Vivek Ramaswamy, author of Woke Inc., railed against freedom speech in an intense debate — even a two on one cage match — over a fundamental Constitutional right.
Ramaswamy launched an attack on free speech and free markets at the Nov. 3 edition Squawk Box. Ramaswamy stated that the first rule of the road was no viewpoint-based discrimination. “Spam, porn, moderate that — get it removed from the feeds. That doesn’t mean there’s any viewpoint discrimination. Here’s the rub: hate speech is no longer a category. As heinous and horrible as it may seem, hate speech is simply someone’s opinion.
CNBC hosts Becky Quick (CNBC) and Andrew Sorkin (Celebrity to Net Worth) have a combined net worth $32 million. Free speech, however, is too dangerous to protect. Quick warned of “misinformation” via social media. “And then people believe it.” There are large numbers of people who believe in things that are completely false.
Quick agreed with Sorkin, arguing that social media companies have some responsibility for reining “heinous stories” and “conspiracy theories”. But Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro countered Sorkin’s anti-American arguments via Twitter. In yet another demonstration of freedom of speech, Shapiro asked: “Does a phone company have a duty to stop you saying nasty things about your neighbours?”
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Ramaswamy continued to lecture CNBC hosts about using “misinformation” as an excuse to censor Americans. He stated, “If you’re going down false speech, I believe that a cardinal rule of the company is that it bears the obligation prove that the speech wasn’t false before removing it. And then, if in doubt here’s a tiebreaker: give the power back the user.” “Let the user choose which protocols they want to opt into.”
Becky Quick, a CNBC host, asked Ramswamy if “advertisers don’t want to be in that midst.” She laughed and then shook her head. Ramaswamy replied, “I think advertisers have the option to choose which of these user protocols they wish to opt into.”
Quick: “The racist, hatred channel?”
Ramaswamy replied that it’s “the free speech channel”. “I don’t think those who express these opinions want them to be called racist,” Ramaswamy said.
Quick and Ramaswamy also clashed over Tesla CEO, and Twitter owner Elon Musk’s now deleted comments about the Paul Pelosi controversy. Musk shared a story about the attack on Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) husband, which was reported to have been by an illegal alien and drug user. He also asked why the attacker was wearing his underwear.
Musk tweeted, “There is a small possibility there might be more than meets the eye.”
Conservatives are being attacked. Contact CNBC at cnbcnewspr@nbcuni.com and demand it defend freedom of speech instead of laughing off the dangers of censorship.
