post story and the politico journalists got blocked. And this is Big Tech asserting the power to censor the media.
- [08:04]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [08:04]
Ted Cruz
And you know, if reporters had even the tiniest Hint of integrity. They'd be losing their minds over this.
- [08:15]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [08:15]
Ted Cruz
Because this is literally Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg saying they can decide what media outlets in America can report and what anyone in America is allowed to see. Because if they can, if they can censor the New York Post, they can censor the New York Times. If they can silence Politico, they can silence the Washington Post, or they can silence Fox News. And crossing that threshold of we're now going to silence, silence the media is incredibly dangerous. Two weeks out from an election, certainly no reporter cares. They're so invested in defeating Donald Trump that they're willing to let Jack Dorsey censor them and to decide which of the stories can be published. And these are American oligarchs. I mean, you want to talk about the oligarchs of Russia, These are oligarchs with money that believe they're drunk on their own power.
- [09:16]
Michael Knowles
Right. I think this is the point when people use the phrase fake news, I think sometimes it's a little bit ambiguous what that means, but I think in its most precise meaning, it's not that every single news story is false. It's not that every single reporter is corrupt. It's that the news itself is fake because it isn't the news, because the focus is not on reporting the news. The focus is not on standing up to censorship when the outlets are censored. It's all just about advancing a narrative that benefits one political party over another.
- [09:45]
Ted Cruz
Well, and, you know, so the most of the Democratic senators have ignored this issue, have ignored the New York Post story, have ignored, ignored Twitter censorship and Facebook censorship, by the way. The Biden campaign has ignored it. So Joe Biden. About the only thing the Biden campaign has said is there's no meeting with the oligarch on his official schedule. So they haven't denied that this was Hunter Biden's laptop. They haven't denied that these are Hunter Biden's emails. They haven't denied that Joe Biden met with the oligarch, even though he said. Said previously he did not. They haven't denied that. That Communist China offered Joe Biden millions of dollars. So there's. There no one's even asked them. You know, Biden did an ABC town hall the day after these stories broke, and they didn't bother to ask him. It simply. It doesn't exist. It's been disappeared. But when it comes to Democratic senators, to the extent they've said anything about it, their talking point has been, this is Russian disinformation. Okay, well, I'm not aware of any evidence of that. The Director of National Intelligence has said it's not. But if somebody has evidence that it's Russian disinformation, great. Show us the evidence. Look, if these emails are fake, that's highly relevant. But at this point, Joe Biden isn't claiming they're fake, right?
- [11:10]
Michael Knowles
Well, it would seem, you know, the fact that the Biden campaign won't deny it and the fact that photos were released as well. Either these Russian disinformers have the greatest Photoshop skills in the world, or what we're looking at is, is legitimate material from Hunter Biden's computer.
- [11:28]
Ted Cruz
If something's fake, that's actually what journalism is for. So I'm perfectly fine with people reporting it. If you share the New York Post story, it turns out the story is wrong. Fine. Then they put out the refutation and show that it's wrong. But Big Tech doesn't want to do that. They just simply want to make it disappear. And I think Big Tech believes they are not accountable to anybody. And that's why I think it's so important that they testify.
- [11:56]
Michael Knowles
I think so as well. I was thrilled when I saw that you were calling for Dorsey and Zuckerberg to come and testify. I have to ask you for a little behind the scenes, though, a little cloakroom gossip, if you don't mind, which is that I've seen headlines that some Republicans on the committee are wavering. That's the term that's been reported. Are people going softier? Are we actually gonna hear from some Zuckerberg and Dorsey or not?
