Ben Domenech: Shadow Banning In Social Media 01:03:36

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Hi, this is Jason Chaffetz. Thanks for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. We're going to have a good conversation today. We're going to phone a friend. We're going to call Ben Dominich. That's going to be... He's the co-founder and publisher of The Federalist. You've seen him as a contributor with Fox News and...

Not only does he have that deep voice, he's got this great name, Ben Dominich. Just sounds so dominating. We're going to have a good conversation with him, I'm sure. But I also want to dive in a little bit to the news and then bring on the stupid. Because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. But I want to talk about two things, if I could, that are in the news. And there's a lot happening in the news right now.

But I wrote an article, an op-ed, if you will, for FoxNews.com. And it's called Weaponized Justice Department's Double Standard. One rule of law for Dems, another for GOP. And I feel very strongly about this. And it really comes about because there was an indictment of Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon there with the January 6th commission.

First of all, any sense of reasonableness coming out of that January 6th commission. When Nancy Pelosi changed the rules...

so that she could have total partisan control in her sole determination as to who's actually on the committee. I mean, the legitimacy, I think, kind of went right out the door. I think people understand that this is such a partisan effort. Anyway, above and beyond that,

What I'm concerned about are congressional subpoenas. Now, I have long argued and I still argue that congressional subpoenas are not optional. I just think I want to be really clear about that. But subpoenas are only good as the enforcement of those subpoenas. And when I was the chairman of the Oversight Committee, I actually had unilateral authority to issue subpoenas under the House rules.

And it had been that way with Democrats and Republicans. There was a lot of precedence for this. But when you issue a subpoena and you don't get compliance, then what do you do? Well, unfortunately, a few decades ago, there was a change in the rules, the way these were administered, the law, if you will, where the House used to administer these themselves. This goes back to a famous case with Trump.

none other than Sam Houston and Francis Scott Key as the attorney. Yes, the Francis Scott Key and the Sam Houston. And then fast forward and more recent decades, and I won't go through the long history of this, but rather than the house enforcing it, they left it up to the executive branch, which was a really bad move because then for instance,

I'm a Republican. I was the chairman of the Oversight Committee. We were duly issuing subpoenas, but got noncompliance. And so I was forced to go to the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch at the time, under the Obama-Biden administration to get them to enforce that subpoena. And we had a case...

with a guy named Brian Pagliano. Now, Brian Pagliano was the IT specialist working for Hillary Clinton, worked for her at the State Department. When she left the State Department, he left the State Department. When she started her campaign, he started to work on the campaign.

And it was interesting because I won't go through the whole Hillary Clinton email scandal, but right at the heart of this, Brian Pagliano was the IT specialist and was very close and had great close proximity to this situation. Well, I had wanted to, and our committee had wanted to look at the emails when he was at the State Department.

Now, mysteriously, the State Department, over a long period of time, produced no documents regarding Brian Pagliano and finally eventually claimed that Brian Pagliano, working at the State Department in IT, in information technology, had never sent nor ever received an email at the State Department. Are you kidding me? I mean, we were supposed to swallow and believe that.

Anyway, going through the case, Director Comey and the FBI, working with DOJ, had sought and given Brian Pagliano immunity. The guy was not going to be prosecuted. Now, normally, when you give somebody immunity, you trade it for something. Cooperation with those that are looking at the matter, mysteriously.

Seasoned prosecutors had looked at this stuff for years and years and years and spent decades on their careers working on this stuff, had never, ever seen an immunity agreement with no requirement to cooperate with the government. That's a whole nother subject.

But he has immunity, and we duly issue a subpoena for him to come appear before the committee. Now, once he appears before the committee, he can plead the fifth. You can do that. But you have to come to the committee. You can't just say, well, I'm going to plead the fifth. And then everybody says, oh, okay, I guess not. I mean, our whole justice system would fall apart if that was the case.

So we issue a subpoena and he ignores it. We have a hearing, doesn't show up. So in order to get his attention and make sure there was no ambiguity, I had the U.S. Marshals serve him the second subpoena to comply, to compel testimony and to compel him to appear before the committee. And he didn't show up. So our committee voted and down strict party lines. Keep in mind, Democrats had no desire to vote.

compel somebody to come testify before Congress. That was too much. So straight party line vote. We held them in contempt. We issue that to the Department of Justice through Loretta Lynch. They do nothing.

Then Jeff Sessions comes on board as the Attorney General of President Trump. Guess what? He did nothing. That's a whole other subject. But now, suddenly, it's all about Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. So, of course, Congress, strict party lines. Democrats decide, oh, yeah. Now, there were some exceptions. There were some exceptions. But they issue a subpoena, noncompliance, within a few days.

they held them in contempt. And within a few days, they refer that and then indict him. The double standard is just so much. Look, here's the problem. When you believe that justice should only be administered on your political opponents, that's where we as a nation go sideways and it's just fundamentally wrong.

It either is there or it is not there, but it is fundamentally wrong to suggest that only your political enemies should be on the receiving end of this.

