WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today joined John Roberts on America Reports to address the White House colluding with Big Tech companies to censor the American people. Hagerty discussed new legislation he introduced today, the Disclose Government Censorship Act, which would require government employees to publicly disclose communications with technology platforms regarding action or potential action by the platforms to restrict certain speech.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the White House colluding with Big Tech: “I think the American public was shocked, just as I was, with the revelations that the White House is colluding with Big Tech to try to censor our speech, trying to control the opinions of American people, trying to control what we say. A clear violation of our First Amendment rights, so what they’re doing is trying to outsource this to Facebook and other Big Tech corporations. That’s wholly un-American. The White House seems to have forgotten the fact that in this country, the American public controls the government. It’s not the other way around.”
Hagerty on how politics impacts what is considered “misinformation”: “I think it damages America’s trust in so many ways. If you look at the most recent news, that’s come out, ‘new science’ so-to-speak, that calls for people to now wear masks, even though they’re fully vaccinated. If you go back to what the White House published back in the spring, in May of this year, they clearly published that if you’ve been fully vaccinated, you don’t have to wear a mask indoors or outdoors. I checked just before coming on, that’s still posted. They haven’t censored that, even though it’s contradictory to what the White House is saying now. So there seems to be a political element to this. And when the White House says it’s information that they deem inaccurate, information that they deem unhelpful. I think it’s extremely concerning.”
Hagerty on the Biden White House using Big Tech as an extension of the federal government: “[The White House] is making these Big Tech companies an extension of the federal government. Certainly the federal government is prohibited by the First Amendment from doing just what [White House Press Secretary] Jen Psaki is talking about. But to outsource this, to have it just one step away to… ‘flag’ it and to influence it, I think is very, very concerning. I think that’s at the heart of President Trump’s case right now against Big Tech.”
Hagerty on Big Tech’s censorship of the Wuhan lab leak theory: “If you think about the damage that’s been done by the censorship of the discussion about the Wuhan lab. I mean, now we’re a year and a half away from the outbreak of this pandemic. Wuhan lab involvement was silenced. Our ability to step back and get to the bottom of this now has been severely hampered by the fact that there was very little information available. We couldn’t understand and assess what was happening. Now, we’re trying to go back into rears after samples have been destroyed, researchers have been silenced, the wet markets have been obliterated. I think that that underscores more clearly than any that this is a huge issue that we need to step up and address. We cannot allow these platforms to essentially be an extension of the federal government to do what’s convenient for the federal government, and again, silence America’s free speech.”