On this episode of the Firebrand Podcast, we have a special guest on the show to discuss the latest in the Hunter Biden scandal, and why the FBI should be ashamed of itself. We also hear from the president of the New York Young Republican Club, Gavin Wax.
00:01:14.000Maybe it'd be nice if the FBI, the Justice Department just stayed out of it and let
00:01:19.000we the people decide who we think should represent us, who we think should lead us.
00:01:23.000That's supposed to be how America works.
00:01:25.000So this is the focus on the Judiciary Committee, the political nature of the Justice Department,
00:01:29.000and the linkage now to what was happening with the Hunter Biden story.
00:01:33.000Again, just 15 days before we have a presidential election.
00:01:40.000We are live here on the Firebrand podcast broadcasting from the Longworth House office building in Washington, D.C. in the Capitol complex.
00:01:49.000And that was Jim Jordan talking about the hunted becoming the hunters.
00:01:57.000We're going to go after a politicized Department of Justice and FBI.
00:02:00.000And the best evidence that they are infected by politics is how they treated the Hunter Biden matter.
00:02:07.000This will not be an investigation merely of Hunter Biden.
00:02:10.000It will be an investigation of Joe Biden, how Joe Biden was financially enriched, how Joe Biden used his role as an international power player to sell out America's interests for foreign interests,
00:02:23.000and how Joe Biden himself was actively involved in the cover up of these matters through his government and through some of the worst actors at the FBI and the DOJ.
00:02:34.000That's a preview of coming attractions.
00:02:35.000I'm sure we'll have Jim Jordan on soon to discuss it.
00:02:41.000We've got one of the leading voices in the FCC talking about the need to ban TikTok.
00:02:48.000The threat to our country from the Chinese Communist Party manifested through an app that is widely used in almost every American home that has the capability to get facial recognition,
00:03:01.000to get audio voice recognition, and to compromise our youth.
00:03:06.000Now, joining us, I can't imagine a better person than New York's Gavin Wax.
00:03:10.000Gavin Wax is the president of the New York Young Republican Club.
00:03:13.000He is also in the technology field working at Getter, where we are simulcast streaming right now.
00:03:20.000Gavin, thanks so much for joining Firebrand.
00:03:47.000Wasn't the political environment somehow different?
00:03:49.000What was so different about New York this last election cycle that resulted in your great state sending us a whole lot more Republicans to the Congress?
00:03:58.000Well, thank you for having me on, Congressman.
00:04:01.000And as far as New York is concerned, the Empire State, I think we can attribute a ton of our success politically and electorally here simply to the environment.
00:04:10.000The environment for a Republican Renaissance and resurgence in this state has never been better in decades, generations even.
00:04:17.000When you look at issues like crime, quality of life, the list goes on.
00:04:23.000Things have really hit rock bottom here, and I think it's presented a very fertile ground for a resurgent GOP to take advantage of that to win a series of congressional, state Senate, assembly races, and, of course, come within five points statewide of the gubernatorial race.
00:04:39.000So hopefully we can build off of this coalition, these trends, these realignment, these realigning factors here in New York and turn that into a potentially governing majority in years to come.
00:04:51.000It wasn't too long ago we had control of the state Senate as recently as twenty eighteen.
00:04:56.000So we can certainly bring some two party, you know, sensibilities, if you want to use if we can use that word back to the Empire State, because I think many New Yorkers of all stripes, moderates, liberals, lifelong Dems even are getting really sick of the monopoly Democrat rule up in Albany.
00:05:14.000And they're looking for some two party consensus building on a range of issues, as mentioned earlier, from crime to cost of living, et cetera.
00:05:22.000When you look at some of these new Republicans that will be joining us in the next Congress, people like Nick Langworthy, George Santos, Mr. Lawler, is crime going to really be the take home for them?
00:05:36.680Is the eroding safety and security situation in New York what really drove a realignment in politics?
00:05:43.560Because we saw really entire groups that had previously been reliable voting blocks for Democrats.
00:05:50.180They were up for grabs and Republicans got a lot of those votes.
00:05:53.260So is it is it crime first or how are some of these economic issues also hitting these New York districts where financial services issues, the flow of capital inflation?
00:06:04.100I mean, these are very much kitchen table issues still.
