The Charlie Kirk Show - Setting the Twitter Captives Free with ALX, Savanah Hernandez, and Libby Emmons

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody. 0.99

00:00:00.000 Today at the Charlie Kirk Show, Savannah Hernandez joins us in ALX, fresh prisoners of war from the Twitter battles. 0.99

00:00:09.000 And then Libby Evans explains FTX.

00:00:12.000 Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.

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00:00:23.000 Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:27.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:28.000 Here we go.

00:00:29.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:31.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:33.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:36.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:39.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:40.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:42.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:49.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

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00:00:59.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:02.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.

00:01:11.000 There's lots of things I'm thankful for, but one of the great developments this last year was Elon Musk purchasing Twitter.

00:01:18.000 They were naysayers and people that were very negative.

00:01:21.000 Like, oh, Charlie, he's not going to do anything.

00:01:24.000 There were a lot of doubters out there.

00:01:27.000 But we now have seen that Elon Musk did this for a reason because he does believe in freedom of speech.

00:01:34.000 And I am honored to welcome home from the prisoner of war of Twitter.

00:01:38.000 Consider this to be their kind of welcome back ceremony as kind of when Donald Trump met the prisoners from North Korea, or I think it was North Korea, on the tarmac when they returned home.

00:01:52.000 ALX and Savannah Hernandez have been let out of Twitter jail after a very long sentence.

00:01:58.000 Welcome back to the free world of Twitter, guys.

00:02:00.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:02:02.000 So I'll start with Savannah.

00:02:04.000 Savannah, how long were you in Twitter jail?

00:02:06.000 I was in Twitter jail for two years, and I had a triple ban, Charlie, because my first ban was, you know, it came after Donald Trump retweeted me back in 2020.

00:02:15.000 And then they came up with the excuse of ban evasion, despite me never having any other accounts, any suspensions, any bans.

00:02:22.000 And then I made two more accounts after that, which were subsequently deleted.

00:02:26.000 So two long years, Charlie.

00:02:29.000 Two years.

00:02:29.000 ALX, I feel it's been at least three years for you.

00:02:32.000 Is that right?

00:02:34.000 It's been about two and a half years.

00:02:36.000 Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

00:02:38.000 Similar situation.

00:02:40.000 I was retweeted by President Trump about eight times.

00:02:44.000 And then I had posted a Joe Biden meme.

00:02:48.000 And two hours later or 20 minutes later, I can't remember at this point.

00:02:52.000 I found my account suspended.

00:02:55.000 And similar to Savannah, I got hit with, oh, you're ban evading.

00:02:59.000 And then recently I tried to appeal.

00:03:02.000 Actually, the day I got my account back, I got an appeal back saying that I engaged in targeted harassment, which I had never done.

00:03:11.000 And that was the morning I got my account back.

00:03:14.000 And then an hour after Trump was reinstated that same day, I was getting text saying my account was back.

00:03:21.000 Yeah.

00:03:21.000 So ALX, let's talk about the political and broad implication of this.

00:03:26.000 And then Savannah, I want to get your thoughts on this.

00:03:28.000 You know, for some of our listeners, they don't use Twitter and they think Twitter is irrelevant, but it really is the incubator of elite thought.

00:03:35.000 It is the place where ideas kind of are formed and then they spread to the rest of society through newspapers and other forms of media.

00:03:44.000 And now ALX, Elon has done what he said he was going to do.

00:03:48.000 What is the significance of this?

00:03:50.000 What are the ramifications long term of a free and open Twitter?

00:03:55.000 Yeah.

00:03:56.000 So a lot of people don't understand how much Twitter does actually control the news cycle.

00:04:02.000 I was having a conversation with some family members who don't use Twitter, but they don't understand how it does impact what they see and read.

00:04:10.000 They read their news from online newspapers or even physical newspapers.

00:04:16.000 However, most of those stories start from journalists who are on Twitter.

00:04:20.000 So even if you aren't a person who uses Twitter, you're getting your information from someone else who is reporting it from Twitter.

00:04:29.000 So what this means is now the leftists are no longer going to control the agenda and the trending topics.

00:04:36.000 That was always a big thing.

