Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) unloaded on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey during a Senate hearing on Wednesday, slamming the actions that his platform has taken against conservatives.
Dorsey has long engaged in and promoted far-left activism, ranging from Black Lives Matter to promoting articles that essentially “called for a complete marginalization of the Republican Party and its voters,” as reported by The Daily Caller.
Cruz started off by noting that Twitter’s “conduct has by far been the most egregious” out of the tech companies that were subpoenaed to testify — the other two being Facebook and Google.
Cruz began his line of questioning by hammering Dorsey for claiming, without evidence, that Twitter does not have the ability to influence elections. Cruz noted that Dorsey’s response was “absurd on its face.”
“As you know, I have long been concerned about Twitter’s pattern of censoring and silencing individual Americans with whom Twitter disagrees,” Cruz said. “But two weeks ago, Twitter … crossed a threshold that is fundamental in our country. Two weeks Twitter made the unilateral decision to censor the New York Post in a series of two blockbuster articles, both alleging evidence of corruption against Joe Biden, the first concerning Ukraine, the second concerning communist China.”
“And Twitter made the decision number one to prevent users, any user, from sharing those stories, and number two you went even further and blocked the New York Post from sharing on Twitter its own reporting,” Cruz continued. “Why did Twitter make the decision to censor the New York Post?”
Dorsey responded by claiming that the platform decided to enforce its “hacked materials” policy and the goal of it was to limit the spread of materials that are hacked, and he did not want Twitter to be a distributor for hacked materials.
Cruz responded by highlighting how Twitter allowed, and even promoted, reports from The New York Times about President Donald Trump’s tax returns — which Cruz noted that it was “a crime, a federal felony, to distribute someone’s tax returns against their knowledge.”
Dorsey then falsely claimed during his testimony that Twitter was not still blocking reporting from the New York Post.
“Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear and why do you persist in behaving in a Democratic Super PAC silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?” Cruz asked.
“We’re not doing that,” Dorsey claimed.
WATCH:
.@tedcruz destroys @jack pic.twitter.com/PI8dIPvSlA
— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) October 28, 2020
Following Twitter’s censorship of the New York Post’s bombshell reports two weeks ago, Cruz said that what the platform was doing amounted to election interference.
“This is election interference and we are 19 days out from an election,” Cruz said. “It has no precedent in history of democracy. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know what the hell is going on. Chairman Lindsey Graham and I have discussed this at length and the Committee today will be noticing a mark-up on Tuesday to issue a subpoena to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next Friday, to come before this Committee and the American people and explain why Twitter is abusing their corporate power to silence the press and to cover up allegations of corruption.”
This story has been updated to include additional information.