EZRA LEVANT ｜ A freedom-focused lawyer could be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee： an interview with Harmeet K. Dhillon
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
173.5302
Summary
Tonight meet the freedom lawyer who just might be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. A feature interview with Harmeet Dylan about her work as a free speech lawyer in America, and her thoughts on the current state of free speech in big tech.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
tonight meet the freedom lawyer who just might be the next chairman of the republican national
00:00:20.220
committee a feature interview with harmeet dylan it's december 27th and this is the ezra
00:00:32.380
harmeet dylan is one of my favorite people such a great pundit you probably recognize her from tv
00:00:46.020
if you watch any american tv she's often on shows like tucker carlson tonight talking about
00:00:51.180
republican matters legal matters freedom of speech she's everywhere on tv but she also runs a very
00:00:57.600
busy freedom oriented law practice one of the few to do so almost exclusively in fact she set up a
00:01:04.240
whole freedom oriented legal defense fund especially active in california during the lockdowns sort of
00:01:10.200
like our canadian version of the democracy fund just amazing i'm very delighted that today she's
00:01:18.400
and joining us now is harmeet dylan who i regard as the most important free speech lawyer in america
00:01:34.140
of course she does other things too harmeet great to see you thanks for taking the time to meet with us
00:01:38.660
thanks for having me ezra well i want to disclose to our viewers that you're not just
00:01:43.260
an interesting commentator an expert that we talked to you have in the past actually helped
00:01:48.440
rebel news as a lawyer as we faced battles of free speech and canceled culture so you know we know your
00:01:56.640
work is excellent you're not just a talker you're a doer i don't even know how you get it all done i
00:02:00.960
see you on tucker carlson i see you on the media but for example you were recently on the ground in
00:02:06.080
arizona going toe to toe with democrat lawyers about the the election shenanigans there i don't
00:02:13.460
know how you like you're literally all over america fighting for freedom i don't i don't know how you
00:02:17.640
do it well you know it matters matters on what you prioritize in life so for me it's pretty much
00:02:23.440
family and these free speech and freedom issues and so while i sort of started out as a free speech
00:02:30.380
lawyer and have really focused my career on that you also realize that if you don't have
00:02:35.800
the right laws in the government if you don't have the right leaders who care about those issues
00:02:40.440
you know ultimately those words on paper don't matter we saw that during covid you guys saw that
00:02:46.800
in canada certainly and you're continuing to suffer there more than we are i think and so i think
00:02:53.020
these things go hand in hand and if you really want to affect change you have to we have to take a big
00:02:56.860
picture look at it so so i do work uh long hours well we're grateful that you do um i i have to tell
00:03:04.380
you i was i felt like things were going in the wrong direction for a number of years uh as a user of big
00:03:10.940
tech platforms like twitter and youtube and facebook rebel news has faced demonetization and
00:03:16.860
deplatforming and i felt like it was only getting worse and they were getting more brazen and then uh the
00:03:22.300
2020 election and and frankly the the lackluster uh results in the u.s senate midterms but i have to
00:03:30.740
say i've been as the kids say white pilled as in i've been given a hope about the future by elon
00:03:36.600
musk's takeover of twitter and his emphasis on free speech and his revelations coming clean about what
00:03:43.300
twitter did in the past i have to say for the first time in a few years i'm actually feeling hopeful
00:03:48.620
again i shouldn't say that because i'm tempting fate what would you say is the state of freedom
00:03:55.440
in big tech online on our phones on our apps uh is elon musk a blip or is he maybe a new trend
00:04:04.160
i would call elon musk a trend um i would say that you know look historically overall
00:04:10.600
uh twitter's censorship situation has really waxed and waned and the recent revelation um you know
00:04:18.600
earlier this month of the of the twitter files by independent journalists matt taibbi and barry
00:04:24.940
weiss working together has been an eye-opener and that was led by the owner of the company saying
00:04:31.700
this needs to happen for freedom um you know i don't know his politics particularly but he has
00:04:37.580
