Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Optimism returns to Big Tech as Trump ushers in a new era

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. One of my favorite people, one of the smartest people I know,

00:00:04.220 one of the clearest thinkers I know, and I love his accent too, is my friend Alan Bokhari. I used

00:00:09.920 to know him as the senior Breitbart editor for Big Tech. Now he works fighting for freedom online.

00:00:17.860 Alan Bokhari is our guest today. But before I get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber

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00:01:28.420 here's today's podcast.

00:01:44.000 Tonight, when was the last time you felt great about big tech? Well, I'm feeling that way now.

00:01:50.060 I'll tell you why. It's February 11th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:57.020 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:02:08.380 Oh, hi there. Have you ever heard the phraseology, blue pill or red pill? It comes from the 0.86

00:02:15.060 sort of sci-fi, deep thinking movie of a couple decades ago called The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves.

00:02:23.220 And you're inside The Matrix, and it's a very strange, half psychological, half computer place.

00:02:29.860 And you can take the blue pill and go back to your blissful ignorance, sort of like the before you were

00:02:36.700 cast out of the Garden of Eden, before you ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Or take the red pill,

00:02:42.920 which would wake you up to the harsh realities of the world, but at least you would be conscious

00:02:47.420 rather than unconscious. That was from the movie. But the kids invented two more different pills.

00:02:55.740 Black pill is when you're just, you've given up. Everything is so desperate. There's no hope.

00:03:02.220 Blue pill is you're numb. Red pill is you're alive and fighting. Black pill is we're all doomed. But

00:03:08.400 white pill, white pill, say the kids, is when suddenly you're full of hope and your troubles have

00:03:15.660 washed away. And let me tell you that our special guest for today's podcast has personally taken me

00:03:22.400 through all four pills. He's the one who helped red pill me back in the day about the big technology

00:03:29.620 censorship, the war on dissident ideas, especially if you were pro-Trump or pro-freedom. He's the one

00:03:37.060 whose books and investigative reports made me black pilled, thinking there's no way out of this. It's

00:03:43.700 only going to get worse. Censorship and big tech control are like a ratchet. They only get one way.

00:03:50.840 But in recent weeks, he has, along with me, become white pilled. The amazing hope that big tech might

00:03:58.320 actually become free again. And we're both marveling at what Elon Musk is personally doing.

00:04:04.520 So those are the four pills that I've gone through, all four of them, with our guest,

00:04:08.580 Alan Bokhari, who sat down with me yesterday for a feature interview. Here's an interview now.

00:04:16.120 Well, every day I can hardly wait to wake up and roll over in bed, turn on my phone,

00:04:21.540 and check Twitter to see the next chapter in an unfolding story, the battle between Doge,

00:04:29.800 the Department of Government Efficiency, run by Elon Musk and his hand-picked wizards,

00:04:36.580 versus the deep state. It's incredible to see. He's got this team of young guys. They're all

00:04:42.920 in their 20s or even their teens. They all have fun nicknames. One of them goes by the name

00:04:49.820 Big Balls, and I ain't afraid to say it. These are coding geniuses who are working their way

00:04:56.300 through various government spending databases. They went through USAID, which is a massive 40

00:05:03.980 billion plus slush fund for every crazy woke scheme around the world. They did so much revealing

00:05:10.700 that President Trump just abolished the whole department. Now they're moving on to the Department

00:05:15.380 of Education, and soon they'll be unleashed on the Pentagon itself, nearly a trillion dollars a

00:05:23.100 year. Well, this isn't sitting well with the Democrats, who are invariably the beneficiaries

00:05:28.840 of all this. Let me show you a beautiful moment, and this is worth it in itself, a security guard

00:05:35.960 standing in front of the doors and just not moving when a gaggle of entitled Democrat congressmen

00:05:44.120 demanded him to. And just the forlorn look on his face, give this guy a prize. Take a look at this

00:05:51.420 wonderful exchange. That's Maxime Waters, a fossilized Democrat, entitled maniac. Take a look. 0.97

00:05:58.740 Are you prepared to stand here all night if we decide to stay? I guess, yeah. All right,

00:06:03.280 well, you just stay right there. You just stay and stay. Why are you letting us go to that desk

00:06:07.680 like we were able to do last year? No, he's not. He's not a U.S. employee. I don't know who he is.

00:06:13.980 Look them in the eye. Come on, hold your face up. Look at him. Let him see you. This is him. Look at it. What's your name? Tell us your name. Give me that I.D. again.

00:06:30.100 Give me the I.D. again. So what? I showed you the I.D. You do what? I showed you the I.D.

00:06:36.280 Won't you let me see the I.D. again? Huh? No. No? Will someone else ask him for the I.D.? Will you ask him for it? He won't let me see it again.

00:06:46.520 You didn't see it. I haven't seen it. You didn't see it. They didn't see it.

