00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk Show, Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, takes on big tech in a way that is a blueprint for conservatives all across the country.
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00:02:54.000Hey, everybody, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show today.
00:03:50.000There's a couple studies that we'll get into that are funded by the tech companies that say that conservatives being banned on social media is a myth.
00:03:57.000Well, the president literally has no access to social media, former President Trump.
00:04:04.000There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of social media tech censorship.
00:04:10.000Not to mention the monopolistic practices, the predominant nature of the political affiliation of their employees, how willing they are to kowtow to the most radical left-wing activist voices.
00:04:23.000We know the threat that big tech poses to our country, big tech and big data.
00:04:31.000So a lot of people have been wondering: well, how do we fight back against big tech?
00:04:40.000It's probably not going to happen with the Democrats controlling the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.
00:04:44.000Why the Republicans didn't do it when they controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency is beyond me.
00:04:49.000Should we try and push back against them for antitrust?
00:04:54.000It's probably a good idea, but it's unrealistic given the fact that Joe Biden has just staffed the Department of Justice with former tech staffers that have worked for these companies.
00:05:07.000But all those things should be tried and tested.
00:05:12.000One area that conservatives control that we have never utilized is the states.
00:05:22.000You see, when the Democrats find a source of power that they don't like, when the Democrats find an organization or they see a group of conservatives that they don't like, they instantaneously and immediately use their constitutional power on a state level to go after that conservative group or even just a industry they don't like.
00:05:45.000A great example is the California Attorney General going after ExxonMobil, largely unfairly.
00:05:52.000Another example would be the New York Attorney General going after the National Rifle Association.
00:06:01.000The National Rifle Association rarely ever endorses Democrats.
00:06:05.000It is a pro-Second Amendment organization, and the left has despised the NRA for decades.
00:06:13.000Google is a more powerful, more sophisticated, more solvent NRA for the left.
00:06:21.000Google is a political advocacy company for Democrats.
00:06:26.000There are very few people on the conservative side that are actually fighting right now, that are actually taking stances against the most pressing and urgent needs for our country.
00:06:47.000One governor is showing the rest of the country how to lead.
00:06:55.000He delivered a state that is the third most populous state in the country, a battleground state, to Donald Trump by 400,000 votes, despite Michael Bloomberg spending $2 million a day the last 60 days of the campaign.
00:07:12.000He had safe and secure elections with all of the election results in by 9.30 Eastern on election night with zero allegations of fraud.
00:07:23.000We're, of course, talking about Governor Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.
00:07:27.000And now Ron DeSantis, being a leader, is exhausted with seeing conservative bluster in Washington, D.C., and is now actually pushing back against the tech tyranny that we have seen.
00:07:45.000Not just talking about it, not just doing a press conference, not just giving lip service like most Republicans are trained to do, but doing something about it.
00:07:54.000Ron DeSantis has come out and said, quote, as these companies have grown and their influence has expanded, big tech has come to look more like Big Brother with each passing day.
00:08:12.000And this is real life, not George Orwell's fiction.
00:08:15.000These companies exert monopoly power over a centrally important forum and the public discourse and the access of information that Floridians rely on.
00:08:26.000He continued by saying that if these companies violate the new rules that are put forward by Florida, then these companies, these tech companies, could be fined up to $100,000 a day.
00:08:47.000Now, that might not be a lot of money for these tech companies, but $100,000 a day, if I do my math correctly, is about either $36.5 million or $365 million.
00:09:04.000No, that's right, $36.5 million a year.
00:09:08.000That's about the cost of Facebook and Google's lobbying budget every single year.
00:09:13.000However, if this piece of legislation passes in the Florida State House and State Senate and gets signed into law by Ron DeSantis, which it looks like it will, what if other states followed?
00:09:27.000South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Ohio, West Virginia.
00:09:36.000What if South Dakota came out and said, we'll find you $250,000 a day if you continue to crack down on conservative voices?
00:09:43.000Now, you might say, oh, it's no big deal.
00:09:45.000These tech companies can never be challenged.
00:09:48.000Just the threat of state-based legislation against these tech companies is enough to challenge and push back against the behavior that they have been displaying and exhibiting.
