Senator Marsha Blackburn on the Republican Path Forward

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Hello, everybody.

This is Victor Hansen at the Victor Davis-Hansen podcast, and we have a special treat today

with our guest, Senator Marcia Blackburn.

She's a senior senator from Tennessee.

She was a seven times elected House member, and I think you've all seen her on television and watched her career.

And we're very pleased.

And we want to get right into it, Senator.

You've been

very interested in big tech, and that's been in the news lately,

especially with sort of the asymmetrical treatment shown by the White House toward Elon Musk at Twitter.

And then contrast that with Apple and others in China that seem to be

lending their expertise, or if that's a euphemism, to the Chinese government to engage in surveillance of dissidents and, of course, to enforce their police state.

What do you think is going on with the White House?

Is it just that the money that comes in through Silicon Valley donations to the the left?

Why are they so blatantly asymmetrical?

Yes, and asymmetrical is the right term for that, Victor.

Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

Here is the way I'm looking at what the White House is currently doing, and it takes a little bit of historical perspective.

It was about 12 years ago that I started working on the online privacy issue, and it was about 10 years ago that we introduced a bipartisan online privacy data security bill.

Well, the Democrats decided to kill that bill because the big tech companies in California did not want it.

The reason for that is because they feel like they should own the virtual you.

If you are on their platform,

their valuation is set by the eyeballs that they can control every day the amount of time they can have them on their platform.

That's why they incentivize children to stay on these platforms because that's money in the bank to them.

When it comes to the hardware side of big tech and those companies like Apple

that are there in the Silicon Valley, they teamed up with China.

And we all know that after the over the past four decades China has been very aggressive in trying to control US corporate manufacturing it didn't matter if it was pharmaceuticals or telecommunications equipment or hardware, batteries, so many other things, consumer goods, consumables, pharmaceuticals.

And they have captured this by saying, we can produce this for pennies on the dollar for what you would have to pay to produce it in the United States.

So you have these big companies like Nike, like Apple, that are completely dependent on manufacturing in China, much of it being done in Xinjiang province with Uyghur slave labor.

And they cannot separate themselves because for them

to boast the profits that they are boasting every year, they have to stay close to China.

Well, now we're at a point where we have a president whose family has Biden Incorporated, and it has been revealed, documented, that the Bidens have

had thirty million dollars in profits that have come from relationships with businesses in China.

And

this is why I think you are seeing this asymmetrical treatment come out of the White House right now.

It's very difficult for them to separate themselves.

It is very difficult for them to turn their back.

What would happen if they turned their back?

For companies like Apple, how would they separate themselves?

When you look at the way Apple is treated, even though they're cutting off airdrop to Chinese citizens

who use their iPhones in China, trying to stop them from organizing protest.

And you see that treatment, but then you turn around and you see how they're treating Elon Musk with Twitter.

And of course, there seemed to be a now resolved misunderstanding between Elon Musk and Tim Cook about whether Twitter would or would not be allowed to stay on the Apple App Store.

So

it looks as if

the White House

has a penchant for picking winners and losers.

They've done it in energy policy.

They have done it when it comes to inflationary items.

They have done it in climate policy.

They have done it in domestic policy.

You're seeing it reflected in our foreign policy decisions.

And again,

they are trying to say Apple is going to be our winner and Twitter and Elon Musk will be our loser.

Two different standards, two different sets of rules.

That's how

this White House rolls.

What's frightening to me, and I think to you, is that I work near Silicon Valley or in the middle of it at Stanford University, and there's $7 trillion of market capitalization between San Francisco and San Jose.

And they have this close relation with Stanford University.

And we see it with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

We saw it with Ben

Sam Bankman Freeds, his parents are law professors where I work.

And mark zuckerberg what i'm getting at is that they have this uh progressive impulse this idea that they're never going to be subject to the consequences of their ideology and they have so many resources so mark zuckerberg can put in 419 million dollars in the last election to warp various precincts as you know michael bloomberg paid 17 million dollars per delegate he spent almost a billion dollars and he had 10 billion dollars in investments in china So the money, they have these huge investments in China.

They've created a 19th century monopoly over communications.

They destroyed parliaments, remember, with their App Store ostracism.

They're going after,

what can you do?

I know you have, maybe you could explain to our listeners, if you have a 50-50 Senate, are you...

Are the memberships of the Senate on the committees 50-50 and you do have subpoena power?

Or is that considered a a majority Democrat because Harris can come in and

decide a critical vote for the left?

But what can we do about it right now?

Yes, in the Senate, take Senate Judiciary Committee where we discuss antitrust legislation.

