Transcripts For FOXNEWSW Americas Newsroom 20201117

Without that the recount is meaningless. Open up unconstitutional Consent Decree now at governor brian kemp. The secretary of state says that is not true. Reaction in moments. Lets go to john roberts live on the north lawn this morning. So john, what is the latest from the Trump Campaign as it continues its fight to dispute these election results. Good morning. Good morning. The Trump Campaign is pointing to two what they call Significant Developments as further evidence that there were widespread voting irregularities in the november 3 election and that the ballots in many cases cant be trusted or at least the vote count cant be trusted. The situation in georgia where you were mentioning more than 2600 ballots were not included in the initial vote count in floyd county which is a county favorable to President Trump. According to georgia officials someone forgot to upload a memory card from one of the voting machines. Including those votes as trace mentioned could reduce the margin slightly between biden and the president by 800 votes or so. Not enough to turn the tide. The current split is 14,000 votes. More problems may be discovered in the recount. And as you pointed out the president is claiming there is no process to verify signatures in georgia. The secretary of state disputes that. The other situation is in clark county, nevada. Election officials have to hold a special election because of ballot discrepancies in a race for county commissioner. The president tweeting about that. Big victory moments ago in the state of nevada. The commissioner race on the same ballot as president just thrown out because of voter discrepancies. Clark county officials dont have confidence in their Election Security. Major impact. However, it should be pointed out if they do hold a special election, the plan at the moment is just to revote the county commissioner race and not the president ial race. Though it does give the Trump Campaign an opening to mount a legal challenge if you have a revote for that race you need to revote the president ial race as well. Something that the National Security advisor Robert Obrien said yesterday is raising eyebrows at the white house where he appeared to acknowledge inevitability of a joe biden presidency inlitionly white house officials were taken oh back he would go that far. Now if you listen to what he said in its totality there is a lot more nuance to it than initially reported. Listen here. If the bidenharris ticket is determined to be the winner. Things look that way now, well have a very professional transition from the National Security council. Were in a situation where we arent going to trumps second term where im sitting in the white house would like to see. If its another outcome it will be a professional transition, no question about it. An Important Court campaign in pennsylvania this afternoon. A judge will be hearing a motion to dismiss a court case filed by the Trump Campaign challenging equal protection saying how there were differences between Republican Voters and democratic voters were treated and if the motion to dismiss is granted that will be a big blow to the Trump Campaign. If the judge allows this to go to trial, that will be a Significant Development on behalf of the Trump Campaign. For how long this goes on, check with some folks this morning. It is looking like this could go into the end of the first week, maybe the beginning of the second week of december. Because they want to take it all the way through state certifications. California is the last to certify december 11th. There is a december 8th deadline for court challenges. The Trump Campaign isnt looking at that as a hard deadline. When the electors vote is december 14th. We could be here awhile. Sandra an update from the georgia secretary of state in just moments. Trace washington, d. C. s chief of police says this weekend was the worst in the country. The worst is to see our country having those physical disputes over an election. Thats something we attribute to other countries around the world. Trace nearly two dozen people were arrested including one man flowing fire woe, at supporters. President elect biden laying out his plans for economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic saying democrats and republicans have to Work Together and pass a new stimulus package. Peter doocy is live in wilmington, delaware. What are some of the questions surrounding bidens plan . Good morning. Good morning, trace. One of the Big Questions is whether or not he now supports canceling all Student Loan Debt or just as much as House Democrats have said they would support as part of that covid19 relief package. I have oef laid out in detail. For example, the legislation passed by the Democratic House calls for immediate 10,000 forgiveness of Student Loans. Its Holding People up. Theyre in real trouble. The Senate Minority leader who could be the Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer depending on the georgia runoff thinks biden could forgive up to 50,000 in Student Loan Debt an his own with an executive order. 1 trillion of outstanding Student Loans. The loudest calls are those coming for big change and theyre coming from the left and biden believes it wont be hard to get republican support for these huge progressive priorities. He just needs to take over as president first. Refusal of democrats and republicans to cooperate with one another is not due to some Mysterious Force beyond a control. Its a choice we make. If we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate. Today biden remains here in wilmington. His Transition Team is preparing a National Security briefing for him and the reason they are doing it and not the intelligence agencies is because since the gsa still has not certified biden was the official winner he doesnt have access to the president ial daily brief. Trace. Trace thank you. Sandra for more on bidens plan lets bring in bill mcgurn from the wall street journal. Bill, weigh in on this. You have joe biden talking about free College Tuition. Chuck schumer jumping in saying lets go beyond that and forgive Student Loan Debt. What you did not hear in the News Conference yesterday was how the heck do you pay for all this . Right, right. Sandra, you know the most expensive things from washington are free, right . The end of the day it means you and me as the taxpayers all pay for it, right . I think this has a further aspect to it, which is this is going to be very divisive because a lot of people, my daughter took out Student Loans and is repaying them so fort. I took out Student Loans. We all repaid them. So the people that worked hard and saved and scimed and repaid if they cancel it. There is definitely a problem with college debt. 1. 5 trillion today. We need to attack the structure. The structure is College Tuition rising higher than inflation and one reason for this is the universities have no skin in the game. The real problem isnt even the kids as they graduate from yale or Yale Medical School with 200,000 in debt. The problem are the kids that take out loans, start school and dont finish it. They dont get the advantage of a better job and they are still stuck with the debt. Meanwhile the school has pocketed the money. We need to get the schools to have some skin in the game to change the structure or else pay it off and it will balloon again under the same structure. Sandra the point at this point were starting to get a good idea based on what we heard from joe biden yesterday what a Biden Administration could and would eventually look like, bill. One idea that has been floated around that he was considering hiring the head of a Teachers Union as his secretary of education. You are weighing in on that on a new piece this morning. The education of joe biden you write. Is he really going to nominate the head of a Teachers Union for his cabinet . Everyone understood a Biden Education Department will mark a change of direction from the past four years but to elevate to an education secretary someone whose career is fighting any reform at relaxing the teacher unions strangle hold on the Public Schools would be a bleak admission about whose interests come first. So bill, what is your message here . My message is this would be a really telling pick. I think it would be a disaster for american education. Look, the department of education exists because the nea extracted a promise from jimmy carter when he ran in 1976. To put someone in charge who spent a career fighting reforms. Most real education reforms in some ways constrain the power of the Teachers Unions and give parents more leverage over Teachers Unions. This is the opposite. To have someone there i think there are a lot of democrats that would agree with this. A lot of democrats that are very pro education reform. They may not support School Vouchers but they are big into charters and different kind of measures of accountability. Heck, president obama pushed charters and teacher he having a waitions. This would be a terrible thing. Look, right now especially with the pandemic. Weve seen a lot of parents want their kids back in the classroom. The cdc tells us the classroom in the interest of the children its superior than virtual learning. Across this country we have Teachers Unions fighting efforts to get kids back in the classroom. Meanwhile there are a lot of private schools and parochial schools that have reopened and managing to teach their kids and keep coronavirus at bay. Sandra all really important discussions to be had. Meanwhile there is this idea floated around that the pandemic has been a chance for an economic reset. Here is Justin Trudeau on that theory and Tucker Carlson reacting to it last night. Watch. This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset. This is our chance to accelerate our prepandemic efforts to reimagine economic systems and address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change. Oh, this is our chance, says Justin Trudeau. Not our chance to save you from a virus with a 99 survival rate. This is our chance to impose totally unprecedented social controls on the population in order to by pass democracy and change everything to conform with their weird academic theories never tested in the real world and dont make sense. This is their chance. This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset, end quote. Thats a head of state talking. Sandra that was Tucker Carlsons response to the Trudeau Covid reset remark. What was your response, bill . Look, im with tucker on this. I think this is incredible. A lot of people are using this as an opportunity to do other things and what we need is to concentrate on the vulnerable and figure out ways to do it. We would have a lot more confidence in these governments if they had solved the problems in the first place or mitigated it. To use it as an excuse to reset, that invites all sorts of horrible specters. It is going to command economy. A lot of these people want to boss everyone else around and tell them what to do and what we really need is to unleash the economy and get people back to work. Sandra running a banner at the bottom of the screen. California lawmakers decided to pack their bags and take a trip to hawaii despite the covid restrictions that many of them have encouraged to be in place. It reminds you of some of the hypocrisy we are seeing in a moment thats so challenging for everyone. When were asked to play by the rules but the people making them are not. Final thoughts, bill. Yeah, do as i say, not as i do. Story of government for a long time. Sandra bill mcgurn from the wall street journal. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Trace jewish groups are asking the Supreme Court to step in over new covid restrictions. Is new York Governor Andrew Cuomo illegally targeting them . How far will democrats go to win the Georgia Senate runoffs . A new warning for anyone trying to move to the state just to vote in those races. Georgias secretary of state joins us next. Priceline works with top hotels, to save you up to 60 . These are all great. And when you get a big deal. You feel like a big deal. Priceline. Every trip is a big deal. My psorii had enough s pain . Its not getting in my way. Joint pain, swelling, tenderness. Much better. My psoriasis, clearer. Cosentyx works on all of this. Four years and counting. So watch out. I got this watch me. Real people with active Psoriatic Arthritis look and feel better with cosentyx. Cosentyx works fast for results that can last. It treats the multiple symptoms of Psoriatic Arthritis, like joint pain and tenderness, back pain, and helps stop further joint damage. Dont use if youre allergic to cosentyx. Before starting, get checked for tuberculosis. An increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. Tell your doctor about an infection or symptoms, if your inflammatory bowel disease symptoms develop or worsen, or if youve had a vaccine, or plan to. Serious allergic reactions may occur. I just look and feel better. I got real relief with cosentyx. Watch me feel real relief. Ask your rheumatologist about cosentyx. Trace White House Press secretary Kayleigh Mcenany is slamming democrats for what she calls hypocrisy on Election Fraud. Four years of investigating. We had a special counsel, we had the f. B. I. , peter strzok looking into this before the president was president trying to frame him essentially . We barely scratched the surface and we get hundreds of affidavit. Credible allegations of fraud. Were criticized for shining a light of the system. They get four years of pedaling conspiracy theories and producing nothing. Sandra more than 2600 uncounted ballots have been found in floyd county, georgia. Narrowing joe bidens lead by about 800 votes as the state continues its manual recount. Counties have midnight wednesday to finish the tallies. Trace, as this news comes in the secretary will be joining us in just a moment. Big questions over what this means in that state but all eyes on georgia as we head into january with the runoff elections being key. Here is President Trump in a tweet reacting to the georgia recount. Georgia wont let us look at all important signature match. Without that the recount is meaningless. Open up unconstitutional Consent Decree now. He put brian kemp of georgia on that twitter feed there. Well ask the secretary of state about that but 2600 uncounted ballots is an important discovery regardless how or if it changes the outcome of the election in that state. This is an important discovery. It is because maybe 800 ballots go in favor of the president. You look at this and talk about floyd county. All of a sudden they find 2600 missing or things that werent uploaded properly. The president s point and administration and campaigns point is this. If you have floyd county that has some snafu because things were uploaded this recount could be pivotal. Maybe other counties have other irregularities or other problems that werent specified or werent caught during the initial counting. And thats the overall point in this. Maybe this doesnt change the outcome. But maybe another county, a bigger county might. And maybe there are other problems that maybe would cause some other investigation and i think thats the