In this episode, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-GAZETTE) is joined by conservative commentator Mike Gibbons to discuss the dangers of Big Tech's censorship of conservative voices in the 21st century and the need for conservative voices to speak out against them. The Heritage Foundation has a new report that lays out the case against Big Tech, and lays out a road map for how to fight back against them in Congress and in the media. The report is titled, Combating Big Tech s Totalitarianism: A Roadmap to Stop Big Tech from Suppressing Conservative Speech, and How To Fight Big Tech in the Age of the Deep State. And, as always, thank you for tuning into Conservative Talk Radio and Business Insider. Please don't forget to rate, comment and subscribe to our other shows MIC/LINE, The Anthropology, The HYPE Report, and The HYPETALKS. Please take a few minutes to leave us a rating and review our podcast on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, Share, and Subscribe to our new podcast, The Conservative Lens. Thank you so much for your support and share the podcast with your fellow patriots. We are always grateful for your continued support and your continued encouragement. Thank you for being a Friend of Conservative Media and Business of the Swamp Dweller Podcast! - Your continued support is greatly appreciated. - Tom Pizzi and we look forward to seeing you in 2020. ! - The Swamp Thing Podcasts. Tom PODCAST, The Swamp Dwellers Podcast, the Swamp Thing, the podcast produced by Swamp Thing Media, the place where we cover all things conservative media and culture and culture. . . . and much more! - Thank you, Tom Pinnell, the swampy, urban legend, and all things swampy and swampy . of Swamp Thing , and all of your support is appreciated! Tom's new book, Tom's book is out in the new book "The Swamp Thing" is out now! and all the rest of the swamp is out! , and so much more. -- Tom's next book is coming soon! -- Thank you Tom's review is out soon, Tom s review -- the rest will be out soon! -- Tom s Tom s next book -- and we hope you like it, too? -- of course, we'll see you in the next episode
00:05:33.000The reason Facebook is so powerful is because we all use them.
00:05:38.000What we need to do is vote with our feet.
00:05:42.000And that is the first thing you should do is go home and close your Facebook account and tell your friends because that is how you get these people.
00:05:55.000Broadcasting from the Capitol Complex, the Longworth House Office Building.
00:06:00.000I've got a terrific guest today that is going to break down the battle against big tech.
00:06:04.000Not the talking points, not what you saw right there, but the actual legislation that could become law.
00:06:10.000Who we have to work with to make it happen and how that process has been refined over time through Investigations and other critical work of the Antitrust Subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee.
00:06:22.000That was the Ohio U.S. Senate Republican frontrunner, Mike Gibbons.
00:06:28.000And I played you that clip from one of the U.S. Senate debates because I wanted to show you that some, not all, but some of the silver-haired leaders of Republicanism still believe that we can vote with our feet and detach ourselves from the digital world.
00:07:15.000Our man, Mike Gibbons, who told people to go unplug their Facebook, has a Facebook page he posted an hour ago.
00:07:23.000And so it's just, we can't look to Republican leadership that doesn't offer serious, thoughtful solutions to how people interact with the digital world.
00:07:33.000Fortunately, the Heritage Foundation's Kara Frederick put out a report that really gets to the core of this.
00:07:39.000It was a jarring report entitled, Combating Big Tech's Totalitarianism, A Roadmap.
00:07:45.000So, a few highlights from this Heritage report.
00:07:49.00052% of Americans believe that big tech censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story was election interference.
00:07:58.000One in six Biden voters would have changed their mind had they seen the Hunter laptop story.
00:08:04.000A lot of buyer's remorse out there in the country right now.
00:08:07.000And more than 17 platforms muzzled President Trump, sitting as president in the weeks after January 6th.
00:08:14.000Twitter has seen a number of suspensions harm conservatives.
00:08:18.000So the suspensions on Twitter actually go to a 21 to 1 ratio conservatives to liberals.
00:08:25.00021 to 1. Our good friend Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's going to be the guest on the show tomorrow, was kicked off Twitter for championing weight loss as a COVID strategy.
00:08:33.000Which, by the way, it totally should be.
00:08:37.000Google suppressed conservative websites such as The Daily Caller, Breitbart, The Federalist during the 2020 election season.
00:08:46.000Breitbart saw search visibility decrease by 99% during the 2020 election compared to 2016. Facebook censored Republican members of Congress at a ratio of 53 to 1 compared to Democrats.
00:09:01.000In October 2021, leaked Facebook documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal showed that they had tools developed after Trump's 2016 surprise win.
00:09:12.000And in their documents, it shows that when those tools were removed, if they were to be removed, Breitbart would see a 20% increase in traffic.
