WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined The Brian Kilmeade Show to discuss President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress and the continued threat of Big Tech censorship.
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Partial Transcript Below:
Hagerty on Biden’s history of plagiarism: “I watched it [the joint address] open up as President Biden took credit for a rebound in our economy, and I’m sitting there thinking it’s only possible because of the policies that President Trump put in place in Operation Warp Speed. But again, he [Biden] took credit for somebody else’s work. We’ve heard this before for from President Biden, going all the way back to his days in school. That’s plagiarism by any other term. But it was just then a litany of one crisis after the other. Yet, he didn’t talk about the border crisis, which is the biggest crisis we face right now, until the very end of his speech. And he said, ‘well, if we believe that’s a crisis, then we’re going to have to vote for his bill for amnesty.’ I mean, it was just pathetic, and he billed this as a blue collar blueprint. What it was, was a blue collar jobs killer.”
Hagerty on Biden violating the Impoundment Act: “What Biden has done is actually violated the Impoundment Act. Congress has already appropriated the funds for that wall to be built. It’s not the executive branch’s role to come in and undo that. I mean, we saw President Trump go through an impeachment trial because of just that thing, regarding funds to the Ukraine. President Trump was accused of holding that up. Biden is holding up the funds to build that wall—we need it now more than ever. He’s proving that… This is a crisis of Biden’s own making, but I think there’s a lot of intent to it. Again, because he’s trying to flood the nation and really change the shape of America.”
Hagerty on the 21st Century FREE Speech Act: “It’s amazing. [Big Tech] will suppress the speech of the most important leader in America and the one of the most famous people in the world, as you say, Brian, yet, they will continue to allow Ayatollah Khamenei to post on their networks how to death to Israel and how to go about doing it. You know, they’ll allow the New York Post article on Hunter Biden to be taken down. I mean, this is out of control and it needs to be addressed as you say. And that’s why I introduced my 21st Century FREE Speech Act to combat this censorship by Big Tech. What it does in the first instance is it eliminates section 230. What it does, is looks at these companies as what they are today—they are functioning like common carriers. We regulate telephone companies, we regulate railroads. What we want to make certain of is that this modern day public square becomes more accountable to the public and allows equal access to all Americans, a non-discriminatory access. And it prohibits these entities from censoring using their own political bias.”
Hagerty on Big Tech censorship: “In my prior job before coming to United States Senate, I was United States Ambassador to Japan, and I dealt every day with China, what they were doing there. This is more something you would expect from the Chinese Communist Party, suppressing their citizens, than it coming from Silicon Valley. So indeed I think that this has been the breaking point. The 2020 election, and the involvement of these Big Tech companies in a way really showed their political bias and their aggressiveness. This is something that the American public realizes, they appreciate, they want to see action taken, and I’m ready to do it.”
Hagerty on Big Tech operating as the modern day public square: “I think the best thing for them to do is step back and to allow the American people to decide what they want to learn. The standards that they have today are extremely opaque. I think they make it up as they go along, depending on how the political ones shift. Again, I’m loathe to look for regulation as the solution to anything, Brian. But when you have entities like these private entities evolve into what really has become the modern day public square, they really do look like common carriers. Justice Thomas made this point clear in a recent opinion, and I was inspired by that opinion. And I thought this is the right approach.”
Hagerty on Democrat support for the 21st Century FREE Speech Act: “Democrats have privately expressed interest to me. We’ll see if we’ll be able to get them on the bill and really move it forward. But I think Democrats have the same concern that Republicans do. They know that the tide can turn as quickly as it does. And they’ll wind up becoming the victim of censorship just as easily… I hope that I’ll be able to persuade some of my Democrat colleagues to look beyond the immediate benefit that they have [from Big Tech’s liberal bias], and think about our nation and to think about what’s best for America, and to really preserve the First Amendment and freedom of speech that we all say that we support, yet we see it trampled on every day by some of these Big Tech companies that decide to opaquely sensor what we’re saying.”
Hagerty on how Biden should have modeled his Blue Collar Blueprint off of Tennessee: “What President Biden should have thought about last night, what he called a blue collar blueprint really was a blue collar jobs killer. If he had a looked He ought to look at states like Tennessee, we’ve become extremely successful. I was part of that. I was the Commerce Secretary when we came out of the last recession and what we’ve done is have low taxes, regulations that are actually friendly and conducive to business. We’ve created a climate in Tennessee that is positive for business, and what’s happened? We’ve seen our jobs grow, our wages grow. We are one of the top performing nations, excuse me, top performing states in the nation. And people are moving from blue states to Tennessee because of that. Instead of talking about raising taxes on America and killing jobs, President Biden out ought to look at examples like Tennessee and say that that’s the path. That’s the blueprint that we need.”