Justices appearing skeptical yesterday of arguments to curb the federal
government's ability to communicate with social media platforms and censorship
fears
that the government actually has a duty
to take steps to protect the citizens of this country.
You can't just sort of pick and choose which part
of the government you're concerned about.
Encouragement would sweep in an awful lot.
What do you do with the fact that the platforms
say no all the time to the government
here to react? Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry,
who helped file the initial suit as Attorney General,
was there for all the arguments.
Governor, your thoughts about the best,
about your chances of having this go through.
You know, I sat in in in the court yesterday
with Congressman Jim Jordan and Congressman Dan Bishop
and we left there almost needing one of the cry
room Jill talked about earlier today.
I mean, the fact that some of these justices,
I just felt like they were going through an academic
exercise rather than understanding the real life implication for 10s
of thousands of American citizens who are being censored
on the Internet and on these platforms.
I mean, the things that this case uncovered,
you know, a couple of years ago when we filed
this case,
then U.S. Senate, then Attorney General Eric Schmidt
and I,
people laughed at us and they thought that we were
going to be laughed out of the courtroom.
And yet here we are at the Supreme Court
and the things that we've
uncovered, I mean this was a case under which we
found where the FBI knew they had the hunt by
laptop but yet let the social media platforms censor the
New York Post's story. Remember that
they censored many Americans who thought that the
COVID-19 virus came out of a lab leak and they
censored that.
And yet we find out today that that is most
the case.
They censored all countries. Censored Mectin.
Yeah, yeah, you have all these people,
they were posting things on down,
then they end up getting shadow banned or banned or
censored from Tommy Lehren.
We know that. So their their argument is this
the government like hey, I'm here to protect you.
If someone starts posting things that Hitler is great and
we need a new Hitler.
We need a new Hitler like leader to take us
to the next level as a country.
Do you think the government should call up and say,
hey, Facebook, take that down?
What would they when the justices seem tonight Grip?
Is that the federal government,
all the agencies and the White House,
they have an X account,
They have a Facebook account.
They've got public service advisories that they could go out
and they can talk to the American people.
In fact, they could also talk to the social platforms
and say,
look, why don't you amplify this message?
Because we believe that there's content on your platforms that
Americans are getting wrong.
But yet the the, the justices seems to not grip
the fact that the government doesn't have the ability to
balance that message.
And they forget that many Americans distrust the government because
of exactly that.
So Governor, here's an example.
The president over the weekend said if when it comes
to these car companies,
if you let China free access to our markets,
it's going to be a bloodbath and everyone.
So some people are misinterpreting that and thinks the president's
calling for violence in the streets.
They might post that on Facebook.
They might post that on Instagram.
And then will this government who happens to be running
against Donald Trump,
who said it, will they decide we had to take
that down?
It's not safe for America to read that,
Brian, you're exactly right. That's the problem here.
The platform should be content neutral and the justices seem
to not be able to grip the difference between
publishers, newspapers and the media and social platforms which basically
operate like virtual public squares.
And they seem to want to allow the government to
suppress citizens rights,
to express their concerns about things that the government is
saying or doing.
And if the government disagrees,
they just take them out the public square.
And let's just add this in The Media Research company
came up and did a study and they found that
Google has interfered with elections 41 times over the last
16 years, amplifying certain searches and decreasing helping Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton and hurting Republicans.
And that's what the Media Research found out.
And this is some of the problem.
People putting their hands on the scales and you guys
are just trying to get everybody's hands off.
That is, that is correct.
I mean, look, we hope that the justices think long
and hard about this and recognize that these types of
cases actually determine whether or not the government was telling
the truth or not and whether or not they should
censor American citizens.
It's great to be hope they get it right and
it's an important one.
Governor Jeff Landry, thanks so much.