Speaker 1: We have all talked for months and months and years
Speaker 1: and years about the threats that big tech is posing
Speaker 1: to free expression, to the First Amendment, to our public square,
Speaker 1: to self government itself. Now, finally the government is taking action.
Speaker 1: The Department of Justice is suing Google on the grounds
Speaker 1: of antitrust. The US Senate is going to subpoena Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, the heads of Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 1: Big tech is finally being called to account. This is
Speaker 1: Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Knowles, joined as ever by Senator Cruz. Senator
Speaker 1: I like to think that on this show we predict
Speaker 1: the future, and I guess sometimes actually maybe affect the future,
Speaker 1: because as we're talking about laws that could be passed
Speaker 1: and big moves that could be taking place in the
Speaker 1: federal government. Last episode we talked about this crazy story
Speaker 1: with big Tech censoring a New York Post investigation into
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden and possible corruption involving Joe Biden. Big Tech
Speaker 1: suppressed the story, shut it down. We also are going
Speaker 1: on for days now it appears the federal government is
Speaker 1: taking action. All I've seen her the headline, Senator that
Speaker 1: the DOJ is going to try to break up Google,
Speaker 1: and that the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to subpoena
Speaker 1: the other heads of big tech. What can you tell
Speaker 1: us about what is actually going on? Well, sure, this
Speaker 1: has been a big and momentous week on multiple fronts,
Speaker 1: as you just noted concerning big tech. Let's start with
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook. And last week during the confirmation hearing
Speaker 1: on Judge Barrett, we had one story that came out
Speaker 1: Wednesday night that was the New York Post blockbuster story
Speaker 1: on Ukraine based on Hunter Biden's emails and alleging on
Speaker 1: its face corruption by Joe Biden and that he had
Speaker 1: lied in saying that he had not not met with
Speaker 1: these Ukrainian oligarchs. The next day, Thursday, and we recorded
Speaker 1: a Verdict podcast with that information that night, because both
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook blocked that story. If any individual user
Speaker 1: tried to tweet out that New York Post story, you
Speaker 1: got a warning sign that said you couldn't tweet it,
Speaker 1: you couldn't post it on Twitter said that this was
Speaker 1: potentially harmful. Well, the next day, Thursday morning, the story
Speaker 1: actually it got worse because the New York Post broke
Speaker 1: a second blockbuster story. This second one was again from
Speaker 1: the same trove of emails on Hunter Biden's laptop, allegedly,
Speaker 1: this one concerning Communist China and an offer from Communist
Speaker 1: China to pay not only Hunter Biden millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: but to pay Joe Biden himself millions of dollars. The
Speaker 1: emails refer to Joe Biden as quote the big Guy,
Speaker 1: and it's an offer of serious cash directly to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: So once again, Twitter block that, and I have to
Speaker 1: admit I saw this. So I'm sitting on my phone
Speaker 1: during the Judge Barrett confirmation hearing, and I'm up at
Speaker 1: the Dias and I'm on my phone and I'm looking
Speaker 1: at the store and I'm like, wow, this is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And so I put together a tweet. You know, we'll
Speaker 1: Twitter block this one too, and I hit send and boom,
Speaker 1: Twitter's blocked it and I can't send it, and I'm
Speaker 1: like furious, And so I get up and called Lindsay
Speaker 1: Graham over and he and I stepped out out back.
Speaker 1: And so the public hearing room where we do the
Speaker 1: hearings is in the Heart Centered office building and there's
Speaker 1: an area back behind this like the ante room. So
Speaker 1: I pulled Lindsay back and I was worked up. I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's subpoena Twitter right now. We're we're meeting,
Speaker 1: the Judiciary Committee is here. Let's do it right now.
Speaker 1: Get Jack Dorsey to come right here and explain what
Speaker 1: in the hell he is doing. So I gotta admit
Speaker 1: Lindsay's staff was very worried about this, and look, to
Speaker 1: be fair, that they're sitting there saying, well, let's not
Speaker 1: do anything to screw up the Judge Barrett confirmation. And
Speaker 1: I understand that, and I'm like, well, look obviously I
Speaker 1: don't want to. I don't want to do anything to
Speaker 1: screw that up. And so they were nervous. Let's just
Speaker 1: let's not do anything else. Let's just do Judge Barrett.
