Vivek Ramaswamy joins us on the show to talk about TikTok and the bill that could ban it, and why it s a good thing it s not under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:06:37.000No, it's not going to be just one of those episodes where we do flashbacks and montages because we're lazy.
00:06:42.000It's an episode where we are going to discuss specifically free speech in the area of big
00:06:46.000tech and now TikTok, because there is a bill that will be discussed today that very likely
00:06:51.000will result not in the ban of TikTok, but in the, I guess I should say, subjecting TikTok
00:06:57.000to the authority of the constitutional parameters of the United States.
00:07:01.000So there are a lot of claims out there surrounding this bill and a lot of mistruths.
00:07:06.000I understand kind of two sides of the as free speech absolutists.
00:07:10.000However, freedom of speech ceases to exist if the platforms that claim to allow freedom of speech are subject to a communist foreign entity.
00:07:19.000So, very different from what we've had to deal with in the past.
00:07:22.000And we'll look at what the global threat to free speech looks like, what it looks like on different platforms, and specifically TikTok, what the alternatives are.
00:07:29.000TikTok is very likely not going anywhere.
00:07:31.000It just comes down to if it will remain under the control of the Communist Chinese Party.
00:07:36.000So you can comment below before we bring Vivek on.
00:07:38.000First off, if you're in chat right now, Mug Club, we'd love to see your questions.
00:07:42.000We can try and ask them of Vivek because he seems to be against this bill.
00:07:47.000I wouldn't say supportive of TikTok, but he has some arguments to make.
00:07:54.000Do you think this bill is the right call?
00:07:56.000And of course, because we will be speaking out against the demented circus monkeys at YouTube and Facebook, if at any point today you see this, You know, head on over to Rumble anyway, who may purchase TikTok because they actually do allow freedom of speech.
00:09:04.000No, I think the beard makes it impossible.
00:09:06.000It's actually how I sound when I fart, though, so it's pretty accurate.
00:09:09.000Gabe William is watching the show going... In third chair, you know him, you love him.
00:09:17.000When you hear this, you mostly thank him for his service, but he'll be at Wise Guys Comedy Club in Las Vegas Friday, April 5th, Saturday, April 6th.
00:10:59.000For example, Senator Hirono Nancy Pelosi calling for the banning of us from YouTube, right?
00:11:03.000That's a problem, that's tyrannical when you have people who are beholden, who've taken an oath to the Constitution, who support censorship and free speech.
00:11:10.000I know what you're gonna say, businesses can do whatever they want.
00:11:11.000It's not a business doing whatever it wants when the government leans on the business.
00:11:19.000A platform, an app, that is ubiquitous in the United States, largely with young people, okay?
00:11:25.000A growing voting demographic that is controlled by a foreign communist entity with a vested interest in the destruction of the United States.
00:11:35.000As a matter of fact, I don't know if we have this quote.
00:11:37.000Someone from China, I don't remember which representative, came out and said this is an act of bullying from the United States against China.
00:11:53.000So let's walk you through history before we get to TikTok so you can understand where it is that we come from.
00:11:59.000We have been censored here, demonetized, Vivek will be coming on very soon, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and of course, yes, yours truly has been completely banned from TikTok.
00:12:09.000So while we're talking about free speech, we were banned from TikTok for saying that Xi Jinping has a small penis, which he does!
00:12:39.000What happened is people at Media Matters and then people in the mainstream media scene and they picked up a hit piece, a highlight reel of all the horrible things that we've said.
00:12:49.000Just so you know, foreshadowing, guilty!
00:12:54.000Boy, you want to have a surreal experience?
00:12:57.000Have the Hodge twins call you from the airport hotel going, Man, we just saw Don Lemon on TV saying, Here's Steven Crowder!
00:13:05.000And your dad was on there going, Queer!
00:13:19.000So you're watching this going for jokes, and we were demonetized on YouTube.
00:13:24.000They created a whole new policy because of a smear campaign, and actually Google's stock took a nosedive because as a result, YouTube demonetized thousands of channels, including historical documentary channels, because we didn't violate any guidelines, so they created new ones.
00:13:41.000Here is actually just a brief memory trigger.
00:13:45.000Controversial YouTuber named Steven Crowder.
00:14:27.000They created new rules for that, where then YouTube could demonetize or remove you for what is on platform.
00:14:32.000So they changed their harassment rules.
00:14:35.000After this took place, this had taken place, to remove more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube, sure, but then they created what is known in the industry, I'm sorry to say, is the Crowder Guideline, uh, the reduce borderline content and raise up authoritative voices.
