The Charlie Kirk Show - February 03, 2023


A Look Inside Elon’s Twitter HQ with Dave Rubin and Citizen Kane


Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

192.05318

Word count

6,501

Sentence count

517

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dave Rubin joins us to talk about his visit to Florida, Citizen Kane joins us, and Dave Rubin also joins us about his recent visit to the Mar-a-lagoons. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsors

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's Anna Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:01.000 Citizen Kane joins us and Dave Rubin also joins us about his visit to Twitter.
00:00:06.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:10.000 Get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com.
00:00:14.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:16.000 Check it out right now, tpusa.com.
00:00:20.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:21.000 Here we go.
00:00:22.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:24.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:26.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:29.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:33.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:34.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:35.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:00:37.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
00:00:42.000 Turning point USA. 0.65
00:00:43.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:00:52.000 That's why we are here.
00:00:55.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.
00:01:04.000 Every day when I am prepping this show, there is one website that I start with.
00:01:08.000 It is a launching off point for other websites.
00:01:11.000 It is citizenfreepress.com.
00:01:15.000 It's a fabulous website.
00:01:17.000 And I think their traffic just keeps on building amazingly.
00:01:20.000 And the man behind this incredibly successful venture is Citizen Kane.
00:01:26.000 Get it?
00:01:26.000 And he joins us right now.
00:01:27.000 Mr. Kane, welcome back to the program.
00:01:30.000 How are you doing, Mr. Citizen Kane?
00:01:33.000 Doing great, Charlie.
00:01:34.000 Just knocking out headlines here in the People's Republic of Bloomington, Indiana.
00:01:39.000 How are things?
00:01:40.000 I was about to say Evanston.
00:01:42.000 One of these days we're going to have to talk about Evanston, but you're out in Arizona.
00:01:46.000 I am.
00:01:46.000 That's right.
00:01:47.000 And I would say glasnost, but I don't know if people still say that anymore.
00:01:51.000 So you run one of the most successful websites out there.
00:01:54.000 One of the reasons I love having you on the program is because you have a finger on the pulse of what the conservative base is consuming and thinking and their sentiment and their attitude.
00:02:05.000 Walk us through the month of January, things you learned, things you saw, articles that perform better than you would have otherwise expected.
00:02:13.000 That's, yeah, that's a good question.
00:02:16.000 So you and I spoke, I think it was the last, a few days before Christmas.
00:02:22.000 So at that time, you know, one of the big things you and I spoke about was whether the MAGA base was being sort of psychologically forced away from voting because they thought everything was rigged.
00:02:36.000 And I still think that's happening.
00:02:37.000 Continue, though.
00:02:38.000 Yeah, I mean, it's definitely that's an issue we'll have to deal with.
00:02:42.000 You know, that talk, obviously, since the election is now further away, a couple, two, three months, that talk has died down.
00:02:53.000 It's, you know, the month of January has been mostly about Trump DeSantis, to tell you the truth.
00:02:58.000 You know, we're in a wolf, right?
00:03:01.000 There's not a lot that's going to happen outside of a Trump indictment.
00:03:04.000 And I figured we would probably talk about that there.
00:03:07.000 You know, we're waiting on Fannie Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County.
00:03:14.000 And there was a New York Times huge profile on her this morning that Drudgelink.
00:03:18.000 So that could obviously happen any day.
00:03:20.000 But those are sort of, you know, we're in an infra, kind of in a period where not a lot is going to happen, you know, unless it's a Trump indictment.
00:03:29.000 So it leads to a lot of DeSantis Trump discussion.
00:03:34.000 Yeah.
00:03:34.000 And so I'm going to read something.
00:03:35.000 I want our audience to email us their reaction, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:03:40.000 And then I want your reaction, Kane, which is one of Donald Trump's postings.
00:03:44.000 And I'm a supporter of Donald Trump in 2024.
00:03:46.000 When I saw President Trump in Mar-a-Lago, I privately expressed my opinion that I thought that this line of attack is not effective.
00:03:55.000 And in fact, I don't think it actually helps him.
00:03:57.000 And I'll read it.
00:03:58.000 He said the fake news media was good yesterday in their coverage of my stops in New Hampshire and South Carolina, other than the globalist street journal, the Wall Street Journal, which is rarely accurate or good.
00:04:06.000 They said the day was really amazing.
00:04:07.000 The enthusiasm to make America great again has ever been stronger.
00:04:10.000 He continues by saying the revelations about quote Ron DeSanctimonius doing far worse than any other Republican governor, including that he unapologetically shut down Florida and its beaches, was interesting indeed.
00:04:22.000 DJT leading big.
