Cruz: Google Should Be ‘Broken Up’ — ‘Abusing Monopoly Power’

Friday on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Company,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called on Google to be broken up for what he called an abuse of “monopoly power.”

“I’m very glad that the Department of Justice is pursuing an antitrust case against them,” he said. “I think they need to be broken up. I think they’re — they are abusing their monopoly power. I think they are extracting monopoly revenues, and not only that, I think they’re abusing their power to censor political speech and to silence the American people online and to manipulate elections, all of which is an abuse of monopoly power.”

Host Stuart Varney asked Cruz if the feelings were shared by his colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle.

“You know, it’s interesting. They’re not really,” Cruz said. “I mean, if you remember a couple of years ago, we had a hearing where Mark Zuckerberg testified in the Senate. And we had — it was a joint hearing of Judiciary Committee, the Commerce Committee, and almost every senator was critical of Facebook and Zuckerberg, which was an interesting — should have been an interesting wake-up call for Silicon Valley. But the reasons we were critical were actually quite different. Many of the Democrats were saying to social media, in effect, how could you have let Donald Trump win? How could you have let these people speak? Can’t you do a better job shutting them up? That’s a very different — we have — a week ago, Twitter and Facebook both censored The New York Post.”

“It’s the first time they’ve gone from censoring individual American citizens to blocking a major media publication that bloke — broke the stories of evidence alleging corruption by Vice President Joe Biden,” he continued. “And Twitter and Facebook did not allow anyone to post it and shut down The New York Post’s own feed so they can’t put it out there. And that — that degree of — of attempted censorship, all of the media ought to be outraged that a couple of Silicon Valley oligarchs are asserting the power to decide what stories you can report and what stories the American people can read or listen to.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor