President Trump signs an executive order to stop big tech's censorship of conservatives. Luckily we can sit down with a guy who has been fighting that very censorship for many years. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, and the guy who's been fighting this for many years, coincidentally is Ted Cruz himself. Senator, nice to see you. Even though we still have to do this virtually digitally and hopefully without any censorship. Well let's hope so, but we'll see a big tech pulls this podcast down. That's right, Senator. I think everybody knows that big tech has been going after conservatives, and probably for a lot of people listening to this right now, they themselves have felt this kind of thing if their account has been suspended for sharing a conservative view. I mean, I think, frankly, it's probably happened to all of us at this point. So we know that there's a problem. But there's been some debate over how you solve the problem. Do you pass some new regulation, do you break them up like their monopoly with antitrust laws, or do you enforce laws that are already on the books. You focused in on something called section two thirty of the Communications Decency Act of nineteen ninety six. The President focused in on that as well in his executive order. Can you tell us what that is and how the argument applies to big tech censorship? Well? Sure, and an answer to your question about what you do you listed several options. By answers are yes, yes, and yes. Let's start with two thirty. What is two thirty? So nineteen ninety six Congress pass a law passes a law called the Communications Decency Act. It was actually mainly focused at trying to regulate Internet porn, but it included a portion in its section two thirty that gave a special immunity from liability for big, big tech companies. And here was the reasoning at the time. Remember this is early, This was right when the Internet is starting. In fact, one thing, Michael, you and I have talked about, I was clerking at the US Supreme Court in nineteen ninety six nineteen ninety seven when one of the first challenges to congressional regulation came up, and I told a story in the book I wrote a few years ago about sitting with a Supreme Court librarian with my boss chief Justice William rynk Quist and was Santra Day O'Connor, and the librarian pulled up hardcore porn to show the justices, and all the law clerks are there and look, Justice O'Connor was in her seventies, and I still remember when they pulled up porn on the screen. Justice O'Connor just went, oh my, And we're all sitting there like the law clerks are in our twenties and we're looking at our shoes feeling really really awkward. And even more awkward is the fact that when they were last students at Stanford, Rinkquist and O'Connor were same class. They actually dated for a while. He was number one in the class, she was number three. So picture this, Michael, forty years from now, you're seventy eighty years old and you're standing in a room with an ex girlfriend from forty fifty years ago watching porn. Imagine how awkward it was for the two of that senator I know and the librarians where I know you've had a lot of strange experiences in politics. I just think I have to stop here for a moment to say that the strangest one I've ever heard from you is watching hardcore porn with Justice Sandrada O'Connor and her ex boyfriend William Brnquist. I think that one is absolutely the top of the list. It was surreal and I can still hear the oh my like echoing twenty plus years later. But this was right at the beginning of the Internet. So you gotta understand justices didn't know what the Internet was. This was librarians saying, okay, this is this internet thing. You type in things. I still remember. In fact, they turned off the filters and to get to porn, they typed in the world cantelope misspelled and cantalope. I use use your imagination, but I guess it pulled up porn and the librarians were trying to show them, Okay, look it's people can stumble into this accidentally all the time. Part of that bill, so it was section two thirty was designed. You had these little Internet startups and the idea was, listen, it's not fair to sue a tech company for something somebody posts on there. Because this is a forum. This is a public square. And so if somebody posts something and you sue the internet company, you could drive them out of business. And it's not the tech company that's speaking, it's whoever the users are. So if you post something, the users should be liable, but not the forums and the and the predicate for this, this is the policy predicate. Everyone understood big Tech what we're going to be what are called neutral public fora In other words, they were going to allow everyone to speak. It was going to be the new marketplace of ideas, and so Section two thirty past in the law. But what it means, you know, Google and Facebook and Twitter they've got an immunity from liability. Nobody else does you, Michael Knowles, if you go on the radio and you to fame someone, you can be sued. Yep, the New York Times. Do you know that Google and Facebook have an immunity from liability? The New York Times doesn't have Fox News, doesn't have everyone else, every American citizen, every American company. It is only big Tech that gets this special immunity from liability. So, Senators, this is the distinction we've heard about a little bit, which is the platform versus the publisher. Right, if you're a neutral platform, you get these protections. But if you're a publisher like the New York Times or the Daily Wire or Fox News or whatever. Then you don't get those protections. And the reason for it, of course, is if you could sue Twitter for every defamatory tweet that has ever been tweeted, Twitter would go out of business in approximately five seconds. That could well be true. But you know the interesting thing. Let's suppose I wrote an op ed that said, with apologies, that Michael Knowles has carnal relations with barnyard animals, and The New York Times published it. And let's assume, and I'm willing to assume for the sake of the podcast, that that is a totally false state, thank you, and that I have no basis that I am willfully being reckless making it up. You as a citizen, could sue. You could sue me for defamation, but you could sue the New York Times because by their choice to publish that, if they publish something that's defamatory about you, sue the hell out of them. I do the same thing on social media. You can't sue the hell out of them. And the reason is that Congress made a determination twenty years ago. These are special public form. Now Here's what's changed. Big Tech has decided and they've decided it only in the last couple of years. They don't want to be neutral anymore. Yeah, they want to be political players. They want to editorialize, they want to silence voices they don't like, and so they're deliberately amplifying lefty voices and silencing conservative voices. And it's okay, fine if they want to do that, fine, but one of the obvious steps is you don't get a special immunity from liability that nobody else gets. We're not going to treat you differently, because if you're going to behave like the New York Times, you should face the same risks the New York Times face. That makes sense. We've heard from some legal scholars on the left or jurists on the left that really Section two thirty shouldn't be applied this way. It's not about political