Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Wel come, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben
Ferguson with you. And you guys know if you listen
to show regularly, that the Sinner and I do this
show around his Senate schedule, especially when it comes to
his official duties. Well, if you are looking at my
clock right now, it's about two in the morning, and
(00:21):
the Senator's flight, which was obviously extremely late, meant that
at this point we still couldn't do the show. Now
here's the good news. We have two conversations that Senator
Cruz and I had that deal with big tech and
also silencing of conservatives that I'm going to play for you.
But this is the part I love about doing this show.
(00:43):
We do the show all times, day and night, and
then sometimes the flights just don't cooperate, even in the
early am hours. So now you understand what's going on.
Don't worry. We'll have your weekend review for you tomorrow
as well. But these are two important topics that I
want you to hear about. And there are a lot
(01:05):
going on in DC, specifically around the issue of big
tech and what they're doing to silence conservatives. But first,
there are so many Verdict listeners that have been asking
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if CJ dot org to give. Now center. Big Tech
is obviously at a massive influence over public opinion in
this country. We saw a recent report that came out
just on TikTok, for example, where they were forty five
to one stories that were pro Palastinian pro Hamas over Israel.
(03:14):
That's one example of how they've really been able to
shape public opinion, especially with young people and the riots
and the chaos we're witnessing on college campuses right now.
But there's also something else that's happened with big tech.
I've been a victim of it. I spoke out again
against big tech a few years ago at a SEAPAC convention,
and before I landed home. After I spoke out about
(03:36):
big tech, specifically Facebook, my accounts were shut down they
have never worked the same way as they did before
the reach has disappeared. I've witnessed it, and many other
conservative leaders out there are going through the same things.
And it always seems to happen center right during a
(03:56):
big election cycle, where the Democrats get a free flow
of information out and conservatives get hammered and silenced.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, that's exactly right. So I started last year as
the ranking member on the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science,
and Transportation, and from that position as the ranking member,
which means the senior Republican on that committee, I launched
an investigation into the abuse of power from big tech,
and this past week we put out a major report.
The report is entitled Weaponizing Terms of Service. How online
(04:26):
service providers use broad policies to silence conservatives. Now, there
are a lot of instances that we know about that
get a lot of publicity. We know, for example, that Twitter,
before Elon Musk purchased them, suspended the account of the
Babylon be for making a joke about a Biden administration official.
We know that both Facebook and Twitter suppressed stories about
(04:49):
Hudter Biden's laptop before the twenty twenty election. We know
that Facebook removed posts suggesting that COVID nineteen originated in
a Wuhan lab we talked about at length on this podcast,
and a theory that has now been confirmed both by
the Federal Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(05:09):
We know that YouTube took down a March twenty twenty
one video of a panel discussion with Florida Governor Ron
de Santis, during which he disputed claims that children needed
to wear face masks. We know that YouTube, also, which
is owned by Google, blocked access to a November twenty
twenty three episode of this podcast Verdict, because we were
(05:32):
criticizing the corporate media's favorable coverage of hamas, and YouTube
deemed okay, you must be an adult to see what
is on the network news. We also know in twenty
twenty two, DirectTV dropped one America news network, and less
than a year after Democrat leaders in Congress sent a
letter to the CEO calling on them to stop carrying
(05:54):
the network. We also know they did the same thing
to Newsmax. Now I lit Direct TV up and they
ended up bringing Newsmax back. We also know that Into
it at the direction of its banking partners, refuse to
provide payment processing and payroll services to gun manufacturers and sellers.
(06:14):
And we know that JP Morgan Chase closed the account
of the National Committee of Religious Freedom, which was created
by former State Department Ambassador at Large for International Religious
Freedom and former US Senator Sam Brownback. We know that
gofund me block the release of ten million dollars of
donations to the Canadian Trucker's Freedom Convoy. We've seen that
(06:38):
happen over and over and over again. Well, what this
report does is it lays out an entirely new area
of discrimination, and it is using web based products and
services online service providers to ban conservative organizations from using
their technology, and it's going after the infrastructure that is
(07:01):
needed to communicate. And in fact, this investigation reveals that
online service providers are following a playbook for silencing conservatives
that leftist organizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which
is wildly left wing and hates conservatives, and the Anti
Defamation League the ADL, they together put together this strategy,
(07:24):
this playbook to quote remove infrastructure services that conservative organizations
need to operate. And so I'm going to describe that
playbook and what they're doing in particular.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
When you look at their playbook and this amount of influence,
I mean, this can change and alter certainly an election cycle.
It can certainly, I would argue, change a presidential election
as well. And that's the reason why they're doing this.
When you think about, you know, you've got millions of
people that follow you Facebook. I've got you know, over
(07:58):
a million. But if you turn off and throttle either
one of us, then the reach that we have compared
to the left, it just disappears. It's the old saying,
right if a big tree falls in the forest and
no one's around and it make a sound, And that's
exactly what they did. But it wasn't just to one
or two people. They were doing this to hundreds of
(08:20):
top conservative voices that people look to for their opinions,
specifically when it comes to election your issues.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So that's exactly right. And what this report focuses on
is it uses a couple of key examples. It uses
number one slacks removal of libs of TikTok's workspace. It
focuses on event rights removal of event pages for events
related to Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman documentary, as
well as an event where Riley Gaines was scheduled to speak,
(08:51):
and it focuses on Bontera's termination of its relationship with
Independent Women's Forum, which deprived that organization of major nonprofit
technology service provider services and all of this follows. There
was a report that was put out by the Anti
Defamation League and it is called Bad Gateway How deplatforming
(09:13):
effects extremist websites And here's what the ADL recommended. It says,
quote deplatforming websites removing infrastructure services they need to operate,
such as website hosting, can reduce the spread and reach
of extremism and hate online. But when does deplatforming succeed?
And here's what ADL explained quote. This report shows that
(09:36):
deplatforming can decrease the popularity of extremist websites, especially when
done without warning and they go through We learned four
important lessons about how deplatforming affects extremist websites, by which
they mean anything right of center. Number one, it can
cause popularity rankings to decrease immediately. Number two, it may
(10:00):
take users a long time to return to the website.
Sometimes the website never regains its previous popularity.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Bingo.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Number three unexpected and unexpected as key. Unexpected deplatforming makes
it take longer for the website to regain its previous
popularity levels. And number four Replicating deplatform services such as discussions,
discussion forums or live streaming video products on a standalone
website presents significant challenges, including higher costs and smaller audiences.
(10:37):
Now I want to go into a little bit more.
This is what the ADL report. It has an entire
section that says what is deplatforming? And by the way,
the corporate media insists when we talk about deplatforming that
we're making it up. Well, if you actually read the blueprint,
they are very explicit. The left is explicit. They want
to silence use. So let me read from this ADL
(10:58):
report quote. There are three main categories of infrastructure that
keep websites running. Domain registrars, web hosting companies, and security
protection companies. Number one, the website must be able to
register and keep a domain name. A domain name such
as Google dot com or ADL dot org is how
(11:21):
visitors find a site. If a website is removed from
domain name services, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible,
to find Number two Web hosting companies and content distribution
networks provide digital storage space for all the files, pictures, videos,
and software that make up the content of a website.
(11:44):
When a website loses its hosting provider, the site's content disappears.
