00:00:51.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:03.000Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.
00:01:12.000I'm going to connect what I saw last evening at Arizona State University to a new piece in the New York Times, and that is this theme of censorship.
00:01:22.000Left-wing governments, movements, communities, politicians, they need censorship.
00:01:32.000They need to be able to silence dissent.
00:01:36.000Dissent is a threat to a totalitarian regime.
00:01:41.000You see, we as conservatives don't view different ideas as a threat.
00:01:50.000We might view them as a waste of time.
00:01:55.000We don't necessarily view them as a threat to our worldview.
00:01:59.000Now, mind you, there are certain liberal ideas that shouldn't be taught in schools, critical race theory being one of them, post-modernism, post-structuralism.
00:02:07.000But outside of schools and when it gets into the kind of public domain, conservatives, for good reason, don't spend a lot of time writing articles calling left-wing sites or news outlets misinformation spreaders.
00:02:21.000There is a changing landscape of media happening right now.
00:02:28.000Media is changing in front of our very eyes.
00:02:42.000Where they say the people on screen are fake.
00:02:44.000It's very interesting, and it's true that you can now develop completely synthetic broadcasts that will say whatever you want it to say and will look neatly tailored.
00:02:56.000Of which I think to myself, how is that any different than MSNBC?
00:03:01.000How is the artificial intelligent news reader any different than what you see already on cable television?
00:03:31.000I'm only kidding, but the New York Times is really worried that there might be computer-generated artificial intelligent images that will just do what they're told because someone puts it on screen.
00:03:46.000That's already been happening for quite some time.
00:03:49.000However, what they're trying to warn against is that look at all this potential disinformation that can permeate our society.
00:03:58.000And that connects with this story here in the New York Times, where it talks about how podcasting is growing.
00:04:04.000Media is changing in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse in front of our eyes.
00:04:14.000It says Steve Bannon's podcast is Top Misinformation Spreader study says, and it has a chart.
00:04:19.000Now, the chart that they use here, this is a very sloppily put together article, largely because the story that they have here, but the story that they have is based on a study that was done by the Brookings Institution quite some time ago.
00:04:35.000And it has a chart of who are the greatest faults.
00:04:38.000They say share of episode that contain false, misleading, or unsubstantiated statements.
00:04:43.000War Room with Steve Bannon, number one, and the Charlie Kirk show is number two.
00:04:49.00016.6% of the time, the New York Times says, in conjunction with the Brookings Institution, we are spreading false, misleading, or unsubstantiated statements, of which I say name one example, the Brookings Institute.
00:05:04.000Is it Brookings Institution or the Brookings Institute?
00:05:09.000The Brookings Institution published this, published this.
00:05:12.000And look, Brookings gets a lot of questionable funding.
00:05:16.000They receive a fair amount of support from shady sources.
00:05:22.000Brookings is the most uniparty think tank imaginable.
00:05:26.000And now there is a new division of Brookings where all they do is they listen to our podcast and they label it disinformation and misinformation.
00:05:37.000Now, of course, that comes with a sense of enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment that what they would say is false, misleading, and unsubstantiated.
00:05:46.000Why would I enjoy that or consider accomplishing?
00:06:20.000Number one, the new Pfizer story that Project Veritas put out, thanks to the wonderful work of James O'Keefe recently, shows the pharmaceutical industry is doing everything they can to try to stop any communication platforms that might be able to publicize a challenge to the pharmaceutical regime running our country.
00:06:59.000Number two is if you look at this list, they're all conservative, except Brett Weinstein, the Dark Horse podcast, who I actually listened to his podcast as an original kind of inspiration to have the courage to speak out on the vaccine.
00:07:16.000Not that I didn't have the courage, I just was uncertain about it.
00:07:18.000And he confirmed so much of my kind of instincts that there was something not right here.
00:07:24.000Brett Weinstein deserves great credit for that.