said very strongly that the fact that you know certain lawyers and certain politicians meddled in
00:04:42.300
the 2020 election is outrageous and can never happen again that the government is meddled that there
00:04:46.880
have been all these communications from the government he fired a former fbi lawyer who um you know
00:04:52.980
was meddling with the release of those documents about twitter shadow banning and um you know reading
00:04:59.380
of people's direct messages and things like that now you still look at some of the other tech
00:05:04.980
platforms google has been i would say worse than twitter in terms of youtube suppression has been going on
00:05:12.420
for years i would not even call it suppression call it manipulation boosting certain kinds of searches
00:05:18.720
de-boosting certain kinds of searches um you know like hate speech against muslims is is you know
00:05:26.800
sort of treated differently than hate speech against jews for example in a report that came out several
00:05:32.440
years ago things like that um facebook uh is kind of all over the map that they you know if you look at the
00:05:39.900
testimony of mark zuckerberg in congress he seems to be confused by the whole thing and like doesn't
00:05:46.780
like censorship but all the people he hires are in favor of it and you know of course he may be speaking
00:05:52.640
out of both sides of his mouth because he's played very heavily with his money in uh getting democrats
00:05:58.720
elected through i would call pseudo non-profit efforts with valid harvesting and so forth so
00:06:03.860
i would call it complicated um but i do think that elon musk has led a new era of glass notes if you will
00:06:11.820
uh online and i hope to see more of that and it's refreshing i do feel like it's a new opportunity for us
00:06:19.180
to have that conversation in the country and the world i the most uh hopeful and unexpected statement
00:06:26.440
came from the boss of netflix which is again a pretty liberal company judging by their content
00:06:32.640
and he was pressed on elon musk and said he admires musk and he he likes the free speech approach and
00:06:39.020
though he may have a different management style uh he was very positive here's a clip of that from a
00:06:44.960
recent conference uh i just thought well wow maybe free speech is spreading take a look you're on there
00:06:50.280
all the time what do you think what's going on i'm excited i'm excited um elon musk is the bravest
00:06:55.560
most creative person on the planet i mean you know what he's done in multiple areas is phenomenal
00:07:00.740
um you know his style is different than like i'm trying to be like a really steady respectable leader
00:07:06.360
you know he doesn't care he's just like out there you know but think of a guy who's spending 44
00:07:13.080
billion he could have built the biggest he could have built a mile long yacht for 44 billion okay
00:07:18.060
but it's like not good for the planet doesn't he's not interested he's in for you think what he's
00:07:22.460
doing is good for the planet absolutely i i'm uh 100 convinced that he is trying to help the world
00:07:28.860
in all of his endeavors okay and he's trying to help the world in that one because he believes in
00:07:33.920
free speech and there's power for democracy and that there's an option now how he goes about it
00:07:38.720
again you know it's not how i would do it um but i'm deeply respectful and i'm amazed that people are
00:07:44.700
like so nitpicky on him on yeah sure the blue check mark he's making a mess of some things or
00:07:49.780
not you know but it's like give the guy a break he just spent all this money to try to make it much
00:07:54.480
better for democracy and society to have a more open platform and i am sympathetic to that agenda
00:08:00.160
i thought that was encouraging and maybe elon musk well he showed that twitter is actually growing if
00:08:07.900
we can believe him he's saying that the average daily users for twitter is record highs there was
00:08:14.800
this rumor that all the advertisers were going to flee well he met with tim cook of apple their biggest
00:08:20.780
advertiser who confirms that they're staying i think that elon musk might just actually pull this off
00:08:27.000
i mean it's bad to bet against him he's the guy who built spacex and and tesla i you know what i i'm
00:08:33.280
i'm nervous about letting my heart hope too much because i'm used to being disappointed but wouldn't
00:08:38.860
it be something if we had a new era of free speech i don't know that maybe i'm being a little hopeful
00:08:42.900
let me talk to you about something that i know you're a real expert on and it sounds technical um
00:08:48.740
it's section 230 of the communications decency act which sounds very weird sounds like it's about
