EZRA LEVANT ｜ If we had 20 Ron DeSantis’s, we’d be winning this battle
Episode Stats
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Summary
Elon Musk is the world s richest man, and he s also a man of action. Here s some news about him, and a discussion with one of our writers who daily goes back and forth with Elon Musk on Twitter in real time.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. Boy, I got two stories today, both of them involving Elon Musk. I guess I talk
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about him a lot, but I really think not only is the world's richest man, one of the most
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interesting men, he's such a consequential man. He's a man of action. And boy, some news today
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about him and a discussion with one of our writers who daily goes back and forth with Elon Musk on
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Twitter in real time. It's amazing to watch. We'll interview Ian Miles Chong. But first, let me invite
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you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's a video version of this podcast. We, you
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left. So please go to rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, if we had 20 Ron DeSantis's, we'd be winning this battle. It's December 1st,
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Take a look at this Reuters headline. There's a little bit of jargon in it. Florida pulls
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$2 billion from BlackRock in largest anti-ESG divestment. What does that mean? Well, ESG
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stands for environmental, social, and corporate governance, which is just a buzzword for left-wing
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political values infiltrating into businesses. We know the long march through the institutions of
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left-wing radicals, universities, the media, Hollywood. But now they're in formerly conservative
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territories, big technology, the military, even NFL football and NASCAR, and now big business.
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Here's how the CFA Institute defines ESG. CFAs are chartered financial analysts. They're people who run
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companies. They're the numbers, guys. See, that's your problem right there. Companies are run by making
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financial decisions based on numbers. But ESG tells businesses they have to place other political
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values higher than making money in their company. Like fighting climate change, whatever that means,
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you're not going to change the weather by spending shareholder money on stupid things. Here's the CFA
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Institute's website. They define ESG this way. They say, what is ESG investing? ESG stands for
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environmental, social, and governance. Investors are increasingly applying these non-financial factors
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as part of their analysis process to identify material risks and growth opportunities. ESG metrics are not
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commonly part of mandatory financial reporting, though companies are increasingly making disclosures
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in their annual report or in a standalone sustainability report. Numerous institutions,
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such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the Task Force
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on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, are working to form standards and define materially
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to facilitate incorporation of these factors into the investment process.
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So it's like when Trudeau says he'll apply a gender analysis to things like building pipelines. It's a laugh.
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It's a joke. There is no gender analysis to building pipelines. Pipelines don't have a gender. They're made of
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steel. But it's just Trudeau's way of smearing the oil and gas industry as misogynistic or whatever. Of course,
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it's not true. Try doing a gender analysis on oil from Saudi Arabia, where women actually are not allowed to work
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in those companies at all. Canadian oil and gas is gender neutral, if you want to use that word. Anyone can work
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in an oil company, any race, any sex, gay or straight, whatever. None of those things can be said about OPEC oil
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or Russian oil, even. But Trudeau used gender analysis to block Canadian pipelines. It's a scam, of course.
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It's purely designed to infiltrate companies. You'd think that one of the highest rated ESG companies,
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by the way, would be Tesla, Elon Musk's electric car company. I mean, he's finally doing that leftist
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dream, building an electric car for the mass market. But of course, Elon Musk has gone rogue these days,
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gone crazy by talking about free speech and all that. Look at this exchange on Twitter. I'm on Twitter
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for fun and for business these days. You learn so much. Carol Roth wrote,
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Remember when Elon Musk wanted to bring free speech to Twitter and then Standard & Poor's
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removed Tesla from their ESG 500 index but kept Exxon? ESG is business social credit. It's a means to
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control capital, keep business people in line with the narrative and ultimately control you.
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She's exactly right. Elon Musk wrote back and said, ESG is the devil. Pretty blunt. He's funny.
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Some other podcaster chimed in and said, What objective standards are used to determine an ESG
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score? To which Christina Peshaw, a senior aide to Ron DeSantis, replied, There are no objective
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standards. If Exxon has a higher ESG score than Tesla, it's all about ideological conformity,
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not sustainability or whatever the virtue signaling word of the day is. And then Glenn Beck jumped in
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to the same conversation. He said, Well, well, a couple of my favorite people talking about
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one of the West's most insidious villains. I have a feeling that there is a Chinese Communist Party
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inspired public-private partnership behind Apple's App Store threat. Elon, you're welcome on my podcast
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anytime. You know, Twitter can be pretty interesting. I like a number of those people in that conversation.
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But Christina Peshaw was the most consequential, at least as far as my news story today is concerned.
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There are 50 United States, and each of them has a governor and a budget and investments.