00:04:38.000 And now Elon just posted a poll asking if he should restore all banned accounts.

00:04:44.000 So this is going to have political implications coming up from like the midterms, after the midterms and into 2024.

00:04:52.000 If you remember 2016, that's how Trump won online.

00:04:56.000 Like everyone was setting the agenda.

00:04:58.000 2016, Twitter was like a wild west.

00:05:02.000 And this is going to have major political implications for 2020.

00:05:06.000 So Savannah, you make a lot of content.

00:05:08.000 You're able to push back against left-wing narratives.

00:05:11.000 Now you could do so on Twitter.

00:05:12.000 In fact, one of your tweets, now that you're reinstated, is getting hundreds of thousands of views.

00:05:17.000 Talk about the significance of this.

00:05:20.000 So Charlie, I'd like to actually use my own two past banned Twitter accounts as an example of how I was able to combat the narrative.

00:05:27.000 So after my original account was banned for also as well, my reporting on the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, which per CNN were fiery, but mostly peaceful.

00:05:37.000 You know, a lot of major news organizations linked back to my footage of white Antifa members shutting down the highway and stopping a black father from going to work to provide for his children in the name of Black Lives Matter.

00:05:49.000 You went and you read that article over the past two years and there was no video to link to it.

00:05:53.000 So, you know, who's to say if that story was even true?

00:05:56.000 The second account that I got deleted was because I went and I exposed how the athletes, the female athletes at the 2022 NCAA Women's Swimming Championships were not happy that biological male Leah Thomas was swimming against them.

00:06:08.000 The entire media was trying to say, oh, this was a great thing.

00:06:11.000 The athletes are not upset about it at all.

00:06:13.000 It's progressive.

00:06:14.000 Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I spoke to the one athlete brave enough to speak out against Leah Thomas.

00:06:19.000 She said she was not happy with what was going on.

00:06:21.000 And the NCAA was telling athletes themselves, don't even mention Leah Thomas's name in the locker room.

00:06:25.000 Do not speak to media.

00:06:27.000 Her interview went viral.

00:06:28.000 Tucker Carlson picked it up.

00:06:29.000 It reshaped the entire narrative about Leah Thomas.

00:06:32.000 And then Twitter deleted her interview.

00:06:34.000 And then you fast forward to the next Twitter account that was deleted.

00:06:37.000 I went to DC Pride in Washington.

00:06:39.000 And of course, we're told that pride events and having children in attendance are a good thing.

00:06:44.000 I captured a clip of a new transgender person twerking in front of children. 1.00

00:06:48.000 And it went viral.

00:06:50.000 It was picked up by almost every single right-wing news network because of how shocking the imagery was.

00:06:55.000 This is why independent journalism is important, because you have the entire mainstream media saying that, oh, it's progressive.

00:07:00.000 It's loving.

00:07:01.000 Everything is doing great with our economy.

00:07:03.000 Another one of the segments that I do is I go to minority communities when Joe Biden tweets out about how well the economy is doing or how gas prices are lowering.

00:07:11.000 I go and I ask the actual Americans who are affected by this to give their response to President Joe Biden.

00:07:18.000 And those videos always go viral because they completely combat the fake propaganda that our own American government is pushing out on the people.

00:07:24.000 So that is why censorship gone from Twitter now is so important because it allows the American people to actually have a voice and to push back against the government propaganda that we are consistently being fed.

00:07:36.000 We're not trying to shape a narrative here.

00:07:38.000 We're just trying to tell the truth.

00:07:39.000 And the people are hungry for the truth.

00:07:41.000 That's why footage like mine is so popular because the American people just want to have their voices heard.

00:07:46.000 And Elon Musk had to spend $44 billion to make that happen.

00:07:50.000 It's one of the great expenditures in American history.

00:07:53.000 I want to play a piece of tape here, just give you an idea of kind of one of the freaks that just got fired from Twitter, PlayCut 100.

00:08:00.000 I'm demanding an apology from Elon Musk.

00:08:03.000 Last week, I lost my position to Twitter working as a senior fact checker, which I had been doing for five years, making sure that misinformation did not reach the public that could potentially damage our democracy.

00:08:17.000 And I was told that the reason I was fired is because I had labeled a story about Hillary Clinton misinformation.

00:08:24.000 Now, this story was a story about how Hillary Clinton had smashed her phone with a hammer to hide 30,000 emails.

00:08:32.000 Now, I labeled that story misinformation because Hillary Clinton did not personally smash her phone with a hammer. 0.82

00:08:39.000 She asked, she requested that her aide smash her phone with a hammer.

00:08:45.000 These are two totally different scenarios. 0.94

00:08:48.000 And I was simply pointing out that Hillary Clinton did not smash the phone with a hammer. 0.65

00:08:53.000 She asked somebody else to smash her phone with a hammer.

00:08:55.000 Therefore, the story about her smashing her phone to hide evidence is misinformation.

00:08:59.000 There's no way that that has to be parody, ALX.

00:09:02.000 There's no way that's real.

00:09:03.000 Yeah.

00:09:04.000 Yeah, I was going to say that has to be fair.

00:09:07.000 I don't even think that Twitter actually has fact checkers.

00:09:09.000 I know they have like their misinformation team or whatever.

00:09:13.000 But I mean, half these people crying about getting fired too, half of them are getting like three months of basically paid free vacation.

00:09:21.000 I mean, I don't know why any of these people would be complaining.

00:09:24.000 Plus, he gave them the option too, instead of getting fired, it's like, okay, you're getting off for free for basically three months and you're getting paid.

00:09:33.000 So that was really smart, actually, by the one because he's just like naturally weeding out anyone who doesn't want to work hard.

00:09:40.000 So there are probably people like that, but yeah, I think that's parody.

00:09:44.000 The fact we can't tell shows exactly what it's exactly the problem with what's going on at Twitter in more ways than one.

00:09:52.000 Everybody, email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:09:55.000 We're going to continue with Servanna, Savannah Hernandez and ALX at ALX.

00:09:59.000 And then what, Savannah, what's your Twitter handle?

00:10:01.000 At Sav underscore says underscore.

00:10:04.000 And both of them will be at AmericaFest, as you can see beautifully displayed behind me.

00:10:09.000 You guys should get your tickets to AmericaFest at amfest.com, December 17, 18, 19, and 20 in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:10:18.000 Tucker will be there.

00:10:19.000 Candace Owens will be there.

00:10:21.000 Kaylee McEnany, Greg Gutfeld, Laura Ingram, Matt Walsh, ALX, Servanna Hernandez, and more.

00:10:28.000 That is amfest.com, AMFest.com.

00:10:32.000 Get your tickets today at amfest.com.

00:10:39.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:10:40.000 It's hard to grasp why anyone would keep voting for record inflation skyrocketing crime and an open border.

00:10:45.000 But anyway, why would anyone keep funding the left by sticking with big carriers?

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00:11:42.000 I want to play this piece of tape here just to get an idea of the type of people that were suppressing us and banning Donald Trump.

00:11:49.000 Play cut 102.

00:11:50.000 30 seconds left.

00:11:52.000 35 seconds.

00:11:53.000 You have like an atomic clock.

00:11:54.000 No, he's got his thing.

00:11:56.000 Everybody here, we're all about to get fired from Twitter.

00:12:02.000 I've been nine years and nine months now.

00:12:04.000 Same with you.

00:12:05.000 How long are you here?

00:12:06.000 Four years.

00:12:06.000 Four years?

00:12:08.000 Nine years and months.

00:12:10.000 Oh, you're not moving now.

00:12:11.000 No, no, he was after.

00:12:15.000 10 seconds.

00:12:16.000 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

00:12:26.000 Happy New Year.

00:12:28.000 Yay!

00:12:29.000 Great.

00:12:30.000 That's a lot of pump and circumstances.

00:12:32.000 I mean, we should make fun of them, Savannah, but there's blood on their hands for they suppressed early treatments about ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine.

00:12:42.000 I mean, there's these people did a lot of evil.

00:12:45.000 I want to make sure that that is communicated.

00:12:47.000 These Twitter soy boys with not an ounce of testosterone in sight, they did evil for society, Savannah. 0.72

00:12:54.000 Exactly.

00:12:55.000 Let's not forget about the suppression of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

00:12:59.000 Many people said, because they did run a poll, hey, if you knew about this before the election, do you think you might have voted differently?

00:13:05.000 To which many people responded, yeah, I would have liked to have known this information.

00:13:09.000 So to say that they were involved as well in suppressing information ahead of our election, involved in suppressing information regarding COVID-19.

00:13:17.000 We also had that article come out about the intercept or from the intercept about how the DHS was working to quell misinformation about the withdrawal of Afghanistan, COVID-19, basically all of the government corruption that the American people should be allowed to question and call out.

00:13:32.000 You know, the DHS was working alongside Twitter to go ahead and silence that and make sure the American public had no idea what was going on.

00:13:39.000 So it is such a beautiful thing now to see that we, again, are able to share the truth, share both sides.

00:13:45.000 And the best thing too is, you know, these people on the left still have a platform to share whatever they want.

00:13:51.000 We just now are allowed to combat it.

00:13:52.000 For two years, I had a Daily Beast reporter slandered me as a white supremacist sympathizer neo-Nazi.

00:13:57.000 I am now able to respond.

00:13:59.000 And it's been absolutely glorious to, you know, not be slandered.

00:14:02.000 It's been great to be able to tell the American people the truth about what's going on, especially ahead of the 2024 elections.

00:14:09.000 It's well said.

00:14:10.000 ALX, it looks as if we now have a more level playing field to be able to communicate and get the word out.

00:14:16.000 This is a very significant thing.

00:14:18.000 Your thoughts, ALX?

00:14:20.000 Yeah, so just on that tape, too, I think it's sad how they're talking about how long they've been there.

00:14:25.000 I've been here for nine years, four years, whatever.

00:14:28.000 So that shows me that they didn't actually work while they were there because the only thing was, hey, are you willing to work hard?

00:14:36.000 So basically, they heard that and they're ready to give up their entire careers or whatever they did there.

00:14:42.000 So that just shows that they didn't work hard.

00:14:44.000 And number two, to your point about the suppression of information, why didn't they censor the WHO when they said there's no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of COVID?

00:14:54.000 That tweet is still up with no indicators, no markers, no fact checks.

00:14:58.000 That's still up there while they censored everyone else for whatever like actual information that they were spreading, whether it be about vaccines or treatments.

00:15:08.000 But yeah, the playing field is about to get a whole lot more level.

00:15:11.000 There's already a million votes on Elon's new poll.

00:15:15.000 Currently, it's 78 to 26, I believe, that people are going to reinstate all banned accounts.

00:15:23.000 So yeah, the playing field is about to get a whole lot more level.

00:15:26.000 I love it.

00:15:27.000 Any final questions?

00:15:28.000 Yes, Savannah, please.

00:15:29.000 If I could jump in too, just to Alex's point, keep in mind as well that Elon Musk has been running Twitter for a couple of weeks now, and he's already put child sexual abuse material at the forefront.

00:15:39.000 And that's been pretty much eradicated off of the platform.

00:15:41.000 We have to ask the question: these employees who have been there for years on years, why did they not make this a priority?

00:15:46.000 And why was Elon Musk able to clean this up in a matter of weeks?

00:15:50.000 Yeah, that's an interesting question.

00:15:52.000 Isn't it ALX?

00:15:53.000 I mean, why is it that those Twitter engineers, those weird guys, were okay with child exploitative material?

00:15:59.000 Why is that?

00:16:02.000 Yeah, so do you know what's interesting is that their AI is able to detect memes and they can take down memes, but they can't detect exploitative material of children and illegal content.

00:16:16.000 And this is the other thing, too.

00:16:17.000 It's like, oh, we want a family-friendly platform for misinformation.

00:16:21.000 I think illegal content like that is more harmful to the general public than, oh, this tweet about COVID-19.

00:16:29.000 So talking about harm.

00:16:31.000 And also, yeah, there's two active lawsuits against Twitter right now where the Twitter actually reviewed like children that were complaining that there were their images on there.

00:16:43.000 And Twitter denied them the right to have it taken down.

00:16:46.000 And basically they had to go to law enforcement to get a ticket.

