Speaker 1: Wel come, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben
Speaker 1: Ferguson with you. And you guys know if you listen
Speaker 1: to show regularly, that the Sinner and I do this
Speaker 1: show around his Senate schedule, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: his official duties. Well, if you are looking at my
Speaker 1: clock right now, it's about two in the morning, and
Speaker 1: the Senator's flight, which was obviously extremely late, meant that
Speaker 1: at this point we still couldn't do the show. Now
Speaker 1: here's the good news. We have two conversations that Senator
Speaker 1: Cruz and I had that deal with big tech and
Speaker 1: also silencing of conservatives that I'm going to play for you.
Speaker 1: But this is the part I love about doing this show.
Speaker 1: We do the show all times, day and night, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes the flights just don't cooperate, even in the
Speaker 1: early am hours. So now you understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. We'll have your weekend review for you tomorrow
Speaker 1: as well. But these are two important topics that I
Speaker 1: want you to hear about. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: going on in DC, specifically around the issue of big
Speaker 1: tech and what they're doing to silence conservatives. But first,
Speaker 1: there are so many Verdict listeners that have been asking
Speaker 1: how can you get involved in how can you help
Speaker 1: the people in Israel? Well, I want you to know
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Speaker 1: support IFCJ dot org to give. That's one word support
Speaker 1: if CJ dot org to give. Now center. Big Tech
Speaker 1: is obviously at a massive influence over public opinion in
Speaker 1: this country. We saw a recent report that came out
Speaker 1: just on TikTok, for example, where they were forty five
Speaker 1: to one stories that were pro Palastinian pro Hamas over Israel.
Speaker 1: That's one example of how they've really been able to
Speaker 1: shape public opinion, especially with young people and the riots
Speaker 1: and the chaos we're witnessing on college campuses right now.
Speaker 1: But there's also something else that's happened with big tech.
Speaker 1: I've been a victim of it. I spoke out again
Speaker 1: against big tech a few years ago at a SEAPAC convention,
Speaker 1: and before I landed home. After I spoke out about
Speaker 1: big tech, specifically Facebook, my accounts were shut down they
Speaker 1: have never worked the same way as they did before
Speaker 1: the reach has disappeared. I've witnessed it, and many other
Speaker 1: conservative leaders out there are going through the same things.
Speaker 1: And it always seems to happen center right during a
Speaker 1: big election cycle, where the Democrats get a free flow
Speaker 1: of information out and conservatives get hammered and silenced.
Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly right. So I started last year as
Speaker 2: the ranking member on the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science,
Speaker 2: and Transportation, and from that position as the ranking member,
Speaker 2: which means the senior Republican on that committee, I launched
Speaker 2: an investigation into the abuse of power from big tech,
Speaker 2: and this past week we put out a major report.
Speaker 2: The report is entitled Weaponizing Terms of Service. How online
Speaker 2: service providers use broad policies to silence conservatives. Now, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of instances that we know about that
Speaker 2: get a lot of publicity. We know, for example, that Twitter,
Speaker 2: before Elon Musk purchased them, suspended the account of the
Speaker 2: Babylon be for making a joke about a Biden administration official.
Speaker 2: We know that both Facebook and Twitter suppressed stories about
Speaker 2: Hudter Biden's laptop before the twenty twenty election. We know
Speaker 2: that Facebook removed posts suggesting that COVID nineteen originated in
Speaker 2: a Wuhan lab we talked about at length on this podcast,
Speaker 2: and a theory that has now been confirmed both by
Speaker 2: the Federal Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 2: We know that YouTube took down a March twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one video of a panel discussion with Florida Governor Ron
Speaker 2: de Santis, during which he disputed claims that children needed
Speaker 2: to wear face masks. We know that YouTube, also, which
Speaker 2: is owned by Google, blocked access to a November twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three episode of this podcast Verdict, because we were
Speaker 2: criticizing the corporate media's favorable coverage of hamas, and YouTube
Speaker 2: deemed okay, you must be an adult to see what
Speaker 2: is on the network news. We also know in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, DirectTV dropped one America news network, and less
Speaker 2: than a year after Democrat leaders in Congress sent a
Speaker 2: letter to the CEO calling on them to stop carrying
Speaker 2: the network. We also know they did the same thing
Speaker 2: to Newsmax. Now I lit Direct TV up and they
Speaker 2: ended up bringing Newsmax back. We also know that Into
Speaker 2: it at the direction of its banking partners, refuse to
Speaker 2: provide payment processing and payroll services to gun manufacturers and sellers.