00:06:49.980 Well, he held the line just like big balls is holding the line every day. They're trying to 0.94

00:06:55.560 dox these kids and get them fired. By the way, yesterday, Donald Trump was asked aboard Air Force One

00:07:01.420 if he trusts Elon Musk. He almost laughed it off as a ridiculous question. Here's Trump's answer to 0.93

00:07:07.360 that. And I've had a great help with Elon Musk, who's been terrific.

00:07:11.940 Bottom line, you say you trust him. Trust Elon? Oh, he's not gaining anything. In fact,

00:07:17.220 I wonder how he can devote the time to it. He's so into it. But I told him do that. Then I'm going to

00:07:22.040 tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He's going to find

00:07:29.080 the same thing. Then I'm going to go go to the military. Let's check the military. We're going

00:07:33.100 to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know,

00:07:38.900 the people elected me on that. It's clear the regime media is trying to drive a wedge

00:07:43.600 between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Here's the cover of Time magazine. The president was asked

00:07:48.740 about that, too, and his answer was classic. He didn't even know Time was still around. Did you?

00:07:54.340 Mr. President, do you have a reaction to the new Time magazine cover that has Elon Musk

00:07:59.020 sitting behind your resolute desk? Is Time magazine still in business? I didn't even know

00:08:05.720 that. It's incredible to see the shoe on the other foot. You will recall that for a better

00:08:12.580 part of a decade, Democrat politicians had riveted themselves straight into Silicon Valley. And it

00:08:19.340 was the political deep state that was telling the Twitters of the world what to do. It's incredible

00:08:24.420 to see the tables turned. And now Twitter is not just telling the Democrats what to do,

00:08:30.420 just cutting off their slush funds by the billions. Joining us now to talk about this

00:08:34.840 is someone who has been tracking big tech for, well, really since the beginning of social media

00:08:42.320 and its interface with the political system. Our friend, Alan Bokhari, who is the managing director

00:08:47.560 of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Alan, great to see you again. We got to get you a nickname,

00:08:52.600 by the way. 0.99

00:08:54.920 Not sure I can compete with big balls. 0.98

00:08:57.100 You know what? I love saying it because it's so silly. And you can just get this sort of a dorm 0.99

00:09:02.460 room frat boy aura to these guys. But I think sometimes frat boy phraseology is for jocks who

00:09:11.580 don't study, who just fool around. These guys are super smart brainiacs, sort of in the mold of

00:09:19.440 Elon Musk himself. In fact, several of them were his former interns. And they have that banter. They

00:09:25.920 have that self-deprecating humor. But they bring the big smarts there. They have managed to do more

00:09:33.300 auditing of the government in the last week than I dare say any auditor general has done in the last

00:09:41.000 decade. Fill in some blanks for our viewers. What's really going on?

00:09:45.620 Well, it's been truly incredible to see. Just over the past week, we saw an entire

00:09:49.820 U.S. government agency, U.S. agencies for international development, USAID, with a $40

00:09:56.940 billion budget just get completely dismantled because the Doge boys exposed that it was what

00:10:04.760 we've been tracking at the Foundation for Freedom Online as well, that USAID really became a slush

00:10:10.720 fund for far-left NGOs, for foreign influence operations that were geared towards advancing

00:10:20.120 online censorship and really geared towards undermining the domestic political opponents

00:10:26.720 of the blob in Washington, D.C. And that's just one example. They're also going to now look into the

00:10:33.340 Pentagon as well, which the Pentagon is supposed to be for national defense. In the Biden administration,

00:10:39.320 in the Biden years, the Pentagon was funding organizations like NewsGuard, which is a private

00:10:45.640 for-hire censorship shop that builds blacklists of disfavored news outlets. The Pentagon gave them,

00:10:51.000 I believe, over $700,000 under Biden. So you see, you know, across so many government agencies,

00:10:57.940 you just see the censorship industry being bankrolled. You see partisan NGOs and non-profits

00:11:03.640 being bankrolled. And you see agencies just going way, way beyond what they were founded to do.

00:11:10.680 You know, it's, I understand foreign aid and I understand some of it can be charitable,

00:11:16.520 but I think much of it is designed to promote a country's national interests. But it seems like it

00:11:22.200 was sort of this private crypto government on the side. I mean, truly a deep state that had its own will.

00:11:27.880 Here's a tweet that the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, put up. And he was saying that all these

00:11:35.800 NGOs and civil society groups had opposed a certain measure. I think it was a mining measure. But without

00:11:43.080 the USAID money and manpower to gin up the street protests, he posted a photo from overhead showing a few

00:11:52.200 dozen people. And you saw Victor Orbán of Hungary saying similar things. And you've seen people in

00:12:00.200 Ireland saying similar things. That USAID was financing color revolutions around the world. That it was 0.80

00:12:09.160 ginning up opposition to conservative populist leaders. And that without that money, this whole left-wing

00:12:17.480 movement, political movement that faked being grassroots is just gone. It was an American 0.96

00:12:25.000 astroturf, as they say, not real grassroots, but fake grass, astroturf. And it was run by Samantha

00:12:32.120 Power, if I got her name right, who was a hardcore, lifelong Democrat. I can't believe she was allowed 1.00

00:12:37.960 to stick around until a few days ago.