00:06:06.600Absolutely. I mean, look, all politics is local, as the old saying goes.
00:06:11.380And there were certainly a litany of issues on the table here in New York that created new coalitions and certainly a realigned many voting groups.
00:06:19.600And, yes, there was many ethnic realignments going on in New York from Asian American voters to Hispanic Americans to Jewish Americans.
00:06:26.920All of these different blocks of votes that were historically within the Democrat camp were shifting over to Republicans.
00:06:36.440And I do think, you know, while many of these newly elected members of Congress that you cited are going to D.C.
00:06:42.980and going to represent their constituents on a variety of different issues that go well beyond crime.
00:06:48.100I do think what made New York unique and different in terms of its political environment for many other states where we did not see a red wave, a red tsunami or even red at all, despite the fact that many of these states have been historically more competitive.
00:07:04.620You're looking at Pennsylvania, Michigan, et cetera, places that, you know, were won statewide by Trump as recently as 2016.
00:07:11.300New York outperformed them in terms of our competitiveness and in terms of the success of our Republican candidates, again, because the the the on the ground situation, which is unique to New York in many ways, is very bad.
00:07:25.460I think, you know, we have seen since the covid crisis that the state of the state have continued to decline the the the the the decline that we were witnessing prior to covid was only exacerbated.
00:07:51.320Criminals are running free and the situation only continues to get worse.
00:07:55.080And I think that's why we almost saw a surprise win for Lee Zeldin back on Tuesday, November 8th.
00:08:01.620And hopefully we'll continue to see wins going into next cycle, 2024 here in New York.
00:08:07.520And I do think with the delegation we are sending to D.C., they're going to do their state proud.
00:08:12.520And we're going to have a lot of great champions of the Empire State down in Washington to serve with you.
00:08:16.960We love it when patriotic New Yorkers choose to make Florida their forever home.
00:08:22.820But I've got to tell you, America is a better place when the Big Apple is a dynamic, iconic city.
00:08:30.740And I've traveled there a number of times, had the great privilege to speak to the members of your club.
00:08:36.300And it astonishes me to see how quickly New York could change.
00:08:41.360I mean, you and I had to go grab, I don't even know if the statute of limitations has passed on this, but you and I had to go grab dinner somewhere during the pandemic.
00:08:48.240And it felt like we were doing a drug deal.
00:08:50.340We had to go down into a basement and bring only cash and look nobody in the eye.
00:08:54.700And all we wanted was some good ravioli.
00:08:57.320And then I did see a rebound after things started to open up.
00:09:04.360But that criminal activity, the feeling that you're not safe on the subway, walking down the street, standing at your bodega, it's really overwhelming.
00:09:14.420And as much as I appreciate the migration of great people and great capital to the Sunshine State, I want the Empire State to be a leading icon of America.
00:09:24.160I just think it's a great thing when New York is a great city and there's still a lot of great folks who live there.
00:09:28.920Gavin, you're the president of the New York Young Republican Club.
00:09:31.940And I want to get into some of the areas where we underperformed.
00:09:35.700We overperformed with New Yorkers, but we underperformed with Gen Z.
00:09:41.060And I wanted to get your perspective on why Republicans are doing so bad with people under 30.
00:09:48.460Well, look, I think we're in an uphill fight.
00:09:50.640All the institutions are working against us, particularly institutions that shape and mold young minds.
00:09:57.500You know, you're talking about higher education.
00:10:01.220You're talking even about corporate America, where many young professionals get their first start in their careers.
00:10:06.820All of these institutions are working against conservatism and the Republican Party, and it just makes the situation even worse for us.
00:10:15.800And we've always had a disparity in terms of the age bracket, you know, division between the parties.
00:10:21.180You know, typically the older you get, the more Republican and conservative you are and the younger you are, the more liberal and Democratic.
00:10:26.580But it's never been a worse situation than we're facing right now.
00:10:31.180And I think, you know, this is an issue that's going to continue until Republicans can present a holistic vision to the next generation, to the younger generations about the future.
00:10:41.100And how their prosperity, their well-being are being robbed from them by globalism, by a lot of the neoliberal institutions that dominate the Western world and how their quality of life, their standard of living, the wealth and prosperity that they are going to enjoy is going to be less than that of their parents for the first time in modern American history, for sure.