00:15:53.000Where it costs four dimes to make and a hairnet and you're worth nine billion dollars.
00:15:58.000So before we get to TikTok, Bill, then this also happened to us with Facebook.
00:16:01.000So Facebook, this is actually how I met my half-Asian lawyer, Bill Richman.
00:16:05.000There was a Gizmodo article that named pages that were specifically selected by hand to censor and remove from Facebook.
00:16:11.000Keep in mind, this is how I made A living, largely, at that point in time.
00:16:15.000Mug Club had not grown to the level that it was now.
00:16:17.000So we made a lot of our revenue off of the website, because we would have many, many millions of people read the articles.
00:16:23.000And that traffic came from Facebook and auxiliary sources.
00:16:26.000So there was an article that said, hey, we decided to throttle Ted Cruz Pack for President, Breitbart.com, the Chris Kyle Foundation, And me!
00:16:37.000One of these things is not like the other, but at that point in time, it was the top page on Facebook.
00:16:42.000And so they specifically chose it to throttle it, so that people who liked the page could not see the content of the page that they liked.
00:16:49.000We also ran into this on Twitter, where we were suspended for hateful conduct, despite the fact that there was no hateful conduct.
00:16:55.000It was about gender fluidity, which is not a thing you can go screw yourselves if you think it is.
00:17:00.000You can go screw the other half of you, depending on which half you are that day.
00:21:14.000Okay, we're going to have a vape on because the vape was opposed to this bill.
00:21:19.000This is important because this is going to be ongoing now and you're going to see more wrinkles kind of highlighted.
00:21:25.000This vote had taken place, well just now, we know how they voted.
00:21:29.000Some people were making the argument That like Facebook, like Twitter before it was purchased by X, like YouTube, Google, of which there can be no doubt, they were attacking free speech, that the TikTok bill would be an attack on free speech.
00:22:20.000It's not even a Trojan horse, it's just a condom penetrating freedom.
00:22:25.000So Eric Swalwell, everyone's favorite, bang the Chinese spy, came out defending the Communist Chinese Party owned app under the guise of, I know Eric Swalwell, you're gonna say this doesn't make sense, I'll give some context after, the guise of free enterprise.
00:22:47.000I want to find ways, you know, to better, you know, restrict the use of data without, you know, taking away a platform that so many small businesses rely upon and so many young people, you know, use to communicate.
00:23:00.000And this would do nothing to look at other social media companies and, you know, and their data.
00:23:04.000So I, I just, I don't like bans on speech.
00:23:07.000You know, we really rely on young voters who don't know a whole lot and illegal immigrants who don't speak the language, so we don't want anything that might negatively affect that.
00:23:15.000This is the same guy, keep in mind, who said this about social media in 2021.
00:23:29.000I would call it a digital convention to rewrite and re-examine Privacy, data security, algorithm laws to make sure that we can protect consumers and they can still be connected in this new digital environment.
00:23:44.000So something like the Internet Bill of Rights, maybe?
00:24:34.000If this has nothing to do with China, how is it bullying China?
00:24:37.000Then China, just because, you know, they're looking out for you, right, the people who put Uyghurs in concentration camps and they arrest people if they have the wrong Bible, says, the U.S.
00:24:43.000cracked down on TikTok Trimpole upon its First Amendment rights!
00:25:54.000And it applies to companies that have ownership or control, right, that would be exhibited by these countries, that would be exerted by these countries, influence.
00:26:05.000So the ownership must meet this criteria.
00:26:07.000So those four countries, and the ownership has to be based on being headquartered or domiciled in said country, having their principal place of business in said country, or be organized under the laws of one of said countries, which are foreign adversaries,
00:26:23.000and the ownership stake must be at least 20 percent, again by one of said listed four
00:26:28.000countries. This would not apply to websites here in the United States. This would not apply to
00:26:32.000businesses that have distribution centers, for example, in China or in Iran. Yes.
00:26:38.000No, this isn't going to- I'm sure they have Sunglass Hut.
00:26:40.000I was a little confused by Matthew's thing.
00:26:43.000Do you think that TikTok does not have a web application and an app for phones as well?
00:26:47.000Yes, it says the word websites in there because it's being very broad in what it defines so somebody can't just skirt the rules and go, well, it's not an app.
00:27:17.000Even though I think we're getting pretty close considering that it's a communist hellhole.
00:27:20.000So I would like to ask you, knowing that that is what this bill entails, do you think it's appropriate?
00:27:26.000Do you think it's appropriate for the United States government?
00:27:28.000Is it the legitimate purview of the United States government?
