Fox News host Tucker Carlson unveiled a report showing that several well-known conservative organizations, all funded by the Koch brothers, are actively helping so-called “Big Tech” suppress conservative speech on the internet.
The Friday night “Tucker Carlson Tonight” monologue began with a review of various ways “Google, Facebook, and Twitter work in secret to impose a left-wing political agenda on this country.” Although polls show Republican voters “starting to figure this out” and wanting the Trump administration to take action, Carlson noted, “no one in Washington is doing anything.”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” said the Fox News host. “Tech companies have thrived under a special immunity they received from Congress that protects them from lawsuits over what people say on their platforms. It’s an exemption that Fox News, for example, does not have. So why does Google have it?”
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Carlson mentioned Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley as a rare example of a high ranking politician trying to fix the problem by proposing “stripping that immunity from tech companies, and treating them like everyone else, unless they can maintain neutral platforms for all views.”
Other ideas, like “breaking up major tech companies,” have not happened.
“Why all the inaction?” Carlson asked. “A big part of the problem is that conservative nonprofits in Washington, the ones that are supposed to be looking out for you, aren’t actually looking out for you. They’re looking out for Big Tech.”
The Fox News host brought up a recently obtained report from the Campaign for Accountability showing how “conservative organizations in DC have colluded with Big Tech to shield left-wing monopolies from any oversight at all.”
News items unveiled by the report include Americans for Prosperity supporting Facebook and Google with an ad campaign targeting politicians of both parties in several states who are leading antitrust investigations.
“In all, the Koch network quietly spent at least $10 million defending Silicon Valley companies that work to silence conservatives,” Carlson said. “As one former Koch employee recently told this show, quote, ‘I know for a fact they take money from social media companies to do their bidding.’”
The 22 Koch-funded “right-leaning institutions” include “the American Conservative Union, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Mercatus Center.” (RELATED: ‘This Is Not The Capitalism That I Signed Up For’ — Tucker Carlson And Steve Hilton Discuss Busting Big Tech’s Monopoly)
“What does all this money buy?” he asked. “Well in September of 2018, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and three other groups funded by Google and the Kochs sent a joint letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressing grave concerns over DoJ’s plans to look into whether search engines and social media were hurting competition and stifling speech. Big Tech companies silence conservatives. Conservative nonprofits try to prevent the government from doing anything about it. Makes sense.”
Calling the Heritage Foundation the “biggest and best-funded think tank in Washington,” Carlson insisted that it now “no longer represents the interest of conservatives, at least on the question of tech.” The Fox News host cited a paper that defends Silicon Valley’s special privileges on the basis of the contention that conservatives can simply “start their own Google” if they don’t like it.
“The paper could have been written by tech lobbyists, and in fact may have been,” said Carlson. “A trade association that represents Silicon Valley called the liability exemption Google enjoys, quote, ‘the most important law in tech.’ Heritage’s paper repeats that line, verbatim, word for word, along with many others.”
The Fox News host concluded by calling the Heritage Foundation’s actions “embarrassing,” although they aren’t “embarrassed” and neither are any of the “so-called ‘conservative’ nonprofits in Washington.”
“They make deals with people who hate you, secretly sell out your interests, then beg you to tithe like it’s the medieval church,” he said. “That’s the system we’ve had for decades. Maybe that’s why, no matter how much money you send, nothing gets more conservative. You wonder how much longer this can continue.”
Source: Daily Caller