00:12:40.440 Yeah. I mean, so here's the thing. To really understand this, you've got to take a big step back

00:12:45.320 into history and look at when these organizations were founded, and for what purpose they were

00:12:50.760 founded. So USAID and other organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, which,

00:12:58.520 similarly to USAID, gives out all of these grants around the world, millions and millions of dollars,

00:13:06.680 nothing compared to USAID, which had a $40 billion budget. But they were all Cold War assets. So their

00:13:14.920 purpose, their original purpose was to spread US soft power and build movements to undermine

00:13:22.360 international communism and the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union's assets. And they were very,

00:13:27.960 very successful at this, don't get me wrong. You go back to the 1990s and you'll see articles

00:13:33.560 in the Washington Post, in the New York Times, praising organizations like the National Endowment for

00:13:39.320 Democracy for Democracy, for doing out in the open what the CIA used to do covertly in terms of regime

00:13:47.160 change. And that's, I think, pretty much a direct quote from the Washington Post's David Ignatius in 1991,

00:13:55.800 when he's describing the National Endowment for Democracy. USAID performs a very similar function.

00:14:01.480 But while it's initial, what we're dealing with here is you have this huge global apparatus of

00:14:09.000 soft power, which had a purpose during the Cold War, fighting communism, fighting America's global

00:14:15.880 enemy, the great global enemy, the Soviet Union, that then becomes purposeless after the Berlin Wall 0.83

00:14:22.760 falls and rediscovers its purpose after 2016. It gets turned around, weaponized, turned on the

00:14:29.400 American people, turned on the global populist movement, because the deep state decides that

00:14:34.520 its number one enemy in the absence of the Soviet Union is Donald Trump and the populist movement.

00:14:40.280 And that's what we're dealing with. You are so right. You know, I remember,

00:14:43.960 I used to work a long time ago for the great John O'Sullivan, who was an attache to Margaret Thatcher

00:14:51.720 when she was PM. And then he was, I believe, with the Daily Telegraph in the UK.

00:14:57.720 And he was really part of the, he was attached to the period of time where the Berlin Wall fell. In fact,

00:15:07.880 O'Sullivan wrote a book about Thatcher, Reagan, and Pope John Paul II, and how they sort of together

00:15:13.320 helped bring down the Berlin Wall and ended the Cold War. And when the Solidarity Movement in Poland, in that

00:15:21.720 Polish shipyard of Gdansk started mobilizing, there was a ton of Western actors and helpers, whether it's

00:15:31.720 fax machines they were giving or, or just advice. Absolutely. And, and that was, they, in doing so, Alan,

00:15:42.280 they probably saved, God forbid, a war would have, a hot war would have happened during the Cold War.

00:15:47.720 They would have saved millions of lives. And to have a peaceful collapse of the Soviet bloc,

00:15:54.600 you can't even measure that in trillions of dollars, because all the blood saved.

00:15:59.880 So give credit where it's due, that there were some State Department and, and CIA operatives who

00:16:07.960 helped bring an end to the Soviet empire peacefully. But you're so right, we've got this massive deep 0.87

00:16:14.200 state permanent military industrial complex, that's like a shark, it's got to keep moving forward, it's got

00:16:19.560 to keep eating, or it dies. And, and it's decided to eat not just political, uh, allies, like Hungary and, and El

00:16:30.120 Salvador, but turn on Americans itself. You mentioned the News Guard, that's a censorship organization, paid by the

00:16:37.480 U.S. Air Force to attack North American media. I think you might know that a few years ago, there was a military

00:16:44.760 contractor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, that was hired by the U.S. Naval Intelligence,

00:16:51.000 to do a workup on Rebel, on Rebel News. What have we got? First of all, I'm not even a good swimmer.

00:16:58.440 So why is the Navy coming after me, Al? I mean, on a more serious note, like what on earth are they doing? Is,

00:17:05.320 is it just about giving contracts to their friends and making everybody rich? Why would they take on Rebel News?

