On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear the case Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden), which could decide the fate of the federal government’s massive campaign to force social media companies into censoring Americans. “It’s the most important free speech case in the country,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) tells Glenn. Sen. Schmitt, who filed the case while he was Attorney General of Missouri, describes the “Orwellian” things this lawsuit has uncovered: “The full power of the federal government was being used to silence Americans.” But will this be enough to stop our power-out-of-control government?
TranscriptBelow is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Okay. Give me -- give me some good news, will you?
ERIC: Well, I will. So Monday, Missouri versus Biden is being argued at the Supreme Court.
And it is this -- we've talked about before. It's the most important free speech case in the history of the country.
Certainly in a generation. Because it deals with the federal government, and its vast censorship enterprise, coercing, colluding, cajoling these social media giants to censor speech. And what the judge found in the lower court, when I filed it, when I was attorney general in Missouri.
What the judge found at the lower court, was that this was almost exclusively conservatives being censored. It reeks of viewpoint discrimination, which violates the First Amendment.
And it was Orwellian. What was uncovered, Glenn. Was tens of thousands of emails and text messages from hiring government officials, to social media giants, saying, take it down.
Or we will launch an investigation. Or we will sue you under anti-trust -- I mean, really, really, the full power of the federal government was to suppress defense, to silence Americans.
So that's been shown in the case. So that now has been appealed by the government.
They want to continue to censor people, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments on that on Monday.
And how do you think it will go?
KEN: I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful.
I just think, the case, a lot of it will come down to, what is the government, actually, doing. And were they, in fact, coercing?
Right? Were they using the power of the federal government to get these social media giants, to do the things that they can't legally do themselves?
What makes this case unique is, typically, social media companies are sued by people who are then de-platformed, or their posts have been taken down.
And those go to the Northern District of California, and they're never seen again.
But what's unique in our case, is that we've sued the federal government, themselves.
In the -- and the actors like Jen Psaki and Anthony Psaki.
Anthony Fauci's deposition, to Elvis Chan's deposition, who was, of course, the FBI agent in charge.
Who was pre-bunking the Hunter Biden story, calling a Russian disinformation a hack and leak operation.
Even though, they had the laptop already. They are pre-bunking this you know, getting ready for 2020.
The COVID -- the -- the efficacy of mass.
You know, they were suppressing that speech.
Vaccine issues. Origins of COVID. Where they were shutting anybody down, that were talking about this, coming from the lab in Wuhan. So all that is uncovered in this law.
And if it wasn't for this lawsuit, Glenn, and then later, Elon Musk buying Twitter with the Twitter files.
And then later, some of the Congressional hearings, this stuff would still be in the dark.
You know, it would still be a conspiracy theory. But it was happening. You know, we referred to it in the lawsuit, is a vast censorship enterprise.
The number of agencies and people involved here, is breathtaking.
And the -- you know, sometimes willing behavior of social media companies to comply and de-platform and censor people. But in some instances, they didn't want to, actually, do it. And they changed their rules.
GLENN: Right. That's what I wanted to ask you about.
How much of this do you think this is willing? And how much of it was fear of the government?
ERIC: Both. So, yeah.
I mean, these social media platforms, typically were very aligned with the left.
GLENN: Right.
ERIC: I think in many instances, Facebook, for example, after 2016, and Donald Trump won, they made it clear, publicly. They were never going to let that happen again.
Right, they were never going to let that happen again.
So I think some of this was overtly political on their part. And they were willing participants. But there are -- there are documents, to uncover. Where they were pushing back.
It was not -- it didn't violate their length of service.
As one judge said in the previous argument. That's a nice social media company you have there, right?
It would be a shame if something happens to us, almost like a mothball, coming from the government.
GLENN: Oh, yeah, that is.
KEN: So this is, again, the -- the -- all the power that the federal government has, exerting that on these social media companies. To do what they can't legally do themselves.
Which is to censor.
So this case, it's hard -- for me, as somebody who believes deeply in the right to free speech. And what that means for a country. And freedom.
This is, in my view, one of the most important cases. In general, the courts heard in a very, very long time. But certainly, as it relates to the First Amendment. That's the most important.
Because we're dealing with the virtual town square now, Glenn.
GLENN: How is this going to affect the -- the new systems that they're putting in, for mis and disinformation? And the governments, you know, work with Five Eyes and with social media and the rest of the media.
Where they are just training them. And guiding them through mis and disinformation.
Will this case have anything to do with that? Because that's upon us, right now.
ERIC: Absolutely.
And so that is the intention of this, to bust that up. Because there are agencies like CISA that most people have never heard of.
