EZRA LEVANT ｜ Elon Musk succeeds in buying Twitter — what happens now？
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Summary
Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter has been accepted by the board, and the company is in some sort of lockdown now. I go through it, my thoughts on things, and we talk with a bit of an expert on Twitter's politics. That's ahead.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. Big news today. It looks like Twitter finally did accept Elon Musk's offer to
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buy them. Oh, the company is in some sort of lockdown now. I'll go through it, my thoughts
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on things, and we'll talk with Alan Bokari, who's a bit of an expert on Twitter's politics.
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That's ahead. But before we do that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
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It's the video version of this podcast. In addition to my own daily show,
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get any dough from Trudeau. We wouldn't take it. All right. Here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, Elon Musk succeeds in buying Twitter. What happens now? It's April 25th, and this is
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The Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the
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government of a wire publisher is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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Big news today. Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter for about $43 billion U.S. is accepted by the board.
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That's about $55 billion Canadian money, by the way. It's hard to believe it's worth that much
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economically, commercially. But then again, Facebook's market capitalization is more than
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half a trillion dollars U.S. So maybe it's true then. Maybe Twitter really is worth 10%
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of what Facebook is. It's about one-tenth the size of it. I was really worried that the board of
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directors of Twitter, you know, valued it not for its commercial potential nor for its free speech
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potential, but actually for the opposite reason, that it was the biggest censorship device in the
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world and that censorship was more valuable than anything else. It was very revealing when the
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Saudi prince Al-Waleed publicly denounced Elon Musk's offer right away. Elon Musk's reply was spot on.
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So I'm excited about this. Earlier today, before the deal was formally acknowledged, I had a great chat
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about it with our friend Alan Bakari, the tech editor at Breitbart.com. So that interview is up in a moment
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before we knew the deal was done. I'm excited. I don't know if Elon Musk will be allowed to get
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away with this, either by the staff of Twitter who hate their new boss or by the censorious world
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that sees him as a threat. Look at this news that was released just today by coincidence, I'm sure.
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FX and the New York Times announced Elon Musk expose documentary. Several former
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Tesla employees will be featured in the documentary speaking out against Musk for the first time.
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But of course they will. I mean, Elon Musk used to be cool to the left. The electric car guy,
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reusable rocket ship guy, big thinker, but he's been doing a bit too much thinking lately, hasn't he?
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Look at this. I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech
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means. I think Elon Musk believes that, by the way, but not a lot of other powerful people do. I want
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to show you one more Elon Musk thing. It's a joke. Billionaires aren't really allowed to joke a lot,
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are they? It was his tweet. In case you need to lose a boner fast. That's pretty funny. I don't
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know if billionaires are allowed to say the word boner like that. Of course, that's Bill Gates on the left,
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a rival tech oligarch. And on the right, a woke new emoji, like a smiley face. This one, an image of a
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pregnant man. There's a lot of reasons this tweet is funny, but look at this exchange. At first, I thought
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this was a hoax. Photoshop. But Elon Musk confirmed that this is real. This is a text message exchange
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between Elon Musk and Bill Gates. So apparently Bill Gates hit up Elon Musk to discuss philanthropy
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on climate change. But Elon asked if he still had a half billion dollar short position on Tesla.
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Bill said he hasn't closed it out. So Elon told him to get lost. No idea if this is true. Laugh out
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loud. And you can see the exchange. Do you still have a half billion dollar short position against
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Tesla? As in, are you betting in the stock market that Tesla will fall in value? Are you shorting
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the stock? Are you trying to make it fall? Are you hoping it would fall? And Bill Gates replies,
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sorry to say I haven't closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.
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And Musk replies to him perfectly. Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change
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seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve
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climate change. Boom. I like that he's the boss of Twitter. I think he'll face some internal
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resistance. Here's a note I saw on Bloomberg. Just before the company announced they accepted Elon Musk's
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bid, they froze the app to stop staff from making unauthorized changes. That's an incredible decision to
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make. But I think that Elon Musk will have problems, but he'll have some help too. For example,
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from some of the original staff and executives of Twitter that believe in free speech, maybe he'll
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bring back the founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, who recently said that the board of Twitter was a
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real problem, but he was prevented from speaking out about it, probably by a non-disclosure agreement.
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There's a lot of questions. There will be some tweaks to the app itself I'm looking forward to,
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but what about its politics, the stuff that the left cares about? Will Donald Trump be let back on?
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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
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rival company called Truth Social, as he's been doing very slowly? How about others who have been
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banned, including political pundits, some of whom even used to work for Rebel News but became banned?
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Will Twitter reveal its internal rules? Will it become transparent about its algorithms,
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who it boosts and who it hides? Will it become transparent about which governments ask it to do
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what? I think we've told you before about foreign countries ordering Twitter to ban people, even
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around the world. The government of Pakistan, you might remember, ordered that some of my tweets
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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
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on historically. I'm excited, though. How can you not be when the richest man in the world solves a
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big social problem with a big check? That's almost a dream scenario. Of course, the left hate him.
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They don't believe in free speech anymore. They don't believe in debate. Half of what's considered
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journalism in 2022 is just hounding people who have the wrong point of view and trying to get them
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canceled. Just for a small Canadian example, Pierre Polyev. He had an event at a rentable
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event space at a brewery here in the greater Toronto area called Steam Whistle, and the brewery,
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for some reason, felt the need to denounce Pierre Polyev and distance themselves from him. I'm guessing
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because if they didn't, they themselves would be denounced by some mob. So they joined the mob and
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denounced their customer. It happened again. Polyev wasn't even in a pub. He was just drinking from a
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beer glass with the company logo on it, and they felt compelled to denounce him for drinking their
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beer. Imagine living in a world like that, but who do we learn such intolerance from? Who taught
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these breweries to be so hateful? Our leaders in the media, Justin Trudeau in particular, who personally
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denounced and then demonized and seized the bank accounts from? People he wanted to cancel over
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the vaccine mandates? Elon Musk is fighting back. A lot of people have bet against him over the years.
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So far, he keeps coming out on top. I'm rooting for him. Up next, my conversation about this with Alan
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Bakari. Well, I woke up to some good news this morning. Rumors are that Twitter's board of directors
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was actually going to accept Elon Musk's $43 billion offer. This after resisting it, we told
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you about how Saudi Prince Al-Walid said he had no interest in selling his shares, even though
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Elon Musk's offer was at a significant premium to the price the stock was trading at. The stock had
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been on a downward trend for more than a year. We saw others on the board who have very little skin
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on the game, as in they themselves didn't have a lot of shares of Twitter, they never used Twitter,
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seemed to be against the idea of turning it into a free speech platform. In fact,
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many Twitter staff said they found that Elon Musk's offer, while they would personally enrich them,
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they found it odious because he had such a commitment to free speech. My favorite reaction
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was that of the Washington Post, owned by Jeffrey Bezos, what, the second or third richest person in
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the world. They objected to Elon Musk buying into Twitter because he was a rich man and no billionaire
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should own a communications media, said the Bezos Amazon Post. Well, today's rumors suggest that,
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in fact, the deal is going through. And joining us now via Skype from Austin, Texas, to talk about it
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is our friend Alan Bocari, senior tech editor for Breitbart News. Alan, great to see you. I don't want
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to believe this until it's done because I won't be able to have the emotional downfall if it turns out
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that the rumor is false. But it seems fairly well sourced. Tell me the latest. The board hasn't
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made any announcement yet and likely won't until the markets close. But what do we know from the
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gossip on the street? Well, the gossip on the street is that Twitter has come to a deal with
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Elon Musk that will be announced shortly. Obviously, we can't know that for sure until it's fully
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announced. But as you said, it's pretty well sourced. It's looking good so far. And according to reports,
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Twitter was getting a lot of pressure from shareholders that didn't want to see this
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deal slip through, slip through the cracks, because it was fundamentally a good deal for
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shareholders. The shareholders are going to make a lot of money if the deal goes through.
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And not all of Twitter, Twitter's obviously a publicly traded company. Not all of Twitter's
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shareholders were of the opinion that letting elites control the flow of information is more
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important than making money. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing in a company. You have a fiduciary duty
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of a responsibility and you can't oppress other shareholders. I'm using business law jargon. What
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I mean by that is if there is a deal that is in the interest of the shareholders, you have an
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obligation as managers, as a board to do that, even frankly, if a minority of the company feels that
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way. And I don't know all the ins and outs of a battle, a shareholders battle, but I suppose there
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could have been a ballot sent to everyone, every single shareholder. It could have gone around the
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board to every, I mean, it would have been a real brawl. It's interesting. I was looking at the
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biography of Robert Zellick, the former deep state diplomat and White House boss who's on the board.
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He's never tweeted once. He has just a handful of shares. And I started to do some more due
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diligence into Bob Zellick. And one of his specialties is fighting against shareholder
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activism. And I thought, boy, I bet you Bob Zellick's working the phones trying to fight off
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Elon Musk. The other day I was quite pessimistic because although Elon Musk is the richest man in
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the world and he's very clever, there are other smart people. And frankly, they have collectively more
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money than him. I was very pessimistic. Were you pessimistic too? Did you think that the empire
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would strike back and stop him? Frankly, I was a little. You could see all these giant corporations
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teaming up with this poison pill approach to stop Musk's takeover. A poison pill approach is where
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a company makes it easier, makes it cheaper for a board member than existing shareholders to buy up
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more stock in order to make it harder for any one person to take a majority stake in the company.
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So certainly, I was a little bit pessimistic about that. You have to remember, Twitter board is made up
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of giant corporations like Vanguard and State Street that manage trillions of dollars in assets.
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So if those corporations wanted to team up to stop Musk, they could have. These are the same
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corporations, by the way, that are pushing so-called ESG, ethical, sustainable governance across the
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corporate world that includes diversity and critical race theory and wokeness in general. A little bit
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comes from them. And you also saw other board members like the Saudi prince indicating they wouldn't
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take a deal. And lastly, as you pointed out, you have these other people on the board who have very
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little financial interests in Twitter. Their share is very minimal. But they're members of the
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establishment who probably recognize that Twitter's value is more than just money. It's about controlling
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the global flow of information, controlling narratives. However, I think what has happened is
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they couldn't get around, as you said, that fiduciary duty. The board of directors ultimately has to make
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a profit for their shareholders. And Elon Musk has to make a very compelling offer there.
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Yeah. You know, I've been thinking a lot about Twitter and, you know, this saying on Facebook,
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if you're not paying for the product or service, it's because you are the product and service.
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And on Facebook, that's obviously what is being sold. Your eyes and ears and your data are being
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sold to advertisers. And I think Zuckerberg is fairly candid about it. On Twitter, it's not just
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your interests and your eyes and ears that are being sold. It's your mouth that's being sold.
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And that's the thing. On Facebook, yes, censorship's important there. But Facebook is not where all the
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politicians quarrel and go back and forth. It's more for family and friends and affinity groups. But
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Twitter is really the journalistic political public square. And I think that was the intangible value to
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Prince Al-Walid of Saudi Arabia, to Bob Zelik, the master of the universe. Sure, they like selling
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ads to eyeballs. But it's not the eyes and ears, it's the mouth. They wanted to be able to turn off
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voices, for example, that were critical of big pharma. They wanted to turn off voices that claimed the 2020
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election for president was rigged. Those are some of the rules, by the way, on other social media.
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So while it pretends to be an advertising service, it was actually a censorship service the same way
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the Ministry of Propaganda in the book 1984 was called the Ministry of Truth. I think that Twitter's
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real value to the Black Rocks and the Al-Walids of the world was they got to listen in on every
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private conversation amongst Twitter users, and they got to throttle the public conversations they
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didn't like. That's correct. I think it actually that became the case over a period of time since
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the 2016 election. You have to remember, Twitter was originally a free speech platform. That's how
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most of the original users of the platform remember it. And that is the case for most Silicon Valley
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platforms. In fact, Facebook originally had very light moderation. Reddit had free speech written
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into its terms of service. This was, to quote a Google document that leaked to me in 2018,
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free speech was in the DNA of Silicon Valley from the beginning. But I think what happened
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since 2016 is the elites realized how much control they'd lost because of this decentralization
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of media and this decentralization of information. They hadn't really realized it until the Trump election,
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how much control they'd lost over the narrative. So in their scramble to get that control back,
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they tried to exert control over all of these platforms. But I'm a bit more optimistic. I think
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it was really a counter-revolution. And as a counter-revolution, it's kind of failed because
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the mainstream media is still in decline. You had CNN Plus just shutting down recently.