00:17:12.520 Maybe it's because we were really the only outfit in Canada that was pro-Trump, but that is not a

00:17:18.440 legitimate expenditure. And if Elon Musk and big balls and the rest of those lads wind up cutting

00:17:26.120 tens of billions or even a trillion dollars, or I think two trillion was their goal, um,

00:17:33.000 I don't think America's going to be any weaker. In fact, I think it'll be stronger, like when Elon Musk cut

00:17:38.120 Twitter by 80% and the product got better. It's, it's just a miracle to behold. And it's just,

00:17:44.600 it's just amazing. Yeah. Well, well, you mentioned fax machines in Gdansk and, uh, you know,

00:17:50.840 you can see the same thing, uh, in the modern era where, uh, during the Arab spring, you know,

00:17:55.880 the state department was trying to keep, keep social media platforms alive across the Arab world and make

00:18:01.480 sure, you know, the, the, you know, the forces of destabilization in the region against its enemies

00:18:06.680 had access to Twitter, had access to Facebook. And this, you know, this, this ties into why they

00:18:12.520 became so concerned with online censorship and controlling social media, because what was,

00:18:17.560 what they saw as an asset during the Arab spring, they saw as undermining their own power in, uh, in

00:18:23.800 their own countries, the power of the establishment, the power of the blob. When, uh, when Donald Trump

00:18:29.640 won the election, when Brexit happened in the UK, they, they suddenly realized, oh no, social media

00:18:35.320 is going to undermine, you know, this, this system that they had in place for decades where, you know,

00:18:40.680 that have a very friendly mainstream media that controlled the public's access to information.

00:18:46.440 Suddenly social media broke that, which is why, you know, we've done this at the foundation for freedom

00:18:51.640 online. You track all the government funding to all of its soft power assets around the world. So much

00:18:57.720 of it has been spent on combating so-called disinformation, which is, you know, the pretext

00:19:03.480 that these organizations use to advance social media censorship, to encourage governments around

00:19:08.840 the world, actually, to regulate American tech companies. It doesn't sound like it's in America's

00:19:14.520 interests for foreign governments to be fining and regulating and banning American tech platforms.

00:19:19.320 But the establishment, the blob, uh, including the foreign policy blob sees it as very much in their

00:19:25.240 interests to stop social media's encroachment on the legacy media, uh, stop it, stop it from weakening

00:19:32.200 its stranglehold over the flow of information. And I think, you know, the past election shows that they

00:19:38.040 really did fail. And that's why that blob is now being, uh, now being dismantled because what

00:19:44.680 essentially happened is, uh, yes, I mean, the foreign policy blob did a great job during the

00:19:49.480 Cold War. No, no question about it. They won the Cold War without really firing a shot.

00:19:54.520 But, you know, what happened, and you see the same thing happening throughout history,

00:19:58.200 you know, whether it's Roman Praetorians or Turkish Janissaries, the people who were entrusted with

00:20:04.840 defending the United States, defending the West, decided that the Western public itself had become a

00:20:10.600 threat. And, you know, the West needed to be defended from itself. And they were the people

00:20:15.080 to do it through this vast censorship apparatus. And, you know, now that's being dismantled.

00:20:20.920 You know, it's like every single bad guy, if they, if they were out of office,

00:20:26.280 they could count on a safety net being there through USAID or one of these other programs. I mean,

00:20:33.640 all around the world, I was just, I just forgot his name now, the former Australian prime minister,

00:20:39.080 who is now, I think, the ambassador from Canberra to Washington. I've just read Rudd or something.

00:20:47.720 Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, like Politico, a left tilting news organization,

00:20:53.640 eight million dollars worth of subscriptions. That's, that's insane. I think the New York Times itself

00:20:58.680 got was a 40 million dollars worth of subscriptions from, I think it was AID or, or, or that may be

00:21:05.480 another government department. How do you even, like, there's not enough people, like, did they buy

00:21:10.760 literally every bureaucrat a subscription just to, just to launder money to their friends? Like,

00:21:19.240 it's so gross and it's so ubiquitous. Like, it's, it's as bad as anyone ever claimed it would be. Again,

00:21:26.600 Alex Jones level conspiracy theories are not enough to take in what actually happened. This is

00:21:34.360 another one of those Alex Jones was right moments. Yep. And another example, just in the past few

00:21:41.480 days, we published a new report at the foundation for freedom online.com on the, the use of us money

00:21:49.640 in Europe funding European NGOs and journalists. And, you know, we found over nine million dollars

00:21:56.600 in subscriptions to just one, one media company in, in Europe, France's AFP, one of the largest

00:22:02.680 news agencies in the world, nine million dollars in subscriptions together with funding for 21 other

00:22:09.400 organizations in Europe, all of which are either enforcers or signatories to the EU's code of practice

00:22:16.120 on disinformation, which has become the Digital Services Act, which, you know, is being used to

00:22:22.520 go after Elon Musk's ex, being used to go after American tech platforms that are deemed by European

00:22:29.560 bureaucrats to be insufficiently committed to censoring hate speech or disinformation that is supported with

00:22:35.880 US government money spread across all of these NGOs and news organizations in Europe. So it's a perfect

