← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
TWITTER-PALOOZA: A Deep Dive Into Elon's Bombshell Release
00:43:23
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- [00:00]
Ben Ferguson
There was a big story that broke this week and it dealt with an important issue, actual silencing and censoring of conservative voices on Twitter right before major elections. We're going to do a deep dive on it. I'm Ben Ferguson, and this is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Senator, the Internet got broken the other night because of Elon Musk and all that he exposed. And it was a big story, obviously. But before we get to that, there's a guy in Washington, D.C. that looks like you, and it's freaking me out. I think it's freaking a lot of people out. And it's someone you would never expect to be wanting to look like you. His name is Mitt Romney, who has grown a beard. For people watching, there it is. I don't know if he lost his razor. I don't know if he's trying to resurrect his career to make people like him. And he saw how much people loved your beard. You got any advice on this one?
- [00:53]
Ted Cruz
Well, listen, I think Mitt's beard looks great. He came back from Thanksgiving and he had white stubble covering his face. It's interesting that his beard is all white. His hair is not all white, but the beard is. And I thought it looked good. So Mitt and I were laughing on the Senate floor. I welcomed him to the bearded club and said was glad to have him. I asked him, what's the deal? What's going on? And he said, oh, he just didn't shave over Thanksgiving and said he figured, what the heck, keep it. He said Ann thought it looked kind of cute. He liked that. That made him happy.
- [01:30]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
- [01:31]
Ted Cruz
He said he's never grown a beard in his life. In his entire life, like college, grad school, never in his life had a beard. And I did share with him a story. I said, well, you're gonna find there are different views depending on the generation. And in particular, young people. 20 something, 30 something will love the beard. But there's another generation, which is typically women in their 70s and 80s who can't stand it.
- [01:59]
Ben Ferguson
My grandmother said she didn't like my dad when my mom and they were dating. She said, I don't like his mustache. He was a police officer. He's hiding something. That's literally what she wasn't joking. She goes, I don't like him. I don't trust him.
- [02:11]
Ted Cruz
So my father had a beard in the 70s and he shaved it because a woman at church said she didn't trust men with beards, that they were dishonest. And look, I think that really comes out of the 60s and 70s and the hippies, and there's a generation where they see someone bearded and they think you're a hippie. And a story I told Mitt, I said, look, I was standing actually right where Mitt and I were standing, which is down at the well of the Senate. And I was talking with Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein came up, and Diane looked at Mitch and said, mitch, when are we going to get tired head to shave that hideous thing on his face? And I turned to her, I said, diane, next thing you know, I'm growing a ponytail, I'm getting Birkenstocks, and I'm coming after your base.
- [03:00]
Ben Ferguson
What'd she say?
- [03:02]
Ted Cruz
Mitch McConnell cracked up laughing. And Diane looked at me completely confused and befuddled. It, it, it just, she did not understand what I was saying. So I told Mitt that, and apparently that might have scared him too, because the next day he shaved it. The very next day he shaved it.
- [03:22]
Ben Ferguson
Well, he didn't wanna take that kind of heat from Democrats, let's be honest. He wants to be friends with them. He loves the Democratic base. He loves the liberals liking him. Of course he's gonna shave the thing.
- [03:31]
Unknown Speaker
Well.
- [03:31]
Ted Cruz
And he said to me, he said, this thing itches. Does it really itch? I said, yeah, for a day or two. And then it passes. And so I actually went to Mitt that next day and said, mitt, I want to officially lodge a protest on behalf of all of your grandchildren.
- [03:48]
Ben Ferguson
Grow it back.
- [03:49]
Ted Cruz
That you're denying them a Santa Claus beard right before Christmas. And I think it's wrong. The grandkids are dismayed.
- [03:57]
Ben Ferguson
I gotta ask your two daughters. When my dad apparently shaved his mustache, the only time we apparently freaked out and cried, I don't remember. We were little kids. Did your daughters like the beard instantly or do they say no? Dad?
- [04:09]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. My girls are actually not crazy about the beard. That even now, even now, it's, I've had it now a couple of years. I like it. But, but, but my girls, my girls could do without.
- [04:19]
Ben Ferguson
Well, if you get, if you, if you get confused with Mitt Romney, it's really going to screw with people. He shaved it now, so I think you're safe. You're not going to have to worry about people walking. Hey, Senator, can I get a picture with Mitt? Can I get a picture with you from Utah? I don't think that's going to happen.
- [04:31]
Ted Cruz
Now, it's fair to say Mitt's base and my base are very different.
