Rebel News Podcast - Antifa burns down Minneapolis with help from the mayor. But Twitter thinks Trump is the problem

00:00:00.000 Hello, Rebels. Today, I take you through Donald Trump's new executive order for fighting Twitter censorship and other Silicon Valley bias.

00:00:10.040 I also take you through some videos from last night's riots in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

00:00:17.640 In both cases, I think it helps to have the video version of this podcast.

00:00:21.920 And I know I say that a lot, but it's true. We're primarily a video medium.

00:00:25.720 And to get the video version, you have to become a member of what we call Rebel News Plus.

00:00:29.260 It's eight bucks a month or 80 bucks for the whole year in advance.

00:00:32.940 And you can just get it at rebelnews.com.

00:00:35.460 And it supports us and you get video version of the show plus Sheila Gunn-Reed's show and David Menzies' show.

00:00:42.600 Okay, here's today's show.

00:00:59.260 Tonight, Antifa burns down Minneapolis with the assistance of its mayor.

00:01:04.140 But Twitter thinks Donald Trump is the problem.

00:01:06.780 It's May 29th and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:09.160 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:15.020 There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.

00:01:19.080 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:24.960 Rioters burned down Minneapolis last night.

00:01:33.440 It's nominally in response to an act of police brutality against this man, George Floyd.

00:01:39.800 He was killed.

00:01:40.760 Cops crushed him.

00:01:42.240 Apparently, it was in response to an alleged forgery incident, which is a non-violent crime.

00:01:47.660 The four cops involved in that were fired and I think they'll probably be charged.

00:01:54.160 The one in particular, the strange details, that cop that put his knee on his head worked security at the same nightclub as Floyd, the victim, himself did.

00:02:08.220 It's very strange.

00:02:09.740 But the details, I think, are secondary.

00:02:12.680 The video of the brutality is all that mattered and the city was torched and looted.

00:02:17.660 I have become more conservative in my middle age on most things, immigration, pro-life, nationalism.

00:02:24.720 But I have become more liberal on two things, trade deals and police brutality.

00:02:31.760 Just this week, our own Kian Bexty was strong-armed out of a Trudeau press conference for no reason at all,

00:02:37.440 other than Justin Trudeau's personal staff hate him.

00:02:40.500 Obviously, there's no comparison between that and what happened to George Floyd,

00:02:43.760 other than both were physical acts of violence committed by police in excess of their lawful powers.

00:02:50.500 Again, no comparison in degree.

00:02:53.340 But I'm getting a little sick of it.

00:02:55.820 Our David Menzies was literally thrown to the ground by police, acting at the behest of that coward Ron McClain last year.

00:03:02.220 In both cases, we're suing.

00:03:03.760 We're suing the York Regional Police, who assaulted David,

00:03:07.560 and we're suing the Privy Council Office for blocking Kian's access to the press conferences.

00:03:12.100 But, look, those are the remedies of a corporation with some legal know-how

00:03:16.560 and supporters who are generous enough to crowdfund our expenses.

00:03:20.140 And we've got some patience.

00:03:22.340 But what if you're a poor black man in Minneapolis?

00:03:24.540 This is awful to watch.

00:03:27.480 And if you're black, you surely identify with him.

00:03:29.680 And it confirms your worst fears about the police.

00:03:32.280 But there are plenty of people who would take that apparent injustice and exploit it for political purposes.

00:03:38.400 I say that everyone in America condemned this, from the top to the bottom, and of all parties.

00:03:43.340 But it's an opportunity.

00:03:45.320 Take this guy, Keith Ellison.

00:03:47.380 He's the Attorney General of Minnesota.

00:03:49.700 And that's him posing with the Antifa handbook.

00:03:54.920 They're a violent leftist street gang.

00:03:56.860 Here's the Attorney General.

00:03:58.760 Do you see the problem here with him endorsing the terrorist group that torched the city?

00:04:03.800 Well, probably you don't if you're a Democrat.

00:04:05.980 I mean, if that were a white Republican who was praising a white racist militia

00:04:11.780 and who had a track record of being abusive to women, as Ellison does,

00:04:16.960 well, that white Republican would be out in a heartbeat.

00:04:19.300 But Ellison is a black Democrat, and he was the first Muslim congressman in America.

00:04:25.080 It would be racist to criticize him, you see.

00:04:27.540 Minneapolis isn't what it once was.

00:04:29.380 It's now the city of Ilhan Omar, the largest Somali population in America.

00:04:34.620 How's that going?

00:04:35.780 Do you feel more comfortable living under American law,

00:04:39.220 or do you feel more comfortable living under Sharia law?

00:04:44.820 Sharia law.

00:04:46.160 I'm a Muslim.

00:04:47.060 I prefer Sharia law.

00:04:48.160 Sharia law, yes.

00:04:50.360 You prefer Sharia law over American law? 0.81

00:04:54.140 Of course, yeah.

00:04:55.300 Of course, yeah.

00:04:57.260 And do you find most of your friends feel the same way?

00:05:01.180 Yeah, of course, if you're Muslim, yeah.

00:05:02.480 Oh, that's how it's going.

00:05:04.640 But it was politicians and activists and Antifa, and I think a city that's being cooped up for two months,

00:05:11.700 going stir-crazy from the pandemic.

00:05:13.940 And of course, the media lighting the fuse, and the place just blew up.

00:05:18.100 Here are people looting stores, stealing televisions, stealing clothes, just smashing things.

00:05:25.820 Not sure what the connection is between looting and George Floyd.

00:05:30.660 That's just stealing.

00:05:32.100 That's just opportunistic theft.

00:05:34.340 Is that fighting against the system and the man?

00:05:37.360 Yeah, not when you're burning down small mom-and-pop stores owned by black businessmen.

00:05:43.860 No.

00:05:44.700 Take a look at this clip from MSNBC.

00:05:46.880 I want to be clear in how I characterize this.