00:22:42.280 example of what I was just talking about, which is, you know, the soft power apparatus,

00:22:46.840 which was built for the Cold War, now being turned around to censor Americans and undermine American

00:22:52.360 tech platforms. This podcast is brought to you by Rebel News. That's right. So if you want to support us,

00:22:59.720 why not do it in a win-win fashion? By shopping for yourself, one of my favorite things to do,

00:23:05.800 head to rebelnewsstore.com to pick the patriotic gear that pleases your heart. And while you're there,

00:23:13.480 use coupon code DREA10 to save while you do. You know, there's something else that's going on

00:23:19.400 that's just incredible. And I think we all noticed it the very first day, January 20th, which is Trump's

00:23:27.720 pace is unprecedented. He, you know, people used to talk about the first 100 days of administration.

00:23:37.560 I think the first 100 hours of this administration is even too long a period of time, because the

00:23:45.560 number of executive orders and changes, like they started deporting illegals the same day. They started,

00:23:52.440 they made moves the same day as he was inaugurated. And even just yesterday, so Donald Trump goes to

00:23:59.640 the Super Bowl. But even in his journey, he's signing executive orders. Sometimes they're trivial,

00:24:06.280 like getting rid of the penny, which he announced yesterday. You know, the penny cost two cents to

00:24:12.920 make. He put out a tweet saying so, bringing back plastic straws, stopping the rules for those awful

00:24:18.360 paper straws. Some of it is trivial. Some of it is taunting or amusing, like renaming the Gulf of

00:24:25.640 Mexico, the Gulf of America. But is it really funny? Because how many things does the left

00:24:30.600 rename? How many historical traditions do they tear down and rename? You know, in Canada,

00:24:37.880 some of our great founding fathers, so to speak, have had streets and subway stations named after them,

00:24:45.640 renamed some woke name? Why can't Trump rename things? But what I'm getting at is the speed,

00:24:51.560 the momentum. He's keeping his enemies on the back foot. He's moving so fast. They're still

00:24:57.880 reacting to what he did a week ago, but he's done six more things since then. This, it's a kind of

00:25:03.560 blitzkrieg, pardon the analogy, of executive actions. I don't even think there's been any votes in

00:25:12.680 in Congress on any substantive bills or anything. It's just Trump moving with every lever of power

00:25:19.000 that he has. And it's awesome. What do you make of the pace of it? And, you know, on two counts,

00:25:25.640 I think Democrats and the establishment that opposed Donald Trump have themselves to blame on this

00:25:31.160 because they spent so, so many years, decades even, building up executive power. And, you know,

00:25:37.320 now that executive power is being used in ways they don't like, finally, in ways that it certainly

00:25:43.480 wasn't used during the first Trump administration. And that's another way in which the establishment

00:25:48.760 and, you know, its allies in the blob and its soft power apparatus and its allies in the media sort of

00:25:55.320 undermine themselves because they used all of their energy, used so many dirty tricks during the first

00:26:01.320 Trump administration, so much censorship to make sure he lost in 2020. They co-opted Silicon Valley

00:26:08.440 platforms. They destroyed free speech on those platforms, which was part of the founding DNA of

00:26:13.240 those companies. They expended all that effort. And the only effect they had was to give Trump four

00:26:20.040 years to prepare for his new term. I think if he won in 2020, he wouldn't have had all that time to

00:26:25.400 prepare. He wouldn't have had time to put everything in place. I think it was sort of a silver lining for

00:26:30.040 Trump that he was out of office for four years and could prepare, you know, this frimsy of activity

00:26:35.800 that we're now seeing play out. I see a couple of judges, local, I think they're called district

00:26:42.520 judges. I'm not familiar with the court system in the U.S. to understand the difference. But I

00:26:47.320 understand that sometimes a district judge will in one locality say, I'm now going to make a ruling

00:26:53.640 that applies to the entire United States of America. And those often get slapped down. But

00:27:01.720 in one case, a judge said, you can't simply en masse stop all these payments. And I think he was

00:27:10.280 referring to the USAID, if I'm remembering the case correctly. And they're coming up with judges who

00:27:18.360 are often partisan. Like, I mean, every judge is appointed by some president. But these are some

00:27:24.440 particularly activist judges. I suppose that's the empire strikes back, isn't it? I mean, I suppose

00:27:33.160 everyone knew Trump was going to take some steps. And they were going to lean on the the Democrats

00:27:38.920 strength of activist judges and activist lawyers. I don't know if that's going to work. I mean,

00:27:44.520 I suppose some of it is how quickly Trump can get a superior court to knock those down.

