EXCLUSIVE – Rep. Steve Scalise Opposes JCPA Media Cartel Bill

The House Minority Whip, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) appeared on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with Alex Marlow yesterday. During the interview, Scalise came out against the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), saying the media cartel bill would “surely not” pass a Republican-controlled House.

“The JCPA, this thing we call the media cartel bill, which would give the opportunity to the establishment media and big tech to negotiate a fee for the establishment media,” said host Alex Marlow. “I think it’s payola so they don’t investigate Big Tech. I think the bill’s pretty dang bad, I have not seen you weigh in on it at all — do you have a take on it?”

“I haven’t seen an attempt even by Pelosi to move it through Congress — it surely would not under a Republican House,” said Scalise.

“Also what you will see is a lot of aggressive oversight against Big Tech,” said the GOP Minority Whip. “All of the things they’ve been doing to suppress free speech — and look, Jim Jordan and Katherine McMorris Rodgers of the Energy and Commerce Committee are working on a bill to actually reform Section 230 to say you can’t discriminate against speech. Those are the sort of things that have been a long time coming, to stand up to some of these Big Tech giants that are using the mantra of free speech to have all these protections, and then they go and trample over your free speech rights every single day. That’s gotta stop.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a much better use of time than this one [the JCPA], which will I think actually will end up helping Big Tech, and it’s being sold to the public as ‘Big Tech won’t like it,'” continued Marlow.

“I think Big Tech will like it quite a bit, and I think the establishment media will love it. I’ll probably bring that up again down the road if this thing continues to rear its head, which it does.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.