stances and conservatives or abusing this. But but the argument you've just made, and that you've actually been making for quite some time now, is the argument that was made today by Attorney General William Barr. It's the argument that was made by President Trump. So it seems that Section two thirty is the key here to the conservatives argument. To stopping this big tech censorship. Can you just go into a little bit of the political debate or maybe how the Trump administration came to adopt this idea. Look, the simplest thing I have to say about as executive orders, it's about damn time. I have literally been urging this administration to do this for three and a half years. In the last three and a half years, you know, Look, I'm in the Senate. I'm a legislator. I can share hearings. I've shared hearings highlighting the rampant censorship and political bias. I can introduce legislation. I've advocated for legislation. But I'm not the executive. It's the executive that actually has enforcement ability, that that that actually has prosecutors and grand juries and subpoenas and can enforce the law. So so I have in the last three years, I have spent hours meeting with Bill Barr, the Attorney General, on this topic. I have spent hours with Jeff Rose and the Deputy Attorney General on this topic. I've spent hours with Makon del Raheem, the head of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, on this topic. I've spent hours with Joe Simons, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who I used to work with. I know Joe very well on this topic. I've spent hours with the President, with the Vice President, with the White House Chief of Staff, with the White House Council, urging them. And here's been the problem everybody. It's not quite in their jurisdiction. It doesn't quite fit in the neat So everyone says, yeah, yeah, it's a problem. They've agreed it's a problem. And by the way, Baron Rosen especially agreed it's a real problem. But it doesn't fit neatly in anyone's sort of traditional job description. And so the president Listen, the President has been frustrated and pissed off about this for a long time, but nobody on his team has been willing to do anything about it. Yeah, and so I do find it kind of ironic that Twitter decided to be such jackass. Yet, you know, look, my view has always been in the kind of hierarchy of big tech. The worst is Google and YouTube, which they own. You know, Google, their motto used to be don't be evil. Now their motto is just evil, Yeah, be evil? Right under Google has been Twitter, and then and then under that is Facebook. Facebook's pretty bad too, but there's tiny moments where they're trying. I think Jack Dorsey at Twitter decided, you know what, I'm tired of Google being the worst player on Earth. And so this whole thing was prompted because the idiots decided to fact check the president's tweet on voter fraud. And by the way, number one, they linked to CNN, which is so profoundly wrong on so many issues it's ridiculous. But but Twitter, I think just pissed off the president and thank god they did, because what I assume happened and I don't know this, but I assume he blew his top and told everyone, somebody get off your ass and do something about it, and it motivated them to finally do this. I'm glad they did. I think this is an incredible threat. Big tech censorship is the biggest threat to free speech and to fair elections and democracy. We got in the whole content, and to Facebook's credit, actually, Mark Zuckerberg came out today and he said I don't think that big tech should be the arbiters of truth, basically directly contradicting Jack Dorsey, a Twitter so, I mean, that's a good move. You know, just what do we think the conclusion of this will be. It seems that the threat would be to get Twitter to back off, to not interfere in the presidential election, to not put their thumb on the scales of how information moves around the Internet. If they don't back off, are we looking at a world in which Twitter really does lose its protections and Twitter goes down? Look that I hope so, although listen, I say I hope so. But I love Twitter. Twitter is a vehicle to engage in public debates, to go back and forth. Twitter as a neutral public forum actually works quite well. It's only recently that they decided to let their crazy lefty go. And actually, Michael, I'll tell you Zuckerberg story. Yeah. So, as you know, Zuckerberg testified in front of the Senate. A lot of us pounded it. He and I went back and forth in a very public exchange when he was testifying. Well, last year, Zuckerberg came to DC and reached out to my office and asked if I'd be willing to sit down and get together. Ken I had dinner together, and it was you know, it was kind of interesting. We thought about actually going to a restaurant. But to be honest, if Mark Zuckerberg and I sat down at a restaurant in DC, people would lose their minds. I mean, I mean, I think they'd started running around screaming and lighting their hair on fire. So we didn't do it in a restaurant. We did it at somebody's house and it was just it was Zuckerberg and me, and it was a couple of people on my staff, a couple of people in his staff. So it was a very small dinner and it was like three hours long, and it was actually, Look, it was a lot of fun. Listen, Zuckerberg comes across as he's a smart, geeky techie, and I'll give him some credit. Look, he's actually trying to wrestle through these issues. But look, and to be honest, we went round and round and round on just what I was advocating was, Look, how about some basic free speech. How about just let the marketplace of ideas? If you disagree with someone, lets something like, let people argue. Trump tweets all sorts of things I disagree with. I don't think the answer is to let some Silicon Valley billionaire silence him. If you disagree with him, say it, disagree with him, but Zuckerberg is trying. He actually, shortly after the dinner I had with him, he gave a speech I think it was a Georgetown maybe somewhere in DC, advocating principles of free speech. Now, look, Facebook has been bumpy on this, yeah, but compared to Twitter and Google, they've been much much better. And you can see them. Twitter doesn't care anymore. And and by the way, YouTube, Yeah, CEO of YouTube came by my office to talk about this, and her attitude was essentially well, I can't even say it, but it was. It was screw it. Although although it said more graphically than that yikes. Um, it was simply we had power and will use power. And you know what, she actually wanted credit because she said, well, you know, people on the left want us to completely silence people were so we're talking about Stephen Crowder as a friend of ours, um comedian, and and and YouTube demonetized him. Boy, talk about an Norwellian word. We will take away all your money. CEO wanted she wanted props because she said, well, we still allow him to post. We didn't. We didn't silence him altogether, like what the hell are you talking? Okay, And she's like, well, that's what the people that the left wanted us to do. I said, listen, the calls for censorship are only coming from the crazy leftists. I'm not asking you to silence Bernie Sanders right or AOC. God knows, they can prattle on forever. But let them talk. Their ideas are so bad, we'll engage with them on substance. Yep. But I am glad the administration has jumped in. By the way, there are other things they can do, and a