00:16:49.000 The regime.

00:16:50.000 So they knew it was.

00:16:51.000 Yeah, I mean, just think about it.

00:16:52.000 The regime hates Elon Musk far more than they ever hated Jeffrey Epstein.

00:16:55.000 That should make you think about something.

00:16:57.000 Savannah and ALX, thank you so much.

00:16:59.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:17:00.000 Congratulations.

00:17:01.000 Welcome back.

00:17:04.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:18:07.000 With us to help make sense of FTX, and we're going to learn together because I'm far from an expert on this topic at all.

00:18:13.000 I've been very obviously focused on.

00:18:15.000 If you want to talk about Maricopa County and what precincts didn't perform the way they should, I'm your guy.

00:18:20.000 FTX, I got some learning to do, and no better teacher than Libby Emmons from the post-millennial.

00:18:26.000 Libby, welcome to the program.

00:18:27.000 Hey, Charlie, how's it going?

00:18:29.000 It's going great.

00:18:29.000 Okay, Libby, let's start at the basic, basic level.

00:18:32.000 Okay.

00:18:33.000 What was FTX and why was it so popular and seemingly successful for a period of time?

00:18:41.000 So FTX was a is still.

00:18:44.000 It's a cryptocurrency exchange.

00:18:46.000 It's where customers can come on.

00:18:48.000 They can buy cryptocurrencies.

00:18:51.000 They can store their cryptocurrencies there in sort of a wallet situation.

00:18:56.000 And yeah, that's what they can do.

00:18:59.000 That's what it was.

00:19:00.000 It was founded by a man called Sam Bankman Fried, and he had a financial background to a certain extent.

00:19:08.000 He went to MIT.

00:19:10.000 He was sort of a classical tech darling.

00:19:14.000 You know, he wore messy t-shirts.

00:19:16.000 He had moppy black hair.

00:19:18.000 He seemed like a boy genius and all of those classic things.

00:19:22.000 He got a lot of funding from venture capitalists and founded this exchange.

00:19:27.000 His purpose in founding the exchange appears to be to have made a lot of money so that he could give it away as part of something that is called effective altruism.

00:19:38.000 And that's the kind of philosophy he was engaged in.

00:19:42.000 This apparently came from his parents who were very into utilitarianism.

00:19:46.000 So that's FTX cryptocurrency exchange.

00:19:51.000 That was very well summarized.

00:19:54.000 Okay, got it.

00:19:54.000 Keep going, please.

00:19:56.000 So they had their own proprietary digital coin on that exchange that could be used to buy services and things of that nature and could be traded and had its own value.

00:20:10.000 And that coin was called FTT.

00:20:13.000 So FTX, very large cryptocurrency exchange, very successful, had a rival in a company called Binance, which was founded by a Chinese CEO.

00:20:26.000 And Binance held a lot of assets in FTT.

00:20:32.000 So they had a lot of FTT and they decided a couple weeks ago that they were going to sell most of their FTT.

00:20:41.000 The CEO of Binance announced that on Twitter, that they were going to sell their coin and then set about doing that.

00:20:49.000 Set off a little bit of a chain reaction.

00:20:51.000 Other people were like, oh, if Binance is selling all of their crypto coin that is, you know, proprietary to FTX, maybe we should sell ours as well.

00:21:01.000 So that resulted, that sale by Binance of their FTT portfolio resulted in a bit of a cash crunch for FTX.

00:21:12.000 So did that expose the fraud then?

00:21:16.000 Yeah.

00:21:16.000 So part of what was going on was that Binance recognized some concerns with regard to the value of FTT and became concerned about, you know, whether or not it was actually worth what it was purported to be worth.

00:21:32.000 Part of their concern was that FTT was a large part of the assets of another company called Alameda Research.

00:21:43.000 This company was helmed by Sam Bankman Fried's girlfriend, Carolyn Ellison.

00:21:50.000 They were all hanging out in the Bahamas, apparently having a great time doing all of this, you know, finance stuff.

00:21:58.000 So Alameda had a huge amount of assets in FTT.

