Big Tech Companies Are ‘Enemies of the People’: Heritage President Kevin Roberts on Newsmax, WMAL

Feb 14, 2022 3 min read

WASHINGTON—Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts joined high-profile broadcast shows last week to talk about Heritage’s fight against Big Tech and the new policy roadmap the organization has put forward to hold these companies accountable. The report, “Combating Big Tech’s Totalitarianism,” was released Feb. 7.

On Newsmax’s “America Right Now” Saturday, Roberts told host Tom Basile about the importance of accountability, but also discussed three of the key areas on which Congress can legislate real solutions and reforms:

“The first is we have to assess executive liability on this. It is so frustrating, to be polite about it, to see what these Big Tech CEOs think about their ability to run roughshod over us. And I want to be really clear, Tom, we’re not talking about just congressional hearings for the sake of congressional hearings. We want these executives to have legal liability for the censorship that they’re taking against especially those of us on our side. But the second thing is, we hate that we have to use this tool, but these companies have gotten too big. They have exploited the free market system, and we must take antitrust action against them to make them smaller. The third and final thing is … they need to publish their algorithms. You and I, when we woke up today, as folks who are center-right, had a probably 500 times greater chance of being censored.”

WATCH: We Have to Stop Big Tech's Influence Over American Society | Kevin Roberts on Newsmax, Feb. 12, 2022

Roberts also joined WMAL’s afternoon flagship program, “The Vince Coglianese Show,” Wednesday, Feb. 9, to talk about Heritage’s new report:

“The very succinct rationale is we’re trying to end the influence of Big Tech on American society as we know it, because as I have said in my three months on post here, the Big Tech companies are enemies of the people. … We want to always perpetuate free-market principles, but subsumed by this really important role, and that is our ability to operate in the public square using our natural rights. That’s what these companies are abridging, and they’re really limiting and harming our ability as Americans to have completely honest conversations in the public square.”

LISTEN: It’s Time to End Big Tech’s Influence on American Society As We Know It | Kevin Roberts on WMAL, Feb. 9, 2022

Since joining Heritage as president on Dec. 1, Roberts has joined a number of national broadcast shows, published a longform essay on the future of conservatism, and been profiled by the Washington Examiner.