00:27:32.000Those who are sworn to the Constitution to say, yeah, foreign adversaries, namely these four countries, if it is owned, operated, or headquartered by these four countries or affiliates therein, people who are affiliate-like companies who have Communist Chinese Party has direct ownership in, then you cannot operate in the United States because we don't know what your algorithms do and we know that you want to subvert our constitutional republic.
00:27:58.000You don't think there's going to be Chinese interference if they can determine exactly what you see and exactly what anyone under the age of 25 sees?
00:28:05.000So they claim to, here's another claim, that the bill threatens freedom of speech.
00:28:20.000Trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans deprived 5 million small business of a platform they rely on to grow and create job.
00:29:37.000Because we spoke freely in ways that would of course be in line with the First Amendment, Constitution, freedom of speech rights in the United States, and TikTok banned us quickly.
00:31:41.000We have laws that are very ineffective, and if you go and watch our piece on marijuana grow farms in Oklahoma, but there are laws that exist to prevent China, for example, from purchasing farmland.
00:31:51.000I believe they should be able to purchase zero farmland.
00:32:09.000A lot of people don't understand this.
00:32:10.000This is like during the Cold War saying that, you know, Russia could basically buy some TV stations and do propaganda in the United States.
00:32:16.000An actual war with Hitler saying, yeah, let's let Goebbels propaganda that you're playing in Germany.
00:32:20.000Let's let that be broadcast in the United States.
00:32:22.000Like, of course we're not going to do that.
00:32:24.000And all they're doing is saying you have to divest.
00:32:26.000You have to have a divestiture where you reduce that 20% down to something else.
00:32:30.000You have to meet these standards after 180 days.
00:34:41.000The Project Texas workers soon found a mountain, keyword mountain, of code from ByteDance waiting for them to verify each morning.
00:34:50.000Under pressure to work quickly, employees found the task to be impossible without more personnel, according to the people familiar with the unit.
00:34:57.000TikTok said, Oracle is monitoring all the data leaving Project Texas, but Oracle doesn't monitor- oh, it's TikTok, so.
00:35:06.000Oracle doesn't monitor the data employees share with each other over TikTok's internal messaging tools.
00:35:27.000Golden shares have become a useful tool to keep companies like these in line with party objectives without the need for the state being a major stakeholder.
00:35:34.000Now, this is something that people will bring up, just to be clear, if there's a potential conflict of interest.
00:35:39.000I'm not saying that there is, but this is relevant.
00:35:41.000Rand Paul, Thomas Massey have received very large swathes of funding from Jeff Yass, who owns a $33 billion stake in ByteDance.
00:35:51.000Now, it doesn't mean that you can't—and this is a chicken or the egg, by the way.
00:35:54.000Any biologist will tell you that—chicken?
00:36:01.000Someone has a stake in ByteDance who is saying, hey, there's a way to improve this, and we believe that through more effective legislation, you can improve the problems that exist within this company.
00:36:08.000It's not necessarily mean they're trying to get a leg up for their company, just to be clear.
00:36:12.000I just think it's relevant, it's worth noting.
00:36:14.000Another vocal opponent of the bill that just was voted on, sorry I don't want to say passed because Schoolhouse rocked this, but is Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:36:24.000President Trump just came out against a legislative measure that would require the owner of TikTok to divest it.
00:36:32.000It's currently a Chinese owner, a company called ByteDance, or else that it would be banned in the United States.
00:36:36.000President Trump just came out opposing that.
00:36:39.000I think that's the right decision, actually, of President Trump to oppose that legislation because it doesn't make any sense.
00:36:44.000This point about the divestment relates to a different concern.
00:38:22.000I'm sure that he has some reasoning here that, not that we've missed, but I would like to
00:38:27.000have a productive conversation with someone who I believe is an honest actor.
00:38:30.000In February of 2023, Vivek did tweet out, and yes, I'm very open to banning TikTok outright.
00:38:37.000In the meantime, we sit on our hands and do nothing as kids get addicted to it like it's digital fentanyl.
00:38:43.000Now, to be clear, he said, I am very open to.
00:38:46.000He didn't say I want to ban it outright, right?
00:38:49.000He did make sure to couch his words very carefully, but I would like to understand why his position has, according to some people, seemingly changed or what his position has always been, where it is right now.
00:39:51.000Okay, so Vivek, let me ask you this, because some people are characterizing this as flipping, meaning that you called it digital fentanyl, said you were open to an outright ban, and now you're saying, you know, don't pass the bill.
00:40:02.000The bill was just voted on, I'm sure you know, overwhelmingly.
