The Megyn Kelly Show - Sen. Josh Hawley on Big Tech Tyranny, Media Absurdity, and the State of the GOP | Ep. 98

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Sen. Josh Hawley, author of the new book "The Tyranny of Big Tech," to talk about the danger of Big Tech, the implications of allowing tech platforms to be sued, media absurdity, why he decided to object to the 2020 election results and whether he has any regrets surrounding his actions about election fraud, the "Big Lie" storyline, the state of the Supreme Court, Rep. Liz Cheney and the state of the GOP, protesters targeting his family, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program, we've got Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri, and I'm excited to have him on. We've been trying to get him on for a while, and we were unsuccessful. And finally, we got a yes. And there's so much to go over with him. You guys have seen how he's been taking a beating from the press. But you also know the press is dishonest and hates Republicans, especially Trump loving Republicans. So what are we to believe? Is he the demon that the New York Times would have us believe going back and looking at his middle school record? Did he make legitimate mistakes that he wants to own or not, right? Does

he have any regrets about the whole Capitol Hill thing, the photo with his fist in the air? We're going to get into all of that. And we're going to get into his fight against big tech, which is, I mean, they are all over us right now, like white on rice. Big tech won't get off of us. And he's one of the few lawmakers willing to pay attention to it and stand up for us and say, stop it. You can't do this. You can't control every aspect of American life. And then punish, by the way, only one group of people who have certain political stripes. And he's doing something about it. So we're going to talk about all that as well. So he's coming on. You're going to love this discussion. And just by way of background, this is a guy who was born in

Arkansas. He was raised Methodist, but is now evangelical Presbyterian. Raised in Missouri, was high school valedictorian, went to Stanford undergrad, Yale Law School. We'll get into all of that. But his academic pedigree is absolute perfection. And yet, if you talk to George Will, he is a domestic enemy. So what's the truth? We'll talk about it in one second. But first this. Senator, how are you? I'm great. How are you, Megan? I'm good. I'm so happy to talk to you. Thank you for doing this.

Absolutely. Thank you. I have so much I want to go over with you. I, of course, I've seen you in the news over the past, you know, few months after everything that happened in the Capitol. And of course, every single report was bad. You're not surprised, you know, the press. So I'm going to ask you about that. But there's so much that I want to get to with you because you're a really interesting guy. Now, now I've read your book. Now I've looked into a lot of your positions. I didn't know your background, I confess, prior to any of this. Super smart guy. Didn't know you chief for the chief. You clerk for the chief justice, Roberts. So lots to get to. Let's just

start with the unpleasantness in the Capitol so we can get through that and get to some of the stuff that's more recent and I think a lot more interesting. Here's my number one question. Reading all the nasty press, it's like he's terrible. He's a seditionist. He's, you know, all sorts of nasty things. You've read them all. Blood on his hands because he supported Trump and his challenge to the electoral results. So let me start with this. Sitting here now in May, do you have any regrets about any of that? No, I don't regret what I did, Megan. What I did was object to the state of Pennsylvania. I filed an objection to the state of Pennsylvania during the electoral certification process.

And this is something that our law explicitly permits and provides for. And by the way, it's been done many times before. The Democrats have done it in the last three presidential elections, right? When a Republican was elected and they've actually objected to 11 different states. And what happens is it triggers a debate. And I thought we needed to have a debate about election integrity. And maybe more importantly, my voters thought we needed to have a debate about election integrity. And my job is to represent them in their views. And that is exactly what I said I was going to do. When I announced on December 30th, I think it was, I announced that I was going to file an objection. I said, my voters have major concerns about election integrity, and I'm going to voice

those on the floor of the Senate. That's what this process is for. And I wasn't going to allow the riot, you know, the criminal riot, which was unbelievable and wrong and a violation of the law. And I was a former prosecutor and say, I've got zero sympathy for anybody who breaks the law, assaults cops. So all of those people who engaged in that ought to go to prison. They ought to do the time. But I wasn't going to allow that then to throw me off track and to change what I told my voters I would do. Because here's the thing, Megan, it's my voters concerns, my constituents concerns don't have anything to do with the criminal psychos who came to the Capitol and tried to interrupt the very debate that I and others were attempting

to have. And so that's why I said, I'm going I said I was going to object. I said I was going to register concerns about what happened in Pennsylvania and say more broadly that going forward, we need to talk about election integrity. And that's what I did. to stand up and challenge that event where the Congress basically accepts the certifications from the states and the vice president signs off on it and so on. That's happened many, many times in the past. Now, this was an unusual situation because President Trump himself was very vocal in making claims in many states about alleged fraud and really leading the charge and getting millions of people spun up. it wasn't just like one of the sort of the normal Senate or lawmaking lunatics who loves to get up there and just push a bunch of BS, right? It was like the president himself had been pushing it. It'd been a big story in the country. This is one of the reasons why people say, well, it was different to have eight senators and 100 plus House members stand up and object, fed a fire that was already primed to explode. That's how they differentiate.

Yeah, listen, I think that either it's legitimate to object during the certification process or it's not. And it doesn't change on who the president is. It doesn't change on what the political fault lines are of the moment. And, you know, it's interesting. During the last impeachment, Megan, I was intrigued to listen to the impeachment managers tiptoe around this because, as you probably recall, at least one of those impeachment managers was himself an objector. He had objected during a previous election to the state of Florida in his case. And so the impeachment managers had to admit

that, you know what, actually there was nothing wrong with objecting. And they even said about January 6th and the objections, they said, nobody did anything wrong in objecting. Their words were, it's a bipartisan tradition to have a debate during the certification process. That was all fine. What was problematic, of course, and then they laid all the blame for the riot itself at the feet of president Trump. I would put the blame for the riot at the feet of the rioters. If you want to come to the Capitol or to any federal building and assault cops and break the law, guess what? You're a criminal. You're going to jail. You should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And I don't care what your rationale is. I don't want to hear it. You ought to go to jail. And

that's my view, whether it's rioters in Portland or Seattle or anywhere else, or if it's the United States Capitol, I don't care where it is. So I do think that just to your question, Megan, I do think a lot of this is the left clearly, clearly hates the former president. They want to discredit anybody who is in any way associated with him. And the truth is, they really don't like Trump voters either. And I was very clear from the time I said, I'm going to object. And here's why, that it was about the concerns of my voters raising, pointing out the, in Pennsylvania, their failure to follow their own law. You know, in Pennsylvania, we didn't even get to the question of fraud or not. They didn't follow their own law and their own Supreme Court. That was the best objection. What the Republicans were saying about Pennsylvania was the best objection they had in the wake of the, you know, the whole thing, in my view. And

you objected to that. You object to Arizona. But I but the reason I ask you about 2020 hindsight is because the morning of that riot, I had Hugh Hewitt on the show and he's a recovering lawyer, just like I am. Right. And we both said, yeah, we're not really particularly, we're not incensed. You know, like this has happened before. A lot of lawmakers go in, they object. They don't think the system worked as it should. They were calling it rigged when Trump got elected and went in and did what you did, took a stand and said, let's debate it. We think it was rigged. It didn't go anywhere. It didn't go anywhere this time either. And so I, for one, wasn't anticipating a riot on Capitol Hill. And I

give you the benefit of the doubt of saying you were not anticipating that either. I think given now in hindsight, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure if you would have done anything differently. And I guess that's my question. Would you have? Well, Megan, I would not have in terms of actually raising an objection and saying that, listen, I think that what happened in Pennsylvania was was wrong. I think that we need to have a debate about election integrity, which we're having now, by the way, because the Democrats now are proposing to change all all of these state laws in one fell swoop. You know, they were trying to do it state by state. Now they want to do it all at once. I think we needed I think we needed to have that debate on January 6th. I think we need to have it now. So in terms of my own objection on that day and doing what I did to represent the views of my

constituents, I wouldn't change that. Now, obviously, I think that to your point about anticipating a riot, I mean, did I think there was going to be a riot? Heck no, I did not. And that's why I say that I've got zero sympathy for anybody who rioted for whatever reason they rioted for. And, you know, you're certainly not going to, no one's going to elicit any sympathy for any rioters for me, whether again, it's whether it's the people on January 6th or whether it's the deranged psycho who killed a cop at the Capitol a few weeks ago, or whether it's rioters in the streets to Portland or elsewhere, whatever, if you break the law and assault cops, you're going to jail or you should.

