00:00:00.000Hey everybody, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:02.000This is producer Andrew filling in, Andrew Colvet.
00:00:05.000Honored to be behind the microphone today on a very, very packed news day.
00:00:10.000And leading off, we talk about Elon and his hostile takeover bid of Twitter, what it means, where this story started, where it's going next.
00:00:21.000And in his own words, we get to hear from Elon with, you know, because he just happened to time this, all this news breaking when he had a TED Talk.
00:00:31.000So we get to hear some of Elon's own words.
00:00:33.000Folks, we also invite Jack Pesobic, who was tweeting back and forth with Elon only a few weeks ago about buying Twitter, only to see those very same predictions and tweets come to pass.
00:00:46.000So you're not going to want to miss this episode.
00:00:48.000Jack is probably one of the country's most foremost experts on the Twitter controversy on the Twitter saga that's going on, depending on what side you're on.
00:01:13.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:22.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:33.000Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
00:01:36.000For personalized loan services, you can count on.
00:01:38.000Go to andrewandodd.com, the wonderfulandrewandtodd.com.
00:01:44.000Elon Musk and his hostile takeover of Twitter, his attempted hostile takeover of Twitter, woke up.
00:01:51.000This is the first thing I'm seeing tweets and texts from like four in the morning, people instantly telling me what the backstory is, what they saw.
00:02:00.000One of those people was Jack Pesobic, friend of the show.
00:02:04.000If you listen to the Charlie Kirk show, you know that Jack is a good friend.
00:02:08.000He also hosts human events daily, which is powered by Turning Point USA.
00:02:14.000Jack was one of the first people to call this exactly what Twitter is experiencing right now at the hands of Elon Musk, a free speech warrior.
00:02:23.000Now, I'm not going to wave the pom-poms, if you will, for Elon on everything.
00:02:28.000But I will say that he is a glitch in the Matrix.
00:02:32.000This is often how we refer to him on this show.
00:02:59.000Most elites are so married to their wealth that they dare not risk their status amongst the rulers of the universe.
00:03:08.000They dare not risk their invites to the cocktail parties and their boards, their board seats, their Kush life.
00:03:15.000Because the richer you become, the higher the stakes.
00:03:18.000The richer you become, the more breaking from the mold of an elite ruler of the world, the higher, the more expensive breaking becomes.
00:03:28.000And yet here we have this glitch in the matrix.
00:03:31.000I think we wrote this morning, $260 billion.
00:03:33.000He's actually worth closer to $300 billion.
00:03:36.000He's able to essentially buy, make an offer at $43 billion to acquire Twitter, 100% cash, apparently, for roughly around 12 to 13% of his overall value.
00:03:49.000Now, that might not seem like much to you, but this would represent one of the single largest philanthropic efforts any individual has ever taken, not just by sheer dollar amounts.
00:04:05.000This would represent one of the largest philanthropic, and I do use that word very intentionally, because we have to ask ourselves, and I'm going to read his quote in his letter to the board, well, to the chairman of the board, Brett Taylor, at Twitter.
00:04:20.000So we have to ask ourselves, what does Elon Musk want?
00:04:26.000Now, I often say this when I get a chance to fill in for Charlie, but we have to say that when somebody shows you who they are, believe them.
00:04:33.000When somebody tells you who they are, believe them.
00:04:37.000There's very few other options, really.
00:04:50.000So I'm going to read this letter and then I'm going to ask the question, who does Elon Musk say he is and what does he want and is it good?
00:04:57.000I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.
00:05:05.000And I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.
00:05:24.000I got popcorn, got my coffee, got my water.
00:05:28.000I'm sitting here taking it all in, watching them melt down.
00:05:31.000As a matter of fact, just, you know, why we're at it, we heard at 2 p.m., Twitter is going to have an all hands to deal with how Elon has triggered them.
00:05:41.000All the snowflakes over at Twitter are going to be dealt with.
00:05:44.000They're going to have a full counseling session.
00:05:47.000They're going to have crisis counselors on call.
00:05:53.000You know, listen, I was just in the Bay Area.
00:05:55.000I'm actually really sad that we didn't stay an extra day just so I could see if I could catch some Twitter employees on the way out of their building that's empty.
00:06:39.000However, since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.