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28 of the states are run by Republicans. But of course, Ron DeSantis of Florida is clearly the most
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active leader amongst them, which brings us back to the news of today. That Reuters story I read the
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headline too. Florida's, let me read a little bit more. Florida's chief financial officer said on
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Thursday, his department would pull $2 billion worth of its assets managed by BlackRock Inc.,
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the biggest such divestment by a state opposed to the asset manager's environmental, social,
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and corporate governance ESG policies. The move will hardly dent BlackRock's $8 trillion in assets
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and drew a strong response from the company, which said the action put politics over investor
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interest. What a laugh that is. Now, it's true, BlackRock is bigger than pretty much most governments
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in the world. It probably controls more of your life in certain spheres, at least, than does the
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government. $2 billion sounds like a lot to you and me, but it's less than 1% of 1% of the funds that
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BlackRock controls. But still, it's finally someone taking on the Death Star, even a little bit.
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I should note that two other governors have done this before. DeSantis did. Louisiana's governor pulled
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$800 million out, and Missouri pulled $500 million out. Maybe Florida's just a bigger state and their
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governor is better at getting national media. But that's three states that I know about. That's not
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a blip then. That's a trend, you could say. Like I say, there are 25 other U.S. states run by
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Republican governors. If they all followed Missouri and Louisiana, Florida, it would surely be an 11-figure
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divestment. Still not enough to dent BlackRock, but enough to get a counter-narrative going.
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What is ESG? Who decided we have to follow it? How is it hurting us, and how can we stop it?
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Let's get that discussion going. As the CFAs tell us, ESG is making political decisions instead of
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business decisions. Now, I suppose we believe in that sometimes, right? I mean, we wouldn't want to
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buy something made in slave labor factories in China just because it was cheaper, right?
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Of course, we do that every day. I mean, everything in Walmart's made in China. Everything in Best Buy's
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made in China, we wouldn't want our computers made there, or our clothing, or our running shoes,
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right? Except they all are, right? In fact, there are massive protests going on right now. I'd call
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it an uprising at Apple's big factories in China right now. Why is Apple making its phones in China?
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Look at this story in the New York Times. Nike, the clothing company, actually lobbied against a
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proposed U.S. law that would stop them from using slave labors in China's Muslim province of Xinjiang.
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They literally lobbied against the anti-slave labor law. So how do they do on this ESG score business?
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Well, let's check. There's a lot of rankings out there. Nike has an ESG score of 17. They call it
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low risk. Do you see that? Really? Low risk? They are literally using slave labor in China and
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lobbying to stop rules against slave labor in China. But they're so cool and woke, right?
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I think that was Colin Kaepernick's company, right? And look at this, Apple. Apple has almost
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the identical score. They are building their machines in China where they're having an uprising.
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But Elon Musk, the free speech guy, building literally electric cars. He's a higher risk,
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according to ESG. Look at this story on CNBC the other day. Standards and Poor's literally kicked
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them off their index saying, I can't even believe this, Tesla's lack of a low-carbon strategy and
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codes of business conduct, along with racism and poor working conditions reported at Tesla's factory
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in Fremont, California, affected the score. Tesla's handling of an investigation by the National
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Highway Transportation Safety Administration also weighed on this score. Really? A low-carbon
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strategy. They're lacking a low-carbon strategy. They make electric cars. They are the strategy.
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And poor working conditions in California, the most pro-worker jurisdiction in America? I mean,
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could be. They're being kicked out, but companies actually building things in China are just fine for
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ESG. Oh, yeah. I'm not sure if there's an objective standard. I just got to show you this one more
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thing. There's a company in Alberta called Meg Energy, M-E-G. They're a large oil sands operator.
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So they're under Canadian environmental laws, Canadian social responsibility, civil rights,
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workers' rights, gay rights, women's rights, aboriginal rights. They are called high risk.
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Do you see that? They have a 38. Danger, danger, high risk, danger. They're operating in Alberta,
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the most ethical jurisdiction in the world. But Sinopec, a Chinese oil and gas company that operates
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in China and OPEC dictatorships, no human rights, no freedom, no environmental, they get 35.7. They're
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better? Sorry, they're better than Meg Energy? Seriously, imagine the bribery behind the scenes
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here. Because it's all loosey-goosey, right? This would be like the corruption at the Olympics
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Committee, different cities trying to bribe the commissioners to get the Olympics in their country.
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Well, back to Ron DeSantis. Here's more from that Reuters story. It underscores how a backlash
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among many Republican leaders, such as those in Florida, against ESG investing, which they see as
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promoting a woke agenda, is gathering steam. Republicans are set to assume control of the U.S. House of
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Representatives in January. This will allow them to hold hearings on ESG and grill the chief executives
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of BlackRock and other major asset managers about their ESG policies and also pressure regulators to
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scrutinize them. Exactly. See, if you are managing someone else's money as an investment firm, or if you're
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running a company on behalf of shareholders, you have a duty to the shareholders, to the investors.
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Obviously, a duty to be honest, don't steal, don't cheat. But you have something else called a
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fiduciary duty. You have to look out for their financial interests. You have to be cautious for
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them. You have to be smart for them. You have to make the most money for them that you can.