What do you make of now even President Biden is out there saying it was an insurrection caused by, quote, the big lie, the big lie storyline, right, that that, you know, Trump won, that there was massive electoral fraud, that Biden had won legitimately. And so even if he might not say, you have blood on your hands, like some of the lovely press has said, the new narrative is the big lie is blameable on everybody who helped perpetuate questions about whether there was fraud. And the big lie is what led to that riot. Yeah, I think that is itself a lie. You've seen Joe Biden tell a lot of lies of his own about election integrity measures. I mean, he's saying now that in Georgia, for instance, which is a set of election integrity reforms that he has called Jim Crow on steroids. That's a lie.

I think the effort, Megan, that you just referenced to tie anybody who wants to talk about election integrity, anybody who wants to raise some of the irregularities like in Pennsylvania, the last election, then the left strategy is to say, oh, you are a violent criminal. There's no qualitative difference between you and the criminals who came into the Capitol. And that's not only wrong, I think it's dangerous, because what it tells the 75 million people in this country who voted for Donald Trump, and many, many, many, many of whom have concerns about election integrity, what it tells them is that your voice cannot be heard in the political process, and there's no place for you in the

political process. That's dangerous. As I said, actually, on the night of January 6th, we have this process of objection, debate, vote. We have that as part of the certification process so people's concerns can be aired democratically, peacefully. And so then we hear them, we resolve them, we move on. And I think what concerns me about Mr. Unity, Joe Biden, is these relentless efforts to tear apart the country by basically delegitimizing anybody who disagrees with them. And that's what this really is. You know, if you disagree with me, you need to be silenced. And that is not a recipe for unity. It's not real leadership. I think it's dangerous. I'm laughing at your Mr. Unity because here was Biden not long after the Capitol riot.

I think the American public has a real good, clear look at who they are. They're part of the big lie. You know, Goebbels and the great lie. You keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie. That's you and Cruz. You're Nazis. You're employing Nazi tactics to say that you wanted to look into the fraud, the allegations of fraud. Now, I know you don't agree with Joe Biden. I know that's outrageous. But let me put it to you this way. I maintain an open mind on the electoral challenges.

I have no idea whether the systems in each state are sound and trustworthy or not. And I actually had a lot of faith in Sidney Powell prior to this event. I do not now. But they lost, you know, Trump lost 60 plus electoral challenges that he filed that when Giuliani was was asked specifically in court, let me see the evidence of fraud when he was given the chance for a hearing on it. You know, a lot of the courts kicked him out saying you don't have standing. But he was offered the chance in in more than one court to actually present his evidence of fraud. And he said, we don't have it. This isn't a fraud. We're not alleging fraud. So before the microphones, he said fraud. Before the judges, he said something different. And after

that, and he lost time after time with Republican appointed judges at the helm and with Democrat judges as well. I said, OK, it's time to move on. And yet you did still object after that. And you even objected even after the riot. Some of the senators went back in there and said, you know what, I'm out. I'm done. People have just been killed on Capitol Hill. I'm not going to keep pushing this. And you didn't. You continue to push it. And that's where it starts to get uncomfortable. Yeah. Just to the point about fraud, Megan, just to go back to that. This is why in my objection to Pennsylvania, what I said that I was objecting to and cited was not any allegations of fraud, Megan, just to go back to that. This is why in my objection to Pennsylvania, what I said that I was objecting to and cited was not any allegations of fraud one way or the other, which I don't know about it. Look, I'm not currently a prosecutor. I haven't litigated

those claims. I'm very aware of the court record that you cited in terms of the claims that were litigated. My objection on Pennsylvania had to do with the fact two things. Number one, that the state's constitution does not permit universal mail-in balloting, but the state of Pennsylvania did it anyway. I know all that. I agree with that, but it was shot down in court. That legal challenge played out and not in your favor. So it's like at some point you got to accept the way the legal system works. Yeah, that's an interesting one, Megan, because on that Pennsylvania challenge, actually, it was not heard on the merits. It's only heard on the merits by the initial court, by the trial court, who said that there was a constitutional problem. And then on appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which you remember is that's an elected court.

So it's a partisan court. That court refused to hear the challenge. They just dismissed it on the doctrine of latches. You know, so basically they said it wasn't timely. refused to hear the challenge. They just dismissed it on the doctrine of latches. So basically, they said it wasn't timely. And that itself was a violation. They said you sat on their hands. Not you, but the Trump team sat on their hands. They had months and months and months to raise these questions, and they didn't do it. Yeah. That was their argument, which I think probably is not right factually. But the bigger point of that, Megan, is that their own doctrine, Pennsylvania's, their own doctrine says that when

there's a constitutional challenge to a law, the doctrine of latches doesn't apply. I mean, we're really in the weeds now, but here's the point, is that the substance of that claim about the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's mail-in balloting statute was never resolved by their Supreme Court. And could it be? You know, that's the court of last resort. And so they dismissed it, and then that's it. You know, there's no other place to go. And that's why I think that is a fit subject to raise to say, listen, there's this. This is weird. There's a

problem here. And then you had also, of course, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court intervening further in the law, changing the time for the return of ballots. Justice Thomas wrote about this in his dissent from denial of cert. You know, I agree with him. I thought that was right. And that was another reason to. Well, I get it. I get it. And look, they give you a mechanism as a U.S. senator, as long as you can get somebody on the House side to to agree to object to even notwithstanding what the courts have said to go in there on your day when the certified electoral votes are counted and the vice president is supposed to sort of rubber stamp it. They're that mechanism. I get it exists for a reason. You're still allowed to go in there and say, I object.

I think this is wrong. I think there's been a problem. And it's happened repeatedly. So on paper, I feel like he had the right to do it. But where they softened me, I'll just tell you as a, you know, whatever, for whatever it's worth, a journalist, a lawyer, a pundit, where they softened me is after the riot, going back there and staying on it. I mean, at that point, did you feel at all like, oh, God, I can't do this, right?

Like people, this has gotten out of hand, right? Like we let it play out in the courts. We, the state certified, Republican state certified. Like at that point, did you have any pause? Like think to yourself, I got to put an end to this. My view on that, Megan, was that if I changed course at that point and did something different than what I had said to my voters I was going to do, it would be number one, allowing the criminal rioters to determine my own course of action. And it would also be, it would also seem to indicate to me at least that, well, actually I wasn't ever that serious about the objection anyway.

You know, it would just be like, now, you know, now that I thought about it more, actually, nevermind. I don't, I'm not really that interested. And that's, that's how I view. I thought it was a serious issue that deserved to be raised. I thought my voters deserved to have it raised. And frankly, you know, as I said at the time, when I first announced I was going to object, I don't know what I would have told my voters at home if I didn't use the one point of the process I had to try and have a debate about this. That's fascinating. I never thought about that, that that maybe the people who went back in and changed their position, the ones who were going to object, that it was a telegraph, that they they never really meant it

to begin with, that they were trying to appease Trump or that they were just trying to, you know, sort of get to the right of certain people in the party. I never considered it like that. Well, and I don't mean by that, Megan, to speak to anybody else's motives, but you asked me about mine. I get it. Yeah.