00:05:50.160 This is mostly a protest.

00:05:52.760 It is not, generally speaking, unruly.

00:05:56.920 But fires have been started, and there's a crowd that is...

00:05:59.760 Yeah, got it.

00:06:01.460 He's standing in the middle of a riot zone.

00:06:03.940 It looks like Mogadishu, frankly.

00:06:05.780 Total war zone.

00:06:06.540 Fires burning all around him.

00:06:08.300 No law, no order in sight.

00:06:09.940 And he says, oh, it's just a protest.

00:06:12.160 It's a peaceful protest.

00:06:13.340 He reminds me of Baghdad, Bob.

00:06:14.800 Well, Saddam Hussein's spin doctor in the Gulf War. 0.60

00:06:18.720 I liked this video that I found online.

00:06:22.180 Lawful black gun owners standing guard outside their own businesses. 0.98

00:06:25.900 They weren't going to let their life's work be torched by Antifa or Black Lives Matter or

00:06:30.740 looters or anyone.

00:06:32.120 And they sure weren't going to rely on politicians like Ilhan Omar or Minneapolis's cartoon of a

00:06:38.280 liberal mayor.

00:06:38.860 His name is Jacob Fry.

00:06:40.320 When rioters started to attack a police station, seriously, a police station, Fry ordered the

00:06:48.600 police to surrender.

00:06:49.960 He ordered them to run away.

00:06:51.700 Or as he put it, I love this, he said, to evacuate.

00:06:54.920 The danger was, the danger became necessary, and I made the decision to evacuate the third

00:07:06.800 precinct.

00:07:07.660 What?

00:07:08.300 Yeah.

00:07:08.900 Believe it or not, in the last mayor's election in Minneapolis, he was not the most anti-police

00:07:13.620 candidate.

00:07:14.080 He actually beat the guy who actually wanted to disarm police.

00:07:17.700 So, the city burns, riots, mobs, looting, but no policing.

00:07:22.880 The mayor says policing is racist or something.

00:07:26.100 This feels like Obama's America, not like Trump's America.

00:07:29.640 And it is actually.

00:07:30.720 Minnesota used to be Republican, obviously, if you can believe it, but the generation of 1.00

00:07:34.560 mass immigration, especially from Somalia, has changed that.

00:07:38.440 Don't think Trudeau hasn't noticed.

00:07:40.620 Here is Trudeau's Somali cabinet minister, Ahmed Hassan, with Somalia's Ilhan Omar.

00:07:45.860 Hey, didn't that mayor sort of remind you of Trudeau, too?

00:07:49.580 Anyways, Trump was watching all this, of course, and he didn't like what he saw, so he tweeted

00:07:53.840 this at 1 a.m. last night.

00:07:55.680 He said, I can't stand back and watch this happen to a great American city, Minneapolis.

00:08:00.140 A total lack of leadership.

00:08:01.680 Either the very weak, radical left mayor, Jacob Fry, get his act together and bring the

00:08:06.260 city under control, or I will send in the National Guard and get the job done right.

00:08:10.220 Those thugs are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen.

00:08:16.720 Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him the military is with him all the way.

00:08:20.340 Any difficulty, and we will assume control, but when the looting starts, the shooting starts.

00:08:24.640 Thank you.

00:08:26.320 I think he's right about the total lack of leadership.

00:08:28.580 Telling police to run away and let black neighborhoods burn isn't leadership.

00:08:35.120 The city is indeed out of control.

00:08:37.260 Here's how Jacob Fry answered that.

00:08:38.800 Weakness is refusing to take responsibility for your own actions.

00:08:43.920 Weakness is pointing your finger at somebody else during a time of crisis.

00:08:50.040 Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis.

00:08:54.140 We are strong as hell.

00:08:56.420 Is this a difficult time period?

00:08:58.180 Yes, but you better be damn sure that we're going to get through this.

00:09:01.940 He even looks the part, doesn't he?

00:09:03.800 He's the perfect anti-Trump.

00:09:05.880 But look again at that second tweet by Trump.

00:09:08.020 If you click on it, on your computer, you can't actually read it.

00:09:11.560 You get this warning.

00:09:13.000 This tweet violated the Twitter rules about glorifying violence.

00:09:17.020 However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the tweet to remain accessible, learn more.

00:09:22.920 And if you click through that warning, you can see it.

00:09:25.280 But you can't retweet it.

00:09:26.620 You can't like it.

00:09:27.520 You can't share it normally.

00:09:28.680 Unfortunately, all the normal social media tools are removed.

00:09:31.480 And of course, there's the denunciation of it all.

00:09:35.020 Just like Twitter did earlier this week to Trump when he warned about voter fraud in mail-in ballots.

00:09:39.560 Twitter is going to war against Donald Trump.

00:09:43.000 But look at that.

00:09:43.800 They claim Trump was glorifying violence.

00:09:46.180 They didn't say that about the rioters, though, who were doing violence and glorifying it.

00:09:52.780 They didn't say that about Minnesota's Attorney General, Keith Ellison,

00:09:56.340 the abusive boyfriend who poses with an Antifa terrorist manual.

00:10:00.480 There are literally thousands of tweets glorifying the riots, calling for the riots, whipping up the riots, calling for murder right now.

00:10:05.840 I don't know if a single one of them has been censored other than that of the President of the United States,

00:10:11.260 whose constitutional duties, if you care about such things, include an oath of office to, quote,

00:10:16.160 support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

00:10:22.760 It is absolutely Trump's job to stand up to violent political riots, which are a species of terrorism, especially if the mayor won't.

00:10:29.260 Trump said he's ready to send in the National Guard.

00:10:31.040 He appropriately consulted with the governor, a Democrat, I might add.

00:10:34.180 Perhaps his flourish, that rhyme, looting and shooting, is not quite as somber as the censors at Twitter might like,

00:10:40.740 because, as you know, Twitter is nothing if not dignified.

