Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Elon Musk succeeds in buying Twitter — what happens now？

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Big news today. It looks like Twitter finally did accept Elon Musk's offer to

00:00:06.380 buy them. Oh, the company is in some sort of lockdown now. I'll go through it, my thoughts

00:00:12.800 on things, and we'll talk with Alan Bokari, who's a bit of an expert on Twitter's politics.

00:00:17.560 That's ahead. But before we do that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.

00:00:21.100 It's the video version of this podcast. In addition to my own daily show,

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00:00:40.840 get any dough from Trudeau. We wouldn't take it. All right. Here's today's podcast.

00:00:55.780 Tonight, Elon Musk succeeds in buying Twitter. What happens now? It's April 25th, and this is

00:01:05.880 The Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:12.680 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the

00:01:18.280 government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:25.780 Big news today. Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter for about $43 billion U.S. is accepted by the board.

00:01:35.600 That's about $55 billion Canadian money, by the way. It's hard to believe it's worth that much

00:01:40.100 economically, commercially. But then again, Facebook's market capitalization is more than

00:01:46.120 half a trillion dollars U.S. So maybe it's true then. Maybe Twitter really is worth 10%

00:01:52.080 of what Facebook is. It's about one-tenth the size of it. I was really worried that the board of

00:01:57.960 directors of Twitter, you know, valued it not for its commercial potential nor for its free speech

00:02:03.700 potential, but actually for the opposite reason, that it was the biggest censorship device in the

00:02:09.100 world and that censorship was more valuable than anything else. It was very revealing when the

00:02:16.440 Saudi prince Al-Waleed publicly denounced Elon Musk's offer right away. Elon Musk's reply was spot on.

00:02:25.340 So I'm excited about this. Earlier today, before the deal was formally acknowledged, I had a great chat

00:02:32.080 about it with our friend Alan Bakari, the tech editor at Breitbart.com. So that interview is up in a moment

00:02:37.940 before we knew the deal was done. I'm excited. I don't know if Elon Musk will be allowed to get

00:02:44.160 away with this, either by the staff of Twitter who hate their new boss or by the censorious world

00:02:51.840 that sees him as a threat. Look at this news that was released just today by coincidence, I'm sure.

00:03:00.220 FX and the New York Times announced Elon Musk expose documentary. Several former

00:03:07.800 Tesla employees will be featured in the documentary speaking out against Musk for the first time.

00:03:14.360 But of course they will. I mean, Elon Musk used to be cool to the left. The electric car guy,

00:03:21.200 reusable rocket ship guy, big thinker, but he's been doing a bit too much thinking lately, hasn't he?

00:03:27.800 Look at this. I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech

00:03:35.440 means. I think Elon Musk believes that, by the way, but not a lot of other powerful people do. I want

00:03:41.660 to show you one more Elon Musk thing. It's a joke. Billionaires aren't really allowed to joke a lot,

00:03:47.460 are they? It was his tweet. In case you need to lose a boner fast. That's pretty funny. I don't

00:03:57.300 know if billionaires are allowed to say the word boner like that. Of course, that's Bill Gates on the left,

00:04:02.320 a rival tech oligarch. And on the right, a woke new emoji, like a smiley face. This one, an image of a

00:04:09.440 pregnant man. There's a lot of reasons this tweet is funny, but look at this exchange. At first, I thought 0.91

00:04:15.000 this was a hoax. Photoshop. But Elon Musk confirmed that this is real. This is a text message exchange

00:04:21.980 between Elon Musk and Bill Gates. So apparently Bill Gates hit up Elon Musk to discuss philanthropy

00:04:30.820 on climate change. But Elon asked if he still had a half billion dollar short position on Tesla.

00:04:36.740 Bill said he hasn't closed it out. So Elon told him to get lost. No idea if this is true. Laugh out

00:04:42.560 loud. And you can see the exchange. Do you still have a half billion dollar short position against

00:04:51.320 Tesla? As in, are you betting in the stock market that Tesla will fall in value? Are you shorting

00:04:57.960 the stock? Are you trying to make it fall? Are you hoping it would fall? And Bill Gates replies,

00:05:04.080 sorry to say I haven't closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.

00:05:10.160 And Musk replies to him perfectly. Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change

00:05:16.680 seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve

00:05:21.520 climate change. Boom. I like that he's the boss of Twitter. I think he'll face some internal

00:05:28.180 resistance. Here's a note I saw on Bloomberg. Just before the company announced they accepted Elon Musk's

00:05:34.340 bid, they froze the app to stop staff from making unauthorized changes. That's an incredible decision to

00:05:43.360 make. But I think that Elon Musk will have problems, but he'll have some help too. For example,

00:05:50.320 from some of the original staff and executives of Twitter that believe in free speech, maybe he'll

00:05:54.600 bring back the founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, who recently said that the board of Twitter was a

00:06:00.020 real problem, but he was prevented from speaking out about it, probably by a non-disclosure agreement.

00:06:04.840 There's a lot of questions. There will be some tweaks to the app itself I'm looking forward to,

00:06:08.700 but what about its politics, the stuff that the left cares about? Will Donald Trump be let back on?

00:06:15.120 Even if he is let back on, will Trump go back on if he's permitted? Or will he still try to set up a

00:06:21.580 rival company called Truth Social, as he's been doing very slowly? How about others who have been

00:06:27.760 banned, including political pundits, some of whom even used to work for Rebel News but became banned?

00:06:34.600 Will Twitter reveal its internal rules? Will it become transparent about its algorithms,

00:06:40.440 who it boosts and who it hides? Will it become transparent about which governments ask it to do

00:06:46.360 what? I think we've told you before about foreign countries ordering Twitter to ban people, even

00:06:53.280 around the world. The government of Pakistan, you might remember, ordered that some of my tweets

00:06:57.640 be banned. I wonder if we'll find out what's going on now, and I wonder if we'll find out what was going

00:07:05.200 on historically. I'm excited, though. How can you not be when the richest man in the world solves a

00:07:11.140 big social problem with a big check? That's almost a dream scenario. Of course, the left hate him.

00:07:18.080 They don't believe in free speech anymore. They don't believe in debate. Half of what's considered

00:07:23.180 journalism in 2022 is just hounding people who have the wrong point of view and trying to get them

00:07:28.680 canceled. Just for a small Canadian example, Pierre Polyev. He had an event at a rentable

00:07:35.620 event space at a brewery here in the greater Toronto area called Steam Whistle, and the brewery,

00:07:42.080 for some reason, felt the need to denounce Pierre Polyev and distance themselves from him. I'm guessing

00:07:47.760 because if they didn't, they themselves would be denounced by some mob. So they joined the mob and

00:07:52.980 denounced their customer. It happened again. Polyev wasn't even in a pub. He was just drinking from a

00:07:59.980 beer glass with the company logo on it, and they felt compelled to denounce him for drinking their

00:08:06.340 beer. Imagine living in a world like that, but who do we learn such intolerance from? Who taught

00:08:13.020 these breweries to be so hateful? Our leaders in the media, Justin Trudeau in particular, who personally

00:08:20.840 denounced and then demonized and seized the bank accounts from? People he wanted to cancel over

00:08:27.120 the vaccine mandates? Elon Musk is fighting back. A lot of people have bet against him over the years.

00:08:32.980 So far, he keeps coming out on top. I'm rooting for him. Up next, my conversation about this with Alan

00:08:40.540 Bakari. Well, I woke up to some good news this morning. Rumors are that Twitter's board of directors

00:08:56.660 was actually going to accept Elon Musk's $43 billion offer. This after resisting it, we told

00:09:04.760 you about how Saudi Prince Al-Walid said he had no interest in selling his shares, even though

00:09:11.040 Elon Musk's offer was at a significant premium to the price the stock was trading at. The stock had

00:09:16.900 been on a downward trend for more than a year. We saw others on the board who have very little skin

00:09:24.420 on the game, as in they themselves didn't have a lot of shares of Twitter, they never used Twitter,

00:09:30.160 seemed to be against the idea of turning it into a free speech platform. In fact,

00:09:35.540 many Twitter staff said they found that Elon Musk's offer, while they would personally enrich them,

00:09:42.220 they found it odious because he had such a commitment to free speech. My favorite reaction

00:09:47.040 was that of the Washington Post, owned by Jeffrey Bezos, what, the second or third richest person in

00:09:52.600 the world. They objected to Elon Musk buying into Twitter because he was a rich man and no billionaire

00:09:59.120 should own a communications media, said the Bezos Amazon Post. Well, today's rumors suggest that,

00:10:07.080 in fact, the deal is going through. And joining us now via Skype from Austin, Texas, to talk about it

00:10:12.520 is our friend Alan Bocari, senior tech editor for Breitbart News. Alan, great to see you. I don't want

00:10:18.360 to believe this until it's done because I won't be able to have the emotional downfall if it turns out

00:10:24.880 that the rumor is false. But it seems fairly well sourced. Tell me the latest. The board hasn't

00:10:30.300 made any announcement yet and likely won't until the markets close. But what do we know from the

00:10:34.860 gossip on the street? Well, the gossip on the street is that Twitter has come to a deal with

00:10:41.100 Elon Musk that will be announced shortly. Obviously, we can't know that for sure until it's fully

00:10:46.620 announced. But as you said, it's pretty well sourced. It's looking good so far. And according to reports,

00:10:52.760 Twitter was getting a lot of pressure from shareholders that didn't want to see this

00:10:59.440 deal slip through, slip through the cracks, because it was fundamentally a good deal for

00:11:04.000 shareholders. The shareholders are going to make a lot of money if the deal goes through.

00:11:09.140 And not all of Twitter, Twitter's obviously a publicly traded company. Not all of Twitter's

00:11:13.600 shareholders were of the opinion that letting elites control the flow of information is more

00:11:19.280 important than making money. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing in a company. You have a fiduciary duty

00:11:25.480 of a responsibility and you can't oppress other shareholders. I'm using business law jargon. What

00:11:31.980 I mean by that is if there is a deal that is in the interest of the shareholders, you have an

00:11:37.400 obligation as managers, as a board to do that, even frankly, if a minority of the company feels that

00:11:45.080 way. And I don't know all the ins and outs of a battle, a shareholders battle, but I suppose there

00:11:50.920 could have been a ballot sent to everyone, every single shareholder. It could have gone around the

00:11:57.060 board to every, I mean, it would have been a real brawl. It's interesting. I was looking at the

00:12:01.720 biography of Robert Zellick, the former deep state diplomat and White House boss who's on the board.

00:12:09.200 He's never tweeted once. He has just a handful of shares. And I started to do some more due

00:12:14.860 diligence into Bob Zellick. And one of his specialties is fighting against shareholder

00:12:20.760 activism. And I thought, boy, I bet you Bob Zellick's working the phones trying to fight off

00:12:27.300 Elon Musk. The other day I was quite pessimistic because although Elon Musk is the richest man in

00:12:31.880 the world and he's very clever, there are other smart people. And frankly, they have collectively more

00:12:36.800 money than him. I was very pessimistic. Were you pessimistic too? Did you think that the empire

00:12:43.860 would strike back and stop him? Frankly, I was a little. You could see all these giant corporations

00:12:50.280 teaming up with this poison pill approach to stop Musk's takeover. A poison pill approach is where

00:12:58.220 a company makes it easier, makes it cheaper for a board member than existing shareholders to buy up

00:13:04.480 more stock in order to make it harder for any one person to take a majority stake in the company.

00:13:13.380 So certainly, I was a little bit pessimistic about that. You have to remember, Twitter board is made up

00:13:19.500 of giant corporations like Vanguard and State Street that manage trillions of dollars in assets.

00:13:26.540 So if those corporations wanted to team up to stop Musk, they could have. These are the same

00:13:31.540 corporations, by the way, that are pushing so-called ESG, ethical, sustainable governance across the

00:13:38.200 corporate world that includes diversity and critical race theory and wokeness in general. A little bit

00:13:44.520 comes from them. And you also saw other board members like the Saudi prince indicating they wouldn't

00:13:50.680 take a deal. And lastly, as you pointed out, you have these other people on the board who have very

00:13:57.460 little financial interests in Twitter. Their share is very minimal. But they're members of the

00:14:04.020 establishment who probably recognize that Twitter's value is more than just money. It's about controlling

00:14:10.160 the global flow of information, controlling narratives. However, I think what has happened is

00:14:16.900 they couldn't get around, as you said, that fiduciary duty. The board of directors ultimately has to make

00:14:21.080 a profit for their shareholders. And Elon Musk has to make a very compelling offer there.

00:14:26.840 Yeah. You know, I've been thinking a lot about Twitter and, you know, this saying on Facebook,

00:14:32.040 if you're not paying for the product or service, it's because you are the product and service.

00:14:37.360 And on Facebook, that's obviously what is being sold. Your eyes and ears and your data are being

00:14:42.780 sold to advertisers. And I think Zuckerberg is fairly candid about it. On Twitter, it's not just

00:14:48.420 your interests and your eyes and ears that are being sold. It's your mouth that's being sold.

00:14:54.500 And that's the thing. On Facebook, yes, censorship's important there. But Facebook is not where all the

00:15:01.220 politicians quarrel and go back and forth. It's more for family and friends and affinity groups. But

00:15:06.700 Twitter is really the journalistic political public square. And I think that was the intangible value to

00:15:13.460 Prince Al-Walid of Saudi Arabia, to Bob Zelik, the master of the universe. Sure, they like selling

00:15:20.680 ads to eyeballs. But it's not the eyes and ears, it's the mouth. They wanted to be able to turn off

00:15:25.400 voices, for example, that were critical of big pharma. They wanted to turn off voices that claimed the 2020

00:15:34.920 election for president was rigged. Those are some of the rules, by the way, on other social media.

00:15:40.620 So while it pretends to be an advertising service, it was actually a censorship service the same way

00:15:48.760 the Ministry of Propaganda in the book 1984 was called the Ministry of Truth. I think that Twitter's

00:15:54.420 real value to the Black Rocks and the Al-Walids of the world was they got to listen in on every 0.99

00:16:00.800 private conversation amongst Twitter users, and they got to throttle the public conversations they

00:16:06.100 didn't like. That's correct. I think it actually that became the case over a period of time since

00:16:12.980 the 2016 election. You have to remember, Twitter was originally a free speech platform. That's how

00:16:17.960 most of the original users of the platform remember it. And that is the case for most Silicon Valley

00:16:23.400 platforms. In fact, Facebook originally had very light moderation. Reddit had free speech written

00:16:30.080 into its terms of service. This was, to quote a Google document that leaked to me in 2018,

00:16:36.560 free speech was in the DNA of Silicon Valley from the beginning. But I think what happened

00:16:42.240 since 2016 is the elites realized how much control they'd lost because of this decentralization

00:16:49.520 of media and this decentralization of information. They hadn't really realized it until the Trump election,

00:16:55.520 how much control they'd lost over the narrative. So in their scramble to get that control back,

00:17:01.500 they tried to exert control over all of these platforms. But I'm a bit more optimistic. I think

00:17:06.420 it was really a counter-revolution. And as a counter-revolution, it's kind of failed because

00:17:11.180 the mainstream media is still in decline. You had CNN Plus just shutting down recently.

00:17:17.440 They were trying to do a streaming service, and that completely failed.

00:17:20.580 No one under the age of, I'm exaggerating, but few people under the age of 45, 50 will be watching,

00:17:29.140 will be getting their news from CNN or the New York Times. It's all decentralized now.

00:17:34.240 And the only way elites can maintain control is if they control content moderation on platforms like

00:17:40.520 Twitter and Twitch and YouTube and Facebook, which are the home to these decentralized creators.

00:17:46.600 And losing control over Twitter is, I think, the first domino. Once one major platform goes back to

00:17:54.520 free speech, the elite's chokehold over information will start to crumble.

00:18:00.960 Well, here's hoping. You mentioned CNN Plus. Netflix had a disastrous financial announcement.

00:18:08.820 Disney has lost tens of billions of dollars of market capitalization in its woke battles against

00:18:15.820 Ron DeSantis. Spotify. I hear they're not renewing their deal with the Obamas. Is that Spotify? Am I

00:18:23.740 getting mixed up? I mean, there's been a number of cultural institutions where wokeism has been in

00:18:29.720 retreat. Let me just tell you something you might not know down there in the States.

00:18:32.560 Justin Trudeau has proposed a bill called C-18 that would have heavy content moderation in Canada.

00:18:40.720 You would have to take down a tweet within 24 hours of it being reported. Obviously, no due process.