00:09:21.000The Washington Times, another right-leaning publication, would see 18% more.
00:09:38.000Data privacy, something that's very important.
00:09:40.000Imposing costs for big tech and their ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
00:09:44.000Prohibiting government from using social platforms to chill speech.
00:09:47.000Don't you remember when Jen Psaki was making recommendations to social platforms about what speech they should remove because it wasn't in line with the regime?
00:09:55.000Scrutinizing mergers is something very important.
00:09:57.000I'm going to be talking about that with my guest.
00:09:59.000Resource is for enforcement of our laws.
00:10:03.000But at the top of the list, the top of the list for Heritage, Abolish Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as we know it.
00:10:13.000Section 230 gives platforms immunities that they weaponize against users.
00:10:19.000So Heritage recommends, and I'm quoting directly from the report here, quote, strip immunity if tech companies censor content based on political and other views protected by the Constitution.
00:10:29.000Big tech companies should not receive liability protection against lawsuits when they act as publishers and alter or restrict content based on political opinion, association, or viewpoint.
00:10:42.000Well, one boomer who does see the grave threat posed by big tech monopolies is Republican Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado.
00:10:59.000Explain to folks that are watching and listening how they should think about So the key, Matt, really is to understand that for more than 100 years, Congress has not acted or has acted in only a small way in the antitrust area.
00:11:21.000We have left it up to the courts to make the decisions, the important decisions in this area.
00:11:26.000The bills that we're talking about now, the antitrust bills, have to do with big tech and only big tech.
00:11:32.000We're not talking about the airline industry, banks or any other part of the economy.
00:11:36.000But because these big tech companies control the flow of information They impact our democracy in a very fundamental way, in a way that we have to address.
00:11:47.000And so the bills that we're talking about increase competition.
00:11:52.000So respond to sort of the Mike Givens' point that we don't really need bills.
00:11:55.000We just need people to unplug from big tech.
00:11:59.000I mean, you know, we are right now simulcast streaming on...
00:12:02.000Some of these big tech platforms that are pretty evil, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and the like.
00:12:09.000So, I mean, what's your response to people that say, the legislative endeavor is a useless one because we can all just make our own choices on our own digital associations?
00:12:18.000Well, I think we need to make our own choices, and I think we need to make moral choices, but that's not enough.
00:12:23.000These companies are so big that they crush competition in ways that affect the information flow in this country.
00:12:30.000So, I don't believe that we need to go in and break them up.
00:12:33.000I don't think government does a very good job of entering the economy and breaking up companies.
00:12:37.000But I do think that we need to do everything we can.
00:12:41.000Aren't you and I on a bill with Congresswoman Jayapal that quite literally does that?
00:12:46.000What it does is it looks at some mergers that occurred before and then unmergers.
00:12:51.000So you could say breaking up, absolutely.
00:12:53.000But the reality is that the chances of that bill passing and the coalition that was needed to To bring the other bills forward, that bill passed the House Judiciary Committee.
00:13:06.000I'm joined by Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado, leading Republican on the House Antitrust Subcommittee on the Judiciary Committee.
00:13:11.000And we're discussing a package of legislation that we worked very hard on to get through the committee.
00:13:17.000And now, as typically occurs, as bills move from subcommittee to full committee and then to the floor, there is a narrowing of focus and really...
00:13:27.000Great deal of attention to what we can get done, what we can get put into law.
00:13:30.000I'm going to get to that and this legislation that you are really, really putting the fine points on regarding non-discrimination of products with platforms.
00:13:40.000But first I want to get your perspective on Section 230 because when conservatives are discussing potential legislative reforms, you often hear folks in the House and Senate really zero in on Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act.
00:13:55.000As I described, it gives these big tech platforms liability that I think they often use to suppress viewpoint and to try to shape the very nature of truth itself.
00:14:06.000What's your perspective on Section 230?
00:14:08.000I think that what Heritage said in their white paper is absolutely right.
00:14:13.000There are three prongs of attack to deal with this issue.
00:14:17.000One is the antitrust laws, the second is Section 230, and the third is a privacy area.
00:14:22.000We don't get the job done unless we work on all three areas.
00:14:25.000So you believe that reforms to Section 230 are necessary but perhaps not sufficient to get to a digital world that is more reflective of our constitutional values?
00:14:38.000And the political reality that we're dealing with, Matt, is that we have a president, a Democrat president in the White House, who will not sign a bill that harms the kind of censorship that the Democrats have appreciated in the last few years.
00:14:55.000So we've got to move forward on the antitrust laws right now because we do have a bipartisan agreement.