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You can call it greed if you're negative about it, but you can call it being prosperous if you're
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positive about it. And given that so many investments are people's pensions, people's life
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savings, or endowments for universities or hospitals, employee pension funds, whatever,
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it is highly moral to get the best rate of return possible under the law. Now, business people might
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be greedy for themselves. I guess that's human nature, right? But fiduciary duty says you have to
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be greedy for others, which I suppose you could call, well, not quite charity, but frankly, you're
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looking out for your fellow man. You're forced to do the best for your fellow man. I don't even think
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you can call that greed because it's not for you. We know that people will take care of themselves.
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That's human nature. But businesses must take care of their investors too. They must do the best
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thing for the grandma who has their pension with the investment firm. But ESG changes that. It makes
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political errands more important than earning money for grandma's pension. It's diverting people's money
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to the pet causes of the ESG activists. Hey, here's an idea. Let businesses make money and then let the
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shareholders who get the dividends decide whatever they want to do with the profits, whatever they
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want. Well, BlackRock not only uses ESG to push its left-wing policies on its investors, but it forces
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companies that want BlackRock money to agree to this ideology. It literally injects politics into
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non-political businesses as a kind of condition, almost an extortion, will invest in you, but only
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if you go woke. I think regulators should take a look. How much money is BlackRock frittering away on
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its political pet projects instead of earning money for investors? How much money is it bribing?
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And how are they pressuring companies to become political to get BlackRock money? In a statement,
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I'll read some more. Florida CFO Jimmy Petronis said the state's treasury, which he oversees,
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would remove BlackRock as manager of about $600 million of short-term investments and have its
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custodian freeze $1.43 billion of long-term securities now with BlackRock, with an eye on
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reallocating the money to other money managers by the start of 2023. Petronis accused BlackRock of
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focusing on ESG rather than higher returns for investors. Florida's treasury division is divesting
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from BlackRock because they have openly stated they've got other goals in producing returns,
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Petronis said in the statement provided by his office. Well, BlackRock's response was just incredible,
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by the way, just amazing. They said, asked about the move, BlackRock said in the statement that
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we are disturbed by the emerging trend of political initiatives like this, that sacrifice access to
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high-quality investments and thereby jeopardize returns, which will ultimately hurt Florida's
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citizens. Fiduciaries should always value performance over politics. They said that. No, no, no, no. ESG is
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the politics part. Investing to make money is the fiduciary part. BlackRock is literally lying. It's
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opposite day. They're accusing the state of Florida of doing what they're doing, which is putting
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politics into business. Here's an interesting end to the story. I thought this was neat.
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Other companies also faced Republican scrutiny. Earlier this week, Republican attorneys general
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from various states asked a federal regulator to limit Vanguard Group Inc.'s activities over ESG
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concerns and asked United Parcel Service and FedEx Corp to clarify their policies on tracking firearm
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shipments. Exactly. Do massive companies get to simply ban people from doing legal things
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to follow some political agenda. How about when Rebel News, when we applied for a mortgage and the Royal
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Bank of Canada approved us financially, said we were worthy of a mortgage, but then canceled it because
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of our politics. Remember when they told me that? That's a form of Chinese-style social credit.
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It's bad enough when governments do that, but now big companies are doing it in partnership with
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government. BlackRock's the worst. I fully support Ron DeSantis. I wonder if, say, Alberta Premier
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Danielle Smathers, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, I wonder if they might do the same. I mean,
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why should Alberta and Saskatchewan invest public money in funds that defame and abuse Alberta's oil and gas
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industry, but don't raise a peep about OPEC or Russian oil? Imagine obeying a junk science eco-cult that says
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a Chinese oil company operating in OPEC regimes is more ethical than a Canadian oil company operating
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here at home. Yeah, the only question I have is, will Canadian conservatives join Ron DeSantis
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in finally doing the right thing? Stay with us for more about Elon Musk.
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Welcome to a day in my life as a Twitter employee. So this past week, went to SF for the first time
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at a Twitter office, badged in. Honestly, took a moment to just soak everything in. What a blessing.
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Also, started my morning off with an iced matcha from the pit. Then I had a meeting, so quickly
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scheduled one of these little pod rooms, which were so cool. They're literally noise-canceling.
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Took my meeting, got ready for a bunch. Look how delicious this food looks. Oh my goodness,
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I was so overwhelmed. Then made my way down to this log cabin area. I don't know what this
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is, but it was really cool. Played some foosball with my friends to kind of unwind a bit.
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Also found this really cool meditation room that I thought was super neat. I didn't do any yoga,
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but they have this yoga room if you are a yogi, so also thought that was really cool.
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Had a couple more meetings in the afternoon. Had a ton of projects that we needed to knock out.
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Say hi to my teammates. Went to the library to kind of get some more work done. Obviously had to have
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our afternoon coffee, so made some espresso. And then before leaving for the day, had some red wine
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that's on tap. Went up to the rooftop and just honestly enjoyed the beautiful weather. So awesome trip.