00:06:46.000Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company, says Musk.
00:06:50.000As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced.
00:07:06.000My offer is my best and final offer, and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.
00:07:20.000This has the potential of being something real.
00:07:23.000When I talk about the cynicism affecting America, when I talk about the cynicism affecting the younger people of this country that I just got to see up close and personal at UC Berkeley, it is because nothing ever really seems to change.
00:07:40.000And for them, it was getting Biden elected and nothing really changed, right?
00:07:43.000For us, maybe it was that we got Trump in office, didn't get the wall built, and look what we have now.
00:07:50.000Whatever it is, real change is hard to see.
00:07:53.000And in this glimpse of an opportunity at a hostile takeover, which has a very good chance of affecting real change, we see hope.
00:08:06.000Look, did you get hit with a big tax spill you were not expecting?
00:08:09.000With rates still being very low and home equity being high, it's the perfect time to refinance and get some cash out of your home.
00:08:16.000Look, you could go to one of these woke banks, Citibank, Chase, where they hate you, they hate the country, and they hate Christianity, or you could refinance right now all of your mortgage needs with my friends.
00:08:28.000It's so easy to remember the website, andrewandTodd.com.
00:09:17.000What's also breaking is that Twitter shareholder Saudi Prince Al-Waleed rejects Musk's bid to take over platform.
00:09:26.000In his tweet, he said that it's much too low, given the intrinsic value and growth potential of Twitter, which is an interesting place to land on.
00:09:40.000He only probably thinks that it has intrinsic value and growth prospects because of the recent stock increase that Elon Musk has helped inspire.
00:10:08.000In a letter to Twitter's chairman, Musk wrote, I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.
00:10:16.000And I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.
00:10:20.000He also wrote, Twitter has extraordinary potential.
00:10:34.000Now, what's interesting about this is that as left-wing Twitter implodes, you've now put them in a very ironic position where they are going to be forced to defend a Saudi prince for defending free speech.
00:11:02.000That's going to be really, really fun to watch in the midst of all this.
00:11:05.000So the question then becomes, and we're going to bring Jack Pesobic on in the next segment to really dive into this, but let's play this out.
00:11:11.000What are the scenarios that happen here?
00:11:14.000What are the potential outcomes that we need to be thinking about?
00:11:17.000Now, you've just seen that a shareholder of 5% of Twitter has rejected the offer.
00:11:24.000Now, rejecting the offer means that they have to be able to present to their shareholders, to the rest of Twitter shareholders, that they have a fiduciary responsibility to manage the company well, that this is in their financial best interest.
00:11:40.000Now, if that happens, guess what's going to happen?
00:11:43.000Twitter stock is going to tumble back down to a very low point if that happens.
00:11:49.000One of the potential outcomes here, if they reject Musk's offer outright, is that they will then, shareholders will then have an opportunity to sue.
00:11:59.000In which case, many of the board members would then be reinstated potentially.
00:12:03.000Or, sorry, removed, and then they would be replaced.
00:12:24.000Most of the analysis that I'm seeing is saying that, regardless, Elon's already won.
00:12:30.000He's gamed this out three or four steps in advance, and he's already won, regardless of whether he takes over the company, regardless of whether he brings in somebody like Peter Thiel, ups the bid again.
00:12:41.000Can you imagine the imploding minds if he brings in somebody like Peter Thial just for fun?
00:12:46.000There are about four different moves that he still has on the board.
00:12:49.000Meanwhile, Twitter's leadership is panicking.
00:12:53.000We're already getting signals that they have rejected the offer.
00:12:55.000So the question becomes: has he already checkmated them?
00:13:13.000It's a beautiful document, and so do I.
00:13:15.000And it's the same with Hillsdale College, the best liberal arts college in America.
00:13:19.000Hillsdale's mission is pursuing truth and defending liberty.
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00:13:34.000But today I want to tell you about Hillsdale's amazing free monthly digest of liberty.
00:15:19.000Yeah, so, I mean, we did have that back and forth with Elon on March 26th, and we put the tweet thread up.
00:15:28.000You know, kind of we're having a discussion in Elon's mentions about some of these censorship areas that Twitter has gotten into, centering conservatives for their viewpoints, but at the same time, allowing false information to fly, whether it's for the Covington kids or Jussie Smollett or, you know, anything that's going on in government, overseas, the foreign policy sphere, right?