00:11:04.080So unless we can begin to properly convey and articulate those problems and also obviously offer a whole range of solutions to them, you know, putting forward ideas and policy proposals that will enable young people to start businesses, to own their own homes, to start families, all the things that, say, the boomers took for granted, but which is now being denied mainly for economic reasons to Gen Z and millennials.
00:11:30.060Is there a malaise setting in from that, Gavin?
00:11:33.600Because what I worry about is you have a Gen Z that is more willing to live with their parents well into their years of majority.
00:11:44.240And, you know, when I was a young person, I couldn't wait to go and find the world on my own, be my own man, have my job, have my own source of income.
00:11:56.240And increasingly we do see in Gen Z, you know, maybe an acceptance that life's just going to be worse and going to be different.
00:12:04.500I mean, we see the suicide rates, we see the drug addiction rates.
00:12:07.980How do you go from malaise to, like, patriotic activity on behalf of a country that Gen Z is going to inherit?
00:12:16.060Well, this is certainly beyond political, it's spiritual, it's cultural.
00:12:20.640I mean, the left has certainly imported European style living at home with your parents to your mid-30s to the United States.
00:12:27.840They always wanted to be like Europe, and we've sure gotten it that way.
00:12:30.500But you also bring up, you know, how this, you know, is impacted by, you know, the use of different antidepressants and our highly medicated, you know, society.
00:12:40.440And it's just, it is certainly inducing a societal malaise, particularly on young people who are the most disadvantaged, who have issues rising the corporate ladder because there's a lot of boomers who refuse to retire and are clinging on to their institutions.
00:12:54.640I mean, look no further than, you know, the leadership of the Democrat Party, the Republican Party.
00:13:00.120You know, it's dominated by the old, certainly not the young firebrands such as Matt Gaetz.
00:13:04.220And I think this just plays society-wide, and I do think this malaise is setting in, and I think there's a sense of, you know, conformity that's going with it.
00:13:12.160But I do think deep down people realize that they want more, and they're looking for more.
00:13:16.840And until the Republicans can give alternatives, we're going to continue to lose.
00:13:21.100I mean, give credit to the Democrats where credit is due.
00:13:23.900They're cynical, but they'll come out prior to the election and say, we're going to pay off, you know, your student debt.
00:13:28.280I mean, it was an interesting, crazy proposal, but it certainly got people to the polls.
00:13:32.400And it got them to vote for them, and of course, they pulled it right after.
00:13:35.280Yeah, I mean, I think that it successfully bought some votes, that they went and put that shiny lure out regarding student debt.
00:13:44.040But the reality is, that is just a burden shift to a lot of working people in our country.
00:13:49.600And frankly, we've got too many people going to college.
00:13:51.720I know that's not always a popular view, but we have indebted an entire generation of people with philosophy degrees and psychology degrees,
00:13:59.740and I'm probably part of the problem, political science degrees, the degree that I have.
00:14:04.960Part of that malaise is facilitated by an addiction to big tech.
00:14:10.060And I really wanted you on the program today to talk about the threat of TikTok.
00:14:14.600Big news, we're seeing voices out of the FCC talking about the danger of TikTok, its utilization by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:14:22.660Now, I know you work in the technology field.
00:14:25.480What's your assessment of the role that TikTok is currently playing in American life and American politics?
00:14:40.880Instagram is a close second, mostly because they are replicating TikTok with their version of Instagram Reels.
00:14:48.940But TikTok is the new big dog on campus, and it just so happens to be a company completely beholden to the Chinese Communist Party out of Beijing.
00:14:58.260And this obviously poses a major, major national security risk.
00:15:02.180I mean, TikTok is unique in how addictive it is and how personalized it is, how it caters to you based on, you know,
00:15:10.000all the data that it collects from your interests to what you're searching, to how you're liking, to how long you're watching.
00:15:16.160I mean, the data that they are gathering from American citizens is massive.
00:15:20.960And in the wrong hands, like in the hands of the CCP, it could be used for extremely effective intelligence gathering and other types of intelligence operations.
00:15:30.020I mean, they can see what's pasted, what's saved in your clipboard.
00:15:35.800They could gather your location data, your facial recognition.