Losing a CDN a content distribution network can cause slow
service for high traffic sites. And number three, a third
category of infrastructure includes companies that protect websites from external
(12:04):
security risks such as distributed denial of service d DOS attacks.
DDoS attacks flood a website with fake traffic to overwhelm it,
rendering it unable to answer normal user requests. If an
infrastructure company, such as a network security firm cloud fare,
refuses to provide DDoS protection to a vulnerable website, it
(12:28):
is vulnerable to being flooded with traffic, rendering it inaccessible.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So you look at this what we found out and
what you just went through. The question is how is
it that these companies, and I'm specifically referring to big
tech are allowed to get away with this and do
this to many people that they're in business with. I
(12:54):
use myself as the example again because I've experienced this.
When you went into business and I felt like I
was in business with Facebook. They said, advertise with us, right, share,
advertise your show, advertise your content, boost your content, spend
money with us, and we're going to help you grow
an audience and it'll be good for everyone. And then
all of a sudden they just shut you down and
(13:16):
they were able to walk away and just say, oh, well,
you violated our terms of service, or you did this,
or you posted too many things that liberals posted as
saying they were factually incorrect. The fact checkers came out
right the liberals on the left. They were fact checking
and putting things against conservatives. So they lose their reach,
lose their ability to boose posts, lose their ability to advertise.
(13:37):
And it was all being done to clearly influence public opinion,
and yet they've gotten away with it. So what's next.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Well, with this report focuses on many of the deep
platforming steps by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, they're very public.
What this report focuses on as the ones that are
not public, which is the back office infrastructure. Let's take
for example, Slack, which is used for communication for many
online organizations and companies. Slack canceled libs of TikTok's workspace
(14:11):
for violating its terms of service and the terms of
service for prohibit users from quote engaging activity that incites
or encourages violence or hatred towards it against individuals or groups.
Slack determined that Libs of TikTok violated this policy based
on three social media posts concerning quote gender affirming, hysterectomies,
(14:33):
and all age drag shows. Now here's the interesting thing.
Slack shut down Libs of TikTok's worksplace without any warning,
without any explanation as to how it is violated slacks policy,
and Slack's action caused Libs of TikTok to effectively lose
its use of Slax communications and forced it to rely
entirely on cell phones to run its business. Now, listen
(14:57):
to this quote, which is fascinating, Slack told the Commerce
Committee told my investigation quote. What makes Libs of TikTok's
posts problematic is that Libs of TikTok has a specific audience,
and they are taking this information and posting it to
that specific audience so that everyone in that audience sees
(15:18):
it at the same time. In other words, they didn't
even find objections with what Libs of TikTok was posting.
What they were mad at is conservatives were reading it
and that was enough reason to deplatform libs TikTok.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
So when you shut down a business in essence the
way they did, is there any real an instant relief
for libs of TikTok or others or is this one
of those they're too big to fail? Right? These companies
are too big, they're protected and you're the menion and
just deal with it. And if you're in, who cares
if your life work is destroyed in thirty seconds because
(15:53):
they shut it off.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
So right now there is not immediate relief. You could
presumably file a breach of contract case. The biggest relief
and the reason I did this report is just sunshine.
They're doing this in the dark, They're doing this without scrutiny.
There is right now no federal law that this is prohibited.
I'll give you another example. Event Bright, which we focus
is on. Event Bright canceled pages for events hosted by
(16:17):
college Republican clubs concerning Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman? Film?
And it also canceled pages for an event featuring swimmer
Riley Gaines for violating its terms of service. Now critically,
no one involved in the decision. This is what they told.
The committee watched the movie What Is a Woman, so
(16:39):
they never saw it, and they couldn't identify anything objectionable
in the trailer, So they just didn't like the topic,
so they decided to take it down. They relied instead
on Matt Walsh's statements about quote gender affirming surgeries, pronouns,
and is Johnny the Walris Children's book to reach the conclusion. Likewise,
(16:59):
event Bright de that Riley gains His event violated its
policy based on her social media post about biological men
competing women's sports. They shut down the event page without
any warning, without any explanation as to how they violated
this policy, without any way to fix it, and their
actions ruined advertisements that included QR coach for the event pages.
(17:22):
So you know, a lot had been done to put
out the codes to say hey, come to this event,
and they forced the event organizers to quickly pivot to
a new method of providing tickets. And the committee asked
event Bright whether Gaines's statements. On October tenth, twenty twenty three,
she posted on Twitter quote real women lack a y chromosome,
(17:47):
and we asked whether that violates event Bright's policy. Event
Bright responded that quote the post speaks for itself, so
they needn't answer that. How dare you say that someone
with a Y chromosome is not a woman. We don't
even need to dispute it. We have the power to
shut it down.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
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Speaker 3 (18:46):
Now.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The number one reason why people don't switch cell phone
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(20:13):
you shine light on this and you talk about this
is really being done in darkness and we need to
we need to shine light on it. Was there any
nervousness from those that you're questioning? I want to use
the word remorse, but I can't imagine they're remorseful. But
is it going to at least make them pause before
(20:36):
they do it again?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Or I'll ask you, Ben, have you seen this on CNN?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Have you seen it on an ABC, NBCCBSMSNBC nowhere? Have
you read it? You read it in the New York Times?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
No, the corporate media will not cover. I'll give another example.
So Bonterra, which provides nonprofit management services, so it's back office,
but it's incredibly important and there are very few providers
of this. They denied those services to Independent Women's Forum,
which is a conservative organization that is focused on advancing
women's rights, and Bontera concluded that it violated its policies,
(21:12):
which require customers to agree to refrain from advocacy denying
quote LGBTQ rights or denying a woman's right to reproductive choice.
Or denying racial justice or denying climate change, and their
policies also prohibit customers from quote promoting, encouraging, or facilitating
hate speech, violence, discrimination based on race, color, sexual orientation,
(21:36):
marital status, gender, or identity expression. Bonterra notified Independent Women's
Form of its decision not to renew their contract without
any explanation of how the organization violated this policy. As
a result, Independent Women's Forum had to quickly move off
Bonterra's platform and obtain a replacement services provider. Bontera told
(21:56):
the committee that Independent Women's Forum violated its true terms
of service because the organization quote works to restrict the
rights of the LGBTQ community. Bontera could not explain exactly
how the group was working to restrict LGBTQ rights, but
generally pointed to Independent women forums advocacy on issues like
(22:18):
protecting women's sports and women's spaces. So, if you actually
think that girls should compete in girls sports, that is
of view that is not acceptable, and you will be
denied online basic infrastructure from monopoly and near monopoly providers.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The amount of arrogance that we see now from these companies,
you've witnessed it now firsthand. Tells you they feel like
they are protected by the current regime. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
You are exactly right. And if you look at at
event Bright for example, let's go back to Riley Gains.
So Riley Gains, they shut her down because they disagree
read about not her event, but about some posts that
she had put out. What they did not object to
(23:11):
was an event that we identified entitled Gaza and the
Struggle for Palestine. Now, that event was flagged by event
writes algorithm, and it was reviewed by its trust and
safety team, but it determined that that event did not
violate its hateful Events policy in an October ninth, twenty
(23:32):
twenty three statements. So two days off after October seventh,
here's what the event sponsored the Palestinian American organization Networks said.