Congressional subpoenas should mean something. And if the Congress is going to claim that it is a co-equal branch of government, then it actually needs to stand up for itself and enforce its own subpoenas, not give it over to the administration and allow their political whims to determine whether or not justice is actually administered.

All right, I want to go to another thing that's also in the courts here and give my take on it. And I really refer deeply into this Wall Street Journal op-ed. It's called An Illegal Vaccine Mandate. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just

smacked down the Obama to the Biden-Harris administration. I mean, that's as strong of a smackdown. And in fact, Wall Street Journal calls it a smackdown on the vaccine mandate. The administration was trying to use OSHA to get it to enforce its rule, saying it was an emergency. Of course, it was such an emergency. It took two months for them to consider the rule. Now they want to put it in there.

Let me read you what Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the unanimous, unanimous panel in a withering opinion, according to the Wall Street Journal. The mandate's true purpose is not to enhance workplace safety, but instead to ramp up vaccine uptake by any means necessary. They went on and cited multiple times where, you know what, folks, they were using this as a rule, as a workaround.

These rules and types of things really should be done at the state level, but as the court explains, they spent two months writing the rule, and it's not a true emergency. COVID has been with us for some 20 months, and OSHA decided to set an arbitrary threshold of...

of employers with 100 workers because they were, quote, will be able to administer and sustain the mandate. It's just, it was a political effort. It wasn't a true medical emergency. The court smacked it down, and I don't think it's going to go anywhere. Fortunately, you have a court paying attention. And when they come up with a unanimous decision,

I think that says a lot. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Ben Domenech right after this. This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required.

It's time to bring on the stupid because you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. 🎵

This one, I go to People Magazine, a family in Lima, Peru. Whoops. This Saleto family, according to Reuters, again, in People Magazine, which I read thoroughly, always. How do you survive without reading People Magazine? Anyway, they purchased a new puppy, and the puppy was named Rerun, and they loved this little puppy, and they bought it in a little shop in Lima, Peru. But then as this little puppy became a little bit more of a dog, it was...

According to People Magazine, playful, friendly, and energetic.

Um, but then as the dog got a little older, they started questioning, is this really a dog? Because the veracity of which he was attacking and killing local ducks and chickens was just getting out of control. Its tail started to change. Its ears started to change and its face became a little bit more prominent. Um, and then I think they figured out that this little dog was actually a fox. Yeah.

Whoops. And, you know, that's kind of cute. I don't know if you should call it flat-out stupid. They probably got ripped off. It's just a cute little animal, but whoops, bought a fox instead of a dog. And that's why it was probably killing chickens and ducks and neighborhood animals. Anyway, for that...

cute thing we're just bringing on the stupid all right now it's time to phone a friend and we're going to call ben dominich he's uh he's got a great deep voice but he's also a great voice in the conservative movement and his probing comments and thoughts and uh questions i think are are very very worthy so let's give a call to ben dominich

Ahoy, ahoy, this is Ben. Ben, hey, this is Jason Chaffetz. Thanks for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. That's quite the answer to the phone.

Well, I'm a fan of C. Montgomery Burns, the Simpsons, you know, sort of philanthropist, you know, do-gooder, you know, when it comes to his engagement with nuclear power. And that's the way that he answers the phone. So it's the way that I and my siblings all answer the phone. Well, anybody who's a fan of the Simpsons is moving in the right direction. I am still in awe of that production. They have done so many great

funny things along the way. It really, I mean, they just, it's great when they, the things they can't do anymore. Someone shared just the other day and I had totally forgotten about it. A whole sequence in which Bart is attempting to avoid his regularly scheduled vaccine shot from Dr. Hibbert. And it's not exactly the kind of thing that they're going to allow on the airways today. Yeah. Well,

Bart's a special character. He kind of, truth be told, we've got a kid in our neighborhood who totally reminds me of Bart Simpson. I'm like, this is Bart personified. I love this kid.

It just makes me laugh and what a great series. Now, so did you grow up like just watching cartoons all day? Is that what your parents did? Just plodded you down and said, hey, watch cartoons and this is how you're going to grow up? No, we had a starkly limited TV experience. My family kept us to, we could max out at an hour on regular days and

And we had to turn it off by 10 a.m. on Saturday morning cartoon day. And so they forced us to be outside most of the time. And because I was homeschooled growing up, that meant that you had to do a lot of things that were nerdy and imagination focused and funny.

And not exactly in keeping with the trends of the day. We had pretty stark limits on video games and movie consumption and all manner of other things. But my parents would let us read

Just about anything. So when I was 10 or 11 years old, I couldn't go and see any movie that wasn't rated G, but I could read Stephen King and my parents didn't care. So that was a very odd dichotomy growing up.

Yeah, you can read The Shining, but you can't go watch The Shining. And your imagination was probably bigger than what would be on screen. Yes, The Shining. It's funny that you bring that up because Shining is a classic example, and I'm sure you have these in your own brain, of a movie that's actually better than the book.