Speaker 1: But this was so so absurd. I told Lindsay we
Speaker 1: got we got to do something. So what his staff
Speaker 1: has said is, well, look we can we can notice
Speaker 1: a hearing for next week and vote on subpoena's next week.
Speaker 1: And I said great, and Lindsay said, you know, if
Speaker 1: you want, you and I can go announce it to
Speaker 1: the TV cameras right now. I said, great, let's go.
Speaker 1: We both walk out as during a break in the
Speaker 1: Judge Barrett hearing, So it's it's just there was a
Speaker 1: kind of a five minute break. Lindsay and I walk
Speaker 1: out to the a TV camera out there, and we
Speaker 1: both announced together that the Judiciary Committee will be voting
Speaker 1: on subpoenas to subpoena Jack Dorsey to testify in front
Speaker 1: of Judiciary. And that blew up the news. That was
Speaker 1: literally just on the fly, Lindsay and me talking in
Speaker 1: the ante room, and we agreed, let's go announce it,
Speaker 1: and now this week we'll be teeing it up. This
Speaker 1: is something that I realized during impeachment, and I suppose
Speaker 1: probably the listeners and viewers realized it too that I
Speaker 1: didn't understand before. In my mind, the way the government
Speaker 1: and especially the Senate works is that everything is preplanned
Speaker 1: and nothing happens on the spur of the moment, and
Speaker 1: you just know what's going to happen. And that's that
Speaker 1: what I realized was that's not really what happens in
Speaker 1: the moment. I mean, as you described, during impeachment, you'd
Speaker 1: hear a question, you'd hear Adam Shifts say something, you'd
Speaker 1: go into the cloak room, you'd talk to Senator so
Speaker 1: and so, you guys would make a plan to do this,
Speaker 1: that or the other thing. And obviously that's what's happening
Speaker 1: here as well. Twitter's decision to censor this information, to
Speaker 1: suppress it led directly to Jack Dorsey getting subpoenaed on
Speaker 1: the fly in the moment. And we'll get into the
Speaker 1: legal issue I suspect in a moment, but I think
Speaker 1: it is important for listeners to consider just the way
Speaker 1: that our political system is structured right now that a
Speaker 1: US senator in a hearing trying to post new information
Speaker 1: that has just come out from the oldest continually published
Speaker 1: daily newspaper in the country founded by Alexander Hamilton, the
Speaker 1: New York Post, trying to put that out there in
Speaker 1: the public square, could be censored by a tech oligarch
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley. That is the regardless of the legal question.
Speaker 1: That is the political situation that we're looking at now
Speaker 1: as we head into these subpoenas. So, look, you and
Speaker 1: I and on Verdict, we've been talking about tech censorship
Speaker 1: a long time, and a lot of us have been
Speaker 1: very concerned about tech bias and censorship for years it's
Speaker 1: been getting steadily worse. It's been escalating, it's more and
Speaker 1: more and more. Last week was a dramatic escalation last week.
Speaker 1: It's one thing for big tech to silence individual Americans speaking.
Speaker 1: They're doing far too much of it. It's wrong and
Speaker 1: it's and I am leading the fight to stop it.
Speaker 1: But last week represented something very very different, which is
Speaker 1: they silenced a major media publication. The New York Post
Speaker 1: has the fourth highest circulation of any newspaper in America.