00:10:44.040 But there's nothing wrong with the tweet.

00:10:46.000 But Twitter has declared war on Trump.

00:10:47.740 They made it clear they're going to not only limit him and what he says,

00:10:51.940 but they're also going to shame him and rebut him and attack him in the guise of being neutral.

00:10:56.460 Well, Trump has had enough.

00:10:58.660 Yesterday afternoon, he rolled out his executive order on preventing censorship.

00:11:02.160 I'll read some of it to you.

00:11:03.600 Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy.

00:11:06.920 Our founding fathers protected this right with the First Amendment to the Constitution.

00:11:11.020 The freedom to express and debate ideas is the foundation for all of our rights as a free people.

00:11:16.700 That's a good way to start.

00:11:18.360 Those are words Trudeau probably would never say, but Trudeau does say some free speech cliches.

00:11:23.560 Sometimes he just doesn't mean them.

00:11:25.200 Here is Trump, and I think he means them.

00:11:26.780 In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression,

00:11:29.600 we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to handpick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the Internet.

00:11:36.340 This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic.

00:11:39.880 When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree,

00:11:43.960 they exercise a dangerous power.

00:11:45.980 They cease functioning as passive bulletin boards and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators.

00:11:51.040 That's exactly right.

00:11:53.120 And the reason that's important is because if you're just a bulletin board where anyone can tack up a poster,

00:11:58.660 you're not a publisher.

00:11:59.500 You can't be held liable for the words that other people put on you.

00:12:03.060 But if you actively police and censor and choose what goes on your bulletin board,

00:12:07.680 well, that's what Twitter is doing.

00:12:09.320 Well, here's what.

00:12:10.080 Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power

00:12:15.160 to shape the interpretation of public events,

00:12:17.940 to censor, delete, or disappear information,

00:12:21.100 and to control what people see or do not see.

00:12:24.300 As president, I have made clear my commitment to free and open debate on the Internet.

00:12:28.740 Such debate is just as important online as it is in our universities,

00:12:32.200 our town halls, and our homes.

00:12:34.200 It is essential to sustaining our democracy.

00:12:37.700 That's true.

00:12:38.460 It's the town square now.

00:12:39.660 If you're not allowed online, it would be like a generation ago,

00:12:42.580 you're not being allowed to go to a physical meeting hall, a town hall.

00:12:46.240 It's just not allowed.

00:12:48.060 The Internet is where we live so much, as the pandemic has shown us in a weird way.

00:12:54.540 Online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse.

00:12:59.400 Tens of thousands of Americans have reported, among other troubling behaviors,

00:13:03.100 online platforms flagging content as inappropriate,

00:13:06.000 even though it does not violate any stated terms of service,

00:13:08.760 making unannounced and unexplained changes to company policies that have the effect of disfavoring certain viewpoints,

00:13:14.960 and deleting content in entire accounts with no warning, no rationale, and no recourse.

00:13:19.280 Exactly. When Trudeau censors me, I hate it.

00:13:23.480 But there are some rules, and I have some recourse.

00:13:26.380 It's expensive, it's slow, it's an uphill battle, but there is a process.

00:13:30.220 What do I do if I'm suddenly deleted on YouTube or Twitter?

00:13:33.140 There's no Twitter court.

00:13:34.480 I don't even know who would have done it to me, or why, or who complained, or what I did wrong.

00:13:38.300 Now, there's a lot of interesting commentary in the executive order,

00:13:41.700 but I'm going to skip over it in the interest of time.

00:13:44.040 But here's the key part.

00:13:45.420 And you've heard me talk about this before, about a year ago,

00:13:48.360 Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

00:13:51.400 It's what makes social media companies unsuable.

00:13:55.500 Section 2, protections against online censorship.

00:13:58.160 It is the policy of the United States to foster clear ground rules

00:14:01.660 promoting free and open debate on the Internet.

00:14:04.420 Prominent among the ground rules governing that debate is the immunity from liability

00:14:08.320 created by Section 230C of the Communications Decency Act.

00:14:13.220 It is the policy of the United States that the scope of that immunity should be clarified.

00:14:17.360 The immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose

00:14:20.400 to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech,

00:14:25.100 but in reality use the power over a vital means of communication

00:14:28.560 to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions,

00:14:32.500 stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints.

00:14:36.380 So just to be clear, when an Internet company allows something to be published,

00:14:40.100 you can't sue them.

00:14:42.260 It's like a phone booth.

00:14:44.120 The phone company doesn't regulate what people say

00:14:46.220 when they talk on the phone in the phone booth,

00:14:48.180 so you can't sue the phone booth or the phone company for what people say through it, right?

00:14:52.560 Same with the Internet.

00:14:53.320 Unless the phone company would actually, I don't know,

00:14:56.160 have someone listening in on your calls telling you what you could or couldn't say

00:14:59.200 or telling you to say something else,

00:15:00.600 then it would be an active publisher, a participant, a censor, an editor.

00:15:04.620 Section 230 provides the Internet version of that phone booth.

00:15:07.760 It protects them.

00:15:08.900 It also legally protects the Internet

00:15:10.440 if they positively do censor things that are awful,

00:15:13.720 like illegal child pornography, just as an example,

00:15:16.860 if it's done in good faith.

00:15:17.860 But it doesn't protect political meddling.

00:15:21.800 It is the policy of the United States to ensure that,

00:15:23.840 to the maximum extent permissible under the law,

00:15:26.680 this provision is not distorted to provide liability protection

00:15:29.880 for online platforms that, far from acting in good faith,

00:15:32.920 to remove objectionable content,

00:15:35.100 instead engage in deceptive or pretextual actions,

00:15:38.480 often contrary to their stated terms of service,

00:15:40.860 to stifle viewpoints with which they disagree.