- [04:36]
Ben Ferguson
Yes, very different. I want to get into this serious topic, obviously, and we're going to do a deep dive. So everybody today, make sure you hit that share button, share the podcast. And we're doing this one as a video as well. So you can share that wherever you're watching this video on Facebook, YouTube, et cetera, because we're doing an entire show dedicated to what just came out of how much government. There's two parts of the story. There's government influence in the private sector and there's private sector also silencing people that they're told to silence by government officials. And I think it's shocking to see how much collusion there was. And Democrats love the word collusion. They've been obsessed with that word for a long time. You want to talk about real collusion? Elon Musk is showing us there was real direct collusion between the Democratic Party and big tech silencing conservatives. You look at this story and this is going to be multiple parts, they're now saying. So they released some of this information and I want your overall reaction to it, just how dirty it was behind the scenes at Twitter to make sure people that were having an influence were silenced with big stories. Now, Senator, before I get your response, I want to tell everybody about Patriot Mobile. They are an incredible Christian conservative cell phone company that can save you money on your bill and also your businesses or your small businesses while they fight at the same time for your first and Second Amendment rights. They are also involved in protecting life and even helping people with adoptions. So if you have a cell phone, you get to keep your same cell phone number. You get to save money on your bill. It's the same towers you're using right now, nationwide coverage. But they take a portion of your bill every single month and they give it back to conservative causes. So every time you use your phone, you're making a difference. Just check them out. Patriot mobile.com verdict. Use a promo code. Verdict. You're going to save money. Free activation and other incredible savings. Also, you can call them 972 Patriot. That's 972 Patriot. Use a promo code. Verdict. Find out more about the great work they do. And you save money on your cell phone bill. Now center, let's get to this. It is shocking what we, what we saw. Your overall reaction is all this information was coming out well.
- [06:55]
Ted Cruz
It's stunning. And a lot more is coming. So you and I are sitting here. It is Sunday afternoon. The first tranche of emails and tweets has come out. Elon Musk has promised a second tranche coming out later today. So we will see what the second tranche holds. But the first one is stunning, and it's a whole Twitter thread. I'd encourage people to read the entire thing. But what we're gonna do on this pod is we're gonna go through the highlights of what's most important. So let's start. Let's start with the first one and this one. This is actually, I think, the eighth tweet, but it goes right to the heart of it. And it is an internal email within Twitter that reads more to review from the Biden team. Colon. And there are a series of five links to different tweets other people have said. And then it says, thanks all. And the response, two words. Handled these.
- [07:48]
Ben Ferguson
And to be clear, this was basically, they went through Twitter the day before or in the last couple days. They said, hey, these are. The tweets are most damning to us, the Democratic Party. We send them to Twitter, and we want you to get rid of all these silence all these people. Shut all these people down. And it was just direct links to tweets. And then it said, handled. There was no pushback. There was no questioning. There was no, we'll take a review.
- [08:12]
Ted Cruz
It.
- [08:12]
Ben Ferguson
It was, how high you want us to jump at Twitter? We'll take care of your problems.
- [08:16]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, this is Twitter acting as an arm for the Biden campaign. Acting as. Look, that's almost how you task an employee. Hey, here, five more to take care of. Handled these done. Just. That's who we work for. We're carrying it out and it goes worse. Let's look at the next one. Okay, so this is Elon Musk kind of commenting, giving a meta comment on the entire thread. And he points out, he says Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a First Amendment violation. But acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech with no judicial review is. Now, let me explain something that's important. Why is Twitter acting on its own, not a violation of the First Amendment? The reason is the First Amendment only applies to government. Actually, as it was written, it only applied to the federal government. First Amendment begins with, Congress shall make no law. It applied to Congress. Now, since then, the courts have expanded the First Amendment, so it applies to the entirety of the federal government. It applies to state governments. It applies to local governments. But a private company, Twitter or anybody else implementing some policy, the First Amendment doesn't govern it. But as Elon points out, there's a major exception to that, which is if a private company acts at the behest of the government, if it is censoring because the government is turning it into an instrumentality of censorship, then the First Amendment does apply. And what these tweets show is that's what was happening. And I gotta say, this podcast, we have been explaining this theory of First Amendment liability for three years now. Yeah, we got into it on a deep dive when the emails became public between Dr. Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. And I explained on the verdict podcast how those emails make Facebook and their similar communications with Twitter face very real liability, because they're not just acting as private corporate actors. They're acting as an instrumentality of the.
