Trump to Hannity: Big Tech should face antitrust scrutiny, slams CNN over leaked video

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Trump to Hannity: Social media should face antitrust scrutiny

Former President Donald Trump sounds off in 'Hannity' exclusive.

In an exclusive interview with "Hannity," former President Donald J. Trump said that social media and Big Tech firms like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Google should face the scrutiny of antitrust investigatory bodies, given their monopolistic actions toward American political discourse.

The Palm Beach, Fla., resident added that a video released by investigative journalist James O'Keefe proves that CNN committed "campaign violations."

In the video, CNN technical director Charles Chester made several shocking revelations about the network's mission to "get Trump out", and that CNN President Jeffrey Zucker would call into the control room on a "red phone" to demand COVID-19 casualty data be made more prominent during a newscast to increase ratings.

"I’m getting the word out because we are doing [press] releases," Trump said of being banned by Twitter and Facebook. "Every time I do a release, it’s all over the place. It is better than Twitter. Much more elegant than Twitter and Twitter is really boring."

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"When I started with Twitter years ago, it was like a fail concept, a platform, fail. And it became exciting. And I think I had a lot to do with it to be honest with you, it became exciting. Now it is boring. It is no good anymore."

When Hannity asked about the Project Veritas video, Trump called Chester's revelations "incredible."

"That is a campaign violation. What they are doing is a massive campaign violation. When you look at what they did," he said.

Trump added that Big Tech titans like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrongfully dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into entities that affect election security measures such as oft-unsupervised ballot dropboxes.

Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan first contributed $250 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life in early September to boost resources for local election officials, such as additional polling places and ballot drop boxes. Critics contended the money primarily went to heavily Democratic areas in battleground states in an effort to tilt the balance.

The ex-president added that he is still heavily considering starting his own social media platform, which he said would not be beholden to Amazon or Google.

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In January, Amazon Web Services, a branch of the Washington state cybercommerce giant, kicked upstart social media network Parler off of its servers and effectively rendering it defunct.

"They have to be strong and can’t be dominated by Amazon, Google and people that could take them off the air right away. You do need antitrust. You have to do something about it," he said.

"With all of the things you said, look, the Democrats lie, cheat and steal. They are vicious."

Fox News' Fred Lucas contributed to this report.