WATCH: Sen. Lindsey Graham Accuses META CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Having 'Blood on His Hands'
Lindsey Graham scolded Mark Zuckerberg and other social media CEOs during Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing..
Jan. 31 2024, Published 3:30 p.m. ET
Ranking member Lindsey Graham didn't hold back at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child safety and technology with the CEOs of major social media companies.
During his opening statement, Sen. Graham lashed out at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and accused the Facebook founder of having "blood on his hands," RadarOnline.com has learned.
Sen. Graham accused META CEO Mark Zuckerberg of having 'blood on his hands.'
Zuckerberg attended the hearing alongside fellow tech CEOs, including TikTok's Shou Zi Chew, X's Elon Musk, Discord's Jason Citron, and Evan Spiegel of Snapchat.
Graham informed the tech giants that they were called to the hearing because their companies have allegedly become "dangerous products" to minors.
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Zuckerberg attended the hearing alongside the CEOs of Snap, TikTok, Discord and X, formerly Twitter.
"The Republicans will answer the call. All of us. Every one of us is ready to work with you and our Democratic colleagues on this committee to prove to the American people that while Washington is certainly broken, there’s a ray of hope," the South Carolina senator began his opening statement.
"And it is here. It lies with your children. After years of working on this issue with you and others, I’ve come to conclude the following: social media companies, as they are currently designed and operate, are dangerous products."
The room erupted in applause when Graham accused Zuckerberg of 'having blood on his hands.'
Graham then told the tragic story of a teenage constituent who committed suicide after being extorted online.
"And as things go at that stage in life, he gave her some photos, compromising sexual photos. And it turned out that she was part of an extortion group in Nigeria. They threatened the young man that if you don’t give us money, we’re going to expose these photos. He gave them money, but it wasn’t enough. They kept threatening and he killed himself."
"These are b------- by any known definition. Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us. I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands!" Graham exclaimed.
The senator proceeded to claim the CEOs were responsible for a "product that’s killing people."
Graham then compared social media reform to safety regulations for cigarettes and firearms.
"When we had cigarettes killing people, we did some about it," he continued. "Maybe, not enough, you’re going to talk about guns. We have the ATF. Nothing here. There’s not a damn thing anybody can do about it. You can’t be sued."
Graham also slammed Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn for their lack of action on the issue.
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Graham switched from slamming the tech CEOs to calling out fellow lawmakers Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, whom he referred to as the "dynamic duo."
Graham claimed the pair "found emails from your company where they warned you about this stuff and you decided not to hire 45 people that could do a better job of policing this."
"So the bottom line is you can’t be sued. You should be. And these emails would be great for punitive damages. But the courtroom is closed," Graham told the lawmakers. "Every American abused by all the companies in front of me, of all the people in America we could give blanket liability protection to. This would be the last group I would pick. It is now time to repeal section 230."
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