00:15:38.160I mean, all this data is now in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party out of Beijing,
00:15:44.300and they can potentially have that data on elected officials, their staff, military personnel, you name it.
00:15:50.500Now, look, we have a lot of issues in big tech, and many of it are from companies that are incorporated and founded and based in the United States.
00:15:58.460So it's certainly not an issue that stops at our national borders, but we can certainly step up to the plate here and reach a consensus
00:16:06.260where I think there may be some consensus to be formed across parties that TikTok is an issue from a national security standpoint.
00:16:13.980I also agree it's an issue from a deeper cultural and psychological standpoint.
00:16:18.780I definitely think it's perpetuating a lot of the societal rot that we're seeing among younger generations in the country as a whole.
00:16:25.200It's addictive, probably the most addictive of the social media platforms, and I say that with experience.
00:16:31.540I've used it. It's certainly very addictive.
00:16:33.280Oh, are you still on TikTok, Gavin Wax? Are you a current TikToker?
00:16:38.060I don't post TikToks. I think I have an account still, but I'm trying to use Getter's Visions, which is a competitor, and, of course, Instagram Reels.
00:16:46.580But I could admit from my past use that I've taken a few hits of TikTok.
00:17:24.000I think, one, the amount of data that they're building up en masse, it's going to give them the information necessary to manipulate society.
00:17:32.820I mean, we're in a new type of warfare.
00:17:35.960It's certainly, you know, there's no guns or artillery being fired,
00:17:39.460but people are in the midst of psychological warfare and demoralization campaigns and how, you know, people are socially engineered en masse.
00:17:48.980We saw it with COVID and the Chinese are becoming experts at it.
00:17:52.720They're experts at it on their own population.
00:17:54.380And the data that they're getting from TikTok will enable them to become masters of social engineering,
00:17:59.580the American people, if we don't stop them.
00:18:01.540So we should not, you know, cede ground in any possible way to them for them to, you know, advance their geopolitical interests against our own.
00:18:10.880And, you know, they're doing this, you know, beyond just big tech.
00:18:13.600I mean, they're buying property up across the entire country.
00:18:16.380You know, they're taking over entire nation's telecom through their 5G networks and Huawei.
00:18:21.780So, I mean, they are playing a multifaceted game here.
00:18:26.840They're playing on a multi-front war in terms of their global dominance from the Silk Road to their investments in Africa, etc.
00:18:33.820So TikTok is just one of those fronts and we certainly shouldn't cede ground.
00:18:39.200But again, you know, for the average American, I think this goes beyond politics.
00:18:43.840And this is what goes back to winning over younger voters and younger people.
00:18:48.060It's that we are in the midst of a spiritual and cultural war.
00:18:51.060And I think social media is perpetuating the worst, you know, facets of leftism and this nihilism and all these other social and societal ills that are really destroying the core fabric of our society.
00:19:05.080And this is not an electoral issue, but this is something deeper.
00:19:08.040And I think, you know, social media at large, it's a new development, obviously, in the human story, you know, only, what, 20 years old, if that.
00:19:16.200But it certainly led to a radical change in how people interact with each other, how people engage with society, how people feel about themselves and see others.
00:19:24.060And it's leading to a litany of, you know, social and psychological ills that we're not fully able to grasp just yet because the science is still out.
00:19:33.860And if we have an opportunity to knock it off the market, getting a win against China and maybe also a win in the battles I just mentioned that are nonpolitical, then I say, why not do it?
00:19:42.540But you're so right about how fast this has developed.
00:19:46.240I mean, I remember being in high school and initially the only way you could communicate with someone digitally is you had to sit there and pound out a text message on a Nokia phone.
00:19:56.260And, you know, if you wanted the C, you had to hit A, B, C on the, you know, on number two.
00:20:02.440And then you'd go on and, I mean, it would take several minutes to construct a message of just a few words.
00:20:07.640And then the transformational revolution was when AOL Instant Messenger would allow you to open up multiple screens and talk to, like, three or four people at one time with a keyboard.
00:20:21.960You could have a few conversations going at once.
00:20:24.280You could have friends all over the country and be sharing ideas or thoughts with them.
00:20:28.900And to think about, you know, how exciting that was and groundbreaking it was, but how it was really nothing compared to turning every American into a content producer, which is really what these social media platforms do.