00:04:24.000 I'm curious in our audience, you guys can email us throughout.
00:04:28.000 Do you agree with Donald Trump preemptively attacking Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSanctimonius?
00:04:33.000 And Kane, I want your thoughts.
00:04:36.000 Is that resonating with the MAGA base?
00:04:38.000 Is that kind of going over with murmurs?
00:04:40.000 What are you hearing or seeing?
00:04:42.000 No, it's not really resonating.
00:04:44.000 People understand that's Trump's personality.
00:04:46.000 I mean, we can really get deep into this as to why Trump psychologically would decide to make these preemptive attacks.
00:04:54.000 But no, it's more hurting to a certain degree.
00:05:01.000 You know, there are people who really, really want unity and they see DeSantis as the future, whether that comes in 28 or 32, they see Kerry Lake in the same way.
00:05:11.000 And so to this certain cohort of the MAGA base, they do not want to see attacks.
00:05:17.000 They do not want to see infighting.
00:05:18.000 They don't want to see Trump reaching out and speaking ill of Governor DeSantis.
00:05:25.000 Then there's the other part of the crowd that could care less.
00:05:28.000 They actually think that DeSantis, they agree with Trump.
00:05:31.000 They think DeSantis has been not sure what the word is, not thankful enough, perhaps for the help that Trump gave him in 2018.
00:05:41.000 And it's true. 0.56
00:05:42.000 It's a legitimate point.
00:05:43.000 DeSantis was trailing in that primary in 2018.
00:05:46.000 Trump endorsed him.
00:05:47.000 It boosted him in a big way.
00:05:49.000 And a certain part of the Trump crowd, you know, very loyal part of that crowd, feels like Governor DeSantis, you know, should stay in his lane.
00:05:59.000 And, but then here's the last part of it, Charlie.
00:06:03.000 As you know, three-quarters of this is coming from lefty media, right?
00:06:08.000 Trying to create, they want to create a conflict between Trump and DeSantis.
00:06:12.000 DeSantis has been wise.
00:06:14.000 He said nothing.
00:06:15.000 Now, we've seen reports that he's courting, you know, courting big donors, probably just in case, and that makes sense.
00:06:25.000 But so I'll shut up for a minute and let you restrict.
00:06:27.000 No, I think that's really smart.
00:06:28.000 I think that there is a split, but it doesn't seem to be resonating the way that Little Marco or Lion Ted or any of those kind of hits in 16 did.
00:06:40.000 And absolutely not.
00:06:41.000 Do you agree with that?
00:06:43.000 I agree completely.
00:06:45.000 And part of that is because, you know, the MAGA base viewed Rubio as an enemy and Jet Bush as an enemy.
00:06:53.000 But that same base loves Governor DeSantis.
00:06:56.000 And so when you're trying to destroy a guy with a nickname or just take shots at a guy, you know, there are millions and millions in the base who love, who just absolutely love, adore Governor San DeSantis, what he's been through with his family, with Casey and her tough battle with cancer.
00:07:13.000 So there's a lot of personal feelings that are involved.
00:07:16.000 And so no, you know, calling Rubio, I mean, you know, the little robot, that was hilarious because, you know, our side wasn't really supporting Rubio.
00:07:28.000 So it's a challenge.
00:07:31.000 You know, you got to thread the needle here.
00:07:33.000 I, you know, if you're asking my personal opinion, I'm covering it, right?
00:07:38.000 So I enjoy the battles, but I would like to, I don't want to see a public battle between Governor DeSantis and President Trump, not even close.
00:07:47.000 I would like to, I would like them to work it out privately.
00:07:51.000 I wish we wouldn't have attacks like this.
00:07:53.000 But look, I don't second guess Trump.
00:07:56.000 You know, he does what he does and he's been pretty successful.
00:07:59.000 Yeah, just based on the emails we received, since I asked the question in just the last couple of moments here, overwhelmingly negative on Trump attacking DeSantis.
00:08:08.000 The sentiment, and I'm summarizing hundreds of emails that come in just like this: is Charlie, I love Trump, but this is not the way that he should be running.
00:08:17.000 Basically, he should be more magnanimous.
00:08:20.000 And DeSantis is not the same as attacking Liz Cheney.
00:08:25.000 I mean, DeSantis has been a rockstar conservative governor that has made Florida a very freer place, a more prosperous place.
00:08:34.000 He's also picked the tough fights.
00:08:36.000 And so I don't think we're going to escape this kind of DeSantis-Trump binary back and forth for quite some time.
00:08:45.000 I think we're entering kind of into the new head-to-head, but you made a smart point.
00:08:50.000 The media actually is really going to enjoy this, right?