overlying point here in georgia and nevada is that they find these small discrepancies theyre worth looking at. Legal experts say the odds of overturning the election, four states, very, very slim but each time you get an instance of this type of irregularity, look it raises questions. Sandra there is also a growing story about people attempting to move or relocate to the state so that they can vote there. The secretary of state on people trying to do that says this, let me warn anyone attempting election mischief. If you illegally participate in our elections you might be a lot more time in georgia than you planned. Promising accountability if anybody were to do that and taking it serious. The discovery of the 2600 ballots, this is Gabriel Sterling serves as the Voting System manager. It is an amazing blunder is how he characterized it. It is a person not executing their job properly. This involves a change at the top on the management side. So its been identified and well see when we speak to the secretary of state of if there is any chance there are more unaccounted for ballots or missing ballots not counted ballots out there. Thats another question. Trace it is interesting. All eyes are on georgia because of the senate races. You have the special elections and this will determine the balance of power in the senate. Right now you have 50 republicans and 48 democrats. If the democrats can take both of these seats you add Kamala Harris as the Vice President and the tiebreaking vote. Thats significant and would make Chuck Schumer the Senate Majority leader. So everybody is watching georgia and every little nuance and every little vote will become pivotal when you talk about the runoff elections coming up in january and look, it is a key point. This is a big, big election with a lot riding on it. Sandra there has been a back and forth with Lindsey Graham and secretary of state from georgia on this conversation that they had. This is Lindsey Grahams side of it saying quote what im trying to find out was how do you verify sig in tours on mailin ballots. Georgia has some protections that other states dont have where you go to the portal to get your ballot. There has been a back and forth with the secretary of state and senator Lindsey Graham on that. Lindsey graham trying to set the record straight he thought he had a good conversation. Things are heating up as we look to that state for what happens next. Trace thats the point where Lindsey Graham is trying to raise just a little bit of doubt. Trying to stir things up a little bit, raise doubt to see where it gets them. Theyre well behind now. Who knows how the recount comes out sandra well leave it there. Trace a half hour from now Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and twitters jack dorsey will be questioned about their actions around the election. Mike lee has a bunch of questions for the duo and joins us next. Woke activists have taken the position that were never allowed to question anyones transition no matter their age, the circumstance or the incredible lack of adequate medical oversight. 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Trace more sheriffs in new york are refusing to enforce governor cuomos restrictions on private gatherings for thanksgiving. They have few Legal Options to enter private residences to report the restrictions. Sandra spacex true rocket successfully docking at the space station last night. It launched with astronauts on board from florida on sunday marking the First Manned Space Mission for spacex. Trace a big hearing on capitol hill top of the hour. The Senate Judiciary committee will question the ceos of facebook and twitter and the handling of misinformation during the election. Mike lee sits on that panel and is joining us now. Marsha blackburn tweeted the following quoting enough with the biased Fact Checking flagging and takedowns at facebook and twitter. Looking forward to a robust discussion tomorrow. Sir, what do you say to the critics who say these hearings the end to be long on confrontation but very short on consequences. This time thats not going to be the case for the simple reason that the more reuncover about how they are operating their businesses, the more we can see that these big social media platforms are in fact offering one service and providing another. In other words, they are claiming that theyre politically unbiased and not putting their thumb on the scale between one side of the political spectrum and the other. So they lure their customers in thinking theyll have an unbiased experience. In practice this is not how it works. In practice what they are doing is steadily putting their thumb on the left side of the scale. Thats a problem. Thats a deceptive trade practice and they need to be held accountable for. That i predict they will be. Trace twitter is labeling some of the president s tweets as disputed and facebook has now shut down a protrump group called stop the steal with 350,000 members. Facebook says the following. In line with the exceptional measures that were taking during this period of heightened tension we have removed the group stop the steal creating real world events. The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group. What do you say to that comment, sir . What i say to that you dont see the same type of action occurring on the left. Jack dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg are found of saying and im sure well hear today that weve got people on both sides of the spectrum who are upset with us. The difference here, trace, you do have some people upset on the left, yes, but theyre upset mostly because they want facebook and twitter to be doing more of their stuff, not less. People who are actually getting censored with some rare and less visible exceptions are overwhelmingly rerepublican, conservative prolife individuals and organizations. You dont see that happening on the left. Trace as you look at the talking points from both sides the conservatives are focused on suppressing conservative content. On the other side you have democrats going after the ceos about limiting or banning hate speech and what they deem hate speech. You have Mark Zuckerberg who has come out and said im willing to follow the rules of the road laid out by these senators. The question a lot of people had what are the rules of the road . What do you plan to lay out for them that they should abide by . For me its very simple. I want them to offer the service that they claim they are going to be offering to their customers. When their customers get on one of these platforms they expect to get both sides. They expect both sides will be treated fairly. Thats not what is happening. Deceptive trade practice and putting them potentially squarely in the crosshairs of section 5 of the federal trade Commission Act. They dont want to be there and shouldnt be there. Trace you mentioned section 5. What about section 230 . Weve heard a lot about this. It gives protection for these Big Tech Companies to have all thoseth content be out there and they are still censoring. Do you see some changes to section 230 as we go forward . I think that is a possibility as well. Were looking at a number of pieces of legislation. One thats being brought up later this week, i believe, that has been introduced by senator josh hawley from missouri making some adjustments to section 230. So yeah, i think that will be on the table as well. As far as existing laws, its not a quick thing to move a bill through congress. But what we have right now the law that we have on the books right now also provide a remedy. Trace senator mike lee, good to see you. Thank you. Well be watching. Thank you. Sandra president elect biden says you have to contain the virus if you want to save the economy. But will more shutdowns do even more harm than good . Plus this. We will make mistakes in life. 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In floyd county they found a memory stick that hadnt been uploaded so that added 800 votes to President Trump. Sandra a total of 2600 ballots found on that memory stick . 2600. He actually picked up 800 votes total in that. Thats why we do audits. Verify that every single ballot has been counted. Sandra for that very reason we understand that if there wasnt a recount we might not know that 2600 votes were not accounted for. Could there be more . Thats why every single county is going through that process. It is a very thorough, rigorous process. Every paper ballot will be counted and day of election and all three forms of voting. Sandra is there any sign to you or evidence that the missing memory stick was deliberate in not getting those votes counted . No. The county election official was out and assigned a person that was inexperienced for a very Critical Role and they messed up. It was human error. It wasnt the machine. Weve asked for his resignation and so have the county commissioners. Sandra the president is asking in a tweet about the signature match. You had a conversation with Lindsey Graham about that. Ill get to that in a moment. The tweet. Georgia wont let us look at the allimportant signature match. Without the recount that is meaningless. Open up unconstitutional Consent Decree now. First your response to that before i get to that conversation with senator graham. Well, first off it was not an unconstitutional Consent Decree. We still have signature match in georgia as we have to have by state law. Since ive taken office weve strengthened it for the First Time Ever with our online absentee important tall we stood up this year. We have photo i. D. With absentee ballot. If you submit a paper application you have a signature match. Election officials this year under my watch have gone through the Georgia Bureau of investigation signature match process for training. Sandra this is a big part of the recount. Ill let you finish in a moment. You had a conversation with Lindsey Graham that grabbed a lot of headlines. You went on the record saying that it was your understanding that he was asking you to throw away valid, legal ballots. If there was inconsistencies in signatures and some of those counties where there was High Frequency of that. Lindsey graham responded to the conversation. What i was trying to find out how do you verify signatures on mailin ballots in these states. Seems to me georgia has some protections that maybe other states dont have. You go to the portal to get your ballot. I thought it was a good conversations responding your accusations of you throw out the ballots. Do you stand by suggesting that the senator told you to throw out legal ballots . Well, i thought he was calling about the senatorial race and then his question was about if ballots could be matched back to the envelope. I said once you have done the signature match we signature match the application and the ballot. I got the i thought he implied that he wanted us to audit the envelopes and throw out ballots of counties with the highest error rate of signatures. Throwing out good ballots with bad ballots. Thats the philosophy he had. At the end of the day they have been signature matched and thats where they are. The ballots have been accepted and those are the ones being recounted. We are following the process we have in state law. Sandra real quick last question on the suggestion that some people move to georgia to influence the elections in january. You are saying you are seeing that. Let me warn you, anybody attempting to do this if you illegally participate in our election you might be spending more time in georgia than you planned. Is that something that you believe that you are dealing with . We could be dealing with it and thats why we put out the warning. Andrew yang said he was planning on moving here with his family. And people think they can just come in for an election. You have to have specific intent to stay here, stay put, put down roots and become a citizen of georgia. Well prosecute that and work in concert with our attorney general. He put out a notice to that same effect. That would be a voter fraud and its severe penalties up to 100,000 fine and 10 years in prison. Sandra the secretary of state of the state in georgia on the recount. Thank you, sir. Keep us posted. Trace there is backlash over a book on transgender teens. One author fighting back after pulling it from shelves and one professor going so far as to call for burning the book. Is that going too far . This holiday season, its all about the bedroom. And with caspers black friday sale, you can save up to 30 and make yours a winter slumberland. 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But could new lockdowns threaten an economic recovery . Sean duffy and robert wolf here to discuss. I often remind our viewers you used to run ubs. You know a lot about the economy and you know that these shutdowns have dramatically affected so many lives. You look at restaurant workers, two million restaurant workers out of work right now. It is a tough environment. Can we even weather further shutdowns that joe biden is talking about . Unfortunately were in this impossible predicament. Right now cases are surging and red and blue states are being hammered indifferently. So the question is how do you reopen under best practice . We dont have the right protocol yet in place. Obviously we can talk about the mask and social distancing and contact tracing. The fact is its surging right now. We dont have our arms around it. 1 in 6 businesses are closing. Five Million People have left the workforce. So the president elect biden is absolutely right. We have to figure out how to reopen safely. But we need to reopen, i agree. These lockdowns are devastating to businesses. Sandra you call it an impossible predicament, one affecting millions of american lives. Sean, then you wonder why these are the questions that joe biden got at that News Conference yesterday . Listen. What do you see as the biggest threat to your transition right now given President Trumps unprecedented attempt to obstruct and delay a smooth transfer of power . It doesnt appear the president is going to come around any time soon and admit defeat. So what are you going to do . What options do you have to try to insure you are ready to go on day one . Sandra how does that how do those questions get to the bottom of solving this impossible predicament as robert wolf put it. Are these reporters or the Joe Biden Fan Club . There was no hard hitting questions of joe biden at all. Didnt get them in the campaign now the media says see the president elect they dont ask tough questions and it will be the status quo for his presidency. I believe in the American People. We should be able to make decisions for ourselves. Family, businesses, employees. We should know the risks and science and make decisions for our own. We dont need the nanny state dogooders to make decisions on our behalf. Lets open the economy back up and what frustrates me is when you shut down states you have a transfer of wealth. You see the costcos amazons and big businesses go better and Small Businesses get crushed. Its why big businesses supported biden. Sandra this was a suggestion last week. We could lock down for 4 to 6 weeks and if we did that, we could drive the numbers down like theyve done in asia, like they did in new zealand and australia. Sandra you advised the last democratic administration. If you were advising president elect joe biden on this issue you would tell him what . I would not be supportive of national lockdowns. Every city and state is different. Certainly i agree with the mandates that governors are putting in on social distancing, washing your hands and masks, looking at the right number of people inside groups, whether its for restaurants at 25 or 50 . Im not for a national lockdown. It is not one type of remedy dont fit everywhere. I think that being said, were months behind because unfortunately this white house has just handled this pandemic in the worst way possible. They actually are spreading it themselves with these super spreader rallies. Sandra i want to let sean react to that. Will you have a role in this administration, robert . Im telling everyone how the economy can recover and get businesses back going again. Sandra ill let you respond to him and taking on the current administrations handling of the pandemic. Joe biden doesnt have much of a different plan than donald trump. Its the same set of policies that donald trump has implemented for the last eight months. I would say that robert is right that if we areing to have any kind of shutdowns it should be county based. Localized, not a National Shutdown because the virus affects different communities at different times. And so be smart with how you do this if you are going to do it. Sandra we all want it to get better and be done safely. Robert, you talk about some of the economic plans that joe biden laid out yesterday. Free College Tuition for all. Chuck schumer talking about forgiving Student Loan Debt. Someone has to pay for that. Trace were moments away from a big hearing on capitol hill with facebook and twitter facing for questions about their actions during the election. Were live with the Senate Judiciary committee next. You can count on me ill be home for christmas if only in my dreams meet omnipod it delivers insulin through a tubeless pod. 