00:18:46.740 And Twitter filed a briefing with the government in response that was confidential. It was only released

00:18:54.600 last week in Access to Information. And Twitter, however much you and I criticize it, and this is

00:19:00.580 pre-Elon Musk Twitter, told Justin Trudeau that his proposals are akin to those in China, North Korea,

00:19:08.740 and Iran. So I'll send you a copy of that if you don't have it, Alam. So Twitter, even though it's

00:19:15.140 not as free speechy as we would like or Elon Musk would like, even so it had the courage to call out

00:19:21.580 Justin Trudeau for his censorship. Did you know that? So that's, so I, you know, I'm with you. I shouldn't

00:19:26.120 be so completely down on them. There is still some free speech DNA in Twitter. If they're willing to

00:19:32.560 tell Trudeau to buzz off, that's, that's impressive. That is impressive. And, you know, the big tech

00:19:39.280 debate is a lot more complicated than many people realize. It's not simply a case of big tech versus

00:19:45.360 everyone else. There are multiple power players here. So there's big tech, which is an independent

00:19:50.420 power in many ways. There's the media, which is trying to control big tech. There are politicians

00:19:55.920 who are trying to control big tech. There are corporations that are trying to control big tech.

00:19:59.760 And then, of course, there's the users and the creators on the tech platforms themselves.

00:20:05.320 That group is the group whose side I'm on. And sometimes they're at odds with big tech. They

00:20:10.820 certainly have been a lot as the content moderation rules have changed over the past four years.

00:20:16.440 But oftentimes, actually, in many cases, we need to be on the side of the tech companies against

00:20:23.280 governments and against media companies. This is why I spent a long time this year writing about the

00:20:29.740 Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the United States, this proposed bill that they've tried

00:20:35.560 multiple times to get through both the House and the Senate. It's a bill that would force tech companies 0.62

00:20:40.500 to pay the New York Times. Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. It will allow the New York

00:20:46.060 Times and other big media companies like CNN to form a legal cartel to band together in order to put

00:20:53.600 pressure on the tech companies for special favors, such as paying them for content and privileging them

00:20:59.560 in search results. So that's a case of media companies trying to impose a new set of rules on the tech

00:21:06.120 companies to favor themselves. And on things like that, we need to be on the side of the tech

00:21:10.120 companies against the media companies. Yeah, that's exactly the similar situation in Canada.

00:21:14.000 Yeah, this Bill C-18 that Twitter was reacting to, it precisely contains what you just described there.

00:21:20.860 It would compel Facebook and Google to pay the legacy media. And the Canadian twist on things is it would

00:21:28.860 also demand that licensed Canadian journalists would be boosted in the algorithm and unlicensed

00:21:37.020 journalists like Rebel News would be throttled. So they've gone full authoritarian in Trudeau's bill.

00:21:45.060 I want to ask you about Elon Musk. I mean, he's such a delight to watch because he's thoughtful,

00:21:52.320 he's a bit of an intellectual. He claims he's not living the billionaire lifestyle. I don't think he has

00:21:57.600 a yacht. He claims he doesn't even actually own a house. He just stays with friends. He does use a

00:22:02.400 private jet. But I give the give the guy some leeway on that. It's would be impossible for him

00:22:07.020 to move around, especially as quickly as need be without it. I don't think he's living a high life.

00:22:13.200 As you would expect the richest man in the world. He's no John Rockefeller, how he's throwing his

00:22:17.840 money around. He seems to talk about freedom. He's got a bit of a blind spot with China because he 0.52

00:22:22.360 doesn't want to get offside with them. Tesla's really going big in China. But on most other

00:22:27.420 issues, he claims he's not for subsidies in America. He says GM lobbied for those. He said

00:22:33.560 we need to produce more oil and gas to liberate Europe from Russia. He's not a doctrinaire leftist. 0.75

00:22:40.720 He's anti-woke. He's got a great sense of humor. I think he's a little nerdy. I really like the guy.

00:22:47.240 Now, maybe I'm setting myself up to be disappointed. But what do you think he's really going to do with

00:22:53.320 Twitter? I mean, 43 billion is like, obviously, he wants to get a rate of return. Do you think he

00:22:58.860 really is going to keep it free? He says that that's what he's about. But you can't trust anyone

00:23:03.600 these days. Well, look, I mean, he's been very, very clear, like his statements have not been

00:23:09.560 ambiguous. He's called himself a free speech absolutist. In his letter to Twitter, with his

00:23:16.400 takeover offer initially, he said, you know, he wants Twitter to fulfill its potential as the global

00:23:20.600 town square. He then went on a panel discussion at a conference later saying, you know, he believed

00:23:26.640 in maximum free speech, that, you know, content moderation ban should be a last resort, something

00:23:33.580 you do. So he's outlining a direction that is very different to the rest of these social media

00:23:39.960 platforms. And if you look at Elon Musk's career, like he hasn't really gone after things or try to

00:23:45.060 tackle challenges that are easy, you know, whether it's, you know, building a reusable,

00:23:49.780 reusable, relaunchable rockets, which people said couldn't be done. He did it. The electric

00:23:53.760 cars, he got into it right at the right at the start of the industry when a lot of people had

00:23:58.220 doubts. He's arguably gone too far with the with the grand visions in some cases. You know,

00:24:05.560 the whole tunneling on the L.A. thing does not seem to have worked out. But the pattern, I think,

00:24:10.540 is that he goes for, you know, big challenges that he finds very interesting. And I think restoring

00:24:15.200 free speech on social media has become one of those challenges. Now, of course, we have to wait

00:24:20.260 and see how how things progress, who are especially who if there are going to be any personnel changes,

00:24:25.700 and who's going to be who's going to be replacing some of the personnel at Twitter,

00:24:29.800 if Musk takes over? Is it going to be business as usual? Is Jack Dorsey coming back? Is Donald Trump

00:24:35.900 going to be reinstated on the platform? He'll certainly have a lot of pressure from people to

00:24:39.900 keep things the way they were or largely the way they were. So we have to wait and see to some

00:24:45.080 extent. But I thought I certainly think Elon Musk is not really not like the other billionaires in

00:24:51.220 many regards. Yeah, I want to tell you a quick billionaire story. About 20 odd years ago, I don't

00:24:57.680 know if you know this, Alan, but I ran for parliament. I won the nomination for the leading

00:25:02.540 conservative party. I was running in the strongest conservative seat in the country called Calgary

00:25:06.920 Southwest. It was five weeks till election day. I was in. But then the party chose a new leader and

00:25:13.560 he had to get into parliament quickly. And he Stephen Harper was his name. He went on to become

00:25:18.120 prime minister. He needed a quick entry into parliament. Safest seat in the country by election

00:25:23.080 five weeks away made sense for me to step aside. I did not want to. I'm almost done my story. You'll

00:25:28.160 see why I'm telling it. The owner of the leading newspaper in the city was a billionaire named Israel

00:25:34.880 Asper, who was a supporter of mine. And the Calgary Herald was the name of the newspaper was

00:25:39.560 saying, get out of there, Ezra. Get out of there. And I called up Izzy. And I said, look,

00:25:45.840 do you want me in parliament or not? You made a little donation to me. I need your help. You own

00:25:49.740 the largest newspaper in the city. They're devouring me every day. I need your help. And he said, okay,

00:25:55.320 we'll do it. Okay. So the next day, this tiny little editorial, the size of a postage stamp

00:26:01.580 appears in the most grudging language saying Ezra has the right to remain as the candidate and

00:26:07.960 surrounded by it were five very long, absolutely brutal op-ed columns kicking the tar out of me

00:26:15.040 saying Levant must go. And I did go three days later. And my point for telling you that story is

00:26:21.980 I had spoken to the most powerful media magnet in Canada at the time. It would be like calling

00:26:28.440 Rupert Murdoch directly. He was a supporter of mine. I said, will you help me? He said, yes,

00:26:34.460 I will. And he made a phone call to the Calgary Herald and they, but if he was not prepared to

00:26:40.540 watch them like a hawk, get into the weeds, they would just give him a perfunctory obedience and

00:26:47.560 then do what they wanted to do. And this is besides telling you a fun story of the, uh, uh, and that

00:26:54.080 I wanted to tell you, Twitter has hundreds, perhaps thousands of ideological underminers

00:27:02.800 who despise Elon Musk. And like my friend, the late Izzy Asper, he can take over as the captain

00:27:10.800 of the ship. But if he gives an order, stop shadow banning people, stop banning people who are skeptics

00:27:19.160 of the lockdown, stop censoring Trump people. He can give that order. Like my friend Izzy Asper

00:27:25.240 gave the order and they can obey in a perfunctory way, but they can undermine him. Frankly, that's

00:27:29.120 what happened to Donald Trump throughout his term of the white house is that they nodded along,

00:27:33.480 but then they undermine. And thanks for letting me tell you my story from what I ran for parliament.

00:27:38.040 But my point is how does Elon Musk take control of a company whose political staff so clearly hate him?

00:27:44.960 Uh, that's, first of all, that's a fascinating story. I wonder how different Canadian politics

00:27:51.620 would be, uh, if you had made it into parliament. That's, uh, yeah, I did that. That probably would

00:27:58.280 have, I think Canada would have been, uh, served a lot better by you in parliament than perhaps even,

00:28:02.700 uh, Stephen Harper. Oh, Harper was great. I, I, I regret taking so long to step aside. It was just very

00:28:08.060 hard to let go of a dream. Anyways, back to your answer. Sorry. Um, but, uh,

00:28:14.560 so on, on the question of, yeah, so there will be lots of Twitter employees who will, uh, attempt to

00:28:20.720 sabotage anything Musk wants if he, uh, if he, uh, successfully takes over Twitter, which is now

00:28:28.380 looking likely. Um, the big, the biggest thing that I think he ought to do is look at the content

00:28:35.980 moderation department. Now, most Silicon Valley companies, uh, certainly Facebook does this,

00:28:43.140 and I think Google does it as well. They contract out their content moderation to, uh, to external

00:28:49.320 contractors. So the first question I think Musk needs to ask is, is there an external contractor

00:28:54.540 that does content moderation that, uh, that is not biased, that is not filled with social justice

00:29:01.840 warriors and communists and, uh, and censors? Uh, I'm not sure one exists currently. It wouldn't be

00:29:08.460 hard to set one up. Uh, certainly he can't suddenly dispense with all content moderation

00:29:13.240 because then he immediately gets Twitter kicked off the app store and the Google play store. Um,

00:29:19.460 so that's something to consider, uh, that he could take cues from the Coinbase CEO. So what the Coinbase

00:29:26.400 CEO did a couple of years ago is he put out a, um, a message to employees saying political discussions

00:29:34.520 are completely banned in the workplace, uh, completely banned in the workplace, uh, no more politics in the

00:29:37.820 workplace. And if Coinbase employees disagreed with that, they were given an opportunity to, uh, to leave

00:29:43.780 with a very generous, uh, leaving package. That is something, uh, um, a future must-backed CEO of

00:29:51.060 Twitter could do. Now, probably a little harder to do that with Twitter than with Coinbase because a lot

00:29:56.540 of people in crypto are already not on the side of social justice warriors and crazy censors and

00:30:03.240 progressives. So probably the ratio of those employees to normal employees at Coinbase was a

00:30:08.940 lot better than the ratio at Twitter. But, uh, ultimately he's gonna, he's gonna have to do some

00:30:14.540 major, major personnel changes to avoid the kind of sabotage you mentioned. And I think the first

00:30:21.220 thing is replacing whoever does content moderation at Twitter. Yeah. Well, and I'm not sure if the,

00:30:27.800 the CEO Parag Agrawal, uh, can survive the new owner either. Um, last question for you and thanks

00:30:34.000 for, for indulging me. And I'm sort of embarrassed that I took up so much time with my story, but it

00:30:38.960 reminded me that you can be the owner of a company, you can be a billionaire, you can be the most powerful

00:30:43.580 man around. But if you're part of a large organization where people are willful and there's

00:30:49.260 political wiggle room, if you're not going to bird dog every single thing, if you're not going to

00:30:54.000 check, check, double check. And if you don't have deputies that are going to do the same thing,

00:30:57.900 you can, you know, you can be the boss in name alone. That's, that's why I told you that personal

00:31:03.120 anecdote. But let me ask you one more thing. And a few years ago, a number of Saudi staff at Twitter

00:31:11.400 were, uh, prosecuted for using their position to spy on Saudi democracy activists, Saudi dissidents.

00:31:22.780 Um, and of course I, I'm very concerned about that. I no longer put confidential things in my Twitter

00:31:29.240 direct messages. I just say, Hey, can we take this to an encrypted app like signal? Not that I think

00:31:35.020 people are hacking me, but I think that there are content moderators or other staff at Twitter

00:31:39.720 who probably are reading my Twitter direct messages. And I just don't even think that's a really

00:31:46.640 stretch to say. And in the case of the Saudis, they were spying for the government. Um, and my

00:31:54.860 question is, do you think Elon Musk will ever know? And do you think we will ever know what has been

00:32:02.600 done in black ops inside Twitter? Who has been shown what, what has been done, uh, for political or

00:32:11.700 international intrigues like that? Hmm. It's not a stretch to say at all. And I've always considered

00:32:17.680 Twitter DMs to be one of the least secure ways of direct messaging. Uh, I always tell people do not

00:32:23.600 post anything sensitive in Twitter DMs. There's nothing, nothing stopping a Twitter employee from

00:32:28.800 reading that. You should always take it to a platform like a signal or even better telegram,

00:32:34.660 frankly. And, um, uh, it's important to remember how important Twitter and these social networks

00:32:43.200 have been to the United States foreign policy and security establishment. You know, these are

00:32:50.080 platforms that were quite critical to fomenting unrest in foreign countries, such as in, uh,

00:32:55.260 Libya and in the Middle East during the Arab spring and elsewhere as, as well, you all, you often see

00:33:01.500 third world countries outright banning Twitter, outright banning Facebook because they see it as

00:33:06.660 a, uh, arm of American foreign policy, uh, interests and influence. Um, so, uh, yeah, I, we, we, we can't

00:33:18.160 rule out the idea that, uh, you know, intelligence services are monitoring direct messages. You remember

00:33:23.580 Julian Assange's and WikiLeaks' DMs also leaked and there was never really an explanation as to how that

00:33:29.160 happened. Uh, because you're, you're absolutely right. What, be careful on DMs. I don't, and the,

00:33:34.540 and the answer to the question is like, I don't think we'll ever know how Twitter was being used by

00:33:37.880 these, uh, by these shadowy forces. Yeah. Including the shadowy forces on its board. Well, hopefully

00:33:43.560 we'll have the news perhaps even by the time this show goes to air tonight. Alan, great to see you as

00:33:48.660 always. And thanks for fighting for freedom. Good to see you, Ezra. All right. There you have it.

00:33:53.340 Alan Bocari, senior tech correspondent at Breitbart.com. Stay with us more ahead.

00:33:59.160 Hey, welcome back. Your viewer feedback. Nat Calverly says it is disgusting to portray Pierre

00:34:14.740 as a racist, constantly calling people you don't agree with racist devalues the meaning of the word.

00:34:20.380 It is very tiresome. It's tiresome, but it still stings. I think it's done for two reasons.

00:34:26.340 I think good faith people who are not racist react. They're stunned by it. I think an actual

00:34:32.760 racist wouldn't be called, wouldn't mind being called a racist because that's what they are.

00:34:38.620 It's the unfairness of the accusation that is meant to stop you in your tracks. And there are still some

00:34:44.920 people who say, well, where there's smoke, there's fire. Uh, the prime minister of the country and the

00:34:49.260 media of the country wouldn't be calling him a racist if he's not a racist. And just to be sure,

00:34:53.640 I should steer clear of him. So it's a very bad faith criticism. And it's really what's had Justin

00:35:00.780 Trudeau elected three times in a row. Barry Thompson says, you know what, Rupa? Old white Canadians are 1.00

00:35:08.320 happy to see people from other backgrounds showing up in union with them. They get some exhilaration

00:35:12.780 out of it. All of us who want to make our own nation in this piece of geography have to find

00:35:17.280 spokespeople. I feel the same way. I find it very validating because I believe that every human

00:35:24.880 yearns for freedom. I don't care where you were born or what language you speak or what race you

00:35:30.160 are. I just think it's a human condition. We want to be free. Right. And, um, you know, the saying

00:35:37.320 man's born free, but everywhere he's in chains. And I think all of us want to be free. And

00:35:43.400 that's why I love Taiwan so much. That's why I like South Korea versus North Korea. They're proof 0.99

00:35:50.280 that even in cultures that are historically different than us, obviously racially different,

00:35:56.280 people love freedom. And Taiwan has not been free for very long, only about a generation. They were

00:36:01.340 under martial law for the longest time. And some people say, well, China cannot truly embrace freedom.

00:36:07.260 It has sort of a Confucian mindset. Well, no, Taiwan is the counterproof to that. Taiwan is a very 0.98

00:36:14.800 vigorous liberal democracy. And I know I'm talking about foreign countries now, but I, I agree with

00:36:21.380 the letter writer. I find it deeply reassuring when people of all backgrounds unite around a love for

00:36:27.480 freedom and personal autonomy. I find it, I do find it exhilarating too. I feel the same way.

00:36:32.580 A to dasso is writing about the RCMP hiding their tracks. Um, when their WhatsApp group mocked people

00:36:41.780 who were abused by cops need to make cops legally responsible for their actions. That will stop all

00:36:46.800 of this. They should have to pay for their own lawyer to defend themselves. Well, look, I think

00:36:51.520 police should have some degree of immunity for what they do on the job. Just like any employee,

00:36:56.280 when they're acting in good faith for their company is really an agent of the company. They're not

00:37:00.740 on their own. But I, I think that with that, there has to be internal discipline. And as far as I know,

00:37:07.340 there has been zero internal discipline, either to the cop that stomped on, uh, the disabled lady

00:37:13.280 or those who made fun of it. So I agree that, um, to a large extent, police who follow the rules and

00:37:22.220 are not grossly out of bounds should be protected by the police force. It would make no sense if police

00:37:27.620 had no protection for what they did in the course of their duties. But I think that with that comes

00:37:32.960 other forms of accountability. Uh, and so far the government has done the opposite. They've hidden

00:37:40.040 the identity of the cops who were bad. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of

00:37:45.960 us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night and keep fighting for freedom. Let me leave you with

00:37:50.020 our video of the day from Drea Humphrey. Freedom for Vancouverites, BC Libertarians hopeful message

00:37:56.720 ahead of a by-election. All right. Good night, everybody. All right. So this is Sandra Philosoph-Schiffer.

00:38:04.360 Now you are the deputy leader for the BC Libertarian Party and you're a candidate in Vancouver's upcoming

00:38:11.020 by-election, right? Yes. In Vancouver, Kulshana. Okay. Well, thanks for being on Rebel News. Now I'm finding

00:38:17.880 there's a lot of people who are kind of just getting into politics right now and starting to

00:38:22.760 learn about how things work. So for some of those people who don't really understand what a by-election

00:38:27.500 is, can you kind of give a little rundown on that? Absolutely. So I am running for a member of

00:38:33.940 Legislative Assembly. So that's for the BC Legislature. And the reason we're having a by-election,

00:38:39.800 which means an election that is, falls in between regular elections because we're expecting a provincial

00:38:44.980 election in about two years. So the by-election is happening is because someone has resigned and

00:38:52.260 there's a spot open in our riding, Vancouver, Kulshana. So I'm running for that. And I think

00:38:57.620 it's interesting that you mentioned a lot of people are getting into politics and that's why I'm in it.

00:39:03.800 I've been noticing some changes in Canada. I come from an immigrant family. So, and my dad's shaking

00:39:09.940 his head saying, we could have stayed in Turkey for that. So I became involved, not because I need a

00:39:18.520 new career. I don't, but I feel duty bound to stand up. So even if I don't win, if I could get people

00:39:25.360 talking and paying attention. And I have to say, Canada is such a great country and BC is the greatest

00:39:31.220 of that. It's been easy to, to just be apathetic because things are pretty good. And relative to

00:39:39.120 other places in the world, it's still pretty good, but we need desperately to hold onto that.

00:39:43.260 The fact that there's a vaccine passport is frightening, not because I'm anti-vaccine or 0.86

00:39:49.360 pro-vaccine. As a matter of fact, I am vaccinated and generally in my life, pro-vaccine, my children are

00:39:54.920 vaccinated. But the fact that our government or any government thinks they should have dominion over

00:40:00.220 my body, let alone my home, is unacceptable. It sets a very frightening precedent. And it's for that

00:40:07.660 that I am running. So you're running on a sort of civil liberty platform. Is there any other

00:40:14.380 issues you're also running on? Maybe some that are specific to Vancouverites? Well, Vancouverites are

00:40:21.220 paying an abnormal amount of tax. We have housing problems and there, there's definitely a supply and

00:40:26.700 demand problem. But I think the supply problem could be eased easily with, frankly, the government

00:40:33.420 stepping out of the way, just the cost, let alone the time and it takes to go through the red tape.

00:40:39.660 I read an article that says the cost of red tape is about 26% for a builder. I talked to builders and

00:40:45.960 they're saying, no, it's more like 40%. So if you could take most of that away, just by government

00:40:51.200 getting away, just off the top, supply and demand being taken, factored out of the equation,

00:40:56.980 that brings prices a lot lower. So I think that that's important. Government needs to stay in its

00:41:03.360 lane. And the very basic things that government should be doing, a military, a court system, 0.75

00:41:10.580 things like that. They don't need to be involved in every single thing we do. It just becomes cumbersome,

00:41:16.480 complicated, and very expensive. So for the people in your area, or this riding, I should say,

00:41:23.640 who are going to be voting in this by-election, what would you say should qualify you for their

00:41:30.160 vote over maybe somebody who has had longer experience in politics? That's exactly why.