00:08:55.540
pornography which it actually sort of was back in the day that was you correct me if i'm wrong harmy
00:09:00.620
that was a rule put into law by congress decades ago actually that protected internet service
00:09:08.280
providers from the content on their system so if you're just running an internet company and some
00:09:13.600
user put pornography up you weren't held responsible for it unless it was brought to your attention and you
00:09:20.180
did it like you were not regarded as a publisher in the first instance and that section 230 has been
00:09:27.960
stretched to protect internet companies including google youtube facebook instagram twitter from any
00:09:34.780
legal consequences for anything they do now correct me if i miss explained section 230 but why don't you
00:09:43.460
tell me a little bit about that and and how it might be reformed to allow more freedom on these web
00:09:51.080
platforms section 230 was passed in 1996 uh really as a result or a i would say a reaction to a supreme
00:10:01.100
you know to some legal opinions that purported to punish um an internet like an email company i mean
00:10:11.880
let's step back a little bit because you know in 1996 we didn't have any of these apps we did not have
00:10:16.900
the internet as we know it right now we had aol dial up i remember that that was really your only
00:10:21.840
option to get email you know you've got mail and these like clunky apps and we do it over the phone
00:10:26.940
line and back then you know there were a few of these platforms like prodigy and a few others where
00:10:32.760
you could get mail and some were painting themselves more family friendly than the others and so they did
00:10:38.420
not allow certain things on their platform they didn't want there to be pornography and stuff and so
00:10:42.340
you know they would have a rule that you couldn't do it but if it snuck through um somebody could sue
00:10:47.140
you for that and so the the law was passed to say internet companies that are simply hosting other
00:10:54.760
people's content cannot be held liable for it you know like you said exactly unless there's sort of a
00:11:00.700
takedown process with respect to certain illegal content you know child pornography what have you and
00:11:07.140
um defamatory speech criminal things like that but then there's a catch-all phrase that's also added
00:11:13.320
in 230 uh that you can't be held responsible for moderating content on on these categories but also
00:11:19.900
this otherwise objectionable now the otherwise objectionable category has been stretched to
00:11:24.580
really as sort of a sort of afterthought to at least become the entire rule and tech companies
00:11:31.000
now tech has evolved to all these complex platforms that today manipulate the speech that we see
00:11:38.120
censor speech for even remove the former president united states while he was a sitting president from
00:11:44.380
the internet something that elon has reversed donald trump and when you try to sue them for taking down
00:11:53.500
speech in violation of their own terms of service they say we can do whatever we want
00:12:00.280
our uh protection under section 230 trump's tort law and trump's contract law that's literally their
00:12:06.760
position in court so for example you have a um a prominent feminist in canada named megan murphy
00:12:16.540
and i represented megan uh in a case against twitter where megan was calling out a transgender activist
00:12:26.180
uh in i think in the vancouver area who would really troll immigrant women by you know seeking
00:12:33.740
waxing of this male jonathan yaniv we we know him too well i'm afraid i mean yeah jessica jonathan yaniv
00:12:42.440
and so that and so this feminist not i mean not my views but you know this feminist said well
00:12:48.740
you know she didn't think this person should be invading women's locker rooms asking girls questions
00:12:55.100
about their periods and asking women to touch his genitalia so she called it out on twitter and at
00:13:01.340
the time twitter did not ban um so-called misgendering as a category of speech that could get you suspended
00:13:09.800
or banned well there's all these you know transgender activists there and all these all these activists had
00:13:15.360
a direct line to content suppressors at twitter and so twitter not only removed our client banned her
00:13:22.480
permanently for calling jessica a he oh there he goes again and um and then retroactively changed
00:13:31.980
the terms of service to cover this conduct and then said that apply well you know you don't
00:13:36.220
retroactively change contracts in america or in canada the free world and so the court said well
00:13:42.120
