Elizabeth Warren and Steve Bannon agree on something big
President Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, tells “WSJ at Large” host Gerry Baker, he agrees with Democratic presidential hopeful and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren that it's time for the government to break up the big tech companies...and claims she copied his idea.
“I said this in September of 2017,” Bannon explains. “These companies have too much concentration of power. They ought to be broken up. You’ve got to go after Facebook, you have to go after Google.”
Bannon believes tech firms need to have their grip on information taken away.
“The data ought to be in some sort of public trust,” he argues.
Bannon says the growing populism movement in the U.S. -- being led by those such as President Trump and Warren’s rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), -- will demand action be taken against big tech.
“I think it’s going to be a new populist message, and we can’t let the Democrats take that," he notes. “And I think it’s going to get only more and more momentum.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP
And he's calling on Trump to lead the way on that issue as well as others populists want to see addressed.
“Last week we saw Apple -- Tim Apple (sic) and all these guys in the White House and as a populist, that’s not good,” he complains. “It’s the people at the laid off factory, at the GM factory, have to be retrained for those jobs. American citizens have to have those jobs, not a new influence of immigration. I believe that’s a policy he’s got to get back refocused on.”
But critics say breaking up big tech firms will stifle innovation and actually hurt consumers.