- [10:27]
Ben Ferguson
Government, an agent, basically, of the government. If you are one of these individuals, and we've seen a lot of this come out, and I want to do a deep dive into this, is there legal recourse now for the people that clearly were put on these lists, and there's a lot of conservatives that are now on this list that we don't. That we know of, there's obviously going to be more that we're going to find out about where their tweets were silenced, their accounts were silenced, and even shut down. If you are one of those individuals, is there a real chance that you could actually sue because of this and possibly win?
- [10:59]
Ted Cruz
Absolutely, yes. Let's go to the next tweet because it actually goes directly to the question you just asked. So celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party. And if you go to the attachment here, I grabbed the first one under si Defer to safety on the high profile second one. So the first one, someone who I don't think is well known, but apparently that poor fellow tweeted something that Biden and the DNC didn't like and Twitter promptly squashed him. The second one, there is famous guy, is a tweet from James Wood, the actor. And so the tweet says, or the email says, an additional report from the dnc and they forward a tweet James woods sent, and Twitter responded by immediately banning James Woods.
- [11:51]
Ben Ferguson
And he has said, I am going to sue on this. I'm not backing down. Does he have grounds? Because we hear a lot of people say a lot of times they're gonna sue. These emails give him what he actually needs for a case is what I've been told from several others who said, hey, this is bad news for the DNC and it's bad news for Twitter. In general.
- [12:11]
Ted Cruz
So going back to Twitter will get sued. Biden will get sued. The DNC will get sued. James woods has said on Fox that his career was destroyed by what the DNC was doing, that Twitter acting to ban him ended up hurting his acting career. And so one of the things you have to prove in a defamation suit is you have to prove damages.
- [12:32]
Ben Ferguson
Right.
- [12:34]
Ted Cruz
I think there's a very real chance someone like James woods will be able to. All right, let's go to the next tweet. So this is shifting into Hunter Biden. So the Hunter Biden laptop story comes out. It's October of 2020. It's right before the election. The New York Post publishes it, and then this is reading from this tweet. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, the Hunter Biden laptop story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be unsafe. Reading this story may be unsafe. They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for. For extreme cases, eg, child pornography. So they decided we're gonna use every tool we can to nuke the Hunter Biden laptop story.
- [13:27]
Ben Ferguson
In essence, taking the Hunter Biden story and making sure that you couldn't share it as if it was child pornography. They used the same exact technology and importance within Twitter to say, this story is so damning to Joe Biden, to the Democratic Party, to this presidential election. And obviously, Twitter was acting as an agent of the Democratic National Committee in the Joe Biden campaign that we will treat it like it is child pornography to make sure this story can never get out to the masses.
- [13:59]
Ted Cruz
What I think is funny is the use of the word unsafe, because you think of unsafe, like, reading this may damage you. You think in the online world, this has a virus in it. Like, there's something unsafe about this website's unsafe. You don't want to go there. No, no. What they meant about unsafe is it's not safe for the political fortunes of Joe Biden and the Democrats that if you read this article, it's gonna hurt the candidate we support. All right, let's go to the next one. So how far did they go? White house spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed, quote, at least pretend to care for the next 20 days. The next 20 days was until the election. And if you look at this email that the campaign staffer sent to Twitter, Kayleigh McEnany has been knocked out of her account for Simply talking about the New York Post story. All she did is cite the story and firsthand reporting that has been reported by other outlets. When the story came out, Joe Biden didn't say this is not my son's laptop. Joe Biden didn't say this is false.
- [15:08]
Ben Ferguson
He.
- [15:08]
Ted Cruz
He didn't say it was fraudulent. He just said, oh crap, this is bad. Yeah, please no one read it cuz I don't like the outcome. It makes me look really bad. The email continues. I need an answer immediately on when how she will be unlocked. I also don't appreciate how nobody on this team called me regarding the news that you'll be censoring news articles. Like I said, at least to pretend to care for the next 20 days. Look, this is the White House press secretary that Twitter bans less than three weeks before a presidential election. Why? Because Joe Biden and the Democrats wanted this story suppressed. And the arrogance of we will silence anyone. So now, according to Big Tech, the White House press secretary cannot talk about articles in major newspapers. The New York Post has the fourth largest circulation of any newspaper in the country. That, as we now know, are true and accurate news stories, but are politically damaging to the side. Twitter wants to prevail.