00:20:44.240And there can be a lot of good in that.
00:20:45.860And I want to talk about that later in our discussion.
00:20:48.180But when you've got the Chinese Communist Party in charge of it, you need to know what the goal is.
00:20:54.920Chinese Communist Party did not set up TikTok to make money.
00:20:57.840They want to control what you see and how you think so that they can control how you behave.
00:21:05.480And throughout the history of great power competition, the idea was you want to influence the leaders, the civil society elite, the military elite.
00:21:15.240But what China has done has been to convert technological expertise into totalitarian control.
00:21:23.580Like we were all promised that the social media revolution would cause great threats to major power and it would embody the body politic to have exciting ideas and to organize together and to push back against totalitarianism.
00:21:38.880But what we've seen from the Chinese Communist Party is that they have used technology to become more effective in totalitarian control.
00:21:47.640And while in China, that means a social credit score and drones flying around telling you when you're allowed to go outside, here in America, it's more subtle, but it's just as pervasive to the core.
00:22:02.520And I think TikTok is central to that.
00:22:05.600We talked earlier in the discussion about how we change our thinking over time in politics.
00:22:10.100Anybody who says that their political ideology doesn't evolve and doesn't deepen and doesn't have additional contours as they gain more experience on the planet Earth is not being honest.
00:22:21.700And what I can tell you is, as a younger man, I was far more libertarian.
00:22:26.980The government doesn't do very much right.
00:22:28.800And so if the government does less and people do more, that's kind of a good thing.
00:22:32.820And that's the construct to build a philosophy off of.
00:22:35.840But as I got into Congress, I became perhaps a little less libertarian and a little more populist because I started to see that if government doesn't do anything for people and we just debate, should government be smaller or larger?
00:22:49.080I've seen throughout my life that government has grown bigger, borrowed deeper against the future of our fellow Americans.
00:22:56.340And yet the right doesn't seem to try to get the government to do anything proactively, positively for our people to improve quality of life.
00:23:04.260And one of the things we ought to do is ban TikTok and look more aggressively at some of these other social media platforms.
00:23:11.960You know, Gavin, you have been a commentator on the impact of this meta concept and the revolution that Twitter is going through right now.
00:23:23.680How would you assess the social media environment broadly in the United States domestically?
00:23:29.960And then I want to get to some of the exciting new things that Getter's doing as well.
00:23:34.260Well, domestically, it certainly hasn't been great.
00:23:37.900Obviously, we've seen now over the last few years that big tech is largely an extension of the intelligence apparatus in this country.
00:23:47.000And that intelligence apparatus has been turned against the American people, in particular conservatives and anyone who goes against the establishment.
00:23:54.540It's been turned against them frequently.
00:23:56.140So big tech domestically is not much better than big tech from China.
00:24:01.780You know, we may have an easier time going after TikTok because of its foreign entanglements and its ties to the CCP.
00:24:08.940But we shouldn't we should certainly not rest on our laurels as it comes to the threats emerging out of Silicon Valley and the boardrooms of Meta and formerly Twitter, I suppose, and all the rest.
00:24:19.920I mean, because there is a lot of insidious elements that have crept into big tech, along with all the other other institutions that we've talked about earlier.
00:24:27.600It's the sort of Fabian style left wing takeovers of the corporate boardrooms.
00:24:33.080And they found out that big tech are the arbiters of the modern town square and how all information and media is, you know, disseminated across society.
00:24:43.440And having that, you know, power lever under your control, under your, you know, under your grasp is a massive, massive, you know, necessary tool for the sort of totalitarian societies that the elites in the West want to imitate from China.
00:24:58.140And we talked about you talked about the high tech totalitarianism we see in China.
00:25:02.940That's exactly what, you know, the Western elites at Davos and, you know, the Great Reset.
00:25:10.560That's all they're trying to build here.
00:25:11.900Maybe they're trying to do it more subtly, as you mentioned, but they're certainly looking to Beijing for inspiration.
00:25:17.240And that's why when given an opportunity to stop it through TikTok or even through domestic regulations on big tech, we should certainly do that.
00:25:25.500I originally was a libertarian, and I definitely have now embraced a sort of populism, nationalism, national conservative type of political ideology.
