Republican Senator Ted Cruz earned praise on Twitter this week for destroying the platform’s CEO Jack Dorsey during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on social media censorship Tuesday. The exchange between Cruz and Dorsey marked the GOP lawmaker’s second brutal attack against the tech giant.
During the hearing, Senator Cruz read statements from the Carter Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform and asked Dorsey if he’d flag the tweets.
“Mr. Dorsey, would the following statement violate Twitter’s policies: Quote ‘Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud’?” Cruz demanded.
“I imagine that we would label it so people can have more context,” Dorsey replied.
“How about this quote … voter fraud is particularly possible where quote ‘third-party organizations, candidates and political party activists’ are involved in quote ‘handling absentee ballots.’ Would you flag that as potentially misleading?” Cruz continued.
“I don’t know the specifics of how we might enforce that, but I imagine a lot of these would have a label pointing people to a bigger conversation,” Dorsey replied.
“Well, you’re right you would label them because you’ve taken the political position right now that voter fraud doesn’t exist. I would note both of those quotes come from the Carter Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, that is Democratic President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker,” Cruz said.
“Twitter’s position is essentially voter fraud does not exist. Are you aware that just two weeks ago in the state of Texas, a woman was charged with 134 counts of election fraud. Are you aware of that?” Cruz continued.
“I’m not aware of that,” Dorsey replied.
Cruz concluded by telling Dorsey that he was going to tweet out the Texas story with a copy of the indictment to test how Twitter would respond to it and sent another two “test” tweets on voter fraud to see if Twitter would flag or otherwise censor them. A little over an hour after the tweets were sent, they had yet to be flagged.
Cruz’s attack was beautiful. Check it out:
Click below to hear Mock ‘N Rob’s reaction to Sen. Cruz’s takedown of Dorsey.