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Trace a new book on rising transgender identification among teenage girls has critics calling it transphobic. When it was called from shelves in target people called them out. The transgender craze. The author joins us now. Thank you for joining us. You write this in the wall street journal. Amid a sea of material promoting medical transition for teenage girls there is one book that investigates that phenomenon and urges caution. Thats the book, the activists seek to sup reese it. Abigail, thats your book and it seems a bit one sided. Thats exactly right. There are hundreds of books out there uncritically celebrating medvedev caltrans ition for teenagers. There is only thats fine. I wouldnt want to ban any of those. But they are calling now for the banning of the only book out there that took a deep dive into the phenomenon of teenage girls suddenly deciding they are transgender and wanting to transition with their girlfriends. And takes a skeptical approach. Thats my book. Trace you want to pause. You have target that briefly stopped selling your book. A berkeley professor calling for the book to be burned and aclus Deputy Director for transgender justice said this book is a dangerous book with a goal of making people not trans. I think of all the times and ways i was told my transness was real. We have to filed these ideas leading to the criminalization of trans life again and stop the circulation of this book. Very little time left. Your thoughts on that. I think it is pretty clear that in the fight ahead for free speech in america we cannot rely on the aclu. Trace abigail. Good luck with the book. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. Sandra a fox news alert to a big hearing about to begin on capitol hill at this hour. The ceos of the two largest names in the Technology Field set to appear before a senate panel this morning making their second virtual appearance in less than three weeks. Welcome to a new hour of americas newsroom, im sandra smith. Good Tuesday Morning to you, trace. Trace good morning. Im trace gallagher, the chief executives of facebook and twitter are in front of the Senate Judiciary committee on the way social media giants handled electionrelated content during the campaign. Jack dorseys Opening Statement says we want to be very clear we do not see our job in this space as done. Our work here continues and our teams are learning and improving how we address these challenges and earn the trust of the people who use twitter. Gillian turner is live in d. C. For more on what is expected to be a pretty fiery hearing. Also a bit of breaking news right now. We have just learned senator chuck grassley, a key member of this committee, has been exposed to coronavirus and now in quarantine. If we hear from or see grassley today he will be virtual. That may very well change the entire tone and tenor of this hearing. We expect 100 to be focused on the president ial election. President trump has continued to use facebook and twitter to really make the case that he has won reelection despite joe bidens victory. Republican sources tell fox news they will laser in on the dozens of warning labels slapped on the president s twitter feed heading up to and since election day. Twitter and facebook have serious major anticonservative bias problems. Fox news obtained the Opening Statement for dorsey. Approximately 300,000 tweets have been labeled under our civic integrity policy for content that was disputed and potentially misleading. They represent. 2 of all u. S. Electionrelated tweets sent during this time period. Mark zuckerberg is going to kick it up a notch and make the argument that facebook has done a lot more than that to try to protect the election. He will say we partnered with Election Officials to remove false claims about polling conditions and displayed warnings on more than 150 million pieces of content. The grilling these ceos got last month three weeks ago was tough. Senator cruz if youll remember went all in on accusations that these companies have become godlike. Here was cruz. Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American People are allowed to hear and why do you persist in behaving as a democratic super pac . Trace, the ball is really in Senate Lawmakers court. The big, big question to Pay Attention to moving forward from this hearing today is are senate regulators ever going to do anything meaningful to rein in the companies and continue to hold the hearings that have been toothless threats . Trace live in d. C. As the news breaks. Sandra the balance of power in washington hanging on the Senate Runoff races in georgia. It looks like democrats in california want to help tip the scales. The San Francisco chronicle reports people are making plans to travel to georgia to fight for democrats. Meanwhile the incumbent republicans say that they are trying to save america from socialism. By keeping the republican majority in the senate. Were going to hold the line in georgia. Were a red state. Well make sure we get everyone out to vote and were not going to let california and new york buy this election because georgia is a red state. Sandra Jason Chaffetz fox news contributor. Someone who knows just how important it is down in georgia. First off, based on what you are seeing today, what are your expectations . My expectations is there will be hundreds of millions of dollars spent. It will be a tight race. There is a reason why they have a republican governor and two republican senators. I think republicans will prevail but i think this story coming out of california and other states about democrats moving into the state is very real. But sandra, with all due respect, they can claim that there is 100,000 fine and 10 years in jail. How many times have we ever seen anybody prosecuted for this stuff . The department of justice, federal election commission, the state governments, they never enforce these laws. Thats what drives us nuts. Sandra i want to put this up on the screen. This is the Washington Post headline. How georgia went blue. With so much riding on these two senate races the question remains whether National Organizations will invest in the tactics of organizers there including rational relational organizing and inperson canvassing. Lets deliver wins for decades to come. Jason, were awaiting the beginning of the hearing on capitol hill but as far as georgia and what i just read there about georgia going blue, what is at stake with these races in january . Well, i think what you will hear if you live in georgia time and time again is exactly what Chuck Schumer said. Chuck schumer is the one who said first well take georgia and then we take over the nation. Thats really what is at stake. Control of the United States senate is everything if the democrats think they can have the house and senate and the presidency. Sandra chairman graham has taken his seat in this hearing. Censorship suppression in the 2020 election. Jack dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg will be appearing virtually for this hearing on capitol hill this morning. Jason, your final thoughts on republicans really trying to dig deeper on what is happening with these Major Companies and their impact on elections. I think there will be a lot of rhetoric but i think until they get the federal trade commission involved and engaged i think these companies have been involved with deceptive trade practices. You havent heard a lot about it. If you want to change the outcome and how they deal with it in an unfair and biased way you have to go through the ftc route. All this other stuff is wrong. Sandra the second time in two months the big tech ceos have appeared before congress and expected to face a grilling from some of the 22 lawmakers that will be appearing in this hearing this morning. Jason, thank you. Here is chairman graham. Offer people like and use. So bottom line is theyve probably been more successful than their wildest dreams and they are having to make decisions that offend people on the left and the right, and what were trying to do is look at section 230 and see if it needs to be modified or changed because section 230 basically allows social media platforms like twitter and facebook to pass on information without legal liability. If a newspaper does something you dont like or you think theyve slandered you in a certain way you can sue them. If a news program does something that you think is out of line, even as a politician with a high bar, you can sue them. These companies have Liability Protection when it comes to the content that their users engage in. You can sue the person who gave the tweet but you cant sue twitter who gave that person access to the world in terms of what they said. And we have to find a way to make sure that when twitter and facebook make a decision about whats reliable and whats not, what to keep up and what to take down, that there is transparency in the system and i think section 230 has to be changed because we cant get there from here without change. But in 2019 a study of more than 15yearolds those who spent more than three hours a day using social media might be at heightened risk for Mental Health problems. Another study 12,000, 1316 year olds in england found using social media more than three times a day predicted poor Mental Health and wellbeing in teens. Other studies observed between links of high levels of social media use to depression and anxiety. The average millennial checks their phone 157 times daily. I dont know how members of the senate, i dont know where we fall. Social media is designed to sustain users attention with a mix of good user interface design and psychology creating an addictive mix for users. Its called the slot machine effect. A technique which utilizes a pull to refresh and scrolling mechanisms on news feeds similar to a slot machine. The light button, a feature to provide social validation to a feedback look and looking at the number of likes a users content exchange. Social interactions, employing gamg to encourage users coming back. For examples streaks is the one causing the most concern and using elongating red lines to display the number of days since two users interacted. Guess what these technologies do is try to keep us engaged. The more we engage the technology, the more advertising benefit to the company. Is that a Good Business practice . Maybe so. Does it create a Health Hazard over time . Something to look at. Now the other aspect of this debate is are these companies newspapers, tv stations, do they have the power of media organizations that have rules and regulations and the Current Media platforms do not . There are rules about what a television station can do. There are rules about what a newspaper can do. And what i want to try to find out is if you arent a newspaper, a twitter or facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post . They decided and maybe for a good reason, i dont know, that the New York Post articles about hunter biden needed to be flagged, excluded from distribution or made hard to find. That to me seems like you are the ultimate editor. The editorial decision at the New York Post to run the story was overridden by twitter and facebook in different fashions to prevent its dissemination. Now, if thats not making an editorial decision, i dont know what would be. Its one thing when we do it in our private lives. Nikki haley made a post about her concerns about mailin balloting. It was flagged as something a claim that hasnt been legitimized. Let me read it to you. The next question to ask is why is it a crime to raise doubts about the holocaust, why should anyone writes about such doubts be in prison while insulting the prophet . Thats the ayatollah. He is opining raising doubts about the holocaust should be a crime and he has openly called for the destruction of israel. His regime has. And his tweet was basically allowed to flourish. Here is what nikki haley said. Despite what the media tells us, Election Fraud does happen and policies like ballot harvesting and mailing ballots to people who dont request them makes that easier. That needs to stop. This claim about Election Fraud is disputed. Well, thats her opinion. She believes, like i do, that mailin balloting is ripe for fraud if you cant verify the signature and if we just send mailin ballots out to the world that arent requested and you dont have a signature verification system that can be trusted, you have led to harvesting of ballots for nefarious purposes. The question for us as a country, at what point do the decisions by these organizations cross a line and at what point do they have to assume responsibility that section 230 chills them from . And to the people who are about to testify, i consider your products to have changed the world, mostly for the good. Were able to interact among ourselves. Were able to talk to each other and share life experiences, were able to realtime communicate to our neighbors and friends and those who oppose us what we think with technology that just makes it instant and can literally light up the world. Section 230 was developed to allow these technologies to flourish. Early on if you could sue twitter or facebook for content on a Facebook Posting or a