Rejecting calls to break up Facebook, Cory Booker seeks to restore a norm that’s eroded under Trump

Excerpt from "Daily 202" by James Hohmann @ WashingtonPost.com, May 13

Cory Booker stands athwart this zeitgeist of pitchfork populism, yelling stop. Appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,”the Democratic senator from New Jersey said he disagrees with Elizabeth Warren that Facebook, Google and Amazon should be broken up. “I don’t think that,” said Booker. “I don't think that a president should be running around, pointing at companies and saying ‘break them up’ without any kind of process here. It’s not me and my own personal opinion about going after folks. That sounds more like a Donald Trump thing to say, ‘I'm going to break up you guys.’ No. We need to create systems and processes.”

ABC’s Jon Karl noted that Booker had just likened his colleague from Massachusetts to Trump. “I most certainly did not. She is my friend,” Booker replied. “Well, that’s what she’s saying,” the interviewer replied.

“Let her discuss and debate her positions,” Booker answered. “I'm telling you right now: We do not need a president that is going to use their own personal beliefs and tell you which companies we should break up.”

-- Warren proposed breaking up Facebook in February, but the issue has moved to the front burner again since Chris Hughes — who co-founded the site with Mark Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room — endorsed the idea last week. “Chris Hughes is right,” Warren tweeted. “Today’s big tech companies have too much power—over our economy, our society, & our democracy. They’ve bulldozed competition, used our private info for profit, hurt small businesses & stifled innovation.”

The Warren campaign declined to comment specifically on Booker’s criticism. But the senator has insisted that her desire to break up the big tech companies is not animated by any kind of personal animus in the way that the Trump administration’s opposition to AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner appeared to be driven by the president’s hatred for CNN. The former Harvard Law professor has argued that saying she wants to more aggressively enforce existing laws, and explaining what exactly that means, is not improper. She’s also called for passing new legislation to separate the platform, the equivalent of Glass-Steagall but for Big Tech. (Warren explained her plan in a lengthy post on Medium in March.)