00:10:04.000Ron DeSantis says, quote, the message is loud and clear.
00:10:06.000When it comes to elections in Florida, big tech should stay out of it, which, of course, he's talking about big tech that did not allow the story of Hunter Biden or Joe Biden to be spread on any of their tech platforms going into November.
00:10:20.000The Washington Post, which is funded by a tech company itself, Amazon, came out and said, quote, the claim of anti-conservative animus in itself is a form of disinformation, a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it.
00:10:33.000No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that searches are being manipulated to favor liberal interests.
00:10:43.000Just the way they word that is so deceiving.
00:10:48.000This is a study from some tech company that was funded by some tech company.
00:10:54.000Conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons.
00:10:57.000No, they don't remove conservative content ever for ideological reasons.
00:11:02.000They remove it because they say it's a violation of their terms of service, which of course is actually they don't like the ideology, but they hide behind some stupid paperwork.
00:11:12.000So it's incredibly deceiving the way that they worded this.
00:11:18.000When we have clear and present threats against our country, the question should be, why are more governors not standing up against this like Ron DeSantis?
00:11:26.000Ron DeSantis is a governor of a battleground state, yet he's governing as if he's the governor of Texas.
00:11:37.000I'm sure Governor Christy Noam will step up and pass similar pieces of legislation.
00:11:43.000Ron DeSantis has already taught us how to do elections in our country, how to do them safely and securely, and now he's leading the charge on how to hold big tech accountable.
00:11:52.000Republicans control 28 state legislatures, state senates, and governor's mansions.
00:12:02.000My friend, Governor Gianforte in Montana, I will send him a note encouraging him to support this kind of legislation.
00:12:09.000If we are going to have the robber barons of our time, if we are going to have these companies with unchecked influence, it's about time that the conservative states stand up and rise up and say, You are suppressing our citizens, you're interfering with our elections.
00:12:24.000And we're not going to take it any longer.
00:12:26.000We will fine you, we will put you in court, we'll pass legislation that makes it impossible to do business in our state if your pattern of behavior continues.
00:12:38.000Ron DeSantis is showing us how we use the power the people gave us to protect freedom and liberty.
00:12:48.000Look, a lot of people are getting canceled unnecessarily.
00:12:51.000And the fact is, the internet never forgets.
00:12:54.000There's never been a more important time to protect your internet activity.
00:12:57.000That's why I urge you to get ExpressVPN.
00:12:59.000Everything you search for, watch, or click online can be tracked by big tech companies.
00:13:03.000They can match your activity to your true identity using your device's unique IP address, which is why I switch on ExpressVPN with my computer or phone.
00:13:12.000My IP address is masked by a secure VPN server, which makes it harder for websites to identify me.
00:13:18.000The ExpressVPN app also encrypts my network data to protect my sense of information from being compromised.
00:13:22.000Plus, you can use ExpressVPN on up to five devices simultaneously.
00:13:26.000So multiple users on your network can stay safe with a single subscription.
00:13:31.000What I like most is how easy it is to use.
00:13:33.000It just takes one click to protect all your devices.
00:13:35.000That's why they are rated the number one VPN by CNET and Wired.
00:13:39.000So stop handing over all your data to big tech companies.
00:13:42.000Go with the VPN I trust with my online protection.
00:13:48.000That's expressvpn.com/slash Charlie to get three months free on a one-year package.
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00:13:58.000Go to expressvpn.com/slash Charlie right now to learn more.
00:14:04.000And so I want to get to some more sound here of Governor Ron DeSantis, who is leading the constitutional reset in our country.
00:14:14.000Not the great reset, but the constitutional reset to bring us back to our constitutional roots.
00:14:19.000Remember, the states created the federal government.
00:14:21.000The federal government did not create the states.
00:14:25.000We are a bottom-up country, not a top-down country.
00:14:28.000And so, if these big tech oligarchs in Silicon Valley are going to want to make America in their image or remake America in their image, they're going to have to go through a series of states, not just through executive federal fiat.
00:14:43.000And Governor Ron DeSantis is showing us heroically and courageously how to fight.
00:14:47.000This is a fight that he does not have to pick, by the way.