00:15:01.000But it's not just the Democrat that's in the White House.
00:15:03.000It's often Republicans in Congress Who seem to be the champions of Section 230. I want to play a clip for you.
00:15:09.000This is Congresswoman Kathy McMorris-Rogers.
00:15:12.000She is the leading Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
00:15:15.000This is her perspective on Section 230. I want to be very clear.
00:15:20.000I'm not for gutting Section 230. It's essential for consumers and entities in the internet ecosystem.
00:15:27.000Misguided and hasty attempts to amend or even repeal Section 230 for bias or other reasons could have unintended consequences for free speech and the ability for small businesses to provide new and innovative services.
00:15:48.000I think that strong reforms are necessary.
00:15:51.000I think that you correctly in your antitrust work have segregated out how we treat these large platforms versus how we treat some of these smaller companies.
00:16:02.000What's your confidence that a Republican majority, which many people expect following the upcoming election, would actually continue the bipartisan work that you and Chairman Cicilline have done on this antitrust legislation?
00:16:19.000Well, I think that some of these bills will move forward this Congress.
00:16:25.000I think that some of the ideas from these bills will move forward in future Congresses, and I hope that Republicans embrace antitrust.
00:16:35.000It began back in the Gilded Age with leaders like Teddy Roosevelt and others who recognized the dangers of the vast accumulations of wealth and power that go along with these monopolies.
00:16:51.000He's a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, and I'm proud to have him here broadcasting live from our congressional office, Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado.
00:16:59.000But I do have concerns that Republicans talk tough on Big Tech, but then often end up voting with Big Tech.
00:17:06.000I think one reason why is that they're addicted to the money that Big Tech donates to them.
00:17:51.000Get out of our face every day on these difficult issues.
00:17:57.000Campaign finance system as a matter of policy is one vector where I think people get compromised by big tech, but I think it is a far more sweeping endeavor with the intense lobbying, with big tech hiring family members of lawmakers.
00:18:12.000I mean, how are we supposed to go negotiate with Chuck Schumer on an issue that could harm Facebook when his daughter works at Facebook?
00:18:20.000I'm also concerned that we've got to get the right people who are willing to be super aggressive, not only on the antitrust matters that we're going to discuss, but also on Section 230. And one thing that concerns me is that Kevin McCarthy has built out a I think we've got the press release that we're going to go to.
00:18:47.000We know he's a great warrior for free speech, but I worry that some of the people who haven't taken our pledge, who certainly don't hold my views, are being elevated within the Republican conference on this, and it could result in them stifling our work potentially in a majority.
00:19:07.000You are working right now on very serious legislation that deals with how big tech platforms can discriminate or not discriminate against products.
00:19:17.000Can you give viewers an update on the status of that legislation and why it's needed?
00:19:22.000Well, Matt, I just want to back up one second.
00:19:26.000Well, you tried to get on the Anti-Big Tech Task Force, and you're not on, and Kathy McMorris-Rogers, who's carrying Big Tech's water, who is embracing Section 230, is one of the leaders?
00:19:37.000Well, it's interesting, because as the person who was really bringing these antitrust bills forward, I wanted our voice, all of our voices who are in favor of this One remedy, one part of the remedy.
00:19:55.000It should be an anti-big tech task force.
00:19:58.000Heritage essentially concludes that these people are the death star.
00:20:00.000We have to shoot everything we have at them from antitrust, from behaviors, from enforcement.
00:20:08.000And I think you've laid out a strategy that is multi-vector as well.
00:20:12.000It is, but all I'm saying is I approach this with an open mind.
00:20:17.000They just convince me every single time that they're bad.
00:20:19.000So I'm not looking at this as an anti-big tech task force, but it's so ironic that those of us that have a passion for this area were held off of this task force.
00:20:30.000Well, once I saw that Kathy McMorris-Rogers was the leader.
00:20:34.000I knew for certain at that point it wasn't going to be an anti-big tech task force.
00:20:38.000I mean, frankly, if you take money from big tech, you shouldn't be on the big tech task force.
00:20:48.000So that is kind of the free speech vector.
00:20:50.000Let's go to the bipartisan legislative vector that you are very hard at work on every day.
00:20:56.000So just take one simple bill, for example.
00:20:59.000The state attorney generals came to me and said, we want to be able to sue these big companies and stay in our own state.
00:21:06.000Because every time they sue, the case miraculously gets moved to the Northern District of California, the backyard of Google and these other companies.
00:21:18.000It passed out of a Judiciary Committee.
00:21:20.000I've gone to multiple meetings of Republicans and asked people to sign a discharge petition.