- [16:15]
Ben Ferguson
If you're Kayleigh McEnany and you see now what was happening behind the scenes, what are her options legally? Can she do anything because she was at the White House? Because that's what I think many Democrats are betting on as well. This was the fog of war. That's what they kept going back to.
- [16:31]
Ted Cruz
Right?
- [16:31]
Ben Ferguson
We didn't. We were so concerned about Russian disinformation. That's our get out of jail free card. And we were just trying to protect the integrity of an election. They're gonna go back to that. That's their game plan here.
- [16:43]
Ted Cruz
And Ben, it's why what Elon Musk is doing is so important. Because they could maintain that a couple of days ago they could say, oh, it was fog of war. We were doing it. Cuz we thought it might be hacked. We were doing it. What Elon is doing is releasing the goods. And so let's get through a few more of these because it will show that the lefty Twitter defense is just complete bs. So let's get to the next one. You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange which ends up including Gatti and former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. Coms official Trenton Kennedy writes, quote, quote, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe. And let's read the Exchange in close. So this is October 14, 2020. So just a couple of weeks before the election. New York Post, Hunter Biden laptop article, privileged and confidential. Uh oh, I don't want to get sued. Let me. You put privilege and confidential on something when you're afraid of getting sued.
- [17:42]
Ben Ferguson
Really?
- [17:43]
Ted Cruz
And you're saying this email will really hurt us and cause us to lose if we get sued? Our teams continue to investigate the origins of the material included in the reporting. Trenton Kennedy is the comms official. I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe. No kidding. And I think the best explainability argument. Okay, we got to figure out a way to explain it. Yeah, we banned it because it hurts Biden. That's not a good answer. So I think the best explainability argument for this externally, not internally.
- [18:17]
Ben Ferguson
Externally.
- [18:17]
Ted Cruz
Internally we know exactly what we're doing, but externally, we gotta figure out. Something to say would be that we're waiting to understand if this story is the result of hacked materials. We'll face hard questions if we don't have some kind of solid reasoning for marking the link unsafe. And Katie Roseborough comes and says, will we mark similar stories as unsafe? And she points out that the Senate Homeland Security Committee was investigating the hard drive in the laptop. No answer to that. Let's go to the next one. By this point, everyone knew this was F'd.
- [18:55]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
- [18:56]
Ted Cruz
And they didn't abbreviate effed, said one former employee. But the response was essentially to err on the side of continuing to air. Now, let's look at the exchange back and forth.
- [19:10]
Ben Ferguson
And to be clear, this means let's just run out the clock.
- [19:12]
Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [19:13]
Ben Ferguson
Close to election Day. If we can just run out the clock here until the election by default, if we win, we're good. We succeeded in our goal, which was to make sure that Joe Biden won the election and Donald Trump lost the election and other Republicans lose in the process that are down ticket. We just gotta be smart for 20 days. 19 days. 18 days. We're on a countdown clock, guys. We can pull this off for our team.
- [19:39]
Ted Cruz
That's exactly right. And they know what they're doing is political. It's utterly transparent. Look, they're going back and forth. Yoel Roth, who was one of the senior officials at Twitter, the policy basis is hacked materials, though, as discussed, this is an emerging situation where the facts remain unclear. In other words, we don't know that this is hacked. We're just making this up. By the way, it wasn't. But they didn't know it was. Now, here's the most revealing sentence of all of this. Given the severe, severe is in all caps, risks here and lessons of 2016. We're erring on the side of including a warning and preventing this content from being amplified. Now, what were the lessons of 2016?
- [20:32]
Ben Ferguson
I'm trying to remember and go back to 2016.
- [20:35]
Ted Cruz
Well, there was this guy named Donald J. Trump who won.
- [20:38]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
- [20:39]
Ted Cruz
And the severe risks here is Donald Trump winning again. Holy crap. If people read what Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were doing, if they read the corruption, they're not gonna vote for that guy. Which means the guy we hate will get reelected. They're admitting here's what's the risk. The risk is Trump wins.
- [21:00]
Ben Ferguson
Not a story, nothing connected to Hillary Clinton back in the day. They're literally saying the risk is Donald Trump wins another four year term.
- [21:08]
Ted Cruz
That's exactly right. All right, let's go to the next tweet. All right, so the former vice president of global communications, guy named Brandon Borman asks, can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy? And let's pull up the full context. Brandon Borman knew to Ian's point. Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy? That is, as part of our approach in addressing potentially hacked materials, we are limiting visibility of related stories on Twitter while our investigation is ongoing. Now, this is a brief moment of, okay, we're lying. Everyone knows we're lying. But do we have any fig leaf to pretend that we're following a policy and we're not simply doing the behest of Joe Biden and the Democrats?
