NBC Censors Video of Elizabeth Warren Taking CNBC to the Woodshed
[There was a video here]
Last last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivered a masterful defense of her proposed update to the bank-regulating Glass-Steagall Act on CNBC's "Squawk Box," effectively shutting down co-anchor Brian Sullivan's claim that government can't do anything to rein in financial risk.
A clip of the interview went viral earlier this week after it was posted on Sen. Warren's official YouTube account, amassing some 700,000 views in a matter of days.
And that's when NBC Universal decided to have it removed.
Filing a copyright claim, NBC forced YouTube to yank the video, leaving behind the video sharing site's familiar slash-mouthed emoticon — now more apt than ever.
Interestingly enough, NBC hasn't seen fit to remove MSNBC and CNBC clips from the YouTube pages of over a dozen Senators, including another clip still hosted on Warren's account.
Shortly before the video was pulled, CNBC anchor Jim Cramer tried to undermine its value, tweeting to his followers, "There is some weird strain of thought that CNBC got beaten by Senator Warren. I like the senator but she had NO impact. Sorry.."
To which one Farker responded: "Too bad we can't judge for ourselves."
Thankfully, NBC has yet to pull some lesser-seen copies of the interview, and those remain on YouTube for the time being.
Needless to say, by censoring the video, NBC has now all but guaranteed that it will never ever go away again.
For good measure, here's a transcript of Sen. Warren's remarks, courtesy of AmericaBlog:
ELIZABETH WARREN: From 1797 to 1933, the American banking system crashed about every 15 years. In 1933, we put good reforms in place, for which Glass-Steagall was the centerpiece, and from 1933 to the early 1980s, that’s a 50 year period, we didn’t have any of that – none. We kept the system steady and secure.
And it was only as we started deregulating, you start hitting the S&L crisis, and what did we do? We deregulated some more. And then you hit long-term capital management at the end of the 90s, and what did we do as a country, this country continued to deregulate more. And then we hit the big crash in 2008.
You are not going to defend the proposition that regulation can never work, it did work.
CNBC’s BRIAN SULLIVAN: I didn’t say regulation never worked, Senator. By far and away, and I agree, there were fewer bank failures in that time after Glass-Steagall.
ELIZABETH WARREN: “Fewer,” as in of the big ones, zero.
UPDATE: NBC Universal has released a statement to Gawker saying they "think that the clip featuring Senator Warren is well worth watching and... it has been available to view in multiple locations on CNBC.com since its original posting."
It's worth noting that the clip above is not available on CNBC's website — rather, the entire 10-minute interview is.
No word on why this particular clip was removed while other CNBC clips, including other copies of this same clip found on YouTube, have remained.