Speaker 2: And we know that JP Morgan Chase closed the account
Speaker 2: of the National Committee of Religious Freedom, which was created
Speaker 2: by former State Department Ambassador at Large for International Religious
Speaker 2: Freedom and former US Senator Sam Brownback. We know that
Speaker 2: gofund me block the release of ten million dollars of
Speaker 2: donations to the Canadian Trucker's Freedom Convoy. We've seen that
Speaker 2: happen over and over and over again. Well, what this
Speaker 2: report does is it lays out an entirely new area
Speaker 2: of discrimination, and it is using web based products and
Speaker 2: services online service providers to ban conservative organizations from using
Speaker 2: their technology, and it's going after the infrastructure that is
Speaker 2: needed to communicate. And in fact, this investigation reveals that
Speaker 2: online service providers are following a playbook for silencing conservatives
Speaker 2: that leftist organizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which
Speaker 2: is wildly left wing and hates conservatives, and the Anti
Speaker 2: Defamation League the ADL, they together put together this strategy,
Speaker 2: this playbook to quote remove infrastructure services that conservative organizations
Speaker 2: need to operate. And so I'm going to describe that
Speaker 2: playbook and what they're doing in particular.
Speaker 1: When you look at their playbook and this amount of influence,
Speaker 1: I mean, this can change and alter certainly an election cycle.
Speaker 1: It can certainly, I would argue, change a presidential election
Speaker 1: as well. And that's the reason why they're doing this.
Speaker 1: When you think about, you know, you've got millions of
Speaker 1: people that follow you Facebook. I've got you know, over
Speaker 1: a million. But if you turn off and throttle either
Speaker 1: one of us, then the reach that we have compared
Speaker 1: to the left, it just disappears. It's the old saying,
Speaker 1: right if a big tree falls in the forest and
Speaker 1: no one's around and it make a sound, And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what they did. But it wasn't just to one
Speaker 1: or two people. They were doing this to hundreds of
Speaker 1: top conservative voices that people look to for their opinions,
Speaker 1: specifically when it comes to election your issues.
Speaker 2: So that's exactly right. And what this report focuses on
Speaker 2: is it uses a couple of key examples. It uses
Speaker 2: number one slacks removal of libs of TikTok's workspace. It
Speaker 2: focuses on event rights removal of event pages for events
Speaker 2: related to Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman documentary, as
Speaker 2: well as an event where Riley Gaines was scheduled to speak,
Speaker 2: and it focuses on Bontera's termination of its relationship with
Speaker 2: Independent Women's Forum, which deprived that organization of major nonprofit
Speaker 2: technology service provider services and all of this follows. There
Speaker 2: was a report that was put out by the Anti
Speaker 2: Defamation League and it is called Bad Gateway How deplatforming
Speaker 2: effects extremist websites And here's what the ADL recommended. It says,
Speaker 2: quote deplatforming websites removing infrastructure services they need to operate,
Speaker 2: such as website hosting, can reduce the spread and reach
Speaker 2: of extremism and hate online. But when does deplatforming succeed?
Speaker 2: And here's what ADL explained quote. This report shows that
Speaker 2: deplatforming can decrease the popularity of extremist websites, especially when
Speaker 2: done without warning and they go through We learned four
Speaker 2: important lessons about how deplatforming affects extremist websites, by which
Speaker 2: they mean anything right of center. Number one, it can
Speaker 2: cause popularity rankings to decrease immediately. Number two, it may
Speaker 2: take users a long time to return to the website.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the website never regains its previous popularity.
Speaker 1: Bingo.
Speaker 2: Number three unexpected and unexpected as key. Unexpected deplatforming makes
Speaker 2: it take longer for the website to regain its previous
Speaker 2: popularity levels. And number four Replicating deplatform services such as discussions,
Speaker 2: discussion forums or live streaming video products on a standalone
Speaker 2: website presents significant challenges, including higher costs and smaller audiences.
Speaker 2: Now I want to go into a little bit more.
Speaker 2: This is what the ADL report. It has an entire
Speaker 2: section that says what is deplatforming? And by the way,
Speaker 2: the corporate media insists when we talk about deplatforming that
Speaker 2: we're making it up. Well, if you actually read the blueprint,
Speaker 2: they are very explicit. The left is explicit. They want
Speaker 2: to silence use. So let me read from this ADL
Speaker 2: report quote. There are three main categories of infrastructure that
Speaker 2: keep websites running. Domain registrars, web hosting companies, and security
Speaker 2: protection companies. Number one, the website must be able to
Speaker 2: register and keep a domain name. A domain name such
Speaker 2: as Google dot com or ADL dot org is how
Speaker 2: visitors find a site. If a website is removed from
Speaker 2: domain name services, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible,
Speaker 2: to find Number two Web hosting companies and content distribution
Speaker 2: networks provide digital storage space for all the files, pictures, videos,
Speaker 2: and software that make up the content of a website.
