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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
President Trump signs an executive order to stop Big Tech's censorship of conservatives. Luckily, we can sit down with a guy who has been fighting that very censorship for many years. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, and the guy who's been fighting this for many years, coincidentally, is Ted Cruz himself. Senator, nice to see you. Even though we still have to do this virtually digitally and hopefully without any censorship.
- [00:35]
Ted Cruz
Well, let's hope so. But we'll see if Big Tech pulls this podcast down.
- [00:39]
Michael Knowles
That's right, Senator. I think everybody knows that Big Tech has been going after conservatives. And probably for a lot of people listening to this right now, they themselves have felt this kind of thing. If their account has been suspended for sharing a conservative view. I mean, I think, frankly, it's probably happened to all of us at this point. So we know that there's a problem, but there's been some debate over how you solve the problem. Do you pass some new regulation? Do you break them up like they're a monopoly with antitrust laws, or do you enforce laws that are already on the books? You focused in on something called Section 230 of the Communications Decency act of 1996. The President focused in on that as well in his executive order. Can you tell us what that is and how the argument applies to big tech censorship?
- [01:24]
Ted Cruz
Well, sure. And in answer to your question about what you do, you listed several options. My answers are yes, yes, and yes. Let's start with 230. What is 230? So 1996, Congress passes a law called the Communications Decency Act. It was actually mainly focused at trying to regulate Internet porn, but it included a portion in it, Section 230, that gave a special immunity from liability for big tech companies. And here was the reasoning at the time. Remember, this is early. This was right when the Internet is starting. In fact, one thing, Michael, you and I have talked about. I was clerking at the U.S. supreme Court in 1996, 1997, when one of the first challenges to congressional regulation came up. And I told a story in the book I wrote a few years ago about sitting with a Supreme Court librarian, with my boss, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and with Sandra Day O'Connor. And the librarian pulled up hardcore porn to show the justices. And all the law clerks are there. And look, Justice O'Connor was in her 70s. And I still remember when they pulled up porn on the screen, Justice O'Connor just went, oh, my. And we're all sitting there like the Law clerks are in our 20s and we're looking at our shoes feeling really, really awkward. And even more awkward is the fact that when they were law students at Stanford, Rehnquist and O'Connor were same class. They actually dated for a while. He was number one in the class, she was number three. So picture this, Michael. 40 years from now, you're 70, 80 years old and you're standing in a room with an ex girlfriend from 40, 50 years ago watching porn. Imagine how awkward it was for the two of them.
- [03:17]
Michael Knowles
Senator, I know.
- [03:18]
Ted Cruz
And the librarians were.
- [03:19]
Michael Knowles
I know you've had a lot of strange experiences in politics. I just think I have to stop here for a moment to say that the strangest one I've ever heard from you is watching hardcore porn with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her ex boyfriend William Rehnquist. I think that one is absolutely the top of the list.
- [03:37]
Ted Cruz
It was surreal and I can still hear the oh my like echoing 20 plus years later. But this was right at the beginning of the Internet. So you gotta understand, justices didn't know what the Internet was. This was librarians saying, okay, this is this Internet thing. You type in things. I still remember, in fact, they turned off the filters and to get to porn they typed in the word cantaloupe. Misspelled and cantaloupe. Use your imagination. But I guess it pulled up porn and the librarians were trying to show them. Okay, look, people can stumble into this accidentally all the time. Part of that bill. So it was section 230 was designed, you had these little Internet startups and the idea was, listen, it's not fair to sue a tech company for something somebody posts on there. Because this is a forum, this is a public square. And so if somebody posts something and you sue the Internet company, you could drive them out of business. And it's not the tech company that's speaking, it's whoever the users are. So if you post something, the users should be liable, but not the forums. And the predicate for this, this is the policy predicate. Everyone understood big tech were going to be what are called neutral public fora. In other words, they were gonna allow everyone to speak. It was gonna be the new marketplace of ideas. And so section 230 passed into law. But what it means, you know, Google and Facebook and Twitter, they've got an immunity from liability. Nobody else does. You, Michael Knowles, if you go on the radio and you defame someone, you can be sued. The New York Times, do you know that Google and Facebook have an immunity from liability. The New York Times doesn't have Fox News, doesn't have everyone else, every American citizen, every American company. It is only big tech that gets this special immunity from liability.