trust agencies both DIGNFTC have been engaged in investigations. These are monopolies and their abusing monopoly power. Something else they can do that's in the executive Order. That's important. It's not just Section two thirty, but it's it's deceptive trade practices. I'm really glad the order tells the Attorney General to work with the state attorneys general. I've also talked at length with a Texas attorney general who's leading a state lawsuits about these deceptive practices. And Bill bar today in the Oval Office, he said it well, and actually he reflected a lot of what he and I talked about over breakfast. He said, Listen, these tech companies have built their platforms on a lie. They tell people if you come to our platform, you can speak, and if you sign up to follow someone, you watch them, you can see what they post, and if they sign up to follow you, they can see what you post. That's the fundamental promise, and that is a lie. We know Twitter shadow bands if they don't like you. People who say I want to follow to Michael Knowles, I care what Michael Knowles has to say. Twitter says no, no, no no, no, no, no no, We're just going to silently make it go away. That is a lie. That is fraud. And I'm glad this executive order takes a step towards real legal liability for defrauding consumers, which is what big tech is doing. That's a big key to this whole issue is the dishonesty, is the fraud, is the very very possible, and it seems likely violation of these laws. So it's very good. We'll see what happens from it. I mean sort of. The ball now is in the court of big tech. We'll see how they react to it. I want to get your opinion on something by the way directly related to this social media marketplace, which is a few incidents that have popped up over the last week or so, and they've really gained national attention because of social media. The most prominent one would be the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The police officer who arrested this man. You've got a white officer, black perpetrator, I suppose, or alleged perpetrator, and the suspect ends up dead. That guy's got his knee on his neck. I mean, it looks really bad. And then this spreads on social media. Now there are riots erupting around the country, not even just in Minneapolis. Also in Los Angeles there is looting going on. I'd like to get your perspective on that video, from both a social media perspective, a social perspective, and also from the perspective of well, what happened in Minneapolis was horrific, it was wrong. I've watched that video and lest at anytime you have an incident with police, sometimes the social media mob is quick to demonize the police officer, and I've long advocated we should wait for the facts to play out. That being said, I watched that video and you had a man in handcuffs on his face and the pavement with an officer's knee in the back of his neck pushing it into the pavement. He's gasping for breath, he's pleading that he can't breathe, and the officer continues for eight minutes. That is, on the face of it, police brutality, and anyone who believes in liberty should not want to see authoritarianism and an authority abuse. The police officer has been fired and the Department of Justice is open an investigation of civil rights investigation. I'm glad they have watching. That pisses me off. And by the way, you know, the social media mob is quick to paint this as far as they're concerned, that was Donald Trump with his knee on the back of the neck. Let me be clear, this is Minneapolis, Minnesota. You've got a democratic mayor, you've got a democratic governor, you've got democratic senators that this is bright blue. And we keep seeing these things happen, this abusive power, often in democratic strongholds. Were people that claim to be interested in defending people's rights. They're not doing a good job of it, right. I mean that I think a little bit of perspective here is key, and it's why it's so good to get your opinion on this is you're not only somebody with a Twitter account, but you also happen to know quite a bit about the way the criminal justice system works, having worked in it for a long time. I think that perspective really helps. We saw a less tragic, much more frivolous example of this also just a few days earlier, which was this altercation that happened in Central Park. There was a man talking to this woman and basically said, put your dog on a leash. She said no. The man, for some reason had dog treats in his bag just for this sort of occasion when people don't know their dogs on a leash. As he lures them away with the treats. Then this woman sort of lost her temper and had a little bit of an emotional meltdown, and then he started filming it. And you know what was the end result of this. Nothing happened. I mean, after the videos went public, then this woman lost her job and lost her dog. But in the moment itself, it seemed a little bit like much much ado about nothing. The social media mob is what made it so much worse, so much more sensational. Is that is there a world in which we should perhaps hope that maybe social media takes it down a few notches because of this sort of emotion that it can gin up. Yeah, look, I gotta say I have a little bit different take on it. There's there's no doubt that that incident showed the power of social media and that that an iPhone video can suddenly get millions of views all across the world. Um, I have to admit the woman who involved, who was involved, her behavior was atrocious, of course. Yeah. Um, this was an individual, an African American individual who was there bird watching, who at least on the video we saw, didn't do anything remotely threatening to her. And to watch her be willing to listen, making a false accusation, yep, deliberately is an act of violence. And and and when when when this woman Amy Cooper, picks up her phone and calls nine one one and she says, an African American man is physically threatening me and my dog, and she she calls in what, by all appearances, is a totally false crime report, and it's a dangerous crime report. Listen, if you call the police and say someone is physically threatening me. You are asking for law enforcement to show up with guns, and the very real consequence of that could be that the person you're wrongly accusing gets shot and killed. Listen, when officers arrived to an assault in progress, that they there is a risk of something going really wrong. And she was in a very real sense in dangering his life. Now, I gotta say the fact that he had dog treats, it was trying to feed her dog. If I'm walking my dog, stay the hell away from my dog and don't get him dog treats. That that's a little out there. But the attitude she expressed were clearly racist. They were clearly wrong. And and by the way, the same point I made about Minneapolis holds here. You saw the Twitter mob saying, oh this is this is the age of Donald Trump. They they blamed Donald Trump for it. Well, then the story comes out that, to the shock of nobody, she's apparently a liberal Democratic donor who's donated to Brocco bomb At, a Pete buddhag Edge and a John Kerry, Right, and of course she is. But you know, to be honest, well, look, actually there is racism on both sides of the aisle. But the left, many on the left love to jump on a soapbox and moralize that's right. And you bring up such a great point, because we shouldn't downplay and in the instance in Central Park, we shouldn't