It called the October seventh attack quote self defense measures
and said that quote Israel bears the full responsibility for
those attacks, and declared that quote the Palestinian people have
(23:52):
the right to defend themselves and to fight the occupation
with all means available. We salute the steadfastness of the
Palaceian people in its resistance. So understand saluting the mass
murder of twelve hundred people. The raping of women and girls,
that does not violate their hateful speech policy, But saying
(24:15):
that girls exist that does. Saying that men should not
compete against women and women's sports that does. That is
the utter hypocrisy and double standards that allows. By the way,
event Bright has also allowed numerous quote stop Cop City
(24:36):
events which support violent protesters who oppose the building of
a police and firefighter training facility. Likewise, event Bright created
a map of Black Lives Matter protests, many of which
turn violent, to help users find them. So, in other words,
(24:57):
actual events that produce violence, that end up killing people,
that burn shops, that firebomb cars, those are not deemed
hateful and violent. But if you say that women exists,
you must be deplatformed.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
We talked about the media giving them cover. I expect
some in the media to be liberal hacks, right, but
this brings up a big issue that we need to
talk about with NPR. The new CEO of NPR is
someone that is paid by US taxpayers and someone who
has described the First Amendment as the number one challenge
(25:37):
she faces. Our tax dollars are going to a CEO
who's running INPR National Public Radio saying the First Amendment
really seems to get in her way. Really, that's where
money is going. Well.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Unfortunately, NPR has been profoundly corrupted, and it's been made
worse by hiring a CEO who is a brazen, blatant,
unapology jic, radical leftist, and she doesn't pretend to be
unbiased at all. Now, we discussed in a previous podcast
couple of weeks ago the Bombshell Report from Uri Berliner.
(26:12):
Uri Berliner was a twenty five year NPR employee and
was the former business editor of NPR, and he wrote
an April ninth essay in The Free Press, which resulted
in NPR suspending him for publishing how's that for free speech?
If you criticize us, you're out of here and you're
all fine, and ultimately led to his resignation. So he's gone.
(26:34):
This essay cost him his job, but he laid out
the incredible bias at NPR and the shift at NPR. So,
for example, he laid out in twenty eleven, which was
not that long ago, NPR's audience was twenty six percent conservative,
twenty three percent middle of the road, and thirty seven
percent liberal, so it leaned left. But not dramatically, so
(26:57):
by twenty twenty three those numbers that shifteddically. It was now,
instead of thirty seven percent liberal, it was sixty seven
percent liberal, and instead of twenty six percent conservative, it
was only eleven percent conservative. And mister Berliner laid out
details of how they would stifle stories that were inconvenient
(27:19):
to liberals. They would amplify stories like the Russia collusion story,
even if they were not supported by the facts. He
outlined at great length how NPR had no interest in
being impartial, being unbiased. And then you take in the
wake of this and the wake of what should be
(27:40):
real concern of Hey, we're national public radio. We're supposed
to be nonpartisan. We're supposed to be down the middle. Now, look,
I for one have serious doubts why the taxpayer should
fund any radio station. I think there are plenty of
for profit radio stations. I don't know why the government
should coursively tax you to pay for yet another radio station.
(28:02):
But I'll tell you what. Even if there's an argument
they should do so for generic news that somehow there's
not a market demand for, there is no argument I
know of that they should do so only for left
wing propaganda and the newly appointed CEO Catherine Marr has
been a hard partisan her whole life. So, for example,
(28:23):
in twenty twenty, Mar referred to President Donald Trump as
a quote deranged racist sociopath. Well, then I'm confident her
coverage of Donald Trump will be fair as long as
she introduces him as a deranged, racist sociopath every time
he's covered.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
How do you even get that job? And I'm being serious,
if you're National Public radio, how does that automatically disqualify
you from that position as soon as they see that quote?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, and by the way, that's not an outlier. In
twenty twenty one, she celebrated trump banishment from social media,
referring to him as a fascist. So she loves censorship, Okay,
the former president of the United States elected by the
American people. I'm thrilled that he's being silenced because I
dislike his politics and I think he's a fascist. In
(29:15):
May of twenty twenty, right in the middle of the
George Floyd riots, Mar suggested that looting represented a form
of reparative justice for historic wrongs, and she remarked how
white silence is tantamount to complicity and violence. She's also
(29:37):
posted repeatedly in support of Democrat politicians including Hillary Clinton,
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden. Now listen, as
a private citizen, she has a right to be an
angry left wing radical and a hard Democrat partisan. But
(29:58):
explain to me why on earth the American taxpayers should
fund her partisan propaganda.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, and yet that's exactly why she probably got the job,
because they're like, oh, perfect, You're going to keep pushing
this propaganda out there full speed ahead. I want to
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as well. That's preborn dot com slash verdict. Senator, if
(31:57):
you are at NPR, can you imagine if you are
left the lefty how much freedom I think it would
make you feel like you had to then go out
there and continue to push propaganda on the American people.
If this is your CEO, I mean it's a license
to basically go all in on liberal propaganda at the
taxpayer's expense.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Now, that is exactly right. And I've got to say listen.
As you know, I'm the ranking member on the Senate
Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and part of my
responsibility in that role, we've got jurisdiction over about forty
percent of the US economy, and part of my responsibility
is oversighted. I can tell you that I am actively
(32:40):
engaging in oversight right now, calling on NPR to explain,
to explain why they're willing to put in place a
hard left wing activist, not a neutral journalist, but someone
who is biased, who is who is an active supporter
of sensorship, to violence, to silence the views she disagrees with.
(33:05):
Why NPR believes that that is an appropriate leader for
their institution.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, that's a really great point.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And listen, don't necessarily take our words for it. I
want you to listen to Catherine Maher in her own words,
because it's going to show just how radical she is.
And I want to play a couple of clips. Let's
start with her explaining that, in her view, the number
one challenge that she faces is the First Amendment of
the Constitution. Let's play that clip.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
The number one challenge here that we see is, of course,
the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly
robust protection of rights, and that is a protection of
rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very
important that platforms have those rights to be able to
regulate what kind of content they want on their sites,
but it also means that it is a little bit
(33:52):
tricky to really address some of the real challenges of
where does bad information come from and sort of the
influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I mean, it's amazing center. This is the woman running MPR,
and I guess this is almost like the best thing
you can put on your resume, right, You're like, hey,
I think the First Amendment's a real problem. It's like perfect,
We'd love to hire you at MPR.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, And she actually says, well, the First Amendment is
really important for platforms, but then what she describes as
their First Amendment right is for their ability to censor
and silence things they disagree with. So to her mind,
what she cares about is the ability if there's a
view that is right a center. As far as she's concerned,
the First Amendment is all about silencing those views. There
(34:35):
can be no dissent, all right. I want you to
listen to another clip. This is a Ted talk where
she's discussing truth when she was at Wikipedia, and somehow
she has a different view of truth than I think
you and I might have. Give a listen.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
But the hard things, the places where we are prone
to disagreement, say politics and religion, Well, as it turns out,
not only does Wikipedia's model work there, it actually works
really well because in our normal lives, these contentious conversations
tend to rrupt or disagreement about what the truth actually is.