And just speaking on my own and just what I was thinking on the day, you know, as we sat and waited as the police officers and then, as we, as we sat and waited, uh, as the, as the police officers, and then the, the, uh, national guard, as they struggled to inject those criminals, uh, putting themselves in harm's way to do it, you know, as we sat there and I, I thought about this, you know, just like you asked me, I thought through it. And what I thought was, is listen, I think that what happened in Pennsylvania is something that we should talk about. It has validity regardless of what these thugs are doing. And I just thought, again, if I change course now, people are going to say, oh, well, this, you know, you never really believed that this was a stunt and now it's no longer serviceable

to you. So you're just going to move on. And that's just not that's not the case. I thought, listen, I told my voters I'd do it. I'll do it. All right. Let's talk about the photograph because that's I mean, people really fixated on that. I never totally understood the fix. I mean, they don't like you. You're a Republican and you're a Trump supporter. So like that explains a lot of the dislike. But there's that photograph of you with the fist up as you walk past the what were then protesters. This is what nobody points out. Like you weren't there wasn't an assault on police officers going on and you stuck your fist in the air. I mean, like, the media is so dishonest. I was like, he saw protesters. Protest is American. Haven't they

been telling us that all summer? Like, I don't mean to give you your defense up front, but I want to say I thought that was a misrepresentation of what you meant to communicate. But why don't I'll give you the chance to set the record straight on that. Well, listen, that was, yeah, that, that, uh, that photo was taken as I, as I was walking over to the house chamber there on the, I guess it's the East side of the Capitol, um, of that morning or shortly afternoon on the, on the day. Uh, and to your point, what we had been were, I mean, there were a lot of, there were tens of thousands of demonstrators in the city and I had, I had, you know, just driven into the city and I'd seen them everywhere. And so as we drove up there, uh, and, and got to the, to, um, the Capitol, they were, uh, standing on, they were well off the Plaza. The police had barricaded them off the Plaza and they were

standing there behind the barricades, peacefully waving American flags. And, uh, as I was walking, I waved to him, some of them started to call out my name. So I waved to him and I gave him, I think the thumbs up and I pumped my fist at him. And, you know, that was like, hey, how's it going? And good for you for being here because it is their First Amendment right. It is their First Amendment right to demonstrate. It is their First Amendment right to gather. Were any of those folks who I saw there, did any of them go on to riot? I have no idea. If they did, I hope they're being prosecuted, I will say, because I will defend the right of anybody to gather and demonstrate peacefully in accordance with the First Amendment. I did that for the BLM protesters, who I did not agree with this past summer, but I said over and over, there's a difference between the folks who are

gathered peacefully, lawfully, and those who are assaulting cops. That was true of them. It was true of the folks on January 6th. It's going to be true going forward. I mean, this isn't the last time we'll have a demonstration in America, and that's fine. But we've got to draw a hard line between folks who demonstrate whether we like them or not, and those who commit acts of violence. And I will maintain that line no matter what. They never show the wide shot of that photograph. It's always just the close-up of you with the fist, like the wide shot. I'm going to guess because I know what time of day it was, would not have shown anybody storming the Capitol or assaulting anybody. It's like there's no distinction in the media. And of course, now most of us expect that now. OK, this is what I read in preparation for today's interview. Forgive me for sounding like a middle school sixth grader, but now they say no one wants to work with you. No one wants to be your friend. You're too toxic. You can't get people to sign on to your bills. It's like a bunch of mean girls now for you in the Senate. You and Cruz, although Cruz has been in that boat for a long time. I launched the Kelly file incidentally in 2013 with him. He was my first

guest. And my very first question on that show was what's it like to be the most hated man in America. So some things never change, right? The more they stay the same, the more they change, whatever the vice versa. So what does it feel like for you there day to day? It feels like for me, Megan, just doing my job. And you know, these, the, the left, my, my observation about the left is, and I've only been in the Senate for two years, so I don't have the depth of experience on this that others like Senator Cruz might have. But my observation is, is that when the left needs your vote, then they're all about bipartisanship. When they don't need your votes, then they couldn't care less about it. And you see that with all that they're doing right now. I mean, they passed their massive COVID, quote unquote, COVID package, which really had very little to do with COVID, with not any support from Republicans. I guess

one Republican senator ended up voting for it, but no bipartisanship whatsoever because they used reconciliation. They didn't need any Republicans. They didn't want the help. They didn't need the help. Same deal on infrastructure. If they could pass it without us, they absolutely would. If they could get their caucus unified, they would absolutely steamroll us. So, you know, to me, they can use whatever excuse they want. I have, my history is I will work with anybody, and I mean anybody, if it is good for the people of my state. I just did it with Senator Sanders, Bernie Sanders. We worked together on relief support, direct relief payments this past December for folks who needed them and got that done. And, you know, Bernie and I disagree on probably most everything, but on that issue,

which was important for working families in my state, I was delighted to work with them and I'll work with anybody going forward and I look forward to it. Okay. Left wing question, not actual left wing. It is in liberal, I guess like left field is what I was looking for. Left field. Did you hear at all from Chief Justice Roberts after January 6th? As I mean, I assume he was a mentor to you. I have not talked to the chief justice since then, but I don't talk to the chief justice frequently, partly, mostly, Megan, out of respect for his role and for mine. You know, the Chief Justice is really, really careful never, ever to talk about politics, never, ever to talk about, of course, never to talk about cases, even past cases. And I've always tried to respect the boundaries of that. So he's, you know, I will just say that I loved working for

Chief Justice Roberts. He was a great boss. You know, I don't agree with every opinion he writes by a long shot. And I suspect that if you, you know, said to him, like, do you agree with all Josh Hawley's positions? I bet he'd say no. But but he's he's careful to avoid the political talk. And I don't try to I'd never try to put him in a position where he has to comment. Were you, you weren't clerking for him when they decided Obamacare, were you? That was, that was later after you, I guess. Yeah, that was after my time. That was after my time. Good for you. You ran a field there. I told my audience, I saw him at this play once in Manhattan. It was one of those, these weird things where you can interact, the actors, the cast interacts

with the audience. And so you're kind of part of the play. And he was there as an audience member and I was there as an audience member. And I always deeply admired the guy. I really did. I thought he was just chiseled out of the crib to be chief justice, though his jurispr He said, oh, you're the one. I said, definitely am. I said, however, Obamacare was not a principled decision. It was not a principled decision. Yeah, yeah. My husband's like, honey, honey, let's go. It's the Chief Justice of the United States.

Let's move on. He's probably used to it. He's probably used to it. He's definitely used to it. And weirdly, he wasn't out to please me. So I learned that too in that moment. There you go he wasn't out to please me. So I learned that, too, in that moment. But I still respect the guy. I can't hate Chief Justice Roberts. I think he's a good, good man. I don't think he's been you know, he's certainly not a Scalia, but I understand he's got a bigger responsibility than Scalia had in a way because he's the chief.

He's got to think about the court, too, although maybe too much. I think he's been doing a little too much of that. What do you think? Well, my own view is that the court, I think, despite the best efforts of the Chief Justice and maybe others to try and, quote unquote, keep it out of politics, I really think that from the Obamacare decision forward, the court has become more and more enmeshed in politics because with the Obamacare decision, it turned it into a political football. My own view is that, listen, you've got to read the statute and enforce the statute as it's written, even if it's uncomfortable. And with Obamacare and the individual mandate, I think that if the individual mandate is unconstitutional, then it's unconstitutional. And you don't rewrite the statute to try to make it something that it isn't. I mean, you don't say it's a tax or it's this or that. If it's unconstitutional, hold it as unconstitutional.

That's what he did. He found a way to justify it. They said it was not allowable under Congress's interstate power. It's power to regulate interstate commerce, but it was okay, according to Roberts, under the tax clause, which was just made up. Okay, enough bashing on the Chief Justice. But let me finish it up with this question. So I have to ask you, do you think that Biden is an illegitimate president right now?

No, I think he's the duly elected president of the United States. And I think that, listen, we've got to right now, for those folks like me and the voters that I represent, who have profound concerns about where he is leading the country. What we've got to do is use all of the channels available to us to, A, put forward an alternative vision and B, try to stop his agenda and to enact something better. And that's what I try to do. So onward, onward is your message to people. Onward. That's right. In one second, we're going to ask the senator about Liz Cheney, who is making all sorts of dire predictions about Senator Hawley's career and career prospects. What does he think of her?

And I'm also going to ask him about when rhetorical attacks turn into something much more dangerous. When your wife and your newborn child are at home and the mob comes, then what? It happened to his family and we'll get into it next. First this. I'm dying to get to this and I'm going to get to this in a second. The New York Times report on little baby Josh Hawley, which is spectacular. They looked into your past as far back as when you were 12, which is just amazing. But one of the things they said, which I'll ask you about, is that you had said something in your eighth grade yearbook. Yes, we've seen it, or at least the New York Times says that you were going to. It said something like Josh Hawley 2024. Is that true? Are we likely to see that? I don't think so, Megan. I don't have the precise clarity on everything I did when I was 12, but I certainly don't remember planning to run for president. By the way, you just said the New York Times has seen it. They haven't seen it, actually. This was our question to them. We're like, oh, really? Show us the yearbook. They couldn't show it to us. Was it just your middle school principal giving you up?