GLENN: Right. Right.
ERIC: But, yeah, was very involved, Glenn.
GLENN: Explain what -- explain to the audience, what CISA is.
ERIC: It's basically the agency that was created, not that long ago. The deal was sort of cyber security. Okay?
GLENN: Right.
ERIC: And what it found itself doing. In -- you know, during COVID. In particular.
Was under the guise of disinformation and misinformation, as you clearly articulate, that's -- look, that is -- that's a ploy, by one of the tyrants to control speech.
GLENN: Yes.
ERIC: The truth of the matter is, you get to say your opinion. Even if someone else thinks it's wrong.
The government doesn't get to shut that down. The government doesn't get to tell you, what you can say and what you can hear.
It's up to the individual, how they want to move forward.
And as they analyze facts, and what their decisions are. Right?
It was sort of like with the mandates. With mask mandates.
People can make their own decisions. They can judge if this is a good thing or not for their families. Same with the vaccine.
So all of this was about command and control, for these sprawling agencies. The other thing that was exposed in this too, Glenn. Is there were universities. University of Washington, Stanford were involved with helping, you know, sort of determine what the disinformation. And misinformation was.
GLENN: Right.
KEN: So, again, they're outsourcing this to their sort of web of allies. To censor Americans.
And this case would prevent that. This case, if the court rules the right way, and I hope that they do. It would essentially, it would be an injunction on all these agencies from engaging in that kind of activity.
It would be a huge win. Now, no matter what happens, the case, of course, stands for exposing all of this.
But the remedy that hopefully will play out. Is preventing this.
But as we talked about before, I've got legislation, in the Senate. That would empower individuals, to sue individual government actors. If they -- if they're right to be --
GLENN: I would --
ERIC: It would -- you can then sue. Yeah, it would. Because in stead of the AG and the state suing, you would have an army of citizens, being able to stand up for their First Amendment rights.
GLENN: You know, the Treasury, I think in cooperation -- I would have to look this up.
I think it was the World Bank. I don't know. Some world organization, got together and ran a -- kind of a war game with the central banks around the world.
And one of the things that came out of that was, we have got to shut down voices.
And this -- this is an exact quote. We have to shut down voices, that disagree, in the case of an emergency. A financial emergency.
That disagree with the actions of the central banks. Even if they are correct, because they could further the collapse of the system.
And I've been saying on the air, for a while now. I know I'm not going to agree with the -- with the global central banks on whatever it is they're planning to do.
The people who created the problem, I don't want designing a new system or anything else. And that snuffs out freedom of speech, quickly. Quickly.
ERIC: It does. It does. And what I think you're seeing play out in realtime, is the -- the broad diffusion of information, which is good.
That's good. Is the democratization of how people get information. You're sort of on the front lines of all this, a long time ago.
What they really fear is that individuals will then take different inputs and make up their own minds.
Free networks, that tell you everything they want you to hear.
And, again, I just think that we ought to be unafraid, I think, as conservatives, to talk about.
This is about -- this is before B freedom. This is about liberty. This is about making up your own mind. And they know how powerful that idea is.
They absolutely -- so what's the game plan?
You saw it play out in COVID. Which is create a crisis. Have a -- in other words, real or manufactured, right?
GLENN: Yep.
KEN: And then you consolidate power. You fearmonger. You other, the othering of those who are dissenting.
I mean, think about it.
Go back in time just a little bit. They were -- in Australia, which we thought was kind of like us, but with cute apples. They had camps.
You know, they have camps!
People were being arrested in parks, for not wearing masks. I mean, we can't memory hole all this stuff.
That is a glimpse of the kind of world that some of these folks want to live in, if you disagree with the regime. And we have to fight that with everything we have, to make sure that doesn't happen.
And also, it depends on us, defending somebody else's rights to say something that we disagree with.
That's their hallmark of it.
They want to bulldoze all of that, Glenn. To have a regime there, and anybody that stands in the way is othered, marginalized, called all sorts of names, lose their jobs, de-platformed.
I mean, that is -- so this whole lecture we get from Joe Biden, on threats to democracy.
We have seen the threats. We have seen the threats. And it is Joe Biden's administration which is censorship enterprise, and trying to throw political opponents in jail.
So I think people are waking up to this. And I think we just have to stand up to this.
GLENN: Good. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it.
We'll be watching Monday. Maybe you'll come back Monday or Tuesday. And tell us highway it went.
And -- and dissect the arguments, back and forth, between the two.
Thank you, Eric. Appreciate it.
Senator Eric Schmitt, from Missouri.