00:15:43.320 Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies

00:15:47.800 to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse

00:15:51.600 under the guise of promoting open forums for debate

00:15:54.280 and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity

00:15:57.780 when they use their power to censor content

00:15:59.680 and silence viewpoints that they dislike.

00:16:02.340 When an interactive computer service provider

00:16:05.240 removes or restricts access to content

00:16:07.680 and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph C2A,

00:16:11.820 it is engaged in editorial conduct.

00:16:15.420 It is the policy of the United States that such a provider

00:16:17.440 should properly lose the limited liability shield

00:16:21.020 of subparagraph C2A

00:16:23.160 and be exposed to liability like any traditional editor

00:16:26.340 and publisher that is not an online provider.

00:16:29.580 Okay, that was a little long,

00:16:31.080 but what's happening now is under this order,

00:16:34.720 the Section 230 immunity,

00:16:36.380 that's basically a huge subsidy to the Internet,

00:16:38.520 since it absolutely removes from the Internet

00:16:41.040 countless lawsuits, including defamation lawsuits,

00:16:44.600 that bedevil other publishers.

00:16:46.600 So Section 230 will only apply to Internet companies going forward

00:16:50.180 if they act in good faith,

00:16:52.620 including that they not engage in the following things.

00:16:57.120 A, deceptive, pretextual, or inconsistent

00:16:59.420 with a provider's terms of service,

00:17:01.720 or B, taken after failing to provide adequate notice,

00:17:05.800 reasoned explanation, or a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

00:17:09.520 So, from now on,

00:17:12.600 Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google,

00:17:15.260 they can't trick you, they can't lie to you,

00:17:17.200 they can't have secret political filters,

00:17:19.820 they can still be immune

00:17:21.940 to litigation like a phone booth is,

00:17:24.120 but only if they are truly neutral and fair

00:17:27.080 like the phone booth is.

00:17:29.180 And I think the most interesting part

00:17:30.640 is a call for a review of Internet companies

00:17:32.720 in concert with the states

00:17:35.080 about the following.

00:17:36.380 Increased scrutiny of users

00:17:39.600 based on the other users they choose to follow

00:17:42.720 or their interactions with other users.

00:17:45.580 Algorithms to suppress content or users

00:17:47.780 based on indications of political alignment or viewpoint.

00:17:51.160 Differential policies allowing for otherwise impermissible behavior

00:17:54.240 when committed by accounts associated with the Chinese Communist Party

00:17:57.440 or other anti-democratic associations or governments.

00:18:00.440 Reliance on third-party entities including contractors,

00:18:04.480 media organizations, and individuals

00:18:06.080 with indicia of bias to review content.

00:18:09.240 And acts that limit the ability of users

00:18:11.380 with particular viewpoints to earn money on the platform

00:18:13.720 compared with other users similarly situated.

00:18:16.180 It's like he's talking directly to me.

00:18:20.740 That's exactly what happens to us.

00:18:22.360 The demonetization, the shadow banning,

00:18:24.680 the de-boosting, as YouTube calls it,

00:18:27.140 when they smother your content and downrank it.

00:18:29.780 All of that happens to us.

00:18:31.820 We talked about two things today.

00:18:33.980 The riots and looting in Minneapolis

00:18:35.660 and then the president's executive order,

00:18:38.160 including the review of social media.

00:18:39.620 In a way, the two things couldn't be more opposite,

00:18:41.840 more different, less related,

00:18:42.960 but they are related

00:18:43.920 because social media is how we learn about the world now.

00:18:46.900 It's how we talk amongst each other.

00:18:48.240 It's how our leaders communicate to us and vice versa.

00:18:51.740 It's how criminals foment riots.

00:18:54.000 It's how politicians react or not.

00:18:56.640 Twitter has decided that this riot is the moment

00:18:58.880 they're going to de-platform the president of the United States,

00:19:02.520 but let the fires of the riot keep burning.

00:19:05.800 Trump has decided this is the moment he's going to push back.

00:19:09.140 I expect more riots before the 2020 election.

00:19:11.740 It's the George Soros way.

00:19:13.300 He's a major funder of Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

00:19:16.080 He likes this chaos.

00:19:17.320 He thinks it hits Trump.

00:19:18.840 It makes Trump look chaotic and out of control,

00:19:21.400 and it takes away hopes for an economic success

00:19:24.080 that Trump was counting on.

00:19:26.260 And I expect that Twitter and the rest of Silicon Rally knows

00:19:28.780 that if they don't knock Trump out now,

00:19:32.940 his second term will be something they and all other liberals hate.

00:19:36.540 We're in the big battle now, folks.

00:19:38.620 I wonder how it's going to end.

00:19:39.940 Stay with us for more on this.

00:19:42.140 The choices that Twitter makes when it chooses to suppress,

00:19:57.300 edit, blacklist, shadow, ban,

00:20:00.600 are editorial decisions, pure and simple.

00:20:03.120 They're editorial decisions.

00:20:05.060 In those moments, Twitter ceases to be a neutral public platform,

00:20:08.720 and they become an editor with a viewpoint.

00:20:11.780 And I think we can say that about others also,

00:20:13.940 whether you're looking at Google,

00:20:15.200 whether you're looking at Facebook,

00:20:16.540 and perhaps others.

00:20:18.660 Well, there you have it, Donald Trump reiterating the difference

00:20:23.140 between being a neutral platform, like a bulletin board,

00:20:26.520 or my favorite example, like a phone booth,

00:20:29.240 versus being a publisher with editorial opinions,

00:20:31.860 who is legally responsible for their conduct.

00:20:35.140 Joining us now via Skype is our friend Alam Bokhari,

00:20:37.820 a senior tech correspondent for Breitbart.com.

00:20:40.260 Great to see you again, Alam.

00:20:41.880 Hey, Ezra.

00:20:42.320 Hi, you and I have been talking about this very subject for years, really,

00:20:47.640 Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

00:20:50.900 And when I first heard of this, I thought,

00:20:52.980 what's communications decency?