downplay the woman's atrocious behavior just because you point out that there's more to the story, for instance, than you know, she's totally wrong and he's totally right. I mean, maybe some of his behavior was a little odd too, Maybe it doesn't justify her behavior the same thing. Obviously, you can look at what is pretty clearly police brutality in Minneapolis and condemn that as being terrible and not therefore start defending looting and burning down businesses. You know, it seems that there's this knee jerk reaction on social media where we immediately have to take a side and say one person was totally wrong, one person was totally right, when really the situations are much more complex than that, and maybe a little bit of perspective on the legal side, on the policing side, on the social side can help us to understand those things well. And listen, police brutality and it undermines not that just the community, but it undermines law enforcement as well. Right, I'm blessed to know a lot of men and women who are law enforcement officers, and they feel that whenever something happens, they the mob immediately assumes they're at fault. And there are instances a lot of instances where an officer is scared for his life and is protecting himself. And it's one thing I saw. I watch the video, and sometimes these videos don't capture everything that happened. There may have been something that happened before that's not on it. So you have to view all of this with skepticism. And so there are times when an officer has to use physical force and serious force to subdue a dangerous individual. What made this video so damning is it at last eight minutes and the guy is in handcuffs and his face is there, and he's gasping for breath and he's pleading saying I can't and and this officer doesn't do anything other than keep the knee pressing into his neck. That was grotesque and wrong, particularly there are multiple other officers around. It's very hard to look at that video and suggest there was any reason that officer believed was afraid for his safety as compared to just being brutalizing someone who was already immobilized. And that is not how law enforcement should operate, and that's how not how they usually do. And it's why it's good that the Department of Justice is looking into this, and I very much hope justice is served here. That's right, because the effect of this ultimately is going to be to undermine our faith in these very institutions that would be maintaining law in order, maintaining civil society. It is far wider reaching consequences than many many would admit. Before we go, we got to get to a little bit of mail bag. First question, you know, a really easy one to I'm sure you can answer this in ten or twenty seconds from Norman. How should pro American nationalists think about Hong Kong? You know, a really easy topic, like China and Hong Kong. So what China is doing is trying to take over Hong Kong completely, trying to subject it to the communist government's authoritarianism, trying to strip their rights of democracy, trying to strip their rights of free speech. It is a power grab, but it is wrong. And by the way, when Hong Kong Hong Kong used to be part of the British Empire, and then when it rejoined China, China agreed to have two separate systems and to protect freedom and democracy in China. China's now changed its mind and it's crushing freedom. There are a lot of consequences. We just saw this week the State Department to issue a report that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China. They did so because of legislation that I wrote. I authored legislation that was included in a bigger bill that directed the State Department to assess whether Hong Kong had real autonomy. We just got the report this week. I talked with the State Department this week right after they issued it. The consequences of that is significant. There are a lot of things that flow from that in terms of number one Treasury Department and sanctions that could easily flow. You know, China wants to use Hong Kong as this sort of free market bastion to get around the restrictions on China, but at the same time they want to trample freedom. There tariffs, the US Trade Representative, the teriffs we have against China, Hong Kong is exempt from that. I think given this determination, we will see I believe a determination from the President in the White House that will result in some very significant legal consequences, basically ending Hong Kong's special status because China is no longer honoring the agreement they had. That's very very good point, because I guess this gets back to what we're talking about with big tech. Some players in the world are trying to have it both ways. They're trying to get certain special protections when actually they're violating the very basis of those protections. Something to look at in China. Then, finally, maybe the most important question that we keep getting recurring here when it comes to criminal justice, what is Ted Cruz's stance on the legalization of marijuana? Leave it to the states, Listen. I have very libertarian instincts, and I have to admit on pot legalization. Over the course of my life, I've had different views at different times. There are times when I was for legalization. Personally, I'm not for legalization now, so if there were a referendum in Texas on it, i'd vote against it. I think there are some significant negative consequences that come from it. But I believe federalism. I believe we got fifty states and reasonable people can differ on this, and I think it's perfectly fine to let the states operate as laboratories of democracy to see what happens. And and so, I mean, listen, when I was when I was a teenager, I smoke pot. I wrote about that in my book. Also, you know, when I was in high school early on in college, I smoke pot a number of times. And it, um, it's not something I hope my kids don't. Thankfully they're nine and twelve. I'm pretty sure they haven't gone there yet. But you know, it was I wasn't much older than they were when when I first tried it, and it's not something I don't think it's good for kids to do. But I think we can leave it to the states and let the states sort out if and when it should be allowed or if not. So what I'm hearing, Senator is we're not going to get one of these Elon Musk Joe Rogan moments where you pull a joint from off camera and start puffing on screen. We're not going to get that. Well, I will say this, if you remember when Bill Clinton was running for office and he said he smoked pot, but he didn't inhale. Yeah, I have to admit I was even then. I was cracking up, laughing, say thinking, so you're saying you didn't do it right, like if you gotta do it actually like I mean, don't screw it up. Like listen, I still smoke cigars. Now you don't. You don't inhale cigars. That's actually not how and you and I have smoked cigars, that's right. But uh and there they're one does not but but no, I will be not be lighting up a spliff in this this particular podcast. It's fair enough. You know you you're You've reminded me when you mentioned Bill Clinton. Those Democrats wasting things so fiscally irresponsible even when it comes down to something such as that much more to get to. But a last we're right of time, Senator. We will have to pick it up again next time. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two jobs, Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.