Speaker 1: And not only could you or I or any American
Speaker 1: you couldn't tweet their story. Twitter actually blocked the New
Speaker 1: York Post itself, prevented the New York Post from posting
Speaker 1: their own story and silenced the media from speaking. And
Speaker 1: it actually, you know, Politico certainly not a right leaning publication,
Speaker 1: to put it mildly, a Politico journalist sent out some
Speaker 1: tweets about the New York Post story, and the Politico
Speaker 1: journalist got blocked. And this is big tech a the
Speaker 1: power to censor the media. And you know, if reporters
Speaker 1: had even the tiniest hint of integrity, they'd be losing
Speaker 1: their minds over this, right, because this is literally Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg saying they can decide what media
Speaker 1: outlets an American can report and what anyone in America
Speaker 1: is allowed to see, because if they can if they
Speaker 1: can censor the New York Post, they can sense of
Speaker 1: the New York Times, if they can silence Politico, they
Speaker 1: can silence the Washington Post, or they can silence Fox News.
Speaker 1: And crossing that threshold of we're now going to silence
Speaker 1: silence the media is incredibly dangerous two weeks out from
Speaker 1: an election. Certain no reporter cares that they're so invested
Speaker 1: in defeating Donald Trump that they're willing to let Jack
Speaker 1: Dorsey sensor them and decide which of the stories can
Speaker 1: can be published. Um, and it's it's these are these
Speaker 1: are American oligarchs. I mean, you want to talk about
Speaker 1: the oligarchs of Russia. These are oligarchs with money that
Speaker 1: that believe they're drunk on their own power, right. I
Speaker 1: think I think this is the point when when people
Speaker 1: use the phrase fake news, I think sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: little bit ambiguous what that means. But I think in
Speaker 1: its most precise meaning, it's not that every single news
Speaker 1: story is false. It's not that every single reporter is corrupt.
Speaker 1: It's that the news itself is fake because it isn't
Speaker 1: the news, because the focus is not on reporting the news.
Speaker 1: The focus is not on standing up to censorship when
Speaker 1: the outlets are censored. It's all just about advancing a
Speaker 1: narrative that benefits one political party over another. Well, and
Speaker 1: you know, so the most of the Democratic senators have
Speaker 1: ignored this issue, have ignored the New York Post story,
Speaker 1: have ignored um ignored Twitter censorship and Facebook censorship. U
Speaker 1: by the way, the Biden campaign has ignored it. So
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. About the only thing the Biden campaign has
Speaker 1: said is there's no meeting with the Oligarch on his
Speaker 1: official schedule. So they haven't denied that this was Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden's laptop. They haven't denied that these are Hunter Biden's emails.
Speaker 1: They haven't denied that Joe Biden met with the oligarc
Speaker 1: even though he said said previously he did not. They
Speaker 1: haven't denied that that communist China offered Joe Biden millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, So no one's even asked them. You know,
Speaker 1: Biden did an ABC town hall the day after these
Speaker 1: stories broke, and they didn't bother to ask him. It's
Speaker 1: simply it doesn't exist. It's been disappeared. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to Democratic senators, to the extent they've said anything
Speaker 1: about it, their talking point has been this is Russian disinformation. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of any evidence of that. The Director
Speaker 1: of National Intelligence has said it's not. But if somebody
Speaker 1: has evidence that it's Russian information, great, show us the evidence. Look,
Speaker 1: if these emails are fake, that's highly relevant. If they're
Speaker 1: But at this point Joe Biden didn't claiming they're fake. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: it would seem, you know, the fact that the Biden
Speaker 1: campaign won't deny it, and the fact that photos were
Speaker 1: released as well, either these Russian disinformers have the greatest
Speaker 1: photoshop skills in the world, or what we're looking at
Speaker 1: is legitimate material from Hunter Biden's computer. If something's fake,
Speaker 1: that's actually what journalism is for. So I'm perfectly fine
Speaker 1: with people reporting it. If you share the New York
Speaker 1: Post story, it turns out the story is wrong, fine,
Speaker 1: then they put out the refutation and show that it's wrong.