sorry under 230 they can do whatever they want their contract doesn't really matter now that is not what
00:13:46.120
congress intended i have worked hard over the years to get members of congress to comprehend this
00:13:51.220
i've testified in congress several times about this issue and frankly too many members of congress on
00:13:56.460
both sides of the aisle are just captive you can give them a political contribution and they'll do
00:14:01.720
whatever you want yeah that's sad that includes many republican members of congress i am you know some
00:14:08.560
who are running for leadership positions right now and so it's kind of disgusting but ultimately maybe
00:14:13.640
there will be a bipartisan will on this issue or we elect better republicans who will actually win
00:14:18.520
elections that's one of the reasons i'm running for rnc chair because you know all of this is
00:14:23.220
pointless you know cocktail party chatter unless you actually win elections and implement change
00:14:27.600
through strength we're going to get back to your campaign for rnc chair i'm very excited about it
00:14:32.860
we'll talk about in a minute but let's just take one more minute on section 230 here's a way i think
00:14:38.180
about it and you tell me if this is correct if you put up let's say on the wall of a school
00:14:43.140
a cork board like a bulletin board and anyone could affix something to it you it makes sense that
00:14:49.300
you wouldn't sue the bulletin board owner if they didn't have any rules for what could go on they would
00:14:54.980
be like a like a phone booth you have no idea what people say when they use your phone booth
00:15:00.340
so that's a platform but a publisher is someone who uses their judgment edits things chooses curates
00:15:09.220
now that's very different that's not a bulletin board that's not a pay phone that's a radio
00:15:14.800
broadcaster that's a newspaper editor and seems to me the tech companies want to be treated like a
00:15:21.420
platform oh we're just an empty vessel you can't hold us accountable for what's in us
00:15:27.000
but then they make very publisher type decisions like you just described of of the canadian feminist who
00:15:35.740
was saying certain words so they i think they're having it both ways that they want the immunity
00:15:43.000
of a neutral bulletin board cork board but they want the power to say no no we're only letting
00:15:49.200
things we like up on our bulletin board like a publisher would i i i can't believe that has gone
00:15:55.420
on for as long as it has but i i think you're right i mean if you look at the largest lobbyists
00:16:01.200
in washington dc it's not the military it's not the banks it's the tech companies they're the biggest
00:16:07.580
spenders there aren't they well yeah absolutely i mean by the way they subsidize uh you know by
00:16:14.360
um you know sponsorships of uh big conservative organizations as well um i wouldn't name names but
00:16:22.120
you know like sometimes i i was surprised at one point to go to one of the biggest gatherings of
00:16:26.640
conservatives and see platinum sponsored google i mean they you know they want access right so
00:16:30.820
i think you're exactly right when congress passed section 230 in 1996 there was no concept of an
00:16:37.420
internet that we know today there was no concept of filtering deboosting boosting shadow banning none
00:16:43.980
of these things and so today literally i would say up until elon musk took charge and fired people
00:16:49.800
who were doing this and maybe even today in some degree literally everything you see there is curated
00:16:57.540
in some way it isn't unfiltered it's very different than typing a message in my upper east side apartment
00:17:03.900
in in the 1990s and dialing up the internet and sending it to my mom okay like that was literally
00:17:12.640
the equivalent of the phone lines yeah but today the you know it's like a magazine it's like sending
00:17:20.020
a letter to the editor of vanity fair and they decide whether they're going to publish it or not
00:17:23.320
i mean so that's very different and when they choose to publish it and it's defamatory or what have you
00:17:29.400
or it's it's terrorists planning an attack on israel uh or america you know they're like oh we don't
00:17:36.240
have nothing to do with that but they actually are reading and filtering and all of that and so
00:17:40.280
new laws are needed to reflect these new realities and new politicians are needed who aren't owned by
00:17:48.220
big tech yeah we'll move on in just one sec i gotta just ask you one last question because
00:17:53.280
we we see the revelations from the twitter files and again kudos to elon musk for airing his own
00:17:59.080
dirty laundry he well he bought the laundromat and he's he's airing someone else's dirty laundry he's
