During a Senate hearing Wednesday, Mitt Romney argued against an amendment proposed by Rand Paul to make it illegal for the government to use social media and big tech companies to censor Americans’ views.
Romney thinks the government has a role. That would infringe on the 1st Amendment, but he doesn’t seem to realize it. This man has no business being a senator.
RAND PAUL: “…the First Amendment really isn’t about protecting the speech of government workers the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law. It’s about limitations on government involvement with speech.”
“If Twitter says bad things about me and puts up bad things and takes me down I have no recourse against Twitter, same with Facebook. I’m mad, I hate that YouTube has taken my speeches down. I don’t do business with them anymore, because I think they’re bigoted, biased and wrong-headed on this.”
“As far as threats, what we do know from the Twitter files is that the government was making threats,” Paul continued, adding “there were threats of Anti-Trust action against the companies if they didn’t take the material down, there was also threats of we will remove your 230 protection. Section 230 gives them liability protection and there were overt threats and threats in writing basically saying if you don’t take this down you know your 230 protection of liability could go away.”
“I think the government should be absolutely prohibited without question. I think it should be as Draconian as you probably can make it,” Paul continued, adding “things that are an opinion, the government has no business in this.”
Mitt, as oblivious as ever, disagreed.
MITT ROMNEY: “To say that no employee of the government from the president on down to that millions of people who work in the government can speak with a social media company or a Legacy Media Company and express their point of view that an article is wrong or that Avenue they’re going down is wrong, that would shut off free speech.”
This is what we have going on in the Republican Party.
Watch: the nearly five-minute long clip or the longer one below:
.@SenRandPaul introduced an amendment to protect free speech.
Mitt Romney opposed it, worried that it might interfere with government officials’ ability to get Big Tech to censor Americans’ speech.
I’m not kidding. pic.twitter.com/okvWR6tP4p
— Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) July 29, 2023
Ten-minute plus video:
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