Sen. Klobuchar Goes Off on Social Media Platforms for Covid-19 Disinformation: ‘Absolutely No Reason’ Not to ‘Take This Crap Off’

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) blasted social media companies for allowing Covid vaccine disinformation to circulate on Sunday, telling CNN’s Dana Bash that “there’s absolutely no reason they shouldn’t be able to monitor this better and take this crap off their platforms.”

Klobuchar’s comments came as a reaction to President Joe Biden saying social media giants like Facebook are “killing people” with misinformation.

“Social media has greatly contributed to this misinformation,” she said. “There’s no doubt. Look at the numbers from the Kaiser Foundation. Two-thirds of the people who have not gotten vaccinated say because they’ve gotten something off social media. Come on. So I really appreciate President Biden calling this out.”

According to recent polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation, two-thirds of unvaccinated adults either believe one or more vaccine myths or are unsure whether the myth may be true.

Klobuchar told Bash she feels “very strongly” about countering misinformation since those who are unvaccinated are the ones “tragically dying.”

The vast majority of recent Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. were among the unvaccinated. According to an analysis of government data by the Associated Press, 99.2% of the people who died from Covid-19 in May were not fully vaccinated against the virus.

Klobuchar then called on Republicans, even those who did not vote for Biden, to tell “the truth” about vaccines and encourage those who may be hesistant.

Klobuchar went on to say that she would be in favor of using anti-trust laws to break up social media companies to encourage competition.

“But it is also about the misinformation out there on the social media platforms and breaking them up,” she said. “Part of this is that they gobbled up so many companies that you don’t even have the chance that other media platforms could do this on social media. So I am a fan of using anti-trust to look back and see if they should divest assets so we could get true competition against the dominant platforms.”

Watch above, via CNN