00:00:00.000Hey everybody, what does it mean when a company wants to be regulated?
00:00:03.000We talk about Facebook, we talk about their new ad campaign, we talk about social media, the whistleblower, and we also talk about a history of government regulation and how it actually helps the bigger companies.
00:00:13.000Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:16.000I want to thank those of you that generously support us and allow us to continue to do what we are doing at charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:00:26.000Lewis from Brooklyn, New York, thank you.
00:00:28.000Lisa from Charlotte, North Carolina, Pollyanna from California, thank you, Michelle from Idaho, thank you, Rebecca from Atlanta, Georgia, Glenn from Lake Fort Worth, Florida, thank you, Kathy from Hawaii, thank you, Karen from Kentucky, and Valerie from Freeport, Illinois, charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:00:47.000Come to America Fest, everybody, December 18, 19, 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona.
00:00:51.000tpusa.com slash amf tpusa.com slash am fest.
00:01:23.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:15.000And I was just doing some work and it was kind of up there.
00:02:19.000And the advertisement wasn't go use Facebook.
00:02:22.000The advertisement was go use WhatsApp.
00:02:26.000The advertisement was learn how Facebook wants more regulation for the internet.
00:02:31.000Now, all of this is happening in a time where people are starting to realize that technology is actually harming our ability to be fully human.
00:02:46.000Where we are seeing young girls develop ticks because they're on TikTok too much.
00:03:46.000We now are seeing a disturbing trend of Facebook and the tech industry being somewhat in the orbit of a push to regulate these companies.
00:04:01.000And the big kind of psychological op, the big press op, if you will, where it feels as if the entire thing was concocted was the story with Francis Hagen.
00:04:34.000It wasn't as if it was a real whistleblower.
00:04:37.000And notice the whole thing, it wasn't about how Facebook needs to be broken into pieces.
00:04:42.000It's that, no, we need more government legislation to try to control what Facebook is doing.
00:04:48.000And so then new details are showing that the whistleblower, Francis Haugen or Hagen, is actually being funded by the CEO of eBay.
00:05:02.000That the Facebook whistleblower is funded by the billionaire founder of eBay from PR to legal aid.
00:05:11.000So his name is Pierre Omendiar, a well-known critic of big tech whose previous advocacy efforts have supported independent journalism and anti-monopoly campaigns and employee activism.
00:05:23.000And he donated $150,000 to Whistleblower Aid last year, the same nonprofit responsible for her legal representation.
00:05:36.000She's not advocating for a breakup of tech or how technology is making young people have serious health issues and destroying our capacity to communicate.
00:05:48.000No, what she's advocating for is a new government agency that will police speech, that will criminalize other ideas.
00:05:58.000And so the Facebook files continued to come out.
00:06:02.000And the Facebook files are part, is she the one leaking them?
00:06:11.000But a new one that we are involved in, and I don't know, the Washington Post, for example, this article just posted by Sarah Ellison.
00:06:20.000We've been knowing this story was going to come out for a while.
00:06:23.000Facebook allowed conservative outlets to spread misinformation.
00:06:26.000And we're mentioned in this, alongside Prager University, Diamond and Silk.
00:06:32.000And basically, what was happening is that Facebook employees were complaining to the CEO of Facebook, get rid of Charlie Kirk, get rid of PragerU, get rid of Turning Point USA because we don't like the ideas that they are spreading.
00:06:47.000You have all this kind of happening at once.
00:06:49.000You have the selective leaks of these documents that are showing that the CEO, Zuckerberg, and his team were not wanting to overly censor conservatives for misinformation.
00:07:14.000And then you have this fake whistleblower come out and demand that Facebook is a company that needs more regulation.
00:07:21.000And then all of a sudden you see it all come together.
00:07:23.000Facebook realizes that they are seeing a trend, a very quick trend, where the winds of the nation are going to want to regulate them.
00:07:38.000And so Facebook is doing the thing that is in their best interest, not the best interest for the country, where they're saying, okay, we are going to then demand regulation that benefits us.
00:07:49.000Whenever you see a big company asking to be regulated, don't regulate them that way.
00:07:58.000When you see a big company like Facebook running advertisements on cable television saying, we stand for Section 230 reform.
00:08:51.000We work in the spectrum of freedom of expression versus content moderation and constantly trying to figure out where on that spectrum we should land.
00:09:02.000I don't know if that is right to have a private corporation like Facebook dictating what those boundaries are.