00:08:53.000 In some ways, we're almost falling into their trap.
00:08:57.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:08:58.000 It is a trap.
00:08:59.000 And that's what I called it for the first three months.
00:09:01.000 I wouldn't touch this story from May through October.
00:09:06.000 I would not post anything about Trump, Trump, DeSantis on the site.
00:09:10.000 So I didn't want to touch it because I didn't want to fall into play.
00:09:15.000 You see who's writing these stories.
00:09:16.000 It's Danielle Beast, Washington Post, at least originally, you know, this summer and the early part of the fall.
00:09:22.000 Those were the groups that were trying to stir up this battle between the two of them.
00:09:25.000 But, you know, what you see really quickly, what you see in those emails is essentially what I see on the site.
00:09:31.000 People still love Trump.
00:09:32.000 They're going to forgive him, but they wish he wouldn't attack DeSantis.
00:09:37.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:10:38.000 We received tons of emails, well over a thousand emails here.
00:10:42.000 And the consensus is that, and these are from people who support Trump, as I do for 2024, that it's not a good look and doesn't help him.
00:10:51.000 So we'll see.
00:10:55.000 Maybe there's something we don't see, but I will reiterate this.
00:10:58.000 And, you know, Kane, I'd love your thoughts on this.
00:11:01.000 I would rather see Donald Trump attacked Lindsey Graham than Ron DeSantis.
00:11:05.000 Your thoughts?
00:11:07.000 Yeah, give me a chuckle.
00:11:10.000 Pedro Gonzalez wrote a good piece on, I have it up on the site.
00:11:15.000 It's called The South Carolina Sellout.
00:11:17.000 It's one of the headlines.
00:11:18.000 And he was talking about that exact same thing, like, you know, attack Lindsey, not Ron.
00:11:23.000 Yes.
00:11:24.000 You know, hey, first thing, man, you've got some power.
00:11:26.000 A thousand emails in 15 minutes.
00:11:28.000 That's something for us.
00:11:30.000 We have an audience, man.
00:11:31.000 I got to tell you, we got some viewers.
00:11:34.000 I'll tell you what.
00:11:36.000 We got an interactive audience.
00:11:38.000 And they love you, by the way.
00:11:39.000 A lot of positive citizen free press listeners, I got to tell you.
00:11:43.000 So let's just kind of walk through then the next couple of months then, outside of the politics stuff.
00:11:49.000 What are the stories that you see starting to bubble up to the surface?
00:11:52.000 The Biden thing, where should we be focusing?
00:11:55.000 What do you consider is more kind of vapor and smokescreen versus legitimate stories that we need to zero in on?
00:12:02.000 I see a lot of energy towards the kind of vaccine justice issue, which I find to be super interesting as the Pfizer cover-up is really starting to be revealed.
00:12:12.000 Your thoughts?
00:12:14.000 Yeah, that's a good point on the vaccine justice. 0.51
00:12:18.000 That more and more, you know, people have been fighting for almost three years now, and more and more it seems like we're getting some wins here.
00:12:25.000 And again, that, you know, news naturally fills a vacuum.
00:12:30.000 So with fewer political stories, because it's an off year with 2023, hopefully we can get some work done there.
00:12:37.000 And I posted the live link yesterday to the very first House COVID hearing on the waste and abuse of tens and tens of billions of dollars.
00:12:47.000 So, but let's get into it.
00:12:49.000 I think, so here's what we got for the next six months.
00:12:53.000 We've got COVID stuff, we've got Trump DeSantis, and we've got will they indict or won't they?
00:12:59.000 So you mentioned those Biden documents.
00:13:01.000 I want to hear your thoughts.
00:13:03.000 I feel like that finding the Biden documents completely takes a Mar-a-Lago indictment of Trump off the table.
00:13:10.000 What do you think about that?
00:13:11.000 Yeah, I think that might be right, which actually reinforces something you teased earlier.
00:13:16.000 I think Fulton County is the plan.
00:13:18.000 I think Fulton County is actually where the regime is now placing their bets, just based on the profile pieces, the pub pieces, the leaks, the focus and the attention.
00:13:28.000 I think that they are turning down, they're lowering the expectations of a federal indictment, and they're going to try to indict Donald Trump in a state that he needs to win the presidency and Republicans need to win, and where a local grand jury actually might be more flexible.
00:13:42.000 Your thoughts?
00:13:44.000 Yeah, Fanny.
00:13:46.000 Well, okay.
00:13:47.000 So there were always two possibilities for DOJ indictments of Trump, right?
00:13:52.000 It was Mar-a-Lago and it's January 6th and the, you know, the whole insurrection stuff.