00:18:04.920
showing really the internal machinations all the way up to the executive suites uh of how they censored
00:18:12.620
things and how they misled the public it really is quite incredible for someone to to do to a company
00:18:19.140
that they just bought is to put all their bad news out in public i i don't think i've ever seen it
00:18:24.920
done before um here's my question to you a lot of times people say not just section 230 gives these
00:18:33.380
companies immunity but hey it's a private company they can do what they want um they don't have to
00:18:39.120
let you write on their platform just like fox news doesn't have to let you appear on their shows they
00:18:46.000
own it they can choose but but if government agencies whether it's the fbi the cia the white house
00:18:55.580
dr fauci and the nih if a government institution emailed called twitter and said censor this guy
00:19:04.160
silence that guy then it's not a private company anymore then it's not a section 230 decision
00:19:11.800
anymore it's it's really the law that i would guess applies would be the u.s first amendment
00:19:16.640
i mean yeah i agree with that that actually ties into a law suit that my law firm did and my non-profit
00:19:23.080
the center for american liberty there's a prominent conservative commentator named rogan o'hanley
00:19:27.740
he's a former entertainment lawyer in california and now a social media influencer they're very
00:19:33.640
popular with young people on on twitter and other platforms and still on instagram and others but he
00:19:39.260
was removed from twitter after the 2020 election for posting some i think i would say very mild critiques
00:19:45.520
but popular critiques of the integrity of that election uh calling for an audit of the california
00:19:51.840
election which by the way had probably over a million ballots that went out to people who
00:19:55.860
aren't registered voters in california so that's a good question to be asking and he also questioned
00:20:01.540
whether joe biden uh if he had the most votes ever in american history why is there a barbed wire
00:20:07.240
fence around the united states capitol um he was banned from twitter for that we later learned
00:20:12.980
through judicial wash efforts judicial wash being one of our you know activist um non-profits uh on
00:20:20.180
the free speech and government secrecy side in the united states that the california secretary of
00:20:26.720
state's office specifically requested that our client be removed because he was supposedly spreading
00:20:32.380
election disinformation and we have a document that demonstrates that and some some biden campaign
00:20:40.480
vendor was paid 25 million dollars by my taxpayer dollars in the state of california to censor
00:20:47.220
our speech and it worked and in fact 98 percent of the posts that that were recommended by the
00:20:54.080
secretary of state of california to be taken down were taken down we've since learned that that effort
00:20:59.040
was not just restricted to california but other states and also to the federal government you mentioned
00:21:04.200
fauci you mentioned fbi um you know uh mark zuckerberg has come out and said on joe rogan's podcast
00:21:11.680
that the fbi uh was requesting um you know certain information be taken out of 100 biden's laptop
00:21:17.920
and things like that and so i completely agree we did file a lawsuit under the first amendment
00:21:23.340
saying that this this constituted government interference with free speech now the district
00:21:28.240
court dismissed the case um the case was just argued this month in the ninth circuit
00:21:32.820
and uh we will see what happens with it i think this is a fundamental issue because we and i don't
00:21:38.640
want to get into the weeds here but we have other concepts in american law that say that while
00:21:42.320
generally first amendment issues are restricted to government activity and you know sort of spaces
00:21:46.940
where anybody can go there is some analysis under california law and some other law that if a private
00:21:53.280
area is effectively a free speech forum because let's say it's a company town or a mall or something
00:21:58.500
like that then there could be aspects of first amendment rights that attach to leafleting and other
00:22:04.060
first amendment activities and so you know some lawyers have tried to import those concepts into
00:22:08.800
the first amendment analysis here you know courts haven't really bought into that i think the
00:22:13.140
jurisprudence needs to evolve to reflect the current reality that today and particularly during covid
00:22:17.580
really the place we lived our lives for the most part was on the internet and if you weren't allowed
00:22:22.260