Speaker 1: But Big Tech doesn't want to do that. They just
Speaker 1: simply want to make it disappear. And I think Big
Speaker 1: Tech believes they are not accountable to anybody, and that's
Speaker 1: why I think it's so important that they testify. I
Speaker 1: think so as well. I was thrilled when I saw
Speaker 1: that you were called for Dorsey and Zuckerberg to come
Speaker 1: and testify. I have to ask you for a little
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, though, a little cloakroom gossip, if you
Speaker 1: don't mind, which is that I've seen headlines that some
Speaker 1: Republicans on the committee are wavering, that's the term that's
Speaker 1: been reported. Are people going soft here? Are we actually
Speaker 1: going to hear from Zuckerberg and Dorsey or not? I
Speaker 1: believe we will. It is true. We are having I
Speaker 1: guess what I'll characterize as vigorous internal conversations. We were
Speaker 1: supposed to vote today. This is Tuesday, you and I
Speaker 1: are talking. I think the pod will probably can't come
Speaker 1: out tomorrow. But we were supposed to vote today on
Speaker 1: the subpoenas. We haven't voted today. There is a vote
Speaker 1: noticed for Thursday, so two days from now on the subpoenas.
Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook are right now negotiating with the Judiciary
Speaker 1: Committee about potentially appearing voluntarily, and actually next week they're
Speaker 1: going to be appearing before the Commerce commit I also
Speaker 1: serve on the Commerce Committee, so I'm going to be
Speaker 1: at a hearing next week with the heads of Google, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Twitter. Anyway, Commerce is a very different committee than Judiciary.
Speaker 1: I'm on both of the committee, so it's I'm I'm
Speaker 1: fine with that, but Commerce, the issue's Commerce focuses on
Speaker 1: Section two thirty will be part of the discussion in
Speaker 1: the Commerce hearing. But Judiciary is on both sides, Democrat
Speaker 1: and Republican, frankly manned by junkyard dog prosecutors who know
Speaker 1: how to pound the hell out of a witness. It's
Speaker 1: just a different that, ain't commerce. Commerce is lovey dovey
Speaker 1: kumbay yah. It's It's a lot easier to testify in
Speaker 1: front of Commerce than Judiciary. What I am pressing for,
Speaker 1: what I want to see happen is I want to
Speaker 1: see Dorsey and Zuckerberg testify in person. They prefer to
Speaker 1: do it remotely. Yeah, I want to drag their asses
Speaker 1: to Washington to sit down in that hearing and answer questions.
Speaker 1: And I think it needs to be for the election.
Speaker 1: I believe we'll see them testify before the election. I
Speaker 1: hope it's in person. That's what I'm pressing for and
Speaker 1: whether it is by subpoena or voluntary doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: My objective is that they testify. If they agree to
Speaker 1: voluntarily shown up, fine, as long as it's in person
Speaker 1: before the election. But where the votes are on Judiciary,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We may find out on Thursday. We
Speaker 1: may see it tied up for a vote. I think
Speaker 1: we'll see all the Republicans come on board if it
Speaker 1: actually gets pressed to a vote. I think there's some
Speaker 1: folks that are nervous, But nervous is not the same
Speaker 1: thing as voting, now, you know, Senator, I read the
Speaker 1: mail bag to this show, and we get a lot
Speaker 1: of emails and a huge number of people are asking
Speaker 1: when these guys are going to be dragged in front
Speaker 1: of Congress and in front of the Senate to answer questions.
Speaker 1: So I hope that your colleagues on the committee get
Speaker 1: the message. Very interesting, it actually had not a occurred
Speaker 1: to me that testifying before different committees has a different
Speaker 1: tenor because you have different people on those committees. And
Speaker 1: I'm not at all surprised the Judiciary Committee has more
Speaker 1: of a bulldog kind of style. I certainly want to
Speaker 1: see them dragged before that committee and answer those questions.
Speaker 1: I also have to ask you though about this separate question.