00:40:06.000Okay, so clarify what your position was there and where it is now, what your opposition is to this, please.
00:40:14.000So first of all, TikTok has major problems.
00:40:16.000I have probably been, if you rewind even a few years, even before I was running for president, at the leading edge of pointing out a lot of the issues with addictive social media across the board, particularly with TikTok.
00:40:27.000And a position that I've adopted since the start of the campaign, I think I said this on day one, And I maintain today is that I think there is a reasonable case to be made for addictive social media, algorithmically powered addictive social media, to be banned outright in kids under the age of 16.
00:40:44.000That would include TikTok, it would also include other platforms.
00:40:49.000I prefer to, all else equal, when we have a choice, ban the bad behavior, not the individual actor or the individual company, because that sets a terrible precedent.
00:40:59.000So there's three major issues with TikTok, as I see it, right?
00:41:02.000I'm not some sort of TikTok fan apologist.
00:41:05.000To the contrary, we've got to see the problem with clear eyes.
00:41:07.000Problem number one is addictive tendencies in kids.
00:41:10.000Problem number two is forced data transfers or the potential of forced data transfers to the Chinese Communist Party.
00:41:17.000And problem number three is the people who run that platform, which could be the CCP, engaging in system-wide persuasion control, effectively tilting the levers of what people do or don't see.
00:41:33.000Is that this neither addresses those concerns, any of them, and I can explain why, while also massively expanding the authority of the federal government, particularly the executive branch, particularly President Biden right now, to be able to censor the speech of political opponents in ways that have nothing to do with TikTok.
00:41:51.000So the bill is both over-inclusive while also failing to do the thing that it supposedly is purporting to do.
00:41:59.000And the reason why is anytime you're in the business of creating a bill to go after one company, one actor, what our founding fathers referred to as bills of attender, this is a constitutional prohibition.
00:42:09.000Anyway, I think there's a good chance this will get challenged in the courts and thrown out for this very reason.
00:42:57.000And especially people, like, I do think, and here's the thing, sitting around with Section 230 and having been banned, you know, demonetized on YouTube, banned from TikTok for literally making fun of Xi Jinping.
00:43:07.000That's why we were banned from TikTok repeatedly.
00:43:10.000This is addressed in a way that says, OK, look, I didn't know that.
00:43:15.000It's disgusting when we do similar things in the United States.
00:43:17.000I don't know why you're demonetized on YouTube, but I suspect it could relate to speech that the U.S.
00:43:22.000jokes towards Xi Jinping. I think he's earned it, but you know, that's just me, Mr. Old-Fashioned.
00:43:26.000It's disgusting. It's disgusting when China does it. It's disgusting when we do similar
00:43:29.000things in the United States. I don't know why you're demonetized on YouTube, but I suspect
00:43:32.000it could relate to speech that the U.S. government finds offensive, and it's bad no matter who does.
00:43:35.000Well, when senators like Hirono and Pelosi are out there saying Mr. Crowder needs to be banned,
00:43:39.000and they say he hasn't violated policy, so we'll just remove millions of dollars.
00:43:42.000However, nothing ever happens with those.
00:43:44.000This is a rare instance where something can happen and I would actually argue that the reason this can get bipartisan support is because of the specificity.
00:43:51.000Because of the specificity that says, for foreign adversaries, 20% ownership, you know, if the data transfers occur, if they are headquartered or domiciled in these other countries, it is more specific than, for example, some of the left's legislation of hate speech or misinformation.
00:44:08.000So it's one of the rare instances, you know, I don't believe in common ground based on a lie.
00:44:12.000If I may, I may push back on that for just a second.
00:44:18.000It is a myth that Chinese ownership of the company is the only source of leverage that China has in order to decide how, say, data is or is not transferred to the behavior of companies.
00:44:31.000To the contrary, we have far greater evidence of even U.S.
00:44:35.000companies that do business in China handing over U.S.
00:44:39.000user data to the CCP than we have for TikTok itself.
00:44:43.000I'll give you a very specific example.
00:45:07.000users handed over to the CCP, presumably as a condition for Airbnb being able to do business.
00:45:14.000in China. So the fact that Airbnb isn't Chinese owned, it doesn't stop it from doing that. So my point about this
00:45:19.000bill building under inclusive is if the problem is transferring
00:45:22.000us user data to the CCP, transferring the ownership matters very little as long as there's another lever for
00:45:29.000actual control over those companies. I agree with a major problem.