on the internet to speak you were depersoned yeah this is china style social credit social programming
00:22:29.640
and it's unacceptable in a so-called democracy or public yeah incredible um donald trump there's uh
00:22:38.620
he has his strengths and weaknesses i think one of the best things he did as president was his
00:22:44.540
judicial appointments he did a lot of them and they seem to be very strong constitution loving uh
00:22:52.060
yeah i would say strict constructionists if that's the phrase i i think his legacy
00:22:58.860
uh in the courts is one of his strongest legacies and hopefully some of those judges will be more
00:23:05.640
freedom oriented do you have any thoughts on trump's judicial appointments um as regards free speech
00:23:10.740
trump's appellate judicial appointments were terrific his team chose and frankly mitch mcconnell chose to
00:23:19.840
focus on appellate appointments and so the consequence of that is if you're not pushing through
00:23:28.080
trial court appointments is you have to lose a trial to get to a good judge if you draw them
00:23:34.940
in the court of appeals so the work was incomplete and the work was incomplete in part
00:23:42.700
because of you know the size of majorities in the in the in the senate and pushing people through and
00:23:52.400
let's say the republican party has underperformed at the polls over the last three election cycles
00:23:58.280
if we had done better we would have had even more great judges at the trial court level and the
00:24:02.140
appellate level yeah well i have to say uh that's an interesting point of view that he he didn't do
00:24:08.580
enough and there were other areas he could have done it i i think it's not just him right as well
00:24:13.380
yeah it was the senate sure i take your point here in canada we had a conservative prime minister
00:24:18.180
for nine years and he simply didn't care about the courts and so whatever good he did i think has
00:24:22.340
been undone by appointments including his own appointments let me let's get to the republicans
00:24:26.800
because we've touched on them a few times you i see you on fox news and other media talking about
00:24:32.240
uh the law especially in in election battles and you were there in arizona that was crazy in arizona
00:24:40.040
we we sent a reporter uh katie davis court down there for a while i mean we just couldn't stay
00:24:45.400
there for for weeks and weeks and weeks it's not election day it's election month what kind of a
00:24:50.520
country takes three weeks to count ballots you know even brazil counted all their ballots in one night
00:24:57.360
what happened what happened is democrats have been very successful and outmaneuvered republicans
00:25:04.160
not this year not last year but over the last many years while republicans were frankly out to
00:25:10.900
munch on this issue i'm just one republican who's been jumping up and down and screaming about it for
00:25:15.460
years including at the rnc and you know people just shrug and spend money on whatever else they spend
00:25:21.260
money on and so uh democrats have expanded voting day to voting weeks and voting months they've allowed
00:25:29.580
at the same time we have fairly loose voter rolls i we don't keep updating them when people move die
00:25:35.320
you know or otherwise become ineligible to vote we still send them ballots um covet enabled a wholesale
00:25:42.880
shift to vote by mail uh in the 1990s both republicans and democrats and the former president jimmy
00:25:50.360
carter democrat and um and cabinet member james baker had a commission here in the united states where
00:25:57.380
they both concluded in their commission that voting by mail is less secure than voting in person this
00:26:02.860
is also logical and obvious um and yet uh you know you have a combination of insecure voting methods
00:26:10.780
being spammed out to all these people and then strangers can come to your house in many states
00:26:16.660
called ballot harvesting and pick up your ballot and take it this has led to accusations in places like
00:26:21.980
old folks homes or memory care facilities where people do not know that their ballots are being
00:26:27.240
taken from them by aids and filled out and returned and you know if if an election is close so for
00:26:33.940
example my law firm right now is um you know has been working this month in december with um with a
00:26:39.540
campaign for um sec for for attorney general in arizona i.e. abe hamaday the the margin in his race
00:26:46.460
which is still being contested and is an automatic recount is um is like about 500 something votes so
00:26:54.160
if you have a few loose votes here and there in a state that adds up to the margin and so you know
00:27:00.460
that's those are the kinds of issues that we have to be focusing i think 10 times the resources on
