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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
Conservatives are finally fighting back in a tangible way against Big Tech censorship. And as it so happens, we happen to have on this show the man who first put forward the legal theory that is doing it and the man who was at the center of Big Tech's biggest censorship play during the 2020 election. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz, joined as ever by Senator Ted Cruz. And we're very pleased to be joined by Sohrab Amari, op ed page editor at the New York Post and the author of the Unbroken Thread, which is an excellent book that people should go read. Sohrab, thank you for being here.
- [00:42]
Sohrab Amari
Thanks for having me, gents.
- [00:44]
Michael Knowles
So, look, I hate to say I told you so. I hate it when we take a victory lap on this show.
- [00:48]
Ted Cruz
Let's be honest, there are few things you love more than saying I told you so.
- [00:52]
Michael Knowles
That might be true. That is true, in fact. And we can say it on this show because I think you were the first one. And I think it was on this show that we put forward the idea of how conservatives can, using the law, go after Big Tech, which is something very near and dear to all of our hearts. So how is it happening?
- [01:12]
Ted Cruz
Well, that's right. We talked about in an earlier verdict the theory that I thought Big Tech could be held accountable for. And it turned out that the theory that we talked about is, in fact the theory that is embodied in the class action lawsuit that President Trump filed against Big Tech. And the theory is that they're violating the First Amendment. Now, the challenge with that is the First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies. The First Amendment begins with the words Congress shall make no law. And so the First Amendment is binding against the federal government. And through a process called incorporation, the First Amendment is binding against state government. But Facebook is not the federal government. It's not state government. And so when President Trump filed his lawsuit, you had all sorts of know it alls in the corporate media say, oh, this has no chance of success because, ha ha, Facebook's not the government. You lose. Well, what that misses is there's a long line of Supreme Court cases that says that when government uses private industry as a tool to carry out its policies, then that private industry can become state action, that it can become an arm of the state. And the theory that we talked about on the pod earlier is that Facebook and Twitter and social media have become so intertwined and Google have become so intertwined with the federal government between the carrot and stick of section 230, providing immunization the. The stick of government officials threatening retribution if social media doesn't censor to match government's policies. And then on top of that, you've got the Fauci emails back and forth with Mark Zuckerberg, where Fauci, as a senior government official, is directing. Zuckerberg, here's the speech I want you to censor. Silence them when they say this, silence them when they say that. And Zuckerberg essentially salutes and says, sir, yes, sir, and goes and becomes the enforcement arm for the federal government. And when we talked about right after the Fauci emails came out is, wow, this really lays out a factual predicate that Facebook is not acting as just a private company on their own, but they're acting as an arm of government. Well, it almost seems like the Biden administration saw that and decided to up the ante, because this week between Jen Psaki and Joe Biden, they're leaning in. Jen Psaki from the White House, from the podium, is directing social media. You must take down any speech we deem to be misinformation, which is whatever is contrary to the government line at that moment, and demanding from the White House podium not just one social media site. We want every social media site to become our censorship arms. I gotta say, I think the Trump class action lawsuit became much, much stronger this week because of the blatant exercise of power by the Biden administration.
- [04:22]
Michael Knowles
You know, I will admit I was one of the people who was skeptical of the First Amendment argument against Facebook, and you did begin to persuade me otherwise. But it does seem as though the Biden administration wants to give some credibility here. And by the way, when it's the Biden team defining misinformation, I think we have it on good authority that that misinformation often turns out to be exactly the truth. As we found out in 2020, it.
- [04:49]
Sohrab Amari
Turns out to be information. Right.
- [04:52]
Ted Cruz
Look, you know full well because one of the targets of censorship right in the heat of the 2020 election was the New York Post, where big tech for two weeks banned you from their platforms. What was your reaction when the big tech overlords just with a flip of a switch said, you're deplatformed?