tweet and they were liable for what somebody else said or what they felt or did, then the company would have probably never been in existence. The companies are trying to help us deal with child pornography. To be able to maintain Liability Protections when it comes to Sexual Exploitation of social media sites, sexual predators this committee has passed a bill saying you can only maintain that Liability Protection if in fact you use best Business Practices. And thats where i think we need to be going. My hope is that we change section 230 to incentivize social media platforms to come up with standards that are transparent and opaque that will allow us to make judgments about their judgments, that the Fact Checkers be known, that the Community Standards, who sets them, what are their biases, and give some direction to these companies because they have almost an impossible task. They are literally trying to engage in telling us what is reliable and whats not based on cable news commentary or tweets from politicians or average citizens. Nobody in a free society has ever had that responsibility before. And the question is, how do you control that responsibility . I dont want the government to take over the job of telling america what tweets are legitimate and what are not. I dont want the government deciding what content to take up and put down. I think were all in that category. But when you have companies that have the power of governments, have far more power than traditional Media Outlets, something has to give. And im hoping in this hearing today that we can find a baseline of agreement that section 230 needs to be changed, that my bias would be to allow the industry itself to develop best Business Practices to protect the sites against terrorism and Child Exploitation and other concerns. That we look at the Business Practices of these companies through a help prism that some of their practices need to be modified because it can become addictive. We thought tobacco was a good thing for a long time to the point we sent it to our soldiers in combat. The more we realized about the addictive nature of tobacco the more we changed our mind about telling the product about the product. So whether or not we do that with social media platforms, that these platforms can be addictive if used too often, i dont know if we need to go there but i do know that section 230 as it exists today has got to give. I think there is republican and democrat concern about the power that is being used by social Media Outlets to tell us what we can see and what we cant, whats true and whats not to the extent that section 230 in my view has to be rewritten. So thats the purpose of this hearing. Its to find a way forward to bring about change. When it comes to social media platforms and section 230, change is going to come. With that senator blumenthal. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. And thank you for having this hearing today. And i look forward to cooperating with you not only in this hearing but in the Upcoming Congress on our bill and other measures because you are absolutely right, change must come to social media. The fact is we meet today in an unprecedented and precarious moment in american history. Daily the president shocks our conscious and shakes the very foundations of our democracy using a powerful mega phone, social media. The president has used this mega phone to spread vicious falsehoods in an apparent attempt to overturn the will of voters. Every day he posts new threats and conspiracy theories about mailin ballots and voting machines, lies that contradict his own Election Security officials and his lawyers. He uses this mega phone potentially to block a peaceful transition of power. Now, mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey you have built terrifying tools of persuasion and manipulation with power far exceeding the robber barons of the last gilded age. You have profited of strip mining data and Voter Suppression and you have an immense civic and moral responsibility to insure these instruments of influence do not irrepably harm our country. I recognize the steps, baby steps, that youve taken so far, the destructive, incendiary misinformation is still a scourge on both your platforms and on others. In fact, google has been given a pass from todays hearing. It has been rewarded by this committee for its timidity doing even less than you have done to live up to its responsibilities. The recent actions you have taken in fact are simply to check the truth of what appears on platforms, often it is Voter Suppression and incendiary, malicious misinformation and you have tried to slow its insidious spread. Thats not censorship. Thats moral and civic responsibility. Now i believe and i hope the chairman agrees that a series of hearings on big tech is long overdue on antitrust issues, on privacy concerns, and section 230. I have urged, in fact, a breakup of tech giants because they misused their bigness and power. Breaking off, for example, whatsapp and instagram. Rigorous privacy protections because consumers should have control over their own data. And indeed section 230 reform, meaningful reform, including even possible repeal in large part because their immunity is way too broad and victims of their harm deserve a day in court. But this hearing is certainly not the serious proceeding that we need. It may come a political side show, a public forum, my colleagues seem to want to ignore the foreign Disinformation Campaign to interfere with our democracy and calls for murder of f. B. I. Director wray and dr. Fauci. What weve seen here are fighting words and hate speech that certainly deserve no Free Expression protection. The fact is that the purpose of todays hearing seems as much to bully or browbeat you, mr. Zuckerberg and mr. Dorsey, from taking the more responsible actions by threatening cuts to section 230. Censorship is really a misnomeer for this hearing. What youve done is to label and fact check to avoid amplifying misinformation and to alert people that what they are consuming may misinform them. It took down ads for biden in michigan and aclu in colorado for mistaken information about voting. In short, there was actions that have happened on both sides. I have fought for section 230 reform for 16 years. From my time as connecticuts attorney general when i took on the scourge of registered sex offenders luring children on facebook in my state with senator portman i have led passage of the only successful revision so far to section 230, the stop enabling section act. And chairman graham and i have authored the only bill to reform section 230 that has actually moved out of a committee. It passed this committee unanimously. Change is going to come, no question. Change is on the way, and i intend to bring aggressive and targeted reform to section 230. But i am not, nor should we be on this Committee Interested in being a member of the speech police. There are real harms and real victims here and in some ways this hearing is a betrayal of those real harm and the real victims of them. Those harms have been caused by big tech because you have failed your responsibility, as have others in this industry. I want to see real reform that will enable these abuses to be reformed because your platforms have embraced views and weaponized child predators, violent White Supremacists and human traffickers and i have heard you have set back the rights of muslimamericans organized by private online groups. You have set back consumers in competition making that kind of antitrust action very, very important. The American Public deserves and demands real reform and accountability, National Consumer privacy rules, antitrust principles that curb predator power and reform section 230 that stops shutting the courthouse door to victims. I look forward to an opportunity for real change and i think you can see this moment by being on the right side of history. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Thank you. A lot to unpack there, senator blumenthal has been great to work with and ill continue to work with you if we keep control of the committee, senator grassley will be the chairman next year and i would encourage him to have the hearings that senator blumenthal referenced. It is an ongoing conversation to get it right to the extent we can get it right. Mr. Dorsey from twitter, are you with us, mr. Dorsey . I am. Can you hear me . Thank you, the floor is yours. Thank you, members of the judiciary committee. For the opportunity to speak with the American People about twitter and your concerns around censorship and suppression of a specific news article. Generally what we saw in the 2020 u. S. Elections conversation. We were called today because of an enforcement decision we made against the New York Post based on a policy we created in 2018 to prevent twitter from being used to spread hacked materials. This resulted in us locking people from sharing the New York Post article publicly or privately. We made a quick interpretation using no other evidence that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking and according to our policy blocked them from being spread. Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours. We informed the New York Post of our error and policy update and how to unlock their account by allowing them to tweet the news article again. They chose not to instead insisting we reverse our enforcement action. We did not have a practice around retroactively overturning prior enforcement. We needed one and created one that we believe is fair and appropriate. I hope this illustrate the rationale behind our actions and demonstrates our ability to take feedback and admit mistakes and make changes all transparently to the public. We acknowledge there are still concerns around how we moderate content and specifically our use of section 230. Three weeks ago we proposed three solutions to address the concerns raised they all focused on services to decide to moderate or remove content. It could be expansions to section 230. New legislative frameworks or commitment to industry wide best practices including one moderation practices to be published. Two, straight forward process to appeal decisions, and three, best efforts around algorithm choice are suggestions to suggest the concerns we have Going Forward and all achievable in short order. It is critical as we consider these solutions we have new startups and independent developers, doing show increases the probability of competing ideas to help solve problems Going Forward. We must entrench is Largest Companies any further. Finally before i close i wanted to share some reflections on what we saw during the u. S. President ial election. We focused on addressing attempts to undermine civic integrity providing informative context and product changes to encourage greater conversation. We updated our civic integrity policy to address voter intimidation, suppression or confusion about how to vote or misrepresents affiliation or election outcomes. More than a year ago the public asked us to offer additional context to help make potentially misleading information more apparent. We did exactly that. Applying labels to over 300,000 tweets from october 27th to november 11th. Which represented about. 2 of all u. S. Election related tweets. We also changed how our product works in order to help increase context and encourage more thoughtful consideration before tweets are shared broadly. Were continuing to assess the impact of these product changes to inform our longterm roadmap. Thank you for the time. I look forward to a productive discussion focused on solutions. Thank you, mr. Dorsey. Mr. Zuckerberg. Thank you, chairman graham, Ranking Member and members of the committee. Last months hearing i spoke about the role internet platforms play in supporting democracy, keeping people safe, and upholding fundamental values like Free Expression. People have deeply held beliefs about these issues and can reach very different conclusions about the right balance. We try to do whats best for our community and the world. Acknowledging that there are difficult tradeoffs. I believe that some of these tradeoffs and decisions would be better made through a democratic process and i look forward to discussing that today. First, i want to update you on our efforts during the election. At facebook we took our responsibility to protect the integrity of this election very seriously. In 2016 we began to face new kinds of threats and after years of preparation we were ready to defend against them. We built sophisticated systems to protect against election interferes with artificial intelligence, human review, partnerships with the intelligence community, Law Enforcement and other tech platforms. Weve taken down more than 100 networks of bad actors, trying to coordinate and interfere globally. Established a network of independent Fact Checkers that covers more than 60 dantion languages. We made political advertising more transparent than anywhere else. We introduced new policies to combat Voter Suppression and misinformation. Still the pandemic created new challenges. How to handle misinformation covid and voting by mail. How to prepare people for the reality that results would take time and how to handle if someone prematurely declared victory or refused to accept the results. We made sure we took precautions. We worked with local Election Officials to remove false claims about polling conditions that might lead to Voter Suppression. We partnered with reuters and the National Election pool to provide reliable information about results. Posts by candidates on both sides and additional contexts the post trying to delegitimize the outcome. Locked down new political ads to prevent misleading claims from spreading. We strengthened enforcement against Conspiracy Networks to prevent them from use you are our platforms to organize violence or civil unrest. I believe this was the largest Election Integrity effort by any private company in recent times. This is what people expect of us and im glad that from what weve seen so far our systems performed well. Election interference we mains an ongoing threat that will never be fully solved. We continue to improve with each election. Integrity work is half the story. We also ran an unprecedented Civic Engagement program to encourage people to take part in our democracy. We ran the largest Voter Information Campaign in history, 140 Million People visited our voting information center. Including more than 33 million on election day alone. We estimate that we helped more than 4. 