The Charlie Kirk Show - Is It Time To Ban TikTok?

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 A guy who is going to get in a fight with Charles Barkley.

00:00:02.000 Should we ban TikTok?

00:00:04.000 And my reflections from my visit at CalPoly San Luis Obispo.

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00:00:41.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:42.000 Here we go.

00:00:42.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:44.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:46.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:50.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:53.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:54.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:55.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:57.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:01:02.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:01:03.000 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.

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00:01:41.000 All right, everybody, we have a real fun story for you here.

00:01:44.000 So, Charles Barkley likes to run his mouth. 0.98

00:01:48.000 And Charles Barkley said recently that he wants to punch any black person wearing a Trump mugshot t-shirt. 0.96

00:01:58.000 Well, I don't think Charles Barkley would be able to punch our next guest. 0.97

00:02:02.000 Wouldn't go very well for him.

00:02:04.000 Would not go very well for him.

00:02:06.000 This is Zeke Arkham, and his pronouns are bruh and bruta.

00:02:11.000 I get that right.

00:02:11.000 Zeke, welcome to the program.

00:02:14.000 Thanks.

00:02:15.000 You got that right.

00:02:16.000 Thank you so much for having me.

00:02:17.000 So, Zeke, tell us about this.

00:02:19.000 This has gone really viral, and I love anyone that puts Charles Barkley in his place.

00:02:25.000 Well, it was brought to my attention.

00:02:27.000 A lot of my followers tagged me on Twitter in his post, and they said, you know, Zeke, I think he's calling you out. 0.99

00:02:34.000 I think he wants to punch you in the face. 0.72

00:02:36.000 So I took a look at it, and I knew I had a Trump mugshot shirt. 0.96

00:02:40.000 So I got the shirt, I got the hat, and I said, Hey, Charles, I heard you looking for me.

00:02:45.000 You know, I grew up in an era where if you hit me, I'm going to hit you back.

00:02:48.000 You know, I was a big fan of Charles Barclay growing up.

00:02:50.000 I used to watch him play basketball.

00:02:52.000 I enjoyed his time with the 76ers.

00:02:54.000 So it was surprising for me to hear him say that.

00:02:57.000 But, you know, I never thought, you know, Charles and I would get into any kind of fist of cuffs or anything.

00:03:03.000 I just want to let him know: hey, listen, we're out here.

00:03:05.000 We're not going to be intimidated.

00:03:07.000 And we're in your face.

00:03:09.000 So if you're talking about punching people, you can go ahead and start with me.

00:03:14.000 And his comments the next day, he sort of backed off.

00:03:16.000 He said, I'm not going to punch anyone.

00:03:19.000 He referenced my shirt.

00:03:20.000 He said, tell me, you get a better, a bigger shirt.

00:03:23.000 So it was nice just to have that interaction.

00:03:26.000 So, Zeke, you're an outspoken.

00:03:29.000 I think it's fair to call you a conservative.

00:03:31.000 You love the country.

00:03:31.000 You're pro-American.

00:03:33.000 And there seems to be more and more black voices that are supporting Trump and supporting conservative values.

00:03:41.000 Talk about your story in addition to this kind of fun saga that we've seen the last couple of days.

00:03:47.000 I sort of red told myself my story starts with me having conservative values, but not knowing I was conservative.

00:03:55.000 I thought that I was pretty liberal just because, you know, I always believed in the mantra, I'll defend your right to say it, even if I don't agree with it.

00:04:03.000 But it used to be a fairly liberal mantra, I guess, until they went pretty far left.

00:04:08.000 Now their mantra seems to be either agree with me or that you're a bigot or you're a racist or you're a sexist or you're any other sort of slur they want to call you. 0.58

00:04:19.000 And I started doing my own research. 0.62

00:04:22.000 People told me, just do your own research and see what you come up with.

00:04:25.000 And I started doing my own research.

00:04:26.000 I started seeing where this country was going and I didn't agree with it.

00:04:30.000 You know, I tell people all the time, I voted for Obama twice just because I thought that this was the direction I wanted my country to go in.

00:04:38.000 And pretty quickly, I disagreed with everything he was saying and everything he was doing.

00:04:45.000 And I guess conservative voices started preaching to me and started, I started agreeing with everything they were saying.

00:04:53.000 You know, I'm for small government.

00:04:54.000 I'm for family.

00:04:55.000 I'm for God.

00:04:56.000 I'm for law and order, which seems to be more and more right-leaning views.

00:05:04.000 So the more I started reading, the more I started doing my research, the more I started reading Thomas Sowell, who I'm a huge student of, I started allowing myself more conservative, right-wing values.

00:05:16.000 I love the Thomas Sowell reference.

00:05:18.000 He's one of my intellectual heroes.

00:05:21.000 Let me just pose a hypothetical.

00:05:23.000 What if millions of young black students were exposed to Thomas Sowell instead of, let's just say, the BLM mantra? 0.82

00:05:30.000 What would that mean?

00:05:30.000 Do the ideas of Thomas Sowell, do they get a fair hearing in current black academic settings?

00:05:37.000 They don't because he preaches that you have to take responsibility for yourself.

00:05:42.000 You have to stand up, put your big boy or big girl pants on, and take responsibility for your own actions, for your own decisions.

00:05:50.000 And that seems to be a lot of what the left is teaching against.

00:05:54.000 They teach the BLM mantra. 0.82

00:05:56.000 They teach that you're a victim.

00:05:57.000 Being a victim is the easiest thing in the world because nothing's your fault.

00:06:01.000 Anything that goes wrong in your life, well, it's because of racism. 0.94

00:06:04.000 It's because of white supremacy. 0.99

00:06:05.000 You know, this white supremacy boogeyman is out there lurking around the corner, is hiding under your bed trying to get you. 0.76

00:06:12.000 So I think if more children were exposed to Thomas Sowell at a younger level, I think they'd be more agreeing with what he would have to say.

00:06:22.000 I have an eight-year-old daughter right now, and all I do is talk to her about self-responsibility and just being in control of your own fate, your own future.

00:06:31.000 And these are things that I read from Thomas Sowell, and this is what I'm teaching her now.

00:06:35.000 So she's starting to get on that path.

00:06:37.000 And I have young nieces and nephews, but I'm starting to talk to them about that as well.

00:06:41.000 And they're starting to get on that path.

00:06:43.000 So we as conservatives, we have to get to them while they're young because they're being indoctrinated by the schools.

00:06:49.000 They're being indoctrinated by the TVs.

00:06:51.000 They're being indoctrinated by things as innocent as we used to think as things like Sesame Street.

00:06:56.000 And we have to show that we're the prevailing voice, not their friends, not their teachers, not Sesame Street, not the media.

00:07:05.000 We have to be their voice.

00:07:06.000 We have to teach them while they're young and so that they can go out there and have these core values instilled in themselves.

00:07:12.000 Donald Trump, according to polling, is doing better and better with Black Americans.

00:07:16.000 Why is that the case?

00:07:17.000 And what can he do to win record amounts of Black support coming into November? 0.98

00:07:22.000 I think it's more because people aren't dumb. 0.79

00:07:25.000 They know the economy under Biden hasn't been good. 0.84

00:07:29.000 They know that $100 doesn't take them where it used to anymore at the supermarket.

00:07:34.000 They're looking at the prices at the gas pumps.

00:07:36.000 They're looking at crime and safety.

00:07:38.000 They're looking at their neighborhoods and how illegal immigrants are taking over, how they're being kicked out of schools. 0.99

00:07:44.000 They're being kicked out of housing.

00:07:46.000 And illegal immigrants are being put back in. 0.99

00:07:49.000 And I think they're just taking a good look around and going, you know, we didn't have this under Trump.

00:07:54.000 And they're not falling for the left-wing gaslighting where the left is trying to say, oh, you know, your life is so much better while we're in control.

00:08:02.000 Your life is so much safer while we're in control.

00:08:05.000 Look at all the money you're saving while we're in control.

00:08:08.000 And I think more and more black folk are looking in their pockets and going, no, I don't have money anymore.

00:08:13.000 You know, I can't play it from my house anymore like I was younger.

00:08:17.000 You know, it's costing me now more and more at the pumps.

00:08:21.000 So I think more people are just taking a good looking around and going, you know, maybe I should listen to what Trump has to say.

00:08:27.000 He's speaking plainly.

00:08:28.000 He's speaking to stuff I'm concerned about.

00:08:30.000 He's speaking to my future.

00:08:32.000 He's speaking to my financial benefit.

00:08:35.000 Maybe we should listen in.

00:08:37.000 And hopefully his numbers in 2024 will reflect that.

00:08:42.000 So Zeke, plug your show.

00:08:44.000 We have two minutes remaining.

00:08:45.000 I want to make sure you get plenty of time to do that.

00:08:47.000 How our audience can follow you, please.

00:08:49.000 You can follow me on Twitter.

00:08:51.000 That's my main mouthpiece at Zeke Arkham.

00:08:54.000 Z-E-E-K-A-R-K-H-A-M. 1.00

00:08:57.000 I'm also on Instagram where I put video commentary up, same handle, Zeke Arkham.

00:09:02.000 And I'm just a guy with a social media account trying to put my voice out there, offering a fresh perspective, hopefully.

00:09:10.000 And, you know, I speak plainly.

00:09:12.000 I speak to the common blue-collar worker, the guy who wakes up every day, puts his shoes and pants on and goes out there and gets to work.

00:09:20.000 And thankfully, a lot of people agree with my message.

00:09:23.000 My message is resonating with a lot of people.

00:09:26.000 And, you know, just I'm another patriot out there who just wants their country in the right direction.

00:09:32.000 Final question, Zeke.

00:09:33.000 It seems as if black men are trending more in the direction of kind of conservative values than women. 0.83

00:09:39.000 Why do you think that is?

00:09:41.000 Because like I said, you know, we get up every day, we put out boots and shoes on.

00:09:45.000 We get to, we go to work, and we're able to take a look at the world around us.

00:09:49.000 You know, a lot of the BLM propaganda is geared towards black women, saying that you don't need a man in the house, saying that you can get out there and survive by yourself, that you can do anything a man can do.

00:09:59.000 And when you have that message geared towards the women, you're going to lose a lot of the men because the men are saying, I am valuable.

00:10:07.000 I can contribute to the household.

00:10:09.000 I do want to raise my children.

00:10:11.000 I want to be involved in my sons and daughters' lives. 0.72

00:10:13.000 So all the BLM propaganda, all the left-wing propaganda saying you don't need a man, all the toxic feminism that's out there that falls into Miss Andrew, that's out there saying that men are nothing but predators, that men are no good, that all men are going to do is cheat on you and hurt you.

00:10:29.000 That's going to lose a lot of men, no matter what color you are, no matter what your background is.

00:10:34.000 So I think a lot of black men in particular are getting tired of these messages.

00:10:38.000 They're getting tired of these constant battering from the BLM and the leftists, and how the Democrats every four years only remember black voters are out there every four years.

00:10:50.000 So I think a lot of black men in particular are getting really tired of that message.

00:10:53.000 And they're starting to now agree with a lot of what conservatives are saying.

00:10:57.000 And I just wish the conservatives would really take advantage of this and get out there and start really recruiting so that even beyond 2024, we can take our country back.

00:11:08.000 Zeke, God bless you, man.

00:11:09.000 You're welcome back anytime.

00:11:11.000 And I could see why Charles Barkley backed off.

00:11:14.000 It wouldn't go.

00:11:16.000 Zeke, thanks so much.

00:11:17.000 Thank you, sir.

00:11:18.000 Thank you so much for having me on.

00:11:21.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:12:25.000 So yesterday, I ventured to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

00:12:29.000 Thank you, Andrew, for filling in.

00:12:30.000 Got a great response.

00:12:31.000 By the way, we move up on the podcast charts almost always when Andrew fills in.

00:12:35.000 So we should have Andrew fill in more often.

00:12:38.000 Andrew's going to say, no, he does a great job.

00:12:41.000 So I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and, you know, there was all this chatter about the protests, and there were protests there.

00:12:50.000 And we'll talk about that in a second.

00:12:52.000 But what kind of blew me away was the attendance.

00:12:56.000 So the way this works is I'll show up on a college campus and I'll set up a card table and we have conversations and we film it and everyone's welcome to film it.

00:13:04.000 They can film me and we film them and we post kind of some of the interaction sometimes online.

00:13:10.000 And it's good for our turning point chapter.

00:13:12.000 It's good for independent students.

00:13:13.000 It's good for students that might feel isolated or might feel as if there is very little ideological community for what they for where their worldview is.

00:13:24.000 And let's just 122, let's put 122 up on screen.

00:13:28.000 Typically our Change My Minds will have 20, 30, 40, 50 people.

00:13:33.000 I mean, that's easily 500 to 600 people that attended right on campus.

00:13:38.000 And the amount of enthusiasm and response that we received for Turning Point USA for our message, let's play B-roll cut 121 so people could get kind of a little bit of a picture there.

00:13:52.000 This is on a college campus.

00:13:54.000 Is that 121?

00:13:55.000 Yeah.

00:13:56.000 And you're trying to tell me that there's no conservatives on these campuses.

00:14:00.000 And this goes to show me that the macro polling that we are seeing, New York Times, Sienna, Washington Post, that young people, in particular, young men are becoming more right-wing is correct.

00:14:13.000 I mean, this is at one of the most liberal schools in the country.

00:14:20.000 It's hard to articulate.

00:14:22.000 San Luis Obispo is a very liberal town.

00:14:25.000 It's like Seattle in California.

00:14:28.000 By the way, it's objectively gorgeous.

00:14:30.000 I've never been there before.

00:14:31.000 It's incredibly beautiful.

00:14:32.000 It's surrounded by rural, more conservatives, but it's like Portland near the coast.

00:14:38.000 It's about 15 miles from the coast.

00:14:40.000 And the campus has, you know, all the, as you would expect, gay flags and transgender stuff.

00:14:45.000 And yeah, there were a couple protesters.

00:14:47.000 You know, we can just look at Cut 120.

00:14:50.000 Here they're marching all six of them in their all black. 1.00

00:14:53.000 Pretty weak and pathetic. 1.00

00:14:55.000 You can just play 120 as they're marching through TP USA, fascists off campus. 1.00

00:15:00.000 Queers bash back. 0.99

00:15:03.000 And if you then put up another one of these pictures, they were outnumbered like 500 to six.

00:15:10.000 And they all of a sudden started to retreat and they started to get a little bit scared because they've never been outnumbered before.

00:15:16.000 In fact, they're used, and I call them trans Tifa.

00:15:19.000 Trans Tifa.

00:15:21.000 I have never seen a response like this on campuses.

00:15:23.000 I have no idea what that means politically.

00:15:25.000 I have no idea.

00:15:26.000 I'm not going to speculate.

00:15:28.000 I'm just telling you factually, I've never seen energy turnout response.

00:15:34.000 And it's not just here.

00:15:36.000 On the same day, we hosted the largest ever Turning Point USA high school event in Georgia.

00:15:42.000 1,200 high schoolers attended a basically maximum capacity filling out all the bleachers of a high school auditorium in Northern Georgia.

00:15:52.000 The day before, Candace Owens filled up an auditorium at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, UNC Chapel Hill, and we had to turn away another thousand people that could have filled that room.

00:16:07.000 The day before that, we sent Candace Owens to University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

00:16:13.000 We're again packed room.

00:16:15.000 Here were the protesters.

00:16:17.000 Look how outnumbered they are on campus, 123.

00:16:19.000 You'll see here.

00:16:22.000 We are not here for debate.

00:16:26.000 We are not here for debate.

00:16:32.000 And what are they chanting?

00:16:33.000 We are not here for debate, all six of them.

00:16:35.000 Of course not.

00:16:37.000 They are not in the ideological majority on these campuses.

00:16:41.000 Five or six years ago, we'd be lucky if 10 or 12 kids would stumble on by.

00:16:46.000 Now, what do I attribute that to?

00:16:48.000 Number one, the young men are waking up.

00:16:51.000 The hyper-feminization, the transing of the country, they are waking up. 0.86

00:16:55.000 Number two, they do not want to live a future as Russian serfs. 1.00

00:16:59.000 They want to own property.

00:17:00.000 When I start talking about homeownership and inflation, even the radicals get a little quiet because they know that they are being robbed on a daily basis.

00:17:11.000 And then I have to give Turning Point USA credit and Turning Point Action credit.

00:17:14.000 Every day we go to work and we do the tough stuff.

00:17:16.000 We silence out all the critics. 0.76

00:17:18.000 You know, Rana, she attacked us almost every single day, sent her little emissaries. 1.00

00:17:23.000 Well, she's gone now.

00:17:24.000 The RNC, the establishment, the moderates, they hate us, but the results speak for themselves.

00:17:28.000 There's something profound happening on these campuses.

00:17:33.000 For years, I've been talking about how our nation's public schools have been captured by progressive ideologues, especially true if you're a Christian family.

00:17:39.000 For those of you worried about the best educational path for your kids and grandkids, I want to tell you about how Turning Point Academy is working with the Herzog Foundation, how you at home can also benefit from it.

00:17:48.000 They have an online publication called The Lion, and also Making the Leap, the Herzog Foundation offers a wide range of advice and information for Christian parents to make the best education decisions for your kids.

00:17:57.000 Go to Herzogfoundation.com.

00:17:58.000 That is Herzogfoundation.com.

00:18:00.000 So check it out right now, Herzogfoundation.com.

00:18:03.000 Portions of the Charlie Kirk show are brought to you in part by the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation.

00:18:07.000 That is Herzogfoundation.com.

00:18:11.000 Joining us now is Joel Fayer from the Digital Progress Institute.

00:18:15.000 There is a TikTok ban that seems to be pending.

00:18:19.000 I want to dive deep into the topic of TikTok.

00:18:21.000 This is going to be an illuminating conversation.

00:18:23.000 Joel, welcome to the program.

00:18:25.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:18:26.000 Big fan.

00:18:27.000 Happy to talk about the topic.

00:18:29.000 Yeah.

00:18:29.000 Great.

00:18:30.000 So the ban on TikTok seems to have been resurrected.

00:18:33.000 It was gaining some steam for a while, and now it's coming back.

00:18:37.000 Let's just start with what is TikTok?

00:18:40.000 How big of a threat is it to our youth?

00:18:43.000 Let's put the national security stuff aside.

00:18:46.000 How about just what it does to a young person's brain, their behavioral patterns, depression, anxiety?

00:18:51.000 Joel, please.

00:18:53.000 Well, I thought we saw, I thought we witnessed a clear example of what it can do just in the past day.

00:18:59.000 I mean, you had kids with the mere threat of potentially having this ban or having this off the market.

00:19:07.000 You had kids calling in threatening things from ranging from suicide or that they were going to be overly depressed or, or even, I think there was even some who said they were going to assassinate sitting members of Congress.

00:19:20.000 So I think the effects of it are pretty clear.

00:19:23.000 And I think it's hard to discount the fact that this is a very, very addictive substance.

00:19:28.000 I mean, this is well documented throughout all, throughout all medicine.

00:19:32.000 I'm not, I think what yesterday demonstrated was that, yes, this is clearly something that is akin to digital fentanyl for kids.

00:19:42.000 Do you believe that there's an intentionality on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party via Byte Dance to get this into the hands of America's youth?

00:19:50.000 Just given the connection between Byte Dance and China, I can't see how you can separate the two.

00:19:57.000 So even if it's, I can't, I can't even, I was trying to think of a way around like, is there a, is there a reasonable argument to say that the Chinese government doesn't have an interest in it?

00:20:07.000 It's just the way the corporate, the way Byte Dance operates and the way it operates with TikTok, it's hard to imagine that they don't want this to happen.

00:20:16.000 And look, case in point, yesterday they literally put out a push notification on their app to call every representative and tell them that and tell them to stop this ban.

00:20:28.000 When in all reality, that's we they got something way more than they bargained for.

00:20:32.000 They basically got a bunch of kids to admit that without them, they're going to commit suicide.

00:20:37.000 This is this is insane.

00:20:39.000 What has it done to, let's just say, people's self-image, depression, anxiety?

00:20:46.000 Has it further accelerated these negative mental health trends?

00:20:51.000 The stats are getting harder to just prove the opposite.

00:20:54.000 So in reality, I think that we are seeing just the interest of social media in general.

00:21:00.000 And we just had a hearing on this a couple of weeks ago, or maybe not a few weeks ago.

00:21:05.000 Sorry, the days are blending together and these hearings are blending together, where you have a bunch of parent groups coming to the table here and coming to Congress saying our kids are more depressed.

00:21:21.000 We're seeing higher and they're seeing higher depressions in teenage women of all, of all the different populations.

00:21:27.000 And we're also seeing them engage in behaviors that aren't normal for kids.

00:21:31.000 Like, I mean, it's kind of weird when you walk down the street and see a one kid doing a weird dance that they, and then you walk down the street and see a kid that may be completely independent of that kid doing that same exact dance.

00:21:44.000 It's just, it just seems to me that there is a, it also seems to me there, I think there's, it's well documented that there are individual folks, there are individual institutions pointing out that there is a connection between the addiction that these kids feel on the addiction that these kids have on these apps and their behaviors.

00:22:02.000 It's just undeniable.

00:22:04.000 What, so it's this is currently bubbling up in the House of Representatives.

00:22:09.000 And the big question is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary and Controlled Applications Act.

00:22:17.000 Walk us through the proposed legislation that just cleared the Commerce Committee.

00:22:21.000 Yeah, I think the first thing to note today, like on March 7th, we saw something historic happen.

00:22:26.000 And like, and again, it had nothing to do with, say, the union, thank goodness.

00:22:30.000 So like in a time like immense political division and an election year, both Republicans and Democrats came together to pass an act that would make it unlawful for an entity to distribute or maintain or update any app that is controlled by a foreign adversary in the United States.

00:22:47.000 So what does that actually mean?

00:22:49.000 Well, in common parlance, it's basically if the act would have the practical effect of preventing, let's say, a Chinese-based tech company with clear ties to the Chinese government, let's say, I don't know, ByteDance, to have any ownership interests in a social media app targeted at Americans.

00:23:06.000 And let's just pull something out of the hat here, maybe like TikTok.

00:23:09.000 That not only would the act proscribe that specific interaction, it would also mean that if TikTok doesn't divest out of ByteDance, it will not be allowed to operate in the U.S., nor could Apple or Google post it on their app stores, plain and simple.

00:23:27.000 So would that potentially apply to like Telegram that has Russian owners as well?

00:23:34.000 Or is this, why don't they just do a bill targeted at TikTok?

00:23:37.000 Why do they have to make this so abstract?

00:23:40.000 Well, look, quite frankly, there have been a lot of pushback from more left of center groups and also more libertarian groups who have put First Amendment charges on this.

00:23:54.000 And I think what you're seeing is that the bill is specifically targeted at a specific type of harm.

00:24:02.000 And so, in general, the First Amendment does allow for any action that may have an implication of free speech to abridge whatever free speech rights are, which I don't think there really are here.

00:24:18.000 But again, I think Congress is trying to be very careful about that.

00:24:22.000 And they were trying to make sure that this was targeted to a specific harm.

00:24:25.000 And that specific harm is happening on social media in general.

00:24:30.000 So I think that's why you're seeing them go for apps over just the wide array of communication sectors.

00:24:36.000 But to be clear, we have done this before.

00:24:38.000 There is precedent for this.

00:24:40.000 We've done this in the telecom space.

00:24:42.000 For instance, Huawei and ZTE, which were Chinese-based, trans-based companies that had significant ties to the CCP, are not allowed to get licenses at the FCC.

00:24:52.000 They're not allowed to receive any federal funding that comes through what's called the Universal Service Fund programs that the FCC administers.

00:25:00.000 So we have done these types of bans in other aspects and other parts of the stack.

00:25:04.000 I think this is just the next step in that larger scheme to shore up our national security.

00:25:12.000 So one of the pillars for your organization, DigitalProgress.tech, is privacy for every consumer.

00:25:18.000 Talk about TikTok's questionable privacy protocols.

00:25:22.000 Yeah, well, thankfully for me, it's really an easy case to make.

00:25:27.000 I mean, they've been like since even since its first iteration, what it was called Musically, they have been under the ire of both administrations on privacy violations.

00:25:37.000 The Federal Trade Commission, for instance, has what's called consent decrees on By Dance Now TikTok to prevent them from sharing kids' data to advertisers.

00:25:51.000 Then you have the other issue of state legislators or CAG's office rather suing them for circumventing the wiretap.

00:26:01.000 These guys are trying to get in every aspect of your every aspect of your life, whether that's through your phone, whether that's through whatever, whether your tablets, at all times, TikTok wants your data and they specifically want kid data.

00:26:15.000 So this is, so again, I think that the track record speaks for itself.

00:26:21.000 Like you have consent degrees up the wazoo when it comes to TikTok.

00:26:25.000 And so frankly, I really don't even need to make the case.

00:26:29.000 People can just easily just look at TikTok's track record and they'll see privacy violation after privacy violation and promise after promise broken time and time again.

00:26:38.000 So what do you think is the likelihood of this then passing?

00:26:42.000 What are the political prospects, the legislative prospects here?

00:26:45.000 So there's some good news here.

00:26:46.000 The good news is that we had a unanimous vote.

00:26:49.000 I think that's pretty historic that you have a in a time when it's an election year, no one wants to give the other party or their side a political win.

00:26:58.000 We saw a 50 to zero vote to get it to get it moving to the next stage.

00:27:02.000 And it's moving at a rapid pace.

00:27:04.000 Like this isn't, this is pretty, it's not common to have a bill move this fast.

00:27:11.000 So we also hear that the House Speaker wants to bring this to a floor vote.

00:27:18.000 My expectation is that it's probably going to pass that too.

00:27:22.000 The tricky issue is going to be where it comes to the Senate, how the Senate's going to feel about it.

00:27:27.000 But again, it's one win at a time.

00:27:30.000 And so right now, I think the focus for congressional members is to get it through the House.

00:27:36.000 But just given the clear endorsements that you're getting on both sides of the aisle on the House side, it's pretty hard for it not to go through all the way the legislative process to the president.

00:27:46.000 My more cynical take on who might be pushing for this.

00:27:49.000 I mean, if I was Facebook, I would want TikTok to be potentially be banned.

00:27:54.000 And so I want to talk about that.

00:27:55.000 But just kind of to go a previous question, this very well could be applied to other applications as well, Rumble, Twitter, and because Twitter, for example, has Saudi Arabian investors.

00:28:08.000 So I think that the cornerstone of the law, as I understand it, is that there has to be an ownership interest.

00:28:16.000 And so that's going to be.

00:28:18.000 Yeah, so like 17% is owned by Saudi Arabia.

00:28:21.000 So again, I think that there are, it also has to go through a different separate process than being in as part, I think it has to go into an NC list as well.

00:28:30.000 It's not just like, oh, you have ownership, therefore you're bad.

00:28:33.000 There has to actually be an investigation, like we do with literally every other communication system.

00:28:38.000 We do that at the FCC.

00:28:40.000 They do have foreign ownership rules to make sure that the foreign ownership isn't above a certain percentage.

00:28:46.000 And again, I don't see those thresholds here.

00:28:49.000 I think it's a more involved process than just saying you're owned by the Saudis, therefore you're already out of here or you have to divest.

00:28:59.000 The issue, as I see it, is that you have to be part of a known entity list before you can even get to the remedial aspects of it.

00:29:10.000 So, Joel, indulge my cynicism here.

00:29:14.000 If I was Google and Facebook and losing market share in the short video consumption market, of which both are trying to compete with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, I would want to try to use the legislative blunt force instrument to go after my competitor, TikTok.

00:29:30.000 Are they behind this?

00:29:32.000 I sincerely doubt that.

00:29:35.000 So I think there's a lot of concerns raised, and there are obvious competition plays here.

00:29:40.000 But I think in general, what this really builds off of it is like almost half a decade long of a record from TikTok showing that it is under a little bit more, more of the control of ByteDance, which is by extension in control of the CCP.

00:29:55.000 I think that that's driving more of the conversation than the competition elements of this.

00:30:00.000 But I think I completely agree with the idea that this market is highly concentrated and that the role of social media over our information is abhorrent.

00:30:10.000 And I think that at some point we are going to have to talk, have serious conversations about competition issues over this.

00:30:16.000 I mean, we're already starting to do that.

00:30:17.000 I mean, with strong antitrust enforcement with Google and with Google search, you're seeing that.

00:30:22.000 You're seeing that there's more ire coming under Apple.

00:30:25.000 And I just, but I don't think that's the driver in terms of this, as it relates to this conversation.

00:30:32.000 And it's a very odd push if that's how you wanted to go about it.

00:30:37.000 So then the legislative kind of future in front of it.

00:30:40.000 So then who'd become again, the old bill is the old bill.

00:30:43.000 Is this then go to the Department of the Secretary of Commerce to enforce?

00:30:46.000 Is that correct?

00:30:47.000 That's how the old one was written.

00:30:49.000 Or is this an FTC thing?

00:30:51.000 Who actually then ends up having the power to do this?

00:30:55.000 So the way I read the bill, it looks like it's more geared towards AGs, but I do believe that there are multiple angles of that.

00:31:06.000 But my general guess, well, my general view is that I think it's, I believe the Department of Commerce, and I think that there might be other roles that other agencies have.

00:31:14.000 Again, this bill came out a couple of days ago.

00:31:18.000 And so we're all just trying to piece together all the enforcement, all the enforcement pieces.

00:31:23.000 But my understanding is, yes, it's basically going to work through a few different agencies, state AGs in particular.

00:31:29.000 In closing here, I want you to talk more about your great group, the Digital Progress Institute, and your kind of core pillars and what you're trying to aim and achieve.

00:31:38.000 So in general, like the Digital Progress Institute is really just an organization that's trying to find agreement among instead of looking at where we disagree.

00:31:47.000 Our general mission is that we are a bipartisan org that tries to push for incremental progress in the tech and telecom space.

00:31:56.000 And so we push for five basic categories of things or five different categories where we think there is bipartisanship.

00:32:03.000 One is certainly 5G and beyond.

00:32:04.000 We want to make sure that we are, we have healthy, competitive wireless markets.

00:32:08.000 We definitely want to make sure that we have robust competition, particularly on the tech space.

00:32:11.000 We have pushed very hard against big tech.

00:32:13.000 We think that there's a significant issue in those digital markets.

00:32:17.000 We certainly see, we certainly want privacy for all.

00:32:19.000 We talked about that a little bit with TikTok, but I think TikTok sends more into the cybersecurity bend of things on top of privacy.

00:32:26.000 Broadband for all.

00:32:27.000 So trying to figure out to make sure how everyone can be able to use broadband to access great shows like yours and be able to have as much interaction with the internet as possible.

00:32:37.000 We also go for holistic internet regulations.

00:32:39.000 So that also means Section 230 reform is on the table.

00:32:42.000 We certainly are looking at common carriage and public accommodations.

00:32:45.000 And we're trying to apply that more broadly onto the internet ecosystem.

00:32:49.000 And so those are the general pillars of our org.

00:32:52.000 And so we, again, we are really focused on where we agree and we want to make sure that we push good, solid policy.

00:32:59.000 Joel, thank you for the time.

00:33:00.000 And the website here is digitalprogress.tech.

00:33:03.000 Thank you so much.

00:33:04.000 Thank you.

00:33:07.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:33:09.000 Everybody, email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.

00:33:11.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

00:33:16.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - March 08, 2024

Is It Time To Ban TikTok?

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