00:25:33.940And I think if you have two different political parties, one which is willing to use its power to effectuate its own ends, and the other that it's only willing to step back and do nothing, it's the party and the political ideology that's willing to use power to effectuate its own ends that's going to win.
00:25:49.700And that's bringing a gun to a knife fight, and we're going to continue to lose until we know and realize that we must wield power, you know, when we have the opportunity, because they will use it against us in a heartbeat.
00:26:02.340And sometimes we have to put down some of these sort of ideological roadblockers and understand that when it comes to governing, we need to be pragmatic, we need to be dynamic, and we need to understand that action is necessary and not just falling back on theorems and maxims and talking points.
00:26:19.080But when we're in office, you know, we should use the power of that office to advance our agenda, our conservative America first agenda.
00:26:27.340And I don't think there's anything anti-American about that.
00:26:29.360I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
00:26:31.320That's how society has always progressed.
00:26:33.020That's the history of human interaction and human power dynamics.
00:26:37.160So it's only recently that Republicans found an excuse for some of their fecklessness and some of their weakness.
00:26:43.520But I think that there's a paradigm shift going on in the way that many on the right think about power, think about government.
00:26:49.480And I think they realize in order to preserve our way of life, our traditional American society, our freedoms, our liberties, we're going to have to, you know, roll up our sleeves a bit and wage some asymmetrical warfare that the left has been doing against us for decades.
00:27:04.220Yeah, it would be symmetrical with the way a lot of us have been treated.
00:27:07.460But you're right. As a conservative, at your core, you have to want to conserve something, to keep something, to hold as precious American citizenship, American sovereignty, American culture, American language.
00:27:23.100And you've seen far too many conservatives believe that, well, we're doing our job just so long as we deal those things away more slowly.
00:27:31.960And the reality is we have to conserve, we have to protect, and then there are hills we've got to climb.
00:27:37.720And there's power that we have to be willing to take when it is given to us by the voters in elections.
00:27:44.380You know, part of the debate that we will have in the Republican Congress is about how to break up big tech.
00:27:51.080There are some who say, well, you can eliminate some of the immunities that they enjoy, and there'll be a judicial process that then they'll have to go through.
00:27:58.040That might bring a few of the bad actors down.
00:28:00.500There are some who would simply say, reshape these companies.
00:28:03.500By force of law, go in and reshape the companies.
00:28:07.600Force Instagram to be sold from Facebook.
00:28:11.700Force Google to separate search and email.
00:28:14.940And that's really the Elizabeth Warren perspective.
00:28:17.460And so I might be more in line with the Elizabeth Warren perspective to break up big tech,
00:28:23.400rather than maybe the Republican Kevin McCarthy perspective of eliminating some of the shields that big tech has been allowed to build in the law.
00:28:33.660That'll be one of the very important debates coming up.
00:28:35.820But, Gavin, you made a critical point about the relationship between big tech and the intelligence apparatus,
00:28:41.960and it bears drawing a fine point on it and repeating it.
00:28:45.840You said big tech is part of the intelligence apparatus, and people need to understand that that has a human feature, too.
00:28:55.020There is a revolving door between the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, NSA, and a lot of these big tech companies.
00:29:03.420They go cash out working for big tech.
00:32:19.560He certainly could have done a lot more with the Cooperative Party and D.C. bureaucracy.
00:32:24.920But I think that's what people are looking for.
00:32:26.600And I think the Republican establishment, the Republican leadership does not give many people,
00:32:31.660certainly in the grassroots, certainly myself, certainly people that I talk to,
00:32:34.800a lot of confidence that they're willing to do much.
00:32:37.740I mean, you mentioned earlier, you know, the McCarthy style, you know,
00:32:40.700removing some of these protections and these shields from tech,
00:32:44.540which I think would be, you know, a good logical first step.
00:32:47.200But I even doubt he would be willing to do that, if anything.
00:32:50.880I mean, you know, the Elizabeth Warren approach you mentioned, while drastic, is even further away.
00:32:55.820I think nothing's on the table until we really begin to see some sizable paradigm shifts within the party structure of both parties,
00:33:04.640because the unique party controls everything and they're going to move at a snail's pace.
00:33:08.480And they're only going to give crumbs when people demand cake.
00:33:11.880And I think that's an issue at large with D.C.