(35:10):
But the people who write these articles, they're not focused
on the truth. They're focused on something else, which is
the best of what we can know right now. And
after seven years of working with these brilliant folks, I've
come to believe that they are onto something that perhaps,
for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking
(35:35):
to convince others of the truth might not be the
right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the
truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way
of finding common ground and getting things done. Now, that
is not to say that the truth doesn't exist nor
(35:58):
is it to say that the truth is and important. Clearly,
the search for the truth has led us to do
great things, to learn great things. But I think if
I were to really ask you to think about this,
one of the things that we could all acknowledge is
that part of the reason we have such glorious chronicles
(36:21):
to the human experience in all forms of culture is
because we acknowledge there are many different truths. And so
in the spirit of that, I'm certain that the truth
exists for you and probably for the person sitting next
to you, But this may not be the same truth.
This is because the truth of the matter is very
(36:43):
often for many people. What happens when we merge facts
about the world with our beliefs about the world. So
we all have different truths. They're based on things like
where we come from, how we were raised, and how
other people perceive us.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
What utter garbage? Like every word of that. You want
an indictment of the modern left. You want an indictment
of the idiocy of media. You want an indictment of
the academic world. You want an indictment of big tech.
Good God, what utter garbage? Truth doesn't exist? George or
Well is spinning in his grave and laughing at the
same time. Two plus two doesn't equal four, it equals
(37:21):
five because we say it is there is no truth.
Listen to that quote. Our reverence for the truth might
be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding
common ground and getting things done. But don't worry. This
is only for things that don't matter, the contentious issues.
What does she identify politics and religion? When it comes
to politics and religion, look, Jesus Christ said, I am
the way the truth in the life. But no, no, no, no, no,
(37:43):
no no, don't have reverence for truth. We're not interested
in that. We are interested in set aside of truth.
That can be your truth, my truth. Everyone has a truth.
Maybe for you, two plus two is five? What utter garbage?
Speaker 3 (37:57):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
A journalist is supposed to be interested in the truth.
Do you have perfect truth?
Speaker 3 (38:01):
No?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Do you have perfect knowledge? No? But you should get
damn close to it. You should be trying to get
to the truth. Remember what journalists used to learn? Who? What, when?
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Where? How?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Why?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Like?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
What happened? What are the facts? Well? No, no, no, not
according to her. According to to her, there are no facts.
There is no truth. It's your truth, it's my truth,
and my truth from Catherine Marr's perspective is as a
left wing partisan, whatever the orthodoxy is, and we will
silence views that disagree. And the First Amendment is a pesky,
(38:30):
pesky barrier. All right, I want to play one more clip. Yeah,
one more clip where she's describing what she did at Wikipedia.
Listen to this third clip.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I started by talking about the idea of free and
open as some of our founding principles sort of free
and open source coming from me to the open source community. Well,
I have come to the opinion and the perspective that
free and open was a way of looking at the
world that was inherently limited relative to what we were
trying to achieve. Free and open has the best of intentionality,
(39:02):
but in the end, what free and open often ended
up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was
really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics
that exist offline prior to the advent of the Internet.
And so what we ended up seeing was Wikipedia really
rebuilt this idea of knowledge as a whole around what
the Western canon. You see the exclusion of communities of
(39:26):
languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based
on reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition is
something that is particular to many I mean not sorry,
the idea of a written tradition which is particular to
some cultures and not to others. The ways in which
we I ascribe notability often really comes from sort of
this white male, westernized construct around who matters in societies
(39:51):
and who is elevated in whose voices, and so some
of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really
did not end up with the intention I really did
not end up living into the intentionality of what openness
can be.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I mean, that just is brilliant right there, God bless so.
Look she's explaining at Wikipedia, they deliberately abandon a quote
free and open approach. By the way she's telling you
what she's gonna do at NPR. NPR is not going
to be free and open, according to her, because she
doesn't believe in free and open. Why because free and
(40:25):
open number one, she says, Well, that advantages cultures that
believe in the written word. Because you know what good
has book learning ever done anyone? Well, heck, you're forgetting
those cultures that don't believe in that fancy learning stuff
like what utter garbage. I'm sorry, I thought actually a
(40:46):
journalistic outfit should actually reflect celebrate the best of education,
of learning, of what we know. But she says, no, no, no, no.
If it's actually free and open, will recapitulate a white male, westernized,
westernized construct. Let me ask you something, Ben, what the
(41:07):
hell does that mean? Seriously? Those are the words Marxist use,
and typically the more syllables they use when they get polysyllabic,
the less they're making any sense. So explain to me
the phrase recapitulate a white male, westernized construct that does
not end up living into the intentionality of what openness
(41:30):
can mean. Those words have no content other than I
want the power to silence things I don't like. Am
I wrong?
Speaker 1 (41:38):
No, you're right. And my question goes back to this
for you. It used to be at MPR and others
they would at least fake it like their bias. Now
it's just flat out open and they're doing it with
our tax tours. Is there ever going to be a
day of reckoning where MPR finds out, hey, good luck,
do your own thing, because we're not going to pay
(41:59):
for this proper again anymore.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Look, if NPR cares at all about journalistic integrity, if
they care at all about continuing to receive taxpayer funds,
they should terminate Catherine Marr immediately. Her job should be done.
They should not have a rabid left wing partisan who
hates the First Amendment, who've used it as an inconvenience,
who wants to censor conservatives, who is actively explicitly and
unabashedly opposed to free and open communication, who doesn't believe
(42:24):
in truth, who believes truth is an impediment to what
she's doing. That is not a journalist in any way.
She ought to go and join Emily's list, she ought
to go and join the DNC. She gotta go run
for Congress and become a henchman to Nancy Pelosi. She
should not actually be running a news organization, especially not
a news organization funded by the taxpayers. And if we
(42:44):
have to be honest, if you had a Democrat who
had a shred of integrity, they would say, of course,
this is not appropriate for her to run NPR. The
chances of that happening are zero, But I can tell
you I'm going to be pushing for accountability and I'm
going to be pushing for oversight of it because it
is brazenly shameless for them to put someone so wildly
(43:06):
unqualified in that position.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Don't forget. We do the show Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and
a week in review on Saturdays. Hit that subscribe, follow
or auto download button wherever you're listening to this podcast
so you do not miss a episode. Also, on those
in between days, download my podcast, The Ben Ferguson Podcasts,
and I will keep you updated on the latest breaking
news that is happening on those in between Days and
(43:30):
the Senator, and I will see you back here on
Saturday for a weekend review.
Wel come, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben
Ferguson with you. And you guys know if you listen
to show regularly, that the Sinner and I do this
show around his Senate schedule, especially when it comes to
his official duties. Well, if you are looking at my
clock right now, it's about two in the morning, and
(00:21):
the Senator's flight, which was obviously extremely late, meant that
at this point we still couldn't do the show. Now
here's the good news. We have two conversations that Senator
Cruz and I had that deal with big tech and
also silencing of conservatives that I'm going to play for you.
But this is the part I love about doing this show.
(00:43):
We do the show all times, day and night, and
then sometimes the flights just don't cooperate, even in the
early am hours. So now you understand what's going on.
Don't worry. We'll have your weekend review for you tomorrow
as well. But these are two important topics that I
want you to hear about. And there are a lot
(01:05):
going on in DC, specifically around the issue of big
tech and what they're doing to silence conservatives. But first,
there are so many Verdict listeners that have been asking
how can you get involved in how can you help
the people in Israel? Well, I want you to know
about IFCJ. IFCJ is helping on the ground in Israel
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right now. Since October the seventh, the attacks on Israel
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help the people of Israel, all you have to do
is call this number to make your gift eight to
eight four eight eight IFCJ. That's eight eight eight four
eight eight if CJ. Or you can go online to
support IFCJ dot org to give. That's one word support
(02:53):
if CJ dot org to give. Now center. Big Tech
is obviously at a massive influence over public opinion in
this country. We saw a recent report that came out
just on TikTok, for example, where they were forty five
to one stories that were pro Palastinian pro Hamas over Israel.