5 Million People register to vote and helped states recruit 100,000 poll workers. This was done in a transparent and nonpartisan way as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting the civic process. On top of these efforts by facebook my wife and i personally donated 400 million to support Election Officials around the country in making sure that they had the infrastructure they needed to enable everyone to vote safely during this pandemic. My last testimony i said the people would judge us by our performance during this election. I believe that the full story is not only how we handled bad behavior on our platforms but encouraged Civic Engagement more broadly. Im proud of the work weve done to support our democracy and i look forward to discussing this. I also welcome the opportunity to discuss internet regulation. I believe were well overdue to update the rules for the internet around content, elections, privacy, and data portability. There were important questions here including who should be responsible for what people say online . For any system to work, i believe there needs to be a transparent process that people feel they can trust. It will be difficult since our country is so divided but i believe its the only way to address these issues for the long term. The challenges that we face are deeper than any one platform. Theyre about how we want to balance basic social equities we all care about like Free Expression, Public Safety and privacy. This is why i believe we would benefit from clearer guidance from elected officials and i look forward to discussing this today. Thank you both. Well have one round and seven minutes but as always try to be a little bit liberal of the time. It is a very important topic. So lets just get right into it. Mr. Dorsey, you can go first and mr. Zuckerberg. When you heard senator blumenthals Opening Statement and mine, what did you get from it . Well, i think you pointed out that we are facing something that feels impossible. We are required to help increase the health of the conversation and insure as many people as possible can participate. And in order to do so we need to make policies so that people feel safe and they feel free to express themselves. To minimize threats of abuse, of harassment, of misleading information, of organized campaigns to artificially amplify or influence a particular conversation. And that policy creation, that enforcement, is challenging but also it is more or less opaque to the public and thats where i think we have a gap. We have transparency around our policies, we do not have transparency around how we operate content moderation, the rationale behind it and the reasoning. And as we look forward, we have more and more of our decisions, of our operations moving to algorithms which are have a difficult time explaining why they make decisions, bringing transparency around those decisions, and that is why we believe that we should have more choice in how these algorithms are applied to our content. Whether we use them at all so we can turn them on or off. And have clarity around the outcomes that theyre projecting and how they affect our experience. Trace thank you. Mr. Zuckerberg, have quickly, please. What did you hear . Senator, i heard that there are issues around content moderation as well as other areas. And frankly im optimistic from the statement that we may be able to move forward and hopefully update some of the rules for the internet around these areas. I have been encouraging and hoping we would do this for a couple of years and from your Opening Statements it sounds like there may be now enough Common Ground on views that Real Progress can be made here. From my point of view the question for us is when it comes time to flag content as being reliable or not reliable, do either one of you believe that the government should do that . Is that a solution where the government sits a regulatory scheme that talks about what should be up and what should be down . I dont believe so. I think that would be very challenging. Do you agree with that, mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, for certain types of illegal content i think it may be appropriate for there to be clear rules around that. But outside of clear harms including things like Child Exploitation, and areas like that, terrorism, i would agree with your sentiment that its not something that government should be deciding on a piece of content by piece of content basis. If we take the government out of the picture in noncriminal areas should we leave it up to the industry to come up with best Business Practices . In terms of how to moderate content . I think we need a line around the problem that were trying to solve. And there are Many Solutions to solving those problems but i think we also have to focus our efforts on what will have the greatest impact. We believe that the greatest impact will be found in how we deal with algorithms and use them. Theyre responsible for showing us what we see or what we dont see. They need to be there needs to be more choice in their use. Do you agree with that, mr. Zuckerberg . Senator, i think that there is a role for regulation in the process even if not defining on a piece of content by piece of content basis. One of the areas ive advocated for is regulation around transparency. That goes beyond just about what the policies are and what the process is, but also goes towards results. As an example of this, every quarter facebook releases a Community Standard enforcement report. A transparency report that breaks down each category of harm potentially harmful content we track ranging from terrorism to Child Exploitation and incitement of violence and pornography. Who sets those Community Standards . How are they set by the company . We have a policy team that consults with a number of different stakeholders and outside groups to make sure we get feedback from a broad swath of our is that publicly known . Senator, i believe so. Our head of content policy has testified publicly multiple times. Okay. So when it comes to Fact Checking, would you give us a list of the people you use to fact check . Senator, yes. We work with a number of independent organizations that are accredited by the Pointer Institute and they include reuters, associated press, United States, usa today, fact check. Org, science feedback, politifact check your fact stories in the dispatch in the United States. I think its important for the public to know who sets Community Standards, how they are set, who does the Fact Checking, who you rely upon to do that. I think that would go a long way to people having a better understanding of the decisions you make. Mr. Zuckerberg, do you believe your product can be addictive . Senator, we certainly do not design the product in that way. We design the product to be as useful and meaningful as possible. My question is there seems to be an ample body of growing medical evidence that social media sites have an addictive nature to them. I dont think the research has been conclusive but an area we care about and study. We dont want our products to be addictive. We want people to use them because theyre meaningful. We take steps to make sure that this is the case. For example, you know, we dont give the team thats running news feed a goal around how much time people spend on our product. Which goes counter to a lot of the memes and misinformation out there around how we operate. But my goal is to help people connect and find content and interactions meaningful to them on our service. Our view is if thats what we deliver over the long term and people find the services useful theyll use them more. But i dont think that companies should be optimizing to just encourage people to spend as much time as possible on them. Time is about up. Have you seen the movie social dill emma . Im familiar with it. Have you seen it, mr. Dorsey . No, i have not. I would encourage both of you to see it. So here is what i think were going to do on the committee over time, i hope, is to ask the question more directly are these social media sites addictive . Do they have a Public Health component that needs to be addressed . For years we thought tobacco was a great thing and we found tobacco was not such a great thing. The medical science around these websites are becoming very concerning to me particularly among children. And that you can manipulate how many times you watch and you can set these media sites up so people will constantly interact. So to both of you, i appreciate coming before the committee. Weve got a long way to go. I dont think the government needs to regulate what we think or what we say. But weve got to up our game here and ill end with this last question. Do both of you support change to 230 reform of section 230 . Senator, i do. Mr. Dorsey . Yes. Thank you. Senator blumenthal. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Let me bring this down to very practical terms. Were in the middle of another election. This election in georgia could determine which Party Controls the United States senate. Im concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching. That you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation exactly the same kind of Voter Suppression tactics that existed in the last election and that you are in fact reducing content modification. The fighting words and hate speech in the last election could inflame violence and send poll workers into hiding. Discourage people from coming to the polls. We have to expect the same kinds of malign tactics, in fact, they are already visible and im going to ask mr. Chairman that these posts and tweets be entered into the record if there is no objection. That are aimed at delegitimizing the election in january. My question to you is will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including Fact Checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation and other steps even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead . Senator, our policy is to have similar approach in the upcoming Georgia Special elections that we took during the general election. Mr. Dorsey . Yes, we do. We intend to learn from all of our experience with this election and bring all that learning Going Forward to making it more robust. During the past election, there was rampant disinformation on social media in spanishspeaking sites repeating qanon conspiracy and false claims of election rigging. In my view you need to will you commit to taking steps to improve content modification for spanishspeaking communities before the georgia runoff . Senator, this is something were already working on and worked on ahead of the general election. We have multiple Fact Checkers who focus on spanish as a language and we made sure we translated our Voter Information Center into spanish which we showed at the top of facebook and instagram to everyone who uses those products in spanish in the u. S. Those are a couple of the steps that weve taken and were certainly committed to focusing on this. Yes, we will, in partnership with latin x civil rights group. I would like to know what additional steps you are going to take . The georgia runoff is underway and as ive indicated, ive seen a backsliding and refrenchment that is very deeply troubling that has enabled the spread of this disinformation, the restarting of certain algorithms, for example, that promote or amplify misinformation is very, very troubling and i think i want to know within a week what additional steps you are taking to enhance the efforts to stop this kind of amplification and spread. Let me ask about facebook Community Standards which ban language that quote incites or facilitates serious violence. November 5th steve bannon in a Facebook Live video called for beheading of dr. Fauci and f. B. I. Director wray for not acting more favorably toward President Trump, twitter banned bannon for these remarks. You removed the video, mr. Zuckerberg. On thursday you reportedly told facebook employees that bannon had not violated enough policies that he should be banned from facebook. My question to you is how many times has steve bannon called for the murder of government officials before facebook suspends his account . Senator, as you say, the content in question did violate our policies and we took it down. Having a content violation does not automatically mean your account gets taken down. The number of strikes vary depending on the type of offense. The people are posting terrorist content or child ex employation content the first time they do it well take down their account. For other things it is multiple. I would be happy to follow up afterwards. We try not to will you close down when his commit . Will you commit to taking down that account, Steve Bannons account . Senator, no. Thats not what our policy suggests that we should do in this case. According to the internal records that are on record now, leaked by nbc news, facebook has removed fact check and forgiven infractions for conservative pages and pundits shufp as breitbart, eric trump, donald trump junior and pundit based on a fear of accusations of bias. Has facebook avoided penalizing or Fact Checking conservative pages that violated its policies based on concerns of political bias and allegations of bias . Senator, no. We havent done that. And i think those reports mischaracterize the actions that we take. Im not aware of any instance where weve overturned a fact check specifically. And certainly no action like that would be taken for the reasons that you are saying. What we do sometimes is if apply some judgment on whether the repeat offender policies would render too harsh of a penalty. But thats different from overturning a specific fact check. And it is not done for the reasons that you said. Im very concerned that in fact facebook seems to have a record of making accommodations and caving to conservative pressure and the president has tried to use an executive order on section 230 to bully or browbeat and exert pressure on you and others in this industry. They are working and winning. Let me ask you about antitrust issues. In 2013 facebook bought onabo, a virtual private records network that claimed to protect users privacy. The access to private information about its users provided facebook with unparalleled ability to track potential competition. I want to know whether facebook used data from onabo when it decided to [inaudible] in 2014 . Senator, i believe that data was one of the sources that the team looked at but i dont think it would have taken using onabo to understand that whatsapp was a great product and i dont think that was determinative in my decision to pursue that. Well, in fact, the house antitrust report says onabo data was used to determine whether whatsapp was killing facebook messenger, end quote. My time has almost expired but let me just say finally that antitrust action by the federal trade commission is long overdue. I believe that Decisive Action is necessary, including very likely breaking up facebook if there is a remedy. All options ought to be on the table. Divestment of instagram and whatsapp and the fcc ought to impose how facebook uses user data and competes with rivals because the abuse of competition must end. Mr. Chairman, i ask that three letters from civil Rights Groups regarding disinformation and hate speech on twitter, facebook and youtube and also a letter from coalition of childrens protection advocates on the earn it act and child sexual abuse material on digital facts being entered into the record. Thank you for being here today. Without objection. Senator cornyn. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Well, im glad to hear both of our Witnesses Today say that section 230 theyre open to reform. Because i think its fair to say the internet has outgrown section 230. While weve made some modifications when it comes to terrorism and when it comes to Child Exploitation, i think there is more to do. But i think the question is going to be how this regulation is going to come to pass. I know there are some, including on this committee, who suggest that maybe we ought to create a private right of action so that individuals can sue over claims of violated rights on your platforms. I think thats one form of regulation. It is called the regulation by litigation but it is certainly not my first choice and it is not optimal. And i dont think it is something we ought to be embracing in the first instance. But i do think it is critical that each of you and your counterparts work with us to try to come up with something that will address the concerns. And the basic concern i have is its hard to know exactly how to classify your business model. We have a provision in the bill of rights protecting freedom of the press but yet here while we would never let the government regulate what the press writes or doesnt write, essentially were allowing private companies, which are now defacto Public Forums to regulate that speech. Im no more comfortable delegating those decisions to you than i am delegating to you my vote in the last or upcoming elections. It was said the solution for bad speech is not less speech, its more speech. It seems to me like the practices that you are engaging in to tag, remove and otherwise censor speech on your platforms violates that principle. I would like to know why that shouldnt be a better approach by allowing more speech rather than censoring what is perceived as bad speech. And then, as i think ive discussed with you, mr. Zuckerberg, i think were all sort ever struggling to come up with what the appropriate analogy is to your business model. We know as newspapers have become less profitable and many of them gone out of business there has been consolidation in the news media. There is a proliferation of cable tv shows and people being able to get information through a variety of sources, but there is no Walter Cronkite or the big tv networks with the trusted anchor person who people have confidence in who will that they will shoot with them straight. So i know its a very difficult thing to manage. But i would just encourage both of you not to wait for the lawsuits. We saw what happened to microsoft. I think bill gates said it was one of his biggest mistakes. Failing to engage with some of the antitrust concerns when it came to microsoft and he learned that the hard way. There is a better way for the American People and thats if we work on this together. Mr. Zuckerberg, i believe that facebook publishes on a quarterly basis a report of its actions in this area. Is that correct . Senator, thats correct. And could you describe that for us and what motivated you to undertake that sort of transparency . Yes, i believe that in order for people to trust that were doing a good job, they have to be able to see the results. And we have to be able to break down on a content on a category by category basis across all the different categories of harm, whether its terrorist content or Child Exploitation or incitement of violence or pornography or International Property violations, how much of the violating content is on our platforms and how effective our systems are at removing it. We try to get a high as percent of this harmful content and addressing it before real people have to experience it and report it to us themselves. So in categories where we do quite well, for example, in fighting against terrorist content, our ai systems and Counter Terrorism teams are able to remove 98 or 99 of that harmful content before anyone has to report it to us. In other categories it is more challenging and were still making more progress. I think as part of a Regulatory Framework here it would be good if every company had to issue a transparency report outlining what they are seeing on their platforms and the results and effectiveness of their content moderation systems so that way the people who are responsible for holding all of us accountable, whether its journalists, congress, academics, could have an apples to apples comparison how all the Different Companies are doing and potentially as part of the law require that Companies Even maintain a certain level of effectiveness. Thank you. Mr. Dorsey, when twitter decided to take down the story, the New York Post story on Hunter Bidens laptop, did you do that under your terms of service or did you do it under some other claim of authority . We did it under our terms of service which as you know everyone agrees to when they sign up for twitter. This is a policy around distribution of hacked materials. We did not want twitter to be a distribution point for hacked materials. You do realize by taking down that story you probably gave it more prominence and more visibility than it ever would have gotten had you left it alone. We realize that and we recognize it as a mistake that we made both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately which is why we corrected it within 24 hours. Mr. Dorsey, why isnt justice bran diass form lags in whitney versus california why shouldnt that apply to the internet platforms like yours . In other words, the cure for bad speech is not censorship, it is more speech. Why wouldnt that principle apply to twitter . I think it does apply. All of our policies are focused on encouraging more speech. What we saw and what the market told us was that people would not put up with abuse, harassment and misleading information that would cause harm. And they would leave our service because of it. So our intention is to create clear policy, clear enforcement, that enables people to feel they can express themselves on our service and ultimately trust it. So it was a business decision. It was a business decision. Thank you. Senator feinstein. Thanks very much, mr. Chairman. Mr. Dorsey, in recent hearings before the Senate Commerce committee you said, i think, that twitter has a policy against misinformation relating to civic integrity. President trump and his allies have tweeted hundreds of false claims about the 2020 election. Trump has falsely claimed victory and alleged widespread voter fraud. So here is the question. Does misinformation about the results of an he election and voter fraud relate to civic integrity . Why or why not . Yes, it does and we label those tweets when the election has not been called yet and where multiple sources have called it differently. Im sorry, i didnt understand that. Did you say youve been able to tweet . No, we have labeled the tweets that would indicate a different result from the election called by multiple sources. I see. At what point was that done . Throughout the period, october 11th up to today. So when the tweet was initially came in, how long was it before you, quote, updated it . We didnt update it. We put a label on it pointing to the broader conversation. Our goal is to connect people with more information around whats happening with the election and that was and that occurred anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes. But as quickly as we can. Thank you. Is 30 minutes the maximum time . I dont know. We can get you that information. Would you . Im interested in this. Does misinformation about the results of an election and voter fraud relate to civic integrity . Why or why not . Yes, it does. And we also label those tweets that would indicate whether fraud is happening. We connect those to larger conversations on the platform. We want to provide context here. Thats our goal, providing for context and information. Now a specific question. Im not sure actually what the answer to this should be. But on november 7th President Trump tweeted and i quote, i won this election by a lot, end quote. Obviously thats not true. President trump lost the election. The warning label says official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted, end quote. Do you believe that label goes far enough to prevent the tweets harm when the tweet is still visible and not accurate . I do. It is not just the surface level label. It points to a collection of news articles, of information and conversation that gives you an expansion on whats happening with the election. My concerns are that these tweets arouse people and it seems to me that the entity that runs this operation ought to have an understanding that when there is a major situation, that the tweets can play a unique role in either reassuring or stirring people up to unacceptable levels. Could you comment on that . Well, i agree in spirit. Our policy is focused on misleading information around the election and the civic process to provide greater context and added information so people can make decisions around what is happening with the election and that is three phases. The runup forelection, election day and the phase were in right now post election. Our policies are focused on providing more information and more context to people on that basis. Let me give you a specific. On november 7 President Trump tweeted this. I won this election by a lot. End quote. Thats obviously not true. President trump lost the election. The warning label that twitter has applied to the tweet says, and i quote, official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted, end quote. Now, here is the question. Does that label do enough to prevent the tweets harms when the tweet is still visible and is not accurate . I believe its really important that we show people a broader context and that is the intention of the label. It is not just text below the tweet, it is a link to connect to a much larger conversation and news articles across the spectrum. Give me an example of what would have to happen before the situation would warrant a stronger response . We did have stronger responses during election day and the week after where we did put on something that you had to click through to see the content of the tweet and limited spread for anything that went against our civic integrity policy including results of election results. On november 12 President Trump tweeted a Conspiracy Theory that 2. 7 million votes for him were deleted. The warning label twitter applied to that tweet said, quote, this claim about Election Fraud is disputed. Now here is the question. I think it is a tough issue. Do you believe this label does enough to prevent the tweets harms when the tweet is still visible, it is a highly emotional situation, but the tweet has no factual basis . But the tweet has a link to more information, to more conversation and more context that informs the situation what is happening. So i do believe that connecting people to the larger conversation, giving them more context is the right path here. But they have to move to solicit that contact, right . It is not contained as an addendum to the original tweet. The label is an addendum to the tweet. If you tap on it or click it you will go to an expansion of the information. I see. Can i ask a question of mr. Zuckerberg . Yes, you may. One more that would be okay. Mr. Zuckerberg, at the recent hearing before the Senate Commerce committee, you said that facebook has a, quote, policy in place that prevents any candidate, end quote, from, quote, trying to delegitimize the result of the election, end quote. But the steal the vote and voter fraud garnered more than 300,000 interactions in the hours after mr. Trump falsely declared victory. So here is the question. Do you believe facebook did enough to prevent trumps efforts to delegitimize the election result . If so, why have you reached that conclusion . Senator, i believe that we have taken some very significant steps in this area, not just the adding additional context to specific posts and making it so that when people search for different hashtags we show Additional Information but we also took the unprecedented step of putting the Voter Information Center at the top of facebook and instagram for everyone in the u. S. That showed them reliable information about the election including partnering with organizations like reuters and the National Election pool to show them Accurate Information about the results of the election. So all taken together, i think that we really went quite far in terms of helping to distribute reliable and Accurate Information about what was going on during this election. Let me give you one more along this line. After President Trump falsely claimed that the election was being stolen, a group called stop the steal was started on facebook. It grew to more than 300,000 users in less than a day making it one of the Fastest Growing groups, i understand, in facebook history. You shut the group down but substantial damage already had been done. Trump supporters, some of them armed with assault weapons, held stop the steal rallies outside Election Offices. In philadelphia, two armed supporters who had traveled from virginia were arrested on their way to the citys vote counting center. Here is the question. This is a tough one. What are your concerns about the spread of misinformation, no matter how innocent it is, or it is not innocent, like trumps claims about the election that they may incite violence . Senator, im very worried about this especially any misinformation or content that could incite violence. And during such a volatile period like this one of our Top Priorities is making sure that people dont use our platform to organize any violence or civil unrest. And that was the basis under which we took that group because there were a number of members who were posting potentially violent or encouraging violent comments that violated our policies. We also have broader policies in place around trying to slow the spread of misinformation more broadly, even when it is not going to lead to some kind of violence or imminent harm and thats why weve created this independent Fact Checking program where we work with more than 80 partners around the world to help do Fact Checking because people in our community have told us they dont want to see misinformation but they dont want us to be deciding what is true and false. So we have taken the step of building this program which i believe is more sophisticated than what anyone else in our industry has. Im very focused on these issues. Im happy to hear that because im really struck by it that people armed with assault weapons as a product of a tweet could rally outside an Election Office and i think it is really a serious issue that needs to be considered. And there need to be, once you signal that and people respond to it, it has to be in some way abated or some way pointed out or restructured on the internet itself. Now, can you respond to that . Senator feinstein, were almost double the time. Im sorry. Thats all right. Well have a vote come up. I apologize. Senator lee. Thank you, mr. Chairman. First i would like to note that as far as the president s arguments about the election and how they turned out, inciting violence i would like to point out the obl violence im aware of has occurred in connection with antifa. And their response to protrump peaceful rally attenders. So i dont quite understand that. Maybe well have a chance to dwell on that more in a minute. First i want the talk about federal law, existing federal law. Section 5 of the federal trade Commission Act prohibits businesses from engaging in unfair or deceptive trade practices. Compliance with this particular law requires that there be