00:41:36.360 Because that's exactly why. I'm not a professional politician. I'm someone who lives here, who works here

00:41:43.140 in Vancouver, and who pays taxes here, and has children here, and enough is enough. I don't

00:41:50.480 need the job. I already have a job. I'm doing this out of a sense of duty. And I think that is why you

00:41:57.080 should vote for me. And what would be your promises, maybe your first course of action, if you were to be

00:42:03.020 the next MLA in this riding? My first course of action? Well, as an MLA in a single riding, there's not

00:42:08.320 much our party can do. However, I will certainly be the voice of protest for government overreach,

00:42:13.780 which is really what libertarianism is about. It's consensual interactions, financial and otherwise

00:42:22.940 between people. And I'm not saying it's lawlessness. Some people assume that we are full-on anarchists,

00:42:29.980 and maybe some of us are. That's certainly not what the party is about. We want the government to take a

00:42:34.880 step back and get out of where it doesn't belong, starting with vaccine passports, also federally,

00:42:42.000 which is not our jurisdiction. But the fact that Bonnie Henry is requiring physicians to disclose 0.96

00:42:49.640 to the College of Physicians and other healthcare colleges their vaccination status, what is next?

00:42:56.340 Again, what precedence is that setting? So the first thing we would do is get government out of things

00:43:00.240 like that. Whole government right out, not completely out of healthcare. I think out here in Canada and

00:43:06.620 other countries as well, there are many countries with healthcare is universal. And that's okay in

00:43:12.640 principle. But the more I dig into it, the worse it looks. And we were already struggling pre-COVID.

00:43:18.500 So what we would like to do is allow more private options, more co-pay options. And that's the first

00:43:28.140 thing. And also adopt different models. For elder care, for example, I know my husband's father in

00:43:35.520 Holland had a nurse coming to his house every day and check on him. Hello, Mr. Shipper. Are you okay?

00:43:43.280 Yes, I am. No, I need this, et cetera, et cetera. And he was able to stay in his house till he was really

00:43:47.920 old. And I think that helps older people live longer lives. And he wasn't lonely. He had someone

00:43:53.120 to check on him. He had kids anyway, but they get busy too. They don't get to check on dad every day.

00:43:58.720 So I think we need to adopt that model really quickly. And not just that, it's actually a lot

00:44:04.180 cheaper. Another thing, we are spending more money in Canada than just about every other country in the

00:44:10.560 world for healthcare, including private, public, and mixed systems. But our results are depending,

00:44:17.460 again, on who you ask, probably out of 35 countries, number 24, number 28, depending on what

00:44:26.460 specific things we're talking about. We want to loosen up some of the administration money we spend

00:44:32.300 in Canada, and BC is even worse. Don't get me started on that. The employer health tax, which

00:44:37.400 doesn't go to health. And as a business owner, that offends me.

00:44:42.000 But we want to, Germany, for instance, spends 11 times less than Canada does on administration.

00:44:50.000 So what does that translate to? They spend only slightly less money than us, like maybe 1%

00:44:54.800 per capita or something like that. So for the same money, they're getting a lot more.

00:44:58.540 So we're talking, they have triple the doctors per capita, double the nurses per capita, double the

00:45:05.920 equipment, MRI, CT scanners, et cetera, et cetera. We should get that for our money. I don't mind

00:45:11.800 spending money, just ask my husband. But we should be getting something for our money. And we're paying

00:45:16.880 more and more and getting less and less. Personally, I had to wait, and this is pre-COVID, 36 hours for an

00:45:23.580 emergency appendectomy. And where was I waiting? The only spot they had for me, available for me,

00:45:29.120 after spending the entire day in the emergency, like in the triage area, was in the tuberculosis

00:45:36.060 wing. And that's all they could offer me. That's not acceptable. And things get worse. And the people

00:45:42.040 they kept bumping me for were genuinely sicker than I am. This is not a slight at all on our healthcare

00:45:47.540 workers. Our healthcare workers here are excellent. Excellent. Well, yes, BC is in a healthcare worker

00:45:54.500 crisis. More options are needed. The BC government is putting millions, 12 millions, they just announced

00:46:00.500 into getting foreign nurses to come work here. And yet they still have thousands of healthy healthcare 1.00

00:46:08.100 workers at home without pay due to not being vaccinated for COVID-19. What do people need to

00:46:14.080 know about where and how to vote for this election? This is just in the by-election. You can vote

00:46:19.340 at the Elections BC office, and there are going to be several voting places. It's all online on

00:46:24.580 electionsbc.ca. All right. Thanks so much. There you have it. Sandra Philosopha Shipper with the BC

00:46:33.320 Libertarian Party.

00:46:44.080 All right, thanks for the first time.

00:46:47.080 You're here today.

00:46:47.540 Thank you.

00:46:48.840 For more information visit www. blo Hokiesko.deckvePro.com.

00:46:49.340 Thanks a lot.

00:46:50.120 You're here today.

00:46:51.060 Here we have a good time scientists.

00:46:52.300 Bye bye.

00:46:52.960 Bye bye.

00:46:53.160 All right.

00:46:53.860 Bye bye.

00:46:55.100 Bye bye.

00:46:55.320 Bye bye, bye bye.

00:46:56.420 Bye bye.

00:46:56.820 Bye bye.

00:46:58.060 Bye bye bye.

00:46:58.500 Bye bye bye bye.

00:47:00.420 Bye bye bye.

00:47:06.360 Bye bye bye bye.

00:47:07.860 Bye bye bye.

00:47:08.100 Bye bye bye bye.

00:47:09.460 Bye bye.

00:47:10.600 Bye bye bye.

00:47:11.500 Bye bye bye.

00:47:12.500 Bye bye bye bye.

Rebel News Podcast - April 26, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Elon Musk succeeds in buying Twitter — what happens now？

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