Thank God for Sen. Ted Cruz! Until he spoke at today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Big Tech control of information, you might think you were watching a county commissioner meeting about how to award blue ribbons for best pickle at the fair.
Most of the senators were pussyfooting around the issues of Big Tech censorship until Cruz showed up loaded for bear! The Texas senator went directly after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (replete with his Rasputin beard) over the company’s attempt to suppress the New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden corruption in Ukraine and China.
“Mr. Dorsey who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear,” Cruz asked.
“Why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC, silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?”
Dorsey played dumb, saying that Twitter had overreached when it originally banned distribution of the Post’s bombshell story, but he still defended the policies in place regarding hacked material and misinformation about elections.
Dorsey said that the Post’s stories were suppressed because Twitter didn’t know where the information came from.
“We found that the New York Post, because it showed the direct materials, screen shots of the direct materials, it was unclear how those were obtained. That it fell under this policy,” Dorsey said.
This was completely illogical since the Post had been completely transparent in reporting that all the incriminating data came from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which had been lawfully obtained from a computer repairman.
Moreover, as Cruz pointed out, Twitter had not exercised similar judgment in regard to New York Times reporting on illegally obtained copies of President Trump’s tax returns.
Dorsey said that because it changed its policy quickly after initially banning the Post story, it should get a free pass. But this fluid policy shows just how arbitrary and dangerous Twitter’s power to manipulate information is.
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment of deception was Dorsey’s one-word response to Cruz’s first question, “Does Twitter have the ability to influence elections?”
“No,” Dorsey said, thus totally shredding his own credibility. Twitter is an information pipeline used by tens of millions of people each day, and yet Dorsey wants us to believe that the information shared, suppressed and made up on Twitter has zero influence on elections!
What a liar!
The purpose of today’s hearing was to discuss Section 230 protections granted to Internet companies years ago that shield Twitter and Facebook from liability claims. The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the “leadership” of Lindsey Graham, has postponed a similar hearing until after the election.
Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who spoke after Cruz, suggested that the hearing was political grandstanding.
“I have never seen a hearing so close to an election on any topic, let alone on anything that is so obviously a violation of our obligation under the law and the rules of the Senate to stay out of electioneering,” said Schatz.
Cruz didn’t get to respond to the comment, but if he had, perhaps he would have reminded Schatz that never in more than 200 years of democracy have we seen such a blatant attempt to steal an election in the final weeks of a campaign.
Free speech still matters.
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