00:13:57.000 So I feel like Mar-a-Lago is completely off the table because they know that justice is often about public opinion and there is no way they can indict Trump.
00:14:07.000 And obviously you can't indict a sitting president.
00:14:10.000 So they wouldn't be able to indict Biden while he's president, but it just isn't going to flow.
00:14:14.000 So that leaves the insurrection thing in Georgia.
00:14:16.000 So let's get into Georgia.
00:14:18.000 I read that New York Times profile piece this morning. 0.94
00:14:21.000 They are puffing up Fannie Wills. 0.91
00:14:21.000 It was long. 0.91
00:14:24.000 She sounds like a, she's, she's tough on gangs, tough on crime in Atlanta, and they kind of threw some shade on her.
00:14:30.000 So she's not a totally typical Democrat.
00:14:33.000 But I think, you know, look, if Merrick Garland brings a case and loses, it's a stain on him forever.
00:14:40.000 If an unknown prosecutor from Fulton County brings a case and loses-she just made herself more famous for three months of discussion on MSNBC.
00:14:50.000 I don't think she has nearly as much to lose as Merrick Garland would.
00:14:55.000 So that's another factor leaning towards indictment.
00:14:58.000 Then when you, I was following the, you know, the judge 10 days ago was making the decision about whether to make the grand jury report public.
00:15:06.000 And he ordered that they should make it public with heavy redactions.
00:15:11.000 But all of the comments from her office at that time were, don't do it.
00:15:15.000 We're on the cusp of making our decision.
00:15:18.000 It just, to any reasonable reading person, it smelled like she was saying, look, we're going to indict the guy.
00:15:24.000 So back off.
00:15:26.000 So I think it's coming now.
00:15:28.000 Then you get to, can she win?
00:15:32.000 And I don't think she can win.
00:15:33.000 I think it's a 6-6 jury in, because I think these are political cases and it's going to be, you know, that's a good point.
00:15:41.000 It's not Washington, D.C. at all.
00:15:44.000 But I think you're right.
00:15:45.000 I think the document Mar-a-Lago case, not as strong.
00:15:48.000 There might be this, whatever, this guy's named Tim Smith or Jim Smith, the special counsel.
00:15:52.000 There might be a January 6th thing.
00:15:54.000 The insurrection, it's insane.
00:15:55.000 That's not even in the realm of, that's the word they use unnecessarily.
00:15:58.000 But then keep your eye on Fulton County.
00:16:00.000 All right, we're out of time.
00:16:01.000 CitizenFreePress.com.
00:16:03.000 Citizen Kane, thank you so much.
00:16:05.000 Love being here and good luck with the Bolsonaro event in Miami, brother.
00:16:09.000 It's going to be fun, man.
00:16:10.000 We'll send you links.
00:16:10.000 God bless you.
00:16:14.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:17:17.000 Joining us now is one of my favorite guests, and I have a lot of questions for him.
00:17:21.000 And I saw his recent Twitter thread, and I said, man, we got to talk.
00:17:25.000 It's Dave Rubin from the Rubin Report.
00:17:27.000 Dave, welcome back to the program.
00:17:29.000 Charlie, I have to say you've become a fine broadcaster.
00:17:32.000 You know, when we met you many years ago, you were just a kid and you were going to these college campuses and arguing with these leftist maniacs.
00:17:41.000 But look at you.
00:17:42.000 You've got a shirt and a tie, a microphone, you read copy.
00:17:46.000 It's very impressive, my friend.
00:17:48.000 Dave, all of this is temporary because some chat bot is going to take over my entire job in five years.
00:17:55.000 No, listen, we're dinosaurs, man.
00:17:57.000 It's over for us.
00:17:58.000 They're just going to have some little virtual man doing everything that we do, which is why we have to enjoy it now.
00:18:04.000 Yes.
00:18:04.000 I mean, we're going to have driverless cars and machines doing our radio programs.
00:18:10.000 So, Dave, you had a chance to go into the labyrinth itself, the Twitter headquarters first.
00:18:17.000 How did you pull that off and what did you learn?
00:18:20.000 Yeah, well, labyrinth is the right word.
00:18:22.000 I'll get to that in a sec.
00:18:24.000 How did it happen?
00:18:25.000 Well, basically, you know, there's been a lot of wacky stuff going on with Twitter.
00:18:29.000 You're a power user there, and you're one of the guys that in the original Twitter files, it was exposed that your account was being hit.
00:18:36.000 So you're well aware of the specifics.
00:18:38.000 But to your audience, you know, for people that are not on Twitter or don't pay that much attention, you know, you really can tell if you're a big Twitter user when people are seeing your stuff, when your relevant stuff's really breaking through, when things are going viral, when you may not see other people that you follow, and a whole bunch of other problems.