(03:14):
That's one example of how they've really been able to
shape public opinion, especially with young people and the riots
and the chaos we're witnessing on college campuses right now.
But there's also something else that's happened with big tech.
I've been a victim of it. I spoke out again
against big tech a few years ago at a SEAPAC convention,
and before I landed home. After I spoke out about
(03:36):
big tech, specifically Facebook, my accounts were shut down they
have never worked the same way as they did before
the reach has disappeared. I've witnessed it, and many other
conservative leaders out there are going through the same things.
And it always seems to happen center right during a
(03:56):
big election cycle, where the Democrats get a free flow
of information out and conservatives get hammered and silenced.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, that's exactly right. So I started last year as
the ranking member on the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science,
and Transportation, and from that position as the ranking member,
which means the senior Republican on that committee, I launched
an investigation into the abuse of power from big tech,
and this past week we put out a major report.
The report is entitled Weaponizing Terms of Service. How online
(04:26):
service providers use broad policies to silence conservatives. Now, there
are a lot of instances that we know about that
get a lot of publicity. We know, for example, that Twitter,
before Elon Musk purchased them, suspended the account of the
Babylon be for making a joke about a Biden administration official.
We know that both Facebook and Twitter suppressed stories about
(04:49):
Hudter Biden's laptop before the twenty twenty election. We know
that Facebook removed posts suggesting that COVID nineteen originated in
a Wuhan lab we talked about at length on this podcast,
and a theory that has now been confirmed both by
the Federal Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(05:09):
We know that YouTube took down a March twenty twenty
one video of a panel discussion with Florida Governor Ron
de Santis, during which he disputed claims that children needed
to wear face masks. We know that YouTube, also, which
is owned by Google, blocked access to a November twenty
twenty three episode of this podcast Verdict, because we were
(05:32):
criticizing the corporate media's favorable coverage of hamas, and YouTube
deemed okay, you must be an adult to see what
is on the network news. We also know in twenty
twenty two, DirectTV dropped one America news network, and less
than a year after Democrat leaders in Congress sent a
letter to the CEO calling on them to stop carrying
(05:54):
the network. We also know they did the same thing
to Newsmax. Now I lit Direct TV up and they
ended up bringing Newsmax back. We also know that Into
it at the direction of its banking partners, refuse to
provide payment processing and payroll services to gun manufacturers and sellers.
(06:14):
And we know that JP Morgan Chase closed the account
of the National Committee of Religious Freedom, which was created
by former State Department Ambassador at Large for International Religious
Freedom and former US Senator Sam Brownback. We know that
gofund me block the release of ten million dollars of
donations to the Canadian Trucker's Freedom Convoy. We've seen that
(06:38):
happen over and over and over again. Well, what this
report does is it lays out an entirely new area
of discrimination, and it is using web based products and
services online service providers to ban conservative organizations from using
their technology, and it's going after the infrastructure that is
(07:01):
needed to communicate. And in fact, this investigation reveals that
online service providers are following a playbook for silencing conservatives
that leftist organizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which
is wildly left wing and hates conservatives, and the Anti
Defamation League the ADL, they together put together this strategy,
(07:24):
this playbook to quote remove infrastructure services that conservative organizations
need to operate. And so I'm going to describe that
playbook and what they're doing in particular.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
When you look at their playbook and this amount of influence,
I mean, this can change and alter certainly an election cycle.
It can certainly, I would argue, change a presidential election
as well. And that's the reason why they're doing this.
When you think about, you know, you've got millions of
people that follow you Facebook. I've got you know, over
(07:58):
a million. But if you turn off and throttle either
one of us, then the reach that we have compared
to the left, it just disappears. It's the old saying,
right if a big tree falls in the forest and
no one's around and it make a sound, And that's
exactly what they did. But it wasn't just to one
or two people. They were doing this to hundreds of
(08:20):
top conservative voices that people look to for their opinions,
specifically when it comes to election your issues.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So that's exactly right. And what this report focuses on
is it uses a couple of key examples. It uses
number one slacks removal of libs of TikTok's workspace. It
focuses on event rights removal of event pages for events
related to Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman documentary, as
well as an event where Riley Gaines was scheduled to speak,
(08:51):
and it focuses on Bontera's termination of its relationship with
Independent Women's Forum, which deprived that organization of major nonprofit
technology service provider services and all of this follows. There
was a report that was put out by the Anti
Defamation League and it is called Bad Gateway How deplatforming
(09:13):
effects extremist websites And here's what the ADL recommended. It says,
quote deplatforming websites removing infrastructure services they need to operate,
such as website hosting, can reduce the spread and reach
of extremism and hate online. But when does deplatforming succeed?
And here's what ADL explained quote. This report shows that
(09:36):
deplatforming can decrease the popularity of extremist websites, especially when
done without warning and they go through We learned four
important lessons about how deplatforming affects extremist websites, by which
they mean anything right of center. Number one, it can
cause popularity rankings to decrease immediately. Number two, it may
(10:00):
take users a long time to return to the website.
Sometimes the website never regains its previous popularity.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Bingo.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Number three unexpected and unexpected as key. Unexpected deplatforming makes
it take longer for the website to regain its previous
popularity levels. And number four Replicating deplatform services such as discussions,
discussion forums or live streaming video products on a standalone
website presents significant challenges, including higher costs and smaller audiences.
(10:37):
Now I want to go into a little bit more.
This is what the ADL report. It has an entire
section that says what is deplatforming? And by the way,
the corporate media insists when we talk about deplatforming that
we're making it up. Well, if you actually read the blueprint,
they are very explicit. The left is explicit. They want
to silence use. So let me read from this ADL
(10:58):
report quote. There are three main categories of infrastructure that
keep websites running. Domain registrars, web hosting companies, and security
protection companies. Number one, the website must be able to
register and keep a domain name. A domain name such
as Google dot com or ADL dot org is how
(11:21):
visitors find a site. If a website is removed from
domain name services, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible,
to find Number two Web hosting companies and content distribution
networks provide digital storage space for all the files, pictures, videos,
and software that make up the content of a website.
(11:44):
When a website loses its hosting provider, the site's content disappears.
Losing a CDN a content distribution network can cause slow
service for high traffic sites. And number three, a third
category of infrastructure includes companies that protect websites from external
(12:04):
security risks such as distributed denial of service d DOS attacks.
DDoS attacks flood a website with fake traffic to overwhelm it,
rendering it unable to answer normal user requests. If an
infrastructure company, such as a network security firm cloud fare,
refuses to provide DDoS protection to a vulnerable website, it
(12:28):
is vulnerable to being flooded with traffic, rendering it inaccessible.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So you look at this what we found out and
what you just went through. The question is how is
it that these companies, and I'm specifically referring to big
tech are allowed to get away with this and do
this to many people that they're in business with. I
(12:54):
use myself as the example again because I've experienced this.