00:09:08.000And I think that with the right adjustments made to Section 230 and improved regulation, Facebook and the broader industry can receive better guidance in where on that spectrum we should be.
00:09:24.000I want you to think deeply about that for a second.
00:09:27.000That's Facebook running an advertisement saying that Facebook is not positioned to do the regulating.
00:09:34.000It's that Facebook wants a new government agency to do the regulating.
00:09:40.000Why would they be running an advertisement like that?
00:09:43.000They want to run an advertisement like that because if a new federal agency to police speech was created, they get two big wins out of that.
00:09:52.000Number one, they can no longer be blamed for what they censor and do not censor on their platform because they're tired of this.
00:09:58.000They're getting exhausted with doing it.
00:10:00.000They've tried this third-party fact-checker thing.
00:10:03.000They want to outsource the censorship so they could wash their hands clean of it.
00:10:06.000But the second thing is their real motivation.
00:10:10.000They want to add on hundreds of millions of dollars of regulatory compliance to make it impossible to start a new social media company, to make the cost to start up and to compete against Facebook nearly and totally impossible.
00:10:25.000Facebook is using this sort of propaganda campaign.
00:10:32.000They want to wash their hands of the actual intervention of picking winners and losers.
00:10:38.000So if you have this new federal agency that then polices speech on social media, then you're going to see all of a sudden when someone gets kicked off social media, when Trump gets kicked off social media, Facebook doesn't have to have some sort of stupid board or go, they're saying, oh, no, no, it wasn't us.
00:12:05.000The Washington Post writes, the new cache of internal Facebook documents provide more insight into that dynamic.
00:12:11.000Some memos include assertions by Facebook staffers that when conservative publishers engaged in behavior that ran afoul of Facebook rules, the company often let them off the hook.
00:12:20.000Quote, a fear of political backlash was a contributing factor in decisions made not to have conservative publishers like Breitbart or Prague or conservative personalities like Charlie Kirk and Diamond and Silk deemed repeat offenders for promoting misinformation, a designation that is supposed to cause a temporary block on ads.
00:12:35.000By the way, we did, just so we're clear, we lost access to monetization on Facebook and we were suppressed for an entire quarter, for 90 days.
00:12:44.000This idea that we haven't been suppressed.
00:12:47.000Another conservative outlet that a Daily Wire, the staffer wrote, quote, seemed to have been consistently exempted from punishment for running afoul of Facebook rules against collaboration with other groups to echo and amplify falsehoods.
00:12:57.000The documents did not outline what specific violations had allegedly occurred.
00:13:01.000Referring to Diamond and Silk, the two passionately pro-Trump video bloggers, the Facebook document noted the duo, quote, is extremely sensitive and has not hesitated going public about their concerns around alleged conservative bias on Facebook.
00:13:13.000A 2020 NBC News story reported that Facebook managers intervened to remove strikes from their internal records for Diamond and Silk, allowing them to avoid repeat offender status.
00:13:26.000We responded, a spokesman for Kirk maintained the prominent conservatives are, quote, routinely targeted by Facebook and unfairly labeled as misinformation.
00:13:33.000Any exceptions must have been made only after gross bias has already been demonstrated.
00:13:37.000And I completely agree with that because that's what we said.
00:13:41.000That's our story and we're sticking with it.
00:13:43.000Far from receiving special or favorable treatment, the experience for conservatives like Charlie Kirk has been the exact opposite.
00:13:49.000Fact checkers routinely target prominent conservatives, flagging posts based on technicality, uncharitable interpretations, obvious jokes, or peer opinion labeled as misinformation.
00:13:59.000Any exceptions must have been made after gross bias has already been demonstrated by third-party fact checkers.
00:14:05.000So understand what's really going on here.
00:14:07.000What's going on here is these leaks in conjunction with Haagen-Doss and in conjunction with Facebook running ads is this, okay, these conservatives out of control.
00:14:17.000They're the ones that are stowing the anti-vaccine stuff.
00:14:21.000They're the ones that are doing the anti-mask stuff.
00:14:23.000And Facebook is like, okay, we are no longer to be able to police our own.
00:14:36.000And by the way, I wouldn't be surprised if you're going to see states like New York or California start to put some sort of beginning stages, if you will, of censorship boards in their states.
00:14:50.000Cut 47, Facebook is running this as an advertisement.
00:14:54.000Privacy on Facebook and legislation associated with it.