00:33:15.160You discussed the revolving door, the rent seeking that goes on, how it's, you know, totally corrupted our institutions.
00:33:21.340And it's created this sort of, you know, capital of an empire where nothing gets done unless you're willing to spend enough money to grease the wheels.
00:33:28.620And obviously the American people don't have that largesse to do that, but certainly foreign actors do, certainly corporate interests do.
00:33:35.940The American people only have their votes and their votes are seemingly beginning to matter less and less,
00:33:41.660because even though they'll elect Republicans time again, those Republicans or Democrats even will do nothing.
00:33:47.480So it's a systemic issue we're facing, and I think it's creating a political environment that is full of apathy,
00:33:56.280and it's not good for the future of our republic.
00:35:02.760And now it's a great place for our office to get messages to constituents.
00:35:08.840There's programming schedules you can check out on Getter so that you can get the content you want from some of the voices that you trust.
00:35:16.520So maybe give folks who might be watching this on one of the other social platforms or streaming services a sense of what the experience is like on Getter,
00:35:25.540how that might differ from what they're seeing on other platforms.
00:35:27.980Look, I think it's better on Getter, no pun intended.
00:35:31.920But, you know, the all-tech space has certainly come a long, long way from the early days that you referenced where people said,
00:35:39.360well, go make your own social media platform.
00:35:41.240We have, obviously, many of the failures that were associated with Parler, a lot of the censorship that happened with sites like Gab.
00:35:48.620But I think now the all-tech space with Rumble and Getter and even Truth is really beginning to come into its own.
00:35:54.600They're beginning to see a critical mass of users and community formation.
00:35:59.380The features of the tech are beginning to either be on par or even surpass, in some instances, that of big tech.
00:36:07.920Getter had an edit button before Twitter did.
00:36:10.480Getter had – when Twitter was deprecating live streams and periscopes, Getter was bringing on live streams.
00:36:17.060So there was certainly even a tech and features disparity growing between all-tech and Twitter.
00:36:23.720And I think that forced Twitter prior to Elon Musk taking over.
00:36:27.380It forced Twitter to start integrating new features like Twitter Blue and undoing tweets and the edit button and all these other things.
00:36:35.000It started to create the first sense of competition in this space.
00:36:39.460And even if some of these all-tech companies don't win, quote-unquote, ultimately in this battle of companies,
00:36:45.980they are certainly creating an environment and incentives for these companies to innovate, continue to innovate,
00:36:52.980and continue to have policies that are designed to encourage a larger user base.
00:36:59.140And I think we're seeing massive upticks on Twitter's daily active users and activity engagement.
00:37:04.400I know Elon is bragging about that constantly.
00:37:07.400And that's due just sort of to the notion that it's a little more free, that it's a little – there's a little less censorship.
00:37:15.920It doesn't even have to actually be a reality.
00:37:17.660But the mere notion that Twitter is going to censor less and ban less has led to a resurgence of activity on that platform without even seeing any substantive changes from the policy side yet from Elon.
00:37:30.520So I think it's showing the market that there is a massive demand there for free speech, for alternative platforms.
00:37:37.740And if you build it, they will come, and maybe there will be some short-term downsides with advertisers and other things that I know Elon and the new Twitter board is experiencing with many of these left-woke companies trying to pull their advertising dollars.
00:37:52.600But he's looking to monetize other facets of the platform to move away from an advertising model.
00:37:58.720Maybe the rollout of the Blue Check $8 verification system wasn't ideal, but it shows a willingness to test the waters and to move away from an environment where corporate woke entities can determine company policies because of their advertising spends.
00:38:15.460And I think Getter and others are showing that you can build really reliable, self-sustaining platforms with growing communities without having to go woke.
00:38:24.740And I think the more of this that happens, it will begin to set precedent.
00:38:27.400We'll see more people enter in to the alt-space marketplace and to the alt-space, you know, sector.
00:38:33.500And the more competition, the better, and the more tech and the more features, the more innovation, the better, because I think we definitely had a period of malaise, to reuse a word from our earlier discussion, in the tech space for many years.
00:38:46.100And I think it culminated with the banning of Donald J. Trump, President Donald J. Trump from Twitter.
00:38:51.040And I think we're kind of emerging from that dark age now.
