00:00:00.000Jack Visobic filling in for Charlie Kirk here at the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:04.000We've got an incredible interview here for you today with Darren Beattie talking all about whose fingerprints are really behind the trust and safety initiatives.
00:00:43.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:16.000Pro-American Patriots from Sea to Shining Sea are coming together to reclaim our foundational truths of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:03:49.000We did the trip to the Holy Land, walked all the way through the lands of the Old Testament, the lands of the New Testament, broke down everything that was going on in there.
00:03:56.000We traveled to Ukraine together and we rode the night train to Odessa, which became sort of this famous podcast that we did where I actually was able to record on the back of an old Soviet-era train traveling through some of the war-torn area between Lviv and Odessa.
00:04:14.000We then traveled all the way forward to Mikolaev, Mikolaev, which at the time was the front before Kherson had been before the drawdown of the Russian forces in Kherson across the river.
00:04:32.000He's been, as he likes to say, he's my first follower.
00:04:35.000But when we look out at the waterfront today, we see so much that's going on.
00:04:41.000And one of the key points, getting back to our initial theme of leverage, is power within the United States and power within our country.
00:04:49.000And a big story, huge story that we've seen come across right now is this defense spending bill because it's coming up with a lame duck session.
00:04:58.000However, comma, we know this is going to be, all right, we know this is going to be one of the last pieces of legislation that comes before the Republican takeover of the House.
00:05:09.000And that will happen on January 3rd, speaker's race.
00:05:13.000However, what we're now seeing, what we're now seeing is news out of the House and news out of the Senate.
00:05:20.000I've got it from my sourcing that McCarthy's there in the White House, that meeting he had with Biden.
00:05:26.000One of the demands that he put down on the table was about the vaccine mandate for military.
00:05:31.000And we were told that the vaccine, and specifically on the House side, we're seeing it on the Senate side as well.
00:07:56.000He's saying that the United States and NATO writ large are currently escalating crises along two axis, two fronts, a potential two-front global conflict.
00:08:11.000Because as Mearsheimer points out, we're already in a proxy war with Russia.
00:08:45.000Then I joined the U.S. Navy afterwards.
00:08:47.000And John Mearsheimer, like very respected foreign policy guy, old guy, been around forever, University of Chicago professor, leader of what's called the realist school of thought.
00:08:57.000And what he says is that the unipolar moment is over.
00:09:02.000This idea that it was the end of history, that the United States is going to be the global hegemon of the United States, our financial system, our military system, the U.S. dollar, the petrodollar, all of this, moving manufacturing to East Asia while we outsource our energy policy to the Middle East, right?
00:09:21.000That that system would live forever, but that's done.
00:09:51.000This is the guy who in 2014 predicted the outbreak of war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
00:10:00.000Rents are soaring at unprecedented highs.
00:10:03.000If you're renting or have a friend or family member that is, now is a great time to make the move to homeownership.
00:10:09.000Look, you got to own renting, that's great reset stuff.
00:10:12.000Andrew Del Rey and Todd of Akian at Sierra Pacific Mortgage have helped so many people make that leap from renting to owning with lots of programs that offer first-time buyers assistance with little to no down payment needed.
00:10:25.000I encourage you right now to visit my buddies, their website.
00:12:51.000But I also do understand that, okay, if you're going to have an app, if you're going to have something that's on the app store, which by the way is a total monopoly that we need to get away with, that's actually a duopoly because you have the Apple Store and you have the Play Store at Google.
00:13:02.000But are there going to just be, is it going to be a complete free-for-all on Twitter?
00:13:06.000Of course, there are certain things that are legal that you have to get rid of.
00:13:09.000And there are certain content guidelines that are required by many areas like the EU.
00:13:14.000So if you're going to, if you're going to have something like that, then it needs to be specifically outlined, needs to be specifically outlined.
00:13:20.000But at the same time, ALX, who is going to be coming up, I'm going to steal his thunder yet.
00:13:29.000He's got an op-ed that he wrote in the Washington Times a little while back with where he talked about a potential phased system, whereby if you do end up breaking one of the rules, you do end up breaking one of the guidelines that you can still get your account back.
00:13:42.000And look, obviously, Elon's facing pressure as well, right?
00:13:46.000So when you look at Twitter, you have to understand Elon's running it as a business.
00:13:51.000And so his pressure is advertisers, the EU threats.
00:14:39.000And so I would, you know, the Republicans in Congress or anyone in Congress who has a backbone, has any spine whatsoever, show your leverage.
00:14:54.000But of course, if we're going to pull back, sorry about that.
00:14:58.000Sorry about the cold, cold winter that you guys have put yourselves in because you outsourced your energy policy to a crazy young girl who has no idea what she's talking about.
00:15:07.000And now you don't have any way to heat your homes and the Germans are chopping down the forest like it's the Middle Ages again.
00:15:15.000You put yourself in this situation, not us, not us.
00:15:19.000So don't come to us trying to tell us how it is that we are supposed to conduct ourselves, our companies, how they are supposed to conduct ourselves.
00:15:32.000And again, this, by the way, this weekend on human events, we've got a huge special for you guys, myself, Matt Tierman, all about Brazil, the uprisings in Brazil and the CCP, what's coming on there.
00:15:43.000Next up, Darren Beattie, a bombshell news story exposing more of the partisan tampering of Eric Holder when it comes to Apple, when it comes to what I call the disinformation archipelago.
00:15:58.000These NGOs, these shadowy, sinister groups that operate outside the confines of our government and yet come in the same way the Europeans are trying to come in and tell us who can and can't on the internet.
00:16:37.000Look, you've helped build the wonderful My Pillow into the incredible company that is today.
00:16:41.000And I got to tell you, the things that they have, like the six-piece towel set, the two bath towels, the two hand towels, the two washclaws, game changer.
00:16:51.000The bed sheets, boom, knocked down to $29.98.
00:16:56.000But look, orders placed now through Christmas.
00:16:58.000We'll have an extended money-back guarantee through March 1st.
00:17:01.000It's an amazing way to end your year and do your Christmas shopping and support the wonderful, the amazing, patriotic Mike Lindell.
00:17:08.000Just go to mypillow.com and click on the Radio Listener Square and use promo code Kirk.
00:17:12.000Call 800-875-0425 and use promo code Kirk.
00:17:38.000And we have Darren Beatty, editor, publisher, founder, Revolver News, is coming up right here for us with an excellent story about Eric Holder.
00:17:47.000But Darren, I got to ask you first: the Kanye West permanent ban.
00:17:52.000So we're talking about that today and we're talking about the question of leverage and power in America, leverage and power over Twitter.
00:17:59.000What do you make of the Kanye West permanent ban?
00:18:03.000Let's ask that before we get into this Eric Holder situation.
00:18:07.000Well, we'll have to see whether it's actually permanent.
00:18:12.000I mean, there is a special advantage to having a direct line to Elon, and it's clear that Kanye or Ye or whatever, whatever he's called, he has that direct line.
00:18:23.000And so I think deep down, you know, Elon, just like Jack Dorsey, you know, nobody believes in sort of permanent punishment without any opportunity for redemption.
00:18:36.000So we'll just have to see how it plays out.
00:18:39.000As to the policy itself, I mean, it certainly contradicts Elon's previously stated preference that basically we go by what legal speech is.
00:18:51.000So assuming that Kanye said nothing illegal, which I don't think he did, he shouldn't be banned for it.
00:19:02.000Elon is far more practical, I think, than a lot of people imagine.
00:19:07.000And it could very well just be the practical, messy reality that Elon's done a tremendous amount for Twitter already.
00:19:17.000And he needs to offer a couple sacrifices to the censors in order to keep up what he's been doing, at least at these initial stages.
00:19:28.000And I think we can all probably agree that Ye was certainly testing the limits and making things difficult for Elon.
00:19:37.000So maybe it's just as a matter of practical reality, that's what Elon had to do, even though it violates his stated preference of just saying, okay, if it's legal speech, it should be allowed on Twitter, at least for American users.
00:19:52.000Do you think it could be argued that this banning specifically is actually less about content and more about timing?
00:20:12.000However, this is a decisive climactic period.
00:20:17.000And with his tweet, of course, Elon with his mess around and find out tweet, he seemed upset, obviously.
00:20:25.000To your point, he seemed personally upset.
00:20:28.000Well, he's personally, yeah, I think he's personally upset because I think he has a personal relationship with Ye, and I think they got along great.
00:20:36.000And, you know, based on his public statements, again, you know, we can, in theory, support free speech, but based on his public statements, Ye would make things pretty damn difficult for Elon.
00:20:48.000He put Elon in a very difficult position.
00:21:04.000You know, Elon could be in a worse position in six months, depending on how things equilibriate.
00:21:10.000That's still very much an unwritten story.
00:21:12.000But I think your basic point is extremely valid.
00:21:15.000And the difference between Elon and Ye is very instructive, like irrespective of all the stuff that he's saying.
00:21:24.000But Ye is seemingly on a kind of kamikaze mission, whereas Elon is not trying to be a kamikaze.
00:21:32.000Ye is actually trying to build something sustainable.
00:21:36.000And in the early stages of doing that, I mean, frankly, I think he's already gone a lot farther and a lot harder than I would have ever imagined in these initial stages without building up the infrastructure.
00:21:48.000And it seems like at least initially his first real test was how is he going to negotiate things with Apple?
00:21:55.000That was a real lever point the regime had against him.
00:21:58.000And it looks like for now, at least, he was able to smooth things over.
00:22:01.000He was able to say, look, I'm not going to back down from this.
00:22:04.000So if you want to have this fight, we'll have this fight.
00:22:07.000He met with Tim Cook, and it looks like the Apple lever is neutralized, at least for the time being.
00:22:15.000So I think he's doing an excellent job under the circumstances.
00:22:21.000What's your sense of this other take that's been out there as well of the idea of Musk the monarch, Elon I of Twitter, that he has these policies, but then when it comes to someone like the Alex Jones, where he said he's not going to bring him back and he meant he brought up his own son and a situation that personally had affected him, here you're pointing out that obviously there is a personal direct situation with Kanye.
00:22:50.000So is that one way to look at it as well, that we may get more of Elon I type situations where there's one set of rules for sort of the common user, but there may be these sort of, I don't know, idiosyncratic bans along personal whims?
00:23:06.000Well, I mean, I think that's unavoidable in any kind of regime.
00:23:10.000It's just the question of how transparent it is.
00:23:12.000And I think it's more transparent under Elon's tutelage.
00:23:17.000But as we've seen a little glimpse of what happens behind the curtain and, you know, Twitter under previous management, which is far more censorious, it's the same kind of deal.
00:23:26.000It's just, you know, the government saying, oh, you got to get this person.
00:23:29.000And, you know, but ultimately it's people making these decisions on the basis of arbitrary standards.
00:23:38.000And I guess you could advocate some kind of principle to make it less arbitrary.
00:23:44.000But even those principles would have to be interpreted on a case-by-case basis.
00:23:49.000And as I kind of mentioned on my last appearance on Tim Pool, I think if we're looking to maximize speech and freedom on Twitter, the seemingly arbitrary approach can actually probably get us further than principles that have to be kind of neutrally applied everywhere.
00:24:10.000Because unless Elon's willing to go First Amendment standard, which I don't think is tenable as a practical matter in this early stage, instead of just saying, okay, in Alex Jones's specific case, I'm banning him, he'd have to come up with a principle.
00:24:26.000And that net would entail banning a bunch of other people along with Alex Jones.
00:24:31.000So if you actually look at it, I think we might be better off with the kind of the arbitrary standard plus transparency to go with it, which we didn't have under the previous.
00:24:43.000I certainly agree with you that having the transparency of Elon, just telling you, just tell, I am banning this person and here is why.
00:24:51.000Even yesterday, you know, and I've been on Twitter for way too much and far too long, but he even posted something and said, hey, we are conducting a bot ban.
00:25:07.000So I do agree with you that it's been far more transparent than this sort of Kafka-esque, you know, labyrinthine process of I actually love in Kafka's trial in the original German, the title is Der Process.
00:25:41.000Before, what we had was an arbitrariness without transparency and therefore without accountability.
00:25:48.000And at least like with Elon making these decisions, and again, I think he's pretty close to limiting the concessions to the regime to the, you know, the bare minimum of what he has to offer.
00:26:07.000But even in those cases, it's very clear what's going on.
00:26:10.000And so there is a form of accountability to Elon for what he's doing.
00:26:16.000And, you know, even, yeah, the bot ban thing, it's like, you know, if Twitter were to just do that before, it could help to sort of clarify a lot of things.
00:26:26.000People aren't thinking, oh, they're, I'm losing followers because of this or that.
00:26:30.000Okay, well, you're getting rid of spam bots.
00:26:33.000So I think he's really approached it from a kind of sensible, he's taken a sensible approach, and it's a difficult thing.
00:26:42.000He's playing with for the highest stakes.
00:26:45.000And so I continue to give him the benefit of the doubt and see how things work out over the course of the next six months or so.
00:26:53.000No, let's get into a little bit, though, about their process and their process is dare punishment, because you have a new story up at Revolver that's basically all about how this sausage was being made, not just to Twitter, but Apple and others.
00:27:09.000And an interesting name that I think everyone will be familiar with that I don't even, but I don't think people knew they were associated.
00:27:15.000He was associated with what you and I have referred to in the past as the disinformation archipelago.
00:27:32.000Well, there was this recent kerfuffle with Apple.
00:27:35.000Apple has insane, a really obscene amount of leverage over everything on the internet, including Twitter, any kind of app.
00:27:45.000And, you know, it begs a question because, you know, Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety, was calling for, you know, the regime, calling for Apple to use its leverage to basically kneecap Twitter and say, well, who's the trust and safety equivalent and Apple who would play a critical role in this decision-making process?
00:28:05.000Now, the current person there has zero online footprint other than a lesbian wedding registry.
00:28:14.000Someone of that level having zero online footprint.
00:28:17.000But her predecessor, who was in charge during the critical months leading up to and during the 2020 election and the whole aftermath involving the January 6th censorship blanket, this is someone that we were able to find out about.
00:28:33.000And this person just happens to be Eric Holder's right-hand woman.
00:28:37.000And Eric Holder, the Eric Holder himself, apparently was involved in this trust and safety department during the 2020 election.
00:28:47.000Well, he was involved by proxy, by inference, because the story is Margaret Richardson, the woman who was head of trust and safety, was basically Eric Holder's right hand throughout the entirety of his tenure in the Obama regime.
00:29:04.000She was, you know, it's partisan enough.
00:29:09.000She joined the presidential transition committee and then went straight to work as Eric Holder's counselor at the Department of Justice in January 2009.
00:29:24.000And she remained with Holder throughout the entire regime, going all the way up to Eric Holder's chief of staff.
00:29:30.000And then just to give a sense of how connected she was to Holder, she followed him everywhere in post-administration appointments.
00:29:39.000She followed him to Airbnb and to Covington, the law firm.
00:30:18.000And yes, in case anyone doesn't know, trust and safety is sort of the Orwellian label whereby many major tech companies sort of conduct their censorship, content moderation, disinformation type operations.
00:30:38.000Yeah, the Ministry of Trust and Safety.
00:30:54.000There are variations, but the standard version is trust and safety.
00:30:58.000And it's amazing when you actually look at the people who are placed in these positions because you would think companies at this level would at least try to maintain appearances.
00:31:11.000They would at least be, so to speak, optics pilled and have people who conduct themselves with the pretense of a kind of disinterested, nonpartisan, Non-profit.
00:31:25.000Have taken a marketing class or something exactly.
00:31:28.000And just to give you a sense of how ridiculous is so, the the recently departed head of trust and safety for Twitter yes, um Yoel, who has no kind of distinguished background to speak of at all, but for his much celebrated dissertation.
00:31:47.000The guy wrote a dissertation on the gay dating app Grinder and this guy goes from that to heading trust and safety on Twitter, which gives you a sense of how ridiculous it is.
00:32:01.000And the case of Apple, which is arguably even more ridiculous and sinister, it was run by this woman, Margaret Richardson.
00:32:10.000And again, Apple is like the biggest company in the entire world by market cap.
00:32:16.000They have a market cap of like $2.4 trillion.
00:32:21.000It's mind-boggling what a huge and serious company this is.
00:32:27.000And of all the people on the planet that they could have chosen to be the public face of their content moderation decision making, they choose a woman who was on the Obama campaign as a woman for Obama.
00:32:41.000And of all the people that she was associated with the Obama administration, she's associated with as the right-hand woman by his side as of January 2009, Eric Holder, arguably the most partisan and aggressive hack in the entire Obama apparatus.
00:33:02.000And this is who's making the critical censorship decisions for Apple.
00:33:07.000It really just exposes the entire sham of trust and safety.
00:33:16.000And, you know, it's one thing you see how partisan she is with the censorship.
00:33:21.000But let's think about the trust version too.
00:33:24.000People forget about the scandals that Eric Holder is involved in.
00:33:28.000I think as one of the few cabinet officials to be held in contempt of Congress, he was the guy behind Fast and Furious gun running operation.
00:33:39.000Margaret Richardson was by his side while the entire Fast and Furious thing was conducted and then blew up in Eric Holder's face.
00:33:49.000That doesn't sound like a trustworthy person to me.
00:33:52.000And so if you go to this woman's Twitter and it's just like littered with, you know, she's retweeting Michelle Obama's tweets about George Floyd.
00:34:04.000And it's so egregious to think that someone who's this aggressively and nakedly partisan would be placed in that kind of position at the world's largest and most powerful company.
00:34:17.000I mean, you take someone like that and have them in charge and incredible work, by the way.
00:34:23.000And everyone should go to Revolver because, you know, we've discovered, you've discovered another revolver in a sense, but in this case, it's a revolving door, a revolving door.
00:34:34.000But instead of it's not just the bankers going into government, which we saw in the Obama administration, particularly with Goldman Sachs, we're now seeing political actors going into tech, going back to tech, going back into government, in and out and in and out the entire time.
00:34:49.000It's like a, you know, but, you know, they're still, they're still all agents of the foot clan, you know, right at this point.
00:34:56.000They're still all working as maybe that's what Kanye was trying to show us yesterday with his mask, you know.
00:35:05.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:35:07.000Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.