Speaker 1: We've been focusing on Facebook and Twitter, but the big kahuna,
Speaker 1: the real giant in this space, is actually not Twitter,
Speaker 1: and it's not even Facebook. It's Google. The DOJ has
Speaker 1: just announced that they are going to sue Google on
Speaker 1: anti trust grounds. Obviously, I am not an expert in
Speaker 1: anti trust law, and I suspect most people who are
Speaker 1: calling for a big tech to be broken up aren't
Speaker 1: expert in that either. What is the case here and
Speaker 1: do you think it will be successful? And do you
Speaker 1: think it's advisable? So I'm very glad DJ is moving
Speaker 1: forward and filing a case. The exact details of it
Speaker 1: will be coming out in coming days and weeks, but
Speaker 1: as I understand it, they're bringing a case that Google
Speaker 1: is a monopoly and it's abusing its monopoly power. And
Speaker 1: at least some of what the case is focusing on
Speaker 1: is that they force, for example, phone companies to preload
Speaker 1: Google on it as your search engine when you get
Speaker 1: a phone, and they use their market power to prevent
Speaker 1: competitors from doing the same. And look, Google is very
Speaker 1: good at leveraging one monopoly and too power in all
Speaker 1: sorts of other areas, and so from the initial announcements,
Speaker 1: that's what the case is going to focus on. I
Speaker 1: hope one component of the case is using their monopoly
Speaker 1: power to censor political speech that doesn't fall as traditionally
Speaker 1: or cleanly into antitrust laws. And it's one of the
Speaker 1: things we've talked about. In fact, when you and I
Speaker 1: talked with Bill Barr. I mean I have in the
Speaker 1: last four years raise this issue personally and directly with
Speaker 1: the President multiple times, with the Vice President, with the
Speaker 1: White House Chief of Staff, with the White House Council,
Speaker 1: with the Attorney General, with a Deputy Attorney General, with
Speaker 1: the Assistant Attorney General for an I trust, with the
Speaker 1: chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: I think it's the biggest threat in the country to
Speaker 1: free speech, to a free press, and to to our democracy,
Speaker 1: to our our elections. So I hope and Google is
Speaker 1: by far the worst actor. So as I sort of
Speaker 1: ranked the actors of big tech, Facebook I have problems with,
Speaker 1: but comparatively speaking, they're the least bad of the big guys.
Speaker 1: Then there's Twitter, which is quite brazen, and then by
Speaker 1: far the worst I believe is Google, and Google owns YouTube,
Speaker 1: so so I throw YouTube into it. And remember Google's
Speaker 1: motto used used to be, uh, do no evil? Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't be evil, don't be evil, don't be evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and then they just scrapped it. I mean they
Speaker 1: literally scrapped the motto and I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was what they were twirling their mustache and like the
Speaker 1: fires of Hades to which they were condemning the globe
Speaker 1: and decided, oh, let's not forswear evil anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: it really is. And the amount of look, Google's worth
Speaker 1: over trillion dollars they have I think one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollars in cash, just just like the change
Speaker 1: apparently sitting around and the sofas and between the cushions
Speaker 1: and their sofas, like the massive power Google has, and
Speaker 1: they are completely brazen about using it to advance their
Speaker 1: political lens. And I will say I have a theory.
Speaker 1: By the way, so on these New York Post stories,
Speaker 1: we know that Facebook and Twitter blocked it. To our knowledge,
Speaker 1: Google hasn't blocked it. So I actually tried went to
Speaker 1: Google and typed in and Google it comes up, and
Speaker 1: I have a theory that actually the reason Google didn't
Speaker 1: block it is because they knew this DJ's case was coming,
Speaker 1: that they're on mildly better behavior because they're facing massive litigation.
Speaker 1: I can't prove that that's just a theory. No, it's
Speaker 1: a good suggestion, Senator, because I did wonder at the time.
Speaker 1: I said, wait a second, how's Google not jumping on
Speaker 1: this bandwagon? But of course Google is getting word when
Speaker 1: when you're talking about an entity as large as the
Speaker 1: DOJ or the federal government, obviously they know what's coming
Speaker 1: down the pike, and what you what you focused on
Speaker 1: there is search, which when most people think about how
Speaker 1: YouTube is abusing its power or Google is abusing its power,
Speaker 1: they think it's through video, or they think it's through advertising,
Speaker 1: or they think it's But in this fifty seven page
Speaker 1: complaint that the DOJ has just filed here, they actually
Speaker 1: focus in on search, and search is Google's core product.