That is, since we're a 50-50 Senate, that is a 50-50 committee.

That does make a difference in who is able to clear

the committee when it comes to having nominees for different agencies.

So you do have that difference that

does take place.

That's why it's very important to win this Georgia seat, isn't it?

That's exactly right.

So that we keep that 50-50.

And then it does make the vice president who sits as President of the Senate the tiebreaker in that regard.

So the 50-50 is vitally important so that we're able to keep people that should not be at agencies, people that should not be confirmed to judicial positions, that we keep that from happening.

And you brought up and touched on the resources that the Democrats have and how they use them.

And that does

so succinctly speak to the two tiers of justice approach that they seem to take.

There's one set of standards and one set of justice for the favored and another set of standards and justice for those that are unfavored by the federal government.

And we see this repeatedly.

Now, when it comes to dealing with Apple and Google, I've had a piece of legislation that is bipartisan.

And as the ranking member of consumer protection data security, I've done this with Senator Blumenthal, who is the chairman.

And we've worked together on the Open App Market Act.

This is an antitrust provision.

And this would allow you, the consumer, to have control over what goes on your iPhone.

or if you have an Android, you're dealing with the Google store, and you make the choice by working directly with the app innovator to put something on your phone and work with that innovator or work with that service.

All your upgrades would come directly from them rather than coming through the app store.

What I've learned and the reason I started writing this legislation was because of app innovators in Tennessee.

who would say, hey, 30% of our profit has to go to Apple or to Google for us to get our app

on the app market store.

And then, of course, Apple requires you to use their payment system.

So those are revenue streams for these companies.

And

beginning to break this apart and to give consumers control, getting a

an online privacy bill passed.

And that is something Senator Blumenthal Blumenthal and I have worked through on a bipartisan basis.

And I hope that next Congress we're going to be able to push that through so that a tech company would have to have your explicit consent in order to track you, to follow you, to capture your data, to hold your data, to monetize your data.

And that would begin to give the consumer the power that they need and it would help to rein in big tech so that they couldn't pick winners and losers.

So you couldn't have the federal government saying, hey, big tech, we need you to do our job here like they did over the Russia collusion or the Hunter-Biden-Bitop

laptop issues.

So if that was successful on another element of your legislation, let's just say that In January of 2021, then they wouldn't have had the ability, they wouldn't have had that monopoly to put Parliament out of business, essentially.

Or you wouldn't see Elon Musk right now going over kind of cup in hand and saying to Tim Cook, please don't take Twitter off your app store because they have life and death monopoly control.

You believe, I know what I've watched Silicon Valley for 40 years in California.

And what they do is when a Democratic administration comes in, they assure them that all the money they make

when they channel it to politics is going to go to the left.

So therefore, don't regulate.

When Republicans come in, they say, you guys are Milton Friedman, free marketeers.

We're the 19th century models that you worship.

Don't regulate.

They play both sides.

But

is there a sentiment in the Senate that because they use the public airway, so to speak, or public cyberspace,

they don't own it?

Yeah.

And that they have to follow certain regulations as energy companies, maybe, or public utilities?

Or do we are you are we going to go that far?

Or you think that's that necessary to regulate them like that?

There are some components that are necessary.

And if you look at section 230, which is where you get into the censorship issue, Victor, there has been a push by some of us to reform, not to do away with, but to reform Section 230 to remove ambiguous language and to make it more specific.

The reason for doing this is because 230 was put in place in 96 when the internet was in its infancy, and there needed to be protection for these companies and platforms that were going to be the new public square to actually grow.

And what has happened is these have been used to censor the

the American public.

So that is worth a revisit.

And whether it is speech, whether it is products and product liability, whether it is aggregator websites

that are pushing information and merchandise out, holding people accountable for fraudulent merchandise,

fraudulent pharmaceuticals, things of that nature.

230 needs some reforms.

So that is on the table.

As I mentioned, an online consumer privacy bill that puts the power in your hands to say to big tech, no, you cannot use my data, but you cannot boot me off of your platform if I say you cannot have access to

my data.

That is something that is up, the Open App Market Act, my Kids Online Safety Act, that would require these tech platforms to have some transparency to be certain that parents are provided information to protect our children from these pedophiles and drug dealers and sex traffickers that they are meeting on platforms like TikTok, like Snapchat, to require these platforms like TikTok.

to not share consumer data with the Chinese Communist Party, which is what they are doing.

So there is bipartisan agreement on those and there is bicameral agreement on these.

And Senator Blumenthal and I have worked now,

coming to an end of four years, to push these forward.