President Trump signs an executive order to stop big tech's censorship of conservatives. Luckily we can sit down with a guy who has been fighting that very censorship for many years. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, and the guy who's been fighting this for many years, coincidentally is Ted Cruz himself. Senator, nice to see you. Even though we still have to do this virtually digitally and hopefully without any censorship. Well let's hope so, but we'll see a big tech pulls this podcast down. That's right, Senator. I think everybody knows that big tech has been going after conservatives, and probably for a lot of people listening to this right now, they themselves have felt this kind of thing if their account has been suspended for sharing a conservative view. I mean, I think, frankly, it's probably happened to all of us at this point. So we know that there's a problem. But there's been some debate over how you solve the problem. Do you pass some new regulation, do you break them up like their monopoly with antitrust laws, or do you enforce laws that are already on the books. You focused in on something called section two thirty of the Communications Decency Act of nineteen ninety six. The President focused in on that as well in his executive order. Can you tell us what that is and how the argument applies to big tech censorship? Well? Sure, and an answer to your question about what you do you listed several options. By answers are yes, yes, and yes. Let's start with two thirty. What is two thirty? So nineteen ninety six Congress pass a law passes a law called the Communications Decency Act. It was actually mainly focused at trying to regulate Internet porn, but it included a portion in its section two thirty that gave a special immunity from liability for big, big tech companies. And here was the reasoning at the time. Remember this is early, This was right when the Internet is starting. In fact, one thing, Michael, you and I have talked about, I was clerking at the US Supreme Court in nineteen ninety six nineteen ninety seven when one of the first challenges to congressional regulation came up, and I told a story in the book I wrote a few years ago about sitting with a Supreme Court librarian with my boss chief Justice William rynk Quist and was Santra Day O'Connor, and the librarian pulled up hardcore porn to show the justices, and all the law clerks are there and look, Justice O'Connor was in her seventies, and I still remember when they pulled up porn on the screen. Justice O'Connor just went, oh my, And we're all sitting there like the law clerks are in our twenties and we're looking at our shoes feeling really really awkward. And even more awkward is the fact that when they were last students at Stanford, Rinkquist and O'Connor were same class. They actually dated for a while. He was number one in the class, she was number three. So picture this, Michael, forty years from now, you're seventy eighty years old and you're standing in a room with an ex girlfriend from forty fifty years ago watching porn. Imagine how awkward it was for the two of that senator I know and the librarians where I know you've had a lot of strange experiences in politics. I just think I have to stop here for a moment to say that the strangest one I've ever heard from you is watching hardcore porn with Justice Sandrada O'Connor and her ex boyfriend William Brnquist. I think that one is absolutely the top of the list. It was surreal and I can still hear the oh my like echoing twenty plus years later. But this was right at the beginning of the Internet. So you gotta understand justices didn't know what the Internet was. This was librarians saying, okay, this is this internet thing. You type in things. I still remember. In fact, they turned off the filters and to get to porn, they typed in the world cantelope misspelled and cantalope. I use use your imagination, but I guess it pulled up porn and the librarians were trying to show them, Okay, look it's people can stumble into this accidentally all the time. Part of that bill, so it was section two thirty was designed. You had these little Internet startups and the idea was, listen, it's not fair to sue a tech company for something somebody posts on there. Because this is a forum. This is a public square. And so if somebody posts something and you sue the internet company, you could drive them out of business. And it's not the tech company that's speaking, it's whoever the users are. So if you post something, the users should be liable, but not the forums and the and the predicate for this, this is the policy predicate. Everyone understood big Tech what we're going to be what are called neutral public fora In other words, they were going to allow everyone to speak. It was going to be the new marketplace of ideas, and so Section two thirty past in the law. But what it means, you know, Google and Facebook and Twitter they've got an immunity from liability. Nobody else does you, Michael Knowles, if you go on the radio and you to fame someone, you can be sued. Yep, the New York Times. Do you know that Google and Facebook have an immunity from liability? The New York Times doesn't have Fox News, doesn't have everyone else, every American citizen, every American company. It is only big Tech that gets this special immunity from liability. So, Senators, this is the distinction we've heard about a little bit, which is the platform versus the publisher. Right, if you're a neutral platform, you get these protections. But if you're a publisher like the New York Times or the Daily Wire or Fox News or whatever. Then you don't get those protections. And the reason for it, of course, is if you could sue Twitter for every defamatory tweet that has ever been tweeted, Twitter would go out of business in approximately five seconds. That could well be true. But you know the interesting thing. Let's suppose I wrote an op ed that said, with apologies, that Michael Knowles has carnal relations with barnyard animals, and The New York Times published it. And let's assume, and I'm willing to assume for the sake of the podcast, that that is a totally false state, thank you, and that I have no basis that I am willfully being reckless making it up. You as a citizen, could sue. You could sue me for defamation, but you could sue the New York Times because by their choice to publish that, if they publish something that's defamatory about you, sue the hell out of them. I do the same thing on social media. You can't sue the hell out of them. And the reason is that Congress made a determination twenty years ago. These are special public form. Now Here's what's changed. Big Tech has decided and they've decided it only in the last couple of years. They don't want to be neutral anymore. Yeah, they want to be political players. They want to editorialize, they want to silence voices they don't like, and so they're deliberately amplifying lefty voices and silencing conservative voices. And it's okay, fine if they want to do that, fine, but one of the obvious steps is you don't get a special immunity from liability that nobody else gets. We're not going to treat you differently, because if you're going to behave like the New York Times, you should face the same risks the New York Times face. That makes sense. We've heard from some legal scholars on the left or jurists on the left that really Section two thirty shouldn't be applied this way. It's not about political