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They were trying to do a streaming service, and that completely failed.
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No one under the age of, I'm exaggerating, but few people under the age of 45, 50 will be watching,
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will be getting their news from CNN or the New York Times. It's all decentralized now.
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And the only way elites can maintain control is if they control content moderation on platforms like
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Twitter and Twitch and YouTube and Facebook, which are the home to these decentralized creators.
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And losing control over Twitter is, I think, the first domino. Once one major platform goes back to
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free speech, the elite's chokehold over information will start to crumble.
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Well, here's hoping. You mentioned CNN Plus. Netflix had a disastrous financial announcement.
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Disney has lost tens of billions of dollars of market capitalization in its woke battles against
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Ron DeSantis. Spotify. I hear they're not renewing their deal with the Obamas. Is that Spotify? Am I
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getting mixed up? I mean, there's been a number of cultural institutions where wokeism has been in
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retreat. Let me just tell you something you might not know down there in the States.
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Justin Trudeau has proposed a bill called C-18 that would have heavy content moderation in Canada.
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You would have to take down a tweet within 24 hours of it being reported. Obviously, no due process.
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And Twitter filed a briefing with the government in response that was confidential. It was only released
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last week in Access to Information. And Twitter, however much you and I criticize it, and this is
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pre-Elon Musk Twitter, told Justin Trudeau that his proposals are akin to those in China, North Korea,
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and Iran. So I'll send you a copy of that if you don't have it, Alam. So Twitter, even though it's
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not as free speechy as we would like or Elon Musk would like, even so it had the courage to call out
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Justin Trudeau for his censorship. Did you know that? So that's, so I, you know, I'm with you. I shouldn't
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be so completely down on them. There is still some free speech DNA in Twitter. If they're willing to
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tell Trudeau to buzz off, that's, that's impressive. That is impressive. And, you know, the big tech
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debate is a lot more complicated than many people realize. It's not simply a case of big tech versus
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everyone else. There are multiple power players here. So there's big tech, which is an independent
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power in many ways. There's the media, which is trying to control big tech. There are politicians
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who are trying to control big tech. There are corporations that are trying to control big tech.
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And then, of course, there's the users and the creators on the tech platforms themselves.
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That group is the group whose side I'm on. And sometimes they're at odds with big tech. They
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certainly have been a lot as the content moderation rules have changed over the past four years.
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But oftentimes, actually, in many cases, we need to be on the side of the tech companies against
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governments and against media companies. This is why I spent a long time this year writing about the
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Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the United States, this proposed bill that they've tried
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multiple times to get through both the House and the Senate. It's a bill that would force tech companies
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to pay the New York Times. Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. It will allow the New York
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Times and other big media companies like CNN to form a legal cartel to band together in order to put
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pressure on the tech companies for special favors, such as paying them for content and privileging them
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in search results. So that's a case of media companies trying to impose a new set of rules on the tech
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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.
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It would compel Facebook and Google to pay the legacy media. And the Canadian twist on things is it would
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also demand that licensed Canadian journalists would be boosted in the algorithm and unlicensed
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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
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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
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money around. He seems to talk about freedom. He's got a bit of a blind spot with China because he
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doesn't want to get offside with them. Tesla's really going big in China. But on most other
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issues, he claims he's not for subsidies in America. He says GM lobbied for those. He said
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we need to produce more oil and gas to liberate Europe from Russia. He's not a doctrinaire leftist.
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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
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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
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you do. So he's outlining a direction that is very different to the rest of these social media
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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
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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
00:46:48.840
For more information visit www. blo Hokiesko.deckvePro.com.