Amy Klobuchar Destroys Bipartisan Tech Legislation, Then Turns Around To Blame Ted Cruz

Courtesy of the dear Minnesota Senator, Amy Klobuchar, the hopes of a bipartisan agreement in Washington D.C. which was almost finalized, has been ruined. 

The Hill reported that the Democratic senator requested to have a committee vote aimed at giving the media the opportunity to have negotiations with technology platforms. This was after she stated that the adopted amendment offered by Ted Cruz hindered the agreements reached by senators prior to the meeting on Thursday.

The senator said, “I think the agreement that we had has been blown up. This bill is about protecting local journalism by leveling the playing field and allowing local news outlets to band together to negotiate for fair compensation from tech platforms. I am committed to targeted, bipartisan legislation to achieve this goal.”

Funny how the Democrats always blame the Republican politicians for the failure of every bipartisan legislation. This time, the Minnesota senator dumped the blame on Ted Cruz. 

This bill would have granted smaller newsrooms in the country the platform to negotiate with big tech names all over the country, including platforms like Facebook and Google. The newsrooms would be able to negotiate compensation from these tech platforms for distributing their content.

In addition, this bill will create a limited safe space from antitrust laws for verified digital journalism providers. This habor will allow the journalists to also participate in joint negotiations. More so, it would enable newsrooms to negotiate collectively and get the best deals from the tech platforms.

Moving on, Cruz proposed an amendment that eliminates this antitrust exemption if either of the involved parties mentions content moderation in their negotiations, as that is not the aim of the bill.

He said, “It simply says the topic of discussion when the two sides get together can’t be censorship. It should be ad revenue, which is what all of this discussion of this markup has focused on.”

Following this, the Minnesota senator tried to appeal to one of the bill’s sponsors, Senator John Kennedy. She threatened that they would not be able to support the bill if Cruz’s amendment was involved.

Klobuchar said, “Sen. Kennedy, we worked on this for months and we won’t be able to support the Cruz amendment here, so I’m hoping we can talk about this in the future. But if this is in it we can’t support the bill.”

Moving on, Senator Josh Hawley, who had supported several other antitrust bills, said he would not support this one. He claimed that minimizing the antitrust rules makes it “pro-trust.”

Amy Klobuchar’s media cartel bill has been delayed at the last minute.

Ted Cruz successfully amended it to prevent media companies from colluding with tech companies on censorship.

Suddenly, the Democrats are no longer interested!https://t.co/RZgcRl2cBS

— Allum Bokhari (@LibertarianBlue) September 8, 2022

As Cruz’s amendment was approved, he made a statement regarding the outcome, describing it as a huge victory as he succeeded in protecting citizens of the United States from unfair censorship.

He said, “huge victory for the First Amendment and free speech. Democrats would rather pull their bill entirely than advance it with my proposed protections for Americans from unfair online censorship.”