It's middle school classmates. You can't make this stuff up. I think one middle school principal giving you up? It was, I don't know. It's middle school classmates. You can't make this stuff up. I think one middle school classmate. Yeah. It's just like this pure absurdity of everything in that sentence is we're now back to talking about, yeah, somebody who knew me in middle school who says that, you know, I can't believe that he became such a conservative. Oh, so horrible.

You know? Wait, there's more. I want to get to that. That's my very next topic. But first, let me just finish it out with Liz Cheney. She says you've disqualified yourself from running for president because of all the stuff we just talked about. What do you think? What do you say to her? Well, I just, you know, I don't I don't know her personally. I think she's sort of spiraling. If you look at the things that she's saying and the claims that she's making, you know, I I would just say that I think the viewpoints that she's saying and the claims that she's making. You know, I would just

say that I think the viewpoints that she represents, Megan, not just as regards to the former president, but in her support for these endless wars. I mean, she's somebody who's never met a war that she didn't love. I just think that she's out of step with Republican voters. And, you know, I'm not one of her voters. So that'll be their choice to make. I'm not a member of the House conference, you know, in terms of her leadership position, that's their choice to make. But I, I just think that this is somebody who does not really represent, uh, Republicans. And so what do you think 2024, do you think it'll be Trump? Well, I don't know. I don't know what he, what he wants to do. Megan, I have,

I have no insight into that at all. I do think that if he runs, I think he will be the nominee. I mean, I, I just think that's pretty clear. Will he run or not? I don't know. I don't know. I haven't asked him. And who else could you get behind? Oh, gosh. I mean, I imagine let me put this way. I imagine if the former president does not run, there will be all kinds of folks who are interested in the nomination. And I'll just have to, like every other Republican voter at that point, I'll have to take stock of who that is and make my decision then. But we'll see. There's a lot of time. You don't see yourself on that list. No, ma'am. No, I do not. In 2024, I am up for election in 2024, but it's back in the state of Missouri. And I hope that the people of Missouri will want me to continue to serve in the United States Senate.

OK, so here's where people lose their like the press is so dishonest. And and some some of these lawmakers on the left have been really gross and dishonest in the wake of the whole Capitol Hill thing. Democratic senators filed an ethics complaint against you for doing the very thing, as we just pointed out, many have done before. You filed one right back, which was smart, right? Like this lunatic fringe, some 6,000 attorneys and law students pushing for your disbarment as an attorney. Now, just so the viewers know, as I understand it, you went to Stanford undergrad. You went to Yale Law School.

You clerked for the 10th Circuit. You clerked for the Chief Justice. You had a very nice job with a white shoe firm in private practice, and you ran for office, Attorney General of Missouri, and so on. They want you to be disbarred. And there's another contingent that wants Yale to actually revoke your logic. Yes, yes. I'm scared of how stupid the next generation of lawyers is going to be. They're just stupid. They're doing the same thing to Ted Cruz at Harvard. They are.

They are. And welcome to the new left, Megan, which is that if you do not agree to toe the party line on every issue that they deem important, then they will cast you out into the outer darkness where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. I mean, this is what they want, right? They want to say, here's what counts as legitimate speech, and here's not. It doesn't matter, by the way, that the laws of the United States provide for objections during the electoral certification process, as you and I've already talked about. It doesn't matter that Democrats have done this. None of that matters. What matters is that we didn't like what you said,

Josh. And so therefore, we want you silenced. We want you punished. We want you expelled. And it is absolutely, it is outrageous. It's abusive. In the case of the phony ethics complaints, I mean, as soon as they filed it, all of these lefty dark money groups seem to already know about it and began a campaign to amplify it. I mean, that's really- What's a dark money group? What does that mean? Oh, you know, like we're talking like the Lincoln Project, for instance, is a dark money group. You don't know where their money comes from. Very dark. Very dark. Right. Exactly. In their case. So, you know, this is it is an abusive effort to punish and silence speech they don't like. And I can just tell you, this is why 75 million Americans who supported the former president and who support conservatives, they feel like when they see this stuff, they're

like, man, first they're coming for Josh and then they're coming for me. And that's one of the reasons that my job is, I was elected to this, right? So I don't feel sorry for myself at all. This is my job. My job is to stand there and take the heat. If I take a position that people don't like, I've got to own that position. We're just talking about that in terms of my position on objection. You know, I object to electoral college. I got to own that. And I say, here's why, and I got to own it. So the coming after me, that's fine. I expect that, but I'm not going to give into it. I'm not going to accept their lies. I'm not going to agree to be canceled by them because if I do, then it will go on to say, okay, right. And everybody who is like Josh, everybody who agrees with him, they all ought to be delegitimized too. They ought to be shut up

in silence too. And I'm telling you, that's not democratic. That's not American. It's crazy. It's this cancel culture craziness, and we've got to say no to it. Okay. So I believe, tell me if you disagree, none of those is going anywhere. You're not going to be disbarred. You're not going to have your Yale degree taken away. And you're not, the ethics complaint is not going to go anywhere. Although that's the one, I guess that has the most potential traction because it's the, the, the Senate, man, it's not even a majority of Democrats, but they've got Kamala Harris. I mean, how does that work? What could the Democrats, because they control the ethics committee, do you think you would be censured or how does that, how's that going to go out? The committees are all 50, 50 Megan,

in terms of just the, the makeup of the, of the Senate. The Ethics Committee is supposed to be technically nonpartisan. Obviously, it's partisan elected people are on it, but they're supposed to act in a nonpartisan manner. But to your question, this stuff is not going to go anywhere because it's all fake and phony. And I will absolutely fight it every step of the way. But I don't think that the senators, for instance, who filed that complaint, I don't think they expected it to go anywhere. They wanted to try and grandstand. They wanted to try and make a point.

And they didn't care that they abused the ethics process to do it. And you saw, you know, you saw senators on both sides, including Dianne Feinstein, who said immediately when they filed that complaint, she said, whoa, I'm opposed to this. This is wrong. If you disagree with him, sure. You can say I disagree with him. You can say, sure, I thought that was a bad judgment call. But you don't go and try to use the ethics process to investigate and harm and censure someone because you disagree with them politically. Of course, many Republicans, I think all Republicans feel the same way. So this is again, this this is part of the cancel effort of the left. And if you get into it, Megan, here's the thing. If you get into it, then they will redouble the pressure and they will redouble their efforts to silence you. You've got to take that stand on principle and say this is wrong. These are lies and I'm not going to give into it. Yeah. Well, that's why I like you. You filed one right back because the only way to fight these bullies who try to come after you when it's above, I mean, I love accountability and responsibility, but when, when people overstep and try ruination, they go for ruination.

We have to fight everybody. It doesn't matter. I don't care. You're partisan stripes. You have to fight back. It's the only thing a bully understands. But to your credit, you say you put yourself in the public square and you can take it. Your family, however, has also been targeted in a very disturbing way. That's not OK. That's a hard line. And I feel like it's getting crossed more and more where we see protesters go to people's houses, where their families are, where their kids are. And in a way that is threatening and I'm sure really disconcerting. And it was right before the Capitol riot. They did this to your wife. It was two days before, January 4th, as I see it, as I recall. Can you tell us what happened? Yeah, absolutely. I was at home in Missouri. So we've got three kids, Megan, my wife and I

have three kids, two little boys, and then a newborn baby. She was four months at the time. Let me do my math here. Two months at the time. She's six months now. Abigail is her name. And she couldn't fly yet, not old enough to travel, just two months old. So I was at home in Missouri with the two boys.

My wife, Erin, was in the D.C. area with the baby, precisely because the baby couldn't travel. And so these protesters come to our house out in Virginia. They come to our house at night. I'm not there. And they come with bullhorns. They come with all of this, the signs and posters, all the stuff that they trashed our yard with. They came and chalked up the sidewalk and all that kind of nonsense. But the biggest thing was that they go out there in the street and on the sidewalk in front of our house and then up into our yard and they're screaming. They've got multiple bullhorns. They're screaming. My wife hears them, comes out with the baby and says, I'm here by myself. Josh isn't here. She's like, you know, Josh isn't here. I'm here by myself.

Please leave. You know, it's nighttime. You're scaring my neighbors. You're scaring me. Please leave. After that, not only did they not leave, Megan, they began to shout at her. They started shouting at my newborn daughter,

asking my wife, you know, like, is her life important? Do you want her to have a future? I mean, stuff that my wife was like, whoa. I mean, this is crazy wife was like, whoa. I mean, this is crazy. So my wife went back in the house, locked the door. Then they came up to the house onto our front porch and began banging on the door. They brought their bullhorns up to the door and started screaming, come out, come out, come out to my wife, banging on our windows. This is after they know she's home alone.

I mean, this is really crazy behavior. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. By the disgusting. It's disgusting. By the way, the guy who was this Antifa, who was this? Yeah, it was like a shutdown DC or something. It's the name of the group. And they are, according to their own publicity, an Antifa affiliated group.

Of course, when I called them out, as I did that night, you know, my wife calls me. I hear about this. And I said, you know, we've got to stand up to them right now. We can't let them think they can get by with this. So I put out a statement on social media and was like, this just happened at my house and I'm calling out these thugs right now. And I'm telling you that we're not going to let you get by with it. And, you know, Megan, the, the, the guy who helped to organize it has now pleaded guilty, uh, to illegal trespass. So, you know, the press initially was like, Oh, this is all fake.

Josh's wife just made this up. It didn't really happen. They never came up on his property. It was a, in fact, the organizers lied to the press and said, oh, it was just a candlelight vigil. We never did anything. Well, as it turns out, that's all, oh, it's all a lie. And the guy who organized it

is now pled guilty. So, uh, you know, there you go. I mean, truth actually can prevail if you're willing to take a stand. And my wife got blessed. She was like, I just am not willing to live in fear. The other thing they said, Megan, they said to my wife is we'll be back. And they said, we won't, you won't know when we're coming back, but we will be back. And my wife was like, I refuse to live in fear in my own house with small children. This is outrageous and we're not going to stand for it. Can I just point out for the record that when that's done to a woman who had a baby two months earlier, when you're still full of like hormones that you cannot control, it is a biological fact

and your partner's not at home. Like I can only imagine how hard it was for her to control her emotions and not let loose on those guys and give them, of course, a video, which they would have loved. So kudos to her. And she must have guts to walk out there and say, like, get off my lawn. Get off my lawn. She does. She's tough as nails. The fun never stops. The fun never stops.

That was January 4th. And then we see just, I think it was April, the New York Times decided to be fun to do. They decided to do a profile on you, Senator. Oh, great. The New York Times is doing a profile on me. Terrific. What are they going to want to talk about my legislation to try to break up the big tech antitrust situation? What can we talk about?

No, they tracked down your high school prom date. They tracked down your Stanford undergrad advisor, quote, the Josh I knew was not an angry young person. Thank you, David Kennedy. Thank you for weighing in. Your prom date, Kirsten, is very disappointed in you. I want you to know. Your middle school principal, Barbara,

she is too very disappointed you would suck the country into Trump's lies. And by the way, it's going on your permanent record. At 12, it turns out you wrote about the 1992 presidential election for your school paper. Oh, fascinating. I pity the poor reporter who got put on this beat. And in middle school, you had the nerve to drag children, children, I tell you, to the movie Nixon. What are they doing? I mean, did you you must have laughed when you saw this. Oh, I did. In fact, I didn't. To be 100 percent honest with you, Megan, I actually didn't even read it because I just it was such I knew it was going to be so absurd. And the whole idea, I mean, you've captured it perfectly, the absurdity of not talking about any substance, not trying to talk about any policy, not trying to talk about anything of weight, but talking to my former prom dates and middle school classmates. I mean, it just is absurd on its face. It shows you, though, to get back to the sort of cancel culture and the idea

of the left. What the left wants to do is, is that if they disagree with you, then any efforts to silence you, mock you, all that's, all that's fair game. And of course they may make themselves look like fools in the process as these people did with this ridiculous story, but it just shows you that they recognize no, no bounds of propriety or even reasonable. I mean, who cares what my middle school classmates predicted might be my political views in 30 years? You know, I mean, it's it's really soft.

Up next, we're going to get into Simon and Schuster canceling Senator Hawley's book, which it found a home ultimately. But, you know, look, Simon and Schuster, to its credit, it just pushed back against a complaint by its internal mob to not publish Mike Pence, the now former vice president of the United States. But Josh Hawley was a bridge too far, apparently, because they dumped him. What does he think of it? And, you know, about this push in general, right? This cancellation of people when they do controversial things. We'll talk about that. We're going to get into the big tech discussion, which is fascinating. In fact, Abby said it was her favorite part of the whole discussion.

So that's coming up next, how he's cracking down on big tech as they crack down on you. But first, before we get to that, we're going to bring a feature we have here called You Can't Say That. You can't say that or think that or do that. Oh, wait, this is america and we have to add a new term on the show because you also can't make that symbol with your hands apparently that's just very wordy but we'll work on it all right let me explain have you been following this controversy out of jeopardy the ever controversial jeopardy is back in the news you can't like we talked with the guys from the fifth column about how knitting has gone

woke and controversial now. Well, Jeopardy, too. There's a contestant on Jeopardy named Kelly Donahue. Kelly's a guy. Won several games in a row. And then in one episode just last week, he gave an answer that bothered some people. Doesn't every answer bother people? I feel like everything I say bothers people.

Oh, well, deal with it. In an answer about the Romani people of Europe, Donahue asked, what are gypsies? That was his, you know, answer, which, as you know, is always has to be in the form of a question. Well, that's apparently now considered a slur, which guest host Anderson Cooper was quick to point out to him. Can't say gypsies. So, okay, now we know that. Well, 450 former Jeopardy! contestants signed an open letter to the Jeopardy! producers about this comment and another incident I'm about to get to, but they were offended by this. And I quote,

yes, it may be an innocent or ignorant reply. And yes, it was technically correct. But on a television show for an international audience, the impact on a larger stage needs to be taken into account. They wrote they wanted that whole thing edited out. No one can hear any words that might be found offensive by some somewhere sometime because you can't say that. But the story does not end there. It would have been a candidate for this segment even if it had.

But oh no, it gets better. Because the 450 Jeopardy contestants had a much bigger problem with what Kelly did the next day. In counting his victories, Kelly held up one finger against his chest after the first win, right? Like, hey, one, I'm number one. I got one. Two fingers after his second win. And you know what he did the third day. You know it. Three fingers were held up after his third victory. You cannot hold up three fingers anymore. You can't do that. The way he held up those fingers, it looked like an okay hand gesture. Do it right now. Try to hold up your three fingers the way most Americans would hold up three fingers, right? That's like pinky ring and middle. I don't know. To tell you the truth, I usually do it the European way, which is thumb first and third. That you still can do, but you

cannot do pinky ring and middle because look at your hand. What are you doing? You think you're making an okay hand gesture? No, you're a white supremacist. That's what you are. That's what you are saying. If you denote three that way, like Steph Curry does and other NBA players, apparently when they make three pointers, this is Steve Krakauer telling me this. I don't know. I've never seen Steph Curry do anything. I know his wife, she cooks and she's awesome. But you see, this is actually very offensive now. This goes the letter, okay, and I'm quoting, whether intentional or not, resembled very closely a gesture that has been co-opted by a white power group, or all of them, alt-right groups, and an anti-government group

that calls itself the three percenters, end quote, wrote the former Jeopardy winners, 450 of them, who clearly have way too much time on their hands. First of all, who studies enough trivia to wind up in Jeopardy in the first place and do well? And second of all, who's taking time out of their damn day to write letters and pair up with another 449 contestants? Can you imagine the organization on this? It's so sad. These insane people demanded that Kelly Donahue apologize for his apparent

white power symbol, writing, we cannot stand up for hate. We cannot stand next to hate. We cannot stand on stage with something that looks like hate. We are ashamed to be associated with brands and identities that suffer the taint of hateful statements and actions, particularly if they go unchallenged by those at the top. They have lost their ever-loving minds. I mean, there's something wrong with these people. Did anybody stop to look back at whether he had done the one and the two? Like, that was my very first question when I heard this story. Like, there's something wrong with these people. Did anybody stop to look back at whether he had done the one and the two? Like, that was my very first question when I heard this story. Like, did he do the one and the two? I don't totally discount that maybe he was trying to send a

signal. Sometimes people are out there and they do weird things on television, but it was right there. It's like, do a simple search. It's right there. It's knowable. It's so crazy, by the way. Can I just say, I have seen, of course, in the news that this, that the okay symbol, like the normal okay symbol where you put your forefinger by your thumb and you hold up the other three fingers has been co-opted by white supremacists. Now, if you do that symbol, you might be a white supremacist. You might be considered a white supremacist. It's like it's in my head. And we were pulling into our building, I don't know, like six months ago.