- [21:56]
Ben Ferguson
This is almost like a conspiracy to commit fraud where if you the way that they're.
- [22:03]
Ted Cruz
I agree with every word you said, except for the word almost.
- [22:06]
Ben Ferguson
It is conspiracy to commit fraud.
- [22:08]
Ted Cruz
This is a conspiracy to defraud the American people, to defraud the American voters, to defraud democracy. This is, to use the term that Donald Trump likes. This is rigging an election. This is concern. Hold on.
- [22:22]
Ben Ferguson
I want you to say that again because it's a very important point that you just said.
- [22:26]
Ted Cruz
This is evidence of rigging an election. Now, it's not rigging an election in the sense of Venezuela hacking into voting machines.
- [22:36]
Ben Ferguson
Right.
- [22:37]
Ted Cruz
But it is rigging an election in the sense of big tech billionaires at the behest of one of the two parties, silencing and censoring and blocking truthful reporting about facts that would change how people vote.
- [22:57]
Ben Ferguson
So then there's an issue, by the.
- [22:59]
Ted Cruz
Way, you know, who does this? Putin does this. You know who else does this? Xi does this. This is how dictators behave. If we have facts you don't want to see. Right now, Communist China is stopping the protesters from communicating exactly the same way Twitter was doing at the behest of the Biden White House.
- [23:20]
Unknown Speaker
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- [24:47]
Ben Ferguson
I know there's so many people that are gonna listen to this. They're gonna say, I'm angry, I'm frustrated. So why isn't someone gonna go to jail for this?
- [24:54]
Ted Cruz
Well, we're gonna talk about the consequences in a minute.
- [24:56]
Ben Ferguson
Okay, good.
- [24:57]
Ted Cruz
Let's keep going through the thread. Okay, now this is a very interesting one, to which former Deputy General counsel Jim Baker again ceased to advise staying the non course because, quote, caution is warranted. Let's pull up exactly what Baker said. Jim Baker knew. Privileged and confidential Notice the lawyer sticks. Privileged and confidential. That's. Oh, crap. This is a document that would be really bad if anyone sees. By the way, the thing that has totally screwed them all is Elon Musk bought the company. And so you can always waive privilege. The fact that Elon Musk decided to release it. It's Twitter that has the privilege.
- [25:30]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. So in litigation, not the individual.
- [25:32]
Ted Cruz
Right. Because Twitter is the client. So attorney client privilege. The client owns and possesses it. The client can waive attorney client privilege. So when Jim Baker typed this, he figured, well, Jack Dorsey owns Twitter, so Twitter will never name this privilege. And the relevance of this is, if you had a lawsuit and the other side filed for discovery and tried to get this email, anything that's labeled privilege.
- [25:59]
Ben Ferguson
And confidential, off the record at that point, or a lot of it, you'd have an argument.
- [26:02]
Ted Cruz
You would have an argument in front of the court about whether it was in fact privilege, whether it was attorney client privilege, whether it was advice being given to the client. And there are ways to waive that privilege, but the simplest one is for the client to say, I waive it, which is what Elon Musk has done by releasing it. So let's see what Jim Baker says. I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked. In other words, he's admitting we don't know if they were hacked or not. At this stage, however, it is reasonable for us to assume that they may have been, and that caution is warranted. By the way, the Biden campaign wasn't saying they were hacked.
- [26:39]
Ben Ferguson
Never once they say the laptop wasn't true. Never once the campaign say that it wasn't, that it was inaccurate. Never once they come out and condemn it or say anything negative about it. They were silenced because they understood that they couldn't say that.
- [26:52]
Ted Cruz
The email continues. There are some facts that indicate that the materials may have been hacked, while there are others indicating that the computer was either abandoned and or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes. We simply need more information. Now. Who is Jim Baker? He was the general counsel of Twitter. Do you know what he did before that?
- [27:17]
Ben Ferguson
What was his job before that?
- [27:18]
Ted Cruz
He was the general counsel of the FBI, who, by the way, let everyone.
- [27:23]
Ben Ferguson
Just take a moment to digest that. That's a really big deal.
- [27:26]
Ted Cruz
The FBI general counsel who was.
- [27:28]
Ben Ferguson
Which is not a little job. Explain how big of a job that is. The FBI.