some consistency between what a Company Represents as their practices and their products and what they actually are. In other words, you cant sell one thing and provide another under the guise of providing Something Different than whats being sold. Both twitter and facebook represent and have represented for years to their users their customers that they take a neutral approach to election content moderation. However, as weve heard today and as we will continue to hear today and into the foreseeable future, there are instances in which your platforms are taking a very distinctively partisan approach and not a neutral one to content moderation. For example, days before the election twitter suspended the account of mark morgan. Mark morgan is the commissioner of the u. S. Customs and Border Protection office. They suspended commissioner morgans twitter account specifically for a tweet celebrating the success of the u. S. Southern border wall. Apparently commissioner morgans tweet and comments about the border wall violated twitter platform rules governing what it calls hateful conduct. Ive read the offending post. The owe fending posts reads as field. As cbb and the army corps of engineers, every mile helps us stop murderers, sexual predators and drugs from entering our country. It is a fact walls work. Period, close quote. Mr. Dorsey, can you tell me in one sentence what exactly is hateful about commissioner morgans tweet that i just read . We evaluated this tweet again and found we were wrong. There was a mistake and it was due to the fact that we had heightened awareness around government accounts during this time. So that was a mistake. We reverted it. Thank you. I appreciate that and well get back to more of that in a minute and get back to the fact that i understand that mistakes happen but what were going to see today is that mistakes happen a whole lot more, almost entirely on one side of the political aisle rather than the other. Now commissioner morgans statement in that tweet as was initially taken down is factual. Nothing remotely hateful about it and yet it was taken down. Now on october 15th facebook relied on a third party Fact Checkers assessment to ban two advertisements from facebook for quote partly false information. Now both of these advertisements were factual in nature and revealed joe bidens and Kamala Harriss views on late term abortion. Joe biden stated he wont accept any restrictions on abortion and senator harriss views are such that she voted against requiring care for a child born alive during a botched abortion. The very next day the Third Party Fact checker issued a statement retracting the assessment and retracting it as erroneous. However, it stunningly took facebook almost two more weeks until october 29th when voting had already started in many jurisdictions, to lift the ban on these legitimate ads. Ads that the fact checker had already declared a couple weeks earlier were erroneously taken down. Mr. Zuckerberg, why on earth did it take facebook two weeks to correct this error . Senator, im not familiar with the details of us reenabling that ad. I can follow up with you after. It is possible that this was just a mistake or delay and unfortunately when we handle millions or billions of pieces of content a day, while we strive to do as well as possible and be as precise as possible, we will make some mistakes. Thank you, i appreciate your acknowledgement of the fact that there are mistakes. Those mistakes sure happen a whole lot more on one side of the political spectrum than the other. This is understandable, were humans but understandable why this might occur. Maybe some of it has to do with your employees, 92. 83 of facebook employees who donated to federal candidates gave to democrats. Twitter its even more stark than that. 99. 3 of twitter employees have donated to federal candidates gave to democrats. So these mistakes they may be mistakes but they are mistakes that rhyme, they may not repeat themselves but they rhyme. And the consistent theme happens to be republicans, conservatives and prolife activists. Now, i would like to ask both of you, is there a list of every user or every content creator who has been deplatformed or had their contents realtered or some other adverse action taken by either facebook or twitter altered . Is there some list that identifies each user for which that has happened . Mr. Zuckerberg, lets hear from you yes or no question. Does such a list exist . Senator, im not aware of anything like that existing. Mr. Dorsey, how about you . Im not exactly sure what youre asking. Simple question. Do you have a list of users or content creators have had action taken against them. Reach altered or deplatformed because of the content of their posts . Certainly whenever we take an action it is recorded somewhere in a database. Im not sure if thats your intent. Thats helpful. What im hearing from both of you is that while there may not be an actual list i would like you both to check to see if such a list exists, even if there isnt there is a defact owe list. You have within your database is records of occasions when this has occurred. I would like to ask both of you if such a list exists, please send it to me. I would like to see it. If such a list does not exist you certainly do have a data necessary in order to generate some. I request as a member of this committee that you generate such a list and provide it to me. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Senator graham, the chairman of the committee has stepped out momentarily and ive been directed to recess the hearing momentarily so that we can go and vote. And then well pick up back here in just a few minutes. I would like to, as long as i have the gavel momentarily ill ask one more question before i leave to go vote and we will recess the hearing. Could i ask when were coming back . Ive been waiting to ask questions for an hour now. Well be coming back as soon as senator graham returns. He left to vote just a moment ago and he will be back. Mr. Zuckerberg, in September Facebook tagged an ad run by the american principles project in michigan that criticized joe biden and criticized senator gary peters. And the ad was tagged because it was quote, unquote, missing context. Now, the next day the ad was shut down entirely by facebook. Facebook relied on a supposed fact check from politifact, a nice way to avoid taking accountability for the problem except that the fact check in question literally said that the ad quote makes predictions we cant fact check. Apparently this had to do with lacking context. When did lacking context become a new standard for political ads . All political ads, all ads in general, but certainly all political ads lack context. Ben sasse finished a resounding victory in nebraska and i havent seen his tv ads im sure they are brilliant. He is made for television. With or without the beard. And im sure his ads didnt say ben sasse, great senator, but not that great of a hockey player. There is context that is lacking and left out in any advertisement. So what does it mean and have you applied the missing context label to any democratic ads . A single one that you can identify . Senator, im not familiar with that specific standard but as kind of a background on the Fact Checking program, the basis of this is that we have heard resoundingly from our community that people do not want to see misinformation and believe it is a problem. People also believe that they do not want facebook to be the arbiter of truth in deciding everything that is true and false. And for what its worth i strongly agree with that and i do not thing its the right thing for us to assume that role. So within those bounds, weve tried to create a Fact Checking program that works with independent third parties who have been accredited by the Pointer Institute for journalism, which i think is widely respected, and we give those Fact Checkers the latitude to determine whether ads or other content on our service is accurate and if not we apply some demotions or prevent them from being run as ads. I can follow up in more detail afterwards on the specifics of your question since im not as familiar with them right now. I would appreciate that very much if you would be willing to do that. Its not only inconsistent with logic and with the standards that apply in every other advertising context that im familiar with. It is also insistent with what facebook itself does. To give you context for that while we talk about missing context. I recently posted something about the election on facebook. And my Facebook Post was almost immediately tagged with the following quote, Election Officials say that voter fraud, which is historically rare, has not affected the outcome in this election. If confirmed that mailin voting was conducted in accordance with state voting rules. Close quote. Now i find this a little disturbing. The tag to me sounds a lot more like staterun media announcing the party line rather than a neutral company as it purports to be running an open online forum. This kind of editorializing insulates people from the truth and it insinuates that anyone concerned about voter fraud must be crazy. It also states it as if it were an irrefutable neutral objective fact. Maybe these kinds of concerns are out of the mainstream in palo alto, but they are not out of the mainstream with the rest of america. I have to reiterate, i hope this kind of manipulation wasnt intentional but it is getting harder and harder for me to accept the premise that it could be anything but intentional. And if it was intentional, yet more evidence that facebooks actions surrounding this election are incongruent with the promises that youve made to your own users and thats a problem. Consistent with the directions that have been given by chairman graham well recess. I predict we will be in recess for no more than 10 or 15 minutes until chairman graham returns. We stand in recess. Sandra all right. Youve been listening to the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on capitol hill of dorsey and zuckerberg. Lets bring in Molly Hemingway joining us now. What youre reacting to on twitter while this is all happening is senator Lindsey Graham saying that twitter made itself the New York Posts editor. It was quite a moment near the top of the hearing where he said if you arent the New York Post why are you making editorial decisions . There are rules about what a newspaper can do and what i want to try to find out is if youre not a newspaper at twitter or facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post . They decided and maybe for a good reason, i dont know, that the New York Post articles about hunter biden sandra twitter Ceo Jack Dorsey went on to explain why they did what they did. What did you think of it . Well, jack dorsey falsely claimed the reason why they censored and brutally interfered in the 2020 election by censoring the New York Post, deplat forming them. Restricting peoples ability to share information about Hunter Bidens laptop because it violated their terms of service. It says it prevents anybody sharing information they believe to be hacked. We know that isnt true in multiple ways. For one thing there is no evidence that the hunter biden laptop materials were hacked. They were a legitimate journalistic inquiry for anybody who cares about journalism and fact. People had a right to know the biden Family Business was involved with the Chinese Communist party and state owned businesses. No question it is important. Also no suggestion that these were hacked materials. And then there is also the issue we know there were hacked materials which were Donald Trumps tax returns which the New York Times didnt bother explaining how they were able to hack but we know they were ill gotten. Whoever shared them did not have authorization to share them. Twitter made no attempt to restrict the sharing of that information. So we have evidence that twitter and other Big Tech Companies are lying about their involvement and their interference in the 2020 election and were having yet another round of hearings. Interesting to see that democrats who are asking the questions the end to be largely supporting of getting rid republicans are asking some questions about it. I think it is getting to the point though that a lot of people who are victims of this censorship and election interference are wondering how much more will he talking about it and when will something be done particularly considering how much impact these big tech censorship and deplatform efforts have had an peoples elections . Sandra such a great point. The American People watch another hearing like this and while they are interested and they want to see what goes on inside of these Technology Companies and how they do filter out some of this information, would there be any accountability . How many times did you hear some of the Technology Giants say we made a mistake. It shouldnt have happened. Jack dorsey said were facing something that feels impossible. They were reminded of the great responsibility that they have with so many people getting their information from these technology sources. The New York Times in the middle of this posted a data point that from november 3 to november 6 the days that followed the election on and following twitter labeled 38 of Donald Trumps 29 tweets. So they are bigtime in this and they are dramatically affecting what people see and how they see it when you consider the context. What else did you take away from what you just heard . I think thats important context that you just provided. What happened in the decades leading up to the 2016 election is that media were able, Big Media Companies were able to control what people heard or thought about different issues. And then you started having people work around big media by using social media. Able to communicate their message that way. A lot of people blamed social Media Companies including twitter and facebook for not doing enough to stop donald trump and allowing the American People to elect him. They went and spent the next four years making sure that they would be able to use their power to suppress conservative voices and opinion and facts that benefited conservatives or hurt liberals. So they i think see the 2020 election and their ability to interfere in it by censoring and deplat forming voices they didnt want heard as a victory. So with democrats and Big Tech Companies sensing they had this big victory im not sure what can happen. At the same time conservatives are far beyond the point of wondering whether this is election interference or censorship, they know its a serious problem and theyre ready to see major action taken. They view this as an infringement on the culture of free speech in this country. It was interesting that these Big Tech Companies were claiming they used impartial journalists to determine whether something is factual or not. Thats the problem. Journalists are not seen as credible and neither are their fact checked an used to suppress conservative voices. Sandra they were khaejed on that this morning who has the discretion inside their companies to make those decisions, molly. And you just saw it on a banner on our screen, jack dorsey saying that 300,000 electionrelated tweets were disputed by the