And our doorman opens up the garage door and then he like waves you in, right? He looks to make sure nobody's coming across the sidewalk. He waves you in. So he waved me in and like, it was taking me a second cause I was whatever, getting my kids settled. And I was just, I wasn't paying attention right away. And he waves me in and I was trying to tell him like, I'm coming in one second. And I gave him the okay sign oh my god they're in my head these lunatics have got in my head that somehow this is communicating not i'll be there in a second i'm good but i am a white surprise like i just chose that random moment to be like, yo, go white supremacy. It's insane. As Kelly Donahue could tell you. So what did Kelly do? Well, you know damn well what he did. He hasn't been listening to our show or Douglas Murray or any of the people like the

fifth column guys who said be brave, call bullshit. He issued the sad, sad statement that was like, he should have gone on offense. Like you people have lost your minds. Okay. Sorry. It doesn't sound like a Jeopardy contest, but this is what he said. Quote, people who know me personally know that I am not racist, but for the public at large, it bears repeating. I am not a racist and I reject and condemn white supremacy and all forms of bigotry for the evil they are. Quote, it is shameful to me to think that anyone would try to use the stage of jeopardy to advance or promote such a disgusting agenda. Oh, Kelly, it was a nice try, but it wasn't quite what you should have said. You should have used those same fingers and put down all but the middle one. That was the way out of this jam and put everybody attacking

you baselessly into their place, which is as dishonest brokers who are taking an unfair shot at you. But I understand, brother. I get it. It's tough when the mob comes for you. This is America 2021, sadly. And now the truth is, if you hold up your hand in a certain way that looks like three fingers, but also is somehow a secret racist message, according to some somewhere who might secretly be watching you. Well, you can't say that. Back to Senator Hawley in one second. And your book that's just come out, you know, in their defense, it was like the day after the Capitol Hill riot, so everything was very charged. But what did you

make of them canceling you? Oh, it was outrageous, particularly because it was done on the basis of total lies. And I mean, this was a petition started up by the left on Twitter, I think, certainly amplified by Twitter. And so the irony here, Megan, is rich. The book is The Tyranny of Big Tech, and it's then big tech that leverages their power to cancel the book. I mean, it's really where to try to cancel it. So it's just, you know, it's hilarious. But it also just shows you, I think, the groupthink that pervades the left and their

willingness to use their power to try and silence people that they disagree with. You know, Simon & Schuster is a major, major publisher. They've just been bought, interestingly, by Random House, I believe. So, you know, they're a huge, huge corporate publisher that control many, many different imprints, many, many different outlets. And you see them, you know, trying to leverage that power to basically say, well, we're going to try to shut you down. I mean, here they're the ones who went out and commissioned the book and then to try and cancel it and shut it down. So I just thought that it was based on lies because the whole premise was that Hawley incited this riot. That's a total and complete

lie. But it also, I think even more fundamentally than that, it shows you the attempt on the left to use the power of private corporations to try and carry out the sort of censorship that government could never do under our Constitution. And you see the tech companies doing the same thing. The liberals secretly or not so secretly love these big companies and these monopolies because they have the kind of power to censor conservative voices that the government couldn't do. They also canceled just recently the cop from the Breonna Taylor case who was shot in the leg, in the femoral artery, executing that no-knock warrant. It was not his decision to get the warrant. He had been called in at the last minute. He'd been told to do it. He was following orders. He went in there and Breonna Taylor's boyfriend shot him and he fired back. That guy wanted to publish a book. No charges were brought. He wanted to publish a book.

Simon & Schuster initially said yes. And then all the internal Simon & Schuster people said, how could you? They canceled him too. And I just, you know, like the double standard on all of this is so frustrating because nobody here, I think not neither you nor me, certainly in my people go back and listen to my broadcast, but would defend the Capitol Hill riot in any way. Five people died, 138 officers injured, 444 people have been arrested. It's not good in any way. It's disgusting. But the truth is that the BLM protests have led to, and I'm going to cite my sources here, at least 25 people being killed, at least 25 killed, more than 2000 cops injured in just the first few weeks. I stopped counting after

the end of July. 72% of law enforcement agencies reported that the police had been harmed by Molotov cocktails, bricks being thrown at them, frozen water bottles, and so on. 8,700 protests, 574 riots. The majority did not turn violent of those protests, but 574 were riots. Hundreds of them had murders, violence, arsons, other criminal acts, over 230, 2,300 looting incidents, 624 arsons. It's 6,000, 16,000 people arrested, 16,000 city halls were burned and so on. And by the way, my numbers on this, the numbers of people killed, it was 11 dead in the protest, 14 and David Dorn like related incidents around the around the riots. And those come from a left leaning group, a nonpartisan, I should say, group that did the counting.

So that's benefit of the doubt. And the cop numbers come from a cop group that oversees. it's called the Major Cities Chiefs Association, 69 largest police agencies in the US. So anyway, my point is not a peep, right? Not a peep. Out of the left, you are ripping on the Capitol Hill riot and you canceled, you can't publish a book, you can't do anything. You think it'd be tough for the leaders of BLM to get a book published right now? Yeah, it's the double standard. Yeah, the double standard is glaring. It is absolutely glaring. And this, by the way, is why the media figures have less and less influence. Traditional media figures have less and less influence, I think, with the American public and the voting public. People don't trust them. And this is why, Megan, people aren't stupid. They know that there were riots across this country.

Many, many Americans, including those in my home state, lived through those riots. You mentioned David Dorn. He's from St. Louis. He was a constituent of mine, shot at point-blank range by rioters in the midst of a riot. He went the retired cop, right? He goes to try and help a buddy who has a store, has a small business. David gets up in the middle of the night voluntarily to try to go help this guy, gets shot at point blank range, and the whole thing is captured on social media, and he's left there to die. I mean, it's unbelievable.

We've lived through that in Missouri. Millions of Americans across the country have lived through these riots, and they know the difference. They know that there's a difference between a protest and a riot, and they know that there are rioters who claim all kinds of ideologies as their excuse, whether, again, it's BLM or whether it's some right-wing garbage or whatever it may be. And here's the deal. If you assault cops, if you break the law, you should be prosecuted. You should go to jail. And I think the American people know the difference, but we're constantly told we're constantly told constantly that if it happens on the left,

then it's all fine. And that there has to be some violence in order to achieve a greater social good, right? I mean, there has to be the violence is either, either it's not real and we're all exaggerating it or it's necessary. Whereas of course, if it's,'s if it's violence motivated by the right, then it's like, oh, well, I mean, that's that's fundamentally different. It's not fundamentally different. Violence is violence. Violence is wrong. Political violence is wrong, no matter who does it. And we just got to stand firm in that. Yeah. Meanwhile, the violence in Portland, which is Antifa, there were violence. There was violence in more than 62% of those quote protests. So it's like, but still, they don't condemn that until right now. The

mayor's finally like, hey, maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe we should be going after these people. You think? All right, let's finish out by talking about big tech, because I thought your book was fascinating and really alarming. And I will make a confession to you. I had not yet actually sat down and watched The Social Dilemma. I think I was just sort of tuned out and confused it for The Social Network, which I had seen 10 years earlier. I'm like, I've already seen this. Totally different story. The Social Dilemma, which everybody should watch. It's a documentary on Netflix. And I told my team, I want to do a show on this. but the problems being raised in that documentary about it features insiders from inside big tech all of the major ones talking about how they manipulate us we're their little guinea pigs we're their lab rats people are so worried that the vaccine is injecting

Bill Gates chip inside of us no that's called your phone he's already got you he's got a chip walking around with you in your droid. And Tim Cook's got one in your iPhone. They can see everything you do, everything. And you're raising a couple of points here. As I understand the summation, it's you are being monitored.