- [27:32]
Ted Cruz
It's a huge job in the fb. Jim Baker was intimately involved in much of the abuse of power we saw at the FBI. He then runs over and is at Twitter doing the same thing, continuing. And one of the things that comes out in this thread is how much of a continuous web it is from the deep state at the FBI to big tech and Twitter, which is willingly part of the FBI's effort to silence dissent from those they disagree with. It really is stunning that it's literally the same people.
- [28:06]
Ben Ferguson
Can I hit pause on Twitter for a second? And again, I know that you don't know, but I think we can speculate at this point if this was going on at Twitter. Is there any ounce of your thought process that thinks that somehow other big tech companies like Facebook were not doing the exact same thing?
- [28:25]
Ted Cruz
We know exactly.
- [28:25]
Ben Ferguson
Getting the exact same emails, get, having the exact same communications that we're now seeing revealed by Elon Musk.
- [28:32]
Ted Cruz
They all were. And the mothership is Google. Google. And they own YouTube. Google is the biggest and the most powerful. Twitter was the most brazen, like Dorsey was. Just screw it all. We're leftists and we're proud, but we know Facebook was doing this. They did the same thing on the Hunter Biden story. And Google is where you have the biggest impact. And so I guarantee you Google and Facebook are both looking at this going, oh, crap. Oh, crap, you're airing dirty laundry. Don't talk about this in public. First rule of Fight club is you don't talk about Fight Club. This for all of big tech and the abuse of power. This is pulling back the curtain. Let's go to the next one. Although several sources recalled hearing about a, quote, general warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there's no evidence that I've seen of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem. Let's go on to the next one. Quote, they just freelanced it, end quote, is how one former employee characterized the decision. Quote, hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn't going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it. Now stop and think about that. Like, they made up this hacking thing.
- [29:59]
Ben Ferguson
That was the alibi.
- [30:00]
Ted Cruz
Nobody was claiming it, including the candidate, including Hunter Biden. Right. If Hunter Biden had came forward and said, this is not my laptop. Okay, that might be something. If Hunter Biden had come forward and said, my laptop was hacked, you might at least have something. None of that happened. Twitter just made it up. Oh, crap. Bad stuff for Joe Biden. I know it's hacked, but within hours. Let me read again the quote from one former employee. Within hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn't going to hold, but no one had the guts to reverse it. So they knew they were lying, but they Thought they'd never get caught. Next tweet. All right, an amazing subplot of the Twitter slash Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey and how long it took for the situation to get un F'd. Yeah, again, they didn't abbreviate effed. But this is a child friendly show, so we're doing so, as one ex employee put it, even after Dorsey jumped in. So listen, I don't exonerate Dorsey in this. He created a culture where he put in place decision makers who were hard partisans, who hated Donald Trump, who wanted Biden to win and were willing to do anything, were willing to lie. We're willing to act at the behest of the Biden campaign. Remember the exchange at the beginning? Handled it. Handled it.
- [31:26]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
- [31:26]
Ted Cruz
They viewed themselves as we have an obligation. What's the obligation? Learn from the quote, lessons of 2016 and make sure it doesn't happen again.
- [31:38]
Ben Ferguson
There's been a lot of reporting saying Jack Dorsey is mentioned there, knew nothing. Was that on purpose by these employees? Or do you think maybe he said, leave me out of it so I have the ability, you know, deniability? Or do you think they just knew their marching order so well, we can do this and this is normal, active business for us. We're just gonna keep doing it. We don't need to call him because this is what we've been doing for all these other stories.
- [32:01]
Ted Cruz
Possibly, you know, some combination. Who knows, who knows where he was, who knows what he was doing, who knows what his state of mind at the time this was happening. I don't know any of that.
- [32:11]
Ben Ferguson
Because you've actually questioned Dorsey.
- [32:13]
Ted Cruz
I have questioned Dorsey.
- [32:14]
Ben Ferguson
And it got pretty intense when you were questioning him.
- [32:17]
Ted Cruz
We have gotten into it on this topic and in a subsequent verdict, we'll pull up and go back to Dorsey's testimony before Congress. In light of this exchange, that will be one of the podcasts coming up. Let's finish going through this thread. All right, now here's an interesting thing. I'm just gonna read this. In one humorous exchange on day one, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gatti to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the, quote, backlash re speech. Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern. And let's look at his email. Ro Khanna wrote, generating a huge backlash on Hill re speech. Happy to chat if you're up for it. Best row. So, number one, this Democrat congressman is on a first Name basis with these high muckety mucks at Twitter sends him this email to his credit. Look, I don't know Ro Khanna. My understanding is at least he understood.