- [05:15]
Sohrab Amari
I actually hadn't seen this story. I'd gone to bed early. I could look up our pages the night before, but I hadn't. So I just went to sleep, woke up, saw the story. I was like, whoa, that's a big cover. That's interesting. 10 o'clock. Facebook employee says we're reducing circulation on this. And in his bio, it says, before joining Facebook, this. This fellow was a staffer for Senator Boxer, a staffer for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But so shameless, so blatant about this. And then the Twitter thing happened where you couldn't share it publicly. And then people were asking me, so what's the story? Can you send it to me in direct messages? And you couldn't send it in direct messages. It was the most surreal, sinister. I mean, look, I mean, ultimately, we prevailed. The New York Post, its story got unbanned. We got our account back without doing the absurd thing that Twitter asked us to do, which is to admit that this was hacked material, which it was.
- [06:13]
Michael Knowles
Not as far as it absolutely was.
- [06:15]
Ted Cruz
And by the way, you say you prevailed. There was this thing that happened in November. Yes.
- [06:23]
Sohrab Amari
And I don't know if you saw that. There was a Pew poll suggesting thing that a marginal share of Americans would have voted differently had they heard of the Hunter Biden files.
- [06:34]
Ted Cruz
So it's worth, for folks listening and watching, let's assume some of them are distracted by the summertime joys of life and don't perhaps remember the story. So what was the story in the Post that Big Tech banned?
- [06:49]
Sohrab Amari
The initial story that they banned was a story that suggested that Hunter Biden had arranged meetings between executives from a Ukrainian energy firm called Burisma, which was paying him $50,000 a month. Nice work if you can get it, despite his utter lack of expertise in Eastern European energy affairs or whatever. So, yeah, that he had arranged meetings between executives from this firm and his father, who was then the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine and the second most powerful man in the world. That was the story. And we were very transparent about how we had gotten hold of the Hunter Biden laptop. Our sourcing was more transparent and more open that, yes, it was a partisan source. We had gotten it through Rudy Giuliani. But there had been so many stories over the past four years anti Trump stories that were sourced based on an official who knew an official whose aunt might know someone else, you know, and they collapse under factual scrutiny. None of those stories got banned. This one we said, yes, we got this from a partisan source. You, the reader, have the right to know that. Make your own judgment about it. But here's also the raw facts which aren't, you know, debunked for the mere fact that it's a partisan source. Go ahead.
- [08:10]
Ted Cruz
The pushback was. They said it wasn't Hunter Biden's laptop. We now know it was, of course.
- [08:16]
Sohrab Amari
He wouldn't deny it on air in an interview with, I think cbs.
- [08:19]
Ted Cruz
So the story was true.
- [08:21]
Michael Knowles
True misinformation. It was true, but it was deemed misinformation by the people who control 90% of the flow of information around the Internet.
- [08:29]
Sohrab Amari
Yeah. When I would go on Fox to defend the story, I often would say none of the thrust of the story or the essence of the story is absolutely true. And that actually, I now regret that wording because even the details were true. It wasn't as if the gist of it was true. The whole thing was true. One bit has been debunked and it's.
- [08:47]
Ted Cruz
Worth pointing out, look, something you said is really significant, which is when it broke, neither Hunter Biden nor Joe Biden denied that it was his laptop.
- [08:55]
Sohrab Amari
Nope. Or that the emails were not authentic.
- [08:58]
Ted Cruz
If it wasn't his laptop or if the emails were fake, you would expect within the first hour for Hunter and Joe to both be on TV saying, this is a lie. This is not my laptop. These are not my emails. I mean, that. That's the natural. If they don't say that, we are reminded of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that doesn't bark when they're not saying that, that communicates an awful lot.
- [09:25]
Sohrab Amari
What they relied on was claims of Russian disinformation. Absolutely not true.
- [09:31]
Ted Cruz
Well, didn't 50 intelligence, senior intelligence voices.
- [09:36]
Sohrab Amari
General aid and others.
- [09:37]
Ted Cruz
This is Russian. Have any of those 50 apologized, apologized, admitted that they were completely full of crap, that they were aiding in covering up true information about one of the two presidential candidates?
- [09:53]
Sohrab Amari
Senator, you work in Washington. Have you ever heard a swamp creature apologize for anything?
- [09:58]
Ted Cruz
Well, no, and I'm not holding my breath.
