At yesterday's House Weaponization of the Federal Government Committee hearing, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) grilled ex-Biden Administration officials about their censorship requests to social media companies.
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NewsTranscript
00:00than Donald Trump's re-election bid.
00:02Let's just call it what it is.
00:03And with that, I yield back my time.
00:10I thank the chairman and I thank our witnesses for being here today.
00:16And, you know, Mr. Slavitt, in your book, Preventable,
00:18you wrote that, quote,
00:20but even accounting for Trump,
00:22other deep-seated issues that are part of our culture and national identity
00:26emerge to haunt us.
00:28Our obsession with individual liberties,
00:30even at the expense of others' lives and health,
00:33is it a bad thing that Americans feel strongly about individual liberties?
00:36Certainly not.
00:38How, then, did individual liberties become a barrier to—
00:44what are you talking about there?
00:45I didn't suggest that they're a barrier.
00:49What's the trade-off there?
00:50You feel like that some liberties should be curtailed?
00:54I feel like, first of all, what I wrote as a private citizen,
00:59I want to emphasize, I think that it's important
01:01to have dialogues about all these issues.
01:03And I think that's what we were attempting to do with social media companies.
01:06You were actively curtailing liberties, which is what you were doing.
01:09I don't believe—
01:10Are you proud of the work that you did?
01:12Certainly.
01:13Why? What did you accomplish?
01:16Well, by most estimations,
01:18three million American lives were saved,
01:20not just by my work, but by the work of two administrations,
01:23a bunch of scientists, the military—
01:25That was because you exerted influence
01:28to be able to get what you believe saved those lives out.
01:31Because the country pulled together, I think,
01:32in quite a pretty responsible way during a pretty tough time.
01:36No remorse, no regrets over asking social medias to censor Americans?
01:42I'm self-critical, but I never asked social media companies to censor anything.
01:47Right, just take it down.
01:48Or just don't sell the books.
01:49We don't really want you to keep selling these books.
01:52No, that's not what I said, with due respect, Mr. Congressman.
01:55What I said was, I want to understand how your policy is to promote these books,
01:58not to sell them, but to put them on the equivalent of the end cap of the aisle
02:02and say, these are the most important books to read.
02:04So it was okay if they had them somewhere, just not online?
02:07It's okay, but it's acceptable for them to do whatever they wanted.
02:10Mr. Flaherty, are you proud of the work you did?
02:13Yes, Congressman, I am.
02:14Why? Did you feel like you exerted some influence over people?
02:17Congressman, I'm proud of the administration's efforts to save lives.
02:20I didn't ask about the administration.
02:21I asked about you.
02:22You happy? You feel like you did a good thing?
02:24Congressman, I'm very proud of the work we did in the administration to save lives.
02:29So the means did justify the ends, right?
02:31So it was okay that we curtailed freedom because the outcome was desirable.
02:36Congressman, I want to dispute the characterization of our work.
02:38Is that what the First Amendment says?
02:40We certainly were not censoring, threatening,
02:42or providing consequences to companies.
02:43We were raising up.
02:45I think the American people will conclude that you were, in fact, doing that.
02:49And I think once we get to share all the transcripts with the public,
02:52I think the unredacted versions will make it very clear that's exactly what you were doing.
02:57And that's what the social media companies knew you were doing and why they conformed.
03:02And recently, the House gave the executive branch, even in the Senate, and now it's a law,
03:08we gave the administration, the executive branch, even more authority.
03:12Recently, the House voted to ban TikTok.
03:14While Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are a threat,
03:18I voted against this ban because I have serious concerns that banning social media platforms
03:23is more harmful to free speech in America than to China.
03:27We have a White House that is engaging in coercive activity
03:31so that they can actively control the narrative on social media
03:34and, frankly, on an online bookstore, the most ubiquitous one in the world.
03:39This is the same kind of stuff the Chinese Communist Party does,
03:42and they heavily regulate media and online speech.
03:46I'm extremely worried that a platform ban provides another point of leverage
03:52for the executive branch, for government, to exercise coercion over private companies
03:56to effectively censor Americans and their First Amendment-protected right to speech.
04:03We will not counter China by becoming more like China,
04:06yet that's exactly what we've done with this TikTok Trojan horse.
04:10Congress effectively granted a rogue White House the same control over internet activity
04:15that the Chinese Communist Party exercises in China.
04:18It is a grave mistake, and I hope we correct it,
04:21because we can see here today that we already have an administration
04:25that tried to launch a disinformation governance board.
04:28Were either of you part of those discussions?
04:32I was not part of anything like that, no.
04:34Congressman, I was not part of this.
04:35This is heavily related to the activity that you guys were engaged in,
04:38so when you say we at the very highest levels,
04:41would that include President—I mean, the highest level at the White House is President Biden.
04:46Congressman, again, it shouldn't surprise anybody that we were,
04:50as an administration, focused intently on getting the American public vaccinated.
04:53This is a thing that everyone at every level of the administration—
04:57But so again, the means justify the ends.
04:59We can cancel speech and violate it.
05:01I think it's a shame that this has happened, and I hope we criminalize it,
05:05because you should not be able to violate the First Amendment rights of American citizens
05:10and not have consequences for it.
05:11My time has expired, and I yield.
05:15The gentleman yields back.
05:16The gentleman—