When you went into business and I felt like I
was in business with Facebook. They said, advertise with us, right, share,
advertise your show, advertise your content, boost your content, spend
money with us, and we're going to help you grow
an audience and it'll be good for everyone. And then
all of a sudden they just shut you down and
(13:16):
they were able to walk away and just say, oh, well,
you violated our terms of service, or you did this,
or you posted too many things that liberals posted as
saying they were factually incorrect. The fact checkers came out
right the liberals on the left. They were fact checking
and putting things against conservatives. So they lose their reach,
lose their ability to boose posts, lose their ability to advertise.
(13:37):
And it was all being done to clearly influence public opinion,
and yet they've gotten away with it. So what's next.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Well, with this report focuses on many of the deep
platforming steps by Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, they're very public.
What this report focuses on as the ones that are
not public, which is the back office infrastructure. Let's take
for example, Slack, which is used for communication for many
online organizations and companies. Slack canceled libs of TikTok's workspace
(14:11):
for violating its terms of service and the terms of
service for prohibit users from quote engaging activity that incites
or encourages violence or hatred towards it against individuals or groups.
Slack determined that Libs of TikTok violated this policy based
on three social media posts concerning quote gender affirming, hysterectomies,
(14:33):
and all age drag shows. Now here's the interesting thing.
Slack shut down Libs of TikTok's worksplace without any warning,
without any explanation as to how it is violated slacks policy,
and Slack's action caused Libs of TikTok to effectively lose
its use of Slax communications and forced it to rely
entirely on cell phones to run its business. Now, listen
(14:57):
to this quote, which is fascinating, Slack told the Commerce
Committee told my investigation quote. What makes Libs of TikTok's
posts problematic is that Libs of TikTok has a specific audience,
and they are taking this information and posting it to
that specific audience so that everyone in that audience sees
(15:18):
it at the same time. In other words, they didn't
even find objections with what Libs of TikTok was posting.
What they were mad at is conservatives were reading it
and that was enough reason to deplatform libs TikTok.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
So when you shut down a business in essence the
way they did, is there any real an instant relief
for libs of TikTok or others or is this one
of those they're too big to fail? Right? These companies
are too big, they're protected and you're the menion and
just deal with it. And if you're in, who cares
if your life work is destroyed in thirty seconds because
(15:53):
they shut it off.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
So right now there is not immediate relief. You could
presumably file a breach of contract case. The biggest relief
and the reason I did this report is just sunshine.
They're doing this in the dark, They're doing this without scrutiny.
There is right now no federal law that this is prohibited.
I'll give you another example. Event Bright, which we focus
is on. Event Bright canceled pages for events hosted by
(16:17):
college Republican clubs concerning Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman? Film?
And it also canceled pages for an event featuring swimmer
Riley Gaines for violating its terms of service. Now critically,
no one involved in the decision. This is what they told.
The committee watched the movie What Is a Woman, so
(16:39):
they never saw it, and they couldn't identify anything objectionable
in the trailer, So they just didn't like the topic,
so they decided to take it down. They relied instead
on Matt Walsh's statements about quote gender affirming surgeries, pronouns,
and is Johnny the Walris Children's book to reach the conclusion. Likewise,
(16:59):
event Bright de that Riley gains His event violated its
policy based on her social media post about biological men
competing women's sports. They shut down the event page without
any warning, without any explanation as to how they violated
this policy, without any way to fix it, and their
actions ruined advertisements that included QR coach for the event pages.
(17:22):
So you know, a lot had been done to put
out the codes to say hey, come to this event,
and they forced the event organizers to quickly pivot to
a new method of providing tickets. And the committee asked
event Bright whether Gaines's statements. On October tenth, twenty twenty three,
she posted on Twitter quote real women lack a y chromosome,
(17:47):
and we asked whether that violates event Bright's policy. Event
Bright responded that quote the post speaks for itself, so
they needn't answer that. How dare you say that someone
with a Y chromosome is not a woman. We don't
even need to dispute it. We have the power to
shut it down.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
If you've got a cell phone. Ninety nine percent of
Americans have a cell phone, and when you use that phone,
you may not realize what you're supporting with Big Mobile.
Did you know that Big Mobile gives massive donations to
democratic causes, democratic candidates and organizations. Did you know that
Big Mobile gives big money to Plan Parenthood. Well, that
is why I took my cell phone and I switched
(18:30):
to Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile is the only conservative Christian
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Speaker 3 (18:46):
Now.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The number one reason why people don't switch cell phone
providers is because they think it's going to take forever.
That's true, it used to take a lot of time,
and so people would stay because they want to go
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Switching not anymore would take an in twenty twenty four,
you can literally use your same phone you have right
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(19:48):
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(20:13):
you shine light on this and you talk about this
is really being done in darkness and we need to
we need to shine light on it. Was there any
nervousness from those that you're questioning? I want to use
the word remorse, but I can't imagine they're remorseful. But
is it going to at least make them pause before
(20:36):
they do it again?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Or I'll ask you, Ben, have you seen this on CNN?
Speaker 1 (20:39):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Have you seen it on an ABC, NBCCBSMSNBC nowhere? Have
you read it? You read it in the New York Times?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
No?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
No, the corporate media will not cover. I'll give another example.
So Bonterra, which provides nonprofit management services, so it's back office,
but it's incredibly important and there are very few providers
of this. They denied those services to Independent Women's Forum,
which is a conservative organization that is focused on advancing
women's rights, and Bontera concluded that it violated its policies,
(21:12):
which require customers to agree to refrain from advocacy denying
quote LGBTQ rights or denying a woman's right to reproductive choice.
Or denying racial justice or denying climate change, and their
policies also prohibit customers from quote promoting, encouraging, or facilitating
hate speech, violence, discrimination based on race, color, sexual orientation,
(21:36):
marital status, gender, or identity expression. Bonterra notified Independent Women's
Form of its decision not to renew their contract without
any explanation of how the organization violated this policy. As
a result, Independent Women's Forum had to quickly move off
Bonterra's platform and obtain a replacement services provider. Bontera told
(21:56):
the committee that Independent Women's Forum violated its true terms
of service because the organization quote works to restrict the
rights of the LGBTQ community. Bontera could not explain exactly
how the group was working to restrict LGBTQ rights, but
generally pointed to Independent women forums advocacy on issues like
(22:18):
protecting women's sports and women's spaces. So, if you actually
think that girls should compete in girls sports, that is
of view that is not acceptable, and you will be
denied online basic infrastructure from monopoly and near monopoly providers.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
The amount of arrogance that we see now from these companies,
you've witnessed it now firsthand. Tells you they feel like
they are protected by the current regime. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
You are exactly right. And if you look at at
event Bright for example, let's go back to Riley Gains.
So Riley Gains, they shut her down because they disagree
read about not her event, but about some posts that
she had put out. What they did not object to
(23:11):
was an event that we identified entitled Gaza and the
Struggle for Palestine. Now, that event was flagged by event
writes algorithm, and it was reviewed by its trust and
safety team, but it determined that that event did not
violate its hateful Events policy in an October ninth, twenty
(23:32):
twenty three statements. So two days off after October seventh,
here's what the event sponsored the Palestinian American organization Networks said.