00:45:32.000I do agree with it. Good. No, I agree. So I think that I think
00:45:35.000that the idea that we're just gonna Oh, now we change the ownership of this one company, massively expanded President
00:45:41.000Biden's authority to determine what platform does or doesn't count as being controlled by a foreign adversary to be able
00:45:46.000to shut it down, I think is a massive civil civil libertarian
00:45:51.000Without really any juice to address the core concern of Chinese leverage over the United States, when in fact that leverage plays out through so many levers other than equity ownership, against the backdrop of the further irony that we have companies from Google to Airbnb that have shown greater leverage to the Chinese Communist Party than this Chinese owned company.
00:46:11.000If I may push back, I agree with you, by the way.
00:46:12.000Last time I was in an Airbnb, I found a camera in the two-way mirror.
00:46:15.000I knew it was the CCP, and I said, get a look.
00:46:19.000Because I'm confident, you know, I'm right at the bell curve of average, but you know, it's okay.
00:46:24.000So my point here is, I understand that, however, those bills don't exist.
00:46:29.000TikTok does, there is not, I agree with you, this happens not only with Facebook and with YouTube, in the terms that they want their content to be palatable to foreign countries, right?
00:46:39.000And so they throttle content, just like we saw with the NBA, for example, where they couldn't speak out, they couldn't even acknowledge Taiwan.
00:46:45.000NBA, Black Rock, Disney, you go straight down the list.
00:46:49.000There's a lot of leverage for expanding.
00:46:55.000Your point is there is a starting point, right?
00:46:58.000You're not going to get a bill that will establish, hey, you guys can't allow this leverage even in catering to the content of foreign adversaries or transferring data.
00:47:08.000I think there's a very clean bill that should be passed.
00:47:10.000This is one that I would vehemently support.
00:47:12.000I'm not in Congress right now, thank God, but I think I would be able, if I were, I would push for this.
00:47:19.000Is a clean bill, irrespective of ownership, irrespective of domicile, it is fundamentally illegal for any U.S.
00:47:39.000We go after that regardless of who's actually doing it.
00:47:42.000And that reveals what's really going on, because I do think we're falling for a kind of trick here.
00:47:46.000One of the people playing the trick is it's a combination of, I think, a Biden-led administrative state that wants to expand its executive authority, an administration that's already been using platforms like Facebook, pressuring them through the back door to go after its political opponents.
00:48:00.000To expand the range of who they're able to go after, but to bring this full circle, here's the dirty little secret in Washington D.C.
00:48:06.000You know who's advocating for this bill?
00:48:08.000It's really the lobbyists hired by that very company, Facebook.
00:48:11.000And so we are falling for a Facebook-led lobbying campaign to deflect attention from the reality of Facebook engaging in some of the same behaviors it's accusing TikTok of, getting in bed with the government actor, not quite the CCP here, but the The deep state in the United States of America doing the same thing, deflecting attention, effectively sidelining one competitor, while actually being the product of one company's self-interested lobbying, as opposed to a full-fledged ban of the underlying behavior that actually would ensnare Facebook and Google and Airbnb, but which those companies have effectively lobbied their way out of being
00:49:25.000Well, I would say one thing about that.
00:49:26.000Federal courts rescinded that ban, right?
00:49:28.000And I do think that federal courts, and I think the Supreme Court, will come down against this one as well for some of the same reasons.
00:49:35.000Came down against that because that was an executive order, but will come down against this one in part because of the expanse of abuses inherent in a law that's this vague and this broad, directed effectively at one company that vests this much authority in the chief executive and the president.
00:49:48.000And I don't think we do ourselves any favors by saying, oh, there's a bill, only to see it rescinded, just like it happened last time around by the Supreme Court or by federal courts.
00:49:55.000I think that there's an opportunity where if you're just a consumer and I take an average person home and say, OK, something's come up.
00:50:17.000One thing in this bill is it's the sole authority in the U.S.
00:50:21.000President to make these determinations, which I think is a civil libertarian nightmare.
00:50:26.000If you think President Biden has unfairly, indirectly censored political opposition through the back door of tech companies, then it's probably a bad idea to give him even greater latitude to do it directly through the front door of this law.
00:50:39.000I completely agree with the sentiment.
00:50:43.000And you know that I've been, this has been my cause du jour long before anyone else has even come along the trail.
00:50:53.000I agree with everything you've just said, except this bill is specific enough that it doesn't do that.
00:50:58.000And I think you're going to have a really hard time saying, well, this bill is too broad, and then get any kind of traction with a bill that would say, Undue influence and the ability to have data transfer to a foreign entity of any kind.
00:51:10.000This is four specific adversaries listed, a specific type of ownership listed, either it being headquartered or domiciled.
00:51:16.000Something that specific, if we say that that can't happen, something more broad has no chance in hell.