00:20:54.640 That sounds like a law about obscenity or pornography,

00:20:57.140 and indeed it is,

00:20:58.400 but it's the source of the immunity for tech companies.

00:21:02.800 If they just behave neutrally,

00:21:05.360 no one gets to sue them for publishing a bad thing

00:21:09.380 if they did it in good faith by accident, right?

00:21:12.320 So that was the source of their legal immunity

00:21:14.680 that's probably worth billions to them,

00:21:16.940 because they're just not sued like a newspaper is.

00:21:19.620 But if they're going to start acting like a newspaper,

00:21:21.320 they're going to be on the hook for it.

00:21:22.340 That's basically my takeaway.

00:21:23.660 Is that your takeaway from this executive order, too?

00:21:26.720 Absolutely.

00:21:27.260 The thing to understand is a social media platform

00:21:30.140 can't really function without this legal immunity,

00:21:32.520 because they'd have to assume legal responsibility

00:21:35.960 for what millions and billions of users post on their platform.

00:21:40.500 That's an impossible legal risk to take.

00:21:42.980 So it would destroy social media companies' very business model.

00:21:47.040 So you'll think they'd be especially keen to preserve it.

00:21:51.740 And yet, with all the censorship we've seen over the past four years,

00:21:56.280 they're now acting like publishers

00:21:57.420 who do have legal responsibility for what they publish.

00:22:00.240 So they're threatening their own legal immunities, really.

00:22:03.300 That's central to their business model.

00:22:05.060 And I think that's why this has been a huge focus for Republican lawmakers,

00:22:09.900 and indeed Democrat lawmakers as well,

00:22:11.760 because they know this is crucial to the way the Internet works right now.

00:22:15.960 The problem with it is that, in my view,

00:22:18.680 it's not the legal immunity for hosting content.

00:22:20.620 That's defensible.

00:22:23.120 But the law also contains legal immunity for taking down content,

00:22:26.700 something I don't think they need,

00:22:28.220 because they do that in a much more limited number of cases

00:22:31.340 than compared to what they host.

00:22:34.500 You know, what often gets lost in this debate

00:22:37.120 is the fact that I don't think social media platforms

00:22:40.960 or tech platforms need to censor anything

00:22:42.860 that's First Amendment protected, even obscenity.

00:22:45.580 So, you know, Google, when it still believed in free speech,

00:22:51.240 going way back to the very start of the company,

00:22:55.180 has had a safe search option that you can voluntarily turn on or off

00:22:59.540 if you want to filter out of the scene results.

00:23:01.900 So these platforms can very easily develop custom filters

00:23:06.420 for any kind of content you can imagine

00:23:08.260 and then leave it up to users what they want to filter in and filter out.

00:23:11.880 The reason why they haven't been doing that over the past four years

00:23:15.180 is because they want to control information.

00:23:17.520 They and other progressive elites realize

00:23:20.180 they're losing the public debate, they're losing elections,

00:23:23.960 and that unless they clamp down on free speech,

00:23:26.080 unless they get back control over the flow of information,

00:23:29.700 like, you know, the good old days of cable news

00:23:31.760 when, you know, MSNBC and CNN filtered everything

00:23:34.380 that, you know, Americans got to hear,

00:23:37.060 then they're going to continue to lose.

00:23:39.120 They can't win on the basis of facts.

00:23:40.600 They can't win a fair debate,

00:23:41.620 so they have to censor public debate instead.

00:23:44.180 You know, that's a great point,

00:23:46.620 because, of course, you still can find indecent or obscene things

00:23:50.960 on the Internet in a hurry.

00:23:53.800 And you're right, that safe search or parental lock,

00:23:57.840 or these things are available if people willingly take them

00:24:02.000 or want them, and a lot of people do.

00:24:03.360 I mean, there's a lot of parents want to put filters

00:24:07.360 on what their kids see,

00:24:08.380 but this is about Google executives putting filters

00:24:12.140 about what grown-ups can see

00:24:14.880 without the grown-ups choosing it.

00:24:16.700 I mean, the choice of YouTube,

00:24:19.620 or, sorry, in this case, Twitter,

00:24:21.380 putting huge warning alerts

00:24:23.740 on Donald Trump's political opinions

00:24:25.880 is so far removed from communications decency,

00:24:30.500 and it's so ham-fishing.

00:24:32.100 I've got to ask you this.

00:24:34.140 Alan, you and I were always saying,

00:24:35.860 when is the president going to do something?

00:24:38.400 And I thought he never would.

00:24:40.580 It's almost like Twitter wants to pick a fight,

00:24:44.440 and, boy, they've picked one now.

00:24:47.440 Is this part of a strategy by Twitter?

00:24:49.480 Because, I mean, they're doubling down.

00:24:51.280 They're having blinking lights and flashing buttons

00:24:54.420 and hiding things and rebuttals,

00:24:56.220 and they're even being snarky.

00:24:58.880 There's a little Twitter public policy team

00:25:01.480 that's being snarky to Trump.

00:25:04.960 What's their strategy?

00:25:06.240 I'm just shocked by how brazen Twitter is.

00:25:08.240 I think they think they're bigger

00:25:09.040 than the president of the United States.

00:25:10.400 I don't know.

00:25:10.700 Maybe they are.

00:25:11.140 What do you think?

00:25:12.720 It is brazen, and they're still doing it today.

00:25:15.260 They hit another one of Trump's tweets

00:25:17.180 about the riots in Minneapolis,

00:25:19.200 falsely claiming he was glorifying violence.

00:25:21.780 He was simply saying that, you know,

00:25:23.540 if the looting and riots continue,

00:25:25.140 the military force will be used,

00:25:26.460 probably a valid statement

00:25:27.560 for a head of government to say.

00:25:30.500 Meanwhile, they haven't taken down,

00:25:32.720 done anything similar to tweets

00:25:34.080 from Ayatollah Khomeini, for example,

00:25:36.600 encouraging, you know,

00:25:37.920 attacks of terrorism in Israel.