00:07:28.000But the second reason is that War Room, Charlie Kirk Show, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Michael Savage, Brett Weinstein, Daniel Horowitz, Lauderworth Crowder, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rudy Giuliani that they list.
00:07:43.000It is a greater reach, a greater impact, a deeper ability to shape narratives than CNN, MSNBC, and they know it.
00:07:54.000Media has changed so substantially that people are now going to ulier methods of distribution and media to be able to find out what's happening in the world.
00:08:08.000And the New York Times finds that to be very troubling.
00:08:10.000And so they label us as misinformation, which of course is not true.
00:08:15.000You see here on the list, War Room number one, Charlie Kirk show number two, a close second.
00:08:19.000I'll take the silver medal behind Steve Bannon.
00:08:24.000It's exactly, and this is why I spoke out so forcefully back in May and before that about the censorship and the campaign against Alex Jones.
00:08:37.000This is the same playbook they used against InfoWars and Alex Jones.
00:08:40.000I'm not saying you have to like Alex Jones and think he's great or all that, and some people say he's terrible.
00:08:47.000What is relevant is the same playbook, the same blueprint that they used against Alex Jones, the New York Times is now trying to use against our program, which is exactly why I felt compelled to say, we're not going to allow this to happen again.
00:09:05.000And by the way, anyone from the Brookings Institution is welcome on this program anytime, and we can discuss, you can have the floor uninterrupted, why you think I am a spreader of misinformation, false or misleading, unsubstantiated statements.
00:09:20.000No, the New York Times is platforming this because they want us silenced.
00:09:26.000The same way that Twitter silenced me.
00:09:33.000When Roe versus Wade fell as the law of the land last year, all it did was increase what pro-abortion states are doing to entice and mislead women to abort their children.
00:09:42.000States are now advertising to travel just to get an abortion.
00:09:48.000So the need to provide the truth as girls and women are contemplating what to do about their pregnancy is greater now than ever before.
00:09:55.000Ultrasounds save babies because ultrasounds give the truth at a time everyone else is saying it's not just a baby, it's just a clump of cells.
00:10:03.000When you introduce a girl to her baby by providing an ultrasound, you are giving her the truth at the most important time of her life.
00:10:10.000And more than 85% of the time, she will choose life.
00:10:13.000You don't have to make a lot of noise to make a big difference for life.
00:10:16.000Just give an ultrasound at preborn.org to be a hero for life.
00:11:05.000And he had tons of courage on the COVID issue, especially.
00:11:08.000And it just kind of started with Joe Rogan with buddies and friends.
00:11:11.000If you go look at the old Joe Rogan experience videos or podcasts, it was just kind of Joe Rogan chilling with friends back in 2011, 2012, and uploading the audio file.
00:11:19.000I was like, I don't know if anyone's going to listen to this.
00:11:21.000And then it slowly became kind of the center of the contrarian zeitgeist.
00:11:53.000You see, what is such a threat to the regime, and one of the reasons why podcasting is so successful is that it doesn't require a ton of capital to continue to produce or to be able to distribute.
00:12:12.000And you look at the New York Times list right here of what they consider to misinformation spreaders.
00:12:20.000Now, it just gets a little bit more concerning than this because some of you are emailing us, oh, come on, Charlie, what's the big deal here?
00:12:41.000And so now with articles like this, the drumbeat, if you dare question mainstream narratives, you should no longer be able to have a podcast on Apple.
00:12:51.000The quote at the top of the Brookings study is this, quote, since the advent of the medium, podcasts have generally offered a space where you can say whatever you want.
00:13:00.000Once written off as a dying medium, podcasting has undergone rapid growth and monetization while largely avoiding content moderation and regulatory debates.
00:13:17.000Now, similarly, the New York Times article includes this line, quote, the findings underscore the vital role that Apple and Google and a constellation of podcast applications play in connecting disinformation peddlers to their audiences.