00:27:51.880 And I suppose in some ways, Trump might literally just not listen. I mean, Joe Biden didn't listen

00:27:57.320 when the court said his student loan forgiveness was unlawful. I mean, what are you going to do,

00:28:02.360 arrest him? I think that the courts, by overreaching, by prosecuting the lawfare against Trump for the

00:28:10.680 last four years, have sort of burnt up their moral authority, is what I'm saying. I think

00:28:15.880 conservatives are generally very law-abiding and respectful of legal authority. But when you spend

00:28:21.880 four years bending the laws to get Trump, there's not a lot of respect left in at least the Republican

00:28:30.520 side of the populace to say, hey, Trump, you better slow down. This judge might have a point. I think

00:28:36.520 those activist judges torched the reputation of all judges in a bit. What do you think?

00:28:42.840 Yeah, I think that's right. And I think when you had, like you said, four years of lawfare,

00:28:47.560 what is it, 400 indictments against Trump already, a completely weaponized judicial system,

00:28:52.840 really, combined with, you know, Soros-funded DAs letting violent criminals out onto the streets. I

00:29:00.040 think a lot of Americans know that, you know, just because someone's a judge or a DA doesn't

00:29:05.560 necessarily mean they're not a partisan political operative. And I think many of these judges who

00:29:10.360 are now, you know, coming out with rulings against Trump fall into that category. I think a lot of

00:29:15.880 this will end up at the Supreme Court. A lot of it will end up at higher courts. And we'll see what

00:29:21.240 happens there. But certainly, with the Democrats, you know, not in control of the House, not in control

00:29:26.200 of the Senate, not in control of the White House, and, you know, not in control of the bureaucracy.

00:29:31.080 They were arguably, the establishment was still in control of the bureaucracy, arguably, during the

00:29:37.400 first Trump term. That's clearly not happening this time around. So they really, their only option,

00:29:42.760 really, is to, number one, fall back on the courts, on the judicial system. And number two, I think,

00:29:48.840 fall back on their foreign allies. There's a lot of hopes, particularly in the censorship industry,

00:29:55.720 you know, the vast network of disinformation researchers and private companies like NewsGuard

00:30:01.080 that support online censorship, that the European Union, with its Digital Services Act, can somehow

00:30:06.360 bring Silicon Valley to heel. But the Trump administration has a weapon against that, too,

00:30:13.880 in the form of tariffs. You could argue that the DSA, with its massive fines on American tech companies,

00:30:20.920 is a tariff in all but name on the tech sector. And, you know, Trump and the American government

00:30:26.280 is perfectly within their rights to respond to that with their own trade measures.

00:30:31.880 You know, I remember when Mark Zuckerberg had his, you know, conversion on the road to Damascus,

00:30:38.440 when he renounced, and we talked about this before, he even used the language of the right in jettisoning

00:30:46.760 transgenderism and things of that sort. To me, by far the most important thing in Zuckerberg's comments

00:30:53.320 were when he alluded to the fact that the State Department would help Facebook liberalize its

00:31:01.080 approach to free speech in foreign countries. And to me, and you, and I think we agreed on this,

00:31:06.680 that's code for, the State Department would push back on any government that said to Zuckerberg,

00:31:13.160 no, no, no, you've got to keep doing our bidding, whether it's in Brazil or in the UK.

00:31:19.240 And just this morning, it looks like Rumble, the free speech platform, is back in Brazil. So

00:31:25.080 something must have moved there, which is surprising. Yeah, I think something did. I think

00:31:29.960 that something was the USAID going away. You have to, it's important to remember here that

00:31:34.520 it's not so much the current State Department and the current US government pressuring these foreign

00:31:40.280 countries. It's more a case of them undoing the damage that they had already done over the past,

00:31:46.680 you know, half decade or more. Because, you know, as we've shown our latest report in Europe,

00:31:51.960 and also, frankly, in Brazil, there was millions and millions of US government money flowing into these

00:31:59.080 places into Brazil, into Europe, into NGOs that were across these countries across the continent of

00:32:04.680 Europe, whose sole purpose was to create a panic around disinformation, and to encourage regulators

00:32:11.160 in those countries to go after American tech companies. So really, you know, if Trump pushes

00:32:16.920 back on that with with what Mike Benz calls free speech diplomacy, if they push back on that with tariffs,

00:32:22.360 or with a new direction from the State Department, that's really undoing the damage that the foreign

00:32:26.760 policy blob had done in promoting online censorship around the world.

00:32:31.000 It's so interesting. You know, I, I'm not sure if you know this, but a few months ago, when Brazil

00:32:36.120 banned Twitter in general, in Brazil, because there was an activist judge, Alexandre de Morege,

00:32:42.920 who was ordering Twitter to silence certain critics of the regime, but for Twitter to stay silent about

00:32:48.760 it. They were basically saying, censor this guy, but don't tell anyone we told you to do it.