- [10:03]
Michael Knowles
Well, I would point out here that as you mentioned, Sohrab, there were a lot of people who just hadn't heard of this story. A good number of them would have changed their votes according to surveys later. And so you've just got this arbitrary wielding of power, you know, even beyond the First Amendment arguments for speech control. You've got three companies run by billionaire oligarchs in Silicon Valley who control the flow of information around the public square. They are working, to use a phrase for Mitch McConnell, as a sort of woke parallel government that is policing speech. And I think it actually ties in. So, Rob, with your book, which is we are seeing the free speech tradition. So much of the political tradition in America being completely upended by a handful of very progressive actors.
- [10:49]
Sohrab Amari
This is a point that I often made, is that there's this element of these upstarts with Their, you know, they wear Birkenstocks and shorts, you know, but they happen to be billionaires. Yeah, censoring the newspaper. Founded by one of the founding fathers. I mean, there's the gall of that. The cultural gall.
- [11:10]
Ted Cruz
Let's pause this.
- [11:11]
Sohrab Amari
They have a lot more money, to be honest.
- [11:12]
Ted Cruz
You guys were founded by Alexander Frigate Hamilton.
- [11:16]
Sohrab Amari
Yeah.
- [11:16]
Michael Knowles
Like, there's a musical about that guy. You know, he's a very important guy.
- [11:21]
Ted Cruz
I say this all the time, but Saturday Night Live skits have come to life. You have these billionaire oligarchs in Silicon Valley that are like. And you guys are what, the fourth, fifth largest circulation in the country?
- [11:33]
Sohrab Amari
Yes, yes.
- [11:34]
Ted Cruz
And yet Zuckerberg and Dorsey, who, My God, tell me he is not a troll who came from under a bridge. What is it with that beard? And at least one of those Senate testimonies. I was pretty sure he hadn't showered, hadn't gotten out of bed yet. I mean, it was.
- [11:52]
Michael Knowles
What does he need to. Who does he answer to?
- [11:54]
Sohrab Amari
Doesn't he go on these meditation trips where he only dines on bananas and whatever.
- [11:58]
Michael Knowles
I refer to him as Hipster Rasputin. There are many theories.
- [12:01]
Sohrab Amari
That's a very good one. Yes, I like that one.
- [12:03]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. But the absolute arrogance of we will silence. And it was not only you. There was an aftermath to that and that. There was a Politico reporter who sent a tweet referencing what your article was about. And the Politico reporter got banned. And the Politico reporter crawled back on his hands and knees and said, oh, my overlord Masters, I apologize for having offended you. I will not discuss the topics you will not allow me to discuss.
- [12:33]
Sohrab Amari
So just to tie those two elements together, because the entire Blue Check media, save for a few honorable exceptions, the entire Blue Check media lined up behind the censorship ban, sheared it. And that one reporter, Gabe Sherman, had to do his kind of Maoist self criticism. I'm so sorry. I should have looked into this story, blah, blah, blah. And then you bring in the 50 intelligence officials. And as I remember, journalists and intelligence officials were supposed to have an adversarial relationship with this country because those intelligence officials wield the unaccountable power to, you know, like, nuke people or not nuke people, but drone people or spy on people. And journalists were supposed to kind of have a questioning relationship with them. Not. But General Hayden comes out, says, well, I don't have any evidence for this, but it has all the harm, all the indisha of Russian disinformation. And every Blue Check Reporter says, oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir, that's right. Yes, it is. You're not going to question that. I mean, but so, Rabi, that's very dangerous.
- [13:35]
Ted Cruz
You know, the media world, do you think there was a single one of them who actually believed what they were saying at that point? One of the things that has happened to media today is they are pure partisan. The New York Times understood that their overriding mission in life was to defeat Donald Trump, that they were political operatives and anything that helped Trump must be silenced. Anything that benefited Joe Biden must be amplified. Anything that hurt Biden must be covered up. And they're not. You know, there was a time when there was a norm in journalism of actually cover facts. As far as I'm concerned, the New York Times and CNN and MSNBC and ABC and cbs, NBC, the corrupt corporate media behaves exactly how they would behave if they were, in fact, the communication directors for the Biden campaign.