company in the week following election day. Its an important point and this hearing will continue with republican senators grilling those tech giants on capitol hill moments from now. Molly, thank you. Trace. Trace well, meantime the gop bringing out the heavy hitters in georgia ahead of mustwin run office to try to keep democrats in check or if they will have free rein in dc. Karl rove one of the big names being brought in to help. Well tell you exactly how next. One call to newday usa can save you 3,000 every year. You could start saving, beginning with your next mortgage payment. Refi now at these historic low rates. Tm ti;lj r uque3a n1 . [÷ npqq . Xhs irresistibly smooth chocolate. To put the world on pause. Lindor. Made to melt you. By the lindt master chocolatier. Trace our next guest is leading a massive republican fundraising drive for the two Senate Runoff races in georgia. The january 5 vote will decide the balance of power in washington karl rove joins us now. Former White House Deputy chief of staff and fox news contributor. This effort includes you, former new jersey governor chris christie, nikki haley and the former Vice President dan quayle. Why get involved in this, karl . How important is it . Well, its vital to whoever controls the United States senate. Will have a big impact on the direction of Public Policy over the next two and four years in the United States. I was asked by the chairman Republican Campaign committee to head up this effort. Mine is more a managerial responsibility and well announce the state chairs and bundlers and the honorary chairs and National Leadership of this effort in coming days. Were rapidly trying to pull together a nationwide organization to help do in a matter of seven weeks what takes most campaigns a couple years to get done. That is raise money from across the country to fund these vital races. Trace is that the deal, you know democrats a lot of political analysts have said the money flowing into georgia will be unprecedented over the next several weeks and democrats have a good start on this thing. Is that part of the equation here, karl, that you believe you might be a little bit behind going in . Well look, the democrats showed in the past election think about it. They spent 80 million to try to defeat Lindsey Graham in south carolina. Spent almost that amount of money to defeat Mitch Mcconnell in kentucky and failed. One guy in california, wealthy Silicon Valley type put 28 million into texas in the last couple weeks the try to defeat senator john cornyn. Mike bloomberg put 100 million in florida. Lots of wealthy liberal on either coast willing to pop money into the races. We expect perdue and loeffler will be outspent by the democrats. It is not who has the most money but wise in spending the money. Im confident well both have sufficient money and our team will spend it better. Nobody should kid themselves. Well be outspent in georgia no ifs, ands or buts. Trace you were talking about the money when you said pile it on big time. And the ground game. We have to get out the vote. I know both candidates have talked to their teams. Both candidates are keenly aware of this. Their volunteers now today knocking on doors in georgia. Theyve got a gigantic get out the vote operation. We have to put every bit of energy and effort to win these races and come out the victors and be in the majority in the senate by a slim 5248 margin. Trace it will be expensive and ugly. I want to put it on the screen from an opponent from Senate Majority pac writes the following quoting. The Georgia Republican ticket is made up of a pair of corrupt out of touch politicians and will stop at nothing to take away georgias healthcare. They arent ready for prime time and focused on exposing their records in the months to come. This is going to be contentious, karl. Absolutely. Both of these people have been cleared by the Senate Ethics commission of having done anything wrong. Everything right in handling their financial affairs. Been cleared bipartisan committee. This is the kind of trash that will be coming their way and we ought to be prepared for it. If you cant talk about the issues. If your party represents taking over government and takeover of healthcare and tax increases and the Green New Deal and ending raising utility bills and raising costs for driving your car you dont have much to talk about. Go throw a bunch of mud on the republicans and we expect that to happen in the next 48 days. Trace what do you make of the California Democrats saying they plan to go to georgia start their own ground game and people saying well move to georgia and maybe set up residency and hit earlier the secretary of state saying no, thats not going to happen. We will prosecute if you do that. What do you think about that . Think about that. Democratic president ial candidate says he will move to georgia in order to vote in the election, andrew yang and leave. Californians are planning to come to georgia. I recommend to your viewers enter your browser and enter Washington Post georgia and youll see a video that a california democrat has put up of him calling a voter in georgia with a fake georgia accent and calling him on a sunday to get him to vote for warnock and ossoff, the two Democratic Candidates and hanging up having his west coast voice back again. It is very funny but it is indicative how con descending and elitist these California Democrats need to be of georgia. They need a california liberal to help them vote right. I recommend it to. Washington post, indicative of the people in california coming to georgia to help save them from voting for republicans. Thank you, sir. Sandra thank you, the wall street Journal Editorial Board arguing the two successful vaccine trials in the fight for the coronavirus might be proof that President Trumps way of doing this is better than president elect biden. Vaccine distribution could get caught up in bureaucratic red tape. Lets bring in dan henninger. Who should get credit when this vaccine is finally ready, dan . Good morning. Hi there, sandra. The primary credit should go to the developers of the vaccine, the u. S. Pharmaceutical industry, which is really one of the most extraordinary forces for good in the world. I mean, we have the best biological and chemical scientists anywhere working for Companies Like pfizer, Johnson Johnson and moderna. Credit should go to the Trump Administration which mike pence as well, who decided to try to fast track the development of these vaccines. And when you think that we focused on this back in march and we now have at least two vaccines with up to 95 effectiveness, it is an extraordinarily fast uptake in creating therapies and vaccines to treat this Public Health crisis. So i think both the pharmaceutical industry and donald trump himself and the administration deserve great credit for the Great Success were having here. Sandra an important point. The headline in the wall street journal highlights that. Trump, biden and covid vaccines. With joes advisor scuttle more fda approvals . A quote. The trump fdas covid has been providing clear guidance to drug and vaccine makers about expectations. This has helped therapies and vaccines advance and cut fees, three trials from a few months. These reforms are one of the Success Stories of the federal response but a serious risk that the biden team will reimpose bureaucratic control that restricts medical advances. Is that a risk we face in the coming year . I think it is, sandra. I mean, we have to put this in context. The Democratic Party for years has regarded the pharmaceutical industry as the enemy. They call it big pharma, al gore ran against big pharma and under democratic administrations the food and Drug Administration has been extremely cautious and slow in approving new drugs whether for Heart Disease or cancer. That is their instinct and thats the intink on the people of the biden advisory team. But we dont have stories on Television Every Night of people dying of Heart Disease or cancer so generally democratic fdas can get away with slow walking the approval of these therapies. We are in the middle of a Health Crisis and they want therapies and vaccines developed and delivered as quickly as possible raising the question of whether even a Biden Administration with people who typically have been slow to approve these sorts of things, whether they will be able to get away with that politically under these circumstances. Sandra interesting perspective. Dan henninger from the wall street journal. Thanks. Trace big tech hearings 2. 0. Heads of facebook and twitter called back before congress. Coming under fire for what many say is censorship of conservatives. The hearing currently in a short recess. Well take you back there live when it resumes. For over 30 years, lexus has been celebrating driveway moments. Heres to one more,. Ok everyone, our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy. Whoohoo great tasting ensure with 9 grams of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, and nutrients to support immune health. And nutrients to [whats this . ] oh, are we kicking karly out . We live with at t. It was a lapse in judgment. At t, we called this house meeting because you advertise gigspeed internet, but we cant sign up for that here. Yeah, but im just like warming up to those speeds. Youve lived here two years. The personal attacks arent helping, karly. Dont you have like a hot pilates class to get to or something . [ muffled scream ] stop living with at t. Xfinity can deliver gig to the most homes. Sandra a live look on capitol hill as we await the hearing to resume the Senate Judiciary committee chaired by senator Lindsey Graham expected to resume any moment now. And, trace, we have been watching this, obviously, because republicans had called jack dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg back into a hearing room for the second time now to press them on suppression, censorship, the 2020 election. Did you see a grilling from those republican senators a few moments ago, and that is expected to continue on capitol hill any moment. Trace what i found fascinating is that both Mark Zuckerberg and jack dorsey said they would agree to changes for section 230. That is the law that gives them protections against liability for the things that people post on their website. Agreeing to changes it is in essence a way for them to say that maybe they would be wi wilg to be treated differently more as publishers or as providers or people putting views out there. So, it means that there is a possibility that facebook and twitter and the is unlike would change, could change so that they would have more control over what is posted on their web sites and in the same time they would be liable for that content. Sandra Lindsey Graham making headlines in the minutes that followed his Opening Statement of this hearing saying that twitter made itself the New York Post editor with that hunter biden story. He said what i want to try to find out is if you are not a newspaper at twitter or facebook, then why do you have editorial control of the New York Post . Obviously that was a big moment in that hearing room as both those ceos try to answer those questions and those senators Digging Deeper on what the American People are concerned about. They are concerned about the limiting of information, the censoring of information that we get. So Many Americans get when they look to the social media sites for their news. Trace and i asked senator mike lee earlier these hearings are known, they are big on confrontation and big on the soundbite, not as big on consequences. And he had said thats all going to change. And hes one of those that wants to put these social media giants to their feet to the fire in this. So we will see how it comes out. Sandra we should see them back in the hearing room any moment. Trace denying claims that President Trump weighed possible military action against Irans Nuclear program during a white house meeting with his National Security team last week. Benjamin hall is live with more on this. Benjamin . Yeah, hi, trace. Two Senior Administration officials pushing back strongly both on the reports that President Trump had asked for strike options against iran but also on reports that he had to be talked out of launching a strike. In fact they call those reports utter garbage. What we do know is the iaea the International Atomic Energy Agency last week published a report saying that iran had increased their stockpile of uranium to more than 12 times the limit that they agreed to in 2015 and well on their way to amassing the fuel needed to making nuclear bombs. As a result of that President Trump met with security chiefs in the oval office and these strike options, which the military always has prepared and prepped were brought into that meeting. President trump, however, didnt even want to entertain them. Nevertheless, iran seized upon the news of an apparent strike and they press in retaliation saying any attack would be met with a crushing response. Vice President Biden meanwhile has said that he will quickly rejoin the jcpoa the iran deal despite the of countries in that region and iran continues to violate the sanctions against venezuela. Two different ways of dealing with the slack republic. Trace . Trace benjamin k. You have these reports coming out saying in fact iran is still ratcheting up their uranium levels, the key ingredient to make nuclear weapons. They are still tictocking that up and that makes this even more important when you talk about getting back into the jcpoa agreement that joe biden has talked about doing. Sandra absolutely a live look at the hearing room. We will get back to that as soon as it begins there was a vote that had to happen. Senator Lindsey Graham slipped out the door while senator mike lee was questioning the Technology Ceos when he comes back in that room they will begin. The Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein late for the meeting as well. A lot happening on capitol hill this Tuesday Morning weeks after election day. And now have you got joe biden, the president elect naming members of his staff this morning, trace. Its a busy november here as we cover the news. Trace it is a busy time around here. Then you talk about this senate. Rejust talkewe just talked to kn off races in georgia balance of power in the senate, two seats up for grabs. Republicans now have 50 senators. We have 48 of the democratic side. If its a tie, Kamala Harris will be the ty breaker and Chuck Schumer would be the Senate Majority leader, sandra. Sandra thats it for us from americas newsroom. Thanks for joining us, everybody. Outnumbered starts right now. Harris and we are awaiting that hearing with big tech ceos to resume on capitol hill we will take you there expeditiously when that happens. All of this is playing out as tensions remain high over 202420 election results. Earlier today facebook ceo Mark Zuckerberg and twitter Ceo Jack Dorsey faced accusations of suppressing conservative views and interfering in the election. Senators were asking some tough questions about big techs handling of President Trumps statements before and after the election. And republicans pressed dorsey on twitters blocking of New York Post stories on hunter biden business dealings