00:14:50.000He's going up against the trillionaire class of Menlo Park.
00:14:54.000He's going up against people that can change search results to manipulate what people think of him.
00:15:02.000But Governor Ron DeSantis seems to be putting the well-being of the state of Florida, a state of which I am a resident in, a proud resident in, to have a governor like this who takes a stand.
00:15:13.000Let's go to Cut 38, where Ron DeSantis says: if the Hunter Biden story was true, we rely on social media so we can get around corporate legacy media.
00:16:12.000Where are members of Congress saying that?
00:16:14.000Where are members of Congress standing up and demanding action?
00:16:19.000But here's the brilliance of the system that our founding fathers gave us.
00:16:24.000Our founding fathers never wanted a purely federal system.
00:16:28.000We do have a federal government for certain reasons.
00:16:33.000But I think we have lost the critical nature and the importance of states' rights.
00:16:39.000Now, mind you, every time a Democrat becomes president, it seems as if we reimmerse ourselves in the Federalist Papers and we talk about states' rights.
00:16:47.000Democrats are unafraid to use states' rights to try and push forth unconstitutional policies such as sanctuary cities, their own immigration laws, in defiance to federal law.
00:16:58.000But this is not even in defiance to federal law.
00:17:01.000This is the governor of Florida saying, if you are going to have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube used and monetized and profit off of the citizens of Florida, then you are not going to be able to interfere with elections.
00:17:19.000You're not going to be able to manipulate data.
00:17:22.000And you are not going to be able to act in the way you have been.
00:17:25.000Let's go to Cut 39, where Governor Ron DeSantis has, let's just say, a pretty good response to one of these reporters.
00:18:02.000So they haven't done a good job in it.
00:18:04.000The thumb's always on the scale in one direction.
00:18:07.000And we just need to bring we need to bring some protection for folks.
00:18:10.000I really, really worry when you have a business owner that may rely on some of these tools to do small business.
00:18:18.000If they engage in wrongthink or they go to the wrong political event, then all of a sudden they can act in concert and just take you off.
00:18:25.000You need to have protection against that.
00:18:27.000If Governor Ron DeSantis ever wants to run for the presidency, he's sure starting off pretty strong.
00:18:34.000And again, it's too early to talk about what's going to happen in the years to come.
00:18:37.000But when a lot of people are floating out names of people that have good name ID or good slogans, you have Governor Ron DeSantis, the governor of the third largest state in the country, who delivered the state for 400,000 plus votes for Donald Trump, the safest and securest elections with no allegations of fraud.
00:18:55.000And now he's going after big tech and he's protecting your freedom and liberty.
00:18:59.000But Ron DeSantis is leaning into the constitutional firewall that our founding fathers gave us.
00:19:05.000And Florida is full of people like me that left Illinois and we're trying to seek a state that at least some form of sanity.
00:19:13.000In fact, I was just reading this article in the break to our friends at AM560, The Answer in Chicago.
00:19:20.000Illinois has lost more residents since 2010 than all but one state.
00:19:26.000Illinois has the 46th worst lowest growth rate in the country, which is unbelievable considering its population.
00:19:34.000The outward migration of Illinois is extraordinary.
00:19:37.000Speaking to WBEZ, Aaron Aylman, who is the head of CMAP, which I'm not really sure what that is, says, quote, we need to shore up our policies that we need to attract and retain business and identify those places where businesses might want to locate.
00:19:52.000Do you know what the property tax is for a commercial building in Cook County every single year?
00:20:20.000I mean, I think we're going to do three different things.
00:20:22.000One is protect Floridians' data privacy from big tech, which is a huge issue.
00:20:27.000As you said, protect big tech from interfering in an election.
00:20:31.000And that may mean you de-platform a candidate you don't like.
00:20:35.000Two guesses as to which type of candidate big tech wouldn't like.
00:20:38.000But it also means doing the algorithms in a way that will suppress stories or accelerate them to benefit a candidate.
00:20:46.000That's effectively an in-kind contribution.
00:20:48.000And then the general protections for deplatforming users.
00:20:53.000And what we're allowing people to do is bring civil suits under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Statute, an anti-fraud statute.
