EZRA LEVANT ｜ New smoking gun documents reveal Biden's social media censorship agenda
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Summary
When Joe Biden threatened to censor vaccine skeptics, and they threatened to do such damage to Facebook, the government panicked and agreed to violate their users' rights. Who are the censors? Are they made of better stuff than us?
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. Some incredible revelations in the United States about how Joe Biden
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threatened Facebook and Instagram to censor vaccine skeptics, and they threatened to do
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such damage to Facebook, Facebook panicked and gave in. We'll have the actual memos for you
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today. I want you to see them with your own eyes, which means I want you to see the video version
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of this podcast, which means you need what we call Rebel News Plus. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,
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click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. I know that's not a lot of money for you, but you add it
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all up. It's a lot of money for us. That's how we survive without government bailouts. We survive
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based on your support. So please go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe, get the video
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version of these podcasts, and here's today's show. Tonight, the smoking gun. New documents show how Joe
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Biden threatened Facebook and Instagram, and they panicked and agreed to violate their users' rights.
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It's July 27th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Censorship is almost always a bad thing. I should really say it's always a bad thing,
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but I can think of one example where it's not. In the year 1644, a philosopher-poet named John Milton
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wrote a defense of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. He gave it a Greek
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name, Areopagitica. He nailed it, though. He got it right, and it really hasn't been improved upon in
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380 years. I think this is the best thing ever written on free speech. You might know his most famous
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line from this essay, let truth and falsehood grapple. Whoever knew truth put to the worst
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in a free and open encounter. Isn't that the truth? Now, sometimes truth takes a little while
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to get its boots laced up, and falsehood has already run around a bit, but truth catches up in the end,
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I believe. And who are the censors to censor? Why are they able to look at the words and see if they're
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bad or good before telling us we can see it or not? Why do they can look at the bad tweets and the bad
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books and a bad movie and then make a decision for us? Why can't we be our own censors? What I mean
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is, are they made of better stuff than us? They think you can't handle the truth. You'd be corrupted
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by it. You'd be misled by it. They're better than you. They won't be fooled. They can look at the bad
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things and tell you if it's okay. Who chose them? And just by censoring something, haven't you
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actually imbued it with a magical power? It's cool now. You've made it more attractive. It's a bad
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boy thing. You've also said something about the regime that has done the censoring, though, haven't
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you? That regime must be brittle. It cannot withstand scrutiny. It's weak. Anything done forcibly has that
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effect, doesn't it? Let me give you the example of vaccines. I think I know people who would have
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considered taking the vaccine had they been permitted to make the decision freely for themselves.
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They'd have done their research. They'd have thought about it, weighed it. Maybe they wouldn't
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have taken it, but I think others might have, but for the fact that they were being forced to do so.
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It's quite a disease that was so meek that most of the time you had to have a special test to know if
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even had it. And it's quite a vaccine that's so safe and effective that you had to be forced on pain of
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being fired to get the jab. Do you see my point? The very brutality of it is what turned off many. They
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couldn't persuade us, so they tried to force us. But if you'd force a man and a woman and a pregnant woman
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and a young child, if you'd force them to actually take a vaccine, it's not hard to believe that you would
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force people to stop asking questions about them. Am I right? You would force them not to see things
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that are critical. Hey, let me show you a comedy sketch by a comedian named Jimmy Dore. But of course,
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he's much more than a comedian. He's a very thoughtful, skeptical, social commentator. He's a
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man of the left, and he can't believe what's happened to the left, but left or right, watch this. I think
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It happened around COVID. I'd never noticed this before in any other time in my life,
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but you weren't allowed to ask questions at any point during this. You just had to do what the
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man on the TV said without questions, and then you're a good person. But if you question it,
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Jimmy, only dumb people ask questions. No, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to question authority.
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It's like a value. Is that what they taught you in comedy school?