00:18:55.000 So for the last couple of weeks, it seems like those problems have really ramped up after about a three-week period when Elon made the acquisition, when suddenly Twitter felt like the old days.
00:19:05.000 People were seeing tweets again.
00:19:07.000 I was starting to see people I had long forgotten about because they had been shadow banned into oblivion and everything else.
00:19:12.000 So I was fortunate enough to get in touch with two engineers over there, and they were doing a deep dive on my account and asking me what I was seeing for about two weeks.
00:19:21.000 And we're doing a text chat on this.
00:19:23.000 And then I got a call last Tuesday basically saying, hey, can you get to San Francisco today?
00:19:29.000 Elon wants to meet with you.
00:19:31.000 And basically, when the world's richest man who's running Twitter wants to meet with you, you get on a plane, Charlie.
00:19:36.000 And I sat in the last row, row 32E, with a in the middle seat with no reclining back to it.
00:19:44.000 It was not working, but I made it to San Francisco.
00:19:46.000 I got there a little bit after midnight.
00:19:48.000 He was there.
00:19:49.000 You know, a whole bunch of engineers still burning the midnight oil.
00:19:52.000 He came up to me.
00:19:53.000 We chatted for a few minutes and then he said, and this, this really sets up everything you need to know about the guy.
00:19:58.000 He's had meetings all day long.
00:19:59.000 I think he was testifying in a court case earlier in the day.
00:20:01.000 He had the Tesla quarterly earning meetings the next day.
00:20:05.000 And he says to me, he says, Dave, you know, I'm extremely tired, but if you need me to stay right now, if you need us to sit down and deal with this right now, we'll do it.
00:20:15.000 And I was like, no, Elon, it's okay.
00:20:17.000 We could do it tomorrow.
00:20:19.000 And then we ended up meeting the next day, again, after midnight, because he was so busy for about two hours.
00:20:24.000 And that's where we got into some of the nitty-gritty.
00:20:26.000 But I thought that that little moment alone, the fact that this guy, you know, I'm just one of a gajillion people on Twitter, but that he was willing at 1 a.m. basically to stay up later to continue trying to fix these problems.
00:20:40.000 Like he did not need this problem, Charlie.
00:20:42.000 This thing is a freaking endless headache as he described it.
00:20:46.000 It's a fractal Rube Goldberg machine.
00:20:49.000 Everyone may remember the Rube Goldberg machine from the original Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure.
00:20:54.000 And they have basically built a system that is tenuous at best.
00:20:59.000 This thing could fall apart at any moment.
00:21:02.000 He spent $44 billion on it.
00:21:04.000 He believes in the public square.
00:21:05.000 He believes in free speech.
00:21:06.000 He's trying to fix it.
00:21:08.000 But as he said, the more that you go in and you fix things, the more things start breaking.
00:21:13.000 And he has a big problem on his hands, but he seems interested in doing it.
00:21:17.000 It seems to be the modern Gordian knot of technology.
00:21:23.000 Maybe he's Alexander the Great.
00:21:25.000 So that's an amazing story.
00:21:25.000 I don't know.
00:21:28.000 Just the details of you met midnight to 2 a.m.
00:21:33.000 And just, I mean, that is perfectly consistent with all the folklore around Elon Musk and kind of how he operates and his eccentricities.
00:21:42.000 So, but what did you leave Twitter with a greater understanding of what they're dealing with and or more trust that they're trying to accomplish legitimate free speech ends?
00:22:00.000 So I'll answer the second part first.
00:22:00.000 Yeah.
00:22:02.000 As long as Elon is in charge from everything I saw out of that guy, I 100% trust that he is trying to keep it open.
00:22:10.000 He is trying to even the playing field.
00:22:12.000 He is not trying to censor people.
00:22:14.000 He's trying to have a transparent set terms of service, you know, all that sort of stuff.
00:22:19.000 So on that end, as much as I can trust someone that I don't live with, that I don't know to that degree, I do trust he's doing his best on that front.
00:22:26.000 We also talked about politics a bunch, and he was well aware of sort of my political evolution, which in some ways mirrors his own political evolution because, you know, he was only a Democrat voter his entire life until this last election, the midterms.
00:22:39.000 He voted for Myra Flores in Texas because he's a resident of Texas.
00:22:42.000 Now the Tesla is over in Austin.
00:22:44.000 He has said he would support DeSantis, but the point is, this is not somebody, you know, the media treats him like he's some scary far right winger.
00:22:52.000 And it's just, it couldn't be further from the truth.
00:22:54.000 So we did a whole bunch on the politics side as well.