Speaker 2: When a website loses its hosting provider, the site's content disappears.
Speaker 2: Losing a CDN a content distribution network can cause slow
Speaker 2: service for high traffic sites. And number three, a third
Speaker 2: category of infrastructure includes companies that protect websites from external
Speaker 2: security risks such as distributed denial of service d DOS attacks.
Speaker 2: DDoS attacks flood a website with fake traffic to overwhelm it,
Speaker 2: rendering it unable to answer normal user requests. If an
Speaker 2: infrastructure company, such as a network security firm cloud fare,
Speaker 2: refuses to provide DDoS protection to a vulnerable website, it
Speaker 2: is vulnerable to being flooded with traffic, rendering it inaccessible.
Speaker 1: So you look at this what we found out and
Speaker 1: what you just went through. The question is how is
Speaker 1: it that these companies, and I'm specifically referring to big
Speaker 1: tech are allowed to get away with this and do
Speaker 1: this to many people that they're in business with. I
Speaker 1: use myself as the example again because I've experienced this.
Speaker 1: When you went into business and I felt like I
Speaker 1: was in business with Facebook. They said, advertise with us, right, share,
Speaker 1: advertise your show, advertise your content, boost your content, spend
Speaker 1: money with us, and we're going to help you grow
Speaker 1: an audience and it'll be good for everyone. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they just shut you down and
Speaker 1: they were able to walk away and just say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you violated our terms of service, or you did this,
Speaker 1: or you posted too many things that liberals posted as
Speaker 1: saying they were factually incorrect. The fact checkers came out
Speaker 1: right the liberals on the left. They were fact checking
Speaker 1: and putting things against conservatives. So they lose their reach,
Speaker 1: lose their ability to boose posts, lose their ability to advertise.
Speaker 1: And it was all being done to clearly influence public opinion,
Speaker 1: and yet they've gotten away with it. So what's next.
Speaker 2: Well, with this report focuses on many of the deep
Speaker 2: platforming steps by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, they're very public.
Speaker 2: What this report focuses on as the ones that are
Speaker 2: not public, which is the back office infrastructure. Let's take
Speaker 2: for example, Slack, which is used for communication for many
Speaker 2: online organizations and companies. Slack canceled libs of TikTok's workspace
Speaker 2: for violating its terms of service and the terms of
Speaker 2: service for prohibit users from quote engaging activity that incites
Speaker 2: or encourages violence or hatred towards it against individuals or groups.
Speaker 2: Slack determined that Libs of TikTok violated this policy based
Speaker 2: on three social media posts concerning quote gender affirming, hysterectomies,
Speaker 2: and all age drag shows. Now here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 2: Slack shut down Libs of TikTok's worksplace without any warning,
Speaker 2: without any explanation as to how it is violated slacks policy,
Speaker 2: and Slack's action caused Libs of TikTok to effectively lose
Speaker 2: its use of Slax communications and forced it to rely
Speaker 2: entirely on cell phones to run its business. Now, listen
Speaker 2: to this quote, which is fascinating, Slack told the Commerce
Speaker 2: Committee told my investigation quote. What makes Libs of TikTok's
Speaker 2: posts problematic is that Libs of TikTok has a specific audience,
Speaker 2: and they are taking this information and posting it to
Speaker 2: that specific audience so that everyone in that audience sees
Speaker 2: it at the same time. In other words, they didn't
Speaker 2: even find objections with what Libs of TikTok was posting.
Speaker 2: What they were mad at is conservatives were reading it
Speaker 2: and that was enough reason to deplatform libs TikTok.
Speaker 1: So when you shut down a business in essence the
Speaker 1: way they did, is there any real an instant relief
Speaker 1: for libs of TikTok or others or is this one
Speaker 1: of those they're too big to fail? Right? These companies
Speaker 1: are too big, they're protected and you're the menion and
Speaker 1: just deal with it. And if you're in, who cares
Speaker 1: if your life work is destroyed in thirty seconds because
Speaker 1: they shut it off.
Speaker 2: So right now there is not immediate relief. You could
Speaker 2: presumably file a breach of contract case. The biggest relief
Speaker 2: and the reason I did this report is just sunshine.
Speaker 2: They're doing this in the dark, They're doing this without scrutiny.
Speaker 2: There is right now no federal law that this is prohibited.
Speaker 2: I'll give you another example. Event Bright, which we focus
Speaker 2: is on. Event Bright canceled pages for events hosted by
Speaker 2: college Republican clubs concerning Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman? Film?
Speaker 2: And it also canceled pages for an event featuring swimmer
Speaker 2: Riley Gaines for violating its terms of service. Now critically,
Speaker 2: no one involved in the decision. This is what they told.