You know, along with like L.A. Confidential and Lats of the Mohicans and The Prestige, a number of those like movies that basically take a book that seems unadaptable, change it and make it better. And, you know, that's why Stephen King hates The Shining infamously. He hates it.

the Kubrickian version of his story, in part, I think, out of jealousy because it's a lot better than the book because they tried to make the book into like a miniseries or something like that. And it isn't anywhere near as good. I mean, it's you can watch it if you're a king addict like I am, but it's not a it's not the kind of thing that you

It basically says Stephen King should stick to writing books as opposed to saying how movies should go. Well, I did love the movie. Actually, when you were saying all that, I was thinking of Fletch.

Yes.

And my dad, first thing he would do on Sunday when he got that TV guide is he would mark through all the shows that I couldn't watch, which really became my guide to this is what I really want to be watching. Three's Company, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat. Those were the ones I wanted to watch. I'm not sure of the age demo of your listeners, but we too had that in-newspaper TV guide that...

That that you would use because you didn't have any way of seeing what was on the other channels at the other time. Those were the days, you know, especially when we still had TVs, I think more than one that had dials on them that you had to get up in order to change the channel. And the funny thing about it is that, you know, the one show that my family watched.

really was always okay with us watching and consuming because of its family-friendly, wholesome nature was, of course, The Cosby Show, which is now completely ruined in retrospect for everything that we know about Bill Cosby. But, like, we grew up listening to, like, you know, Bill Cosby himself, the album, and all of the, like,

you know, Oh, these are, you know, this is wholesome family friendly comedy. And, and, and now it's, it's just, you know, I, I try to appreciate it as, as it was, as opposed to the, the pudding pop and, and roofie salesman that we knew him later to be. So, you know, I, I'm,

I'm older than you are, so I got a lot of these kinds of stories in my background. Yeah, and I think that it's sort of like, you know, you get older and then you start to realize that your teacher was just like some regular, you know, schmuck who just, you know, I just like, but they were so, it was my teacher, you know, and then you get older and you just think, oh my goodness. And then some of these television icons are people that were stars, right?

You know, it just kind of burst your bubble. Have you had the experience of being invited back to some kind of academic program that you graduated from?

where at the time you put the professor on some kind of pedestal, and then you realize as you approach middle age that he was younger than you are now, and that actually he didn't really know that much about his subject matter. Yeah, it's kind of depressing. Because I definitely had that happen. It's kind of depressing because I look back and I look at their picture and I thought,

I'm older than this guy. I don't look nearly that old, do I? I mean, was it the way they took pictures or dressed? I'm like, come on now. That picture of a 38-year-old made them look like they were like 79. And now I'm like, 79 is not looking too bad.

You know, it's I still remember the one professor that we had who lost the midterm. He claims when his when his car was robbed while he was at

at WrestleMania in Virginia beach. And, and the idea that this, you know, bald, you know, sort of a middle-aged man who we all thought of as being, you know, old as old as sin was the kind of person who would go to WrestleMania was just a, a complete mind explosion for me at the time. And now I think about it and it's like, wait,

wait a minute, he's like 40 and I would go to WrestleMania. So how does that work? All right. So tell us a little bit more about growing up. So you, you were born down in Mississippi, right? But raised in Charleston, South Carolina. Is that, do I have that right? That is, you do have that right. I was born in Jackson, Mississippi. I was born on new year's day. I was not, however, the first baby in the,

in America or in the state. And so, but my parents didn't get like a whole, you know, a carload of free diapers or anything like that. They missed the tax credit by not being born. Something that my father reminded me of with regularity as I was growing up in which I now actually appreciate as being the dark humor that it is. The yeah, we moved to Charleston, South Carolina. My parents were both American.

evangelical Christian hippie types and kind of crunchy, you know, granola co-op type people. And, but very, I would say traditionally conservative in, in the social sense and, and in their faith and,

And we moved to North Charleston, Tim Scott's territory, which is if people have visited Charleston, they probably visited downtown, which is the old Charleston, which is beautiful and which I love. But we lived in North Charleston, which was much more sort of racially even evenly divided and kind of the blue collar people who worked at the port were.

or who were Navy vets, that kind of area. And lived there for many years. And while we were there, we

lived through a couple of hurricanes and, and, uh, my parents started homeschooling, uh, me and my, uh, sister. And then, um, and my, and then my little brother was born and we moved up to, uh, Northern Virginia, uh, to rural Virginia and Loudoun County, which is now a County that everybody in America knows about for very weird reasons. Um,

And that's really where I spent my teenage years. And it was at the time that we moved there, a pretty rural county, lots of agriculture, but it was also becoming a kind of Silicon Valley East. The MCI WorldCom had moved there. AOL was based there. Amazon was starting its web services there. And so it became kind of a split between...

new money people who lived in McMansions based on, built on old farmland that had been split up. And then to the western part of the county, the places where the farms were still kind of intact. And it was an interesting split, but that's, you know, it was kind of an area that, you

after being what was essentially a very sleepy political situation, you know, one that was very traditional and rural and agrarian and mostly just cared about whether the roads would work for people to commute all the way into the city. So you're growing up, you get kind of this political bent now. Did that come from your parents? Or, I mean, not everybody that's going along in life decides, hey, I'm going to comment on politics in the world. Yeah.