- [05:35]
Michael Knowles
So, Senator, this is the distinction we've heard about a little bit, which is the platform versus the publisher.
- [05:41]
Ted Cruz
Right.
- [05:41]
Michael Knowles
If you're a neutral platform, you get these protections. But if you're a publisher like the New York Times or the Daily Wire or Fox News or whatever, then you don't get those protections. And the reason for it, of course, is if you could sue Twitter for every defamatory tweet that has ever been tweeted, Twitter would go out of business in approximately 5Ns.
- [06:02]
Ted Cruz
That could well be true. But you know the interesting thing? Let's suppose I wrote an op ed that said, with apologies, that Michael Knowles has carnal relations with barnyard animals.
- [06:13]
Michael Knowles
This is a very graphic show, dude.
- [06:15]
Ted Cruz
And. And the New York Times published it. And let's assume, and I'm willing to assume for the sake of the podcast, that that is a totally false statement.
- [06:28]
Michael Knowles
Thank you.
- [06:29]
Ted Cruz
And that I have no basis, that I am willfully being reckless making it up. You as a citizen could sue. You could sue me for defamation, but you could sue the New York Times because by their choice to publish that, if they publish something that's defamatory about you, you can sue the hell out of them. Yeah, I do the same thing on social media. You can't sue the hell out of them. And the reason is that Congress made a determination 20 years ago. These are special public forum. Now, here's what's changed. Big Tech has decided, and they've decided it only in the last couple of years. They don't want to be neutral anymore.
- [07:06]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [07:06]
Ted Cruz
They want to be political players. They want to editorialize. They want to silence voices they don't like. And so they're deliberately amplifying lefty voices and silencing conservative voices. And it's okay, fine. If they want to do that, fine. But one of the obvious steps is you don't get a special immunity from liability that nobody else gets. We're not going to treat you differently because if you're going to behave like the New York Times, you should face the same legal risks. The New York Times.
- [07:38]
Michael Knowles
That makes sense. We've heard from some legal scholars on the left or jurists on the left that really section 230 shouldn't be applied this way. It's not about political stances and conservatives are abusing this. But the argument you've just made, and that you've actually been making for quite some time now, is the argument that was made today by Attorney General William Barr. It's the argument that was made by President Trump. So it seems that section 230 is the key here to the conservatives argument, to stopping this big tech censorship. Can you just go into a little bit of the political debate or maybe how the Trump administration came to adopt this idea?
- [08:18]
Ted Cruz
Look, the simplest thing I have to say about this executive order is it's about damn time. I have literally been urging this administration to do this for three and a half years. In the last three and a half years, you know, look, I'm in the Senate. I'm a legislator. I can share hearings. I've chaired hearings highlighting the rampant censorship and political bias. I can introduce legislation, I've advocated for legislation. But I'm not in the executive. It's the executive that actually has enforcement ability, that actually has prosecutors and grand juries and subpoenas and can enforce the law. So I have. In the last three years, I have spent hours meeting with Bill Barr, the Attorney General, on this topic. I have spent hours with Jeff Rosen, the Deputy Attorney General, on this topic. I've spent hours with Macon Delrahim, the head of the Antitrust division at the Department of Justice, on this topic. I've spent hours with Joe Simons, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who I used to work with. I know Joe very well on this topic. I've spent hours with the president, with the vice president, with the White House chief of staff, with the White House counsel urging them. And here's been the problem, everybody. It's not quite in their jurisdiction. It doesn't quite fit in the neat. So everyone says, yeah, yeah, it's a problem. They've agreed it's a problem. And by the way, Barr and Rosen especially agreed it's a real problem. But it doesn't fit neatly in anyone's sort of traditional job description. And so the President, Listen, the President's been frustrated and pissed off about this for a long time, but nobody on his team has been willing to do anything about it. And so I do find it kind of ironic that Twitter decided to be such jackasses. You know, look, my view has always been in the kind of hierarchy of big tech, the worst is Google and YouTube, which they own. You know, Google? Their motto used to be don't be evil. Now their motto is just evil.