stances and conservatives or abusing this. But but the argument you've just made, and that you've actually been making for quite some time now, is the argument that was made today by Attorney General William Barr. It's the argument that was made by President Trump. So it seems that Section two thirty is the key here to the conservatives argument. To stopping this big tech censorship. Can you just go into a little bit of the political debate or maybe how the Trump administration came to adopt this idea. Look, the simplest thing I have to say about as executive orders, it's about damn time. I have literally been urging this administration to do this for three and a half years. In the last three and a half years, you know, Look, I'm in the Senate. I'm a legislator. I can share hearings. I've shared hearings highlighting the rampant censorship and political bias. I can introduce legislation. I've advocated for legislation. But I'm not the executive. It's the executive that actually has enforcement ability, that that that actually has prosecutors and grand juries and subpoenas and can enforce the law. So so I have in the last three years, I have spent hours meeting with Bill Barr, the Attorney General, on this topic. I have spent hours with Jeff Rose and the Deputy Attorney General on this topic. I've spent hours with Makon del Raheem, the head of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, on this topic. I've spent hours with Joe Simons, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, who I used to work with. I know Joe very well on this topic. I've spent hours with the President, with the Vice President, with the White House Chief of Staff, with the White House Council, urging them. And here's been the problem everybody. It's not quite in their jurisdiction. It doesn't quite fit in the neat So everyone says, yeah, yeah, it's a problem. They've agreed it's a problem. And by the way, Baron Rosen especially agreed it's a real problem. But it doesn't fit neatly in anyone's sort of traditional job description. And so the president Listen, the President has been frustrated and pissed off about this for a long time, but nobody on his team has been willing to do anything about it. Yeah, and so I do find it kind of ironic that Twitter decided to be such jackass. Yet, you know, look, my view has always been in the kind of hierarchy of big tech. The worst is Google and YouTube, which they own. You know, Google, their motto used to be don't be evil. Now their motto is just evil, Yeah, be evil? Right under Google has been Twitter, and then and then under that is Facebook. Facebook's pretty bad too, but there's tiny moments where they're trying. I think Jack Dorsey at Twitter decided, you know what, I'm tired of Google being the worst player on Earth. And so this whole thing was prompted because the idiots decided to fact check the president's tweet on voter fraud. And by the way, number one, they linked to CNN, which is so profoundly wrong on so many issues it's ridiculous. But but Twitter, I think just pissed off the president and thank god they did, because what I assume happened and I don't know this, but I assume he blew his top and told everyone, somebody get off your ass and do something about it, and it motivated them to finally do this. I'm glad they did. I think this is an incredible threat. Big tech censorship is the biggest threat to free speech and to fair elections and democracy. We got in the whole content, and to Facebook's credit, actually, Mark Zuckerberg came out today and he said I don't think that big tech should be the arbiters of truth, basically directly contradicting Jack Dorsey, a Twitter so, I mean, that's a good move. You know, just what do we think the conclusion of this will be. It seems that the threat would be to get Twitter to back off, to not interfere in the presidential election, to not put their thumb on the scales of how information moves around the Internet. If they don't back off, are we looking at a world in which Twitter really does lose its protections and Twitter goes down? Look that I hope so, although listen, I say I hope so. But I love Twitter. Twitter is a vehicle to engage in public debates, to go back and forth. Twitter as a neutral public forum actually works quite well. It's only recently that they decided to let their crazy lefty go. And actually, Michael, I'll tell you Zuckerberg story. Yeah. So, as you know, Zuckerberg testified in front of the Senate. A lot of us pounded it. He and I went back and forth in a very public exchange when he was testifying. Well, last year, Zuckerberg came to DC and reached out to my office and asked if I'd be willing to sit down and get together. Ken I had dinner together, and it was you know, it was kind of interesting. We thought about actually going to a restaurant. But to be honest, if Mark Zuckerberg and I sat down at a restaurant in DC, people would lose their minds. I mean, I mean, I think they'd started running around screaming and lighting their hair on fire. So we didn't do it in a restaurant. We did it at somebody's house and it was just it was Zuckerberg and me, and it was a couple of people on my staff, a couple of people in his staff. So it was a very small dinner and it was like three hours long, and it was actually, Look, it was a lot of fun. Listen, Zuckerberg comes across as he's a smart, geeky techie, and I'll give him some credit. Look, he's actually trying to wrestle through these issues. But look, and to be honest, we went round and round and round on just what I was advocating was, Look, how about some basic free speech. How about just let the marketplace of ideas? If you disagree with someone, lets something like, let people argue. Trump tweets all sorts of things I disagree with. I don't think the answer is to let some Silicon Valley billionaire silence him. If you disagree with him, say it, disagree with him, but Zuckerberg is trying. He actually, shortly after the dinner I had with him, he gave a speech I think it was a Georgetown maybe somewhere in DC, advocating principles of free speech. Now, look, Facebook has been bumpy on this, yeah, but compared to Twitter and Google, they've been much much better. And you can see them. Twitter doesn't care anymore. And and by the way, YouTube, Yeah, CEO of YouTube came by my office to talk about this, and her attitude was essentially well, I can't even say it, but it was. It was screw it. Although although it said more graphically than that yikes. Um, it was simply we had power and will use power. And you know what, she actually wanted credit because she said, well, you know, people on the left want us to completely silence people were so we're talking about Stephen Crowder as a friend of ours, um comedian, and and and YouTube demonetized him. Boy, talk about an Norwellian word. We will take away all your money. CEO wanted she wanted props because she said, well, we still allow him to post. We didn't. We didn't silence him altogether, like what the hell are you talking? Okay, And she's like, well, that's what the people that the left wanted us to do. I said, listen, the calls for censorship are only coming from the crazy leftists. I'm not asking you to silence Bernie Sanders right or AOC. God knows, they can prattle on forever. But let them talk. Their ideas are so bad, we'll engage with them on substance. Yep. But I am glad the administration has jumped in. By the way, there are other things they can do, and