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Yeah, that is what they taught me in comedy school. Even comedians would get on stage and
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they would shame people for trying to get informed about a medical treatment that was experimental,
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that they had to take or they would lose their jobs and they wouldn't be able to travel. And
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when people tried to get informed about that, other people shamed them. They would say,
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please tell me you're not going to do your own research. You know, before COVID, doing your
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own research used to be called reading. Now you're shaming me for reading? At the behest of big
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pharma? It's like I woke up in the middle of a Bill Hicks bit. Well, looks like we got ourselves a
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reader. Tell me, boy, what you reading for? Don't you know everything that needs to be
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read? It's already been read by a smart person. That's how much people internalize the propaganda
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for big pharma. You would never shame people for trying to get informed, no matter what other
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subject it was. Like if I say, hey, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go buy a car. Don't look into it. Well,
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how will I know which car to get? Ask the salesman. He's the expert. My point is the marketplace of
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ideas. It generally works. I can't really think of a time or a place where the people doing the
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censorship were the good guys in the sweep of history. I acknowledge there are some very limited
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examples to the contrary. Frankly, the only one I could think of right now is in wartime.
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Censoring a report about secret troop movements that might help the enemy. But unless it's that
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extreme and limited a case, what is censorship other than an admission that you cannot deal with
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someone else's ideas? You can't debate them. You don't have an idea yourself. You're too lazy. You're
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too above it. I don't know. Did you see David Menzies accosting that man playing rugby in a women's team
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the other day? By the way, his female teammates were defending him, but they couldn't muster any arguments.
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Mr. Davis, Ash, why are you doing this? I'm David Menzies, Rebel News.
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Hi. No, you're not really a part of this. Human rights. What about the human rights of
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biological women being injured by this man? As a mother, why would you expose your kids
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to a misogynist? Because that is my partner. That is my wife that you are being an asshole.
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Sorry, he's a lesbian? It's not a sport. It's not an issue.
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I'm a registered social worker, sir, and I demand human rights for everybody.
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Oh, okay. Yeah, what's a biological female? How do you feel about a biological male playing
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in rugby now? Thank you. I don't really give a f***. Everybody. Okay. I don't know what
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is a crime anymore. Well, sometimes we all ask ourselves that, right?
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But it's not just 19-year-old rugby players who can't debate. Neither can the President
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of the United States. Let me show you what he did. This is new. This is from the Congressional
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Inquiry into the Weaponization of the State Against Political Dissidence. It's a thread
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of Twitter posts made by Jim Jordan, the Republican leading the inquiry. And you should know that
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our friend Janine Yunus is the lawyer on that committee. I'm so proud to know her. Let's
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read through them. It's actually more than a dozen tweets. All right, let me read some of
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these tweets. The first one says, the Facebook files, part one. Smoking gun docs prove Facebook
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censored Americans because of Biden White House pressure. Let me read through them. And I'm going
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to go through them because I really can't improve upon them. And it's not even for me to improve
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upon. I want to show you what the U.S. Congress is doing. And maybe I'll make you a little bit
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jealous that we don't have this kind of parliamentary curiosity in Canada too. Never before released
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internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee prove that Facebook and Instagram censored
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posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure
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from the Biden White House. During the first half of 2021, social media companies like Facebook
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faced tremendous pressure from the Biden White House, both publicly and privately, to crack down
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on alleged, quote, misinformation. In April 2021, a Facebook employee circulated an email
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for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, writing, we are facing continued
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pressure from external stakeholders, including the Biden White House, to remove posts. Isn't that
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crazy? That's a direct violation of the First Amendment. You don't need to be a legal scholar to
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know that. And then he shows the memo. That's the difference. It's not just an accusation now.
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He shows the email. Mark, Sheryl, we are seeking your guidance on whether to take more aggressive
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action against certain vaccine discouraging content. Look what's highlighted in yellow.
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We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the
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press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content. And they go on a little bit. In another
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April 2021 email, Nick Clegg, Facebook's president for global affairs, informed the team at Facebook that
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Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor to President Biden, was, quote, outraged that Facebook did not remove
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a particular post. And here's what he said. And again, this is an internal document.
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Just got off hour-long call with Andy Slavitt. There are some pretty serious and sensitive
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issues we need to address. A summary. And then you can see the bullet points. And the one that's
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highlighted below says, as an example, he was outraged, not too strong a word to describe his
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reaction, that we did not remove this post, which was third most highly ranked post in the data set
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we sent to him. And then what do you think it was? Do you think it was some false scientific claim?
