Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz, R-Texas, vowed to investigate Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives after Newsmax was dropped by DirecTV.
“Today as Ranking Member of the @SenateCommerce Committee I opened an investigation into Big Tech’s censorship,” Cruz tweeted Monday night. “We are going to see accountability, transparency, and we’re going to shine a light on Big Tech’s efforts to silence conservatives.”
Republicans in Congress also want to probe DirecTV and parent company AT&T for similar censorship of Newsmax.
DirecTV has claimed Newsmax and OAN were removed from its lineup as “cost-cutting” measures at the same time the company reported profits last year of $2.7 billion.
DirecTV also claimed Newsmax was demanding “excessive fees” that would cost in the “tens of millions” of dollars.
Newsmax has denied these claims, saying it was seeking a fee of about $1 per cable subscriber per year, among the lowest fees asked for in cable, and that total amount of the deal was a fraction of “tens of millions.”
“This was never about the fees being excessive,” said Chris Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax. “DirecTV’s position has always been that Newsmax of all cable news channels should never get any cable fee whatsoever, not one penny.”
DirecTV continues to carry 22 left-leaning news channels, many with much lower ratings than Newsmax. Those channels get license fees.
Citing the Commerce Committee’s jurisdiction over “half the U.S. economy, including all of telecom and all of Big Tech,” Cruz told Fox News that the recent Twitter Files (internal company records) offered a road map to go after Facebook, Google, YouTube TikTok, and all of Big Tech “that is trying to silence conservatives.”
“Elon Musk’s buying Twitter is a game changer because he’s done something that the Big Tech oligarchs never thought would happen, which is he’s gone open kimono,” Cruz said. “He’s exposed the corruption, he’s exposed the censorship, he’s exposed the collusion with Democrats in Congress, the collusion with the Biden White House, the collusion with the Deep State at the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ.
“And now, we have the evidence, we have the emails, and it’s clear when Democrats said to move, Big Tech said, ‘How high?’ They jump on command.”
We need to go back and enact the World War I and two protection of this country and burn down all communist sabotaging foreign and domestic terrorist groups in America burn down their media platforms pull down the communications and arrest them for Espionage and high treason, these are the demons that attack America 24/7 and stupid people who don’t know history follow these clowns into accomplishing their satanic demonic communist destruction of freedoms and best free country in the world which is being collapsed right under our noses and as we sleep by the demons we didn’t elect in office legally or constitutionally
Finally, we the conservative people have a chance to have our voices and comments heard loud and clear. Thank you Mr. Musk for getting the ball rolling and now Ted Cruz, a real fighter for our rights, is preparing to go after the big tech democrat lapdogs and punish them for cutting the conservative half of the country totally out of the free speech rights we were given by the constitution!!! There has to be a door that is now open to allow our conservative congress members to severely punish social media for violation of our right to free speech.
WAKE UP AMERICA AND USE YOUR VOICES AND VOTES TO GET THOSE WHO TOOK OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AWAY FROM US!!!
Need to pass legislation to remove paragraph 230 that protects social media from spreading lies and to hold the accountable!
Its not going to change anything, Just like the investigation into Trump, Russian collusion and BLA BLA BLA the rest of the crap. Its all going on unheard uncaring unknowing daft ears. Nothings going to be fixed. We’re all screwed. Sorry, I trust no one.
We need to permanently get rid of the three lettered bureaucracies once and for all.
There are over 5 million supporters of a COS but that is not enough. You and others can join the fight. (one word) CONVENTION OF STATES (dot) COM/?ref=65600.