Speaker 2: The committee watched the movie What Is a Woman, so
Speaker 2: they never saw it, and they couldn't identify anything objectionable
Speaker 2: in the trailer, So they just didn't like the topic,
Speaker 2: so they decided to take it down. They relied instead
Speaker 2: on Matt Walsh's statements about quote gender affirming surgeries, pronouns,
Speaker 2: and is Johnny the Walris Children's book to reach the conclusion. Likewise,
Speaker 2: event Bright de that Riley gains His event violated its
Speaker 2: policy based on her social media post about biological men
Speaker 2: competing women's sports. They shut down the event page without
Speaker 2: any warning, without any explanation as to how they violated
Speaker 2: this policy, without any way to fix it, and their
Speaker 2: actions ruined advertisements that included QR coach for the event pages.
Speaker 2: So you know, a lot had been done to put
Speaker 2: out the codes to say hey, come to this event,
Speaker 2: and they forced the event organizers to quickly pivot to
Speaker 2: a new method of providing tickets. And the committee asked
Speaker 2: event Bright whether Gaines's statements. On October tenth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: she posted on Twitter quote real women lack a y chromosome,
Speaker 2: and we asked whether that violates event Bright's policy. Event
Speaker 2: Bright responded that quote the post speaks for itself, so
Speaker 2: they needn't answer that. How dare you say that someone
Speaker 2: with a Y chromosome is not a woman. We don't
Speaker 2: even need to dispute it. We have the power to
Speaker 2: shut it down.
Speaker 1: If you've got a cell phone. Ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: Americans have a cell phone, and when you use that phone,
Speaker 1: you may not realize what you're supporting with Big Mobile.
Speaker 1: Did you know that Big Mobile gives massive donations to
Speaker 1: democratic causes, democratic candidates and organizations. Did you know that
Speaker 1: Big Mobile gives big money to Plan Parenthood. Well, that
Speaker 1: is why I took my cell phone and I switched
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Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The number one reason why people don't switch cell phone
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Speaker 1: That's true, it used to take a lot of time,
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Speaker 1: Switching not anymore would take an in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: you can literally use your same phone you have right
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Speaker 1: About five percent of your bill every month is given
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Speaker 1: supporting our military, our veterans, and our wounded warriors. That
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Speaker 1: promo codevertict you'll get free activation. So now moving forward,
Speaker 1: you shine light on this and you talk about this
Speaker 1: is really being done in darkness and we need to
Speaker 1: we need to shine light on it. Was there any
Speaker 1: nervousness from those that you're questioning? I want to use
Speaker 1: the word remorse, but I can't imagine they're remorseful. But
Speaker 1: is it going to at least make them pause before
Speaker 1: they do it again?
Speaker 2: Or I'll ask you, Ben, have you seen this on CNN?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Have you seen it on an ABC, NBCCBSMSNBC nowhere? Have
Speaker 2: you read it? You read it in the New York Times?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, the corporate media will not cover. I'll give another example.
Speaker 2: So Bonterra, which provides nonprofit management services, so it's back office,
Speaker 2: but it's incredibly important and there are very few providers
Speaker 2: of this. They denied those services to Independent Women's Forum,
Speaker 2: which is a conservative organization that is focused on advancing
Speaker 2: women's rights, and Bontera concluded that it violated its policies,
Speaker 2: which require customers to agree to refrain from advocacy denying
Speaker 2: quote LGBTQ rights or denying a woman's right to reproductive choice.
Speaker 2: Or denying racial justice or denying climate change, and their
Speaker 2: policies also prohibit customers from quote promoting, encouraging, or facilitating
Speaker 2: hate speech, violence, discrimination based on race, color, sexual orientation,
Speaker 2: marital status, gender, or identity expression. Bonterra notified Independent Women's
Speaker 2: Form of its decision not to renew their contract without
Speaker 2: any explanation of how the organization violated this policy. As
Speaker 2: a result, Independent Women's Forum had to quickly move off
Speaker 2: Bonterra's platform and obtain a replacement services provider. Bontera told
Speaker 2: the committee that Independent Women's Forum violated its true terms
Speaker 2: of service because the organization quote works to restrict the
Speaker 2: rights of the LGBTQ community. Bontera could not explain exactly
Speaker 2: how the group was working to restrict LGBTQ rights, but
Speaker 2: generally pointed to Independent women forums advocacy on issues like
Speaker 2: protecting women's sports and women's spaces. So, if you actually
Speaker 2: think that girls should compete in girls sports, that is
Speaker 2: of view that is not acceptable, and you will be
Speaker 2: denied online basic infrastructure from monopoly and near monopoly providers.
Speaker 1: The amount of arrogance that we see now from these companies,
Speaker 1: you've witnessed it now firsthand. Tells you they feel like
Speaker 1: they are protected by the current regime. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2: You are exactly right. And if you look at at
Speaker 2: event Bright for example, let's go back to Riley Gains.