- [12:20]
Ted Cruz
I believe we will. It is true. We are having, I guess what I'll characterize as vigorous internal conversations. Right. We were supposed to vote today. This is Tuesday. You and I are talking. I think the pot will probably come out tomorrow. But we were supposed to vote today on the subpoenas. We haven't voted today. There is a vote noticed for Thursday. So two days from now on the subpoenas, Twitter and Facebook are right now negotiating with the Judiciary Committee about potentially appearing voluntarily. And actually next week they're going to be appearing before the Commerce Committee. I also serve on the Commerce Committee, so I'm going to be at a hearing next week with the heads of Google, Facebook and Twitter. Anyway, Commerce is a very different committee than Judiciary. I'm on both of the committees, so I'm, I'm fine with that. But Commerce, the issue is Commerce focuses on Section 230, will be part of the discussion in the Commerce hearing. But Judiciary is on both sides, Democrat and Republican, frankly, manned by junkyard dog prosecutors who know how to pound the hell out of a witness. It's just a different. That ain't Commerce. Commerce is lovey dovey kumbaya. It's. It's a lot easier to testify in front of Commerce than Judiciary. What I am pressing for, what I want to see happen, is I want to see Dorsey and Zuckerberg testify in person. Now, they'd prefer to do it remotely. I want to drag their asses to Washington to sit down in that hearing and answer questions. And I think it needs to be before the election. I believe we'll see them testify before the election. I hope it's in person. That's what I'm pressing for. And whether it is by subpoena or voluntary doesn't really matter. My objective is that they testify. If they agree to voluntarily show up, fine, as long as it's in person before the election. But where the votes are on Judiciary, I don't know. We may find out on Thursday. We may see it teed up for a vote. I think we'll see all the Republicans come on board. If it actually gets pressed to a vote. I think there's some folks that are nervous, but nervous is not the same thing as voting now.
- [14:43]
Michael Knowles
You know, Senator, I read the mailbag to this show and we get a lot of emails and a huge number of people are asking when these guys are gonna be dragged in front of Congress and in front of the Senate to answer questions. So I hope that your colleagues on the committee get the message. Very interesting. It actually had not occurred to me that testifying before different committees has a different tenor because you have different people on those committees. And I'm not at all surprised. The Judiciary Committee has more of a bulldog kind of style. I certainly wanna see them dragged before that committee and answer those questions. I also have to ask you, though, about this separate question. We've been focusing on Facebook and Twitter, but the big kahuna, the real giant in this space, is actually not Twitter, and it's not even Facebook. It's Google. The DOJ has just announced that they are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds. Obviously, I am not an expert in antitrust law, and I suspect most people who are calling for big tech to be broken up aren't expert in that either. What is the case here and do you think it will be successful and do you think it's advisable?
- [15:47]
Ted Cruz
So I'm very glad DOJ is moving forward and filing A case. The exact details of it will be coming out in coming days and weeks. But as I understand it, they're bringing a case that Google is a monopoly and it's abusing its monopoly power. And at least some of what the case is focusing on is that they force, for example, phone companies to preload Google on it as your search engine when you get a phone, and they use their market power to prevent competitors from doing the same. And look, Google is very good at leveraging one monopoly into power in all sorts of other areas. And so from the initial announcements, that's what the case is going to focus on. I hope one component of the case is using their monopoly power to censor political speech that doesn't fall as traditionally or cleanly into antitrust laws. And it's one of the things we've talked about. In fact, when you and I talked with Bill Barr, I mean, I have in the last four years raised this issue personally and directly with the President multiple times, with the Vice president, with the White House Chief of staff, with the White House counsel, with the Attorney General, with the Deputy Attorney General, with the Assistant Attorney General for antitrust, with the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. I mean, this is, I think it's the biggest threat in the country to free speech, to a free press, and to our democracy, to our elections. So I hope. And Google is by far the worst actor. So as I sort of rank the actors of big tech, Facebook, I have problems with, but comparatively speaking, they're the least bad of the big guys. Then there's Twitter, which is quite brazen. And then by far the worst, I believe, is Google. And Google owns YouTube. So I throw YouTube into it. And you remember Google's motto used to be do no evil.
- [17:49]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, don't be evil. Or something to that effect.