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Do you think it was some complete fabrication or lie? Get a load of this. What did the Biden White
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House want removed? A meme. That's right. Even memes weren't spared from the Biden White House's
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censorship plans. And they show the meme. It's this one. It's a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio
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pointing at something. Looks like a TV set. And it says, 10 years from now, you will be watching TV
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and hear, did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled. You know, just like
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there are class action lawyers advertising. It wasn't misinformation. It wasn't a lie. It was an
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opinion. It was a joke. It was a daydream about what might happen 10 years from now. And Andy Slavitt,
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the president's senior advisor, was shouting at the president of Facebook internationally for an hour.
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And this was what made him most furious. That's not disinformation. That's not a lie. It's not a falsehood.
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It's not defamatory. It's not obscene. It's an opinion. And the White House demanded it be taken
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down. When Clegg, quote, countered that removing content like that would represent a significant
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incursion into traditional boundaries of free speech, free expression in the U.S., Slavitt
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disregarded the warning and the First Amendment. And they show, again, that email. I countered that
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removing content like that would represent a significant incursion in traditional boundaries of
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free expression in the U.S. But he replied that the Post was directly comparing COVID vaccines to
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asbestos poisoning in a way which demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines amongst
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those the Biden administration is trying to reach. You know what's amazing is Nick Clegg is not even
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American. He's a Brit. And he cares more about freedom of speech in the United States and the First
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Amendment than the U.S. president did. I'll keep reading. What happened next? Facebook panicked.
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In another April 2021 email, Brian Rice, Facebook's VP of public policy, raised the concern
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that Slavitt's challenge felt, quote, and I'm going to quote from the yellow part of the email here,
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very much like a crossroads for us and the White House in these early days. But Facebook wanted to
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repair its relationship with the White House to avoid adverse action. And I'm going to quote again
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from the email. This is from Nick Clegg. Given what is at stake here, it would also be a good idea
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if we could regroup to take stock of where we are in our relations with the White House and our
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internal methods too. So Facebook did not want to censor these things. And they're very censorious
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to begin with. Even a foreigner, Nick Clegg, understood the importance of the First Amendment,
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not just in life, but to their business. But they were so terrified of the White House senior advisor
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shouting at them for an hour. They said, this is a real crossroads. This is really going to determine
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our relationship with the White House. They were terrified. I'll keep reading.
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This wasn't the first time that the Biden White House was angry that Facebook didn't censor more.
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According to these documents, the Biden White House demanded to know why Facebook had not
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censored a video from, you guessed it, Tucker Carlson. So Facebook prepared its response to
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appease the Biden White House. Talking points were drafted for Clegg. They knew that Biden hated
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Tucker Carlson and they were ready for it. Facebook was ready to tell the White House that it had
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demoted a video posted by Tucker Carlson by 50 percent in response to the White House's demands,
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even though the post didn't violate any policies. Can you believe that? They throttled, they turned down
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the availability. They stopped people from seeing it, even though in their mind there was nothing wrong
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with it. They were censoring to appease Biden. You can see the internal email. Thanks, Nick. Here's
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some talking points that you can use if Andy raises Rob's questions. You can say reduced and demoted.
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What does that mean? There's 40,000 shares on that video. Who is seeing it now? How many? How as effective
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as that? Like the detail that they hated their critics and they had this whole team of censors is shocking.
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I'm going to keep reading. Public pressure mounted as well. In July 2021, President Biden publicly denounced
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Facebook and other social media platforms claiming they were killing people by not censoring alleged
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misinformation. On August 2nd, 2021, Facebook admitted it was going to change its policies because of pressure
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from the Biden White House. And you can see a lengthy memo about that. Facebook's leadership asked
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misinfo policy to brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive.
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This is stemming from continued criticism of our approach from the Biden administration.
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That's illegal. You can't do things indirectly that you can't do directly. You can't outsource
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censorship. If you're threatening Facebook, which is obviously how they felt and what was happening,
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imagine a one-hour call being shouted at by an outraged senior advisor to the president.
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They were terrified. And if Facebook, which has been censoring Americans and people around the
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world for a decade, is being forced to censor even more than they naturally want to, you can imagine
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how bad it was. But it wasn't just the White House. Facebook also changed its policies in direct
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response to pressure from Biden's Surgeon General, censoring members of the disinformation dozen.
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What? Yeah. They came up with like a hit list of people that they did not think should be allowed
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to talk. You know, there's a concept of a bill of attainder. And it's one of the things that was
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motivating the American Revolution, where you pass laws to target that guy and pass a law to target
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that guy. It's called a bill of attainder. That's basically what the White House was doing.
