On Oct. 5, Michael Zumbluskas, who is vying for a seat in Congress representing New Yorkers in the 12th congressional district in this November’s midterm elections, sat down with Vision Times to discuss his platform, what inspired him to run and what he believes are the priorities for the Empire State.
“I don’t like what’s going on … I got involved in politics in 92 on the first Ross Perot campaign. I was worried then about our national debt, shipping companies overseas, and it has just gotten worse,” he said, adding that “I just can’t let it go by anymore and I need to go out and try to change stuff. I love this country, I love this city, I love this state and it’s being destroyed by the current crop of politicians. They are literally destroying it before our eyes.”
Zumbluskas currently serves as a Republican district leader in the 76th Assembly District in New York City and has been involved in politics in the United States for 25 years.
Born on Mitchell Air Force Base in Hempstead, New York, he grew up traveling around the world with his father, who was a non-commissioned officer in the United States Air Force (USAF).
Health reasons prevented him from following in his father’s footsteps in the USAF but his circumstances opened the door for him to become the first in his family to graduate college, earning a B.A. in history at the University of Scranton.
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Following college, he joined the Army and attended basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky. He served as a petroleum supply specialist in the Army from 1984 to 1987 in Nuremberg, Germany, and Fort Bliss, Texas where he was charged with transporting and refueling tanks and helicopters.
Asked why he was running for Congress, Zumbluskas said, “If somebody doesn’t come up and fight against it then it’s my own fault for not standing up and that’s why I’m running.”
If elected, on day one, Zumbluskas said he would immediately go to work “to bring manufacturing back to this country, or at least back to this hemisphere.”
He said that the pandemic was made much worse in the U.S. because much of the personal protective equipment (PPE) needed was not manufactured on U.S. soil, making America dependent on foreign sources.
“Once the supply chains broke down in most of our companies and our hospitals … we only had three to four weeks worth of inventory on hand [and] once China shut down and some of these other countries, we couldn’t get the PPE … because we didn’t manufacture it here,” he said.
Social media censorship
Another top priority for Zumbluskas is holding social media platforms accountable for censoring doctors, scientists and others over the course of the pandemic.
“Social media, our governments, shut down doctors and scientists that were using alternative treatments — that were working in some cases — and they shut them down saying ‘no, you can’t use that. You can’t talk about it,’” he said, adding that “censorship is destroying this country. We were built on free speech. I’m going to go after them.”
He plans on accomplishing this by adopting a model from Europe for managing social media giants. He said that in Europe “they fine social media companies when they start breaking laws.”
Zumbluskas wants to amend legislation to allow for social media companies to be fined for erroneously deplatforming users for misinformation.
“Okay, you took somebody off YouTube or, you shut down their Twitter or Facebook page because you said they are spreading misinformation; Later on it comes out that it wasn’t misinformation; we’re going to fine you, and I am not talking a little bit of a fine, I’m talking hundreds of thousands, hundreds of millions,” he said.
This September, Google was fined 4.1 billion euros by a European court following an antitrust ruling, as reported by Reuters.
Zumbluskas said the proceeds of the legal action would, in part, flow directly to the people harmed by Big Tech’s actions citing the Hunter Biden laptop story that the New York Post published that was originally panned as misinformation by social media giants, only to later be substantiated as true.
He said the legislation would extend to “so-called fact checkers” as well who would be liable for a fine for labeling something as misinformation that is later found to be true.
“Stop playing this political game,” he said, adding that “Especially when it comes to medicine. Because in the medical field, it’s usually the outlier, the person that comes up with a new idea … that cures or finds a treatment.”
Zumbluskas will be squaring off against two opponents in this November’s midterm elections, including Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat and member of the Working Families Party, and independent Mikhail Itkis.
New Yorkers from across the state will hit the polls on Nov. 8 to elect representatives for all 27 congressional districts.