We're getting very close and I think that next year you will see us be able to get these passed.

People are tired.

Yeah, they're very tired.

We're going to take a quick break.

We're with Senator Marcia Blackburn, and we'll be right back.

We're back now again with Senator Blackburn.

So everything you've outlined seems like a superb solution, but I think a lot of all of us wonder what's taking so long.

Where do you sense are the nexuses of opposition to you, given the resources that big tech has?

Is it libertarian right?

Is it just the DNC?

Who are you

when you say this on the Congressional Senate floor, who do you expect to come after you?

Yes, and it is not libertarians that will come after us because they're wanting the rules of the road for the online space just like everyone else does.

They're saying define this.

What you will hear is opposition to Congress taking an action because Democrats want this to all be done by the executive branch.

Let the FTC, let the agencies put privacy rules in place.

And as I continue to say, no, we are not the EU, we are not Canada, we're not Australia, we need to have Congress speak.

and give the outlines and very specific guidance for the agency.

And then the agency should be there as an enforcement component, not as a rulemaking component.

Very different missions for these agencies.

I'd like to switch gears quickly.

Another issue that everybody is tired of is the overreach by the CDC,

the NIH, and the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

And I guess we could, although it might not be completely fair, we could, the iconic person is Dr.

Fauci with the lockdowns the mandates and uh the demonization and even almost the weaponization or criminalization of critics what i think we all see see that the conversation has finally shifted that you can talk about the origins of the wuhan lab or you can talk about the efficacy of the vaccination versus what was promised by the vaccination and the damage that was done to school children and everything.

But

what's going to happen in the next senate are you going to be able to have i mean rand paul did a superb job to the extent he could as a in the senate as a minority member you see some accountability down the road for these officials that overreached yes

there there will be some opportunities for accountability the republican controlled house is going to do some walk and chew gum exercises, if you will, because they they will have some oversight investigations.

At the same time, you're going to see committees like Energy and Commerce that has oversight of health and human services move forward with their oversight of HHS, of the FDA, of the CDC.

and

look at where there are bad actors.

Look at how budgets, there'll be budget reviews.

That's going to tell a good bit of the story.

And then cleaning up the authority around these agencies and how they conducted their overreach in the pandemic.

I find it so interesting that

so many of these individuals, when you look back at March 2020, it is like they hit the panic button.

They knew they were participating in gang of function research.

They knew what was being done at this lab in Wuhan.

Some of our diplomatic scientists had been warning about this lab for quite a period of time.

And as you have these documents come out that are going to give you more or less an articulation and a timeline of what was transpiring, there will be many lessons learned.

I think that you will see some retirements, maybe some forced retirements,

and then also a reshaping of agencies like the FDA, like the CDC, getting these agencies back to their core mission.

I don't care if someone is a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or whatever political strife.

What they want to see is an efficiency in these agencies and a responsiveness to the things, a timeliness, responding to things that are of concern to the American people.

And with the agency taking more of their authority and Congress not exercising their Article I authority, then the agencies have become more brazen.

And in that, they're saying, well, you know, they're not going to do anything to us if we overstep our bounds.

I think taxpayers are demanding that we do something about this and get them back on their core mission.

Yeah, I do too.

I think it was a surreal moment in American history.

I can just say in my own experience here in Central California,

if you wanted to buy flowers, you couldn't buy a fam, go to a family business that was shut down, but you could go to Walmart and was wide open and buy flowers.

Or you would meet people in the military that had had COVID.

and had some natural immunity, but they were forced to leave if they didn't want to get a vaccination because they were worried that their antibody level was high anyway.

And then

we had landlords that suddenly were not able to

collect rent.

And

they weren't slum lords by any means.

They had no money.

But the reach of the federal government on that never waste a crisis moment was really frightening.

I remember Gavin Newsom had announced to us that this was a moment to push for a more progressive capitalism, as he called it.

We're almost out of time, Center.

But I wanted to,

I know that you and the Senate, everybody in the Senate is wrestling with aid to Ukraine, and we all deplore this naked aggression by Vladimir Putin.

I think it's kind of ironic that people have said that the Republicans are soft when Donald Trump was harder on the Russians, whether it was sanctions or flooding the world with oil they didn't like or killing mercenary, Russian mercenaries in Syria or getting out of, again, asymmetrical missile deals with the Russians.

But

at this point, we've given, we're we're getting close to $100 billion

and

Europe is going back to a pre-civilizational winner almost.

Is there any,

what's the mood?

Is it just going to be a blank check or is there going to be some quid pro quos with the A that we say, is there going to be a, we don't want to reward anything that Putin did, but are we going to fight to the last Ukrainian or the last American dollar?