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I recommend you read the tweets. I'm not going to read every single word of it. But what's new here
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is for the first time ever, Facebook has disgorged its documents. Facebook shows the internal panic
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amongst its executives. Facebook shows the pressure it was under, that they literally made these choices
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to preserve their peace with the White House. They were afraid. It's a violation of the First
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Amendment by the government. I think that people who were banned and punished and censored by Facebook
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might have a legal claim against Facebook and against the government. In a way, I can understand
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Facebook's position. I don't agree with it. I can at least understand it, that they were between a rock
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and a hard place. Even their own principles were violated. I think they should have gone public.
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I think they should have resisted. I think they should have said, look, we're built on freedom of
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speech. See you in court. Instead, they took a cowardly way out. But at the end of the day,
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I understand that they were going to be smashed by the government if they didn't do so. I don't
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exculpate them, but I understand them. I think that Americans who were censored, and the disinformation
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doesn't or should be amongst them, should sue Facebook for violating the terms of service,
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and should sue the U.S. government for violating the First Amendment. Will the Americans reclaim their
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freedom? Will Facebook push back? Certainly they have a role model in Elon Musk, who's turned Twitter
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into a free speech machine. Or do they sort of like being told to censor by Biden, because now they can
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just blame Biden, and now they're not treated poorly like Biden. But let me close with what I think is
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the most obvious point as I stand here in Canada reading about this. Why can't we have this kind of
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inquiry in Canada? Why doesn't anyone in our political system care about freedom of speech?
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Why don't we have political inquiries, legal inquiries? Why don't we have a vigorous, coast-to-coast,
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multi-partisan freedom of speech caucus? Why don't we have lawyers and politicians and, frankly,
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other media doing this? Well, you know the answer. Because freedom has been slowly rung out of our
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system. The media has been colonized. Law schools teach wokeness. It's not just in the lawyers,
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it's in the judges now. I'm afraid our system is not as strong as the Americans. If anyone's going
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to save our freedom in Canada, it just might be Americans saving it for us. Wouldn't it be something
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if this American inquiry causes Facebook to take its foot off the neck of controversial outlets?
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We might be the beneficiaries up here. And wouldn't it be something if those same Americans who love
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their freedom stop some of Trudeau's other plans, like C-18 and C-11, to regulate and censor the media?
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Well, there's a new poll out by Abacus. You've heard me talk about that pollster before.
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They're a liberal-oriented firm, so I'm a little bit cautious of what they report.
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But when they report news and do a poll that shows the liberals in a terrible light,
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which their latest poll does, I tend to take it seriously because they wouldn't say that if it
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weren't the case. I've never seen a poll this starkly in favor of the conservatives. In fact,
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it suggests a conservative party majority. I see that the liberals are trailing badly across most of the
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country, even Ontario. For the first time in memory, the conservative party actually has a lead
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amongst women. Even Atlantic Canada is pretty much split. And the demand for a change is enormously high.
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You might recall that it's this same firm that detected 81% of Canadians wanted a change. Well,
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Justin Trudeau's no dummy. He won in 2015, 2019, and 2021 because he pays close attention to the polls.
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And if his party is despised, and if it's going down in the polls and people want change, well,
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change he'll give them. He won't replace himself, of course, but he replaced an enormous number
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of cabinet ministers. Some of them were achingly awful and had to be replaced. Others, I think he's
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just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But what will it mean for your tax load? Because I think
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economics are one of the reasons that people want to change inflation, mortgage rates, the cost of
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living. Things are tougher than ever. An enormous number of Canadians are one paycheck away from
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disasters. And God forbid, if they lost their job or were off work for a single pay period, they simply
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wouldn't be able to make ends meet. People are scared. And it's money issues again, even though Trudeau
00:21:18.480
likes to work on cultural Marxist divisions. Well, who do we talk to if we want to know about how the
00:21:25.060
new cabinet will hit our pocketbook? There's only one group I trust on that. And you know who I'm
00:21:31.160
talking about. It's the Canadian Taxpayers Federation because they do not take any money from the
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government. So when they speak on these matters, they speak in a nonpartisan way. In fact, what I like
00:21:41.520
about them is they sometimes criticize the conservatives too. And joining me now via Skype from Ottawa is our
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friend Franco Teresano with the latest on this liberal cabinet shuffle. Franco, good to see you
00:21:53.280
again. I saw a tweet by you today. Let me read it. I thought it was a good point. You said total salary
00:21:59.920
cost of Trudeau's cabinet, $11,310,000. And you compared it to years past. Last year was $10 million,
00:22:07.900
the year before $9 million, the year before $7 million. I mean, the election before $7 million. You're
00:22:12.700
pointing out that we're paying more than we ever have for a cabinet, but that's pretty crooked
00:22:19.600
timber in this cabinet. Take it away, Franco. Well, yeah, the reason we're paying more for this
00:22:25.460
cabinet is more ministers with bigger salaries. Now, doesn't that just always seem to be the case
00:22:29.980
with this government? More, more, more, more, more coming from Canadian taxpayers. What's not more?
