CLARKSVILLE, Tennessee — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Bill Hagerty, former U.S. ambassador to Japan and current GOP frontrunner for U.S. Senate in Tennessee, told Breitbart News exclusively that they believe Google’s “monopoly power” is a threat to Americans.
Cotton, who was in Tennessee last week campaigning with Hagerty for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in his contested primary, sent a letter last week to Attorney General Bill Barr requesting that the Justice Department pursue antitrust action against Google over concerns it may use its outsized market share power to silence free speech or influence the outcome of elections.
“Google dominates the online search market,” Cotton said when asked about the letter in a joint interview with Hagerty here in Tennessee. “I think their market share is well over 90 percent. That’s plainly monopoly power. Our antitrust laws say a company can acquire monopoly power by building a better mousetrap. What it can’t do is use that power to then harm its customers, to harm the public interest. There’s at least some evidence that Google is using that monopoly power that it has on online search for adjacent markets, things like online advertising, which hurts small businesses, it hurts schools that are trying to recruit students, and it even hurts political candidates that are trying to reach voters online. Google, like any other company, ought to be held to the same antitrust standards. They ought to have to obey the antitrust laws. It is not good for any American whenever a company monopolizes a market and then uses that monopoly power to harm consumers in other markets.”
Hagerty, when asked how he would fight this if elected to the U.S. Senate, pointed to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)—another U.S. senator who has led on fighting big tech and just endorsed Hagerty’s Senate bid—as an example of the lead he would follow. He also pointed to Project Veritas investigations into big tech companies such as Facebook.
“I’m very fortunate to be from Tennessee. And Marsha Blackburn will be our senior senator,” Hagerty said. “There’s been no stronger voice in holding these groups accountable than Marsha Blackburn. Look at what she’s dealing with in terms of Facebook and Twitter and Google again. They are essentially using their position, their platform, to censor America and to essentially censor conservative voices. Nobody made them the arbiter of what’s true and false. Yet they’re taking that position time and time again. If you look at what Project Veritas uncovered at Facebook, they found a team there to delete posts that were favorable to Trump. What are they trying to do? They’re trying to make the president look worse. Are they trying to affect the outcome of the 2020 election? Perhaps. This has got to be dealt with.”
Cotton noted, too, that every time Google is “caught” manipulating search results or other matters, it always seems to benefit the left and the Democrats. He also said it is incumbent upon big tech companies to demonstrate that they stand with the United States against the Chinese Communist Party and that they should stop using the advantages they have obtained from being American companies to turn around and empower the United States’ enemies like China.
“It’s always a very funny coincidence that any time Google gets caught skewing its algorithm that somehow it’s an accident, it always depresses the search results for conservatives and Republicans,” Cotton said. “It never does that to Planned Parenthood. It never does that to George Soros’s foundations. It never does that to the Democratic Party. I think it’s particularly shameful that some of these companies that are American companies that acquired the market power that they have, thanks to American workers and American laws and American courts protecting their property rights and protecting their contract rights, will then turn around and cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party the way Google has done in the past and yet not cooperate with our military or our intelligence community. I think it’s a disgrace, and the leaders of these companies ought to stand up to their own woke workforces and tell them, ‘We are an American company, and we are going to support America in our competition against China. We’re not going to just sell our services to the highest bidder like the proverbial capitalists who will just sell rope to the communists to hang us all.’”
This is the second of multiple pieces from Cotton’s and Hagerty’s joint interview with Breitbart News in Clarksville, Tennessee, the home of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army at Fort Campbell. Cotton served in the 101st Airborne Division—known as the Screaming Eagles—when he was in the Army. The interview aired on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel on Saturday morning.
LISTEN TO TOM COTTON AND BILL HAGERTY ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:
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