00:15:52.000All this false stuff comes down, except for anything that you say that's in a conservative vein, that's what gets censored.
00:16:00.000And Elon said it feels a little unbalanced.
00:16:02.000And then I responded, you should buy Twitter and take it private.
00:16:07.000Now here we are three weeks later, and he's doing just that.
00:16:10.000We also found out in the backstory that as he was tweeting about that and as we were having that exchange, he was behind the scenes already purchasing up shares of Twitter.
00:16:23.000Now, one of the names that I want people to understand, what are the names that people need to hear in all of this is Alex Spyro.
00:16:30.000And you're seeing Alex Spyro commented on as the lawyer, the spokesman for Elon Musk in this purchase and a few of his other ventures.
00:16:38.000Alex Spyro is one of the heavy hitters out of New York when it comes to these MA deals.
00:16:46.000He's a pipe hitter when it comes to this stuff.
00:16:48.000So when I saw Alex Spyro's name was attached to this thing, I knew right from the bat, right from the get-go, that Elon Musk was serious.
00:16:58.000And what I hear, and you can also read between the lines of Elon's letter to the board of Twitter this morning, that originally he just wanted a seat at the table.
00:17:07.000He just wanted a seat at the table and to have influence with Twitter and with its board.
00:17:12.000He didn't want to do the hostile takeover right away.
00:17:14.000But because of the way that he was treated by the management of Twitter, so you remember in the very first instance, after he said he was buying the 9% stake, the management of Twitter puts out this huge statement, Donald Trump will not be allowed back on.
00:17:26.000And Elon's like, wait a minute, I'm not even in the room yet.
00:17:30.000And then they're putting all these restrictions on and saying, you need to take a background test and you need to cap yourself to 15%.
00:17:37.000And oh, by the way, they were also going to put a restriction.
00:17:39.000And I don't think this has been reported yet, but we talk about it today on Human Events Daily on the podcast that they were putting a restriction in place on him that he couldn't discuss Twitter on the Twitter platform while he sat on the board.
00:17:55.000And obviously, that was going to be a hard no from Elon because that flies in the face of everything that he's trying to do.
00:18:00.000And so because of that, he went back to Spyro, went back to his advisors and said, you know what?
00:18:26.000However, they brought in Goldman to advise them that the price is too low.
00:18:30.000Zero Hedge just has the tweet up where they went back to Goldman's valuation of Twitter from Q4 last year, so December of last year, and they said that it should be a sell, right?
00:18:40.000That they value Twitter, that you should sell between 30 and 36 price target.
00:18:45.000Elon's almost offering double of that.
00:18:47.000So Twitter, they're in a little bit of a bind right now because it turns out the math is actually on Elon's side.
00:18:54.000And if they don't take this deal, you better believe he's going to be vocal about it on his Twitter account.
00:19:00.000So he actually kind of has them between a rock and a hard place.
00:19:04.000And I don't even think they realize it yet.
00:20:29.000What's very critical to understand here, though, folks, is that there is a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders of Twitter to make them as much money as they can, right?
00:20:39.000To look out for the financial best interests.
00:20:41.000No, no, this is what people don't get.
00:20:43.000This isn't something where Twitter can just turn around and say no, right?
00:20:46.000They are required to do this as a publicly held company.
00:21:14.000You've got to shop it around, see if you can get a better deal.
00:21:17.000They're not going to get a better deal.
00:21:18.000So what they might try to do is stand up someone to say, even if it's not completely, you know, completely fought through, they're going to stand up someone to say, oh, well, I'm offering 80 billion, right?
00:21:30.000Find some other billionaire to come in and offer 80 because they probably want 100.
00:21:37.000Without Elon, you know, with the competing bid, I mean, exactly.
00:21:41.000So you've already got the number one, you know, the most, the wealthiest man in the world.
00:21:45.000And plus, by the way, if Elon wants to, and I've seen other people were talking about this, if he wants to, he could enlist the ape army.
00:21:53.000And if people know what the ape army is, these were the retail investors that were behind the meme stocks, behind Dogecoin, behind AMC and GameStop.