00:22:34.940
The value that we're getting, right? Because let's not also forget that the Trudeau,
00:22:38.780
since he took office back, what, after the 2015 election, he's hired more than 98,000 bureaucrats,
00:22:45.520
ballooning the size of the bureaucracy by what? 40%? Now, is anyone out there getting 40% more value
00:22:52.700
from the federal government? No. Maybe the only thing we're getting that's 40% more is 40% more
00:22:59.960
wait times every time we try to get a passport renewed. Yeah. And just disaster in airports,
00:23:05.540
really all the practical things that the government's responsible for. Now, I take the
00:23:10.200
point of your tweet that we have the biggest, flabbiest cabinet ever. And I think it's also
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true to say that a lot of those cabinet ministers aren't really running the show. I think Trudeau has
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an approach that he wants to show a diversity, an ethnic and a demographic and a geographic diversity
00:23:28.480
in his cabinet for PR sake. But I think the key decisions are made in the prime minister's office.
00:23:35.140
I really think so. We learned some of that during the Trucker Commission of Inquiry, where we learned
00:23:39.700
that Marco Mendocino wasn't even consulted with key decisions. His own staff knew he wasn't the
00:23:46.380
decider. Here's my point. It's gross how big the cabinet is. Trudeau's trying to shuffle the deck to
00:23:54.140
say, hey, Canadians, you want change? I'll give you change. But I think the core problems are still
00:23:59.400
there. Trudeau himself and his disastrous finance minister, Chrystia Freeland. I think those two
00:24:07.060
people really are the core of this government. In some ways, I think Chrystia Freeland actually makes
00:24:11.660
more decisions than Trudeau does. What do you think of that thesis, Franco?
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Well, okay. First of all, like a cabinet change, that's not what Canadians really need. What Canadians
00:24:21.700
really need is a culture change from this government. And you know, you mentioned Freeland. I'm glad you
00:24:26.920
did. Because here's the thing, folks. Until the government, whether it's Freeland, whether it's
00:24:31.740
Trudeau, actually changes its policies, i.e. put out its fiscal dumpster fire and stop raising taxes
00:24:39.000
that make everything more expensive, until the government does that, I mean, all of this is just
00:24:43.400
adding lipstick onto a pig, right? I mean, the government can, you know, shuffle its cabinet every
00:24:49.660
single day. It can pose for the camera every single day. None of that would matter until the
00:24:55.400
government actually does what? Two things. Stop raising taxes. That makes everything more
00:25:00.200
expensive. In fact, the whole point of the Trudeau government's and Freeland's carbon tax increases
00:25:05.440
are to make your life more expensive, right? Live the way we say or pay. And the next thing that the
00:25:11.520
government has to do, stop spending money like crazy. The reason Canadians are paying too much tax
00:25:16.420
is because the government loves to shower itself, living a lavish lifestyle on our tab.