Speaker 2: So Riley Gains, they shut her down because they disagree
Speaker 2: read about not her event, but about some posts that
Speaker 2: she had put out. What they did not object to
Speaker 2: was an event that we identified entitled Gaza and the
Speaker 2: Struggle for Palestine. Now, that event was flagged by event
Speaker 2: writes algorithm, and it was reviewed by its trust and
Speaker 2: safety team, but it determined that that event did not
Speaker 2: violate its hateful Events policy in an October ninth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three statements. So two days off after October seventh,
Speaker 2: here's what the event sponsored the Palestinian American organization Networks said.
Speaker 2: It called the October seventh attack quote self defense measures
Speaker 2: and said that quote Israel bears the full responsibility for
Speaker 2: those attacks, and declared that quote the Palestinian people have
Speaker 2: the right to defend themselves and to fight the occupation
Speaker 2: with all means available. We salute the steadfastness of the
Speaker 2: Palaceian people in its resistance. So understand saluting the mass
Speaker 2: murder of twelve hundred people. The raping of women and girls,
Speaker 2: that does not violate their hateful speech policy, But saying
Speaker 2: that girls exist that does. Saying that men should not
Speaker 2: compete against women and women's sports that does. That is
Speaker 2: the utter hypocrisy and double standards that allows. By the way,
Speaker 2: event Bright has also allowed numerous quote stop Cop City
Speaker 2: events which support violent protesters who oppose the building of
Speaker 2: a police and firefighter training facility. Likewise, event Bright created
Speaker 2: a map of Black Lives Matter protests, many of which
Speaker 2: turn violent, to help users find them. So, in other words,
Speaker 2: actual events that produce violence, that end up killing people,
Speaker 2: that burn shops, that firebomb cars, those are not deemed
Speaker 2: hateful and violent. But if you say that women exists,
Speaker 2: you must be deplatformed.
Speaker 1: We talked about the media giving them cover. I expect
Speaker 1: some in the media to be liberal hacks, right, but
Speaker 1: this brings up a big issue that we need to
Speaker 1: talk about with NPR. The new CEO of NPR is
Speaker 1: someone that is paid by US taxpayers and someone who
Speaker 1: has described the First Amendment as the number one challenge
Speaker 1: she faces. Our tax dollars are going to a CEO
Speaker 1: who's running INPR National Public Radio saying the First Amendment
Speaker 1: really seems to get in her way. Really, that's where
Speaker 1: money is going. Well.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, NPR has been profoundly corrupted, and it's been made
Speaker 2: worse by hiring a CEO who is a brazen, blatant,
Speaker 2: unapology jic, radical leftist, and she doesn't pretend to be
Speaker 2: unbiased at all. Now, we discussed in a previous podcast
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago the Bombshell Report from Uri Berliner.
Speaker 2: Uri Berliner was a twenty five year NPR employee and
Speaker 2: was the former business editor of NPR, and he wrote
Speaker 2: an April ninth essay in The Free Press, which resulted
Speaker 2: in NPR suspending him for publishing how's that for free speech?
Speaker 2: If you criticize us, you're out of here and you're
Speaker 2: all fine, and ultimately led to his resignation. So he's gone.
Speaker 2: This essay cost him his job, but he laid out
Speaker 2: the incredible bias at NPR and the shift at NPR. So,
Speaker 2: for example, he laid out in twenty eleven, which was
Speaker 2: not that long ago, NPR's audience was twenty six percent conservative,
Speaker 2: twenty three percent middle of the road, and thirty seven
Speaker 2: percent liberal, so it leaned left. But not dramatically, so
Speaker 2: by twenty twenty three those numbers that shifteddically. It was now,
Speaker 2: instead of thirty seven percent liberal, it was sixty seven
Speaker 2: percent liberal, and instead of twenty six percent conservative, it
Speaker 2: was only eleven percent conservative. And mister Berliner laid out
Speaker 2: details of how they would stifle stories that were inconvenient
Speaker 2: to liberals. They would amplify stories like the Russia collusion story,
Speaker 2: even if they were not supported by the facts. He
Speaker 2: outlined at great length how NPR had no interest in
Speaker 2: being impartial, being unbiased. And then you take in the
Speaker 2: wake of this and the wake of what should be
Speaker 2: real concern of Hey, we're national public radio. We're supposed
Speaker 2: to be nonpartisan. We're supposed to be down the middle. Now, look,
Speaker 2: I for one have serious doubts why the taxpayer should
Speaker 2: fund any radio station. I think there are plenty of
Speaker 2: for profit radio stations. I don't know why the government
Speaker 2: should coursively tax you to pay for yet another radio station.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you what. Even if there's an argument
Speaker 2: they should do so for generic news that somehow there's
Speaker 2: not a market demand for, there is no argument I
Speaker 2: know of that they should do so only for left
Speaker 2: wing propaganda and the newly appointed CEO Catherine Marr has
Speaker 2: been a hard partisan her whole life. So, for example,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, Mar referred to President Donald Trump as
Speaker 2: a quote deranged racist sociopath. Well, then I'm confident her
Speaker 2: coverage of Donald Trump will be fair as long as
Speaker 2: she introduces him as a deranged, racist sociopath every time
Speaker 2: he's covered.