You're being manipulated into addiction and buying behaviors that you wouldn't otherwise do and into endless time online. It's dangerous for you and especially for your children. And all the while, power is being transferred from us to them, from the individual to them. We're no longer in control of our own time. They're controlling. And as they get bigger, they crack down on speech they don't like, which means conservative speech for the most part. There's been some liberal incidents, but the vast majority conservative. And everyone sits back and just watches them grow because capitalism, because we like being able to use Amazon to buy our stuff. We like our iPhone. That's generally how I see the problem. Now you're introducing a couple pieces, but mainly one piece of legislation to fix it. Is that a fair summary? I think it is a fair summary. It's a chilling summary, Megan. And it's exactly right. I mean, the power of these monopolies, I think is really unprecedented in American history. The nearest analogs, and I talk about this in the book, the nearest analogs are probably the railroad

monopolies from a century ago, because they exercised a pretty tremendous amount of power over our economy. But heck, that pales in comparison to big tech. I mean, the railroad companies couldn't control what we read, couldn't control what we say, couldn't control the way that news is written. I mean, think about this. Google and Facebook now have so much power over the distribution of information that they can go to the major journalist outlets in America and say, we want you to change the way you write your stories. We want you to change what you put in your stories. We want you to change how you distribute your stories. channels because Facebook controls what people read and what they don't read. So it's an incredible amount of power. It means that everyday, normal, working Americans are losing power. These companies are gaining power. And to your point, Megan, they do have a political point of view. We know they have a political agenda. At the end of the day, the agenda is really about themselves. They want control. They are also, though, a woke leftist. And so they are pushing a woke left political

agenda. And this is a bad recipe. And And so they are pushing a woke left political agenda. And this is a bad recipe. And this is why we need to break these companies up. We need new competition in these markets. And we need to protect liberty. Monopoly and liberty don't go together. Competition protects liberty. And that's what the book is really about. So what is the likelihood of that? Because as you know, I think it's 49, maybe up to 59. Last I looked, it was 49 states are suing Facebook in an antitrust case. And there is a bill introduced by Amy Klobuchar, too, on the other side of the aisle trying to attack this problem. You and she are not that far apart on this issue. There could be some bipartisanship if you weren't so toxic.

And what do you think is actually going to happen? Because it seems like the mood might be shifting a little toward doing something about how big they are and how powerful they are. I sure hope that it is. I think that certainly among actual people, you know, not these sort of policy ties to the chattering class of Washington, D.C., but everyday working people, I think they've known for a long time. And this is how I first got involved in this issue as Attorney General of Missouri, because I heard from parent after parent about how worried they were about their kids getting tracked all over the web by these companies, building profiles on children. So I started looking into it and looking what they were doing in schools, what Google was doing in schools, for example. It was horrifying.

I think all of that to say, this has been three, four years ago now. I think that the American people have known for a long time, hold on, something's weird here. It's weird that I'm being tracked everywhere. It's weird that they have more control over my own personal information than I do. They want something done. So I think that there is potential, absolutely, for some bipartisan work on Capitol Hill if the Democrats are willing to get tough on tech. And here's my concern, Megan. These tech companies got a sweetheart deal under the Obama administration, the Obama-Biden administration. I mean a sweetheart deal in that insofar as, for example, the Federal Trade Commission actually dropped a potential antitrust

suit against Google at the request of Google when Google went and negotiated and intervened at the Obama White House, like physically at the White House. The Google chiefs went to the White House proper and said, we have a problem here. And the FTC backed off. They've given gobs of money now to the Biden-Harris campaign during this last election. And I'm worried about how cozy the new president is and vice president are with these tech companies. So I hope that the Democrats will get serious about this. I hope Democrats in Congress will hold the new president's feet to the fire. And then I hope those Republicans who kind of have had their hands over their eyes and said, oh, this is the free market has produced these companies. That's not right. The free market hasn't produced these companies. Big government

giveaways have produced these monopolies. Big government has kept these monopolies afloat book, it's like giving tomorrow's drug lords a new drug formula and a promise that they can't be sued for misusing it. So it basically allows them to control, you say, produce nothing and control everything because they can't be sued now. They are allowed, if in good faith, they take down content. They're allowed to do that, but they don't have to. And 230 protects them from lawsuits based on not pulling stuff down or from pulling stuff down as long as it was in good faith. And I know a lot of Republicans say, like, don't mess with 230. We don't want more lawsuits. It's going to lead to more censorship. If you take away 230, they're going to censor everything because they don't they don't want to get sued. What's your response to that? Because

I see the point. Yeah, I would say this, that I think that giving people, giving normal folks some bargaining power here, I think is important. What happens now is that these companies, they issue these terms of service and terms of service say, we don't discriminate on the basis of political viewpoint. We don't censor on the basis of political viewpoint. But as you've just pointed out, Megan, if in fact you do get censored on the basis of political viewpoint and they violate their own terms of agreement, you cannot enforce it. You cannot go to court and say, hold on, hold on. Here's this term of agreement. I agree to this. You agree to this. I want it enforced. Can't do it under current law. My view is let's make those terms of agreement enforceable. The tech companies own terms. Make them enforceable. I think what you would see

actually is they would try and hew very, very closely to what they've written in their terms of agreement. I think that they would actually try to be more neutral, that they would do less political censorship. My guess is that they would probably pull back from trying to control political speech. But I think either way, the size of these companies, apart from just their control over speech, part of what makes them so dangerous is the sheer size and control they have. And this is why we need to break them up. It would be better if we had competition among multiple companies, some of whom would say, hey, conservatives, guess what? You're welcome on our platform. We won't censor you. If you had real competition,

then you could get that kind of sort of market forces. You could recruit those market forces to your end. But you're exposing them legally. Like right now, the reason people can post nutty things on YouTube, I agree, less than they used to be able to., the reason people can post nutty things on YouTube, I agree, less than they used to be able to, but the reason they can get on there and talk about all sorts of nutty things, which I, as a free speech advocate, don't mind for the most part, is YouTube can't be sued for that stuff. YouTube is not considered the content creator. They're just sort of a platform. That's why they got protection under 230. And if we change the law to say, oh, no, now you're going to be treated like you're the Washington Post and that's your reporter who printed libelous stuff about person X,

then YouTube's going to start censoring videos left and right. And same with Facebook and same with Twitter. They're not going to have the manpower to do it, but like it's it's going to shrink every platform for average Joes to get their voices and their opinions out there. Yeah, I wouldn't change that part of it, Megan. I think that the basic premise, what 230 was written to do, at least in part, was to say that if there's truly third-party content, like you've just hypothesized, you've got third-party content on the platform, and the platform doesn't post it, or the platform rather doesn't change it, it's just acting as a kind of a bulletin board, then you can't sue the platform for it unless it's illegal, right? And they should know it's illegal. I think that's fine. I think

that's fine, but that's not what these platforms do because what they do now is they fool around with the content. They amplify the content using their algorithms. They can even edit the content currently, and they still cannot be held liable in any way. So they've got all kinds of powers, editorial powers, and most of this stuff, Megan, courts have made up over time. I mean, the Section 230 law that Congress passed in the 90s, it bears very little resemblance to what is in effect today because courts at the behest of big tech have systematically rewritten it. And my view is, for instance, you mentioned good faith a couple of times just a minute or two ago. The good faith requirement is now gone. I mean, it's a dead letter. Courts have read it out. So I think what we need to do is- That's not true. I remember seeing a couple of decisions

where they did uphold it. Maybe they weakened it, but it's still there. Well, it's there, Megan, but it's in a different section. And so now what the courts have said is that actually all of the authority that the platforms need in order to curate, in order to take down, all of that can be found in the section that does not include the words good faith. So they don't need to rely on it. So yeah, it's still on the statute. Sure. It's still there in the law, but they don't need to rely on it and invoke it. And that's why you see a lot of these reform proposals include putting back a good faith proposal into every part and saying, no, you've got to justify every takedown decision with good faith. So here's what I would do.

I would make it simple. I would say that the platforms need to follow their own terms of agreement that they have written. And if they don't, then they should be held liable. But I would also break them up. Quite apart from whatever their terms of service are, however they write them, I think that, for instance, Amazon should not be able to own both the dominant e-commerce platform in the world and the cloud, rather, as they do with AWS, Amazon Web Services, and have their own retail line of products that they build using their competitors' info. This shouldn't be able to have all of those industries at one point. We need to force them to spin those off.