00:22:57.000 As far as fixing some of the problems, Charlie, you'll find this one particularly interesting.
00:23:00.000 When the original Twitter files came out and they listed you as one of the people that had a label attached to your account, and that meant you were being shadow banned or your views were being depressed.
00:23:11.000 And it wasn't even totally clear what else it could mean as well.
00:23:14.000 So that was one version of it.
00:23:15.000 The reason they called me in was as they did this deep dive on my account, what they found was my account didn't have any of the outward labels that someone like your account or Dan Bongino was another one that had it, a couple other people.
00:23:28.000 My account, what they found was they had to go deep into the code, meaning just looking at my account.
00:23:34.000 And that's where they found things like, I had been labeled not safe for work, which basically means that my account was porn, which it obviously is not.
00:23:42.000 I had been labeled not safe for ads, which meant that when ads were put in the feed, my tweets could not appear above or below them.
00:23:50.000 So you could see how that would hurt within the algorithm.
00:23:52.000 And then I had also been hit with, I think it was the recent misinformation, the recent misinformation tag, which I don't know what I've spread that's misinformation.
00:24:03.000 I mean, if they want to go after misinformation, they should be going after the New York Times and NBC and CNN and the rest of them.
00:24:08.000 But the point was this stuff was buried under the hood.
00:24:12.000 The original Twitter files showed you what was there fairly obviously.
00:24:16.000 And now they're realizing, whoa, there is way more here.
00:24:19.000 And I would guess.
00:24:21.000 And I bet he already has answers on some of this.
00:24:23.000 There is way more that they've found just in the last five or six days since I left San Francisco.
00:24:28.000 So these are, I mean, these are like landmines that are in the inner workings, in the grass, if you will, of the fields of your code.
00:24:38.000 That if you're just kind of looking at a landscape painting, like, oh, look at what beautiful, peaceful.
00:24:42.000 Like, actually, no, if you walk through there, you're going to get your leg blown off.
00:24:45.000 And what you're saying, though, is that they wouldn't know that unless they went deep into the coding underneath it.
00:24:51.000 Let me ask you a question.
00:24:52.000 You might not have the answer.
00:24:54.000 Were any of those kind of coding landmines added post-Elon purchase?
00:25:01.000 So I don't know the answer to that specifically, but I think there's an inkling of something like this.
00:25:07.000 You know, when he got there and he made the acquisition, which is what, about two and a half months ago, he fired half the company.
00:25:13.000 I mean, the company went from 7,500 people to about 3,500.
00:25:17.000 The pictures that I showed in the Twitter thread, you know, you see this really empty, giant space.
00:25:22.000 It's very dystopian in nature because nobody's there because so many of the employees are still working remote.
00:25:27.000 He doesn't want them to work remote.
00:25:28.000 There's a fight about that.
00:25:30.000 The question is, how many bad actors were writing this stuff into the code on their own?
00:25:35.000 Meaning there might have just been some guy at Twitter that was a programmer that didn't like me and decided to do this, you know, just completely as a bounty hunter on his own volition.
00:25:44.000 Or was it coordinated?
00:25:46.000 Do they have emails from Jack Dorsey, the former CEO, saying go ahead and do this stuff?
00:25:51.000 Or did he just turn a blind eye to it?
00:25:53.000 And then really to your question, does Elon know if he got rid of all the bad actors?
00:25:59.000 I can't speak to that exactly, but my guess is, you know, he did a pretty hardcore blanket firing of half the people.
00:26:06.000 You got to imagine, knowing how wokeism has infected every institution, educationally, technologically, governmental, whatever it might be, you can't, you have to imagine that there's still some of them there.
00:26:18.000 And the question is, what are they up to right now?
00:26:21.000 Yeah, I mean, I have so many questions, Dave.
00:26:23.000 The engineers that you met with, and you're good at reading people, and I trust your judgment.
00:26:28.000 Did you get a sense that they were trying to fix this, that they shared values?
00:26:33.000 Okay, explain that.
00:26:34.000 100%.
00:26:35.000 The two guys, the two guys that I spent most of my time with, I'm telling you, these guys brought their laptops up to me, opened up all the internal stuff.
00:26:42.000 You know, there's certain things they can't, you know, you're not seeing people's passwords and things of that nature, but they're showing me all their analytics related to my account.
00:26:49.000 And I gave them a list.
00:26:51.000 I think you were on one of the lists, actually, but I had given them a separate list because you were called out in the original thing of people that I thought it might be worthy of looking into.
00:26:59.000 I'm telling you, every single question that I asked these guys, they had their laptops right in front of me and they were not hiding their screens.
00:27:06.000 So they were showing me things.