00:21:03.000Now, Governor Ron DeSantis went to Yale, if I'm not mistaken.
00:21:09.000He was a congressman, and then became governor.
00:21:13.000In that short clip, there was more wisdom about the threat of big tech than I have heard from most of the Republican Party in the last couple of years.
00:21:19.000Let's go step by step of what he said.
00:21:25.000I've been making this point for years, and I'm thrilled to see someone in a position of leadership of the third largest state focus on this.
00:21:36.000So, for example, if Mark Zuckerberg writes a check to the Democrat Party, that is considered a contribution, a $10 million contribution in cash.
00:21:48.000If Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, writes a check to Raphael Warnock's Senate campaign for $5 million, that's a contribution.
00:21:58.000If someone running for office gets on Jeff Bezos' plane for a political reason, that's an in-kind contribution.
00:22:08.000So it's not a cash contribution, but it's a contribution of assets that they had used for a political purpose.
00:22:13.000The argument that Ron DeSantis is making is that when Facebook comes in and does not allow Donald Trump's content to be shared, when Facebook comes in and says you cannot spread bad stories about Hunter Biden, when Twitter does the same, it is no different than if Mark Zuckerberg were to write a $10 million check to the Joe Biden campaign.
00:22:35.000It's a really smart legal argument that Ron DeSantis is making here.
00:22:40.000And what he said is that we are going to allow people to sue these tech companies in Florida court under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
00:23:08.000Ron DeSantis is using the left's own precedent against them.
00:23:13.000The left has used the power of the states to go after nonprofits, corporations, and entities that they did not like that were on the conservative or free market side, from ExxonMobil to the NRA to many others.
00:23:26.000So Ron DeSantis has the sovereignty of the state of Florida.
00:23:29.000He is allowed to regulate commerce in his state as he sees fit.
00:23:34.000Now, Ron DeSantis can't regulate what happens between Georgia and Florida.
00:24:32.000Therefore, Ron DeSantis is saying everything that happens in the state of Florida is under Florida jurisdiction.
00:24:38.000What happens in California is their own problem.
00:24:42.000And that's exactly the precedent, by the way, of how these states, through liberal left-leaning advocacy efforts, have been able to legalize marijuana.
00:24:57.000So there's no constitutional measure that these tech companies are going to be able to use to prevent the third largest state from pushing back.
00:25:10.000It was Gibbons versus Ogden, which Congress may regulate interstate commerce.
00:25:16.000Got to remember my Supreme Court case is a little bit sharper on that.
00:25:22.000Which is, can states pass laws that challenge the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce?
00:25:28.000And the answer is yes, but the states still control everything that happens within their own states, which is exactly why in Nevada, they have casino gaming, whereas it's very rare in most states to have that.
00:25:46.000If you're not on a Native American reservation or near a body of water, it's very hard to get gaming licenses in most states.
00:25:52.000States created the federal government.
00:25:54.000The federal government didn't create the states.
00:25:56.000These tech companies, as we predicted, overplayed their hand.
00:26:45.000You see, if South Dakota led the charge on this, maybe Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube would say, ah, maybe we're just going to turn ourselves off in South Dakota.
00:26:52.000Now, now you're talking about a state that is the third largest state.
00:26:58.000I don't know the population of Florida.
00:27:00.000I'm guessing it's probably about 28 million.
00:27:03.000I'm going to get a fact check on that.
00:27:36.000Now, we as grassroots conservatives, and you're listening to this on our national radio program and you're listening to this on our podcast, go contact your state legislatures and have every single conservative state pass this right now, carbon copy of the Florida bill, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa.
00:27:54.000And all of a sudden, you're going to, these tech companies are going to realize California's 39 million.
00:28:00.000Anyway, these tech companies are going to realize that the infrastructure they have for lobbying was all for Washington, D.C. Facebook is scrambling to now go hire a lobbyist to get on a plane to Tallahassee.
00:28:18.000The Facebook Government Affairs Office has never heard of Tallahassee before.
00:28:22.000They only care about D.C. Because everything they've been worrying about is federal government monopolistic breakups.
00:28:29.000Everything they've been worrying about is influencing members of Congress.
