Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) protested social media giants Facebook and Twitter for their handling of the bombshell New York Post report about Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, out a day earlier, which both Facebook and Twitter have tried to suppress.
The two companies claimed the origins of the story as justification for their actions.
“So here’s the thing, Sean — what needs to happen is Americans need to be able to sue these companies,” he said. “You know, if you’ve been locked out of Twitter or if you can’t to distribute this New York Post article on Facebook, you ought to be able to sue `em. You could do that with another company, but you can’t do it with Facebook and Twitter and Google because of the special sweetheart deal they get from the federal government. And, by the way, that’s how they’ve gotten so big and powerful. They haven’t done this on their own. They’ve gotten to be these monopolies because the government 20 years ago gave them this sweetheart deal, and it’s time for it to end.”
The Missouri Republican lawmaker pointed to a double standard by the tech giants regarding President Donald Trump’s taxes, which were detailed in a report in The New York Times. However, much like The New York Post story, the information had origins in question.
“I love the media howling now about the fact that the emails that The New York Post published, they said, oh, we don’t know exactly where those are from,” Hawley said. “I didn’t hear any such howling when “The New York Times” published Trump’s tax returns, which they almost certainly got illegally. Here’s the point, if those emails are fake, if The New York Post emails are fake, why isn’t the Biden campaign out there denying it? And the biggest point of all is, why is Facebook and Twitter, why are they doing the bidding of the Biden campaign? Why is it that Joe Biden can snap his fingers and these monopolies, the biggest monopolies in America, just do his bidding and refuse to allow this story to be reported? Now, you’ve got these tech companies trying to control journalism, trying to control news, trying to control what Americans can talk about in a presidential election? And we’ve only got 19 days to go. It’s unbelievable. It’s a racket. It’s collusion between Biden and the big tech companies, and it’s got to stop.”
Hawley argued the GOP would maintain the Senate, and thus it would work to hold big tech accountable for its involvement in politics.
“The big tech putting their finger on the — on the scale,” he added. “Yeah, that’s right, there’s a lot of tough races out there, but we are going to hold the Senate. Of course, I firmly believe the president is going to be re-elected. My home state of Missouri, he’s going to win big. So I think the president’s going to get reelected. I believe we will hold the Senate. And, Sean, we’ve got to take action right now to hold these big tech companies accountable. They are going to continue to do this. If we don’t stop them now, if Republicans don’t stand up and do something about this, these companies are going to run this country. That’s their desire. These woke capitalists. They want to run America. Big government, big tech, they want to run America. We’ve got to stop them. We’ve got to do something right now.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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