- [10:13]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, but be evil, right?
- [10:16]
Ted Cruz
Under Google has been Twitter, and then under that is Facebook. Look, Facebook's pretty bad. Too. But there's tiny moments where they're trying. I think Jack Dorsey at Twitter decided, you know what? I'm tired of Google being the worst player on Earth. And so this whole thing was prompted because the idiots decided to fact check the president's tweet on voter fraud. And by the way, number one, they linked to cnn, which is so profoundly wrong on so many issues, it's ridiculous. But Twitter, I think, just pissed off the President. And thank God they did, because what I assume happened, and I don't know this, but I assume he blew his top and told everyone, somebody, get off your ass and do something about it. And it motivated them to finally do this. I'm glad they did. I think this is an incredible threat. Big tech censorship is the biggest threat to free speech and a fair elections and democracy we got in the whole country.
- [11:15]
Michael Knowles
And to Facebook's credit, actually, Mark Zuckerberg came out today and he said, I don't think that big tech should be the arbiters of truth, basically directly contradicting Jack Dorsey at Twitter. So, I mean, that's a good move. You know, just what do we think the conclusion of this will be? It seems that the threat would be to get Twitter to back off, to not interfere in the presidential election, to not put their thumb on the scales of how information moves around the Internet. If they don't back off. Are we looking at a world in which Twitter really does lose its protections and Twitter goes down?
- [11:46]
Ted Cruz
Look, I hope so. Although, listen, I say I hope so, but I love Twitter. Twitter is a vehicle to engage in public debates, to go back and forth. Twitter, as a neutral public forum, actually works quite well. It's only recently that they've decided to let their crazy lefty go. And actually, Michael, I'll tell you a Zuckerberg story. Yeah. So, as you know, Zuckerberg testified in front of the Senate. A lot of us pounded it. He and I went back and forth in a very public exchange when he was testifying. Well, last year, Zuckerberg came to D.C. and reached out to my office and asked if I'd be willing to sit down and get together. He and I had dinner together. And it was, you know, it was kind of interesting. We thought about actually going to a restaurant. But to be honest, if Mark Zuckerberg and I sat down at a restaurant in D.C. people would lose their minds. I mean. I mean, I think they'd start running around screaming and lighting their hair on fire. So we didn't do it in a restaurant. We did it at somebody's house. And it was just. It was Zuckerberg and me, and it was a couple of people on my staff. A couple of people on his staff. So it was a very small dinner and it was like three hours long. And it was actually, look, it was a lot of fun. Listen, Zuckerberg comes across as. He's a smart, geeky techie, and I'll give him some credit. Look, he's actually trying to wrestle through these issues. But look, and to be honest, we went round and round and round on just. What I was advocating was, look, how about some basic free speech? How about just let the marketplace of ideas. If you disagree with someone, let something like let people argue. Trump tweets all sorts of things. I disagree with. I don't think the answer is to let some Silicon Valley billionaire silence him. If you disagree with him, say you disagree with him. But Zuckerberg is trying. He actually, shortly after the dinner I had with him, he gave a speech, I think it was at Georgetown, maybe somewhere in D.C. advocating principles of free speech. Now, look, Facebook has been bumpy on this. Yeah. But compared to Twitter and Google, they've been much, much better. And you can see them. Twitter doesn't care anymore. And by the way, YouTube. Yeah. CEO of YouTube came by my office to talk about this, and her attitude was essentially. Well, I can't even say it, but it was, screw it. Although said more graphically than that.
- [14:28]
Michael Knowles
Yikes.
- [14:31]
Ted Cruz
It was simply, we have power and we'll use power. You know what? She actually wanted credit because she said, well, you know, people on the left want us to completely silence people. So we're talking about Steven Crowder, who's a friend of ours. Comedian, and YouTube demonetized him. Boy, talk about an Orwellian word. We will take away all your money.
- [14:53]
Michael Knowles
We're not censoring you, we're just taking away all your money.