00:22:04.000 This made Binance concerned because it seemed to be propping up the value of FTT, making Binance concerned that FTT was not actually worth what it appeared to be worth, because in fact, part of what made it appear to have value was Alameda's holdings of it, which in fact were just because Bankman Fried was also a founder of Alameda.

00:22:32.000 So Alameda was propping up FTX.

00:22:35.000 FTX was propping up Alameda.

00:22:38.000 So after Binance decided to get rid of a bunch of their FTT, Bankman Fried had a cash crunch at FTX and went to other cryptocurrencies to say, hey, we kind of need a bailout, right?

00:22:52.000 A la Lehman Brothers.

00:22:53.000 Very similar.

00:22:54.000 And it's important when you're really talking about cryptocurrency and when you're talking about these exchanges and all of these kinds of things, it's very important to remember that we have seen all of this before.

00:23:06.000 We've seen it repeatedly.

00:23:08.000 All of these figures, you know, Sam Bankman Fried has similarities to JP Morgan Chase back in the 19 early 1900s, the banking industry prior to regulation, securities industries, all of this.

00:23:21.000 We've seen it all before.

00:23:22.000 It's just new words for the same kind of, you know, same kind of investment opportunities and financial gamesmanship.

00:23:31.000 So that was well said.

00:23:32.000 That was well articulated, but let me make sure I understand part of this.

00:23:36.000 So Sam Bankman Fried is running this Coinbase equivalent.

00:23:39.000 Is it fair to say he was taking the crypto equivalent of deposits for himself?

00:23:46.000 Is that fair to say?

00:23:48.000 This is a question that is going to be uncovered in the bankruptcy proceedings right now.

00:23:54.000 But let me just go back one second.

00:23:55.000 So after, and I know this is a little in the weeds, but after Binance got rid of their stuff and FTX needed a bailout, Binance offered to do the bailout.

00:24:08.000 And then they took a look at the books.

00:24:10.000 They did a little due diligence.

00:24:11.000 They said, there's no way we're going to do this bailout, totally dodgy company.

00:24:16.000 And then a bunch of the customers who had holdings in FTX basically did a run on the bank and the bank didn't have the money to pay out.

00:24:25.000 So that's where bankruptcy comes in.

00:24:27.000 And that's what we're seeing now play out in Delaware.

00:24:30.000 And as we're seeing that play out, it turns out that the company was so poorly run.

00:24:35.000 It was like this massive company.

00:24:37.000 They didn't even have an accounting department.

00:24:40.000 They were calculating, they were like dealing with expenses and all of that kind of stuff just in a Slack channel.

00:24:45.000 There was no one actually taking care of any of this stuff.

00:24:49.000 Yeah.

00:24:50.000 And we've seen that there was just no real thought put into how to run this company.

00:24:55.000 They don't have the money for it.

00:24:57.000 It also turned out that FTX was funneling a bunch of money to Alameda to prop up Alameda.

00:25:03.000 And the two companies were kind of, it looks like, playing a bit of shell game, propping up each other's value, while actually there was nothing holding that value to anything, anything tangible.

00:25:17.000 So he surrounded himself with reputable figureheads from the world of finance, including former regulators that feel so much like, oh, goodness, what's her name?

00:25:26.000 The woman that just went is going to jail.

00:25:28.000 The Thanos. 0.85

00:25:30.000 Yeah, the Thanos.

00:25:30.000 Theranos.

00:25:31.000 Like Holmes.

00:25:31.000 Holmes did the exact same thing where she had all these boards of like former generals and all of that.

00:25:38.000 So it gives people comfort.

00:25:40.000 And so then there's a huge political and then media wrinkle to this.

00:25:44.000 But just to make sure that everyone understands, FTX was not regulated the same way because it was a Bahamas-based company.

00:25:54.000 Is that right?

00:25:56.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:25:57.000 And cryptocurrency regulation is still in, you know, it's sort of in its infancy here in the U.S., but this kind of company could not exist under current U.S. regulatory law, from what I understand.

00:26:13.000 Mostly I understand this from my mom, who is a retired securities lawyer, who used to tell me about securities law while we rode chairlifts going skiing.

00:26:22.000 Up in the Adirondacks.

00:26:24.000 I didn't go.