- [17:52]
Ted Cruz
Don't be evil. Don't be evil. Yeah. And then they just scrapped it. I mean, they literally scrapped the motto. And I don't know if it was what they were twirling their mustache in, like the fires of Hades, to which they were condemning the globe and decided, oh, let's not forswear evil anymore. I mean, it really is. And the amount of. Look, Google's worth over a trillion dollars. They have, I think, $120 billion in cash. Just like the change, apparently, sitting around in the sofas and between the cushions and their sofas, like the massive power Google has. And they are completely brazen about using it to advance their political ends. And I will say, I have a theory, by the way. So on these New York Post stories. We know that Facebook and Twitter blocked it. To our knowledge, Google hasn't blocked it. So I actually tried, went to Google and typed in and Google it comes up. And I have a theory that actually the reason Google didn't block it is because they knew this DOJ case was coming, that they're on mildly better behavior because they're facing massive litigation. I can't prove that that's just a theory.
- [19:09]
Michael Knowles
No, it's a good suggestion, Senator, because I did wonder at the time, I said, wait a second, how's Google not jumping on this bandwagon? But of course Google is getting word. When you're talking about an entity as large as the DOJ or the federal government, obviously they know what's coming down the pike. And what you focused on there is search, which when most people think about how YouTube is abusing its power or Google is abusing its power, they think it's through video or they think it's through advertising, or they think it's. But in this 57 page complaint that the DOJ has just filed here, they actually focus in on search. And search is Google's core product, if you make it to the first page of a Google search, that it has so much power, so much more power than if you're on page two or page 2000 for that matter. And Google, we know, manipulates search for ideological ends. But what do you say, Senator, beyond the ideological question, beyond the free speech question, what do you say to people maybe they're a little more libertarian leaning who say, listen, it's a free market and Google's a private company sort of. And if Google, you know, is not to your liking, well then fella, just go make your own Google. Do you think conservatives are betraying our kind of free market preferences?
- [20:24]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, look, I understand those sentiments. I will say, by the way, that some of the voices, particularly in D.C. that echo them, some of the more libertarian outfits get a whole lot of money from big tech. And one problem we have in our own neck of the woods in terms of the center right conservative libertarian world, is there are some folks who, if you write them a big enough check, suddenly if you look at some of the most vigorous defenders of tech from all of this scrutiny, for many of them there's a money trail to be followed. But let me take the critique on face value. I am a free market conservative. I believe in free markets. That doesn't mean we don't have laws. That doesn't mean you don't have the antitrust laws. The Antitrust laws have been on the books for almost 100 years. And abusing a monopoly position, which is what Google does, has been against the law a very long time. Of course it is, right? The government shouldn't be regulating speech. We don't want some federal police officer saying, this speech is good, this speech is bad. That would be a terrible outcome. And by the way, the Democrats would love that outcome. So we need to be very cautious about where they want to take this. But there's a difference between that and not letting someone abuse their monopoly power. And there's also a difference. Section 230, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast, is a special immunity from liability that Congress gave Big Tech that nobody else gets. And it's basically a subsidy. All right? You want to put it in free market terms. End section 230. Because it's a damn subsidy to the biggest, most profitable companies on earth. It's corporate welfare, and it immunizes them from behaving like the totalitarian star chamber. And so that's a pure free market argument, which addresses directly what the threat is and the magnitude, if you believe in the principles of free speech, which is that we ought to be able to speak and debate free freely. Allowing one or two billionaires to have a monopoly on every means of communication is a really, really dangerous phenomenon.
