Joining us now is Michael Schellenberg, CBR Chair of Censorship, Politics, and Free Speech at the University of Austin, and Cara Frederick, former Facebook analyst and Heritage Foundation research fellow. Michael, this could mean one of several things. Zuckerberg is becoming disillusioned with the Democrat Party, or he's growing a conscience, or does he think that Trump is going to win? If he does, why now?

Hey, it's great to be with you, Judge. It's a great question. I think it's clear that Zuckerberg has a legal obligation to maximize shareholder interest. So he's clearly calculated that repositioning Facebook as a politically neutral company is the right thing for him now. You saw him unburdening himself of some of the baggage that has weighed down Facebook in recent years. It's important to remember that Mark Zuckerberg had a very strong free speech orientation after the election of Trump. He said, As a Jewish American, I still defend the right of free speech, including Holocaust denial. After NGOs and other groups led a boycott against Facebook, he then imposed much more censorship, including censorship that was demanded by government agencies. I think it's a great moment. I think one of the lessons is just that the price of free speech is eternal vigilance. These guys had a sweeping program that involved FBI, DHS. It was election interference, by the way, by FBI, CIA, former CIA officials. I think we're all more aware of it now. We need to remain aware of it, but it's quite the scandal, and I think that this, hopefully, signals that such a thing won't happen again.

Well, Cara, is this a shift to the right? Do they think that there may be consequences as a result of what happened, as Michael talked about the shareholders' interests?

Judge, I actually don't. I caution people on our side who want to hold big tech accountable from taking a victory lap because Mark Zuckerberg is not dumb. He is absolutely hedging his bets here because what he's done is he's assessed, well, I'll say a regulatory landscape. And he's determined, Hey, I'm not going to really face any real consequences for my platform, eagerly acquiescing to government demands to censor free speech of Americans. Look at the Supreme Court. In June, they had a decision, and they rejected the state's attempt to permanently stop the collusion between the Biden administration and big tech companies. They kicked it back to the states. And Mark knows Democrats are liking this right now, so they're not going to do anything about it. And then establishment Republicans, all they're going to do is offer another strongly-worded letter. They're not going to do anything. And meanwhile, Facebook is going to call a defiant Trump holding up his fist in the air just after he's been shot. Misinformation. It's the same old, and he's hedging his bets, they're rinsing and repeating, and they're just covering it with a veneer of compunction that I don't think Zopperberg really means.

He's just strategic.

Michael, Secretary Mayork has testified to the Senate regarding a big tech back in November 2022. Take a look.

You are not pressuring the big tech companies to take down accounts. You are not meeting with them to ask them to censor on your behalf. That is correct. We are not. The federal government may not use private third parties to engage in activities that are unconstitutional. That's exactly what you and this administration are doing. You are leveraging private companies to carry out censorship on your behalf. It's dystopian, but worse than that, it's unconstitutional. It's also false.

Michael, he was under oath here. Was he lying?

Well, it's hard to know exactly what they were talking about, but I I think people should understand that the Department of Homeland Security created multiple censorship initiatives, including one that was hidden and deceptively labeled a cybersecurity initiative, another one that was operated out of Stanford and three other institutions. There was a censorship industrial complex that was fully operating. I think if Kamala Harris is elected president, there's a strong risk that it will return. But I also think we should give credit where credit is due. Jim Jordan's committee produced of the biggest successes of anything that's come out of this last Congress in really holding the feet to the fire of both government agencies and social media companies. You're right about that. The Twitter files, the Facebook files. I think it's important to recognize victories when we have them.

Yeah, it is. But the question that Hillary Vawn asked in the beginning, if Harris is elected, will she continue with this thing? Hey, Sean Hannity here. Hey, click here to subscribe to Fox News' YouTube page and catch our hottest and most compelling analysis. You will not get it anywhere else.