00:25:22.760
I think there's a related point, would you agree with this, Franco, about printing money? Because
00:25:28.260
by printing so much money, they devalue the amount of money out there. It's sort of like counterfeit
00:25:33.920
money. Counterfeit money dilutes the value of real money. Well, it's the same thing. The government
00:25:38.120
adds billions of dollars just by printing. It makes us all poorer, drives prices up. I think that's
00:25:43.560
a source of inflation, isn't it? One of the sources. It's not a source of inflation, Ezra. It's the
00:25:48.960
source of inflation. Look, I'm not saying that there aren't things going on internationally,
00:25:53.700
whether it's supply shortages of that nature. I'm not saying that doesn't impact it. But what that
00:25:58.480
explains are changes in relative prices. But what makes all prices go up? An increase in the money
00:26:04.980
supply. Brr, the printing press. And what happened during the pandemic? Well, in the two years between
00:26:10.820
March 2020 to March 2022, the central bank, the Bank of Canada printed about $370 billion right out
00:26:19.120
of thin air and then dropped all that freshly printed cash into an economy that was essentially
00:26:24.700
locked down by government fiat. What does that do? Too many dollars chasing too few goods. And to tie
00:26:31.560
the bow on this, Ezra, what was the Bank of Canada largely purchasing? Government of Canada debt.
00:26:38.680
Okay. That is using the printing press to finance Ottawa's deficits. It's the inflation tax. And it's
00:26:45.100
why your life is more expensive. You know, the other day, Chrystia Freeland was on a panel with a lot of
00:26:50.560
foreign media and she boasted that Canadian inflation was, they finally whipped it. And she was so proud
00:26:57.900
of herself, but that wasn't quite true, was it? Inflation in Canada has come down. You didn't ask me
00:27:04.100
about this, Matt. I can't believe it. Okay. Inflation. We had our inflation number on Tuesday,
00:27:09.160
2.8%. Isn't that great? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Okay. We are now within the Bank of Canada's target range.
00:27:18.040
This is huge. It's come down from 8.1% last June. Okay. So whenever you hear those headlines like
00:27:25.240
inflation is cooling, this is what it actually means, folks. And you already know this, right? Because if
00:27:29.680
you're not living under a rock, if you've left that rock to go to a gas station or a grocery store in
00:27:34.220
the last, I don't know, couple of years, you know, that this is the case. In 2022, we had 40 year high
00:27:39.700
inflation, 40 year high inflation. And now inflation is cooling to 2.8%. What does that really mean?
00:27:47.920
Well, if you trust the government numbers, let's take it at face value for the sake of it.
00:27:51.520
It means inflation was a 40 year high last year and prices are still going up by another 2.8%.
00:27:58.960
It's still inflating. It's still, but you know, let me tell you a little anecdote because I,
00:28:03.860
this blew me away. I, the other day I had the pleasure of going to a museum
00:28:07.220
and handling a real coin called a piece of eight, pieces of eight. It was silver from a mine,
00:28:15.420
I think in Bolivia or something. Give me just one minute to tell you this story. This was the most
00:28:20.100
prolific mine in world history for silver. And it was this, it's what really fueled the Spanish
00:28:27.200
conquistadors who kept going to South America. This mine produced so much silver and it was sort
00:28:33.880
of cool to handle the coin. This was 500 years ago, but you dumped more silver into the world
00:28:39.480
than had ever seen before. It chased, like you said, you had so much more money chasing so many
00:28:45.160
more things. The prices zoomed. It distorted the entire world's economy. This one little mine in,
00:28:53.320
I think it was Bolivia. And I just, to hear this story in the museum, it was shocking to think that
00:28:59.260
these things happened like half a millennium ago here in Canada, but at least the silver was real.
00:29:04.720
But in Canada, we're just, the bank of Canada is just print, like a Xerox machine. And there isn't
00:29:13.380
even anything underneath it. At least silver, you could use it for jewelry. You could use it for
00:29:18.680
things. They're just printing paper money. And it's, I think it's doing the same thing. It's driving up
00:29:25.340
the price of everything. You just made me think of those, that pieces of eight silver mine story,
00:29:30.140
and we're doing it all over again. Well, I've got a couple things on that. Okay. So number one,
00:29:36.520
it doesn't take a PhD in economics to understand that if you print more money, the dollars that
00:29:41.140
everyone has is going to be able to buy less. That's inflation. In fact, I think the only people
00:29:45.780
who can understand that fact nowadays are the people with PhDs in economics working at their
00:29:51.240
taxpayer funded universities. Okay. But the next thing, you know why inflation is so pernicious?