It called the October seventh attack quote self defense measures
and said that quote Israel bears the full responsibility for
those attacks, and declared that quote the Palestinian people have
(23:52):
the right to defend themselves and to fight the occupation
with all means available. We salute the steadfastness of the
Palaceian people in its resistance. So understand saluting the mass
murder of twelve hundred people. The raping of women and girls,
that does not violate their hateful speech policy, But saying
(24:15):
that girls exist that does. Saying that men should not
compete against women and women's sports that does. That is
the utter hypocrisy and double standards that allows. By the way,
event Bright has also allowed numerous quote stop Cop City
(24:36):
events which support violent protesters who oppose the building of
a police and firefighter training facility. Likewise, event Bright created
a map of Black Lives Matter protests, many of which
turn violent, to help users find them. So, in other words,
(24:57):
actual events that produce violence, that end up killing people,
that burn shops, that firebomb cars, those are not deemed
hateful and violent. But if you say that women exists,
you must be deplatformed.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
We talked about the media giving them cover. I expect
some in the media to be liberal hacks, right, but
this brings up a big issue that we need to
talk about with NPR. The new CEO of NPR is
someone that is paid by US taxpayers and someone who
has described the First Amendment as the number one challenge
(25:37):
she faces. Our tax dollars are going to a CEO
who's running INPR National Public Radio saying the First Amendment
really seems to get in her way. Really, that's where
money is going. Well.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Unfortunately, NPR has been profoundly corrupted, and it's been made
worse by hiring a CEO who is a brazen, blatant,
unapology jic, radical leftist, and she doesn't pretend to be
unbiased at all. Now, we discussed in a previous podcast
couple of weeks ago the Bombshell Report from Uri Berliner.
(26:12):
Uri Berliner was a twenty five year NPR employee and
was the former business editor of NPR, and he wrote
an April ninth essay in The Free Press, which resulted
in NPR suspending him for publishing how's that for free speech?
If you criticize us, you're out of here and you're
all fine, and ultimately led to his resignation. So he's gone.
(26:34):
This essay cost him his job, but he laid out
the incredible bias at NPR and the shift at NPR. So,
for example, he laid out in twenty eleven, which was
not that long ago, NPR's audience was twenty six percent conservative,
twenty three percent middle of the road, and thirty seven
percent liberal, so it leaned left. But not dramatically, so
(26:57):
by twenty twenty three those numbers that shifteddically. It was now,
instead of thirty seven percent liberal, it was sixty seven
percent liberal, and instead of twenty six percent conservative, it
was only eleven percent conservative. And mister Berliner laid out
details of how they would stifle stories that were inconvenient
(27:19):
to liberals. They would amplify stories like the Russia collusion story,
even if they were not supported by the facts. He
outlined at great length how NPR had no interest in
being impartial, being unbiased. And then you take in the
wake of this and the wake of what should be
(27:40):
real concern of Hey, we're national public radio. We're supposed
to be nonpartisan. We're supposed to be down the middle. Now, look,
I for one have serious doubts why the taxpayer should
fund any radio station. I think there are plenty of
for profit radio stations. I don't know why the government
should coursively tax you to pay for yet another radio station.
(28:02):
But I'll tell you what. Even if there's an argument
they should do so for generic news that somehow there's
not a market demand for, there is no argument I
know of that they should do so only for left
wing propaganda and the newly appointed CEO Catherine Marr has
been a hard partisan her whole life. So, for example,
(28:23):
in twenty twenty, Mar referred to President Donald Trump as
a quote deranged racist sociopath. Well, then I'm confident her
coverage of Donald Trump will be fair as long as
she introduces him as a deranged, racist sociopath every time
he's covered.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
How do you even get that job? And I'm being serious,
if you're National Public radio, how does that automatically disqualify
you from that position as soon as they see that quote?
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, and by the way, that's not an outlier. In
twenty twenty one, she celebrated trump banishment from social media,
referring to him as a fascist. So she loves censorship, Okay,
the former president of the United States elected by the
American people. I'm thrilled that he's being silenced because I
dislike his politics and I think he's a fascist. In
(29:15):
May of twenty twenty, right in the middle of the
George Floyd riots, Mar suggested that looting represented a form
of reparative justice for historic wrongs, and she remarked how
white silence is tantamount to complicity and violence. She's also
(29:37):
posted repeatedly in support of Democrat politicians including Hillary Clinton,
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden. Now listen, as
a private citizen, she has a right to be an
angry left wing radical and a hard Democrat partisan. But
(29:58):
explain to me why on earth the American taxpayers should
fund her partisan propaganda.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, and yet that's exactly why she probably got the job,
because they're like, oh, perfect, You're going to keep pushing
this propaganda out there full speed ahead. I want to
ask all of you listening right now to do me
a favor real quick. I want you to place your
hand over your heart. If you can, can you feel
that it's your heartbeat telling you that you are alive.
It's the same for a preborn baby. Their heart begins
(30:27):
to form at conception, and in just three weeks it
is already beating. At five weeks, a baby's heartbeat can
be heard on an ultrasound. And that is why I
am proud to say that I'm partnering with Preborn, because
we need to help those precious babies. Every day, Preborn's
network of clinic rescues two hundred babies from abortion. Why
(30:53):
because when a mother with an unplanned pregnancy meets her
baby on ultrasound and here's their baby's heartbeat, it is
a divine encounter that doubles a baby's chance at life.
By six weeks, eyes are forming, by ten weeks, a
baby's able to suck his or her own thumb. And
(31:13):
for just twenty eight dollars, you can be the difference
between life or death of that child. It is incredible
because what Preborn does is they give the chance for
a mother to hear the baby's heart beat. Now, all
gifts are tax deductible. You can donate, and you can
(31:35):
donate easily. Just dial pound two fifty and say the
keyword baby. That's pound two fifty and say the keyword baby.
You can donate securely at preborn dot com slash verdict
as well. That's preborn dot com slash verdict. Senator, if
(31:57):
you are at NPR, can you imagine if you are
left the lefty how much freedom I think it would
make you feel like you had to then go out
there and continue to push propaganda on the American people.
If this is your CEO, I mean it's a license
to basically go all in on liberal propaganda at the
taxpayer's expense.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Now, that is exactly right. And I've got to say listen.
As you know, I'm the ranking member on the Senate
Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and part of my
responsibility in that role, we've got jurisdiction over about forty
percent of the US economy, and part of my responsibility
is oversighted. I can tell you that I am actively
(32:40):
engaging in oversight right now, calling on NPR to explain,
to explain why they're willing to put in place a
hard left wing activist, not a neutral journalist, but someone
who is biased, who is who is an active supporter
of sensorship, to violence, to silence the views she disagrees with.
(33:05):
Why NPR believes that that is an appropriate leader for
their institution.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, that's a really great point.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
And listen, don't necessarily take our words for it. I
want you to listen to Catherine Maher in her own words,
because it's going to show just how radical she is.
