Sen. Cruz: Google Is a Monopoly That Is Abusing Its Power

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on The Constitution, appeared on Fox News' ‘Fox & Friends' to discuss today's investigative hearing on Google and Big Tech censorship. As chairman, Sen. Cruz held a hearing in April with representatives from Facebook and Twitter, where he addressed concerns over social media bias and censorship.

"Today, I'm chairing a hearing with Google," Sen. Cruz said. "Google is a monopoly. Google may well be the most powerful company on the face of the planet because they have a monopoly on information, on what you know and what I know. And not only that, but Google owns YouTube, which is the second most popular website on the face of the planet. And the problem is, they use monopoly powers to silence voices they don't like."

Sen. Cruz continued, noting Google's repeated censorship of Dennis Prager and PragerU, one of the witnesses testifying at today's hearing.

"Listen, Dennis Prager is a brilliant thinker but nobody with any sense would describe Dennis Prager as some sort of dangerous voice that must be muzzled," Sen. Cruz said. "But if you're a leftist, he is a very dangerous voice because he responds with facts and reason and the left is terrified of facts and reason."

When asked what the solution is to Big Tech censorship, Sen. Cruz outlined three possible remedies.

"I will readily concede the solution is complicated," Sen. Cruz said. "Nobody wants to see federal speech police deciding what is and isn't permissible. What we do have is three possible remedies. Number one, there is a special provision of law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that gives Google, and Facebook, and Twitter, and the Big Tech media companies a special immunity from liability that nobody else enjoys. And Congress passed that under the assumption they would be neutral public forum. In other words, they weren't going to be biased. They weren't going to favor one view over another. They would let all-comers come to their site. They've decided not to do that. They've decided to be hardcore leftist, to silence, to throttle, to shadow ban conservatives and I think if they continue to do that there is no reason they should get a special immunity from liability that nobody else does.

"Number two, is the antitrust laws," Sen. Cruz continued. "Listen, by any measure Google is larger, it is more powerful, it has a larger market cap than AT&T was when it was broken up by the antitrust laws. It's larger and more powerful than Standard Oil was when it was broken up by the antitrust laws. Google is a monopoly and Google is abusing its monopoly powers. We have antitrust laws to deal with that.

"And third, the Department of Justice can and should be investigating along the lines of fraud and or breach of contract," Sen. Cruz concluded. "When you sign up, say with a Facebook or Twitter, you assume that if you follow someone you'll see their tweets, you'll see their posts. Likewise, you assume if someone follows you. They'll see what you tweet and what you post. That's not in fact what's happening. What's happening is the social media sites are censoring, they're shadow banning. If they don't like what you're saying, they just hide what you're saying. That is essentially a fraud on the consumer, and they're deceiving the consumer because they've got a political agenda. Any of those three remedies need to be considered and I think the scope of this problem needs to be fully understood."

Watch Sen. Cruz's interview here.

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