- [22:45]
Michael Knowles
Absolutely. I agree entirely with that. And I think there is nothing conservative about allowing a couple of oligarchs to dominate our public square and control the flow of information. And of course, there's nothing conservative about letting companies brazenly violate the law. Laws that have been on the books for 100 years, or laws that have been on the books for 25 years. You have assuaged my fears on this free market issue. And I think a lot of conservatives are recognizing that threat. We have a question, by the way, Senator, in our remaining couple of minutes, that is just as important, in my view. I was gonna bring this up with you personally, as a matter of fact. Cause I was very worried when this was mentioned on the Senate floor. This is from Gregory. Is Senator Cruz really a vegan? Say it ain't so, Senator. This is after your colleague Cory Booker came out and made this wild accusation on the Senate floor. Please clear this up for us.
- [23:41]
Ted Cruz
It was a hurtful and scurrilous attack. It was deeply personal. And it was lies, damn lies and statistics.
- [23:52]
Michael Knowles
Great.
- [23:52]
Ted Cruz
I am impressed. Emphatically a Cuban Texan carnivore. But I will concede that all of the animals that I eat are Vegetarians. And you know, so Cory Booker said that and it was a moment of levity where I popped back at him. What would surprise people is Corey and I actually get along quite well. I like Cory personally. We've actually gone out to dinner, although I let him pick the place. And he went to a vegetarian restaurant. It was truly maddening. I was like, could they go kill some animal and serve it for dinner, please?
- [24:34]
Michael Knowles
I'll be right back.
- [24:36]
Ted Cruz
But look, I actually think one of the reasons Cory didn't do very well in the Democratic presidential primary is because he's not a jerk. And I think they wanted someone to be tough and a jerk in that primary. And so Corey was kind of faking it and he wasn't very good at faking it.
- [24:57]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, yeah. I think that came across.
- [25:00]
Ted Cruz
The I am Spartacus moment is a good example of a less than authentic moment than we have seen.
- [25:11]
Michael Knowles
I agree. And he usually, when he's being his authentic self, he usually plays a little bit fairer, a little bit nicer. Except for that awful lie. I have to tell you, Senator, we have had many meals together and I thought, hold on. If Senator Cruz is a vegan, I think I've never seen him eat anything other than red meat at a meal at lunch dinner. So I'm glad that you've cleared this up. Nothing has changed in the meantime.
- [25:34]
Ted Cruz
And you know this cause you. Are you still a California resident or have you gone to Tennessee yet?
- [25:40]
Michael Knowles
Where are you physically right now? Just for a few more minutes in about 10 or 12 days, but I'm in La La land for now.
- [25:47]
Ted Cruz
Well, as you know, Heidi is a vegetarian and she's from California and her entire family are vegetarians. I'm married into a family of California vegetarians. I remember one of the first times I went on a family vacation with my in laws. We were out on a houseboat on Lake Powell, which is spectacular. And my father in law was like grocery shopping. He didn't know what to do with his carnivore son in law. So at the grocery store he bought a giant salami and said, here, Ted, here's some meat for the week. And it was kind of like, thanks, Peter.
- [26:23]
Michael Knowles
That's, you know. And I will say, Senator, it shows how open minded you are. You know, you can have a conversation with Cory Booker. You can share a table with vegetarians, share a family with vegetarians even.
- [26:36]
Ted Cruz
Have I told you my dental theory of this, by the way?
- [26:39]
Michael Knowles
I don't think so, no.
- [26:41]
Ted Cruz
So I have a dental theory. So my father in law is a dentist. But my theory is if you look at the animal kingdom, every animal that has incisors like we do, they are fangs and they rip the flesh of other animals. The animals that chew their cud or chew grass, they don't have incisors. So my dental theory is, look, we have fangs for a reason and that is to plunge our teeth into a rib eye. And my dentist father in law is not persuaded by that argument.
- [27:15]
Michael Knowles
Well, Senator, I find it very persuasive. We have those incisors and fangs for a reason. And that reason might be the testimony of Big Tech executives in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I suppose there are many uses for this. We will have to leave it there though. Look forward to following the update on Big Tech and a number of other issues that we will have to save until next time. Until then, I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [27:51]
Ted Cruz
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Package, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country. In 2022, Jobs, Freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the.