00:38:53.660We're seeing a lot of possibilities, both reforming big tech from inside, which I believe Elon is attempting to do, and of course building separate parallel platforms like Getter, like Rumble, like Truth, which are going to build their own spaces, but also force change in big tech through the process of market competition.
00:39:15.020We're entering certainly a wild west, and I think it's only positive from here.
00:39:18.600And any regulatory changes that come out of D.C. come out of Washington.
00:39:22.540We talked about those protective shields.
00:39:24.360We talked about maybe breaking up some entities.
00:39:26.440Anything that comes out of Washington will only help this process and will weaken what I believe is the monopolistic control of big tech on several of their social media verticals, whether it's, you know, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera.
00:40:03.280You can check out my website, GavinWax.com.
00:40:06.240You can check out the New York Young Republican Club, which is the oldest and largest Republican club in the country, www.nyyrc.com, NYYRC at NYYRC on social.
00:40:17.800We have our upcoming gala December 10th.
00:40:20.780You were obviously a past speaker when we got banned from the Garden State, so we're looking to make as big of a splash as that prior gala.
00:40:28.440And, you know, that's pretty much where you can find me.
00:40:31.720We're still under criminal investigation in New Jersey.
00:40:34.500I'm not sure, but the governor of New Jersey said that because we held a socially distanced dinner without masks that, you know, we were, like, putting people's lives in danger.
00:40:44.740Phil Murphy has put more people's lives in danger than you and I have for holding an upscale political event.
00:41:03.400Follow Gavin and make sure you're following us on Getter because it's a great place for us to be able to stream this content.
00:41:09.360If you weren't paying attention these last few days, you might have missed that we almost stumbled our way into a nuclear war with Russia over an accident that wasn't actually Russian.
00:41:20.980Put up the headline that we get from Fox News.
00:41:23.560Here was a Fox News headline, an actual headline.
00:41:26.680For those of you who are listening to the pod, it says, Russian missiles cross into NATO member Poland, kill two, senior U.S. intelligence official.
00:41:40.840They obviously were Ukrainian anti-assault measures.
00:41:46.760And when you've got the shield, essentially, the defensive mechanism to stop missiles from landing into your territory, you shoot stuff at those missiles.
00:41:56.760And so it was what Ukraine had deployed in their own defense, admittedly, but what Ukraine had deployed that landed in Russia.
00:42:04.440But how irresponsible for news organizations, for intelligence officials to just start by saying, we have to invoke NATO protocols that require us to all go and defend Poland to the death when the reality was there was no Russian attack on Poland.
00:42:23.600Take a listen to some of the worst takes in this fog of war.
00:42:27.440I have no doubt that this is not our missile, not our strike.
00:42:34.280There is no sense for me to trust them.
00:42:36.620I went through war with them and with you.
00:42:40.780I don't, to put an end to it, but I have my opinion.
00:42:45.500I believe this is a Russian missile based on our military reports.
00:42:48.840When it comes to our security commitments and Article 5, we've been crystal clear that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.
00:42:58.180We're still gathering information, but we have seen nothing that contradicts President Duda's preliminary assessment.
00:43:26.820That this explosion was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in Poland.
00:43:35.940And whatever the final conclusions may be, the world knows that Russia bears ultimate responsibility for this incident.
00:43:45.520That was the voice of your Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, probably one of the worst people to wear the uniform in a while.
00:43:59.560These aren't guys who are going to win you any wars, but they might stumble you into some as a consequence of their ineptitude.
00:44:06.540And before Lloyd Austin, it was the voice of Mark Milley who said, this war is fought by the Russian people.
00:44:13.320And I've just got to ask, like how stupid does one have to be to try to provoke the Russian people over Ukraine having some of their materiel accidentally land in Poland?
00:44:29.700It seems like a weird time to try to escalate and accelerate the fight with the Russian people.
00:44:36.040This war was Putin's choice. It was a bad choice. It's a war I hope Putin loses.
00:44:41.800But it's certainly not the Russian people that Americans have a beef with.
00:44:47.480The Russian people are doing everything they can to run out of the country, escape, avoid being drafted into this war.
00:44:55.740But with military leaders like Milley and Austin, the American people should have little confidence that we are being led by the A-team.