- [14:55]
Ted Cruz
CEO wanted. She wanted props, cuz she said, well, we still allow him to post. We didn't silence him altogether. I'm like, what the hell are you talking. Okay. And she's like, well, that's what the people to the left wanted us to do. I said, listen, the calls for censorship are only coming from the crazy leftists. I'm not asking you to silence Bernie Sanders or aoc. God knows they can prattle on forever, but let them talk. Their ideas are so bad, we'll engage with them on substance. Yep. But I am glad the administration has jumped in. By the way, there are other things they can do. Antitrust agencies, both DOJ and FTC have been engaged in investigations. These are monopolies and they're abusing monopoly power. Something else they can do. That's in the executive order that's important. It's not just section 230, but it's deceptive trade practices. I'm really glad the order tells the attorney General to work with the state attorneys general. I've also talked at length with a Texas attorney general who's leading a state lawsuits about these deceptive practices. And Bill Barr today in the Oval Office, he said it well and actually he reflected a lot of what he and I talked about over breakfast. He said, listen, these tech companies have built their platforms on a lie. They tell people, if you come to our platform, you can speak and if you sign up to follow someone, you can watch them, you can see what they post. And if they sign up to follow you, they can see what you post. That's the fundamental promise. And that is a lie. We know Twitter shadow bans if they don't like you people who say, I want to follow to Michael Knowles. I care what Michael Knowles has to say. Twitter says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're just gonna silently make it go away. That is a lie. That is fraud. And I'm glad this executive order takes a step towards real legal liability for defrauding consumers, which is what Big Tech is doing.
- [16:51]
Michael Knowles
That's a big key to this whole issue is the dishonesty is the fraud is the very, very possible and it seems likely violation of these laws. So it's very good. We'll see what happens from it. I mean, sort of the ball now is in the court of Big Tech. We'll see how they react to it. I wanna get your opinion on something, by the way, directly related to this social media marketplace, which is a few incidents that have popped up over the last week or so and they've really gained national attention because of social media. The most prominent one would be the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The police officer who arrested this man, you've got white officer, black perpetrator, I suppose, or alleged perpetrator, and the suspect ends up dead. The guy's got his knee on his neck. I mean, it looks really bad. And then this spreads on social media. Now there are riots erupting around the country, not even just in Minneapolis. Also in Los Angeles, there is looting going on. I'd like to get your perspective on that video from both a social media perspective, a social perspective, and also from the perspective of policing.
- [18:01]
Ted Cruz
Well, what happened in Minneapolis was horrific. It was wrong. I've watched that video. And listen, anytime you have an incident with police, sometimes the social media mob is quick to demonize the police officer. And I've long advocated we should wait for the facts to play out. That being said, I watched that video, and you had a man in handcuffs on his face on the pavement with an officer's knee in the back of his neck pushing it into the pavement. He's gasping for breath, he's pleading that he can't breathe. And the officer continues for eight minutes. That is, on the face of it, police brutality. And anyone who believes in liberty should not want to see authoritarianism and authority abused. The police officer has been fired, and the Department of Justice has opened an investigation, a civil rights investigation. I'm glad they have watching. That pisses me off. And by the way, you know, the social media mob is quick to paint this. As far as they're concerned, that was Donald Trump with his knee on the back of the neck. Let me be clear. This is Minneapolis, Minnesota. You've got a Democratic mayor, you've got a Democratic governor, you've got Democratic senators. This is bright blue. And we keep seeing these things happen, this abuse of power, often in Democratic strongholds where people that claim to be interested in defending people's rights, they're not doing a good job of it.
- [19:41]
Michael Knowles
Right. I mean, I think a little bit of perspective here is key, and it's why it's so good to get your opinion on this, is you're not only somebody with a Twitter account, but you also happen to know quite a bit about the way the criminal justice system works. Having worked in it for a long time, I think that perspective really helps. We saw a less tragic, much more frivolous example of this also just a few days earlier, which was this altercation that happened in Central Park. There was a man talking to this woman and basically said, put your dog on a leash. She said, no. The man, for some reason, had dog treats in his bag just for this sort of occasion. When people don't have their dogs on leashes, he lures them away with the treats. Then this woman sort of lost her temper and had a little bit of an emotional meltdown. And then he started filming it. And it, you know, what was the end result of this? Nothing happened. I mean, after the videos went public, then this woman lost her job and lost her dog. But in the moment itself, it seemed a little bit like much, much ado about nothing. The social media mob is what made it so much worse. So much more sensational Is there a world in which we should perhaps hope that maybe social media takes it down a few notches because of this sort of emotion that it can gin up?
