Why Tulsi Gabbard Sued Google

Tech is a really important conversation to have with you right now. You're in the middle of this lawsuit with Google. Yeah. Explain that. So the first debate that we had in this presidential election, you know, we had hoped that I would do well going into it and that people would go and start their internet search and say, hey, who is Tulsi Gabbard? I've never heard of her before. And so we went and got, you know, the Google ads set up, got them approved. Everything was ready to rock and roll. I was the most Googled candidate of the night, as I have been for every debate that I've participated in. The issue was during that first debate, you know, while that peak period was happening, our Google ad account was suspended by Google with no explanation whatsoever. No like, hey, you guys. There was nothing like, hey, you guys screwed up, fix this and then we'll put your account back in. Hey, Google ads, Bill, how are you? Good to hear from y'all. That is great. That is so sketchy. It's so sketchy. And so, you know, our tech guys are freaking out. They're like, man, this is what we were waiting for. And now you guys took our account down. Tell us what we got to do to get it back up. And A, we didn't hear back for a while. Once we started hearing back, we heard back from different people with different answers, nothing clear cut to say, you did this wrong, fix this, we'll put your account back. Nothing. And then all of a sudden, you know, hours and hours had gone by and then our account was reinstated without any explanation about what happened. And you know, this is, this is bigger than just the loss in opportunity that my campaign had because this happened on that night during that peak period. It's a bigger issue about the power that this corporation has in Google in interfering, essentially in fair elections and in what kind of information they are willing to put in front of people. Don't they own Boston dynamics too? Does Google own Boston dynamics? I think they did in the solar. Good move. I feel like a year ago or something. Bring it. Jaco's ready for the World War. No. I watched Black Mirror. I'm not in. I'll tell you what, you get, you get extra double bonus credit from me right now, Tulsi, because that right there is so crazy and for you to be like, yeah, it's bad for me, but it's also bad for the American people. I would have been stuck at bad for me. That is gnarly. It is. It's so gnarly that they did that. And it's so transparent and very few people talked about it and very few people know about it. Exactly. That's what was so stunning about it. It's like there's people pulling strings. Who? Why? Undefined and no investigation into it until you put out this lawsuit. There's really no way to find out. Yeah. It started to force that conversation that we're continuing to push to the forefront about how, particularly with Google and Facebook, the inordinate amount of power that they have to as we sit and type in a Google search for whatever or what's popping up on our Facebook feed, they control that. I think that we have a real issue in this country with advertising in those things. In Google and Facebook, a real issue that it's never really been fully discussed because those things just sort of came up out of nowhere. We had social networks. We had MySpace and we didn't think anything of it. And then all of a sudden, not only are they here, but they have this extraordinary amount of influence. They have algorithms. So it's not just they're putting out what people put out. They have algorithms that figure out what you're into and then show you that. So if you're just really in a conflict, which most people are, they're just showing you conflict all day long and it's getting everybody riled up. So it's having a direct effect, whether it's planned and coordinated or not. It's having a direct effect on discourse in this country. And I think it's one of the reasons why what you were talking about before were you're either out with us or you're against us and it's never been more hard line than it has been right now. And all of this is because of advertising money. And advertising what? What are you even selling? You're just a portal to connect people with each other and through that you're gaining an insane amount of influence and an extraordinary amount of money is being generated. And we never agreed to it. We just looked down and we saw the ad, oh, what are they selling? Oh yeah, okay, that looks like a nice watch. And then we just... All of us. And then everybody's just getting bought and sold. And it's happening to a point now where that is one of the main town halls, one of the main places where people discuss ideas in the world as these social media networks. And they're not getting smaller, they're only getting bigger so they keep growing and they keep stacking up. And whether it's Google or Facebook or any of these, Twitter, any of these, the amount of influence they have is insane. And they're just people. They're just people. These are just regular folks. Like, I know Jack Dorsey. He's a nice guy, he's a regular fucking person. The fact that this guy has so much power, this company has so much power that any of these companies have so much power. We are not ready for this. And this is happening right under our noses and it's happening so quickly. And then when something like your Google situation happens where it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, not only are you