Speaker 1: How do you even get that job? And I'm being serious,
Speaker 1: if you're National Public radio, how does that automatically disqualify
Speaker 1: you from that position as soon as they see that quote?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and by the way, that's not an outlier. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, she celebrated trump banishment from social media,
Speaker 2: referring to him as a fascist. So she loves censorship, Okay,
Speaker 2: the former president of the United States elected by the
Speaker 2: American people. I'm thrilled that he's being silenced because I
Speaker 2: dislike his politics and I think he's a fascist. In
Speaker 2: May of twenty twenty, right in the middle of the
Speaker 2: George Floyd riots, Mar suggested that looting represented a form
Speaker 2: of reparative justice for historic wrongs, and she remarked how
Speaker 2: white silence is tantamount to complicity and violence. She's also
Speaker 2: posted repeatedly in support of Democrat politicians including Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden. Now listen, as
Speaker 2: a private citizen, she has a right to be an
Speaker 2: angry left wing radical and a hard Democrat partisan. But
Speaker 2: explain to me why on earth the American taxpayers should
Speaker 2: fund her partisan propaganda.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yet that's exactly why she probably got the job,
Speaker 1: because they're like, oh, perfect, You're going to keep pushing
Speaker 1: this propaganda out there full speed ahead. I want to
Speaker 1: ask all of you listening right now to do me
Speaker 1: a favor real quick. I want you to place your
Speaker 1: hand over your heart. If you can, can you feel
Speaker 1: that it's your heartbeat telling you that you are alive.
Speaker 1: It's the same for a preborn baby. Their heart begins
Speaker 1: to form at conception, and in just three weeks it
Speaker 1: is already beating. At five weeks, a baby's heartbeat can
Speaker 1: be heard on an ultrasound. And that is why I
Speaker 1: am proud to say that I'm partnering with Preborn, because
Speaker 1: we need to help those precious babies. Every day, Preborn's
Speaker 1: network of clinic rescues two hundred babies from abortion. Why
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Speaker 1: because what Preborn does is they give the chance for
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Speaker 1: donate easily. Just dial pound two fifty and say the
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Speaker 1: You can donate securely at preborn dot com slash verdict
Speaker 1: as well. That's preborn dot com slash verdict. Senator, if
Speaker 1: you are at NPR, can you imagine if you are
Speaker 1: left the lefty how much freedom I think it would
Speaker 1: make you feel like you had to then go out
Speaker 1: there and continue to push propaganda on the American people.
Speaker 1: If this is your CEO, I mean it's a license
Speaker 1: to basically go all in on liberal propaganda at the
Speaker 1: taxpayer's expense.
Speaker 2: Now, that is exactly right. And I've got to say listen.
Speaker 2: As you know, I'm the ranking member on the Senate
Speaker 2: Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and part of my
Speaker 2: responsibility in that role, we've got jurisdiction over about forty
Speaker 2: percent of the US economy, and part of my responsibility
Speaker 2: is oversighted. I can tell you that I am actively
Speaker 2: engaging in oversight right now, calling on NPR to explain,
Speaker 2: to explain why they're willing to put in place a
Speaker 2: hard left wing activist, not a neutral journalist, but someone
Speaker 2: who is biased, who is who is an active supporter
Speaker 2: of sensorship, to violence, to silence the views she disagrees with.
Speaker 2: Why NPR believes that that is an appropriate leader for
Speaker 2: their institution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really great point.
Speaker 2: And listen, don't necessarily take our words for it. I
Speaker 2: want you to listen to Catherine Maher in her own words,
Speaker 2: because it's going to show just how radical she is.
Speaker 2: And I want to play a couple of clips. Let's
Speaker 2: start with her explaining that, in her view, the number
Speaker 2: one challenge that she faces is the First Amendment of
Speaker 2: the Constitution. Let's play that clip.
