Microsoft and its founder, Bill Gates, went all-in for Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris as President-elect Donald Trump has tapped nominees who will take a hawkish stance on big tech, especially for big tech’s censorship practices.
In late October, the New York Times reported that Bill Gates said he donated roughly $50 million to a “dark money” political action group, Future Forward USA Action, that was backing Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. Future Forward was one of the leading Democrat organizations pushing out anti-Trump ads during the 2024 presidential election.
Although Gates did not explicitly endorse Harris, he claimed that “this election is different.” He told the New York Times:
I support candidates who demonstrate a clear commitment to improving health care, reducing poverty and fighting climate change in the U.S. and around the world. “I have a long history of working with leaders across the political spectrum, but this election is different, with unprecedented significance for Americans and the most vulnerable people around the world.
The Times wrote that Gates has tried to stay above the political fray so that he could work with Democrat and Republican administrations.
However, it appears that his organization has become increasingly tied to the Democrat Party and its presidential nominees.
Microsoft President Brad Smith and his wife Kathy Surace-Smith in 2023 hosted a $5,000 fundraiser, with contributions going to the Biden Victory Fund. Smith was a top fundraiser for Democrats during Biden’s first term in office.
The big tech company has hired many that have later enflamed controversy with the 45th president.
Christopher Krebs, a cybersecurity policy executive for Microsoft, went on to serve as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Krebs has claimed that the the 2020 presidential election was one of the most secure elections in terms of internet security and technology.
During a Senate hearing in December 2020, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) slammed Krebs, saying:
If you’re saying it’s the safest election based on no dead people voted, no non-citizens voted, no people broke the absentee rules, I think that’s false, and I think that’s what upset a lot of people on our side is that they are taking your statement to mean, ‘Oh well there was no problem in the elections.’
“I don’t think you examined any of the problems that we’ve heard here. So really you’re just referring to something differently is what–the way I look at it,” the Kentucky senator added.
Meanwhile, in the late stages of the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into a wide-ranging antitrust probe.
Microsoft even blamed Google for running shadow campaigns against them.
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said that Gates had asked to come to his estate at Mar-a-Lago.
Now, a Trump administration may take a different tack, and work to combat censorship and other anticompetitive behavior by big tech.
“Big Tech, and now Microsoft are trying hard to rehabilitate their image to MAGA and to President Trump, hoping that we don’t remember that they not only funded the enemy, but hired the enemy as well and continue to censor and block conservative thought,” a source familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking told Breitbart News.
Trump in early December tapped Gail Slater, an antitrust veteran and economic adviser for JD Vance, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
Outlets reported that she is expected to continue the department’s crackdown on big tech, including those brought during Trump’s first term in office.
Trump said that Slater will “ensure that our competition laws are enforced, both vigorously and FAIRLY, with clear rules that facilitate, rather than stifle, the ingenuity of our greatest companies.”
Trump also tapped Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Andrew Ferguson to lead the antitrust agency.
Ferguson in mid-December urged the FTC to investigate “unlawful collusion” between big tech platforms and called to stop advertiser boycotts, which he believes harms competition.
He echoed Commissioner Melissa Holyoak’s proposal to revive Trump’s first-term Executive Order 13925 to promote transparency regarding big tech’s content moderation and censorship practices.
He wrote:
We should address not just censorious conduct specifically, but also investigate the structural issues that may have given these platforms their power over Americans’ lives and speech in the first place. In particular, we must vigorously enforce the antitrust laws against any platforms found to be unlawfully limiting Americans’ ability to exchange ideas freely and openly. We must prosecute any unlawful collusion between online platforms, and confront advertiser boycotts which threaten competition among those platforms.
“Censorship, even if carried out transparently and honestly, is inimical to American democracy. The Commission must use the full extent of its authority to protect the free speech of all Americans,” Ferguson continued.
“That authority includes the power to investigate collusion that may suppress competition and, in doing so, suppress free speech online. We ought to conduct such an investigation. And if our investigation reveals anti-competitive cartels that facilitate or promote censorship, we ought to bust them up.”
Trump nominated Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr to lead the agency. Carr has called on big tech platforms to dismantle the “censorship cartel,” stating that American democracy depends on it. Carr states that the tech Masters of the Universe, in conjunction with “the orwellian-named NewsGuard,” fact checking groups, and ad agencies, have enforced “one-sided narratives.”
Microsoft has partnered with Newsguard, whose cofounder suggested that the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop expose was a “hoax perpetuated by the Russians.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
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2024-12-27 21:34:08