profiting, but now you're fucking pulling strings, you're showing us you're pulling strings. And everybody's like, whoa, what's going on? Nothing. Oh, sure. They're going to be offended. Whatever. They're interfering with democracy in this weird sort of semi-legal way. You know, like you could just say that it violated policy. Like what policy? What policy did you violate? Did they just cancel your ad? They still have not told us that. That's insane. The policy you violated was being a viable candidate for president of the United States of America. Exactly. Not only a viable candidate, but one that's saying, hey, you guys are too fucking big. I'm going to break up these monopolies and provide the kinds of oversight and accountability that will protect the consumer, that will protect the American people, protect fair and honest discourse, protect freedom of speech. That's the issue. And that's, frankly, that's a difference between me and somebody like Mayor Pete, for example, other candidates, and he's not the only one, but other candidates who refuse to take a strong position in recognizing the threat to our public discourse and our democracy that these tech giants have really within the hands of just a few people. You have, I think this is just broke in the news recently, Mark Zuckerberg, who, you know, people were taught he's like wanted to run for president not that long ago and was seriously considering it. And, you know, he's trying to start his own cryptocurrency, wants to have his own currency that he controls, like the amount of power this guy has and that he wants to continue to grow is so dangerous. He decided not to run for president, but he and his wife started emailing Mayor Pete's campaign manager saying, hey, here's some guys we think you should hire for your campaign. And so they hired two of Zuckerberg's Facebook guys who are now working for Mayor Pete's campaign. And so they're going to have a seat at the table should this guy get elected, which means Facebook's going to have a seat at the table. Nevermind if he gets elected when he's got two people that are inside track at Facebook that show up there. I don't know if you've ever done anything with Facebook as far as advertising, but like people that understand how all that stuff works. I've talked to him before. It's a whole science behind it. So now that they're in there, he should get a big bump across the board. I don't know Mark Zuckerberg, but I don't like the way he drinks water. You see, he takes those little sips when he's being grilled. Have you ever seen that? Did the weirdest little sips of water. I don't trust a person, man, woman, or non-binary creature that takes sips of water like that. That is just not the way you drink water. When you drink water, it's like, I'm thirsty. I'm going to have some water. That's how you drink water. Show me how he did it. I'll show you. We'll play the video. It's like this. He puts this glass up to his mouth and it touches the lips of the water. It's like a robot. Here we go. Watch this. Look at this. He's a robot pretending to drink. Watch this. What the fuck is happening here? What is happening here? The water didn't move. I never noticed this before. It barely moved. It barely like slid. I love that Jamie was able to find that so fast. Jamie's a master. Jamie's a master. So, so Tulsi, let me ask you this. From a strategic perspective, all right, do you feel like these moves, like you coming out strong against Google, Facebook saying that you could break up those types of monopolies? Strategically, are you thinking right now, well, maybe that wasn't the best call because, you know, you could have not been so strong against them and played along with them a little bit. Maybe they look at you and go through the list that Joe went through earlier, which is you're a veteran. You're a woman. You're a woman of color. You're from Hawaii. You got this experience. Congresswoman. Yeah. Congresswoman. You got all this stuff. They could look at you and go, wow, yeah, she's good. She's on our side. And then maybe, you know, increase your chances of getting elected. Then you get elected. Then you go, okay, you know what? I thought about this and guess what? Uh, we're not doing it that way. And I'm going to break you guys up. Do you think strategically, or is that just your, the type of person you are is like, you know what, I'm just going to, I'm just going to tell the truth from the get go. Is that basically what we're going to tell the truth and call it straight no matter what. And uh, you know, no matter who, who I'm dealing with because, uh, eight, that's who I am. And the people are sick and tired of politicians who play this game and do this political dance as they're trying to get people elected and be like, okay, well, if I just, if I just say this, or if I just kind of cozy up to these people or these interests, they can help me get elected. And then when I win, then I'm going to do the right thing. Well guess what? As you, when you win all of the, okay, I've got to win the next reelection. That means I need more money from wall street. I need more money from Google. I need more money from these guys. So I can't say anything to them off just yet. I'm going to wait until I get reelected. Then that's when I'm really going to start to do the right thing. And I think people across party lines are sick and tired of the same old politicians who say one thing and do another and instead are looking for real leadership.