00:27:07.000 They were showing me graphs.
00:27:08.000 They were showing me as they were uncovering these things.
00:27:11.000 So I felt very good.
00:27:12.000 And I will say that the two guys that, and I'm still working with them, by the way, they are new hires at Twitter.
00:27:18.000 They've been working with Elon before.
00:27:20.000 So he trusts them, but they are new at Twitter.
00:27:22.000 So these are fresh eyes that are looking at this.
00:27:24.000 And I mean, I can't imagine they're even able to take all this, the volume of information in.
00:27:30.000 Because as you said, you fix one problem and you break three, it seems, or you look into one thing and it only reveals another.
00:27:37.000 So at least this is giving me some comfort that this is being addressed and there's a venue to talk about it.
00:27:44.000 My Twitter's been a mess the last couple of weeks.
00:27:46.000 Engagement.
00:27:47.000 Oh, it's worse than ever right now.
00:27:49.000 It's worse than ever.
00:27:50.000 It feels worse since I got back.
00:27:51.000 Yeah, it's worse than when, you know, Stalin was running the place, right? 0.91
00:27:56.000 That guy was the worst of all the Twitter CEOs.
00:27:59.000 Buddhist Stalin, or Jack Dorsey, I'm sorry, I get him confused all the time.
00:28:05.000 So Dave, what you're saying is that the DNA of the company, the fiber, he might have to rewrite the whole thing.
00:28:11.000 I'm a layman.
00:28:12.000 I have no idea what that would even take.
00:28:15.000 So share with our audience other things that you learned in that.
00:28:20.000 compressed meeting with Elon and his team.
00:28:23.000 You obviously came with a lot of questions and concerns.
00:28:26.000 As I mentioned before the break, my Twitter has just been a horror show the last couple of weeks.
00:28:32.000 It's worse than it's ever been.
00:28:33.000 What can you share with us in that regard?
00:28:35.000 Well, I can give you a first-hand account on that one.
00:28:37.000 I mean, I could tell you, Charlie, I don't think I've seen one of your tweets in probably weeks, probably weeks.
00:28:42.000 Me and you used to interact on Twitter quite a bit.
00:28:45.000 I never see you anymore.
00:28:46.000 I'm not retweeting you because I don't like you.
00:28:48.000 I just don't see you anymore.
00:28:49.000 I was wondering, Dave, was it something I said?
00:28:52.000 And I was just, man, I just don't see you.
00:28:54.000 But I'm guessing you don't see me either.
00:28:56.000 I see that.
00:28:57.000 And that is what the problem is.
00:28:58.000 I'm walking in blindness.
00:29:00.000 And I don't have time to look everybody up.
00:29:02.000 I mean, that's not, if I wanted to do that, I'd use MySpace, right?
00:29:04.000 Twitter is supposed to be, it's supposed to profile people you actually want to engage with.
00:29:09.000 Please continue.
00:29:10.000 Well, I'll give you one that's a little bit of insider baseball that I did learn.
00:29:13.000 You may have noticed that, you know, when we all signed up for Twitter over the years, what we all thought we were signing up for was, oh, you follow this person, you're going to see their tweets in a chronological feed with no manipulation or anything else, right?
00:29:26.000 I follow Charlie Kirk.
00:29:28.000 I follow Candace Owens.
00:29:29.000 I follow Ben Shapiro.
00:29:30.000 I'm going to see all their stuff as it comes out.
00:29:32.000 That's what we all thought was happening.
00:29:34.000 Then obviously there was all this under the hood stuff that was manipulating it and the shadow banning and all that.
00:29:39.000 But one of the things that I think he's now realizing was a bit of a mistake.
00:29:43.000 He's even tweeted this in the last day or two that they're going to try to fix it is they created a tab called For You where the algorithm would then recommend things for you.
00:29:52.000 But people did not realize that that was what they were seeing.
00:29:55.000 So suddenly you're seeing all of these things that you did not sign up for and you're not seeing the things that you actually did sign up for.
00:30:02.000 So it was doubly compounded.
00:30:04.000 So I think they're going to reverse that, but even reverting that is tough.
00:30:08.000 And he mentioned how, you know, we talked earlier about how when you fix one thing, you break something else.
00:30:12.000 They had an issue about a week ago with Twitter Spaces, which is their audio platform, like sort of the Twitter radio show sort of thing.
00:30:19.000 And they tried to fix that.
00:30:21.000 And by fixing that, they actually downed the Twitter Android app for a day.
00:30:26.000 So these are big, serious problems that he's got to figure out.
00:30:30.000 But you asked me what else I learned there.
00:30:32.000 I mean, this isn't exactly about Twitter, but man, Charlie, I don't know when the last time you were in San Francisco was.