For a lot of people, that gets them in trouble or they get tongue-tied, but...

What is it about your growing up that said, yeah, you know, I think I can do this. And then later on in life saying, yeah, I can do this for a living. Well, I think from my parents' perspective, they were always interested in politics, but it was kind of a sideline thing for them. They were involved, but mostly because of the abortion issue or religious freedom. And they still, though, very much like to be engaged in what was going on in the world. And

And we would watch the McLaughlin group as a family growing up. Yeah, I remember that. And we would talk about it and argue about it and pay attention to the different things that were going on in the world and certainly paid attention to the 92 election and everything like that and the Gingrich Revolution in 94. In 93, my father ran the campaign of an upstart group

homeschool advocate named Mike Ferris, who ran for lieutenant governor unsuccessfully in Virginia. But it was really the start of a kind of engagement of evangelicals and homeschoolers and people like that, that was far more active in politics. And obviously, you know, we paid attention to that. We paid attention to the

94 thing, I still have the pictures from the hundred day mark of past the contract with America, where my family and my siblings and a bunch of other kids in our homeschool group all went to the Capitol. And I have pictures with

Gingrich and Dick Army and Tom DeLay and John Boehner and people like that from, you know, when I was 12 years old. And that's great. You know, it's yeah, it's very weird because, you know, now I know Newt as a friend and have known him for many years, but it's it's very odd to look back at that at the time. And the the takeaway that we really had was just politics was

part of what my family was engaged in, but it wasn't the be all and end all. And there wasn't any kind of assumption that any of us kids would go into it. It was more, I would say that just, we would always think it was important. And so as we got older, you know, I wanted to be in the media part of it. I didn't really want to work on the inside so much as work on the

The area of covering it got to do an internship when I was 15 at human events where I was working for John Gizzy, who's still around working for Newsmax these days. He's the he's the fellow with the glasses that you see occasionally, if you will pay attention to the White House press briefings. And I

was an intern as well at National Review. And my sister, meanwhile, she had wanted to go into the sports arena. She was an athlete and went into studied sports medicine. My brother was always focused on going the military route. And she ended up being, you know, not just a very active, you know, sort of policy person,

person in terms of her engagement on the subject and now works on Capitol Hill, but worked for both the Bush and Obama administrations in the Defense Department. And then my brother ended up going the military route. So we all kind of ended up in some branch of either service or covering government service. And to me, I like the media route because

you know, it's the place where I feel like you can have the most fun and actually have the most impact in the shift that's happened in the past couple decades, as you know, and as I think you're experiencing yourself, is that

Sometimes it turns out that you can be more powerful or have a more powerful impact from the outside going in than being on the inside or being one of 435 members trying to get stuff through. And that's something that I think is valuable. And I've seen both sides of it myself and appreciate the different aspects of what goes on with those both of those pursuits.

Politics, though, for me, it's something that's very important, but I also find the humor in it and the need to sort of not take yourself too seriously when it comes to approaching it. I'm sure, not for nothing, but I'm sure that everyone who has ever heard me would have heard me say that the

the most accurate depiction of Washington life is not the West wing or house of cards. It's Veep. And it's, and it's really is, you know, people, people making monumental decisions about policy based on who got which parking space. Now there's a, to your earlier point, I think there's a lot of truth to the, I totally buy into the whole Margaret Thatcher approach, which is first you got to win the argument. Then you can go out and win the vote.

And I find a lot of people on the more conservative right side of the aisle are just pathetic in terms of their communication and poor at best in explaining why they believe what they believe. And so that's in part why I really I'm just fascinated. I mean, such great success in your co-founding and publishing The Federalist.

And tell me a little bit more about the genesis of that. What you saw is the need, and it really is exceptionally well done.

Well, thank you for those kind words. In terms of that Thatcher comment, I'm reminded of, I don't know if you're a fan of the British show, Yes Minister. I can't say that I have. The British break, Great British Bake Off, yes. And yeah, I've seen it. Well, look up some YouTube of Yes Minister, and I think you'll relate to it. There's a wonderful scene. The whole thing is about bureaucrats frustrating the

the people who are in elected office. And, but there's this wonderful scene where the prime minister says, you know, well, I can't make any choice in this area. The conference has decided, you know, I am their leader. I must follow them. I think there's a lot of that that goes on in Washington and Congress. But anyway, the Federalist is, I have tried to launch a,

both successfully and unsuccessfully, multiple things in my life. You know, I was a co-founder of Red State back in the day, which obviously was

sort of a key voice during tea party years uh though by that point i'd already sold it along with you know the original founders eric erickson had taken it over and it became uh it was meant to be kind of a big tent thing when we started and became more of a uh like angular tea party-esque kind of thing uh in and so that was a success because you know whenever you make something and then you make money off of it you know i think you can consider it a success

Then I had a couple of failures, the sort of websites that I started didn't get a lot of money or backing for, and they didn't really go anywhere. I got into the think tank space for a bit with the Heartland Institute and Manhattan Institute. But while I was there, I was always kind of thinking that I would do something that I wanted to do something that would have a much bigger impact on the world of right of center media.