- [14:34]
Michael Knowles
But, you know, what people will often say here is, yes, the Times, cnn, yes, they're partisan, but it was sort of ever thus. It was always this way. There's nothing really new here. The American journalistic and free speech tradition, it's always been the same sort of thing. And I suppose this ties in a little bit with maintaining the tradition broadly. And this unbroken thread. Are we actually living through a break with the American political tradition, whether it's in journalism or the wielding of power, or is this. Look, it's just more of the same conservatives. And don't get so wrapped up about it.
- [15:09]
Sohrab Amari
So I happen to be reading Richard Hofstadter's book, the American Political Tradition right now. And, and, you know, he's, you know, in the 50s and 60s, I think it was published in 48, but had this book, had a long life. And his argument was that, that the American political tradition is, broadly speaking, the. Is a. Is a consensus tradition that despite what seemed like it's very furious oppositions at any given point, the bottom line is that it's.
- [15:36]
Ted Cruz
It.
- [15:36]
Sohrab Amari
It is a tradition aimed at maintaining kind of bourgeois liberal power. Right. It's of the owners of capital and then later the managerial capital that emerges to service industrial capital. Because after a while, you couldn't just be a, you know, small. And if that's the case, which is a kind of cynical view, I mean, and he's admiring of the figures he's writing about, including the Founders or Jackson or others. If that's the case, then what we're seeing is a kind of acceleration where it's this blob of government, corporate power, media power, academe, enforcing the consensus because the consensus has stopped serving a lot of people in the heartland of the country. And a lot of people are angry about what the consensus has produced for them over the past generation. But they've become aware of themselves, much more so than perhaps before as a united uniparty elite, and are now prepared to go steps that go beyond what was the norm maybe a generation or two ago in terms of how do you deal with this kind of opposition? I don't know. That's my theory.
- [16:50]
Michael Knowles
You do see a strange issue when it comes to consensus. There are certain issues where the majority of the American people are on one side and the entire ruling class is on another. Immigration is a good example. Poll after poll shows majority of Americans want to reduce immigration, legal and illegal, Republicans and Democrats. And yet, as you know very well, Senator, the ruling class, the establishment on both parties doesn't want to.
- [17:13]
Ted Cruz
So some of what is most troubling is that there were norms and constraints that held back the ability of the ruling class to rule. You go back to our Constitution as it was written. One of my favorite quotes from Thomas Jefferson is that the Constitution was designed to be chains to bind the mischief of government. And when it comes to consensus, even a decade ago, let's not go 30, 40, 50 years ago. Let's go a decade ago. A decade ago, there was a consensus in journalism that there was a journalistic norm, that they had an obligation to report news even if they didn't like it, that they had an obligation to report both sides of a story. Now they were terrible at it, they were horribly biased, but they would tell you when you sat down, I am reporting news, I am doing this. They were lying. They were self justified. But that norm, hypocrisy is the tribute.
- [18:19]
Michael Knowles
Vice pays to virtue.
- [18:20]
Ted Cruz
Exactly. When it came to the First Amendment, there was a consensus, an overwhelming consensus that free speech was a good thing, that people should be allowed to speak. Even if you didn't like what they were saying, that our Constitution protected it, religious liberty, There was a norm that people should be allowed to live according to their faith. You look at something like the Religious Freedom Restoration act that was passed through both houses of Congress, overwhelmingly bipartisan. Hillary Clinton voted for it, Chuck Schumer voted for it, Ted Kennedy voted for it, Bill Clinton signed it into law. All of these norms, everyone agreed, the American flag, everyone understood, you stand up for the damn American flag. Nobody disagreed.
- [19:03]
Michael Knowles
Well, even frankly, we're talking about section 230. Everyone forgets section 230 is part of the Communications Decency act, which was passed by Republicans and Democrats, signed by Bill Clinton, that sought to have some standards on the Internet, although ultimately the anti indecency provisions got booted out of there. But as recently as the 90s, people came together and said, no, there were some norms, there are some standards that we're gonna respect. And that seems to have been upended.