00:30:37.000 Actually, I was there with you a couple of years ago and our car got broken into and they stole my bag with my laptop and everything else.
00:30:44.000 But San Francisco is an unimaginable human disaster.
00:30:49.000 The drugs and the homelessness, it was sprawling throughout the city.
00:30:54.000 Look, I lived in New York City.
00:30:55.000 I lived in Los Angeles.
00:30:57.000 I've been around the country, even Portland and Seattle.
00:31:00.000 I have never seen anything like this.
00:31:02.000 Yeah, and now these people want to run the country.
00:31:04.000 A lot different than Miami.
00:31:05.000 Miami is full of life.
00:31:07.000 Oh, man.
00:31:08.000 When are you visiting me in Miami?
00:31:09.000 It's a freaking joy out here.
00:31:11.000 No, it's so hilarious.
00:31:11.000 I got iguanas.
00:31:12.000 I got lizards.
00:31:13.000 What do you need?
00:31:13.000 You and I should talk off air.
00:31:14.000 I'm actually flying there to go interview Bolsoniro tomorrow.
00:31:17.000 So you and I should, I'll text you and we'll talk about it.
00:31:19.000 What are we doing?
00:31:20.000 Yeah, we got to figure it out.
00:31:21.000 It was a last minute thing.
00:31:22.000 Similar to when Bolsoniero calls you, like when Elon Musk calls you.
00:31:25.000 You got to go interview him.
00:31:26.000 Right.
00:31:27.000 When the deposed Brazilian leader.
00:31:29.000 Of course, obviously.
00:31:30.000 That's an interview you don't want to turn down.
00:31:32.000 So, but in closing here, Dave, look, I believe it's important for our civilization that Twitter gets sorted out.
00:31:40.000 I hate to handicap the odds, but did you leave at least with some clarity that, hey, we got a fighting shot?
00:31:50.000 Yeah, yeah, but it's 50-50.
00:31:52.000 It's 50-50.
00:31:53.000 But, you know, to loosely quote Han Solo, I'll take those odds.
00:31:56.000 I mean, you know, he wants to fix it.
00:31:58.000 He has every resource in the world.
00:32:00.000 He's bringing in tons of great people.
00:32:02.000 The problems just may be that crazy.
00:32:05.000 But, you know, Charlie, you know this.
00:32:07.000 And as a capitalist and as a lover of America and the human mind and the individual, we will always find our way out of these things.
00:32:15.000 So even if Twitter was to fail, and trust me, I do not want it to fail.
00:32:19.000 Even if Twitter was to fail, we will find a new public square and we will build new things.
00:32:24.000 You know, obviously you and I are big supporters of Rumble and I do, which merged with Rumble and Rumble's doing incredibly well.
00:32:31.000 So the pipes and the alternate rails are being built.
00:32:34.000 And, you know, you never want to put all your chips in one basket, right?
00:32:37.000 So Elon is an extraordinary human being.
00:32:39.000 There's absolutely no doubt about it.
00:32:41.000 He is a modern Renaissance man.
00:32:43.000 He's basically a modern iron man.
00:32:45.000 Yes.
00:32:46.000 Yeah.
00:32:47.000 But maybe he can't fix everything too.
00:32:50.000 So I would say anyone listening to this, like go out there and keep building things.
00:32:53.000 That's the most important thing that you can do.
00:32:56.000 I totally agree.
00:32:57.000 20 seconds.
00:32:58.000 Did you get the sense that Elon shares the values of free speech?
00:33:04.000 Is this a moral crusade for him?
00:33:06.000 Yes, it's a moral crusade.
00:33:08.000 Absolutely.
00:33:08.000 And that was extremely refreshing, by the way.
00:33:10.000 We didn't just dive into tech stuff.
00:33:12.000 And I'm not a techie.
00:33:13.000 You know, I have a fairly decent understanding of this stuff.
00:33:16.000 But like you, you know, I talk about politics.
00:33:19.000 I understand the political and philosophical underpinnings of this stuff.
00:33:22.000 But he absolutely is, I would say, on our side when it comes to free speech.
00:33:26.000 Free speech should not be a side.
00:33:28.000 Free speech should be the uniter, not a side.
00:33:30.000 You and I both know that.
00:33:31.000 I'm going to text about Miami, Dave.
00:33:32.000 Great job.
00:33:33.000 Thank you for going out.
00:33:34.000 That's Roll, man.
00:33:34.000 Stake on me.
00:33:38.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:33:39.000 Email me your thoughts as always.
00:33:40.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
00:33:42.000 Thank you so much for listening and God bless.
00:33:47.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.