Dennis talks with Senator Josh Hawley

In this case, it is the senator from the state of Missouri, Senator Josh Hawley. And Senator Josh Hawley has written this book, which I am delighted to tell you is one of the best-selling books in the United States, and we will make it even better. The Tyranny of Big Tech. Senator Hawley, you, sir, have courage, the rarest of all the good traits.

Well, I thank you so much, Dennis. I appreciate that. That's kind of you to say.

Well, it's accurate, and I don't know the origins of courage. It's a dilemma to me. I try to figure it out. In any event, just tell everybody quickly what happened with Simon Schuster.

Well, they were the original publishers of this book. They're the ones that initially signed it up, commissioned it. And then they, back in January, they canceled it. They bowed to the, to the woke mob, a Twitter mob that started a petition to get me deplatformed, to have the book canceled. And Simon Schuster gave in to them. I read about it in a press release. They didn't even alert me personally. I just read about it in the press release. They said, you know, we are, we're going to cancel this book. We don't think that Holly ought to be able to publish with us anymore. They basically accused me of inciting a riot at the Capitol, which is totally false. And they know it's false, by the way, but they didn't have the guts to stand up to the mob. In fact, they kind of became part of the woke mob. And here's my view on that, on cancel culture, is I refuse to go along with it, Dennis. I refuse to bow down to it. I refuse to be co-opted by it. I refuse to cooperate with it. And so I'm delighted this book found another publisher and now people can read it for themselves.

Well, it's doing magnificently. And by the way, just for the record, we share publishers, Regnery. And your book is doing great. The assault on free speech is unprecedented in American history. Is that fair to say?

[Speaker:DENNIS_PRAGER] I think it is fair to say, absolutely. And I suppose you could look back to, in our early days, the Alien and Sedition Acts, where you had the government try to criminalize a certain amount of dissent, which, by the way, is what the Democrats would like to do today. If they could pass legislation like that today, they absolutely would. But what they figured out is, They could use the tech companies to do the same thing and not have to pass any laws at all and not have to survive First Amendment scrutiny. And that's why big tech is so dangerous.

That's exactly right. That's also unprecedented. I testified at the Senate because Prager University was sort of the first well-known censored item on big tech. So your colleague Senator Cruz invited me to testify. And they asked the representative of Google, which runs YouTube, why did you take down Mr. Prager's video on the Ten Commandments? Senator, if I left you in a room alone for a week and told you you can't come out until you figured out what Google answered, you would not get the answer. So I will tell you. It's on, you could actually watch it. Believe it or not, this is on YouTube when I testified there. So Senator Cruz goes to the man and said, "Why did you take down Mr. Prager's video on the Ten Commandments?" And his answer was, "Because it mentioned murder." That sounds about right for Big Tech.

That's about their level of historical and biblical literacy.

Right, exactly right. Well, the $64,000 question is what can be done? Did I lose the senator?

I'm sorry, I've got you now. You said the $64,000 question is what can be done? Well, I think what we've got to do is we have to break them up. Dennis, we've seen this before in our history in terms of companies becoming monopolies and trying to exert political power. Now, we've never seen, as we were just talking about, companies with this size and this amount of power before. This is truly new. But we know what the solutions are. The solution is to break up monopoly power, to make sure that these monopolies can't exercise political control. And that's what we have to do. We have to put the people back in control of their own speech, of their own lives, of their own data, personal property. So I think we have to break them up. And we've also got to give people the right to sue. You know, for instance, take you and your platform. I think if these big tech companies, if they come and try to deplatform you or anyone else on the basis of political viewpoint, violating their own terms Terms of service, you ought to be able to go to court. So give people the right to go to court and break these companies up.

So does that involve repealing Section 230?