00:29:56.360
Two reasons. Number one, fundamentally undemocratic, right? Because everyone knows
00:30:02.180
when the sales tax goes up, everyone knows when an income tax goes up, and then they're able
00:30:07.300
to hold their politicians accountable. But like people, if you just stop anyone at any main street,
00:30:13.360
how many people are going to know how much the Bank of Canada printed? In fact, go talk to those
00:30:17.660
338 members of parliament that are walking around Ottawa. How many of those members of parliament even
00:30:22.960
know what's going on at the Bank of Canada? It's a pretty tough bet there, right? But the third thing
00:30:30.560
that we have to understand, and another reason that inflation is so pernicious, is because it's
00:30:34.840
a fundamentally redistributive scheme. Because not everyone gets those new dollars right away,
00:30:40.820
right? They're not dropping it from the sky from an airplane. No, no, no. The people who are closest
00:30:46.060
to the newly printed cash, whether it's those big banks that the Bank of Canada is getting the money
00:30:51.400
from, or getting the bonds from, or if it's wherever the government is spending that money
00:30:55.740
quick, will they essentially get a transfer of wealth? So not only is inflation, the Bank of
00:31:02.460
Canada, increasing the cost of living, not only is it undemocratic, but it's fundamentally a
00:31:08.100
redistributive scheme as well. You are so right. Whoa, my brain is stretched. Franco, it's great to see
00:31:14.860
you again. Keep up the fight. And I recommend again that our viewers support Taxpayers Federation,
00:31:20.760
the only nonpartisan group in Ottawa on the tax beat that doesn't take money or direction from
00:31:27.280
the government. Great to see you, my friend. Keep up the fight. Thanks so much. All right. Well,
00:31:31.200
stay with us. More ahead. And I'm going to go study that silver mine again. It was quite something to
00:31:36.500
hear about worldwide inflation a half a millennium ago. I got to beef up on that. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:31:44.860
Well, it's great to be back in Toronto. You'll notice I'm not actually in the studio. We did an
00:31:50.980
amazing thing in the studio. We sort of raised the roof literally. Hopefully I'll be back in that room
00:31:56.340
on Monday and I'll show you what it's like. It's very exciting. But I'm in our boardroom. You can
00:32:00.920
see behind me a couple of plaques. Our million subscriber plaque from YouTube isn't that relevant
00:32:06.660
to my monologue today and some of our donor plaques too. That's how we survived the crackdown by social
00:32:11.400
media. I hope you enjoyed my trip to Hungary. I know that's rather an obscure subject matter.
00:32:17.880
There's only 10 million Hungarians in Hungary and some millions around the world. It's not a large
00:32:23.540
country like France or Italy or the UK. But I think what they're doing is very interesting in the fact
00:32:28.440
that Viktor Orban has resisted the globalist woke brigades. And he talks that way. He talks about it.
00:32:33.800
He talks about being colonized by the European Union and even foreign powers other than that.
00:32:39.340
So I enjoyed my trip there and I hope you thought it was okay that I was away for some time. Then I
00:32:45.360
went to Lethbridge to cover the trial of the Coutts IV, at least a pre-trial hearing. What I learned
00:32:51.140
there was a little bit disturbing. I know some people are upset that we are not championing in the same
00:32:55.480
way the Coutts IV as we are the Coutts III. You might remember we're defending three other truckers
00:33:01.900
who were arrested and charged. But they were not accused of any violence. They're just civil
00:33:06.240
disobedience. Of course, we're representing hundreds, indeed more than 2,500 people across the country,
00:33:12.220
including Tamara Leach. And when I say we, I mean either Rebel News or Rebel News is crowdfunding for
00:33:17.400
the Democracy Fund. So we are defending literally thousands of people, including very prominent
00:33:22.740
victims of the lockdowns. I just have to say in all honesty and candor, I cannot divert Rebel News and
00:33:31.420
Democracy Fund donors to a conspiracy to commit murder. It just is outside the scope of how we raise
00:33:37.920
the money. I know some people are upset by that. I hope that the men are acquitted. I hope the charges
00:33:42.420
against them are false. And I hope that they did not do the things they're accused of. And if so, I'll happily
00:33:47.760
eat my words. But until then, we'll do our best to do fair journalism on their case. But I'm worried that some
00:33:56.120
people got a little too deeply into this diagonal on fake reactionary militia and then actually became real when
00:34:06.640
the town was swarming with cops and they said a bunch of stupid things that I can't report to you now, but it'll come
00:34:11.920
out in trial. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at
00:34:18.460
home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.