00:13:36.000The agenda of this article is not to inform readers.
00:13:40.000The reason they wrote this and the reason that I am in the New York Times today, it's to put pressure on Apple and Google and other companies to deplatform programs that the elite left consider misinformation.
00:13:55.000And you could add Spotify to that list as well, which of course is any show that disagrees with them.
00:14:01.000So what do they, how do they decide this?
00:14:04.000Well, it is a Brookings institution that has very strong opinions of their own.
00:14:08.000So they're not exactly an impartial referee.
00:14:11.000They're not exactly, let's say, neutral.
00:14:15.000But it's a couple topics that we have decided to ask questions about over the last couple of years.
00:14:23.000We made a decision to ask questions about the vaccine.
00:14:27.000We made a decision to ask questions about BLM, burn, loot, murder, or BLM, Black Lives Matter, whichever one you want to use the acronym for in 2020.
00:14:51.000We knew that we were going to get pressure for doing that.
00:14:55.000We made a decision to ask questions about bio labs in Ukraine.
00:15:00.000We made a decision to ask questions about ivermectin hydroxychloroquine, intravenous therapy, baby aspirin, vitamin D supplementation, and early treatments.
00:15:11.000We made a decision to ask questions about big tech manipulating our elections.
00:15:18.000And by the way, almost every one of those decisions we made, over time, we were vindicated.
00:15:25.000And they were the misinformation spreaders, not us.
00:15:30.000I want to tell you guys about COVID tax relief.
00:15:33.000COVID tax relief is an amazing service that exists for you because of Washington, D.C.'s addiction to overspending.
00:15:41.000Again, I'm not a fan that this money exists or that's out there or that it's available, but as they say, it is what it is.
00:15:47.000Look, COVIDTaxRelief.org got a small retail business, almost $80,000.
00:15:52.000COVIDtaxRelief.org got a manufacturing business, nearly $250,000.
00:15:57.000COVIDTaxRelief.org got a large distribution business, almost $900,000.
00:16:01.000If you run a business, church or nonprofit, and paid your employees through all or part of the pandemic, you could qualify for up to $26,000 per employee through the Government Cares Act.
00:16:11.000COVIDtaxRelief.org receives a low commission, very reasonable, only after you receive the money.
00:16:31.000You are the reason we keep on doing what we are doing.
00:16:35.000You are the reason why we take on the tough topics.
00:16:39.000And your emails today have been fabulous and supportive, saying, Charlie, keep fighting, don't back down, keep on talking about the tough stuff.
00:16:48.000And so that really, that really touches us and me personally.
00:16:53.000The connection that we have to you, the audience, is very special.
00:16:58.000You guys can always go to charliekirk.com.
00:17:25.000You have a wonderful piece on Revolver.news.
00:17:27.000And then I want to make our announcement, our modest contribution to the cause that hopefully will inspire our audience to do something.
00:17:35.000So state the case, Darren, and then we'll make our announcement.
00:17:38.000Well, I mean, it really is one of the most disturbing and certainly the most important First Amendment case that unfortunately a lot of Americans haven't even heard of yet.
00:17:50.000And it involves the case of a young man called Douglas Mackey, who is allegedly behind a now kind of legendary Twitter account in the 2016 sort of Trump campaign era.
00:18:07.000And this humbly young man just operating this pseudonymous account that trafficked in memes and a lot of the memes were really funny.
00:18:17.000Some were both controversial and hilarious.
00:18:22.000MIT conducted a study of the most influential media accounts on the 2016 election.
00:18:29.000And to their shock and consternation, this pseudonymous Twitter account operated by some young man in New York, allegedly, was more influential on the 2016 election than CBS and other just multi-multi-million dollar corporate media outlets.
00:18:51.000And I think that was kind of a thorn in the side of the regime.
00:18:56.000And so they decided to go after this guy.
00:19:00.000Well, one of the memes in question is following a meme format that's designed to mock the intelligence of Hillary Clinton and her supporters.
00:19:12.000And what it says essentially, Hillary supporters, if you want to vote for Hillary, don't even bother, you know, just text Hillary to this number.
00:19:22.000It's like with the suggestion that Hillary voters are so dumb that they would text Hillary to a number instead of go vote.
00:19:30.000It was clearly following a satirical format.
00:19:35.000But shortly after Biden took office, they arrested this guy.
00:19:39.000Now they're charging him and he faces up to 10 years in prison for this satirical meme mocking Hillary supporters.
00:19:50.000Well, they're dredging up some ancient statute that was originally designed to combat the Ku Klux Klan and prevent the Klan from like physically intimidating African-American voters from going to the polls.
00:20:10.000And they're saying that the statute that was designed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from like blocking a street to prevent an African-American from going to vote encompasses a prohibition, a criminal prohibition on satirical Twitter memes saying, oh, you want to go vote this, vote this thing.
00:20:34.000And the thing is, the government hasn't even been able to produce a single aggrieved party.
00:20:40.000That is to say, a single individual who did not go vote because they were discussing.
00:21:02.000And I'll never forget there was a get out the vote rally for then Congressman Mark Kirk, no relation, ended up being a very moderate senator.
00:21:50.000And they're trying to put this young guy in jail for 10 years.
00:21:53.000And I think we all know, like, if it wasn't actually about mocking Hillary and if MIT didn't determine that this guy had more of an influence on the election than, you know, CBS and the other sort of corporate controlled Hillary aligned media, this, you know, prosecution would never happen.
00:22:14.000But it's actually even bigger than that because, of course, they're saying that this is disinformation.
00:22:21.000And so what it's really about, and this is why it's so dangerous, what it's really about is an attempt by the Biden regime to codify the entire disinformation scam into the criminal code.
00:22:35.000So that disinformation, which as we discussed in many occasions on this show and elsewhere, disinformation is the regime's new censorship predicate.
00:22:46.000And what they're doing is they're saying if you engage in disinformation, that is speech we don't like, you're not only going to be deplatformed from all social media platforms, you're not only going to be fired from your job, you're going to be put in jail, which, as I've said, is kind of the ultimate deplatforming.
00:23:29.000And because of this, the Biden administration is trying to break him financially, put him in jail as a Soviet show trial because he made graphics and memes that there is not a singular provable victim, but they want to try to set a legal precedent that if you make fun of a Democrat presidential candidate, it could land you in jail.
00:23:51.000They're trying to stop the entire subterranean internet culture that was one of the life forces behind Donald Trump's successful 2016 campaign of just kind of meme internet culture where people would make fun of Hillary and they'd make fun of WikiLeaks.
00:24:17.000So this is to help him with legal fees.
00:24:20.000So our audience, and Darren, you could put on your website, if we can raise $10,000, Turning Point USA will match it, which will give a $20,000 net total contribution to his legal fund.
00:24:31.000Darren, why is it important that we get behind this?
00:24:35.000Well, it's important for a lot of reasons.
00:24:36.000It's important because a young guy is facing 10 years in prison for something ridiculous, for satirical memes against Hillary.
00:24:43.000But it's important for the country because, again, it's bad enough that the regime's trying to censor any kind of opposition under the manifest pretext of disinformation.
00:24:56.000But to take it a step further and make it a criminal offense puts us so close to this dystopian China-like situation that we couldn't even call ourselves a free society anymore.
00:25:10.000So everyone who cares about the role of free speech in the deliberative democratic process, anyone who cares about just the importance of humor and satire in a kind of free and flourishing society, this case is the most important case.
00:25:28.000So I really encourage everyone, and I, you know, I congratulate you for stepping up for this because it's truly an issue of national importance.
00:25:39.000Free speech is a precondition for freedom in every other context.
00:25:44.000If we don't have free speech, we have nothing.