And I want to play a couple of clips. Let's
start with her explaining that, in her view, the number
one challenge that she faces is the First Amendment of
the Constitution. Let's play that clip.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
The number one challenge here that we see is, of course,
the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly
robust protection of rights, and that is a protection of
rights both for platforms, which I actually think is very
important that platforms have those rights to be able to
regulate what kind of content they want on their sites,
but it also means that it is a little bit
(33:52):
tricky to really address some of the real challenges of
where does bad information come from and sort of the
influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I mean, it's amazing center. This is the woman running MPR,
and I guess this is almost like the best thing
you can put on your resume, right, You're like, hey,
I think the First Amendment's a real problem. It's like perfect,
We'd love to hire you at MPR.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, And she actually says, well, the First Amendment is
really important for platforms, but then what she describes as
their First Amendment right is for their ability to censor
and silence things they disagree with. So to her mind,
what she cares about is the ability if there's a
view that is right a center. As far as she's concerned,
the First Amendment is all about silencing those views. There
(34:35):
can be no dissent, all right. I want you to
listen to another clip. This is a Ted talk where
she's discussing truth when she was at Wikipedia, and somehow
she has a different view of truth than I think
you and I might have. Give a listen.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
But the hard things, the places where we are prone
to disagreement, say politics and religion, Well, as it turns out,
not only does Wikipedia's model work there, it actually works
really well because in our normal lives, these contentious conversations
tend to rrupt or disagreement about what the truth actually is.
(35:10):
But the people who write these articles, they're not focused
on the truth. They're focused on something else, which is
the best of what we can know right now. And
after seven years of working with these brilliant folks, I've
come to believe that they are onto something that perhaps,
for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking
(35:35):
to convince others of the truth might not be the
right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the
truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way
of finding common ground and getting things done. Now, that
is not to say that the truth doesn't exist nor
(35:58):
is it to say that the truth is and important. Clearly,
the search for the truth has led us to do
great things, to learn great things. But I think if
I were to really ask you to think about this,
one of the things that we could all acknowledge is
that part of the reason we have such glorious chronicles
(36:21):
to the human experience in all forms of culture is
because we acknowledge there are many different truths. And so
in the spirit of that, I'm certain that the truth
exists for you and probably for the person sitting next
to you, But this may not be the same truth.
This is because the truth of the matter is very
(36:43):
often for many people. What happens when we merge facts
about the world with our beliefs about the world. So
we all have different truths. They're based on things like
where we come from, how we were raised, and how
other people perceive us.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
What utter garbage? Like every word of that. You want
an indictment of the modern left. You want an indictment
of the idiocy of media. You want an indictment of
the academic world. You want an indictment of big tech.
Good God, what utter garbage? Truth doesn't exist? George or
Well is spinning in his grave and laughing at the
same time. Two plus two doesn't equal four, it equals
(37:21):
five because we say it is there is no truth.
Listen to that quote. Our reverence for the truth might
be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding
common ground and getting things done. But don't worry. This
is only for things that don't matter, the contentious issues.
What does she identify politics and religion? When it comes
to politics and religion, look, Jesus Christ said, I am
the way the truth in the life. But no, no, no, no, no,
(37:43):
no no, don't have reverence for truth. We're not interested
in that. We are interested in set aside of truth.
That can be your truth, my truth. Everyone has a truth.
Maybe for you, two plus two is five? What utter garbage?
Speaker 3 (37:57):
You know what?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
A journalist is supposed to be interested in the truth.
Do you have perfect truth?
Speaker 3 (38:01):
No?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Do you have perfect knowledge? No? But you should get
damn close to it. You should be trying to get
to the truth. Remember what journalists used to learn? Who? What, when?
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Where? How?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Why?
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Like?
Speaker 2 (38:10):
What happened? What are the facts? Well? No, no, no, not
according to her. According to to her, there are no facts.
There is no truth. It's your truth, it's my truth,
and my truth from Catherine Marr's perspective is as a
left wing partisan, whatever the orthodoxy is, and we will
silence views that disagree. And the First Amendment is a pesky,
(38:30):
pesky barrier. All right, I want to play one more clip. Yeah,
one more clip where she's describing what she did at Wikipedia.
Listen to this third clip.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I started by talking about the idea of free and
open as some of our founding principles sort of free
and open source coming from me to the open source community. Well,
I have come to the opinion and the perspective that
free and open was a way of looking at the
world that was inherently limited relative to what we were
trying to achieve. Free and open has the best of intentionality,
(39:02):
but in the end, what free and open often ended
up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was
really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics
that exist offline prior to the advent of the Internet.
And so what we ended up seeing was Wikipedia really
rebuilt this idea of knowledge as a whole around what
the Western canon. You see the exclusion of communities of
(39:26):
languages because of the ways in which Wikipedia is based
on reliable sources. The idea of a written tradition is
something that is particular to many I mean not sorry,
the idea of a written tradition which is particular to
some cultures and not to others. The ways in which
we I ascribe notability often really comes from sort of
this white male, westernized construct around who matters in societies
(39:51):
and who is elevated in whose voices, and so some
of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really
did not end up with the intention I really did
not end up living into the intentionality of what openness
can be.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
I mean, that just is brilliant right there, God bless so.
Look she's explaining at Wikipedia, they deliberately abandon a quote
free and open approach. By the way she's telling you
what she's gonna do at NPR. NPR is not going
to be free and open, according to her, because she
doesn't believe in free and open. Why because free and
(40:25):
open number one, she says, Well, that advantages cultures that
believe in the written word. Because you know what good
has book learning ever done anyone? Well, heck, you're forgetting
those cultures that don't believe in that fancy learning stuff
like what utter garbage. I'm sorry, I thought actually a
(40:46):
journalistic outfit should actually reflect celebrate the best of education,
of learning, of what we know. But she says, no, no, no, no.
If it's actually free and open, will recapitulate a white male, westernized,
westernized construct. Let me ask you something, Ben, what the
(41:07):
hell does that mean? Seriously? Those are the words Marxist use,
and typically the more syllables they use when they get polysyllabic,
the less they're making any sense. So explain to me
the phrase recapitulate a white male, westernized construct that does
not end up living into the intentionality of what openness
(41:30):
can mean. Those words have no content other than I
want the power to silence things I don't like. Am
I wrong?
Speaker 1 (41:38):
No, you're right. And my question goes back to this
for you. It used to be at MPR and others
they would at least fake it like their bias. Now
it's just flat out open and they're doing it with
our tax tours. Is there ever going to be a
day of reckoning where MPR finds out, hey, good luck,
do your own thing, because we're not going to pay
(41:59):
for this proper again anymore.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Look, if NPR cares at all about journalistic integrity, if
they care at all about continuing to receive taxpayer funds,
they should terminate Catherine Marr immediately. Her job should be done.
They should not have a rabid left wing partisan who
hates the First Amendment, who've used it as an inconvenience,
who wants to censor conservatives, who is actively explicitly and
unabashedly opposed to free and open communication, who doesn't believe
(42:24):
in truth, who believes truth is an impediment to what
she's doing. That is not a journalist in any way.
She ought to go and join Emily's list, she ought
to go and join the DNC. She gotta go run
for Congress and become a henchman to Nancy Pelosi. She
should not actually be running a news organization, especially not
a news organization funded by the taxpayers. And if we
(42:44):
have to be honest, if you had a Democrat who
had a shred of integrity, they would say, of course,
this is not appropriate for her to run NPR. The
chances of that happening are zero, But I can tell
you I'm going to be pushing for accountability and I'm
going to be pushing for oversight of it because it
is brazenly shameless for them to put someone so wildly
(43:06):
unqualified in that position.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
Don't forget. We do the show Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and
a week in review on Saturdays. Hit that subscribe, follow
or auto download button wherever you're listening to this podcast
so you do not miss a episode. Also, on those
in between days, download my podcast, The Ben Ferguson Podcasts,
and I will keep you updated on the latest breaking
news that is happening on those in between Days and
(43:30):
the Senator, and I will see you back here on
Saturday for a weekend review.
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