00:32:53.480 And Elon Musk and Twitter said, we're not playing by those rules. So this de Morege banned the whole

00:32:57.960 app. We went down there for a day, because we heard there was going to be a rally in support of

00:33:02.200 Twitter. I thought, I got to see this. And it was huge. I've heard, you know, 100,000, 200,000. It was that

00:33:09.880 big. Half of Sao Paulo's downtown was shut down. And everyone really was there to talk about freedom.

00:33:16.760 It was the most astonishing rally. It was the largest rally I've ever been in my life,

00:33:21.080 by far. And I could just imagine operators on the street, you know, what, what USAID would have had

00:33:29.960 on the other side to that. I mean, I just, when you're in a hot third world country, I don't know 0.99

00:33:35.240 if Brazil's third world, that's the kind of place where the CIA and USAID, I suppose they operate.

00:33:41.080 And maybe they were one of the reasons, as you say, maybe they were one of the reasons

00:33:46.520 Twitter was banned and Rumble was banned. Rumble's back. I see the White House has announced they're

00:33:51.000 having a Rumble platform account, like they do with YouTube. I don't know. I'm just a little bit

00:33:57.240 hopeful that freedom's on the march. And it's fun to me, because I follow the news in other countries.

00:34:01.880 I follow the news in Ireland for some reason. I'm sort of hooked on that. And that's a country with

00:34:07.080 tens of thousands of NGOs. It's almost a joke that there's an NGO, there's actually an NGO

00:34:14.200 for every 100 Irishmen. Like, I'm not exaggerating. That's not a rounding error. There's about 40 or

00:34:21.640 50,000 NGOs in a country of 5 million people. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. So when USAID

00:34:28.520 shut down, that immediately devastated the left wing in Ireland. And there was like some $70,000

00:34:37.960 grant for a play. And all these Irish are saying, which play was it? Like all of a sudden, everyone 1.00

00:34:44.120 realized they were living in this artificial world funded by the U.S. deep state. It's amazing how,

00:34:52.440 and I'm sure it was heavy duty in Israel, where USAID would have been against Netanyahu. Absolutely. I

00:34:58.760 mean, and I'm just trying to think of other countries where, I mean, Hungary, obviously,

00:35:04.680 probably Italy with probably Germany to shut down the AFD, probably France to go after Marine Le Pen.

00:35:12.520 Like, I think that the whole world has had a burden lifted off them that they didn't even know was

00:35:18.120 American. I mean, it's $40 billion worth of propaganda a year. That's a lot of, that's a

00:35:24.920 lot of nudging, isn't it? It's a lot of nudging. And when you consider the wealth disparity between

00:35:29.720 the United States and most of the rest of the world, you can really see how this $40 billion budget can

00:35:34.760 just overwhelm domestic political opposition in some of these countries. You know, there's just so much

00:35:40.200 money available that domestic political forces just don't have, especially in the developing world.

00:35:45.400 So it's very easy for this self-power apparatus to gain this much influence, which again, served

00:35:50.520 a purpose during the Cold War. It would still serve a purpose if you're fighting, actually fighting

00:35:54.520 America's adversaries like China. The problem is it was used, it was used in this global crusade 0.98

00:35:59.880 against populism because the foreign policy establishment, along with the rest of the

00:36:05.240 establishment in DC, decided that Donald Trump was their number one enemy and not, you know,

00:36:09.480 say a country like China. Let me ask you one last question and sort of how I started. I mean,

00:36:14.360 Elon Musk is a unique human. He's one in a billion, I'd say. The combination of smarts and

00:36:22.520 his style of getting people to do things his way, you know, who else could have built SpaceX, Tesla,

00:36:30.920 against all odds. His hands-on approach and the way he deals with subordinates is rather unique.

00:36:39.480 He spent a quarter billion dollars on Trump's campaign. He personally campaigned in Pennsylvania,

00:36:46.280 a key state. And he is the alpha dog everywhere he goes. He's the boss of everywhere he goes.

00:36:53.720 Either he owns a company outright or he controls the dominant shareholder interest or he has the total

00:37:02.440 respect. So the man isn't like a president. He's more like a king in his own companies. He issues a

00:37:10.760 decree and it happens. There's no official opposition at Tesla. There's no official opposition at SpaceX.

00:37:18.680 So you got a man with a bigger than life personality, the largest following on Twitter, if I'm not mistaken,

00:37:25.080 loves to comment and chirp on everything. And then you got Trump. Larger than life, big ego, likes to comment

00:37:33.560 on everything. But he's actually the one who won the election. He's actually the one who wields the power.

00:37:38.600 You can see the left is trying to pit these men against each other and have a falling out.

00:37:44.760 Is that how this is going to end? Or do you think those two men know that this is the most

00:37:50.280 politically profitable partnership in recent times? Maybe since JFK and RFK were president and

00:37:57.480 attorney general together and there was the bonds of blood between them, the two brothers. I mean, I'm trying to think of a

00:38:04.120 of a duo. And Elon Musk is elected by nobody, but this is such an important partnership. In fact,

00:38:12.120 I don't think anyone else in the world could do what Elon Musk is doing with Doge right now.