00:51:39.000That's where the specificity comes from.
00:51:41.000Ownership is not the only lever that matters when you have the likes of Google that claimed, publicly told all of us, that it was exiting China under its don't be evil mantra, only to see years later that they had Project Dragonfly working with the CCP to create a censored search engine in China that was completely publicly not disclosed, a government contracting project with China, until leaks actually revealed it.
00:52:02.000The instances with Airbnb, I could enumerate other instances.
00:52:05.000The specificity was paid for by the lobbyists to carve out U.S.
00:52:20.000user has not expressly consented, not in some litany of general warranties that you just sign at the bottom through an adhesive agreement, But specific express consent to have their user data transferred to a government, either domestic or foreign, then a company cannot do it.
00:52:40.000And I think if we go to the hard nuts and bolts of the real issue lurking underneath all of this, Which is the data privacy and who owns the data of individual users that we're handing over to all of these tech companies, from TikTok to Chinese-owned to American-owned but Chinese-influenced.
00:53:03.000companies are lobbying against doing the thing that actually needs to be done.
00:53:06.000And so I don't take that for given, right?
00:53:08.000Because there's a reasonable point of view to say, OK, we live in a broken system.
00:53:11.000There's all kinds of broken lobbying from these Silicon Valleys who control these congressmen anyway.
00:53:15.000And so if the Silicon Valley companies control them and we take that for granted, then if this is the best we're going to get, let's at least go for it.
00:53:48.000If Airbnb or Google or anybody else is ensnared, so be it, because they should be.
00:53:52.000And the fact that they paid a bunch of lobbyists here more effectively than the other guys should not determine which laws we do or do not pass.
00:53:59.000I would have one disagree... Well, I would ask you to just blaze in on one point here.
00:54:03.000You said, because of TikTok's ownership, not their behavior.
00:54:07.000Do you actually believe that TikTok's behavior, their algorithms, and how they control content is not at least as egregious as Facebook?
00:54:16.000I don't have as much evidence for that.
00:54:19.000The truth is we don't have as much transparency into TikTok, but the ultimate irony of this, Stephen, is that if you look at the most egregious behaviors in the last 10 years of state actors pressuring a tech company to censor or moderate content in a particular way, engage in persuasion, tilting the scales of elections, engaging in forced data transfers to governments without permission, The places where we have greatest evidence of that, hard evidence, is actually for our US tech companies in Silicon Valley, working hand in glove in bed with US deep state actors.
00:54:51.000That's where we have the plainest evidence.
00:54:53.000So it's beyond bizarre that where we have the plainest evidence, we turn the other way.
00:54:57.000But where we have good circumstantial evidence to be concerned, that's where we've created the lightning rod when it advantages the very companies for whom we have the most damning evidence.
00:55:06.000So I just think we've got to be data driven there.
00:55:09.000But look, come on, Vivek, you're also, you're a brilliant man, you're a genius, far smarter than I, and you know that it will always be circumstantial evidence because we can't get to the evidence because of the lack of transparency of TikTok because of the Chinese ownership.
00:55:18.000Sure, and I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything.
00:55:20.000I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything.
00:55:21.000I'm saying we should do something that will have a significantly restrictive impact on TikTok, but it will also have a restrictive impact on anybody else who's trying to do the same thing.
00:55:29.000And let me just give you one more example here.
00:55:31.000Many of the top apps in the App Store are Chinese, actually, in the Apple App Store.
00:55:36.000TikTok is the one that managed to capture the public imagination right now.
00:55:40.000Even if you're looking at Chinese ownership, what are they going to do?
00:55:43.000They're going to effectively divest them through intermediary shell companies that have ownership that isn't technically Chinese at the top.
00:56:01.000This bill is going to have no impact other than forcing a divestment of one random company and a bunch of virtue-signaling Republicans patting themselves on the back.
00:56:08.000Twenty years later, when you have a regime that's been censoring political speech, using this as the basis to do it, decrying how we ever got here, exactly what we say about Republicans passing the Patriot Act 20 years ago.
00:56:18.000And so I just think as a Republican Party, we need to grow up and get back to first principles.
00:56:22.000Stop being pawns of the lobbyists that pay these politicians and use them as puppets.
00:56:26.000And see if there's a behavior that's problematic, and identify three that are relevant to tick tock that are absolutely problematic.
00:56:32.000Sure, great, ban the behavior, have the courage to do it, rather than have Facebook's write up some sort of legislation with some fake specificity to exclude Mark Zuckerberg founded meta, and then put it up and say, this is what we have to sign.