00:26:25.000 Yeah.

00:26:25.000 I didn't go to MIT, but I did go to my mom's school of chairlift securities.

00:26:30.000 Well, that's true.

00:26:33.000 Your mom probably understands this stuff better than some of these people that were, you know, leaning their name to it.

00:26:37.000 So is it fair?

00:26:38.000 Yeah, she's really brilliant.

00:26:40.000 So, but then here's the other part of it that doesn't make sense is that, I mean, some people estimated Bankman Freed's wealth to be near $30 or $40 billion.

00:26:50.000 Now they say it's worth almost nothing.

00:26:53.000 I mean, so he was almost supporting this family of companies, Alameda with some of the money from FTX, and all around what seemed to be a hyper-political agenda.

00:27:05.000 He pledged a billion dollars to try to defeat Trump in 2024.

00:27:10.000 He was the second largest donor of the midterm cycle for Democrats, if I'm not mistaken.

00:27:16.000 And that's right.

00:27:17.000 Yet, if a company goes from being worth $30 billion to nothing in the span of a couple of weeks, it probably wasn't worth much at all.

00:27:26.000 And so how is it possible that this went largely undetected for as long as it did?

00:27:36.000 Yeah, I think it went largely undetected because Sam Bankman Fried had everybody fooled into believing that he was this amazing boy genius, altruistic, brilliant tech guy.

00:27:48.000 You know, this is a narrative that we have seen play out in the U.S. again and again.

00:27:54.000 VC guys loved him.

00:27:56.000 He would sit there on calls playing video games and acting very aloof and cool.

00:28:01.000 And everyone thought this guy is just horrific.

00:28:03.000 So I think a lot of it had to do with perception, exactly perception.

00:28:09.000 And he was a big donor to Democrats.

00:28:12.000 Once you have somebody funneling you all this money and telling you you're spectacular, a lot of people don't stop to ask the really important questions.

00:28:21.000 And we've seen candidates or politicians at this point trying to distance themselves from him and from the money that he gave their campaigns.

00:28:32.000 We've seen people trying to donate that money elsewhere just so that they don't have to feel that their hands are dirty with it.

00:28:39.000 Of course, their hands are dirty with it.

00:28:41.000 We also see that Bankman Fried had a foundation.

00:28:46.000 I think it's called Better Futures.

00:28:47.000 I know I wrote about it this morning, but I don't remember exactly.

00:28:50.000 And his brother ran that foundation.

00:28:52.000 And that foundation gave a lot, a lot of money to things like researching how to prevent pandemics in the future.

00:29:00.000 He was sort of obsessed with that.

00:29:02.000 Gave money to research into AI and concerns about, you know, AI and humanity and what that was about.

00:29:12.000 But he also gave a lot of money to some media outlets, media outlets that are pretty reputable at this point, including recently Semaphore, which is a recent addition, and a Reuters article from October, which is right around when they launched, talks about the money that this foundation run by Bankman Fried and his brother gave this money to Semaphore.

00:29:36.000 They gave money to Vox, ProPublica, the Intercept, and I think something called the Law and Justice Project.

00:29:43.000 I might not have the exact phrasing right on what they're called.

00:29:48.000 And it's easy to see if you go to these websites and you look up who their donors are.

00:29:53.000 It's right there.

00:29:54.000 It's disclosed.

00:29:55.000 It's not like they were hiding it.

00:29:57.000 But certainly they were taking this money from this foundation.

00:30:02.000 I mean, this makes Enron look like child's play.

00:30:04.000 It really does.

00:30:05.000 Libby, why hasn't he been arrested yet?

00:30:09.000 I don't think that he's been shown to have broken any laws.

00:30:12.000 All of the investment that anyone puts into cryptocurrency is at risk.

00:30:16.000 There's no FTC guarantees like there are for regular investments at regular banks.

00:30:22.000 So yeah, I mean, when you put your money into a crypto exchange and it loses all of its value, that's entirely on you.

00:30:31.000 And people need to know that.

00:30:33.000 That being said, it is really a shame that so many people trusted this.

00:30:37.000 I know that the Ontario Teachers Union, for example, in Canada, lost $95 million in FTX that they had holdings.

