U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Wednesday skewered Twitter and its CEO, Jack Dorsey, for allowing a negative report about President Trump while censoring a story damaging to Joe Biden's campaign.
"Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear? And why insist on behaving as a Democrat superpac?" Cruz said in Senate hearing.
Dorsey, along with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai, was subpoenaed after Twitter blocked a New York Post report on alleged influence peddling by the Biden family and suspended the paper's account.
Dorsey conceded the suspension was an error and has amended its policy. But he said that the paper must delete tweets on the Biden story if it wants its account restored.
The dispute centers on the legal protection the social media companies enjoy as "neutral platforms" rather than "publishers," which are accountable for their content.
Cruz asked Dorsey if Twitter can influence elections, and the CEO denied it.
Dorsey claimed his company was merely part of a "spectrum of resources."
Cruz responded, "Not if they don't hear information."
The senator said the latest episode of censorship of conservative thought and expression is alarming.
The company crossed a "threshold," he said, when it argued it could block alleged corruption by Joe Biden because it was based on "hacked materials" while allowing a story about President Trump's tax returns based on documents that are illegal to publish without permission.
Cruz argued the Biden evidence was not "hacked," coming from a laptop apparently abandoned by Hunter Biden.