a trust agencies both DIGNFTC have been engaged in investigations. These are monopolies and their abusing monopoly power. Something else they can do that's in the executive Order. That's important. It's not just Section two thirty, but it's it's deceptive trade practices. I'm really glad the order tells the Attorney General to work with the state attorneys general. I've also talked at length with a Texas attorney general who's leading a state lawsuits about these deceptive practices. And Bill bar today in the Oval Office, he said it well, and actually he reflected a lot of what he and I talked about over breakfast. He said, Listen, these tech companies have built their platforms on a lie. They tell people if you come to our platform, you can speak, and if you sign up to follow someone, you watch them, you can see what they post, and if they sign up to follow you, they can see what you post. That's the fundamental promise, and that is a lie. We know Twitter shadow bands if they don't like you. People who say I want to follow to Michael Knowles, I care what Michael Knowles has to say. Twitter says no, no, no no, no, no, no no, We're just going to silently make it go away. That is a lie. That is fraud. And I'm glad this executive order takes a step towards real legal liability for defrauding consumers, which is what big tech is doing. That's a big key to this whole issue is the dishonesty, is the fraud, is the very very possible, and it seems likely violation of these laws. So it's very good. We'll see what happens from it. I mean sort of. The ball now is in the court of big tech. We'll see how they react to it. I want to get your opinion on something by the way directly related to this social media marketplace, which is a few incidents that have popped up over the last week or so, and they've really gained national attention because of social media. The most prominent one would be the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The police officer who arrested this man. You've got a white officer, black perpetrator, I suppose, or alleged perpetrator, and the suspect ends up dead. That guy's got his knee on his neck. I mean, it looks really bad. And then this spreads on social media. Now there are riots erupting around the country, not even just in Minneapolis. Also in Los Angeles there is looting going on. I'd like to get your perspective on that video, from both a social media perspective, a social perspective, and also from the perspective of well, what happened in Minneapolis was horrific, it was wrong. I've watched that video and lest at anytime you have an incident with police, sometimes the social media mob is quick to demonize the police officer, and I've long advocated we should wait for the facts to play out. That being said, I watched that video and you had a man in handcuffs on his face and the pavement with an officer's knee in the back of his neck pushing it into the pavement. He's gasping for breath, he's pleading that he can't breathe, and the officer continues for eight minutes. That is, on the face of it, police brutality, and anyone who believes in liberty should not want to see authoritarianism and an authority abuse. The police officer has been fired and the Department of Justice is open an investigation of civil rights investigation. I'm glad they have watching. That pisses me off. And by the way, you know, the social media mob is quick to paint this as far as they're concerned, that was Donald Trump with his knee on the back of the neck. Let me be clear, this is Minneapolis, Minnesota. You've got a democratic mayor, you've got a democratic governor, you've got democratic senators that this is bright blue. And we keep seeing these things happen, this abusive power, often in democratic strongholds. Were people that claim to be interested in defending people's rights. They're not doing a good job of it, right. I mean that I think a little bit of perspective here is key, and it's why it's so good to get your opinion on this is you're not only somebody with a Twitter account, but you also happen to know quite a bit about the way the criminal justice system works, having worked in it for a long time. I think that perspective really helps. We saw a less tragic, much more frivolous example of this also just a few days earlier, which was this altercation that happened in Central Park. There was a man talking to this woman and basically said, put your dog on a leash. She said no. The man, for some reason had dog treats in his bag just for this sort of occasion when people don't know their dogs on a leash. As he lures them away with the treats. Then this woman sort of lost her temper and had a little bit of an emotional meltdown, and then he started filming it. And you know what was the end result of this. Nothing happened. I mean, after the videos went public, then this woman lost her job and lost her dog. But in the moment itself, it seemed a little bit like much much ado about nothing. The social media mob is what made it so much worse, so much more sensational. Is that is there a world in which we should perhaps hope that maybe social media takes it down a few notches because of this sort of emotion that it can gin up. Yeah, look, I gotta say I have a little bit different take on it. There's there's no doubt that that incident showed the power of social media and that that an iPhone video can suddenly get millions of views all across the world. Um, I have to admit the woman who involved, who was involved, her behavior was atrocious, of course. Yeah. Um, this was an individual, an African American individual who was there bird watching, who at least on the video we saw, didn't do anything remotely threatening to her. And to watch her be willing to listen, making a false accusation, yep, deliberately is an act of violence. And and and when when when this woman Amy Cooper, picks up her phone and calls nine one one and she says, an African American man is physically threatening me and my dog, and she she calls in what, by all appearances, is a totally false crime report, and it's a dangerous crime report. Listen, if you call the police and say someone is physically threatening me. You are asking for law enforcement to show up with guns, and the very real consequence of that could be that the person you're wrongly accusing gets shot and killed. Listen, when officers arrived to an assault in progress, that they there is a risk of something going really wrong. And she was in a very real sense in dangering his life. Now, I gotta say the fact that he had dog treats, it was trying to feed her dog. If I'm walking my dog, stay the hell away from my dog and don't get him dog treats. That that's a little out there. But the attitude she expressed were clearly racist. They were clearly wrong. And and by the way, the same point I made about Minneapolis holds here. You saw the Twitter mob saying, oh this is this is the age of Donald Trump. They they blamed Donald Trump for it. Well, then the story comes out that, to the shock of nobody, she's apparently a liberal Democratic donor who's donated to Brocco bomb At, a Pete buddhag Edge and a John Kerry, Right, and of course she is. But you know, to be honest, well, look, actually there is racism on both sides of the aisle. But the left, many on the left love to jump on a soapbox and moralize that's right. And you bring up such a great point, because we shouldn't downplay and in the instance in Central Park, we