We should do the same thing with Google and YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and go right down the line and open up some space for competition. Well, I like how in the book you talk about how historically, as a country, we weren't in love with big, big, bigger. We weren't looking to have these companies get so huge and sort of take over large factions of American society. And that's why people like Teddy Roosevelt and frankly, FDR and others started cracking down on these monopolies, because they're not healthy for a democracy. Now, people like Stossel, my friend and libertarian John Stossel might say, so what? They provide a lot of good services. They got so big because people love them. And that's the

United States. That's capitalism. What would you say to that? Well, I would say that capitalism really is about the operation of the free market, the free entry and exit from the market of individuals. And the problem with monopoly, why monopoly is historically seen as an enemy of capitalism and as an enemy to the free market, is monopoly squelches competition. And you see these companies doing it all the time. I mean, heck, we have the emails from Mark Zuckerberg when Facebook bought Instagram, where Zuckerberg muses openly about the need to buy up a competitor. And he even says, he says, you know, Instagram, where Zuckerberg muses openly about the need to buy up a competitor. And he even says, he says, you know, this Instagram, this could be a competitor to us. Why don't we acquire them? Which is exactly what Facebook ended up doing. And one of the reasons

that we have fewer and fewer startups in this space that make it for any length of time, we also have fewer and fewer new business starts in general, small businesses in this country, is we're seeing more and more consolidation across industry, but especially in the tech space. We've got three or four or five major monopolies that prevent new market entrance, that squelch competition, and that extract monopoly rents, Megan. So think about our data for a second. You mentioned the fact that these companies track us all around the web, that they take our personal information from us. They can do that because they take our personal information from us. They can do that because they're monopolies, because you and I can't effectively opt out.

Where would we go? Where would we go if we wanted somebody else who didn't track us and didn't gather our data? We don't have anywhere to go. I like this. I remember reading about this. You were saying we should have an opt out button that says, no, you may not track me. No, you may not monitor every site I go to and how many seconds I spend looking at X picture or X ad. I mean, who would oppose that? I understand

it undermines their entire business model, but what lawmaker is going to say? Because all constituents would be in favor of that. Exactly. No, it should be a no-brainer. And you know what would be even better, Megan, is if we had enough competition in the market that you would get new companies who would come along and say, new social media companies, for instance, a competitor of Facebook, who would come along and say, hey, come to my site and I won't track you and I won't take your data and I'll be a legit competitor with Facebook. But we don't see those companies developing and reaching any kind of scale before they get bought up or go out of business because Facebook and Google are monopolies. And by the way, Facebook itself, back in the early 2000s, when it was competing against MySpace, you know, I mean, now none of us hardly remember MySpace, but Facebook, what one time had competition and Facebook marketed itself to consumers as a pro privacy platform. It said, we will protect you. And guess

what? After they triumphed over MySpace and basically drove MySpace effectively out of business, what did Facebook do? It went right back to collecting your data, to spying on you. Why could they get by with it? Because now they're a monopoly. And this is why we need competition. Is there any chance your bill or a bill like it is going to pass? Well, I sure hope so. You mentioned Senator Klobuchar a second ago. Senator Klobuchar now chairs the antitrust subcommittee in the Senate that I sit on. And, you know, there is, I think, a lot of room here to find common ground. And I would say to my conservative Republican colleagues, you know, what we need to be in favor of and promoting is robust competition. And we just got to recognize that when these companies are able

to censor speech, when they are able to collect our data without consent, the only reason they can really get by with that is because they're monopolies, because consumers don't have a real choice. And so I think we've, the Republicans have got to get back to being the party of trust busters, the party of robust competition. I think there's a lot of room to work with our Democrat colleagues to do that, but it's going to require the Democrats to actually be serious, Megan, about cracking down on these, on the tech power, tech companies power. And I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure they really want to do that because I think the Democrats like the fact that they can use these companies to

censor conservatives and libertarians in a way that government couldn't. And if you listen to- Well, they want more power over big tech because they want more censorship. They think- Exactly, precisely. It's become a place for disinformation. And yes, it is a place for disinformation. That is true. But that's why there might be bipartisan cooperation on this. And that does raise some, you know, all of this is a little fraught because And that does raise some, you know, all of this is a little fraught because it's a little bit, you know, cracking down on free speech potentially.

But I like it's this is something we've never really dealt with before. We've dealt with behemoths, but we haven't dealt with groups this big that control basically all of the public square. I mean, this is how people communicate now. And it's so creepy. You think J. Edgar Hoover was creepy in the way he'd watch you or the NSA? You know, wait until you read this book, wait until you go watch that movie and figure out they're watching everything you do, everything. They're controlling you. So I got to ask you this. I know you're short on time, but you're not letting your kids have iPads then? And when it comes time, are you not going to let them do social media? We don't currently.

I write about this in the book. My kids are eight and six, my boys. And then we talked about our new baby, Abigail, who's now six months old, about six months old. And we decided that we wouldn't allow our kids to have really any screens, mobile screens. We allow them to watch a little bit of TV, but we don't allow them to have mobile screens. And Megan, we're going to try to hold onto that as long as we can. And I talk about why we do that in the book and every family has to make their own decisions. For us, what we found with our kids was the interactive nature of these mobile platforms, and especially social media based apps on those

platforms, that really draws the kids in. And it just, it makes them voracious for more and more of it. And of course it gives the company's opportunity to track our kids. So we currently don't do that as a family. And I, as to social media, I'm going to try and, and, uh, encourage my kids to stay off of social, social media, hopefully forever, but certainly as long as possible. I just think that, you know, What if they have no friends? I'm in the same boat, but I'm farther down the line because I have an 11 year old and a 10 year old now. But I, but like, this is what everybody says, like, your kid will have no friends. They will get invited to no parties. They will have no idea

what's going on. And I'm like, oh, well, I don't, I don't want that. You know, that's true. Well, I actually think that encouraging our kids to live as much of their lives as possible off social media helps them to build real friendships. And of course, it really helps to do it in partnership with other parents and families. And this is something that my wife and I have the blessing of being able to do. We found groups of like-minded families and we want our kids to build face-to-face relationships. We want them to actually talk to one another, to play with one another in person. We want them to have a real relationship that isn't mediated by these devices. And that is a hard lift in this day and age, Megan, as you point out. But I think that

encouraging kids to build those real friendships, to have those real interpersonal relationships is so key. And I think part of that is living as much of your life as possible off of social media. So it's not acting as the gatekeeper between you and reality. We just set a rule, just set a rule with our kids saying no, no iPads at all during the week. And right now the rule is going to be, you can do two hours on a Saturday and a Sunday, two hours each day. Yeah. I feel like that's a reasonable place to start, you know, at this age because they do use those iPads to do a lot like to talk to their friends. They don't use phones anymore.

You know, so we'll see how that works out. Maybe start with like it's like, you know, if you don't want to go cold turkey and go to AAA, you could start by limiting yourself to two drinks a week. This is this is our version of that. And I appreciate you shining a light on it because, you know, certainly as a parent, it's and I know you're honest about your own addiction when it comes to technology. And I feel it, too. A hundred percent. Listen, I am grateful for your time and you talking about all the hot button issues and

all the sensitive stuff. So honestly, I appreciate it. Oh, thanks so much. Thank you for having me. Don't miss Friday's show. You know, Paul Rossi, the teacher who spoke out about critical race theory and how it was taking over every aspect of his school, Grace Church School, this private school in New York. Well, on the heels of that, a very brave parent named Andrew Gutman wrote a scathing letter of his own at the very tony, even tony-er than Grace Church, Brearley School, which is, I mean, it's consistently on the top 10 of all schools

in the country. And it's definitely in the top 10, probably top three of all girls' schools in the country. Very, very smart girls in Brearley, and they work really hard, and they earn their great reputation. And if your child gets in there, I'm sure it's a point of pride for somebody like Andrew Gutman. And he'd had quite enough and went out of there in a blaze of glory, pulling his children, saying, No more! And the school's reaction was outrageous. He has not yet done an interview, but you will hear him first on Friday, right here. Don't miss it. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production

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