And I felt in the wake of the 2012 election, particularly everything that happened in the primary, but also just the way the election played out in a lot of different ways, that there was a need for some new blood, some new injection of an entity that would

both report and analyze the news, be laser focused on media bias and what we felt like was a truly organized combination of the left and the media working in tandem together, going beyond bias and

to really be propagandistic in a lot of ways. I mean, the idea that, I mean, I'm no fan, I'm not a big fan of Mitt Romney. I've always been public about that. But the idea that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were going to crawl through your window and steal your birth control in the middle of the night, which is basically how they were depicted is, was absolutely abhorrent to me. And so that was something that came out of it. But then also we felt like there was a need for just new voices that could command, you

some direction or come to represent and, and I, a space of ideas that was being lost. And I've always said that the Federalist would not exist if Andrew Breitbart had not sadly passed away. And Andrew and I were not that close. We were colleagues. We weren't friends. And,

But we had dinner many times and hung out together quite a bit. And I had enormous respect for him. And obviously, one of the things that he became known for was preaching the idea that politics is downstream from culture, that culture matters on a level that politicians don't particularly appreciate or don't want to appreciate. And I felt like in his absence, while obviously Breitbart came to be known for a lot of other things,

That that culture first attitude was being lost and that the old guard of National Review and at the time, the Weekly Standard and a number of other places like that really were not engaged in the culture war in the way that I felt that they needed to be. And in appreciating the importance of common culture.

meaning the importance of all these different aspects of American life that inform the way that citizens think about things that don't have anything to do with a policy that's in front of a committee. For instance, you know, there is perhaps no more political arena today than the world of sports media.

Sports media is just shot through with racial politics, transgender politics, Title IX issues and women and everything else related to it. And in particular, I would say it has become the source of a number of major American figures who espouse worldviews that I believe are antithetical to

to what we hope for for an American future. LeBron James being a perfect example of that. And I say that. Yeah, there's so many. I mean, there's so many of them, but it's like here's the most popular basketball star in America and everything he does seems to be in service either of diminishing America or in or in service of of pursuing dollars in China. And, you know, and that has

way more impact than any documentary put together by any foundation or think tank, which a bunch of old people sitting behind desks telling you about how important the American founding is. And so we, we felt the need to create something new. And so Molly Hemingway, David Parsani, Sean Davis, and I put together something in, in the Federalist that launched in, in 2013 now. And we, we,

pretty quickly added to our team, built a number of younger voices into it. And one of the things that we particularly made an aspect of what we were trying to do was to get younger women involved in key positions from the beginning. And that was not so much out of any kind of

affirmative action attempt, but more from my perspective that they were, it was long past time that we had mastheads that actually resembled the people who are most important in terms of directing American culture and the mastheads of places that are within the right of center media landscape are

frequently had either all male or older or just not really connected with so many cultural issues that I think are so important, like education and child rearing and relationships and everything else that goes into that. And so here we are eight years later, and we've got an editorial team that's entirely female, and we've got a number of great young

writers who, you know, I think are, are prominent and known to a lot of the Fox audiences by now and have, you know, differences of opinion, but are very, what they have in common is that they have strong views and that they're willing to defend them. And that they don't back down in the face of, of,

media mobs and the like. And that's become kind of a hallmark of what we do. And I'm proud of it. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Ben Dominic right after this. Well, tell me a little bit about the suppression, because I got to tell you, if you go to certain search engines and try to type in something, it's

It's almost rare to have the Federalist pop up, even when you're searching something from the Federalist. And do you feel that? Do you experience that? And to what degree? And how pervasive is that? It's absolutely pervasive. And I'm glad that you've noticed that.

This is not something that was true, I would say, even a year and a half, two years ago. But it's something that became true during the course of the last election in a really big way. And certainly during our coverage of

and the mandates and everything associated with that. Though I would say that part of it was we were pretty aggressive on the point where things really started to be noticeable was that we were pretty aggressive in calling for the investigation of the lab leak thesis from the beginning. Right.

And, you know, along with Rand Paul and a couple of others who were espousing that, that was something that we really leaned into. We didn't even experience it, I would say, the year before that when we were, you know, and in the previous years when we were obviously very engaged online.

on the Russia hoax and everything related to that, or even on other major media stories such as the Kavanaugh nomination fight and things along those lines. It was really when we started to mess with the idea that, hey, this is

This doesn't necessarily, we shouldn't assume that this came from a wet market. We shouldn't assume that this is something that, you know, is, is not coming out of a lab. We need to have more investigation. That was the point where we started to get some real tech backlash. And because, you know, a lot of them were identifying it as being racist. And that was even before a lot of right-wing sites took serious hits in the summer during George Floyd, that we sort of started to get it earlier. We got it in like April and May and,

And the experience that we've basically had is that most of these tech giants, they don't actually want to have a public story about anything. So instead, what they try to do is essentially shadow ban you to diminish your

You're sharing to turn the knobs and flip the switches that basically prevent things that would have gone viral from going viral and to particularly slow down the sharing of of content from channels that they deem to be ones that they just dislike. I mean, a perfect example of that for us.

