Rand Paul Punches Back After Getting YouTube Suspension: ‘I’m Not Sure When YouTube Became An Arm Of The Government’

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was reportedly censored by YouTube after conducting an interview with a journalist from news network Newsmax, in which they talked about a few different topics, which happened to include the science behind wearing masks in the pandemic.

Paul’s office has stated that the video of the interview was removed by YouTube and the senator’s channel suspended from being allowed to post new content for seven days.

“Censorship by YouTube is very dangerous as it stifles debate and promotes groupthink where the ‘truth’ is defined by people with a political agenda,” Senator Paul went on to say in a video message response to YouTube’s alleged actions.

via Daily Wire:

The video, titled “It Is Time For Unfiltered News,” was also removed by YouTube. “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” stated the Google-owned Big Tech giant.

“YouTube said the video violated their policy because of my comments on masks, and that they don’t allow videos that contradict government’s guidance on COVID,” Senator Paul went on to say in the now-deleted response video.

During a press call earlier on Tuesday, Senator Paul condemned the apparent link between Big Tech corporations, such as YouTube, and the country’s legislature.

“I’m not sure when YouTube became an arm of the government, and I’m not really sure it’s good for journalism to also be an arm of the government without any repercussions or push back,” Senator Paul stated.

While some conservative voices are calling for Big Tech to be reined in through various forms of legislative action, Senator Paul discussed an alternative approach.

“My hope is that maybe through competition we’ll prove them to be wrong in their ways,” the Kentucky senator said.

“As a libertarian-leaning Senator, I think private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, but I think it is really anti-free speech, anti-progress of science, which involves skepticism and argumentation to arrive at the truth,” Senator Paul added. “We realize this in our court systems that both sides present facts on either side of a question and complete an adversarial process to reach the truth in each case.”

The Republican senator then linked the debate to journalism.

“Journalism isn’t far from that and in some ways, the adversarial part of the courtroom is ideally what you would find in journalism, where both sides would present facts, there is a period of argumentation and people figure out the truth for themselves,” Paul said. “YouTube and Google though, have become an entity so huge that they think they are the arbitrator of truth.”

“I will try to channel my anger, not in breaking these companies up but by publicly expressing my disagreement with them and publicly promoting other channels that offer free speech alternatives,” he said in conclusion.