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What an incredible video. It felt more like it was an all-inclusive resort or a cruise ship. All the
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breakfast bars and lunch bars and the yoga room and the wine on tap at an office. You don't normally
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see that. You know, I once visited the Twitter HQ here in Toronto, Canada, and it was luxurious. It was
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nothing like what we just saw there. Apparently they spent $13 million a year just on food.
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It's just incredible. Needless to say, that employee is no longer there, according to Elon Musk. He gave
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her and thousands more the heave home. People who were sort of like barnacles on the ship.
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They weren't computer engineers who built the code. They were part of, you know, the engagement teams or
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the community standards teams or the UN policy enforcement. There were all these political
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barnacles that were slowing down the ship of Twitter. Well, what's interesting about Elon Musk
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buying Twitter and taking it private, he's the boss and he doesn't have to answer to the SEC or to a
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board in the normal way that a publicly traded company would. He can make bolder decisions that
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would have a rebellion amongst shareholders if he was publicly traded. But I think the funnest thing
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about Elon Musk is not only that he is a true disruptor, but that he is tweeting it in real time.
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He's using his forum Twitter to talk about Twitter and how he changes Twitter. There's so many layers
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to it. It's amazing. But we have a small connection to this story. Not only do we love to use Twitter
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and, you know, I think we love it too much. Sometimes it's a bit addictive. But one of our rebels who is
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extremely online, as the kids say, has established a personal rapport with Elon Musk himself. I'm not
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saying they're close friends. But when our writer, Ian Miles Chong, tweets about Twitter and Elon Musk,
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well, more often than not, Elon Musk personally replies. It's actually very exciting. And joining
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us now via Skype is Ian Miles Chong. Ian, great to see you again. And congratulations, not just on your
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work for Rebel News, but you are engaging with one of the richest, smartest, most consequential men in the
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world right now. Absolutely. I mean, it feels like a privilege in a lot of ways. I mean, I wouldn't say
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this about just anyone. You know, I've had a lot of celebrities interact with me. I couldn't care less.
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They're just anybody, you know. But Elon Musk, he is a once in a lifetime human being. And I know I
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sing his praises a lot. Some people have called me out on it. They're like, oh, why are you cheerleading
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him so much? I'm like, well, have you ever met anyone at Elon Musk? I mean, look at what he's doing
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for humanity. You know, you may not agree with all the things he's doing. You may not agree with
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his handling of Twitter, which some might say is very disorganized. But let's face it, he's getting
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results. I mean, it took Twitter how long to crack down on child sexual exploitation? I mean, like they
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never did, right? 10 plus years, they didn't do anything. And Tifa, five years, they didn't do
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anything. And he steps in. Within two weeks, he gets rid of all of this. Well, yeah, that's a good
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point. And he may look chaotic, but he's always had sort of a controversial style. But look what
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he's built, SpaceX. The most successful space company is not NASA. It's a private company.
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Look at Tesla. I mean, I have my opinions on electric cars. But as he repeatedly says,
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he never asked for grants. That was GM and his other competitors. He's made his patents open source.
00:22:50.880
Like the guy is an ideas man. Like you say, some of his ideas might be a bit unusual. He wants us
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all to go to Mars. He's got a neural link plan that I don't quite understand about transhumanism.
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So, you know, I have, I want to be careful of blind spots too. But the man is, he is a decider.
00:23:11.060
He is a doer. And it would be foolish to bet against him. And here's what I like about your
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engagements with him. You're not fan. You're not turning into a fanboy. You and I sort of are
00:23:21.920
friends of his. But you are, I can see what you're doing. You're actually trying to make
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substantive suggestions, arguments. Like you're not just, hey, give me a high five. Let me give
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you an example. Here's one tweet that I thought was interesting. As you know, everyone's trying to
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fight Twitter now. Celebrities are noisily saying they quit. Some companies say they're going to quit
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their advertising. I think it was NBC who briefly quit using it as a, oh, you know what? Let me
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play a really great clip from the White House. A Fox reporter asking the White House, well,
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you're criticizing Elon Musk and saying you're keeping an eye on Twitter. Do you plan to stop
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using Twitter? This was a great exchange. And of course they don't stop, plan to stop using it.
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On another subject, when are you guys going to delete the White House Twitter account?
00:24:16.220
Well, you're saying that you're keeping an eye on Twitter because it might not be a suitable
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Look, I want to be very clear here. The president has always said, and he has been very, very clear
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in his belief that it is important social media platforms to continue to take steps to reduce hate,
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speech and misinformation. And he will continue to say that. But media platforms make independent
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choices about their information that they present. And so, look, I don't have anything to share on any
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policy or any changes that we will be making. We have multiple platforms, as you know, that we
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utilize to communicate with the American people.
00:24:56.360
What a great question. People who say, I'm quitting Twitter. It's like those Democrats when Trump won,
00:25:02.620
who said, I'm moving to America. I'm moving to Canada. That's exactly right. Anyways, let me read
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your, this is one of your tweets just a few days ago. Let me read it and his reply. And I'd love you
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to talk a bit about this. So Ian said, the establishment media is angry at Elon Musk because
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Twitter is no longer under the control of the establishment and its activist allies.
