GOP Senate candidate Sam Brown vows to challenge Big Tech, calls critical race theory an 'insult' to America

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Afghanistan veteran announces US Senate run and reacts to troop withdrawal

Purple Heart recipient Sam Brown discusses serving in Afghanistan and President Biden's decision to withdraw U.S. troops on 'The Story'

Retired Army Capt. Sam Brown is hoping to challenge the Washington political class as a Republican Senate candidate in Nevada with his newly launched campaign. 

"I decided to run for U.S. Senate because the American people need a champion who will lead and serve them based off of shared values," Brown told Fox News during a phone interview. "We have had a political class that has neglected America's interests and values in exchange for political talking points and special interests groups. It's time for Americans to be represented by leaders who care about them and will, you know, address the issues that Americans are dealing with."

Even before officially launching his campaign, which aims to oust incumbent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Brown faced off with his first political adversary, Twitter, whom he accused last week of flagging his Fourth of July tweet of him saluting in uniform as "potentially sensitive content."

Brown slammed Twitter, suggesting his tweet was marked as "potentially sensitive" because of his face, which was severely burned from an IED explosion during his 2008 deployment to Afghanistan. His campaign launch video shared on Wednesday was similarly hit with a warning label. 

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A spokesperson for Twitter previously pushed back at the censorship allegation, telling Fox News such warnings can be enabled or disabled based on the individual user's account settings.

Brown, however, is not backing down. 

"What Twitter is doing to me, what they've been doing to others for quite some time including ultimately deplatforming President Trump while he was still in the White House, this is a pattern that I think is an undeniable attack against conservative voices who are just trying to share our ideas, our concerns, our solutions and honestly our inspiration with all Americans," Brown said. "At the end of the day, the conservative message has largely been and will continue to be one of unity and offering hope to the American people.

"It's tragic that a Big Tech company is allowed to really depress our ability to share those messages with people who desperately need hope at a time when Americans have been crushed by these policies, by the laws and regulations of elected and unelected officials."

(Sam Brown)

Brown called for an "honest conversation" that goes broader than the often-cited Section 230, which grants websites immunity from content provided by a third party, suggesting that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 should be reexamined. 

"Who in 1996 had any idea what a social media platform was or what it could ever be?" Brown asked, stressing that the law "predates" tech giants like Twitter and Facebook. 

He argued that until lawmakers can determine what "role" such companies play in American society, he's not "set" on any particular policy, though he was open to looking into anti-trust laws to break up what he insisted were "monopolies." 

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After attending CPAC in Dallas this past weekend, where the theme was "America Uncanceled," Brown suggested that cancel culture is a problem on both sides of the aisle. 

"Politics is something that ought to be discussed in the classrooms, at the dinner table, at the water cooler in the workplace. And I'm really afraid that cancel culture … has done tremendous damage and all sides and all political ideologies need to refrain from this because it's just hurting America," the Senate candidate told Fox News. 

On the subject of why Americans don't trust the media, Brown insisted the "real question" is if the media represents the values and interests of Americans. 

"Media companies have shifted from being a place where information is provided to the public for us to sort of analyze and assess on our own and has now become an industry that is dominated by really just a few companies. And at the end of the day, the things that drive their decisions and their narratives and their analysis on those platforms are what's going to bring in the most ad revenue," Brown said. "And that's not healthy for American society and public discourse because division sells."

Brown also weighed in on critical race theory, calling it an "insult" to America that's "rooted in Marxism."

"It's a divisive issue. It's something that is not healing to America and ultimately is a major threat to our civil society," Brown said. 

The Republican slammed Cortez Masto's liberal voting record, noting how President Biden narrowly won the state of Nevada but has overwhelmingly voted with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

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"Nevadans need to send me to Washington because I will be their champion where their current senator has abandoned them and allowed Nevadans to really suffer due to their political decisions," Brown said. "We needed an advocate to help keep jobs open, the economy open and give families the opportunities to keep their kids in schools, and Catherine Cortez Masto wasn't there to lead from the front when Nevadans needed that leadership and those decisions in their interest the most."