00:22:01.000He could get all those people on board.
00:22:04.000So if they reject the offer, he could still get all of these people on board and then pledge their proxy votes to Elon.
00:22:45.000Here's what people need to understand as well, Jack, is that the publicly traded company is supposed to already reflect the market valuation for that stock, right?
00:23:05.000So what he's saying is I'm giving you a premium on where that is.
00:23:10.000These people are saying, well, the Saudi Prince is saying, hey, it's actually undervalued, even though Twitter just skyrocketed in price.
00:23:20.000So what they're going to do here, Jack, is they're going to say, well, look at what the price tag was for the stock at its high watermark in February 2021.
00:23:49.000you know, full of left-wingers, but apps like Getter, platforms like Getter, which you are very active on, which Charlie Kirk is very active on.
00:23:59.000I mean, it's one of those things where if this deal doesn't go through, you know, people are just going to move together.
00:24:04.000They're going to say, if this, this is like the last shot for Twitter.
00:24:07.000And for a lot of people out there, and not even just conservatives, but people who are independent-minded, people who just want to have a conversation, people want to be able to debate things that are, you know, they see things coming across their screen.
00:24:17.000They say, hey, I want to debate this, whether it's vaccines or whether it's Russia or whatever, you know, whatever the topic of the day is, they'd like to be able to have serious and substantive debate on it.
00:24:27.000And that's the rub with all of this, because Elon Musk isn't saying that he wants to own Twitter.
00:24:32.000He's saying he wants to liberate Twitter and restore it to its place of a global forum for freedom of speech.
00:24:39.000And that is terrifying to the powers that be and terrifying to the regime.
00:24:43.000They will throw everything they possibly can at Elon, because keep in mind that a lot of his money is derived from government contracts, at least here in the United States.
00:24:52.000He's also got ties to the CCP, and I'm not blind to that, right?
00:24:57.000His factories, by the way, in Shanghai right now are down because of the lockdowns.
00:25:00.000So they're going to go after, you remember there was that series of Tesla tweets that was out about whether he's taking it private, not taking it private.
00:25:43.000It's not just a financial question because it's a question fundamentally of political power in this country and political geopolitical power around the world.
00:26:25.000I am invested personally and also through the Charlie Kirk show to try to do everything we possibly can to try and push back against these Democrats and their lies.
00:26:35.000And so look, you can get a signed picture by President Trump himself.
00:27:28.000I want to play one cut here, Cut77, and I want to then read a tweet from Max Boot, and I want to get your take on what exactly they're so afraid of.
00:27:39.000But at the Washington Post, they served up something slightly different, a little more stealthy.
00:27:43.000They enlisted the former CEO of Reddit, an activist mediocrity called Ellen Powell, who couldn't manage to actually run Reddit, to write an op-ed with this title, quote, Elon Musk's vision of free speech will be bad for Twitter.
00:27:56.000And then the piece contained this line.
00:27:58.000Now, this line doesn't so much reveal a lack of self-awareness as it does commit murder against the entire concept they're trying to support.
00:28:05.000And here's what it is, quote, Musk's appointment to Twitter's board shows that we need regulation of social media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.
00:28:55.000But that's the second richest man in the world.
00:28:58.000You've got The Atlantic, which is essentially owned by Steve Jobs' widow, the Globe and Mail, owned by Canada's richest manned, and the New York Times that at one point that was financially backed by Carlos Swim of Mexico.
00:29:10.000And so what you have here isn't so much a, you know, this, they're making this argument about freedom of speech, right?
00:29:18.000But what this really is is an oligarch fight.
00:29:21.000We're going full mask off at this point.
00:29:23.000You live in an oligarchy, and it's certainly an oligarchy when it comes to communication because who controls communication controls the flow of public opinion, and the flow of public opinion then informs democracy.
00:29:34.000So Mass Democracy comes with, of course, the Washington Post has this in their title, which we're told, Democracy Dies in Darkness, was it's very, obviously very cheesy, kind of cliched and very 1984 sounding.
00:29:52.000And so what McLuhan pointed out, though, and just to finish my point, those are all outlets of information, yet Twitter is a medium of information.