- [33:21]
Ben Ferguson
This is a bad road to go down.
- [33:23]
Ted Cruz
He's a left wing Democrat, but apparently he's one of the very few liberals who actually is a real liberal in that they believe in free speech. But let's do the next one. Twitter files continued quote the First Amendment is an absolute. Szabo's letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers attitudes. They want more moderation. And as for the Bill of Rights, it's quote, not absolute. Let's read the whole thing here. The Democrats meanwhile complained that the companies are inept. They let conservatives muddy the water and make the Biden campaign look corrupt even though Biden is innocent. They link this to Hillary Clinton's email scandal. She did nothing wrong. But the press wouldn't let the story go. It became a scandal far out of proportion. In their mind, social media is doing the same thing. It doesn't moderate enough harmful content so that when it does, like it did yesterday, it becomes a story. If the companies moderated more, if they censored more, conservatives wouldn't even think to use social media for disinformation, misinformation or otherwise. And it continues. The Democrats were in agreement. Social media needs to moderate more because they're corrupting democracy and making all quote, truth relative. When pushed on how the government might insist on that consistent with the First Amendment. They demurred, quote the First Amendment is an absolute. Now this guy is a consultant or a lobbyist. I'm not sure what he does exactly, but it's some guy on Capitol Hill who's talking to a whole bunch of Democrat lawmakers right in the middle of this. And he's reporting back that hey, when I talk to the Democrats, other than Ro Khanna, none of them are unhappy at you censoring this story, but they are unhappy you're not censoring more. The request from Democrats is censor more. In fact, censor so much that conservatives won't even be able to tell you're censoring it. Cuz you just silence everything.
- [35:29]
Ben Ferguson
And that's. And that's what they did. Everything was fact checked. We saw. Look, I was at CNN at the time when this was happening as a conservative commentator fighting the tough fight there. We had to deal with media matters and we had to deal with all of the things we were sharing being silenced. And it was, it happened Instantane.
- [35:46]
Ted Cruz
Yep.
- [35:46]
Ben Ferguson
And now you have to wonder if you're not paranoid. You're just dealing with probably the reality that they said, hey, these conservatives that are on tv, we want to shut them down. These conservatives, we need you to start nailing them and silencing them, making sure their distribution is gone. And clearly, from those early texts, it was anything that went viral. You didn't have to be famous. You didn't have to have a blue check mark.
- [36:08]
Ted Cruz
And notice the Democrat congressmen are complaining about, quote, truth.
- [36:12]
Ben Ferguson
Right?
- [36:13]
Ted Cruz
The Hunter laptop was true, and they.
- [36:16]
Ben Ferguson
Knew it was true.
- [36:17]
Ted Cruz
And, well, they knew at least that the Biden campaign wasn't denying it. They didn't care. Their definition of truth is anything that politically benefits Democrats. The definition of false is anything that politically hurts Democrats. All right, let's move to the next one. All right, so this is a very interesting. This is not part of the Twitter thread, but to understand, you asked, what are the consequences gonna be?
- [36:39]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
- [36:40]
Ted Cruz
So this is a tweet from Sean Cooksey. Sean Cooksey is a commissioner on the fec, the Federal Elections Commission. I know Sean well. Sean used to be a lawyer on my staff in the Senate office before he got appointed and confirmed to the fec. Here's what Sean Cooksey tweets out. Here's what Twitter told the FEC in its response to a complaint about this event. Quote, twitter did not receive a request from the Biden campaign to review, much less restrict, the New York Post articles and go to the next one. Nor did decision makers at Twitter or, to the best of the company's knowledge, anyone authorized to act on Twitter's behalf, even communicate with the Biden campaign regarding Twitter's decision to enforce its content moderation policies with respect to the New York Post articles. You want to talk about very real consequences. It appears that Twitter lied to the Federal Election Commission. And I will point out, so I've got here, here in my hand, their actual response. It's a lengthy response where they make those statements, but they attach at the back of their response two sworn affidavits, one from Yoel Roth, who's one of the senior officials deeply implicated in this, where he says here a couple of things in his sworn affidavit. As a matter of practice, neither I nor the other members of the Site Integrity Team communicate directly with persons outside Twitter that report content for violating Twitter's policies.
- [38:15]
Ben Ferguson
That's a lie. We know that.