00:56:45.000And I refuse to just Play by the, you know, be a price taker, if you will, of what that broken lobbyist-influenced system puts up.
00:56:53.000And instead go back to actually first principles to say that if we're at first principles, this isn't the bill we'd be passing.
00:56:58.000We'd be stopping forced data transfers to the Chinese.
00:57:00.000We'd be protecting young people from addiction on social media.
00:57:03.000And any time a content platform is working with any state actor to engage in persuasion by up-regulating or down-regulating or censoring speech, that's a backdoor constitutional violation.
00:57:44.000There's a reason why Trump, Elon Musk, Rand Paul, Thomas Massey, myself, I think Tucker I was reading, it's a diverse array of libertarian and libertarian nationalist voices.
00:57:55.000I don't consider myself just a pure libertarian.
00:57:58.000I do believe that the world stage is a jungle, and we have to play by the rules of the autocrats on the globe.
00:58:04.000We don't have to play by their rules, but we have to acknowledge that they're not playing by our rules when we protect ourselves as a country.
00:58:09.000So I'm not some blithe, Friedmanite, dreaming libertarian just believing that everybody plays by our fantasy rules.
00:58:16.000We have serious issues with foreign adversaries that we actually need to deal with.
00:58:19.000But don't be duped into tricking ourselves to think that we did it when we didn't, while actually behaving more like the adversary in the process.
00:58:26.000Well, one final question, and Vivek, you know that we love you, appreciate you, of course.
00:58:31.000One thing I will say too, because you've talked about and I agree on the foreign, not only foreign adversary, but on the funding that comes from lobbyist groups.
00:58:39.000Everyone you just mentioned, including yourself, money from Jeff Yass, who owns a $33 billion stake in ByteDance.
00:58:45.000You're never going to get away from that question from your critics.
00:58:47.000Everyone you just named, it's a diverse coalition, except for one true... Everybody should ask the question, right?
00:59:08.000Do you think that the positions that I've taken in the campaign, do you think that those have been ones that have earned me more donors or lost to me more donors?
00:59:15.000I probably lost tens, if not maybe even a hundred million dollar plus donations over the course of the campaign because of positions I took on foreign policy and elsewhere.
00:59:23.000And I put 30 million on my own and probably would have put a lot more on my own if I stayed in the race.
00:59:27.000So if, you know, everyone has to make their own judgments, but put yourself... Well, that's a lot of money I put in.
00:59:35.000I can't say what a lot of what someone had to consume.
00:59:39.000But what I will say is that people should make their own judgments, right?
00:59:42.000Think for yourself, think independently.
00:59:44.000And I just encourage you to do the same thing with respect to who's actually putting up this particular bill.
00:59:50.000And I do think that it's important not to... See, the equivalent of me in this debate would have been to say, not make any of the points I made, but just say, Facebook is funding the bill, and that's it.
01:00:08.000So if you want to say that, you know, any of these politicians or myself or whatever else was supported by some guy, great, say it, but then don't use that as a substitute for engaging on the merits.
01:00:17.000Because the merits should be what govern.
01:00:19.000I do think very important merit would be that entire coalition, putting together and pushing for a bill that would require the kind of legislation that you claim would be productive, that would relate to Facebook, YouTube, X, and TikTok.
01:00:43.000If I ran for president, and I've been talking about this in the campaign, John, if I ever were president, you can take it to the bank that I would push head and shoulders all the way down for actual robust legislation to deal with this threat, but actually want to deal with the threat rather than pretending to while creating a civil libertarian nightmare in the process.
01:01:00.000And I hope that you would push head and shoulders, or at least sell some blue, for me to be reinstated on TikTok.
01:01:59.000Look, I agree, and I don't want to bring up the funding from Jeff Yass, but again, we've been sitting here for so long where nothing happens, and I do think that this bill is specific enough where, look, there's a world in which, he said fast forward it two, three years.
01:02:13.000I understand the concern of the executive power, right?
01:02:15.000However, this is something that Donald Trump did support at one point in time, and all these people did support at one point in time.
01:02:19.000He signed an executive order on it, right?
01:02:21.000He did exactly what- And it's not like the bill changed much since then.
01:02:24.000As a matter of fact, it's not like the bill got more broad.
01:02:26.000If you look at anything right now, you could argue that it got a little- it became a little bit more specific.
01:02:31.000Two years' time where TikTok has basically American ownership or American control over what happens in the United States, which I cannot see as a net negative at this point.
01:02:40.000I don't believe that any type of foreign adversary should be able to operate in the United States.