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He implemented meritocratic policies and fired their friends who worked at Twitter. The public
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can now openly question the narrative. Now, that tweet was very popular. And Elon Musk just wrote
00:25:34.840
one word back. He said, yep. Now, I'm not saying that's a deep discussion, but he's obviously reading
00:25:39.880
you and paying attention and thinking about things. And he's, he's saying, yeah, what that guy said,
00:25:44.840
that's pretty cool. It sums it up, right? Because I mean, that's exactly why they're afraid of him.
00:25:48.620
They have lost control of the narrative. They have lost control of a platform that
00:25:52.440
they use to organize, that they use to push their views and they quote unquote fact check
00:25:58.160
anyone who disagrees with it, including us. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is I think Twitter's
00:26:03.820
main purpose was not as a channel, but as a filter, not, it was, it was not as a medium,
00:26:09.600
but as a lens in the medium. I think that that was its value to the left is not to have a free
00:26:16.020
conversation, but to have it seemingly free, but actually controlled by them. Once that control
00:26:20.400
is removed, I think the left is revealed. Let me read another one. Yoel Roth, who was the head of
00:26:26.080
trust and safety for years, he quit after Elon Musk came aboard and he wrote an op-ed saying,
00:26:32.700
well, maybe the Apple store, the Apple app store and the Android store for, for Android phones,
00:26:40.340
maybe they will ban the Twitter app to make it harder to get. And here's what you wrote. You said,
00:26:45.540
if anyone can fight Apple with an actual chance of winning, it's Elon Musk. He needs allies though,
00:26:52.220
who will stand with them? And he wrote back simply, support is greatly appreciated.
00:26:58.940
Again, not a long reply, but it shows that he's thinking along the same lines as you.
00:27:05.480
Absolutely. I mean, look at, I mean, they had a meeting with Apple yesterday, right? Like he actually
00:27:10.520
went there and Tim Apple or, you know, whatever his name is, since Donald Trump called him Tim
00:27:16.080
Apple, I just can't get it out of my head. So they had a conversation and Tim was very clear to Elon
00:27:22.140
that he had no plans to remove Twitter from Apple. So it seems like somebody at Apple, somebody high up
00:27:27.840
decided that they didn't like Elon's approach to free speech and they wanted to remove it.
00:27:32.260
And this was at the behest of the media. If you, you know, if you paid any attention at all to
00:27:36.620
journalists like Taylor Lorenz, I mean, she went on the BBC, she went on different
00:27:40.700
news stations, podcasts, she and a whole bunch of other journalists, you know, especially the NBC
00:27:45.320
news guys, they were quoting activists who said that Twitter needs to be removed, uh, from, uh,
00:27:51.280
from these app stores in order to secure democracy, right? In order to secure liberal freedom. It's
00:27:56.240
like, okay, like they just clearly want him banned, but the backlash to it was so immense that you had
00:28:02.460
congressmen, you had Kevin McCarthy come out and, uh, as well as Ron DeSantis said that Congress needs
00:28:08.580
to do something about this. If Apple decides to exercise its monopoly powers. Yeah, you're right.
00:28:14.200
You know, I love Ron DeSantis. I think he's an excellent governor and the people of Florida
00:28:17.800
certainly seem to think so if the midterm elections were anything to go by, but I love how he judiciously
00:28:22.700
weighs into national affairs. And I, you know, you would think, well, there's 49 other governors,
00:28:27.740
there's, there should be some ambitious ones amongst them, but Ron DeSantis, he just nails
00:28:32.480
it. Here's a quick clip of Ron DeSantis saying, if Apple tries to do this, it should have congressional
00:28:38.520
oversight. Take a look. Very concerning. And then when you also hear reports that Apple is threatening
00:28:45.140
to remove Twitter from the app store because Elon Musk is actually opening it up for free speech
00:28:54.400
and is restoring a lot of accounts that were, uh, unfairly and illegitimately suspended
00:29:01.020
for putting out accurate information about COVID. That's like one of the main things that's being
00:29:06.740
reinstated. So many things these experts were wrong at, and you had people on Twitter that were calling
00:29:12.760
that out and Twitter, the old regime and Twitter, their response was to try to just suffocate the
00:29:19.040
dissent. And, and, and Elon Musk knows that's not a winning formula. And so he's, uh, providing free
00:29:25.520
speech. And so if Apple responds to that, uh, by nuking them from, from the app store, you know, I think
00:29:33.240
that that would be a huge, huge mistake. And it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power
00:29:39.640
that I think would merit a response, uh, from, from the United States Congress. And so, uh, don't be a
00:29:46.380
vassal of the CCP on one hand, and then use your corporate power in the United States on the other
00:29:52.720
to suffocate Americans and try to suppress their right to express themselves.
00:29:58.260
Well, I think that's spot on. Um, you know, I, I, I saw the claim that Apple is not advertising as much
00:30:07.380
in Twitter. And I know that Apple used to advertise all the time. It would certainly come up in my feed.