We actually, we do pretty well still on, on Facebook because we, we never spent money on Facebook to like gin up our numbers. We just were always organic places that spent money. We're the ones that were hardest hit there. But the example that I would use for us is, is our YouTube channel, which is so shadow banned that I can search for videos of myself and not find them

And it's a very surreal experience. Like, did I actually do that Fox hit if I look for it and it's not on there? But it's true. And it's absolutely incredible.

it's absolutely clear as day if you pay any attention to it. And, you know, the unfortunate part of this, and I'm curious if I can turn around and ask you a question about this. I'm curious if you've found or been convinced by anybody as to a solution on this. I was, I, I, my own feeling is,

We shouldn't treat these companies like they are good faith actors anymore. We can't assume that what they're saying to us is honest. We can't assume that the products that they're offering are not deeply compromised or that they are not violating their own terms or playing Calvin ball with the different rules.

And because of that, we should do everything that we can to eradicate the type of corporate welfare that they enjoy, whether in terms of protection from lawsuits in different areas or the like. But I'm not convinced that there's any particular silver bullet here that results in the kind of better behavior that I think we'd all like to see from these companies.

It's not that I think that a company is not one person. It's not like Facebook is everything that Mark Zuckerberg wants it to be, though I think the metaverse might end up being that way. He does play a lot of civilization. A little scary, yeah. But it's one of these things where I don't think that we can count on them to be good actors, but I also don't know that there's a policy solution

And so that's why I think that this whole thing is sliding more toward breakup and antitrust versus bureaucratic regulation, both of which are solutions that are not ideal.

Yeah, I... For a lot of... A host of different reasons. Yeah, I fear more bureaucratic regulation. I don't think you want the government involved in making these types of decisions. I think ultimately that makes it worse, not better.

I've always taken the position that Section 230, while there's a couple things I would work on tweaking, I kind of like the Wild Wild West, the openness and the errors towards more...

freedom of expression. But with that said, I think that where there is vulnerability for these social media companies is I believe that they're engaged in deceptive trade practices. And I've never understood why organizations like the Federal Trade Commission or some of those types of organizations, whether it be at the state or the federal level, isn't going after them. If you, for instance, on Twitter say,

say that I like this person. I like Ben Domenech. I want to follow him. I do not. And it puts this little enticement on there to say, you know what, you're going to trade. You're going to give as your consideration, you're going to allow us to gather information about you, what you see, what you watch, what you click on, what you don't click on.

and they're going to monetize and sell that. But in return, you get to follow these people. You get to like these people. And in turn, they can follow and like you and they get to see your material. That's just fundamentally not true. And I think you can prove that that's not true. And maybe buried in some term and condition, they've got some, hey, our algorithm makes these decisions. But I think they're engaged in deceptive trade practices. And I wish they would go after that. The other policy thing that I think should be

re-examined is I like actually in part what Europe is doing, which is the right to be forgotten. If you decide that, hey, I no longer want to use Google search engine, what happens to all that data and all that information? They should have to destroy that. They should have to give that back to me.

And I should have the ability to limit what they get and gather on my information. That, I think, is empowering to the consumer and changes the dynamic of what they're doing. Because just like they did with getting loans, they have to very clearly document, this is the interest rate you're going to pay. This is how much you're going to pay in interest. There should be the same type of thing there.

When you engage in a social media company, and I think we really need to think back through allowing 13 year olds to enter into these contracts as if they were an adult. And do they get to be forgotten if they decide to change their mind when they turn 18 or if they're 75 years old, for example? How many kids do you have? We have three.

And are they old enough? Are they teenagers? Oh, yeah. Our youngest is 20. And so our oldest son is like a ghost. He got off that a long time ago. I'm so proud of him for making those decisions. But our younger ones involved and engaged in it. Yeah. Well, so it's weird because...

I'm from this elder millennial generation that's the last one that didn't have, you know, their brains rewired at a very young age from these things. And the difference between me and my youngest sister, who's quite a bit younger because my parents adopted her later, you know, in after the sort of we had grown up a little bit.

And she's just completely different in her interaction with social media than I am and than my older sister is. And I was talking the other night with a friend of mine, a longtime friend of mine, and he said, I was saying, you know, I'm so worried about this. My own daughter's one year old. You know, I'm worried about what things are, you know, things look like this now. They look so terrible now. What are they going to be like when she's a teenager? And he said, well, don't be as scared of this

as you think, because I just did a test and it worked out really well. I paid my kids and he's got, I can't remember, I guess six or seven kids. He said, I paid my kids to get off of social media. And they're all, all but one of them is a teenager. And he said, what would it cost to

to keep you off of social. I want to buy your social media for the next two months. And so he paid all of his kids a thousand dollars to stay off. I was like, I'm like, that's a lot. And he said, well, they were hard edge negotiators. So to stay off, to stay off for two months. And he said that only one of them has gone back to it.