00:21:25.000I have 107 signatures out of 212 Republicans in the United States House.
00:21:31.000When 48 Attorney Generals of the United States come forward, by the way, California is missing for some reason, I don't know why, but when 48 Attorney Generals come forward and say, we need this legislation, And it is a federalist states' rights bill.
00:21:46.000Why aren't more Republicans signing up to say, I'll vote for this if it comes to the floor?
00:22:10.000They won't sign what 48 attorney generals want to be able to not even create new laws, but to be able to bring big tech to heel when they violate state law and engage in...
00:22:23.000And other deceptive or potentially unfair trade practices.
00:22:26.000And you've got a whole lot of Republicans who you think just aren't up for this fight.
00:22:31.000Should that discourage voters that if they returned Republicans to the majority that Republicans would actually fight on big tech?
00:22:38.000I think they should absolutely be discouraged.
00:22:40.000I think one of the things that voters should ask their candidates...
00:22:43.000The discouragement hour with Matt Gaetz and Ken Buck.
00:23:05.000Well, the good news is, from that Ohio Senate debate, these questions are being asked.
00:23:09.000Now, we're not getting all the right answers yet from all the right candidates, but the questions are being asked.
00:23:14.000I want to get to this legislation about how platforms treat products in the non-discrimination issue, because a lot of people might think, oh, well, when I pull up Amazon...
00:23:26.000You know, that is just based on my preferences.
00:23:28.000But sometimes it's based on Amazon's preferences and their desire to vertically integrate.
00:23:34.000Explain where that legislation is and the work you're doing on it.
00:23:38.000So understand that Amazon is a platform.
00:23:41.000But they also produce their own products.
00:23:43.000And what they do is that from their platform, they look at sales trends and they see products that are selling real well.
00:23:51.000Then they go to a manufacturer and produce a similar product and compete against the product that they originally were promoting on their platform.
00:24:01.000And when they do that, lo and behold, Amazon takes that competitive third party product and drops it to page three and they put their product on page one.
00:24:11.000We discovered this during the investigation that was really led by you and by Chairman Cicilline with Amazon and a diaper company.
00:24:20.000I think we've got that clip for viewers.
00:24:23.000In 2009, your team viewed diapers.com as Amazon's largest and fastest growing online competitor for diapers.
00:24:32.000One of Amazon's top executives said that diapers.com keeps the pressure on pricing on us, and strong competition from diapers.com meant that Amazon would work harder and harder so that customers didn't pick diapers.com over Amazon.
00:24:46.000And the customers we're talking about were hardworking families, single parents with babies, and young children.
00:24:52.000Now because Diapers.com was so successful, Amazon saw it as a threat.
00:24:58.000The documents that we've obtained show that Amazon employees began strategizing about ways to weaken this company.
00:25:05.000And in 2010, Amazon hatched a plot to go after Diapers.com and take it out.
00:25:11.000In an email that I reviewed, and we've got these up on the slides, one of your top executives proposed to you a, quote, aggressive plan to win, end quote, against diapers.com, a plan that sought to undercut their business by temporarily slashing Amazon prices.
00:25:27.000We saw one of your profit and loss statements, and it appears that in one month alone, Amazon was willing to bleed over $200 million in diaper profit losses.
00:25:40.000Mr. Bezos, how much money was Amazon ultimately willing to lose on this campaign to undermine diapers.com?
00:25:50.000I don't know the direct answer to your question.
00:25:53.000This is going back in time, I think, maybe 10 or 11 years or so.
00:25:57.000You can give me maybe the dates on those documents.
00:25:59.000But what I can tell you is that the idea of using diapers and products like that to attract new customers who have new families is a very traditional idea.
00:26:12.000Sure, but let's delve into this a little further.
00:26:15.000I'm sorry, you know I only have a few minutes here, so I just want to press on.
00:26:19.000Your own documents make clear that the price war against diapers.com worked, and within a few months it was struggling.
00:26:28.000After buying your leading competitor here, Amazon cut promotions like amazon.mom and the steep discounts it used to lure customers away from diapers.com and then increase the prices of diapers for new moms and dads.
00:26:44.000Mr. Bezos, did you personally sign off on the plan to raise prices after Amazon limited its competition?
00:27:13.000And if so, how does your legislation get at this problem and solve it?
00:27:17.000She has it right, and it's even more interesting...
00:27:21.000Part of the story that's really important to understand.
00:27:24.000Diapers.com, because they had this database of new parents, they were getting into the market of selling baby shampoo and all these other products, and that's what threatened Amazon.
00:27:34.000So what Amazon did was to take them out with predatory pricing.