00:25:40.160 So there's no sense of fair standards here at all.

00:25:43.740 And, you know, going back

00:25:45.340 to what you were saying earlier,

00:25:46.800 these companies are harsher

00:25:48.240 on valid political speech

00:25:50.340 than they are on actual obscenity,

00:25:52.200 and that should tell you something.

00:25:53.180 I personally think that everything

00:25:54.960 should be optional.

00:25:55.900 If they insist on, you know,

00:25:58.320 having these stupid categories

00:25:59.800 like hate speech and fake news,

00:26:03.180 you'd think that at the very least

00:26:04.640 that allow users to choose

00:26:06.300 whether they want to filter that in

00:26:08.260 or filter that out or not,

00:26:09.280 and yet then they don't.

00:26:10.860 And the reason for that

00:26:11.520 is because they want control now.

00:26:13.340 These are not the free speech platform

00:26:15.600 that they were 10 or 15 years ago.

00:26:17.640 Yeah.

00:26:17.920 Oh, exactly.

00:26:18.480 They don't want to let you make that choice.

00:26:21.100 And by the way,

00:26:21.960 I wouldn't trust their filter.

00:26:23.960 What they consider hate speech,

00:26:25.260 I would probably consider breaking news

00:26:27.460 or an alternative point of view

00:26:29.120 or just, you know,

00:26:31.040 I mean, they deem hate speech,

00:26:32.720 speech, frankly, that they hate.

00:26:35.800 How is this going to happen?

00:26:37.000 Because I've seen a few other tech people

00:26:38.900 like Tyler Winklevoss,

00:26:40.840 who was one of the early executives

00:26:43.100 of Facebook that got bought out.

00:26:44.800 He sort of has an independent spirit

00:26:47.320 and he seems to be mocking Twitter a little bit.

00:26:50.580 How are the rest of the social media companies,

00:26:53.080 like Twitter picked this fight

00:26:54.380 and Trump's responding to it,

00:26:56.380 but his response will really hit

00:26:58.480 every social media company.

00:27:00.520 I see the Winklevosses seem to be siding with Trump,

00:27:03.340 if I'm not mistaken.

00:27:04.800 Are there other tech spokesmen, for example,

00:27:08.480 I don't know, Peter Thiel,

00:27:09.520 who's been an ally of Trump.

00:27:12.180 Is there anyone out there,

00:27:13.180 and Zuckerberg's been trying to have

00:27:14.620 a modus vivendi with Trump.

00:27:17.560 Are there other tech leaders

00:27:18.600 who are weighing in on this yet?

00:27:20.640 Well, you know,

00:27:21.220 I think behind the scenes in Silicon Valley,

00:27:22.920 especially some of the venture capitalists,

00:27:25.420 they're not happy with the way

00:27:27.080 Silicon Valley has conducted it.

00:27:28.680 These big tech companies

00:27:29.720 have conducted themselves

00:27:30.820 over the past few years.

00:27:33.180 There are all sorts of people in Silicon Valley

00:27:36.180 who are, you know,

00:27:37.280 uneasy with the political bias.

00:27:39.400 We saw what happened to Palmer Luckey,

00:27:40.700 you know,

00:27:42.120 this genius who invented the Oculus Rift,

00:27:44.380 revolutionized, you know, VR gaming.

00:27:46.700 Then he sold it to Facebook.

00:27:48.080 He joined Facebook,

00:27:49.020 and then Facebook essentially forces him

00:27:51.020 out of the company

00:27:51.620 for supporting Trump.

00:27:53.500 They even tried to force him

00:27:54.520 to endorse the libertarian candidate

00:27:56.820 just to satisfy their own far-left employees.

00:28:00.000 It was an insane story.

00:28:01.600 So there are many people in Silicon Valley

00:28:03.240 who are definitely uncomfortable

00:28:04.380 with the political climate there.

00:28:06.380 Going back to other tech companies,

00:28:10.740 you almost feel sorry for Twitter

00:28:12.340 because they just seem totally in over their head.

00:28:16.680 You know, Facebook conducts themselves

00:28:18.000 in a very Machiavellian way.

00:28:20.340 They outsource all their politically biased decisions

00:28:22.420 to these third-party liberal fact-checkers.

00:28:24.960 They're now outsourcing censorship

00:28:26.260 to this Facebook Supreme Court.

00:28:28.060 It's all to create a chain of plausible deniability

00:28:30.520 so they can wash their hands.

00:28:32.400 Obviously, they're not going to succeed.

00:28:33.560 They're still ultimately responsible,

00:28:35.860 but they're going about it in a much more clever,

00:28:37.660 much more sly way,

00:28:39.980 whereas Twitter just seem to be flailing around,

00:28:42.400 censoring the president's tweets,

00:28:44.120 taking the decisions themselves,

00:28:45.760 not giving themselves plausible deniability.

00:28:47.400 They've sort of deliberately put themselves

00:28:49.520 in the crosshairs,

00:28:51.080 and that shows Twitter is a much smaller company

00:28:53.920 than the other tech giants.

00:28:55.340 They have much fewer resources.

00:28:58.220 But again, I think the biggest threat

00:29:00.040 among the tech giants,

00:29:01.080 especially when it comes to political election interference,

00:29:04.380 and I might do a column on this shortly,

00:29:06.020 is Google.

00:29:07.160 Google has the two biggest search engines in the world,

00:29:10.880 Google and YouTube.

00:29:11.840 YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world.

00:29:14.100 They have more control over the flow of information,

00:29:17.020 including political information,

00:29:18.460 than any other company.

00:29:20.680 And we've already seen,

00:29:21.840 we've seen leaked footage

00:29:22.700 that I published on Breitbart two years ago.

00:29:24.920 They're executives saying that

00:29:26.620 they want to make the populist movement,

00:29:28.820 the Trump movement, a blip in history.