And that they all basically reported being less stressed and more engaged and more able to focus and less distracted. And so I think part of this is as much as we might worry, as much as someone like me might worry or parents today might worry, I think it's a situation where

This is so new. It's only been around for a very short period of human history. And we just have to learn how to deal with it and navigate around it in a way that's responsible as opposed to having it be this unending machine, just this spout of water that's going into you every day, all day long. It's the first thing that you look at in the morning and the last thing you look at at night.

That's what we have to get away from. And I think that we're going to have to take steps intentionally to do that for ourselves and for our kids. Yeah, this is a fascinating topic. And I'm glad you're thinking it through and other smart people are thinking it through because I do think it has to be – it does have to be dealt with, particularly the suppression. I think the suppression –

It's just fundamentally wrong. It's disingenuous. And I think it's counter to the contract that I enter into in the trading of information and that as the vehicle when I want to search and find things and that they purposely for their own personal political whims decide that they're going to have this unequal application of how they do that suppression.

That to me, I don't think would be tolerated by the left who is coming the other way. They would throw labels on it like racist and all these other things. But as long as it's against conservatives and Republicans, it's just fine. It's just fine because it's all about truth.

Well, and that's part of the thing that I think is underlying so much of this is this assumption. You go from making a piece of technology that's designed to, quote unquote, make the world a better place.

And then suddenly when people start using it in ways that you don't approve of, you feel the need to mess with it, to game the system. It's like they're liking the wrong people. They're listening to the wrong podcast.

There were questions thrown. I'm a fan of the Washington Redskins, which is now known as the Washington football team. The most significant perhaps ramification of the summer of riotousness is that a freaking football team has to change their name. Their current quarterback, who was a backup who had to

play because of injury yesterday was doing his, his press conference. And there was all sorts of controversy because he showed up wearing a Joe Rogan hoodie hoodie. And, and immediately he had to answer questions about his vaccination status. He's like, what are you talking about? I'm vaccinated or whatever. And he's like, Oh, Oh, I wore the hoodie. But it's like, we, we really are reaching a point where the people you pay attention to are

are, you know, indicative of where you are on the spectrum. And that's something that's what's so interesting about the dynamics in media today. And I'm sure you pay attention to this is if you the left spent so many years, especially during the Trump era, but even before that, you know, targeting Fox and targeting other center right media publications and saying, well, you're siloing people off.

You're telling them, you know, a message that's different, you know, from the rest of society or something like that. And you even had these ludicrous, I mean, one of the, even one of the Mueller, you know, indictment series during that investigation was mostly directed at

And a bunch of Russians who certainly they meant to interfere with the American election, but they did so primarily by creating ridiculous memes, including that meme of Jesus Christ endorsing Donald Trump. And I would love to find one person in America who actually, you know, voted for Donald Trump because Jesus endorsed him. But the but the but the something they learned from a Facebook meme. But the thing that is is so fascinating is it's the left. It's the dominant right.

force of the media and the people who drive progressive policy, they're the ones in the silo. They're not looking to the log in their own eyes.

Because if they wanted to find out what conservatives in America believe or what just right-leaning independents or just traditionally-minded people believed in America, even vaguely apolitical, they would have to put effort into it. They would have to watch the shows that they're not watching or listen to the things that they're not listening to.

Whereas I get up in the morning and I know what the left thinks because everything else in the media tells me. The front page of the New York Times tells me, NPR tells me, the dominant forces in media tell me. And so it's no mystery what they think.

I know that they think that everybody who voted for either Glenn Youngkin or his black female, uh, Lieutenant governor or his Hispanic attorney general running mates. Um, I know that they think that if you did that, that you're a racist, you know, even though of course voting for the, uh, white incumbent attorney general would have literally been voting for a guy who admitted to wearing blackface, but let's that set that aside. The point just being like, I know that I know that because everyone in media is telling me that, uh,

And it's the other people, it's the people who are on the left who actually would have to do the due diligence to

of seeking out the alternate view. And very few of them actually do it in my experience. Yeah, I think the big irony in this whole thing is those who preach the most tolerance are probably some of the most least tolerant people that I've ever come across. It really is stunning that they are just fine suppressing things as long as you agree with them. Heaven forbid somebody have a different idea or a different perspective about

because that would be intolerant. And anyway, I bet I could talk to you all day about this stuff. I think that's why people go to the Federalist. They listen and see you on Fox and your podcast.

right here on the Fox News podcast list. But I'm fascinated by what you've done and how you're doing it. But I need to ask you a couple quick questions just to get a little further insight into Ben Dominich. By the way, you've got like this incredibly powerful name like Ben Dominich. Nobody's ever said that out loud starting with the word Jason. It's just like it just doesn't happen to me.

Thank you. I appreciate it. So, yes, there was a compliment buried in there. And so I'm going to ask you these rapid questions, and then we'll see how you fare. All right. First concert you attended. The first concert that I attended that I bought the ticket for was the Wallflowers Counting Crows tour in 1996, I believe. Okay.

And they are also the wallflowers are the most recent band that I saw because they performed a couple of nights ago. I saw them. There you go. It's going full circle. All right. What was your high school mascot?