I don't know where does it end and how does it end or

is it beyond our control?

This is a topic that is so frustrating for

me because

November 1st of 21, I sent a letter to the White House and I said, look at what Putin is doing.

He is amassing troops and equipment on the border of Ukraine.

If you go back and you look at the 2008 Olympics, the 2014 Olympics, that is when he chose an invasion.

He did not do that during the Trump administration because he knew Trump would come after him.

So the Biden administration, my recommendations were to begin sales of munitions and arms to Ukraine so they had what they needed to defend themselves.

Put sanctions in place on Nord Stream 2, on Putin, on the oligarchs, on Putin's family, the country, and say,

we're going to sanction you because we're watching what you're doing.

And in addition, if you go into Ukraine, Nordstream is going to be sanctioned.

And

we made these recommendations.

The White House never responded.

Of course, hindsight 2020, they should have been aggressive in holding Putin to account.

The White House wanted to wait until Putin made a move.

And as you know, Victor, if you've got a bully, you need to call him down before he starts to hit somebody.

You don't let him get into the fight.

And you can add Afghanistan, too, to that, that green light.

Exactly.

They were watching Afghanistan

in Afghanistan.

So they were emboldened and they moved forward thinking we would not take an action.

Now you have many of us at Senate Armed Services Committee and in the Senate at large that are just saying, hey, give us an accounting.

Where is the money going?

How is NATO?

How is the EU stepping up?

Are they carrying their part of the burden?

How are we going to deal more holistically with what I call the new axis of evil, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea?

Because there is an intertwining there that should be of tremendous concern to each and every one of us.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

We only have about two or three minutes.

I'm going to take a last break and we'll be right back with Senator Blackburn.

We're back.

This is kind of more controversial.

What do you think went wrong or did it go wrong?

I mean, we won the House and the elections and

the red tsunami did not materialize.

People said, well, we were outspent.

That's true, seven to one, eight to one in many races.

We had, Maybe we had a little bit of overconfidence and people didn't come out because they thought the Republicans were going to win.

I'm not sure we had a positive message.

We were very effective in critiquing the Biden failures, but maybe we didn't have sort of a contract of America.

But all of these exegesis are offered.

What do you think happened that we didn't or we didn't do quite as well as we wanted to?

And that's kind of a euphemism, not quite as well.

Yes.

And, you know, Victor, when I would be out and about, people would say, tell me what you're going to do about inflation.

And I would say, here is my one, two, three.

Tell me what you're going to do about the border.

And I would say, here is my one, two, three.

That kind of specificity.

That's an extra point.

That's what people are wanting right now.

And the Republicans did not have that.

In the House, they had it.

They took the House.

In the Senate, our Republican senatorial committee did not have that type of concise messaging that said, if you give us the authority, this is what we are going to do.

And we did not have a specific message for Gen Z voters who did come out.

We did not correct the messaging around abortion.

There was no federal ban on abortion.

The Dobbs decision sent the issue of regulations and restrictions on the practice of abortion back to the states.

The states will deal with that.

We didn't have a message for seniors

because Biden kept saying, well, I got the price of prescription drugs down.

Well, not exactly.

That record should have been corrected because decreases are not going to be seen by seniors for a few years, if at all.

So there were things like that that I think think were mistakes.

Plus, Republicans need to focus on a get out the vote effort that is going to be a 30-day or a six-week effort instead of a three-day get-out-the-vote effort.

Some states have legalized ballot harvesting.

And we found out in these states, the state Republican parties and the Republican National Committee had no plan.

And that is very disappointing to learn.

It was kind of frustrating here in California because we are a ballot harvesting state that 75% of the vote is not cast on Election Day.

But I thought voter ID was a very important issue, but I almost got to the point where it was a distraction or it was kind of a gambit on the part of the Democrats.

They said,

It's racist.

We don't want it.

And then we reacted to it and we were fighting.

And meanwhile, while we were fighting, they were having this apparatus that allowed 70% of the vote to be not cast on election day where the issue was irrelevant.

And we kept obsessing on the issue where it was only going to affect 30% of the balloting.

They were very clever Machiavellian.

And I don't know how we

have a better mastery of tech and they have a better mastery of not voting on Election Day.

They've made it into a construct.

And if we don't do something, I'm not very optimistic.

So that's something to think about in the future.

It is indeed.

Yeah.

Thank you for coming, Senator.

Senator, and I hope you'll come back if you can.

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you very much.

Senator Marsha Blackburn was with us today, and this is Victor Hansen signing off.

Thank you.