00:30:12.000
So hopefully they're not boycotting. It's one thing for them to ban, but hopefully they're not
00:30:16.080
boycotting. You wrote one more tweet on this theme. You said they're basically asking for a ban because
00:30:22.640
they want ammunition to justify their continued attacks on Twitter and your management of the
00:30:27.720
platform. And, uh, someone else weighed in and then Elon Musk said, this is messed up. Now, again,
00:30:34.400
I'm not saying that these are heavy and deep conversations, but I think that we know for a fact
00:30:39.920
that Elon Musk is reading your analysis, reading what you are choosing to highlight. And he's
00:30:46.840
saying, yep. Like he's basically signaling that your take on things is accurate. So you don't need him
00:30:53.320
to go on at great length because you just went on at great length. He reads and he said, yes,
00:30:57.740
that's it. Much appreciated. Yup. It's messed up. So I, it's a very interesting way of him being the CEO
00:31:03.980
and owner of a mega company to have that kind of interaction. But frankly, that's, what's so fun
00:31:11.660
about Twitter in the first place is you get to talk to the highest and the lowest people. They can
00:31:16.560
be in the same conversation. You could have a master of the universe talking to a kid and it doesn't
00:31:21.800
matter. You're on Twitter. You're part of the conversation. He's leading the charge. I think that
00:31:26.440
more CEOs, more executives, more politicians need to do exactly what he's doing. And he's showing that
00:31:32.260
Twitter is a, is an even playing field before, you know, as the elites versus the plebs, you had,
00:31:38.520
you know, the aristocracy, the blue check marks, they were the ones in charge and they wouldn't
00:31:42.480
talk to anybody else. Now he's democratizing Twitter and he's using that, you know, that new
00:31:48.200
sense of democracy to actually interact with just anybody. He's showing people that this is how it's
00:31:54.020
done. And, you know, a lot of CEOs, people like Mark Zuckerberg, they'll never interact with the
00:31:58.280
public, but he's saying, you know, maybe you should, maybe you should. And I think they should.
00:32:03.100
Zuckerberg comes across as awkward. I mean, there's a reason there's so many lizard memes about Mark
00:32:09.100
Zuckerberg. He's just socially awkward a bit, which is fine. I mean, listen, he's obviously a
00:32:14.780
tech genius. Elon Musk is quirky too, but I think he lets it all out there and he's got a self
00:32:20.740
deprecating sense of humor. Let me show you a fun meme, a video. I can't remember who made it right
00:32:28.000
now. It looks like it was digitally altered a little bit. I think that the eyes and certain
00:32:32.420
things, this is Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who's a congressman from New York, who's a huge critic
00:32:38.720
of Elon Musk and Twitter and Elon Musk. And someone mashed up these two interviews, making it look like
00:32:45.120
they're, well, like they're in love with each other. I, I've watched this three times. I think
00:32:50.260
it is so funny. Well, Elon Musk watched it too, and he loved it. That's what I like about Elon Musk.
00:32:57.760
Yep. For one of the richest men in the world, he still pokes fun at himself sometimes. Take a look at
00:33:02.540
this homemade mashup video that I, I mean, it's just funny. Take a look.
00:33:15.120
I apologize. Everybody's perfect. I'm breaking all the rules. I'm breaking all the rules. I guess
00:33:34.760
I think one of the biggest problems we have in DC is that everyone's egos are too big. I actually
00:33:40.940
prefer to have no titles at all. You're opening yourself up. I'm just being me.
00:33:55.380
Let's go. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's really funny. And look, here's the point
00:34:01.500
is Elon Musk is not shutting down people who are poking fun at him. So when he says he believes in
00:34:06.580
free speech, I think he's living it. I mean, that was obviously very lighthearted, and frankly,
00:34:11.380
it was flattering towards him. But he puts up with a lot of tough stuff. I think he might do it. Last
00:34:17.960
clip. Here is the boss of Netflix, which is a pretty left-wing organization, judging by their
00:34:24.200
editorial output. Here's the CEO saying he rather admires Elon Musk. He thinks Elon Musk is operating
00:34:31.700
in good faith. He wants to save the world. And don't bet against Elon Musk. He's got his quirky
00:34:37.180
style, but he gets her done. Take a look at this. You're on there all the time. What do you think?
00:34:40.400
What's going on? I'm excited. I'm excited. Elon Musk is the bravest, most creative person on the
00:34:46.140
planet. I mean, you know, what he's done in multiple areas is phenomenal. You know, his style is different
00:34:52.800
than like, I'm trying to be like a really steady, respectable leader. You know, he doesn't care.
00:34:57.900
He's just like out there, you know. But think of a guy who's spending $44 billion. He could have
00:35:03.320
built the biggest, he could have built a mile-long yacht for $44 billion. Okay? But it's like not good
00:35:08.980
for the planet, doesn't he? He's not interested. He's in for things to help.
