Tulsi Gabbard: belief

Transcript context

…Can you actually explain that bill? Yes. I guess the bottom line upfront is this is another piece of legislation being expedited through Congress with strong bipartisan support in the name of national security interests that is essentially a power grab and an assault on freedom and liberty. And I’ll just say this in, I think, probably the top three things that they’re not actually telling us that’s in the bill. Freedom of speech, it’s our ability to be able to express ourselves, whether it be in person, on a podcast, on a social media platform, in a newspaper, whatever the platform may be. This legislation gives the executive the power to decide which platforms are acceptable for us to be able to use TikTok itself. The words, TikTok, is not actually in the bill, but it gives the power to the president to decide, “Who is a foreign adversary?,” single-handedly, no consultation with or agreement from members of Congress or anyone else. It actually gives the power to a cabinet secretary to designate, “Who is a foreign adversary?,” and if a social media platform has at least 20% ownership in a social media platform, that platform may be banned from doing business in America essentially, but it’s not just a foreign state actor that could be named as a foreign adversary. It also includes a line in the legislation that if, let’s say a person has at least 25% financial interest or ownership in a social media platform, they’re an American citizen who may be working or living in some other country, or working or living here, but doing business with other countries. If the executive branch of our government decides that this individual is under the influence of, or controlled by someone that they deem a foreign adversary, then that platform must not do business in America, and that person obviously, even an American citizen, is banned from conducting that business. They must divest, essentially. So when you look at, and this is where there’s been a lot of chatter around this, when you look at Elon Musk, for example, well, you already have people in the Biden administration, even President Biden himself, implying that Elon Musk’s activities need to be investigated. Well, he is someone with Tesla who does business in a lot of countries, including China, and therefore, he must be investigated. It is not at all a stretch of imagination to say that X could be the next platform that the executive branch decides. Nope. We’ve designated this person to be a foreign adversary, and therefore, his business interest cannot be allowed for this social media platform, cannot be allowed to exist. ecutive branch decides. Nope. We’ve designated this person to be a foreign adversary, and therefore, his business interest cannot be allowed for this social media platform, cannot be allowed to exist. We’ve seen this already with people accusing him and X of interfering in our elections. Again, it’s ironic that it’s coming from the Democratic party, that they are claiming that a guy who has set himself, he’s committed to free speech and is allowing free speech on his platform, and is not allowing the federal government to manipulate his platform by deeming which accounts are okay to post their content and which accounts are not because of disinformation, or whatever they claim it to be, it’s not an accident that the social media platforms that have been proven to take action at the behest of the federal government and the White House to censor certain voices, they’re not included with or being targeted at all in this legislation or outside of it, yet, other platforms that are not cooperating or collaborating somehow are. So the underlying issue here, this is being sold as TikTok and national security, but ultimately, even as Ron Paul said, this is a legislation that’s the greatest assault on liberty since the Patriot Act was passed.…

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