- [19:28]
Sohrab Amari
Isn't it interesting? You can find incredibly obscene material on Twitter and Facebook completely unmolested by the companies, but conservative speech is censored. That's completely reversing the purpose of Section 230. It was so they would the bulletins at the time there wasn't kind of social media as such bulletins could restrain and censor violent material threats, prurient stuff. All that stuff continues now. But that measure is used to, you know, the political speech. Now to insulate. Insulate these guys when they censor political speech. It's so perverse.
- [20:04]
Ted Cruz
Well, and I think two things happened to shift us away from those norms. Because those norms, and by the way, those norms had withstood over two centuries of our country's history. I said go back 10 years ago, but they didn't originate 10 years ago. They were present at the dawn of the republic. And we went over two centuries holding onto those norms. And it's been the last few years that they've been obliterated. So why were they obliterated? I think it's a combination of a couple of things. One, it is what happened in the university starting 20 years ago and 20 years ago we've talked a lot on this podcast about critical race theory and critical theory. And the Marxists took over many of our universities. And critical theory is all about destroying norms. It's saying, criticizing, it's criticizing. It is literally whatever the norm is. It's a tool of oppression. So therefore, let's tear down the norm. And you know, an awful lot of folks said, oh, that's kind of cute. Our children are being trained in this stuff, but it's harmless. When they go get a job and get a mortgage, they will put aside childish things and move on to life. Well, we had for a decade young leftists come into the media, come into entertainment, come into Hollywood, come into big corporations, come into government who were trained that none of these norms matter and that everything is politicized. So that's number one. But then number two, the accelerant was Donald J. Trump. And I think Donald Trump, who did an enormous amount of good for the country over the last four years simultaneously enraged the left and it made their heads explode. And it accelerated that process because much like if you're leading a rebellion, the rise to power of Adolf Hitler convinces you this rebellion is worth doing because we must stop the evil one. Trump for the left became the evil one, which meant any norm that stood in the way. If you're a journalist, if you're a Jake Tapper, good example of someone who used to be a journalist, he actually knows what these norms were. There was a time when he tried. He didn't effectively follow them, but he tried to follow them. But then the angry 20 somethings say, well, if you report news, it helps the evil one, so therefore don't be part of the oppressive system. All right, so that's kind of a theoretical. But give me your perspective. Well, no, I mean in a newspaper. How real is that?
- [22:51]
Sohrab Amari
Well, it's certainly true, I think that if you poll the average newsroom now, you have lots of recent Ivy grads whose minds are full of kind of the critical theory that you're talking about. What's interesting to me, and if I may introduce a wrinkle to that, is that we say Marxism or we say critical theory, and we use the word left even, but it's not the traditional economic left, because notice it gets so easily accommodated by large corporations. It's not as if. So if critical theory and this kind of neo Marxism were a threat to the material interests of Apple Corp. Nike, of Nike, of the trustees of the Ivy universities, and so forth, I would promise you they would repel it within a second. But somehow it's a kind of cultural leftism that blends very well with kind of neoliberal corporate rule.
- [23:54]
Ted Cruz
Although let me ask you something. Is Chinese communism a threat to Apple or Amazon or Big Tech?
- [24:04]
Sohrab Amari
It's a friend, Steve.
- [24:09]
Ted Cruz
I think that's exactly right. I actually think communists are quite fine with massive accumulations of economic power as long as they can control it. Communism has always been built on a lie, a lie of equality. And in every communist country on the face of the earth, there's massive inequality. Fidel Castro was a billionaire and he lived like a billionaire. Putin is a billionaire and he lives like a billionaire. Putin wants to be Mark Zuckerberg. I'm waiting to see Vladimir on one of those weird hydrofoil things, surfing on the lake like it is. These are all tools to use force, to oppress and take from everyone else. And so big business, I think, has always been willing to get in bed with big government. And Today the Fortune 100 does not oppose communism. And in fact they view communist countries as cash cows.
- [25:05]
Michael Knowles
And you know, obviously when we're talking even about the Western tradition, Marxism plays a role in the Western tradition. So it becomes difficult to parse these sorts of things. You know, the book is called the Unbroken Thread. We are gonna have to break the thread cause we're out of time. But I. So Rob, in our remaining 30 seconds, can you lead us out of this cultural madness and you know, save the West?