00:35:11.220
Do you think what he's doing is good for the planet?
00:35:12.660
Absolutely. I'm 100% convinced that he is trying to help the world in all of his endeavors. Okay?
00:35:20.440
And he's trying to help the world in that one because he believes in free speech and there's power
00:35:24.560
for democracy and that there's an option. Now, how he goes about it, again, you know, is not how I
00:35:29.320
would do it. But I'm deeply respectful and I'm amazed that people are like so nitpicky on him.
00:35:36.060
Yeah, sure, the blue checkmark, he's making a mess of some things or not, you know, but it's like,
00:35:40.860
give the guy a break. He just spent all this money to try to make it much better for democracy
00:35:45.280
and society to have a more open platform. And I am sympathetic to that agenda.
00:35:49.440
What I liked about that, Ian, is that, you know, like I say, Netflix, it's obviously a bit
00:35:54.620
big tech rivals any other company. It's a competitor. It's left of center, but they respect
00:36:00.780
a doer. They respect a builder. And, you know, maybe Elon Musk will get other people in the
00:36:06.540
industry talking about freedom again. Last word to you, Ian.
00:36:08.740
Oh, it's got Zuckerberg, of all people, talking about freedom. Zuckerberg actually spoke at the
00:36:14.500
same conference yesterday, the New York Times thing, the book deal thing. And he said that,
00:36:19.700
you know, he wants to see where Musk goes with this free speech stuff and that it might work.
00:36:24.420
So, I mean, if anything, Elon Musk is leading the way and he's showing people that he's willing to
00:36:29.300
be experimental. This is something that Silicon Valley has forgotten about. I mean, I remember when
00:36:33.420
they used to be disruptors back in the 2000s, right, back when Twitter and Facebook were first
00:36:38.220
founded. So Elon is bringing it back to these days. And I'd love to see other people follow suit.
00:36:44.220
It'd be really nice to, you know, if this actually works, and I think it will,
00:36:48.060
Facebook might actually see the same changes happening to it.
00:36:50.820
Wow, that would be incredible. Here's that clip of Zuckerberg. Take a look.
00:36:54.400
If you look at all the major computing platforms that have existed, Windows, Android, iOS,
00:37:01.260
hopefully the future ones around the metaverse that will get built,
00:37:05.120
Apple's stands out as the only one where one company can control what apps get on the device.
00:37:11.120
That wasn't the case in Windows. That isn't really the case on Android phones. I mean,
00:37:15.940
Google might control what goes in the Play Store, but they've always made it so that you could
00:37:20.760
sideload and have other app stores and, you know, work directly with, you know, phone manufacturers.
00:37:29.620
I do think Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control,
00:37:35.180
like unilaterally what apps get on a device. And I don't think that's a sustainable or good place
00:37:42.140
to be. The reality is, is that the, you know, vast majority of the profits in the mobile ecosystem
00:37:47.260
go towards Apple. They have, I think the majority of people in the U.S. have iPhones. Certainly the
00:37:52.780
majority of the economic, you know, activity on phones goes towards that. So I do think it is
00:37:59.340
problematic for, for one company to be able to control what, what kind of app experiences get
00:38:03.880
on the device. Well, it's interesting time to be alive and we are quite strong on Twitter. I think
00:38:09.640
in many ways it's our strongest medium, or at least this least censored. A lot of our traffic comes from
00:38:14.360
Facebook. That's just the nature of it. But in terms of censorship, I think they have the lightest touch
00:38:20.020
on Rebel News and our personalities. Ian, you're certainly one of our Twitter warriors,
00:38:25.000
always out there. And I really enjoy watching you interact with the man of the hour. And I like
00:38:32.300
the fact that you're putting interesting ideas to him. And he's saying, yes, yes, I find it
00:38:37.340
riveting, frankly. And that's, I guess, part of, part of Elon Musk's strategy too, is he wins when
00:38:44.940
we're all watching this unfold. Thanks for taking the time and keep up the great work.
00:38:51.080
Right on. There you have it. Ian Miles Chong. And you got to follow him online. His Twitter
00:38:56.820
account is spelled still gray, G-R-A-Y. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:39:13.300
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Aztec01 talks about that creepy Simon's pro-suicide ad saying,
00:39:20.580
his increasingly histrionic wandering avalanche of meaningless buzzwords shows how desperate he is
00:39:27.140
to monetize depression, sadness, pain, and death for clout. This idiot is a monster. Yeah, like,
00:39:33.480
it was so weird. And he talked about how brave he was. And that he was, I'm really good. I don't want
00:39:43.200
to take all the credit, but I'm really good. Really good. Really good would be helping someone
00:39:47.920
who's sick, not helping them die. Vic Bor says, these are the same people who claim we should let
00:39:54.840
children transition because otherwise they'll off themselves, yet they support suicide. Yeah,
00:40:00.420
it's a cult of death. It's terrible. And Danielle Smith, Honor 234 says, once again,
00:40:07.660
the federal government of Canada overextends its constitutional powers into provincial areas of
00:40:11.520
responsibility and authority. Another power grab from a dictator in Ottawa. Well, let's see. I mean,
00:40:17.620
according to Lauren Gunter, the Alberta government is united behind Danielle Smith,
00:40:21.220
which is a bit of an accomplishment, given that she was an outsider. But still, we'll see what the
00:40:25.660
province in general says she will be in an election in the spring. That's our show for today.