- [20:57]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, look, I gotta say, I have a little bit different take on it. There's no doubt that that incident showed the power of social media and that an iPhone video can suddenly get millions of views all across the world. I have to admit, the woman who was involved, her behavior was atrocious.
- [21:14]
Michael Knowles
Of course.
- [21:15]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. This was an individual, an African American individual who was there bird watching, who, at least on the video we saw, didn't do anything remotely threatening to her. And to watch her be willing to listen, Making a false accusation deliberately is an act of violence. And when this woman, Amy Cooper, picks up her phone and calls 911 and she says, an African American man is physically threatening me and my dog, and she calls in, what, by all appearances, is a totally false crime report, and it's a dangerous crime report. Listen, if you call the police and say someone is physically threatening me, you are asking for law enforcement to show up with guns. And the very real consequence of that could be that the person you're wrongly accusing gets shot and killed. Listen, when officers arrive to an assault in progress, there is a risk of something going really wrong. And she was, in a very real sense, endangering his life. Now, I gotta say, the fact that he had dog treats and was trying to feed her dog, if I'm walking my dog, stay the hell away from my dog and don't give him dog treats. That's a little out there. But the attitude she expressed were clearly racist. They were clearly wrong. And by the way, the same point I made about Minneapolis holds here. You saw the Twitter mob saying, this is the age of Donald Trump. They blame Donald Trump for it. Well, then the story comes out that to the shock of nobody, she's apparently a liberal Democratic donor who's donated to Barack Obama, to Pete Buttigieg, and to John Kerry.
- [23:03]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [23:04]
Ted Cruz
And of course she is, you know, to be honest. Well, look, actually, there is racism on both sides of the aisle, but the left, many on the left, love to jump in a soapbox and moralize.
- [23:21]
Michael Knowles
That's right. And you bring up such a great point because we shouldn't downplay, in the instance in Central park, we shouldn't downplay the woman's atrocious behavior just because you point out that there's more to the story, for instance, than, you know, she's totally wrong and he's totally right. I mean, maybe some of his Behavior was a little odd too. Maybe it doesn't justify her behavior. The same thing. Obviously you can look at what is pretty clearly police brutality in Minneapolis and condemn that as being terrible and not therefore start defending looting and burning down businesses. You know, it seems that there's this knee jerk reaction on social media where we immediately have to take aside and say one person was totally wrong, one person was totally right, when really situations are much more complex than that. And maybe a little bit of perspective on the legal side, on the policing side, on the social side can help us to understand those things.
- [24:13]
Ted Cruz
Well, and listen, police brutality, it undermines not just the community, but it undermines law enforcement as well. Right. I'm blessed to know a lot of men and women who are law enforcement officers and they feel that whenever something happens, the mob immediately assumes they're at fault. And there are instances, a lot of instances, where an officer is scared for his life and is protecting himself. And it's one thing. So I watched the video and sometimes these videos don't capture everything that happened. There may have been something that happened before that's not on it. So you have to view all of this with skepticism. And so there are times when an officer has to use physical force and serious force to subdue a dangerous individual. What made this video so damning is that it lasts eight minutes and the guy is in handcuffs and his face is there and he's gasping for breath and he's playing pleading. And this officer doesn't do anything other than keep the knee pressing into his neck. That was grotesque and wrong. Particularly there are multiple other officers around. It's very hard to look at that video and suggest there was any reason that officer believed was afraid for his safety as compared to just being brutalizing someone who was already immobilized. And that that is not how law enforcement should operate. And that's not how they usually do. And it's why it's good that the Department of Justice is looking into this. And I very much hope justice is served here.
