Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis says the Biden administration's collusion with Big Tech is a "gross abuse of power" against its political opposition, silencing dissent and meddling with freedom of speech, if not elections.
"You can't do indirectly what the First Amendment would forbid you to do directly, so it was a gross abuse of power," DeSantis told Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show" on Thursday in an exclusive interview.
DeSantis was responding to a question about a recent judge's "absolutely right" to block the Biden administration colluding with Big Tech and social media companies, but he told host Chris Salcedo that he already signed a law against it in Florida.
That was because DeSantis said he was politically victimized by deep state collusion with Big Tech during the pandemic.
"They censored stuff that I was doing with really eminent scientists from Stanford, and Harvard and Oxford, talking about how kids needed to be able to go to school without wearing masks," DeSantis told Salcedo. "Big Tech was censoring that, but that was at the direction of the federal government.
"So I think it was a massive abuse of power."
DeSantis is running second in polling for the 2024 GOP presidential primary, having raised $20 million in his first six weeks since officially announcing his campaign.
He vows to end what he says is the government's abuse of power.
"We're going to clean all of that out as president," DeSantis said.
"If you are colluding — and you're in the FBI or DHS or any of these — with tech, you're going to get canned. You're going to be shown the door. We're going to have zero tolerance for that, because it really strikes at the fundamentals of a free society."
Notably, he said the censorship by Section 230-protected Big Tech social media platforms is "problematic in and of itself." Section 230 generally provides immunity for online platforms insofar as third-party content generated by its users.
"They're monopolies and they get liability protection under the idea that they're open market places," DeSantis said. "But, as we see, they apply terms of service disfavorably against conservative voices.
"So even tech censorship in itself is a big issue that we're going to tackle as president, and we want to make sure everyone has the ability to speak."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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