- [38:16]
Ted Cruz
Although he does say then, since 2018, I've had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and industry peers regarding election security. And then he goes on, he says Twitter's trust and safety leadership determined that the New York Post articles violated the distribution of hacked materials policy and the private information policy and instructed the site integrity team to execute enforcement of those policies. We know from these internal discussions, no, they didn't determine it violated the hacked policies. They pulled that out of their rear end and then realized, oh crap, there's no evidence for us, no basis for us, but, well, let's just stick to.
- [38:58]
Ben Ferguson
It, run out the clock until election day.
- [39:01]
Ted Cruz
And Roth's sworn affidavit. The final two paragraphs I want to read for you. I did not receive any communications from or have any communications with representatives for Biden for President, the Democratic National Committee, or any of their agents regarding the New York Post article before Twitter implemented the enforcement actions on October 14, 2020. Final paragraph of the affidavit. To the best of my knowledge, no Twitter employees received any communications from or had any communications with representatives of Biden for President, the Democratic National Committee, or any of their agents regarding the New York Post article before Twitter implemented the enforcement actions. On October 14, 2020. There's a second sworn affidavit from Lauren Culberson who was the head of US Public Policy. And she likewise, she says that she's the point person for office holders, election officials, candidates, campaigns and party committees. And she says that the public policy team receives requests from persons for tweets to be reviewed for compliance with Twitter's policy. And we forward those requests to review content to enforcement agents, including members of the trust and safety teams. So she's the portal to send the request on. And then she has the final two things. I didn't receive any communications with Biden. To the best of my knowledge, no one else received communications with Biden.
- [40:18]
Ben Ferguson
And there's sworn affidavits. So that changes things.
- [40:22]
Ted Cruz
These two individuals who sign their name to sworn affidavits, if they don't have lawyers, they need to call a lawyer. They need to call a lawyer right now because they are facing potential civil liability, potential criminal liability. And I'll point out on top of that, Twitter faces liability. But you know who else faces liability? The Biden campaign and the dnc.
- [40:44]
Ben Ferguson
Really? So they could be sued and it could be legitimate.
- [40:48]
Ted Cruz
Well, look, the basis of the complaint that Twitter lied to the FEC about was that Twitter blocking the Hunter Biden story was an in kind campaign contribution to Biden for president. And so their whole defense is, no, no, no, we just did this based on Our hacked materials policy, it wasn't about Biden at all. We now know that's a total lie. And I'll tell you what's interesting. The next tranche of materials is dropping.
- [41:17]
Ben Ferguson
Any minute now, which means we know what Wednesday's show's gonna be about. Yep. We're gonna keep doing a deep dive into this. I will say this to everyone that is listening and watching us. Wednesday morning, we will continue part two of this. We will go through it for you so you understand what's happening. We do want you to get in the fight in the game. Make sure you hit that forward button, the share button, Share the video, the audio file with all your family and friends. Senator Cruz is going to keep going deep into this on Wednesday morning. We do this podcast Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I have a feeling all this week, it's going to be on this. So if you. If you miss an episode, make sure you go back and listen to it as this keeps coming out. And I have a feeling sender. And I think you'll agree with me, what they're doing at Twitter right now is they're saying, this is who we were.
- [42:05]
Ted Cruz
Yep.
- [42:06]
Ben Ferguson
And we're not gonna be this moving forward, and we're not gonna pull back from this. We're gonna keep unloading this information in a way. And it was clear Elon Musk said this is basically just the beginning. Now, I would assume he's seen everything, which means there's a lot more to this and it gets worse than what we've even seen. So stay with us all week. It's gonna be very interesting to see what this means. I'm gonna make a prediction. I think this is gonna bring a lot of pain to Facebook at some point.
- [42:33]
Ted Cruz
Absolutely.
- [42:34]
Ben Ferguson
And I think what it's also seeing.
- [42:35]
Ted Cruz
Now is the worrying you're hearing is document shredders at Facebook and Google and YouTube that they're shredding things like crazy because they're worried what's coming next.
- [42:45]
Ben Ferguson
Well, and if there's anything you can connect these two dots with is what they were doing with the laptop. And the way they dealt with these things is exactly the same way that they were dealing with Dr. Fauci and anything he wanted to be silenced with. COVID 19 and if you look at how different those stories are, one was, quote, fake hack material. The other one was just a government saying. We want the narrative to be what it is. I think these stories are going to be intertwined in a way like we never could have imagined. Stay with us all week long. We'll see you back Wednesday morning. Hit that share button, Write a five star review center. This has been fun. Wednesday morning. We'll see all you guys back here.