00:15:37.000We need more federal regulation on our business.
00:15:39.000No, you only want federal regulation when you have the following: a powerful incumbency, a steady stream of profit, and a problem that you want to go away.
00:16:03.000You see, regulation is a deterrent to competition.
00:16:08.000So, instead of trying to compete against Rumble, which just acquired locals.com today, by the way, R-U-M-B-L-E.com, instead of competing in the marketplace of social media apps, Facebook is now running these advertisements.
00:16:20.000What federal guidelines can do can help us out.
00:16:58.000I think it was Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.
00:17:02.000We're going to go back into a chapter and a period of American history that many young people listening to this program are not well versed in.
00:17:16.000And what happened afterwards was one of the greatest handouts to the American financial sector in history.
00:17:22.000A piece of legislation designed by and for the banks that crushed mid-level banks.
00:17:29.000Internet privacy is extremely important.
00:17:31.000New news out shows that Google has been colluding with the federal government to hand over your data if you might have searched something wrong into the search bar.
00:17:42.000So what are you doing to protect your search history?
00:17:45.000Well, this is why you need Express VPN.
00:17:48.000Using the internet without ExpressVPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door.
00:18:46.000Express VPN for me has been a game changer to be able to know that the tech companies or the government, they have to go through a whole nother barrier to try to spy on us.
00:18:58.000And we see with the new announcements out of DC, if you've spoke at a school board meeting lately, you better get a VPN.
00:19:04.000Secure your online activity by visiting expressvpn.com/slash Charlie today.
00:19:23.000When a company is asking for regulation, take pause.
00:19:27.000When a company wants to be regulated, you must ask why.
00:19:31.000Well, in 2008, we all experienced, well, some of you actually were very young in 2008, a financial crisis.
00:19:38.000The 2008 financial crisis changed our life.
00:19:42.000Actually, not as much, but close to as much as the Chinese corona Fauci virus.
00:19:49.000The 2008 financial crisis was because of a lot of different factors.
00:19:56.000Washington, D.C.'s cheap money policies, Alan Greenspan lowering interest rates and keeping them low after 9-11.
00:20:03.000Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a completely immoral and unregulated way giving out low-interest loans to people that did not have the credit scores to back them, looping these loans all together into packages that then could be traded as derivatives on the market, otherwise known as credit default swaps, which was something that was highly, highly controversial.
00:20:33.000Also, we saw after 1999, because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the merging of commercial banks and investment banks together, which further incentivized banks to get more involved in very risky lending and lending practices.
00:20:56.000So you put all this together alongside the very obvious and important government intervention of Wall Street getting drunk off of the liquor that Washington provided.
00:21:10.000You ask yourself the question, what happened after that?
00:21:14.000Well, after that, we saw a massive push by Chris Dodd, who's now a lobbyist, and Bonnie Fank from Massachusetts.
00:21:24.000If you don't know who Barney Frank is, you missed a wonderful chapter in American politics.
00:21:40.000We're in a much worse position now, but it felt bad back then.
00:21:45.000And so Barney Frank from Massachusetts came out with a massive regulatory package.
00:21:51.000The regulatory package that he recommended was, it became the bill Dodd-Frank.
00:21:58.000Dodd-Frank had basically pushed thousands of pages of additional regulation on banks, which ended up actually harming small and local and community banks far more than JPMorgan and Wells Fargo.
00:22:14.000So community bank share of U.S. banking assets and lending market fell from 40% in 1994 to around 20% today.
00:22:25.000You want to know why we are being ruled by the tyranny of JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs have been the death of the community bank.
00:22:32.000Although this is misleading at best, a very likely and accurate number considering Dodd-Frank was implemented 16 years later than 1994.
00:22:40.000Even in addition to that, small banks have been forced to end some businesses such as mortgages and car loans in response to all these new regulations.
00:22:49.000The size of regulatory compliance teams have grown, but the big companies, they are able to factor into their budgets.
00:22:58.000They're able to factor into their multi-billion dollar operating costs.
00:23:03.000Yeah, we'll spend an extra 20 million on legal.
00:23:07.000We'll spend an extra 50 million on compliance.
00:23:11.000But if you're the local community bank here in Boise, you don't have $50 million to comply with Dodd-Frank, the FDIC, and all of the additional regulation that comes onto this.
00:23:23.000And so what has happened to JPMorgan's stock since 2008?