01:02:43.000And then maybe work on some legislation that also would include Facebook, YouTube, Airbnb, you know, the people spying on me there when I was at Opossum Kingdom, like, will grow up never feeling like real men.
01:02:56.000But start with something, and the issue that we see so much is nothing happens because they say this is, you know, a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
01:03:06.000And the irony is not lost on me, the idea of giving control over to the government, but they already control.
01:03:11.000I don't see this as giving control to the government so much as putting reins in on foreign governments and how the government can manipulate the digital town square, because they're doing it now.
01:03:20.000Yeah, so he kind of undercut his own argument in one way, and you lasered in on it a couple of times, but if Facebook and those other companies were so effective at fighting or getting this bill done on TikTok and making sure they were excluded, how much more effective, how much more money, how much more fight would they give if the bill actually targeted practices that they were engaging in specifically?
01:03:41.000So they've been effective here and got bipartisan support.
01:03:43.000Pretty much everybody jumped on board except for, I think, around 50 people in the House.
01:03:47.000We'll see how the Senate handles this.
01:04:02.000The president doesn't, in my opinion, and I'm not a legal scholar and I'm not a constitutional scholar, get more power than they already have here.
01:04:10.000What happened is that the court basically, Biden took over and did not pursue defending Trump's ban.
01:04:18.000It wasn't necessarily that it went all the way through the process and would have gone as far as Trump maybe would have pushed it had he stayed in office.
01:04:25.000I also think what we're trying to do as conservatives, Republicans, whatever you want to label yourself, as people who defend free speech, we want to make sure that you don't look like you flip-flop for money.
01:04:38.000Because somebody is going to bring that up and it might not be somebody who aligns with you and goes, You're just bought and paid for.
01:04:44.000I have a problem with Thomas Massie misrepresenting what is in this bill to people on Twitter so he can get clicks.
01:04:49.000I have a problem with Rand Paul making an argument that he knows is probably not true based on the reports that we have from the Oracle stuff and the New York Times article.
01:04:57.000I have a problem with Elon Musk saying the things that he's saying when you can go into the bill and see it's specifically for foreign adversary countries and specific indications on ownership.
01:05:07.000And I get that that's not broad enough and we can go a little bit further.
01:05:10.000They're not all making the same argument.
01:05:11.000That was going to be one of my points.
01:05:13.000Elon Musk has also been, I love what he's done to a very large degree.
01:05:19.000You won't find a greater Achilles heel than how soft Elon Musk has been on China.
01:05:23.000Let's be really clear about that because it's a very important market to him.
01:05:27.000And you will see a lot of, and I'm not saying Vivek, a lot of conservatives, a lot of quote-unquote populists who play ball For Elon Musk to get, you want to get in good with X?
01:05:41.000Just do me a favor, go and do your own research.
01:05:43.000The people who really rely on X, the people who maybe start their programs on X, the people who partner, tell me where they truly criticize China in a way that is actually damaging, in a way that is actually quantifiable.
01:06:12.000Maybe Jeff Yass would be thrilled to find out that Rumble would purchase at least the American portion of TikTok, have a controlling stake in the American portion, and allow freedom of speech and disallow foreign communist Chinese influence Maybe Jeff Yass actually could use the influence there to encourage the sale.
01:06:29.000Now I know obviously with ByteDance it might be a little bit complicated, but maybe there could be something that would be worked out where he would be looking out for you and guaranteeing that let's take steps in removing the power from foreign adversaries like the Communist Chinese Party and then stepping towards removing that influence through, for example, data, through, for example, algorithmic favors being done with companies like Facebook and YouTube, etc.
01:06:52.000You can find the same thing on YouTube.
01:09:08.000Okay, so before we go, we're going to, if you are watching, we're going to continue discussing First Amendment and all of the speech infringements that take place across the globe right now.
01:09:17.000For example, people being arrested for karaoke singing, kung fu fighting.
01:09:21.000Or making fun of Prime Ministers in foreign countries.
01:10:11.000And that at least gives us something to work with instead of going, well, they just flipped because some guy donated money to their campaigns.
01:10:17.000I think it's important to be able to articulate that argument.
01:10:20.000Before we leave, hey, Mission Control, get us the update on the judge dismissing some of the counts against Trump in Georgia.
01:10:26.000I'm sure people will want to know about that.
01:10:28.000Before we go to Mug Club, and of course we will see you tomorrow, we have the clip now just so you can see the undue influence of the Communist Chinese Party.
01:10:37.000Here is John Cena on his knees, Jacob Marley, on his knees apologizing to China for acknowledging that Taiwan might actually exist, and then it's pissed off YouTube.