shouldn't downplay the woman's atrocious behavior just because you point out that there's more to the story, for instance, than you know, she's totally wrong and he's totally right. I mean, maybe some of his behavior was a little odd too, Maybe it doesn't justify her behavior the same thing. Obviously, you can look at what is pretty clearly police brutality in Minneapolis and condemn that as being terrible and not therefore start defending looting and burning down businesses. You know, it seems that there's this knee jerk reaction on social media where we immediately have to take a side and say one person was totally wrong, one person was totally right, when really the situations are much more complex than that, and maybe a little bit of perspective on the legal side, on the policing side, on the social side can help us to understand those things well. And listen, police brutality and it undermines not that just the community, but it undermines law enforcement as well. Right, I'm blessed to know a lot of men and women who are law enforcement officers, and they feel that whenever something happens, they the mob immediately assumes they're at fault. And there are instances a lot of instances where an officer is scared for his life and is protecting himself. And it's one thing I saw. I watch the video, and sometimes these videos don't capture everything that happened. There may have been something that happened before that's not on it. So you have to view all of this with skepticism. And so there are times when an officer has to use physical force and serious force to subdue a dangerous individual. What made this video so damning is it at last eight minutes and the guy is in handcuffs and his face is there, and he's gasping for breath and he's pleading saying I can't and and this officer doesn't do anything other than keep the knee pressing into his neck. That was grotesque and wrong, particularly there are multiple other officers around. It's very hard to look at that video and suggest there was any reason that officer believed was afraid for his safety as compared to just being brutalizing someone who was already immobilized. And that is not how law enforcement should operate, and that's how not how they usually do. And it's why it's good that the Department of Justice is looking into this, and I very much hope justice is served here. That's right, because the effect of this ultimately is going to be to undermine our faith in these very institutions that would be maintaining law in order, maintaining civil society. It is far wider reaching consequences than many many would admit. Before we go, we got to get to a little bit of mail bag. First question, you know, a really easy one to I'm sure you can answer this in ten or twenty seconds from Norman. How should pro American nationalists think about Hong Kong? You know, a really easy topic, like China and Hong Kong. So what China is doing is trying to take over Hong Kong completely, trying to subject it to the communist government's authoritarianism, trying to strip their rights of democracy, trying to strip their rights of free speech. It is a power grab, but it is wrong. And by the way, when Hong Kong Hong Kong used to be part of the British Empire, and then when it rejoined China, China agreed to have two separate systems and to protect freedom and democracy in China. China's now changed its mind and it's crushing freedom. There are a lot of consequences. We just saw this week the State Department to issue a report that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China. They did so because of legislation that I wrote. I authored legislation that was included in a bigger bill that directed the State Department to assess whether Hong Kong had real autonomy. We just got the report this week. I talked with the State Department this week right after they issued it. The consequences of that is significant. There are a lot of things that flow from that in terms of number one Treasury Department and sanctions that could easily flow. You know, China wants to use Hong Kong as this sort of free market bastion to get around the restrictions on China, but at the same time they want to trample freedom. There tariffs, the US Trade Representative, the teriffs we have against China, Hong Kong is exempt from that. I think given this determination, we will see I believe a determination from the President in the White House that will result in some very significant legal consequences, basically ending Hong Kong's special status because China is no longer honoring the agreement they had. That's very very good point, because I guess this gets back to what we're talking about with big tech. Some players in the world are trying to have it both ways. They're trying to get certain special protections when actually they're violating the very basis of those protections. Something to look at in China. Then, finally, maybe the most important question that we keep getting recurring here when it comes to criminal justice, what is Ted Cruz's stance on the legalization of marijuana? Leave it to the states, Listen. I have very libertarian instincts, and I have to admit on pot legalization. Over the course of my life, I've had different views at different times. There are times when I was for legalization. Personally, I'm not for legalization now, so if there were a referendum in Texas on it, i'd vote against it. I think there are some significant negative consequences that come from it. But I believe federalism. I believe we got fifty states and reasonable people can differ on this, and I think it's perfectly fine to let the states operate as laboratories of democracy to see what happens. And and so, I mean, listen, when I was when I was a teenager, I smoke pot. I wrote about that in my book. Also, you know, when I was in high school early on in college, I smoke pot a number of times. And it, um, it's not something I hope my kids don't. Thankfully they're nine and twelve. I'm pretty sure they haven't gone there yet. But you know, it was I wasn't much older than they were when when I first tried it, and it's not something I don't think it's good for kids to do. But I think we can leave it to the states and let the states sort out if and when it should be allowed or if not. So what I'm hearing, Senator is we're not going to get one of these Elon Musk Joe Rogan moments where you pull a joint from off camera and start puffing on screen. We're not going to get that. Well, I will say this, if you remember when Bill Clinton was running for office and he said he smoked pot, but he didn't inhale. Yeah, I have to admit I was even then. I was cracking up, laughing, say thinking, so you're saying you didn't do it right, like if you gotta do it actually like I mean, don't screw it up. Like listen, I still smoke cigars. Now you don't. You don't inhale cigars. That's actually not how and you and I have smoked cigars, that's right. But uh and there they're one does not but but no, I will be not be lighting up a spliff in this this particular podcast. It's fair enough. You know you you're You've reminded me when you mentioned Bill Clinton. Those Democrats wasting things so fiscally irresponsible even when it comes down to something such as that much more to get to. But a last we're right of time, Senator. We will have to pick it up again next time. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two jobs, Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.