- [25:27]
Sohrab Amari
Yes, I can save the west in 30 seconds.
- [25:29]
Michael Knowles
Appreciate it.
- [25:29]
Sohrab Amari
No, but I do hope people will look at the book because I think a lot of these problems will be seen in a new light in the light of the great tradition, chiefly speaking the Christian and classical tradition, which had an account of the common good, ultimately of what it means to create conditions in which ordinary people can live decent lives of virtue and lives of faith.
- [25:55]
Michael Knowles
A republic itself refers to like res publica.
- [25:58]
Sohrab Amari
Right.
- [25:59]
Michael Knowles
So we holding common.
- [25:59]
Sohrab Amari
It's a common wheel.
- [26:00]
Ted Cruz
Right. And actually, Saurabh, before we wrap, can you take 60 seconds and just tell verdict listeners your story because you have a remarkable story and I think we would be doing a disservice if we didn't get a chance for people to learn it.
- [26:15]
Sohrab Amari
Sure. So I was born and raised in Iran. I immigrated to the United states at age 13. Kind of born into a secular middle class family there.
- [26:27]
Ted Cruz
What year did you come?
- [26:28]
Sohrab Amari
1998. Okay. And I became an atheist while I was still living under the Ayatollahs. In fact, I became an interest atheist in part because of the ayatollahs, Iran. Then 20 years later, through a long process of reading Pope Benedict's books of life experience and a couple of providential encounters with the Mass, I was received into the Catholic Church in 2016 in London. I was working in London at the time. And yeah, and I was at the Wall Street Journal then I'm now at the New York Post. So I've spent most of my career since the second mention, I've spent most of my career with Rupert Murdoch's wonderful family of media companies.
- [27:10]
Ted Cruz
And how did you come to be editor at the Post?
- [27:13]
Sohrab Amari
Well, I'm the op editor. So I had done five years at the Wall Street Journal doing, you know, editing book reviews and then helping run the European editorial opinion pages in London. Then I spent a year at a magazine called Commentary. And then this job opened up at the New York Post and I, I seized it by the horns, as it were.
- [27:36]
Ted Cruz
Well, thank you for your courage. Oh, thank you. And There are a handful of people demonstrating courage in the media world, and you got a target on you as a result of that. What you're doing is important, and I think it's important for the rest of us to encourage you to support you. And I hope that you will get lots more allies, not who will be. I don't want to see partisans on my side of the aisle. I just want to see forums where you're allowed to actually speak the truth and have dialogue, to see institutions that are not pure tools of political propaganda as so much of the corporate media is today. So the line you're trying to hold is incredibly important, and thank you for that.
- [28:27]
Michael Knowles
I just really hope that people are permitted to DM and privately message this episode. Sohrab might have completely blown it for us. We're gonna be totally censored now, but that's fine because conservatives are finally fighting back against this.
- [28:40]
Sohrab Amari
And thank you, Senator, for that fight. Yes, yes, take a battering rant.
- [28:43]
Michael Knowles
We'll follow the political fight, the journalistic fight, the legal fight, but we'll have to do it on a future episode. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. We are going to be taking Verdict on the road. We are partnering with the Young Americas Foundation. We're going to multiple school. I think we're going to six schools and universities with YAF. You can go to yaf.org verdict right now to request that we come to your school. The deadline is August 18th. Senator, should we go to the really nice, wonderful, conservative schools with the Young America's foundation, or should we go to the crazy, leftist, insane schools that are gonna run us out of town on the rail?
- [29:32]
Ted Cruz
Well, it seems to me that should be up to the listeners, a verdict to decide. And so you tell us, if you're a student right now, you might be at one of the few havens of sanity and you say, hey, come cheer us on and reach out to us. On the other hand, you might be behind enemy lines surrounded by Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and looking for a Berlin airlift. You know, my guess is we're open to doing a little of both. But it's really the incredible listeners a verdict who are going to make that decision.
- [30:06]
Michael Knowles
We want to free the students on campus. We want to free all of us here in this country. So make sure you get Those names in yaf.org verdict. August 18th is the deadline.
- [30:17]
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 CAND candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.