00:40:31.080
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,
00:40:34.640
good night, and keep fighting for freedom. Reporting for Rebel News, I'm Tamara Ugolini,
00:40:39.360
bringing you a report that attempts to bridge the gap between the RSV surge currently being seen in
00:40:46.440
children's hospitals with the fallout of the experimental pandemic responses and the vested
00:40:53.000
interests of pharmaceutical companies. In Canada and abroad, children's hospitals are in crisis over
00:40:59.840
respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Yet health officials fail to recognize why this may be
00:41:06.100
happening and instead are resorting to what could have caused it in the first place, which are the
00:41:12.140
unscientific knee-jerk pandemic responses like masking, novel injections, and socially isolating
00:41:18.620
the healthy by way of indiscriminate lockdowns. Dr. Earl Rubin from Montreal Children's Hospital
00:41:25.260
acknowledged the risk all of this had to children during an interview with CTV recently. Listen for
00:41:31.640
yourself. The flu is here, so we anticipate that the numbers will go up. For COVID right now, we are
00:41:39.940
relatively stable. The majority of kids who are admitted with COVID are admitted for another reason
00:41:45.460
and found to be COVID positive, but with BQ1 and 1.1 and VA 4.6, we don't know what's coming. So that's
00:41:54.500
where that triple threat really is. But at this point in time, it's really RSV that is the issue. So to
00:42:02.560
answer your question, there's kind of that perfect storm that's brewing. We have easy transmission of
00:42:10.600
these viruses. We have a population that is non-immune because they've been wearing masks and
00:42:17.060
distance and not going to school in the last couple of years. So you get increased numbers who are
00:42:22.540
vulnerable. And on top of that, you have kids who are not only vulnerable, but because they don't have
00:42:28.400
immunity or getting sicker. So all of these things are coming into play. As analyzed by the infamous
00:42:35.720
health data dissector Twitter account, GoldenPup, who sources all of his information directly from
00:42:41.620
government sources, RSV cases surged in 2021, but we barely heard a peep throughout the COVID hysteria.
00:42:50.060
His graphs repeatedly show that a term known as seasonality is the likely explanation for surges
00:42:57.300
in respiratory viruses and that mask mandates did next to nothing to stop or break that cycle.
00:43:03.540
Using more broad health Canada data, he shows how the average number of pediatric hospitalizations
00:43:10.740
of those age 16 and under has skyrocketed in just one week from November 6th to the 12th, 2022.
00:43:19.880
The dotted black line details average hospitalizations from 2014 to 2020. The blue dash line is 2021 and
00:43:26.520
2022. And then, wow, look at that solid blue line just going straight up. Pup further pointed out this
00:43:33.220
a few weeks ago that RSV incidences were exponentially higher last year. Yet surprisingly,
00:43:39.860
there were fewer kids in the ICU at the same time, 67 compared to 87 this year. And his post dated
00:43:47.220
November 15th, there have been 70,000 doses of the COVID-19 shot administered to children. Now,
00:43:53.700
of course, correlation doesn't equal causation, but what is important to recognize here is that both
00:43:58.980
Pfizer and Moderna's FDA filings show that seasonal syncytial virus is a documented adverse event.
00:44:06.340
Here's an FDA submission on emergency use authorization amendment by Moderna.
00:44:11.380
On page 161, they clearly note that within 28 days after vaccination, some respiratory tract related
00:44:17.380
infections were reported with greater frequency in the mRNA group compared to the placebo group,
00:44:22.740
including croup, respiratory syncytial virus, and pneumonia. And one of Pfizer's emergency
00:44:28.580
use authorization amendments says something similar. On page 35 here, vaccine-associated
00:44:34.420
enhanced disease, including vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease, is included as an
00:44:40.020
important potential risk. If that weren't enough, Pfizer's own analysis of post-authorization adverse
00:44:46.180
events reports acknowledge that respiratory syncytial virus is a documented reaction.
00:44:53.220
So what is our governing health body doing now? Well, they are reviewing a new RSV vaccine, of course.
00:45:00.900
Health Canada said it received a submission from GlaxoSmithKline on October 25th for an RSV vaccine
00:45:06.740
for adults 60 years of age and older. In addition, Pfizer has notified Health Canada that it is planning
00:45:13.620
to submit two RSV vaccine candidates for consideration, one for seniors and one for pregnant women.
00:45:22.740
The revolving door of injections continues, and when that injection causes an unintended consequences,
00:45:29.700
surely there will be a vaccine developed for that too. For Rebel News, I'm Tamara Ugolini.