00:38:17.960 Ken, is this a stable molecule or are these two atoms going to spin apart?

00:38:24.360 That's certainly what the press would like to happen. I see no signs of it happening right now.

00:38:28.680 I think the only way they'd succeed is if they somehow managed to completely nuke Elon Musk's

00:38:35.320 popularity with the American people. Obviously, people on the left are going to hate him naturally.

00:38:41.800 I think it's very hard to get a majority of the public to hate someone who successfully sends

00:38:47.400 rockets into space and brings them back down again. All these technological achievements.

00:38:52.280 You know, it's hard to say that Musk and his companies and the talent that he attracts to

00:38:57.320 his companies who are now going to work on the federal government aren't just enormously capable

00:39:02.280 and enormously competent. And, you know, when it comes to Trump, I think Trump has always respected

00:39:07.800 winners. And, you know, there are a few bigger winners than Musk and his companies. And I think

00:39:14.040 you look at how much has been accomplished already with the USAID, I don't think anyone in DC or in

00:39:22.360 the legacy media can keep up with these guys. Because, you know, I was reading this funny story

00:39:29.240 I saw on X, actually, about how, you know, a lot of people in DC don't know how to deal with people

00:39:34.200 who want to work on Fridays, who want to work on the weekends, just completely an alien attitude to the

00:39:39.320 bureaucracy. And I think a lot of people in America, a lot of people in the public realize

00:39:45.240 it's been a long time coming for this bloated blob that's been in charge of the country for so long.

00:39:51.320 Hey, let me show you a quick clip of one of my favorite commentators. He's on CNN,

00:39:55.320 which makes him even more remarkable. I think you know who I'm talking about. Scott Jennings is his

00:39:59.640 name. And he's such a good talker. And I really think he's a good thinker. Here he is talking about how

00:40:04.360 Trump is good at the 80-20. And what he means by that is he finds an issue where 80% of people

00:40:11.240 are on one side and 20% on the other, like men in women's sports or like Doge cutting through the fat. 0.58

00:40:18.360 Trump takes the 80% side. But because so many Democrats are reflexively anti-Trump,

00:40:23.960 they choose the losing side. Here's Scott Jennings saying it a lot more poetically than that.

00:40:28.040 He's describing what is currently the dumbest strategy in politics, which is Democrats taking the 20 0.51

00:40:34.280 percent side of every 80-20 issue in America. USAID, people want this pared down. They want 0.81

00:40:40.680 to streamline. They want to know where the money is going. Democrats have a meltdown today. Donald

00:40:44.680 Trump signs executive order on keeping boys out of girls sports. Democrats take the 20 side of that

00:40:50.520 issue as well. All these issues. This is like Trump's superpower finding a bunch of 80-20 issues,

00:40:55.240 getting on the 80 and everybody who sort of reflexively against him gets on the 20. And now the

00:41:00.600 Democratic Party has like a 31% approval rating. This is why. I think he's right. And I think so

00:41:06.360 many of Trump's opponents really do have Trump derangement syndrome, that no matter what Trump

00:41:12.440 does, they'll oppose him, even if it's wildly popular. I've got to think this Doge cutting of

00:41:19.480 crazy spending. I mean, I haven't seen polling on it, but I got it. I got to hope that it's extremely

00:41:25.800 popular. How could it not be the kind of waste they've discovered? And for the Democrats to dig

00:41:31.400 in either shows that they're just anti-Trumpers or maybe they were on the take. I think it's such

00:41:36.280 a winner. I'm so excited. And I hope and wish one day it comes to Canada. Last word to you.

00:41:41.960 Uh, yeah, I think that's that's what the blob is really afraid of, that the example set by

00:41:47.240 Musk and Trump just in the past few weeks is going to spread to other countries because,

00:41:51.720 you know, the public in Canada, I'm sure, are fed up. The public in Britain are fed up. The public

00:41:55.560 in Europe are fed up, uh, with their, with their leaders who've just slavishly followed

00:42:00.520 what the, uh, the global establishment base in Washington has, has, uh, has directed them to

00:42:05.560 do over the past few decades. And I think, uh, there'll be demands for similar things elsewhere.

00:42:11.320 Alan, it's great to see you again. We're super fans of yours. We've been

00:42:14.200 reading your stuff for years. Everybody, we've been talking with Alan Bokari. He's the

00:42:18.040 managing director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Keep in touch, my friend.

00:42:21.720 Good to be on, Ezra.

00:42:23.560 All right. There you have it. Well, that's our show for today. Until next time,

00:42:27.960 on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night,

00:42:32.200 and keep fighting for freedom.

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Rebel News Podcast - February 12, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Optimism returns to Big Tech as Trump ushers in a new era

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