00:29:32.100 And it's crazy to think

00:29:34.600 they won't use that vast power

00:29:36.560 in the next election to sway the result.

00:29:39.600 And I think we'll be seeing a lot more about that

00:29:41.400 over the next few months.

00:29:43.520 Yeah, well, look, it's almost June.

00:29:45.660 So June, July, August, September, October, November,

00:29:48.760 it's six months, barely.

00:29:51.620 Well, it's called six months to the election,

00:29:53.260 less than that.

00:29:55.020 Yeah, for around 150 days.

00:29:56.360 Yeah, sorry, about five months.

00:29:59.380 And Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,

00:30:04.000 not only do they have all the media themselves,

00:30:08.160 they are the media themselves,

00:30:09.640 they have an army of lobbyists.

00:30:11.700 They're the top lobbyist spenders in Washington.

00:30:14.780 They have some congressmen and senators on their side

00:30:17.960 because they know all these guys are liberal.

00:30:20.200 I'm wondering if it's too late,

00:30:23.200 if in the next five months,

00:30:25.840 Trump can make a dent in the problem

00:30:27.500 or if they're just going to brazen it out.

00:30:29.360 Because what can you really do in the next five months?

00:30:32.020 I think it's just...

00:30:33.100 Go ahead.

00:30:34.000 The problem is this executive order,

00:30:35.620 while it's a positive step,

00:30:36.920 it shows words are going to be backed up with action.

00:30:39.440 It can only be the beginning.

00:30:41.400 This is not going to fix censorship overnight.

00:30:43.360 You know, sources in D.C. tell me there was,

00:30:46.080 you know, pushback from the career bureaucrats

00:30:48.100 in the Commerce Department and other areas.

00:30:50.900 So it's going to be a struggle to get anything done.

00:30:53.960 And you've got to keep in mind,

00:30:54.760 Facebook has faced over $10 billion collectively

00:30:58.840 in fines from the FTC in the U.S.

00:31:01.280 and from European regulators of privacy violations.

00:31:04.820 And while they did alter their policies on privacy

00:31:07.620 because of all that scrutiny they received

00:31:09.140 because of the fines,

00:31:10.100 they're still going.

00:31:12.020 So that's kind of like the level of punishment

00:31:14.640 you have to deal out to these tech companies

00:31:17.380 to get them to change anything.

00:31:19.060 And I think this executive order,

00:31:20.360 while it's positive,

00:31:21.120 it's just the first step in doing that.

00:31:22.920 Yeah, that's your point.

00:31:23.260 So I don't think it's going to be fixed by the election.

00:31:25.280 And I think the challenge this election for Republicans

00:31:27.260 is how are you going to circumvent these tech giants?

00:31:30.000 How are you going to get the message out

00:31:31.280 in spite of their censorship?

00:31:32.960 Yeah, you're right.

00:31:33.560 I mean, $10 billion sounds like an awful lot,

00:31:35.840 but these companies are, you know,

00:31:37.540 in some cases coming up on a trillion dollar valuation.

00:31:41.320 That's, you know,

00:31:42.060 you give a $10 billion fine to Facebook,

00:31:44.980 they'll go up in the stock market

00:31:46.300 because people say, oh, that's it?

00:31:48.040 Oh, good.

00:31:48.460 Let's keep going.

00:31:49.380 I don't think they were really afraid of anything.

00:31:53.620 A last question.

00:31:54.840 Do you think Trump will find allies anywhere?

00:31:58.400 Do you think there will be some other power source

00:32:02.100 out there that wants to push back?

00:32:04.280 Or are there just too many dollars

00:32:05.780 being sloshed around?

00:32:07.360 And is it just too much inertia?

00:32:11.380 Is it just Trump versus the world again?

00:32:15.180 I think there's some signs of change

00:32:17.720 in conservative institutions.

00:32:19.680 The Claremont Institute, for example,

00:32:21.540 is one think tank that hasn't gone along

00:32:23.400 with this sort of pro-big tech line

00:32:25.840 that some of the D.C. think tanks have gone along with.

00:32:27.900 And I don't think the base will tolerate it for much longer.

00:32:34.420 This is crucial to them.

00:32:35.860 This is their accounts as well.

00:32:37.780 You know, whenever a big politician like Trump

00:32:39.920 or a big media commentator gets censored,

00:32:42.500 that's always headline news.

00:32:43.620 But there are also thousands and thousands

00:32:44.940 of ordinary Republicans,

00:32:46.300 ordinary members of the grassroots,

00:32:47.780 who have had their Twitter accounts

00:32:48.860 and their Facebook accounts taken away.

00:32:50.360 And that discontent is not going away.

00:32:54.340 And if Republicans think they can just,

00:32:56.580 you know, coast by and not do anything serious,

00:32:59.280 I don't think the base will let them.

00:33:02.260 And I think Republican politicians understand

00:33:03.700 if they let this continue,

00:33:05.180 they're not going to win elections ever again.

00:33:07.020 Yeah.

00:33:07.500 Okay, I got one last.

00:33:08.700 I said that was the last question.

00:33:09.740 I got another last, last question.

00:33:12.540 They're censoring Trump.

00:33:14.100 They're restricting Trump.

00:33:15.020 They're throttling Trump.

00:33:16.000 They're de-boosting Trump.

00:33:17.660 They're hiding Trump.

00:33:18.480 Things in the past, they only did the little guys

00:33:20.500 like you and me.

00:33:22.620 What's the likelihood that they will actually

00:33:24.840 suspend Donald Trump from Twitter?

00:33:28.240 I think that would probably be something

00:33:30.480 that even Twitter, with all its blue-haired

00:33:33.160 social justice warrior employees,

00:33:35.220 would not be stupid enough to do.

00:33:39.160 With these tweets, they're sort of going,

00:33:41.860 taking a step, they're not taking a step

00:33:45.400 beyond adding little notices,

00:33:46.940 hiding them behind warning messages.