00:27:05.360
that issue as we are maricopa county had problems in the 2020 election with machines not reading the
00:27:11.440
ballots and signatures not being read correctly and and all of that and yet they did nothing to improve
00:27:18.120
it in fact they knew in maricopa county that republicans are more likely to vote in person
00:27:22.940
i think this is a bad idea republicans but republicans are more likely to vote in person on election day
00:27:27.740
but what does that tell you long lines on election day are only republicans so if the wrong lines people
00:27:33.660
will leave if they if the machines don't work people will leave and there will be long lines
00:27:37.600
if they see bags of ballots in a in a room that are uncounted and on you know attended they will think
00:27:45.280
that their vote will not count and all of this degrades a functioning democratic system and so
00:27:52.400
what i would do to fix that is i would you know take the evidence that my firm gathered over several
00:27:56.920
days in the um in the midterm election where i was working for carrie lake at that time and
00:28:02.200
side by side with rnc lawyers and we know we took we went interviewed a lot of witnesses and we got their
00:28:08.280
statements i would file a lawsuit over that and make sure that the next election is secure now some
00:28:14.400
people say harmeen you know that's weak why can't you fix the last election i mean i could go into
00:28:18.540
that there's all kinds of laws and jurisprudence you know dating back centuries as to you know time
00:28:24.060
limits and what you can do about an existing election so we got to wake up and smell the coffee
00:28:29.040
and know that this will happen in the next election in maricopa county unless we take action to fix it now
00:28:36.300
now arizona does have a republican legislature and so i hope that they pass some strong election
00:28:41.980
integrity measures and they can persuade or have enough of the majority that the governor has to
00:28:46.140
let it go through so we'll see what happens yeah well i sure like carrie lake as a candidate i liked
00:28:51.160
her fighting spirit now you're running for the leadership of the rnc which is the republican
00:28:55.440
national committee for most of our viewers are canadian so we we know what republicans are but what is the
00:29:02.380
organization the national committee what are it what are its powers is it mainly uh a fundraising and
00:29:09.500
spending agency is it a candidate recruitment arm if you become the leader of the rnc which is i think
00:29:16.380
your goal um what does that mean well it is all of the things that you mentioned if it is doing its job
00:29:24.560
correctly um it is a fundraising and spending arm that transfers money to states that transfers money to
00:29:32.140
candidates that shares fundraising goals and funds with uh other fundraising committees nrsc nrcc there
00:29:38.880
are joint fundraising agreements sometimes and profit sharing agreements and you know but it's so much
00:29:44.680
more than that or it should be um the democratic party interferes in our primaries with dark money and
00:29:51.220
with you know sort of strategies and we don't do that in on our own side as sort of help with candidate
00:29:57.160
selection and i think we need to be doing that more we've seen that if democrats do it in our
00:30:01.480
primaries and we don't do it then we're letting democrats to find who our candidates are and that
00:30:05.840
leads to loss obviously the republican party should be the clear messaging leader in the party as we all
00:30:13.540
know politicians have their own agendas and special interests and you know deals they have to cut the
00:30:20.620
republican party doesn't have to cut deals we have a primary um we sorry we have a platform that is
00:30:26.600
developed every four years at our national convention because of covid we did not update that during the
00:30:33.120
2020 election unfortunately we had we maintained the same uh platform from 2016 but in 2024
00:30:39.360
absent some other foreign virus shutting down our government we will be having a platform discussion
00:30:46.300
and that will be talking about the conservative ideals these are the activists of the party so these are
00:30:50.400
conservative ideals and the party needs to strongly stand behind the party platform and and have clear
00:30:57.000
and positive goals i'm afraid over the last few years we've just been constantly in cycles of reacting
00:31:02.840
to democrats and certainly the last two years it's all been reacting letting them set the agenda and we
00:31:08.120
sort of have our weak talking points and don't they don't persuade the voters we just saw that in the
00:31:13.580