00:27:38.000This bill prohibits that kind of predatory pricing and prohibits the self-preferencing that went on with Diapers.com.
00:27:45.000We're talking diapers live with Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado, the leading Republican on the House Antitrust Subcommittee.
00:27:52.000What is the time frame on being able to get legislation, like what you just described, really before the full House for a vote?
00:28:01.000What's beautiful about these bills, Matt, is that they are not only bipartisan, they are bicameral.
00:28:06.000And so the Senate is moving in a parallel path with the House.
00:28:10.000The Senate has passed the non-discrimination bill also, the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:28:53.000Harm companies that went and acquired customers and built themselves up, but because you've got to sell on Amazon, they go and just strip that data from you and put you out of business.
00:29:10.000Some Republicans aren't going to vote with us, and they're going to say, Matt, Ken, you shouldn't be working with the Democrats on this.
00:29:18.000Maybe when we take power and have leverage and can really dictate terms, we should do it.
00:29:22.000But you guys have been romanced by the Democrats on this thing, and you shouldn't be working alongside Elizabeth Warren and David Cicilline and Jerry Nadler, even if your goals are virtuous.
00:31:04.000We'll take some criticism from the right.
00:31:06.000We'll take some criticism from the left, but I think we're building an enduring coalition here that could actually survive this Congress.
00:31:14.000We should get done what we can get done now.
00:31:16.000We should look ahead to even stronger bills, but maybe there can be some positive connective tissue that merges among the populist right and the populist left that we could see...
00:31:59.000Where has McConnell traditionally been on these war powers issues?
00:32:02.000I think the best guess of where he's gonna be on this issue is where the president wants him to be on this issue.
00:32:09.000And the president sees this as an important part of his rebuilding the military, and he's not gonna send the signal to Mitch McConnell to work with us on this.
00:32:24.000I mean, you got to have the ace cinematographers for that.
00:32:27.000So the book that you wrote was Drain the Swamp.
00:32:31.000From that, we were able to make this great movie called The Swamp on HBO. But why did you write the book and what is your principal critique of Congress?
00:32:38.000Well, I'll tell you why I wrote the book.
00:32:40.000I was so disappointed in my freshman term in Congress.
00:32:43.000I came here believing that I could make a difference in this country for the better.
00:33:25.000You know, when I showed up and I thought, so wait a second, I'm going to owe, like, they told me during the course of my freshman term, I owe them $400,000 over that two-year period.
00:33:33.000I think to myself, where do they expect that I'm going to get it?
00:33:36.000And then the committee chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time sits me down and says, well, you've got to find this special interest and play them against that special interest, and then their common ground can be your bank account.
00:33:54.000That the sort of sleaziness of the exchange of favors for money, on legislation, on taking positions on things here, is getting worse or better since you published.
00:34:09.000I don't think it helped the system, but I think it continues to get worse.
00:34:12.000Every year I look at it, and you just look at the numbers that the NRCC and the DCCC are raising, and that number keeps going up, and that number is coming from somewhere, and it's from the members having to go out and raise that money.
00:34:27.000It's been an inordinate amount of time raising money as opposed to developing good policy.
00:34:32.000Well, let me push back on that a little.
00:34:33.000I think that there are some elements getting better.
00:34:36.000You would have never heard of any group rejecting money from almost anyone five, six, ten years ago in this place.
00:34:47.000And you not only have refused money from big tech, but folks like Congressman Stubbe and others have joined in that effort.
00:34:55.000I take no donations from any lobbyists or any political action committees.
00:35:00.000Marjorie Taylor Greene does not take any donations from corporate PACs.
00:35:04.000I don't believe Lauren Boebert takes donations from corporate PACs.
00:35:07.000And you wonder like, well, how have we been able to do that?
00:35:10.000And the answer is by democratizing sort of the policy of political finance across more people.
00:35:18.000I think the small dollar donor has never meant more than they do today, because if you get enough of them, you don't have to go beg lobbyists for money.
00:35:26.000And so, you know, again, this isn't a campaign show, but it does speak to the types of policies in the Congress that get attention and get a focus and get placed on committee agendas based on who's given money where.
00:35:39.000And I mean, you've been very transparent about that.
00:37:21.000They have been attacking fossil fuels for decades in this country.
00:37:25.000And now the chickens have come home to roost.
00:37:28.000And it does sound like Colorado's ready to make its patriotic contribution to America's energy needs, if given the opportunity.
00:37:34.000Ken, how can folks find you on social media?
00:37:37.000How can folks stay in contact with you, sign up for your newsletter, so that we're able to stay real informed on this important antitrust big tech legislation?