- [25:52]
Michael Knowles
That's right. Because the effect of this ultimately is going to be to undermine our faith in these very institutions. That would be maintaining law and order, maintaining civil society. It has far wider reaching consequences than many would admit. Before we go, we got to get to a little bit of mailbag. First question, you know, a really easy one. I'm sure you can answer this in 10 or 20 seconds from Norman. How should pro American nationalists think about Hong Kong? You know, a really easy topic like China and Hong Kong.
- [26:23]
Ted Cruz
So what China is doing is trying to take over Hong Kong completely. Trying to subject it to the communist government's authoritarianism, trying to strip their rights of democracy, trying to strip their rights of free speech. It is a power grab and it is wrong. And by the way, when Hong Kong, Hong Kong used to be part of the British Empire and then when it rejoined China, China agreed to have two separate systems and to protect freedom and democracy in China. China's now changed its mind and it's crushing freedom. There are a lot of consequences. We just saw this week the State Department issue a report that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China. They did so because of legislation that I wrote. I authored legislation that was included in a bigger bill that directed the State Department to assess whether Hong Kong had real autonomy. We just got the report this week. I talked with the State Department this week right after they issued it. The consequences of that is significant. There are a lot of things that flow from that in terms of, number one, Treasury Department and sanctions that could easily flow. You know, China wants to use Hong Kong as this sort of free market bastion to get around the restrictions on China, but at the same time, they want to trample freedom there. Tariffs. The U.S. trade Representative, the tariffs we have against China, Hong Kong is exempt from that. I think given this determination, we will see, I believe, a determination from the President and the White House that will result in some very significant legal consequences, basically ending Hong Kong's special status because China is no longer honoring the agreement they had.
- [28:04]
Michael Knowles
That's very, very good point because I guess this gets back to what we were talking about with Big Tech. Some players in the world are trying to have it both ways. They're trying to get certain special protections when actually they're violating the very basis of those protections. Something to look at in China. Then finally, maybe the most important question that we keep getting recurring here when it comes to criminal justice, what is Ted Cruz's stance on the legalization of marijuana?
- [28:34]
Ted Cruz
Leave it to the states. Listen, I have very libertarian instincts and I have to admit on pot legalization, over the course of my life, I've had different views at different times. There are times when I was for legalization. Personally, I'm not for legalization now. So if there were a referendum in Texas on it, I'd vote against it. I think there are some significant negative consequences that come from it. But. But I believe in federalism. I believe we got 50 states and reasonable people can differ on this. And I think it's perfectly fine to let the states operate as laboratories of democracy to see what happens. And so, I mean, listen, when I was, when I was a teenager, I smoked potential. I wrote about that in my book also, you know, when I was in high school, early on in college, I smoked pot a number of times. And it's not something I hope my kids don't. Thankfully, they're 9 and 12. I'm pretty sure they haven't gone there yet. But, you know, it was, I wasn't much older than they were when I first tried it. And it's not something I don't think it's good for kids to do. But I think we can leave it to the states and let the states sort out if and when it should be allowed or if not.
- [29:47]
Michael Knowles
So what I'm hearing, Senator, is we're not gonna get one of these Elon Musk, Joe Rogan moments where you pull a joint from off camera and start puffing on screen. We're not going to get that.
- [29:57]
Ted Cruz
Well, I will say this. If you remember when Bill Clinton was running for office and he said he smoked pot but he didn't inhale.
- [30:05]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [30:06]
Ted Cruz
I have to admit, I was, even then I was cracking up laughing, thinking, so you're saying you didn't do it, right? Like, if you're going to do it, actually, I mean, don't screw it up. Like, listen, I still smoke cigars now, you don't inhale cigars. That's actually not how you and you and I have smoked cigars.
- [30:24]
Michael Knowles
That's right. And their one does not inhale.
- [30:28]
Ted Cruz
But no, I will not be lighting up a spliff in this particular podcast.
- [30:34]
Michael Knowles
Fair enough. You know, you've reminded me when you mentioned Bill Clinton, those Democrats wasting things so fiscally irresponsible, even when it comes down to something such as that much more to get to. But alas, we are out of time, Senator. We will have to pick it up again next time. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [31:00]
Ted Cruz
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, 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 nation.