midterm elections so i want to see a return to you know a more positive vision of the future what can
00:31:19.600
republicans do for you differently than the democrats i think americans are all suffering under this
00:31:24.960
cultural marxism the liberals are pushing i think if we were clear about what we offered we could pick up
00:31:30.760
more independent votes and even some democrat votes and you really need that to form a winning
00:31:34.940
coalition in this country and so um i think there's some wasteful spending at the rnc i know that
00:31:41.860
i think that our priorities are out of whack and i think that frankly really the same people have
00:31:49.100
run the rnc for the last 12 years and america's moved on it's 2022 right now it's going to be 2024
00:31:56.360
when the next national election happens we cannot be using 1990s methods and you know talking points
00:32:04.860
to elect people um our party right now is a very dc oriented top-down consultant driven i would say
00:32:13.480
corrupt consultant driven outfit um people who get paid whether we win or lose people who make money
00:32:20.880
from fundraising whether it's effective or not the messaging i'd like to change that more to a
00:32:25.880
grassroots type effort i want to hear more from the americans who care about the future of our country
00:32:30.620
and and so that's that's my vision i mean there's so many things i'm excited about it i'd love to
00:32:37.140
make our party more effective more in touch with the voters who we asked to send their small and large
00:32:44.020
checks in and i want those politicians who we support to be more in touch with those voters and i think
00:32:51.300
there's a big disconnect right now the party is divided with recent elections we really need to unite
00:32:56.400
around a winning agenda for 2024 for the future of our country well i think that's a very appealing
00:33:02.360
message how does the vote work who gets to vote for the leader of the rnc when is it is it just other
00:33:09.540
state committee members i don't know the structure when will we know and how do you campaign is it just
00:33:15.160
a small number of people who choose it's a very small number of people who choose um it's 168 people
00:33:22.960
who choose out of the whole country of you know 300 million people plus each state and the six
00:33:29.200
territories puerto rico and guam and the others u.s virgin islands mariana's islands american samoa
00:33:36.400
uh these have three members each to the rnc the state chairman or territory chairman the national
00:33:43.520
committee man and the national committee woman i'm the national committee woman from california
00:33:47.860
and i am um you know one of the 168 members and so when ronna romney mcdaniel became the chair
00:33:55.320
she was the michigan uh chairman of the michigan gop and she's not had a contested election believe
00:34:02.720
it or not so she's been elected for three cycles unopposed and so now she's seeking her fourth term
00:34:07.760
and i believe three cycles of not winning elections is is enough and so um you know i would say five cycles
00:34:17.080
because we had two georgia runoffs that we lost as well and so around the country there's a huge
00:34:24.060
groundswell to upgrade the rnc but some of our members are not hearing that so it is a one-to-one
00:34:30.580
conversation with each of them to try to persuade them as to why we need to improve and change the rnc
00:34:36.620
and so you know that's that's that's it i'll be taking a step back if i win this from my law practice
00:34:43.020
and my non-profit for two years and my colleagues will continue to run those um while i focus on
00:34:48.640
turning around the national party well it's very exciting and uh i can imagine um all the
00:34:55.980
conversations the phone calls and the meetings if there's just 84 people you need to convince in
00:35:01.480
addition to yourself that is a heck of a of an exciting process i certainly hope you win i think
00:35:08.960
you'll bring legal smarts and a modern approach to campaigning because although i'm a canadian and
00:35:15.140
of course uh you know i'm not a voter in the united states what happens in america has a huge effect on
00:35:20.760
canada and the more you embrace freedom and prosperity the more we benefit as well i mean it's
00:35:26.700
been great spending so much time with you i know you're so busy i'm actually amazed you were able to
00:35:31.080
pull yourself away to talk to us at such length thanks for your great work for rebel news for fighting for
00:35:36.680
freedom for freedom for everyone and i hope you succeed and become rnc chair thank you so much
00:35:41.740
and it's an honor to represent people like you who support freedom anywhere in the world that's very