FAULKNER: And Senator Booker, OK, if you’re really serious, let’s go try to do this.
Speaking of serious, there was a little bit of you caught in a hallway outside that hearing today.
CRUZ: Yes. Yes.
FAULKNER: And you were quite passionate about what needs to happen with social media after what looks to be and what some are calling censorship.
CRUZ: Yes.
FAULKNER: A “New York Post” article that came out on Hunter Biden, the son of the presidential candidate for Democrats, Joe Biden. What exactly is going on?
CRUZ: Well, it’s actually two different “New York Post” articles. So, yesterday, “The New York Post” had an article putting forth new evidence of corruption, of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, concerning Ukraine, and — and Twitter and Facebook decided to censor that article.
They decided if you try to tweet that article, they would block your tweet. You’d instead get a warning sign that this is dangerous material. And they actually went so far as to censored “The New York Post” itself, to prevent “The New York Post” from tweeting about their own article.
Then, today, “The New York Post” had a second story about evidence indicating corruption, again in the Biden family, this time concerning communist China and — and the Bidens receiving millions of dollars from communists in China.
I was sitting in the hearing this morning and tried to tweet the story, because it raises very serious questions. And, again, Twitter blocks it. You can’t tweet the story.
And let me be very clear, Twitter is interfering in this election. They are censoring the press. I don’t know if these “New York Post” stories are — are accurate or not. But “The New York Post” has the fourth largest circulation of any newspaper in America.
And, right now, Jack Dorsey is just behaving as Joe Biden’s press secretary. It is censorship. It is wrong. And what I announced today is the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday, will be voting to subpoena Jack Dorsey to come before the Judiciary Committee and testify next Friday and answer questions as to why he is interfering in this election and why he is censoring the press and trying to hide Joe Biden from any scrutiny or any allegations of corruption.
FAULKNER: Senator Cruz, there is a lot to unpack there. So I — I first want to get to this part.
CRUZ: Sure.
FAULKNER: You say you don’t know if “The New York Post” reporting is accurate or not, but you wanted to retweet that. And that’s really where we are. I mean we’re all kind of doing our good diligence as journalists to follow up. A lot of times a story will come and people will question sources, so on and so forth. And so we will do the same thing here at Fox.
But, meanwhile, the White House press secretary was blocked.
CRUZ: Yes.
FAULKNER: You’re telling me you were blocked for trying to retweet a second article in “The New York Post” today during a hearing.
So I just want to drill down on exactly what this means for the American people so that they don’t just think it’s about you and the Beltway and people at the White House.
CRUZ: Yes.
Well, look, if you try right now — and I did this, this morning. You can go to Google, and if you type in New York Post, Biden, and China, you’ll come up with a story today raising serious allegations.
If you try to tweet it right now, Twitter will block you from tweeting it. They’ve blocked the story. You’re not allowed to point to a story in a major media outlet.
And, listen — and, by the way, Twitter and Facebook, they don’t do this for all of the attacks on Donald Trump. You know, “The New York Times” claims to have his tax records, wrote article after article about his taxes. Of course, nobody’s seen them, but they say they have them. Twitter and Facebook didn’t block you from tweeting on that.
The Steele dossier, now totally debunked, all sorts of scurrilous sex allegations about the president, people tweet about that all the time. But when it comes to Joe Biden, Twitter has decided that they are using their multibillion-dollar monopoly power to try to silence all discussion and keep the voters ignorant.
It is — big tech censorship has always been bad, but they really crossed a line in the last 24 hours. I’m not aware of their previously actively censoring major press outlets. It’s not — it’s not really any different than Twitter blocking Fox News from sending out a story.
FAULKNER: So —
CRUZ: Look, Fox News may be right or wrong, “The New York Post” may be right or wrong, but silencing the media is a direct violation of the principles of the First Amendment.
FAULKNER: So when you say you want to talk to Jack Dorsey of Twitter —
CRUZ: Yes.
FAULKNER: And you want to subpoena him to come and testify next Friday, what do you want to ask him?
CRUZ: Well, Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the committee, he and I agree that we’re going to have a business meeting on Tuesday to vote on the subpoena, and — and to have Dorsey subpoenaed to come on — on Friday and to ask, well, what are — what are your standards, Mr. Dorsey? Why are you choosing to silence this media story and — and not other stories?
How do you — how do you determine who gets to speak in America and who doesn’t? And how do you get to decide that you can use your corporate treasury to give what is, in effect, a multimillion-dollar campaign donation to the Biden campaign just 19 days out from an election? What — we’re seeing Silicon Valley billionaires, frankly, drunk with power.
FAULKNER: Senator Cruz, what do you say, then, when you see a conspiracy theory retweeted? Is that something you want to ask Jack Dorsey about, too? I mean, you know the difference between what is true and what is right and what is wrong and what is untrue. You may not be able to source everything that media outlets source.
CRUZ: Yes.
FAULKNER: But I’m just wondering if those, to you, are in different categories, conspiracy theories and things that don’t have the kind of sourcing we would hope for in a “New York Post” article.
CRUZ: Listen, I believe in free speech. And I agree with John Stuart Mill who said, the best cure for bad speech is more speech. So I’m not here asking for anyone to censor Bernie Sanders or AOC or some socialist.
I think with they’re arguing for is ridiculous, but — but — but I’d much rather engage on the substance, on the merits, on the facts. So if people tweet crazy stuff, fine, let speech occur.
Now, that’s very different from something that is — that is a criminal threat or a criminal assault. There — there are exceptions for that. But in terms of — we don’t need Silicon Valley behaving like the Star Chamber and censoring to make sure only the political views they agree with are the only things allowed to be said.
FAULKNER: Yes, that’s interesting. That’s pulling a whole lot of people from all sorts of corners in society together, that idea of more speech is better.
CRUZ: Yes.
Cruz calls on Twitter CEO to testify: We want to know ‘what the hell is going on?’