00:33:50.180 They know if they actually took down

00:33:51.980 one of President Trump's tweets,

00:33:53.300 then it would be non-stop barrage

00:33:57.020 of potential regulations, investigations,

00:34:01.000 negative media coverage

00:34:02.500 that they wouldn't be able to escape from.

00:34:04.460 I think they know that's a step too far.

00:34:06.360 But, you know, anything's possible.

00:34:10.400 I'd be slightly surprised,

00:34:11.700 but not too surprised if they did that.

00:34:13.160 But, you know, many, many people

00:34:15.200 in Silicon Valley and in the Democrat

00:34:16.780 media complex want that to happen,

00:34:19.220 no doubt.

00:34:20.600 Well, we're in very interesting days.

00:34:22.280 I think Twitter picked a fight.

00:34:24.240 I wonder if Donald Trump can win it.

00:34:25.680 Alan Bocardt, it's great to see you again.

00:34:27.600 Keep up the great work at Breitbart.com.

00:34:29.240 We enjoyed reading you.

00:34:29.980 You've been on this story for years,

00:34:31.340 far ahead of everyone else.

00:34:33.520 Thanks, Ezra.

00:34:34.200 Good to be on.

00:34:34.900 Cheers.

00:34:35.420 You too.

00:34:35.800 All right.

00:34:36.460 Stay with us.

00:34:37.260 Your letters to me next.

00:34:38.700 Hey, welcome back.

00:34:52.140 I'm in monologue yesterday

00:34:53.140 about Twitter censoring President Trump.

00:34:55.400 Dan writes,

00:34:56.840 Twitter needs to go back

00:34:57.740 to being a platform and not a publisher.

00:35:00.440 Yeah, but they're having too much fun.

00:35:02.900 I think what happens is

00:35:04.340 if you become a billionaire,

00:35:06.120 there's a chance I might not find out

00:35:08.340 what that's like.

00:35:09.460 Once you have all the money in the world

00:35:10.780 and once you can buy all the things you want,

00:35:13.380 you know, there's only so many houses you can buy.

00:35:15.580 You can only live in one at a time.

00:35:17.160 There's only so many jets or yachts you can buy.

00:35:19.900 You can only be in one at a time.

00:35:21.860 Once you got all the stuff you want,

00:35:24.200 then you start to think,

00:35:25.240 well, how can I change the world?

00:35:26.600 What's my legacy?

00:35:28.560 And you get a bit of a messiah complex.

00:35:30.840 I think Bloomberg has that.

00:35:32.780 I think Mark Zuckerberg has that.

00:35:34.220 And for sure, Jack Dorsey of Twitter has it.

00:35:36.760 And they want to transform people.

00:35:39.380 They start to look at people

00:35:40.620 as little ants in an ant colony.

00:35:42.400 I'm certain that's how Bill Gates looks at people.

00:35:45.480 I think that they don't want to just be a platform.

00:35:48.100 They want to mold minds. 0.59

00:35:51.040 Leslie writes,

00:35:52.040 this reminds me of the 1900s,

00:35:53.460 communist rule.

00:35:54.580 The true news is whatever Stalinists say it is.

00:35:57.840 Stalinists, but of course, 0.92

00:35:58.840 Stalin, I think, knew that he was brutal.

00:36:01.480 These people probably wouldn't think of themselves that way.

00:36:05.080 They'd say, well, we're just your more enlightened superiors

00:36:09.080 and we've done the hard thinking for you

00:36:10.820 and we want to gently nudge you in this right direction.

00:36:14.640 I don't think they think of themselves as evil,

00:36:17.120 but the fact that they take away your autonomy

00:36:19.180 and personal sovereignty means that they are.

00:36:23.160 Jim writes,

00:36:24.420 don't be surprised that the coward in the cottage

00:36:26.360 will have Twitter censor the conservatives.

00:36:28.820 Yeah, well, he certainly,

00:36:31.060 I don't know if Twitter answers to Justin Trudeau.

00:36:33.620 Maybe, maybe not.

00:36:34.880 I think that they look at Canada

00:36:36.500 as a rounding error in both cases.

00:36:38.900 But we know that Trudeau himself tries to censor us,

00:36:41.520 as you probably saw in Trudeau ejecting

00:36:44.260 Kian Bexte from the press conference this week.

00:36:47.740 On my interview with Joel Pollack,

00:36:49.020 on his new book, Red November,

00:36:50.580 Paul writes,

00:36:51.780 I have to get Joel's book.

00:36:52.920 Interesting times coming up this year.

00:36:55.120 Yeah, you know what I like about Joel?

00:36:57.100 I mean, he's smart, obviously.

00:36:58.400 He's very well informed.

00:36:59.240 I think he actually ran for Congress a few years back.

00:37:01.480 But he's fair.

00:37:03.860 He's fair to the left.

00:37:05.940 He covers them without a sneer,

00:37:08.260 and he doesn't twist the knife.

00:37:10.260 And so I think he's got,

00:37:11.580 he's one of the most interesting reporters

00:37:13.900 on the state of the left.

00:37:15.220 I don't want to read leftists covering the left,

00:37:17.420 because it's just slobbering kisses.

00:37:19.900 I don't want to read leftists covering the right,

00:37:22.000 because it's just smearing.

00:37:23.300 But I would read Joel Pollack covering the left,

00:37:26.300 because he would treat them seriously

00:37:27.980 and report it like he saw it.

00:37:30.660 Well, that's our show for today.

00:37:32.480 Until next time,

00:37:33.400 on behalf of all of us here

00:37:34.500 at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:37:35.580 to you at home,

00:37:36.180 good night,

00:37:37.120 and keep fighting for freedom.

00:37:38.220 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - May 30, 2020

Antifa burns down Minneapolis with help from the mayor. But Twitter thinks Trump is the problem

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