So I was homeschooled, but technically we used the University of Nebraska curriculum, so I guess a corn husker. A corn husker. All right, all right. Who was your first celebrity crush? When you were a little kid, first celebrity crush? Homer.

Oh my gosh, this is the easiest one to answer. Jennifer Connelly from The Rocketeer, who I ran into once in New York as a 30-something man and was just sort of completely overcome and didn't know what to say. And my girlfriend at the time had to sort of elbow me and like, what's wrong? And it was like, that was Jennifer Connelly. She's still real. I know her, but she doesn't know me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

All right. Life's most embarrassing moment. Oh, my gosh. That's a great question. I have a number of embarrassing moments. I think probably one of the more embarrassing moments that I've ever had is that I...

I mean, it's actually, it's basically how, how I, how I met my wife, which is that I went on Bill Maher on HBO and, and it was coming off of like a bad breakup, you know, or relationship and went on vacation to the, the friend offered me access to his house in the Virgin islands. So it was on vacation by myself. And I,

And I, you know, am, you know, in my cups and sort of, you know, feeling depressed. And my wife, my then who's Senator McCain's daughter, Megan follows me suddenly out of the blue on Twitter. And before I know it, I am basically, I've gotten her phone number and I'm calling her out of the blue. And, and, you know, we've basically just go from zero to 10. It just like,

in the space of hours in terms of asking her out. And she just thought I was being very forward by doing so. But I was confident that we would hit it off. Because you were? Great. Because I was. But I think fortune favors the bold. But to her credit, to her credit, she was like, okay, you're super forward. And she later admitted to me, she was like, I just was being polite to you to go out on this date. I didn't think that it would lead to anything.

And lo and behold, cut to a couple of years later, and we get married, and now we have a daughter. But it was embarrassing at the time because...

It was just like, you don't know me at all. And I don't typically, I'm not very much that kind of person when it comes to asking somebody out. And so I felt very sheepish that I had been way too forward and possibly prevented her from going out. Well, it worked for you. But it worked. It worked. So it was embarrassing in the moment is, I guess, the way I would put it. All right. Just a couple more. Unique talent nobody knows about.

I don't know that nobody knows about it, but I'm a very good cook. I cook for everybody in my family and do typically Thanksgiving dinner and stuff like that. I didn't know that. Yeah, but that's food. It is a talent. I like to eat, but I'm not very good at making it.

I wasn't very good until a few years ago when I just decided to like really focus on it. Um, and I reached my family is all the talented in different respects, you know, art or music or things like that. And I'm not as talented in that, uh,

in those spaces, I can do a little bit dabble, but I decided, you know what, I'm going to pursue this and learn it. And, and it really is, it's, it's very rewarding. And now it's kind of a thing that I, I enjoy doing, even though it can be stressful when there's a lot of family around. So good, good, good, good. All right. Well, sometime I hope to,

Be with you in person and I'll take you up on the offer to go ahead and make something for us to eat. That would be great. Of course. All right. Last big question, which has to do with a lot with your new chef skills that you evidently have, but

Pineapple on pizza, yes or no? Oh, I'm totally fine with pineapple on pizza. Ben, you were on a roll. Judges do not like this answer. But I'm also someone who thinks that toppings generally on pizza are overrated. I think actually the ideal form of pizza is just –

you know, a nice cheese pizza or most pepperoni. So once you just get out of that vein, I think of it as being do whatever you want with the pie because, you know, it doesn't, it's, it's no longer kind of the ideal form of pizza. I'm very much a, a cheese or cheese and pepperoni guy. And I even got a little, I got one of those nice wood pellet pizza ovens.

this year to make little individual pizzas for people. Yeah, we have a pizza oven out back outside and it's... I love pizza. I could live on pizza and Mexican food, I tell you. Hey, I think that's a great... I think that is a great selection and I strongly recommend it. Personally, you know,

Pineapple is not typically in my order, but I just don't have the judgment. Some people judge it and view it as being some kind of a terrible offense to the Almighty, a sin that one must answer for before the pizza gods at the end of time. That's me. And I'm not baffling asking everybody because it tells me a lot. Yeah.

Okay. Well, in their defense, I mean, doesn't that have all the food groups on it? If you get a nice Hawaiian pizza, I think it actually does. I don't order a pizza to maintain the balance of my diet. You don't use the government pyramid as your guide to the way that we ought to live? I just don't want a wet piece of fruit sitting on my nice pepperonis. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

No, I understand. Thank you so much for joining us on the Jason in the house podcast. And thank you for the time and getting to know you better. Appreciate it. Great to be with you, Jason. Again, I can't thank Ben Dominic enough for joining us, having a good candid conversation about politics in America and in his background. So thank you so much for listening to the Jason in the house podcast. I hope you're able to review it, give it a few stars, subscribe to it.

You can check out more podcasts over at the Fox News Podcast Network at foxnewspodcast.com. Foxnewspodcast.com. There's a whole array of them, including Ben Domenech's. And I hope you get a chance to listen to that as well. We'll be back with more next week. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.

This is Jimmy Fallon inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at foxacrossamerica.com.