Speaker 1: If you make it to the first page of a
Speaker 1: Google search, that has so much power, so much more
Speaker 1: power than if you're on page two or page two
Speaker 1: thousand for that matter. And Google, we know manipulate search
Speaker 1: for ideological ends. But what do you say, Senator, beyond
Speaker 1: the logical question, beyond the free speech question. What do
Speaker 1: you say to people, maybe they're a little more libertarian leaning,
Speaker 1: who say, listen, it's it's a free market, and Google's
Speaker 1: a private company sort of. And if Google, you know,
Speaker 1: is not to your liking, well then fella just go
Speaker 1: make your own Google. Do you do you think conservatives
Speaker 1: are betraying our kind of free market preferences. Yeah, look,
Speaker 1: I understand those sentiments, you know. I will say, by
Speaker 1: the way that some of the voices, particularly in DC,
Speaker 1: that echo them, some of the more libertarian outfits get
Speaker 1: a whole lot of money from big tech. And one
Speaker 1: problem we have in our own neck of the woods
Speaker 1: in terms of the center rights conservative libertarian world, is
Speaker 1: there are some folks who, if you write them a
Speaker 1: big enough check, suddenly if you look at some of
Speaker 1: the most vigorous defenders of tech from from all of
Speaker 1: this scrutiny, for many of them, there's a money trail
Speaker 1: to be followed. But let me take your the critique
Speaker 1: on face value. I am a free market conservative. I
Speaker 1: believe in free markets. That doesn't mean we don't have laws.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you don't have the antitrust laws the
Speaker 1: antitrust laws have been on the books for almost one
Speaker 1: hundred years yea, and abusing a monopoly position, which is
Speaker 1: what Google does, has been against the law a very
Speaker 1: long time. Of course, it is right the government shouldn't
Speaker 1: be regulating speech. We don't want some federal police officers
Speaker 1: saying this speech is good, this speech is bad. That
Speaker 1: would be a terrible outcome, and by the way, the
Speaker 1: Democrats would love that outcome. So so we need to
Speaker 1: be very cautious about where they want to take this.
Speaker 1: But there's a difference between that and not letting someone
Speaker 1: abuse their monopoly power. And there's also a difference. Section
Speaker 1: two thirty, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast,
Speaker 1: is a special immunity from liability that Congress gave big
Speaker 1: Tech that nobody else gets. And it's basically a subsidy.
Speaker 1: All right, you want to put it in free market terms,
Speaker 1: end section two thirty because it's a damned subsidy to
Speaker 1: the biggest, most profitable companies on Earth. It's corporate welfare,
Speaker 1: and it immunizes them from behaving like the Ttalitarian Star Chamber.
Speaker 1: And so that's a pure free market argument which addresses
Speaker 1: directly what the threat is and the magnitude if you
Speaker 1: believe in the principles of free speech, which is that
Speaker 1: we ought to be able to speak and debate freely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: allowing one or two billionaires to have a monopoly on
Speaker 1: every means of communication is a really, really dangerous phenomenon. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I agree entirely with that, and I think there is
Speaker 1: nothing conservative about allowing a couple of oligarchs to dominate
Speaker 1: our public square and control the flow of information. And
Speaker 1: of course there's nothing conservative about letting companies brazenly violate
Speaker 1: the law, laws that have been on the books for
Speaker 1: one hundred years or laws that have been on the
Speaker 1: books for twenty five years. You have assuaged my fears
Speaker 1: on this free market issue, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of conservatives are are recognizing that threat. We have a question,
Speaker 1: by the way, Senator, in our remaining couple of minutes
Speaker 1: that is just as important in my view. I was
Speaker 1: going to I was gonna bring this up with you
Speaker 1: personally as a matter of fact, because I was very
Speaker 1: worried when this was mentioned on the Senate floor. This
Speaker 1: is from Gregory. Is Senator Cruz really a vegan? Say
Speaker 1: it ain't so, Senator This is after your colleague, Corey
Speaker 1: Booker came out and made this wild accusation on the
Speaker 1: Senate floor. Please clear this up for us. It was
Speaker 1: a hurtful and scurrilous attack. It was deeply personal, and
Speaker 1: it was lies, damn lies and statistics. I am emphatically
Speaker 1: a Cuban Texan carnivore, but I will come see that
Speaker 1: that all of the animals that I eat are vegetarians. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, so Corey Booker said that, and it
Speaker 1: was it was a moment of levity where I popped
Speaker 1: back at him. What would surprise people is Cory and
Speaker 1: I actually get along quite quite well. I like Corey personally.