Speaker 3: The number one challenge here that we see is, of course,
Speaker 3: the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly
Speaker 3: robust protection of rights, and that is a protection of
Speaker 3: rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very
Speaker 3: important that platforms have those rights to be able to
Speaker 3: regulate what kind of content they want on their sites,
Speaker 3: but it also means that it is a little bit
Speaker 3: tricky to really address some of the real challenges of
Speaker 3: where does bad information come from and sort of the
Speaker 3: influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's amazing center. This is the woman running MPR,
Speaker 1: and I guess this is almost like the best thing
Speaker 1: you can put on your resume, right, You're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I think the First Amendment's a real problem. It's like perfect,
Speaker 1: We'd love to hire you at MPR.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And she actually says, well, the First Amendment is
Speaker 2: really important for platforms, but then what she describes as
Speaker 2: their First Amendment right is for their ability to censor
Speaker 2: and silence things they disagree with. So to her mind,
Speaker 2: what she cares about is the ability if there's a
Speaker 2: view that is right a center. As far as she's concerned,
Speaker 2: the First Amendment is all about silencing those views. There
Speaker 2: can be no dissent, all right. I want you to
Speaker 2: listen to another clip. This is a Ted talk where
Speaker 2: she's discussing truth when she was at Wikipedia, and somehow
Speaker 2: she has a different view of truth than I think
Speaker 2: you and I might have. Give a listen.
Speaker 3: But the hard things, the places where we are prone
Speaker 3: to disagreement, say politics and religion, Well, as it turns out,
Speaker 3: not only does Wikipedia's model work there, it actually works
Speaker 3: really well because in our normal lives, these contentious conversations
Speaker 3: tend to rrupt or disagreement about what the truth actually is.
Speaker 3: But the people who write these articles, they're not focused
Speaker 3: on the truth. They're focused on something else, which is
Speaker 3: the best of what we can know right now. And
Speaker 3: after seven years of working with these brilliant folks, I've
Speaker 3: come to believe that they are onto something that perhaps,
Speaker 3: for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking
Speaker 3: to convince others of the truth might not be the
Speaker 3: right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the
Speaker 3: truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way
Speaker 3: of finding common ground and getting things done. Now, that
Speaker 3: is not to say that the truth doesn't exist nor
Speaker 3: is it to say that the truth is and important. Clearly,
Speaker 3: the search for the truth has led us to do
Speaker 3: great things, to learn great things. But I think if
Speaker 3: I were to really ask you to think about this,
Speaker 3: one of the things that we could all acknowledge is
Speaker 3: that part of the reason we have such glorious chronicles
Speaker 3: to the human experience in all forms of culture is
Speaker 3: because we acknowledge there are many different truths. And so
Speaker 3: in the spirit of that, I'm certain that the truth
Speaker 3: exists for you and probably for the person sitting next
Speaker 3: to you, But this may not be the same truth.
Speaker 3: This is because the truth of the matter is very
Speaker 3: often for many people. What happens when we merge facts
Speaker 3: about the world with our beliefs about the world. So
Speaker 3: we all have different truths. They're based on things like
Speaker 3: where we come from, how we were raised, and how
Speaker 3: other people perceive us.
Speaker 2: What utter garbage? Like every word of that. You want
Speaker 2: an indictment of the modern left. You want an indictment
Speaker 2: of the idiocy of media. You want an indictment of
Speaker 2: the academic world. You want an indictment of big tech.
Speaker 2: Good God, what utter garbage? Truth doesn't exist? George or
Speaker 2: Well is spinning in his grave and laughing at the
Speaker 2: same time. Two plus two doesn't equal four, it equals
Speaker 2: five because we say it is there is no truth.
Speaker 2: Listen to that quote. Our reverence for the truth might
Speaker 2: be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding
Speaker 2: common ground and getting things done. But don't worry. This
Speaker 2: is only for things that don't matter, the contentious issues.
Speaker 2: What does she identify politics and religion? When it comes
Speaker 2: to politics and religion, look, Jesus Christ said, I am
Speaker 2: the way the truth in the life. But no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no no, don't have reverence for truth. We're not interested
Speaker 2: in that. We are interested in set aside of truth.
Speaker 2: That can be your truth, my truth. Everyone has a truth.
Speaker 2: Maybe for you, two plus two is five? What utter garbage?
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 2: A journalist is supposed to be interested in the truth.
Speaker 2: Do you have perfect truth?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Do you have perfect knowledge? No? But you should get
Speaker 2: damn close to it. You should be trying to get
Speaker 2: to the truth. Remember what journalists used to learn? Who? What, when?
Speaker 3: Where? How?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: What happened? What are the facts? Well? No, no, no, not
Speaker 2: according to her. According to to her, there are no facts.
Speaker 2: There is no truth. It's your truth, it's my truth,
Speaker 2: and my truth from Catherine Marr's perspective is as a
Speaker 2: left wing partisan, whatever the orthodoxy is, and we will
Speaker 2: silence views that disagree. And the First Amendment is a pesky,
Speaker 2: pesky barrier. All right, I want to play one more clip. Yeah,
Speaker 2: one more clip where she's describing what she did at Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Listen to this third clip.