00:30:03.000So if Twitter is the medium by which, you know, it's the network, it's the channel, it's the space where all these things are able to compete and able to be debated, they're telling you that their version of democracy only works if you silence all opposition and all dissenting voices.
00:30:21.000Yeah, I think you're spot on on this, Jack.
00:30:24.000I think what the oligarchs, what the elites are realizing is that their message is failing.
00:30:32.000I mean, look at this Quinnipiak poll that just came out.
00:30:35.000I mean, this is, Jack, he's got an approval rating of 33% according to this poll.
00:30:40.000They realize that if they lose even the mechanisms of the delivery of speech like Twitter, that it is, that is such a ruling class platform that they're really dead in the water.
00:30:52.000Now, you are often on one of our friends' shows, Bannon's War Room.
00:30:57.000He calls this an extinction-level event, right?
00:30:59.000I mean, this really could be an existential crisis amongst the rulers of the universe here.
00:31:06.000Well, Andrew, that's exactly why I'm saying that for them, they realize what this is.
00:31:12.000And we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what the response is going to be because what you've got here is a rogue oligarch, right?
00:31:19.000You've got a rogue elite, someone who's not playing off the same playbook.
00:31:35.000And he says that there are things that he cares about more.
00:31:38.000And this is a power move, by the way, by Generation X.
00:31:40.000And I've talked about this a little bit on Human Events Daily, where Generation X is typically seen as this sort of, you know, the don't tell me what to do generation.
00:31:50.000You know, this is the generation of Kurt Cobain.
00:31:52.000It's the generation of Joe Rogan, the generation of Jack Dorsey, the original creator of Twitter, and also, of course, the generation of Elon Musk.
00:31:59.000And so time and time again, what you see them doing is rejecting authority.
00:32:05.000And so for him to make this move, it's because the woke authority and the woke tyranny has gotten too much.
00:32:12.000Jack, I could go on and on with you about this.
00:32:15.000But I'm just going to make a prediction here that Elon Musk has already checkmated Twitter, the leadership of Twitter, and I cannot wait to see where it goes.
00:32:26.000He is now going on the record about his Twitter attempted hostile takeover of Twitter, which is just, can I just say again, it's so much fun to watch.
00:32:36.000And a good sign as to whether there's free speech is, is someone you don't like allowed to say something you don't like?
00:32:46.000And if that is the case, then we have free speech.
00:32:49.000And it's damn annoying when someone you don't like says something you don't like.
00:32:54.000That is a sign of a healthy, functioning free speech situation.
00:33:00.000Where someone you don't like says something you don't like and it's allowed to happen.
00:33:04.000That is a very simple and a very powerful way to say it.
00:33:09.000Now, here's the thing: there's a difference between compelled speech, right?
00:33:13.000This is why I am in favor of things like the anti-grooming bill in Florida.
00:33:20.000It's saying, teachers, you don't have the right as instruments of the state to teach children about sexualization, gender identity, and things like that.
00:33:29.000These things belong in the power of the people through their vote and through their legislators, through the representative.
00:33:37.000If a teacher forces a child to listen to certain things, to listen to their indoctrination, to their ideologies about whatever, right?
00:33:44.000Now, we're willing as a society to give them wide berth on a lot of topics.
00:33:49.000But when it comes to sexualization, we've said in Florida at least, the people of Florida have said via their representatives that we do not support that.
00:33:56.000So I want to make this very clear because a lot of the argument comes back on conservatives say, yo, you're anti-free speech.
00:34:02.000I thought you were pro-free speech, conservatives.
00:34:30.000Elon Musk also says in clip 88 that he believes that it is his strong intuitive sense, which I love, that having a public forum that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is critical to the future of civilization.
00:34:48.000My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.
00:35:31.000You know, I started today's show by saying that when somebody tells you who they are, somebody shows you what they are, you have no choice but to take them at their word and by their actions and by their deeds.
00:35:45.000Elon Musk, we always knew he was a great entrepreneur.
00:35:50.000We did not know if he was attempting to do great things.
00:35:54.000The last couple weeks in Elon's activities, the things that he is saying, reveal much about the man.
00:36:03.000And should his efforts at taking over Twitter ultimately prove successful, I believe that it will be in the hands of a benevolent force for good and for free speech, at least insofar as free speech is concerned.