00:23:28.000Well, December 19th, 2008, JPMorgan stock was $30.32 a share.
00:23:34.00013 years later, it is at $171 a share.
00:23:40.000They are more valuable than ever before.
00:23:43.000What is the market cap of JPMorgan Chase?
00:23:46.000Well, the total capitalization, again, back in 2008, they were about five and a half times smaller.
00:23:55.000The market cap of JPMorgan Chase is now $512 billion.
00:24:06.000JPMorgan has benefited from the PPP loans, benefited from the cheap money that comes from the quantitative easing of the Federal Reserve, the low price of money, the seeming infinite amount of dollar bills that we have.
00:24:22.000But also any competitor that might go up against JPMorgan, they are going to have to navigate the thicket, the jungle to traverse the side of the wasteland that is the infinite pile of government and federal regulation.
00:24:38.000What happens when JPMorgan Chase is found violating federal banking law?
00:26:29.000I don't talk about it much anymore because we have other issues.
00:26:32.000Go look at the biggest companies in America right now.
00:26:35.000You go look at the ones where it seems as if you can never compete against them.
00:26:39.000Many of them, if not all of them, benefit tremendously from a series and a set of federal regulators that have an inside-out relationship with them.
00:26:47.000Look at Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnson ⁇ Johnson, and BioInTech.
00:27:43.000The FCC, by the way, regulates everything we say on radio.
00:27:46.000We have to literally fill out these forms of what we talk about.
00:27:49.000The Federal Communications Commission, FCC.
00:27:52.000Every single aspect of American life has some sort of regulatory body over it.
00:27:57.000The Internal Revenue Service for tax policy, the Employment Prevention Agency, otherwise known as the Environmental Protection Agency for your EPM, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, ATF when it comes to firearms, whatever you want to talk about, you could put it all together, right?
00:28:12.000So then you have, let's say that there was a new Federal Internet Regulatory Committee, FERC.
00:28:18.000The Federal Internet Regulatory Committee.
00:29:46.000But when the Federal Commission for a Better Internet gets proposed by Kirsten Gillibrand, or when the Federal Commission for a Better Internet gets proposed by Elizabeth Warren, Facebook is making a very smart decision for their own interests and for their stockholders, their shareholders, and for Zuckerberg.
00:30:01.000They don't want to be caught by surprise.
00:30:02.000They don't want to seem adversarial to this new regulatory body.
00:32:10.000And so all of a sudden, we now have rap artists and people that are coming out that are creating songs called Let's Go Brandon, including Bryson Gray, who I think actually came to one of our events a couple of years ago with the Big MAGA hat.
00:32:30.000And he's an ambassador for Turning Point USA.
00:32:32.000I think they took down the song, didn't they?
00:32:36.000YouTube took it down because he said something he wasn't supposed to say.
00:32:41.000Well, now this is growing great steam.
00:32:43.000And with Great Stream, I have to tell you, this is one of the most delicious news stories to see very serious people that take themselves very seriously try to report on the Let's Go Brandon story from Washington Post to Slate.
00:32:58.000My favorite new, and by the way, it's amazing how many people on the left don't even know what's happening with the Let's Go Brandon thing.
00:33:04.000So Slate.com, the story behind the Let's Go Brandon, the secretly vulgar chant suddenly beloved by Republicans.
00:33:11.000Oh, you guys are worried about the sudden decline of American vulgarity.
00:33:16.000Somehow you guys are trying to say that we need to be pious and we need to be reserved and not swear.
00:33:21.000Meanwhile, you guys have Drag Queen Story Hour being put on Nickelodeon and absolute pornographic curriculum being put into children's school.
00:33:34.000And the FCC, you guys can't come after me for saying, let's go, Brandon.
00:33:38.000So for those that don't know, maybe you've been, I don't know, in a coma the last three weeks or, I don't know, navigating the islands of Thailand or something, and you just haven't been really queued into the news cycle, or maybe you were in honeymoon in Sri Lanka.
00:35:32.000And as the president deals with that favorability issue, problem, disaster, the anti-Biden chants, Let's Go Brandon, which you know are kind of code for cleaning up what they're really saying.
00:35:43.000But anyway, let's go Brandon now hitting the iTunes top.
00:36:09.000And honestly, when you have Joe Biden's approval rating at 64% and disapproval rating at 64% and approval rating at 30%, so I'm not really going to make a habit out of watching the World Series after what they did with moving the All-Star game or whatever.