Speaker 3: I started by talking about the idea of free and
Speaker 3: open as some of our founding principles sort of free
Speaker 3: and open source coming from me to the open source community. Well,
Speaker 3: I have come to the opinion and the perspective that
Speaker 3: free and open was a way of looking at the
Speaker 3: world that was inherently limited relative to what we were
Speaker 3: trying to achieve. Free and open has the best of intentionality,
Speaker 3: but in the end, what free and open often ended
Speaker 3: up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was
Speaker 3: really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics
Speaker 3: that exist offline prior to the advent of the Internet.
Speaker 3: And so what we ended up seeing was Wikipedia really
Speaker 3: rebuilt this idea of knowledge as a whole around what
Speaker 3: the Western canon. You see the exclusion of communities of
Speaker 3: languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based
Speaker 3: on reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition is
Speaker 3: something that is particular to many I mean not sorry,
Speaker 3: the idea of a written tradition which is particular to
Speaker 3: some cultures and not to others. The ways in which
Speaker 3: we I ascribe notability often really comes from sort of
Speaker 3: this white male, westernized construct around who matters in societies
Speaker 3: and who is elevated in whose voices, and so some
Speaker 3: of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really
Speaker 3: did not end up with the intention I really did
Speaker 3: not end up living into the intentionality of what openness
Speaker 3: can be.
Speaker 2: I mean, that just is brilliant right there, God bless so.
Speaker 2: Look she's explaining at Wikipedia, they deliberately abandon a quote
Speaker 2: free and open approach. By the way she's telling you
Speaker 2: what she's gonna do at NPR. NPR is not going
Speaker 2: to be free and open, according to her, because she
Speaker 2: doesn't believe in free and open. Why because free and
Speaker 2: open number one, she says, Well, that advantages cultures that
Speaker 2: believe in the written word. Because you know what good
Speaker 2: has book learning ever done anyone? Well, heck, you're forgetting
Speaker 2: those cultures that don't believe in that fancy learning stuff
Speaker 2: like what utter garbage. I'm sorry, I thought actually a
Speaker 2: journalistic outfit should actually reflect celebrate the best of education,
Speaker 2: of learning, of what we know. But she says, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: If it's actually free and open, will recapitulate a white male, westernized,
Speaker 2: westernized construct. Let me ask you something, Ben, what the
Speaker 2: hell does that mean? Seriously? Those are the words Marxist use,
Speaker 2: and typically the more syllables they use when they get polysyllabic,
Speaker 2: the less they're making any sense. So explain to me
Speaker 2: the phrase recapitulate a white male, westernized construct that does
Speaker 2: not end up living into the intentionality of what openness
Speaker 2: can mean. Those words have no content other than I
Speaker 2: want the power to silence things I don't like. Am
Speaker 2: I wrong?
Speaker 1: No, you're right. And my question goes back to this
Speaker 1: for you. It used to be at MPR and others
Speaker 1: they would at least fake it like their bias. Now
Speaker 1: it's just flat out open and they're doing it with
Speaker 1: our tax tours. Is there ever going to be a
Speaker 1: day of reckoning where MPR finds out, hey, good luck,
Speaker 1: do your own thing, because we're not going to pay
Speaker 1: for this proper again anymore.
Speaker 2: Look, if NPR cares at all about journalistic integrity, if
Speaker 2: they care at all about continuing to receive taxpayer funds,
Speaker 2: they should terminate Catherine Marr immediately. Her job should be done.
Speaker 2: They should not have a rabid left wing partisan who
Speaker 2: hates the First Amendment, who've used it as an inconvenience,
Speaker 2: who wants to censor conservatives, who is actively explicitly and
Speaker 2: unabashedly opposed to free and open communication, who doesn't believe
Speaker 2: in truth, who believes truth is an impediment to what
Speaker 2: she's doing. That is not a journalist in any way.
Speaker 2: She ought to go and join Emily's list, she ought
Speaker 2: to go and join the DNC. She gotta go run
Speaker 2: for Congress and become a henchman to Nancy Pelosi. She
Speaker 2: should not actually be running a news organization, especially not
Speaker 2: a news organization funded by the taxpayers. And if we
Speaker 2: have to be honest, if you had a Democrat who
Speaker 2: had a shred of integrity, they would say, of course,
Speaker 2: this is not appropriate for her to run NPR. The
Speaker 2: chances of that happening are zero, But I can tell
Speaker 2: you I'm going to be pushing for accountability and I'm
Speaker 2: going to be pushing for oversight of it because it
Speaker 2: is brazenly shameless for them to put someone so wildly
Speaker 2: unqualified in that position.
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