00:28:34.000Ron DeSantis just did a chess move that they are not prepared for because now they're going to have to get on their Gulfstream private jet to go to Topeka.
00:28:42.000They're going to have to go to Pier, South Dakota.
00:28:47.000They're going to have to go to Austin, Texas.
00:28:50.000They're going to have to go to Helena, Montana.
00:28:53.000And now they're going to have to go into Montana and tell Montana that the Menlo Park masters and the Silicon Valley people shouldn't be regulated by the state of Montana.
00:29:02.000And my friend Governor Greg Gianforte, and I know him very well, he's going to say, yeah, not so fast.
00:29:09.000Because this is an immensely popular issue now amongst the conservative base.
00:29:14.000If we keep this drumbeat going based on what Ron DeSantis has led on, if I was the masters of Menlo Park and I was the tech companies, I'd be nervous about this.
00:29:27.000You're talking about half of the U.S. market that could be restricted, half of the purchasing power of the wealthiest country on the planet.
00:29:36.000But Ron DeSantis is doing this for a different reason.
00:29:39.000He actually knows he's not going to be able to crush the tech companies, but he will be able to tap them back into behavior.
00:30:12.000I think most folks do want protections for their privacy and their data.
00:30:17.000I think most folks want protections from being deplatformed.
00:30:20.000And it's not just being banned from Twitter or something.
00:30:22.000As we've seen, these companies can act, they can collude, they can deny you, if you're a small business, of payment processing, the ability to use email and text.
00:30:32.000You go to a rally that they don't like or you engage in wrongthink and all of a sudden your flower business is decapitated for a month because they take action.
00:30:42.000What makes the American model different than the European model is that we have states that are able to be checks and balances, laboratories of democracy, the liberal Louis Brandeis said.
00:30:55.000Where the states are the checks and balances against an ever complacent or even corrupt, some would say tyrannical federal government.
00:31:08.000You see, the European model is the federal government dictates everything.
00:31:12.000In America, the states have a lot of say, a tremendous amount of say.
00:31:17.000In fact, the Founding Fathers always wanted this.
00:31:20.000And one of the Negatives of the People's Party, which was a populist movement that started in 1896 by William Jennings Bryan, was they got rid of the state legislature appointing of senators.
00:31:34.000Instead, they went to the direct election of senators.
00:31:36.000I can't remember what amendment that was.
00:31:37.000Was that the 16th Amendment or the 17th Amendment?
00:31:40.000We'll look it up where they got rid of the direct elect, where they got the direct election of senators.
00:31:46.000The states were always supposed to have 17th Amendment, my memory was right.
00:31:50.000The states were always supposed to have a not just a say, but more of a check on federal power than the federal government has a check on the states.
00:32:10.000And that balance has been discussed in courts.
00:32:19.000And so the other Republicans that control governors' mansions and state legislatures, it's now time to stand up.
00:32:32.000If you're listening to this podcast, if you're listening to this on radio, contact your state legislatures.
00:32:37.000And if the Republicans control your state, demand that they follow Governor Ron DeSantis.
00:32:43.000From South Dakota to Kansas to West Virginia to South Carolina to Alabama to Mississippi to Louisiana to Arkansas to Kansas to Oklahoma to Utah.
00:32:57.000Wyoming, if every single one of these states built a coalition and they passed their own laws with their own fines, these tech companies would knock it off immediately.
00:33:16.000Governor Ron DeSantis and Governor Brian Kemp both became governors in the same year, 2018.
00:33:22.000And look at the difference that leadership, whatever the opposite of leadership is in Georgia, cowardice, what it makes.
00:33:34.000You have safe and secure elections in Florida, no allegations of fraud, a booming economy, schools that are wide open, tech companies that are now being challenged.
00:33:44.000And in Georgia, well, Governor Brian Kemp, if you want to make some conservatives actually go vote for you, which you have a terrible problem with conservatives in Georgia right now, we are broadcasting this show on the Salem Radio Network station in Atlanta, Georgia.
00:33:58.000So some patriots are listening to this right now in Georgia, then stand up to the tech companies, Governor Brian Kemp.
00:35:19.000And if you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, I highly encourage you to start a high school chapter, a college chapter, go to tpusa.com.
00:35:26.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.