Speaker 1: We've we've actually gone out to dinner, although he I
Speaker 1: let him pick the place and he went to a
Speaker 1: vegetarian restaurant. It was truly maddening. I was like, could
Speaker 1: they go kill some animal and serve it for dinner? Please?
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. But look, I actually think one
Speaker 1: of the reasons Corey didn't do very well in the
Speaker 1: Democratic presidential primary is because he's not a jerk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think they wanted someone to be tough and
Speaker 1: a jerk in that primary, and so Corey was kind
Speaker 1: of faking it, and he wasn't very good at faking it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that came across the I Am Spartacus
Speaker 1: moment is a good example of a less than authentic
Speaker 1: moment than we have seen. I agree, And he usually
Speaker 1: when he's being his authentic self, he usually plays a
Speaker 1: little bit fairer, a little bit nicer, except for that
Speaker 1: awful lie. I have to tell you, Senator, we have
Speaker 1: had done many meals together, and I thought, hold on,
Speaker 1: if Senator Cruiz is a vegan, I think I've never
Speaker 1: seen him eat anything other than red meat at at
Speaker 1: a meal, at lunch, dinner. So I'm glad that you've
Speaker 1: cleared this up. Nothing has changed in the meantime. So
Speaker 1: and you know this because you are you still a
Speaker 1: California resident or have you gone gone to Tennessee yet?
Speaker 1: Where just for a few more minutes in about ten
Speaker 1: or twelve days. But I'm in La La Land for now. Well,
Speaker 1: as you know, Heidi is a vegetarian, and she's from
Speaker 1: California and her entire family or vegetarians. I'm married into
Speaker 1: a family of California vegetarians. I remember one of the
Speaker 1: first times I went in a family vacation with my
Speaker 1: in laws. We were out on a houseboat on Lake Powell,
Speaker 1: which is spectacular, and my father in law was like
Speaker 1: grocery shop. He didn't know what to do with his
Speaker 1: carnivore son in law. So at the grocery store he
Speaker 1: brought bought a giant salami and said, here, Ted, here's
Speaker 1: some meat for the week. And it was kind of like, uh, thanks, Peter.
Speaker 1: That's you know. And I will say, Senator, it shows
Speaker 1: how open minded you are. You know, you've you can
Speaker 1: have a conversation with Corey Booker, you can share a
Speaker 1: table with vegetarians, share a family with vegetarians. Even have
Speaker 1: I told you my dental theory of this, by the way,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Now. So I have a dental theory.
Speaker 1: So my father in law is a dentist, so I.
Speaker 1: But my theory is, if you look at the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: every animal that has incisors like we do, they are
Speaker 1: fangs and they ripped the flesh of other animals. The
Speaker 1: animals that chew their cut or chew grass, they don't
Speaker 1: have incisors. So my dental theory is, look, we have
Speaker 1: we have fangs for a reason, and that is to
Speaker 1: plunge our teeth into a RIBI and my Denis father
Speaker 1: in law is not persuaded by that argument, Well, Senator,
Speaker 1: I find a very persuasive. We have those incisors and
Speaker 1: fangs for a reason, and that reason might be the
Speaker 1: testimony of big Tech executives in front of the Senate
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee. I suppose there are many uses for this.
Speaker 1: We will we will have to leave it there, though,
Speaker 1: look forward to following the update on big Tech and
Speaker 1: a number of other issues that we will have to
Speaker 1: save until next time. Until then, I'm Michael Knowles. This
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