It does. I think Section 230 right now prohibits lawsuits like that. It basically immunizes these tech companies, as you know from personal experience, in just about every circumstance that matters. And so my view is we've got to change that law, which was never meant, by the way, to protect these companies. Section 230 is a law passed in the mid-'90s. There was no Facebook, there was no Google. Now these dominant platforms are using 230, these monopolies using 230 to amass power and to protect it. So we've got to give people the right to sue. We've got to change 230 to do that. But we've got to go further. I think that alone isn't enough. We've got to pair that with trust-busting that will actually go in there and break these companies up and get some real competition back into our marketplace.

Well, do you have any support among colleagues?

You know, I think that Republicans are increasingly coming to understand— Republican senators and representatives are increasingly coming to understand the major threat big tech poses. I don't know how you couldn't understand it after the last year when they tried to interfere in a presidential election, when they deplatformed the sitting president of the United States, Donald Trump, back in January. When they're trying to censor our speech now. I mean, it's just— it's absolutely unbelievable. Now, will the Democrats, however, be willing to actually do something that meaningfully challenges Big Tech's authority? I'm skeptical. I think the Democrats have fallen in love with the monopoly power of Big Tech for the reasons we were talking about. They can use it to censor speech and not be accountable to the First Amendment. So I think that the Democrats have a tough choice to make. They talk a lot about getting tough on monopolies, but will they actually do something about it, about these woke corporations? We'll see, but I think we've got to put them to it.

How do you put them to it?

Well, I've introduced legislation that would break the companies up, and I call it the Bust Up Big Tech Act, and it's right there in print, and it's right there in the form of a law. And so I've challenged colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, join me in this effort if you're serious about doing something Join me in this effort. I've also introduced legislation to give people the right to sue, to make those terms of service enforceable, so that if they violate their contract with you, you can sue them. And I've issued the same challenge: if you're serious, let's pass this. Join me in it. So far, I have to tell you, not very many takers. I think folks in Washington, they like to talk about this problem, but they don't really want to yet do anything about this.

So why would a Republican be hesitant?

Oh, well, two things, I think. For some folks, they are hesitant to take on companies that they think— they think that constitutes intervention in the market. You know, well, this is— we're intervening in the free market. My response to that is, listen, right now these monopolies are destroying the free market. I mean, we need to revive our free market. We need more competition to make the market truly free. The problem with monopoly power is It kills competition and it kills the free and fair operation of the market. I think the other thing though, Dennis, is frankly, there's a lot of influence that big tech has purchased. They have fleets of lobbyists, they've got influence with think tanks, with academics, and they've used a lot of that to try and influence Republicans and to tell them that, you know, you've gotta leave big tech alone, you've gotta stay away from this issue. And I think that's had an effect and we've gotta push back on that and really highlight the dangers this monopoly power poses to free speech and democracy.

They even take down doctors.

That's right, all the time. And if you, if you don't toe the party line on any issue, whether that's about COVID-19, whether that's about other medical issues, whether that's about election integrity, religious liberty, then you're at their mercy. And again, if you don't like a decision that they make, they deplatform you and you don't like the decision, tough luck. Nothing you could do about it. You know, Facebook says, oh, you can appeal to our board. What we saw earlier this week, yesterday, the Facebook board is just Facebook. They're just there to bless what Facebook does.

Facebook.

So exactly, it's just, it's laughable, right? We've got to give people some real power.

Well, I cannot endorse your book highly enough, The Tyranny of Big Tech by Senator Josh Hawley. It is, of course, up at DennisPrager.com. Senator, it's very important work you're doing, and it's, I assume, it's somewhat of a lonely battle. I hope when you go home to Missouri, you get reinforced emotionally to do the battle.

I do. It is a privilege to represent the state of Missouri, and it's a privilege to have the support of the people of Missouri. And my view is, Dennis, they can say whatever they want about me in Washington, D.C. I'm going to keep on representing the The views of my constituents and fighting for their needs no matter what.

Well, all I can say is thank you, Senator Josh Hawley. The book, The Tyranny of Big Tech.