00:30:46.000 They had holdings there.

00:30:48.000 So that's a shame.

00:30:49.000 But people need to be aware of that.

00:30:50.000 Crypto investing is not for the faint of heart.

00:30:54.000 I mean, there's got to be, I mean, there's laws for fraud.

00:30:57.000 I mean, there's law, I mean, there are laws where you can't misrepresent a commercial transaction, right?

00:31:03.000 So if it's true that Bankman Fried even took $1,000 under false pretenses for himself, I mean, it doesn't take, I mean, they're trying to prosecute Donald Trump for having memorabilia.

00:31:15.000 I mean, give me a break.

00:31:16.000 So the question for, that's the question for Bankman Fried.

00:31:19.000 Did he take his customers' money and give it to political campaigns?

00:31:23.000 Did he take his customers' money and use it to bail out his girlfriend's company?

00:31:27.000 Did he take his customer's money and give it to his foundation or line his own pockets with it or anything else?

00:31:33.000 That's a question that has not yet been answered.

00:31:35.000 And you mentioned Enron earlier.

00:31:40.000 As FTX is in bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware, one of the people who is involved, I think he took over and is managing the bankruptcy of the company, was also involved in the whole Enron situation and closing out Enron.

00:31:55.000 So, yeah, that's actually pretty interesting.

00:31:58.000 And some of the documentation that we've seen come out of that bankruptcy proceeding shows a company that is very is very poorly run.

00:32:08.000 And this guy said that as well.

00:32:10.000 He said that the numbers that show up on the FTX balance sheet were constructed when Bankman Fried was the CEO of the company, which he no longer is.

00:32:21.000 And this guy says he doesn't trust those numbers.

00:32:24.000 New numbers have to be done.

00:32:26.000 Bankman-Fried maybe made these numbers up.

00:32:29.000 It's very possible that none of the information that SBF has presented in terms of their balance sheet is accurate.

00:32:37.000 I mean, yeah, at some point, there might not be laws against stealing cryptocurrency from people.

00:32:42.000 I find that still hard to believe, but there is a multitude of fraud laws on the federal books.

00:32:49.000 I mean, they're going after people for misrepresenting allegedly nasal spray, even though they didn't for COVID.

00:32:56.000 I mean, this is not that far-reaching.

00:32:59.000 Let's play cut 103 of another brilliant prediction from Jim Kramer, who still is allowed on television amazingly.

00:33:05.000 Play cut 103.

00:33:07.000 JP Morgan of this generation, Sam Bankman Fried's FTX is slashing everybody's margin.

00:33:17.000 And average fees per transaction cost industry had to climb by 50%.

00:33:21.000 A lot of that is the man, Sam Bankman Fried.

00:33:24.000 He's the man, Libby.

00:33:26.000 He is the man.

00:33:27.000 He was built up and puffed up by every single person imaginable.

00:33:33.000 Your thoughts, Libby?

00:33:35.000 Yeah, I think that that's really a shame.

00:33:37.000 I think he must have just fooled everyone entirely.

00:33:39.000 One thing that's interesting in terms of when you talk about JP Morgan Chase, who I think in 1907 put together a fund to help banks, help bail out banks if necessary.

00:33:51.000 That's something that the Binance CEO is doing.

00:33:53.000 And when he said that he would not bail out FTX, he decided to get together with some other cryptocurrencies and put together a fund that would help bail out crypto exchanges if they needed it.

00:34:05.000 So I don't think it's Bankman Fried at all who's the JP Morgan Chase.

00:34:10.000 I think it's probably this other guy who runs Binance who's a lot closer to that estimation.

00:34:16.000 It's unbelievable.

00:34:17.000 Libby, thank you so much.

00:34:19.000 Appreciate it.

00:34:20.000 Great commentary.

00:34:20.000 Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

00:34:22.000 Thanks.

00:34:23.000 You too, Charlie.

00:34:23.000 Have a good one.

00:34:27.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:28.000 Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:31.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:34:33.000 God bless.

00:34:37.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - November 25, 2022

Setting the Twitter Captives Free with ALX, Savanah Hernandez, and Libby Emmons

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