00:25:47.000Alexander Solshenitsyn used to speak frequently on how the cartoonists received some of the harshest treatment in the gulags.
00:25:58.000The people that would satirize Stalin, the people that would write cartoons against the regime.
00:26:06.000I mean, let's just be honest, what it was.
00:26:08.000And there's a reason for that because humor can pierce and penetrate in a way that other mediums can't.
00:26:49.000Well, in short, the Nord Stream one and two were critically important pipelines that were constructed that enabled Russia to provide energy to Europe, including and especially Germany.
00:27:04.000They'd always been a profound thorn in the side of NATO, NATO-aligned countries, and in particular, the United States, in particular, that color revolution faction that I've spoken about that is singularly obsessed with Russia.
00:27:21.000And sure enough, in the immediate aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Nord Stream pipelines just kind of blow up.
00:27:33.000And, you know, nobody knows for sure what exactly happened.
00:27:39.000I haven't heard anything remotely logical or plausible along the lines of Russia blew up their own pipeline, which kind of was the standard line promoted by people associated with the regime in some capacity.
00:27:55.000But President Biden and Victoria Newland, who has a long history with Russia, was involved in the color revolution, Euromaidan, basically telegraphed that one way or another, the pipeline is going down, kind of cryptic, almost sort of mafia-style threats.
00:28:16.000And now there's been an explosive report by this Pulitzer-winning journalist, Seymour Hirsch, purporting to give a very detailed operational account of how, yes, the U.S. did it, and not just a U.S. proxy, which is always a sort of a possibility, but the U.S. did it directly.
00:28:40.000It was Navy divers operating in the pretext of some kind of harmless exercise.
00:28:47.000They pretended to do this exercise, but really planted explosives.
00:28:51.000This was all being conducted and planned before Russia's invasion even happened, and that it was coming from the very top levels of the Biden White House.
00:29:02.000Now, the truth about this story is Seymour Hirsch has been very accurate.
00:29:09.000It's an unnamed source, and it looks like it relies on only one source.
00:29:13.000But the claims and account here is absolutely explosive.
00:29:17.000It's hard to overemphasize the severity of this because in any normal context, this would amount to an act of war.
00:29:27.000And interestingly enough, not just an act of war against Russia, which is more obvious, but an act of war against Germany, because Nord Stream 2 is actually a critical piece of Germany's economic infrastructure.
00:29:42.000And the behavior of Germany and other European countries as like good, obedient, dog-like vassal states, United States, is more conspicuous than ever.
00:29:53.000Because the most we've seen from Europe and Scandinavian countries is we have seen no evidence that the U.S. claims that this was Russia blowing up their own important pipeline, which is like their most precious piece of infrastructure to Europe that had been in construction for years.
00:30:10.000The notion that they blew up their pipeline was ridiculous.
00:30:14.000And the Scandinavian countries are basically between the lines intimating that it was the U.S. or U.S. proxies by saying there's absolutely no evidence.
00:30:23.000And the broader sort of geopolitical take home from this, I think, is that as much as we want to think of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in terms of Russia, obviously, and the U.S. proxy war with Russia, I think there's a different and equally important story that pertains to our relationship with Europe.
00:30:43.000Because up until this point, Macron and others were talking about strategic autonomy, reasserting Europe's geopolitical sovereignty.
00:30:52.000All of that is absolutely thrown out the window.
00:30:55.000There could be no more spectacular display of complete American dominance and hegemony over the affairs of Europe than us, whether directly or indirectly, sabotaging Germany's pipeline and getting away with it completely.
00:31:14.000There's one wrinkle here that I seem focused on.
00:31:17.000If we did indeed do this, which is a cash cow for Russia, and also, obviously, Germany benefits, hasn't Russia shown rather extraordinary restraint by not retaliating?
00:31:29.000Well, they've already shown extraordinary restraint given all the weapons that we've been providing directly to their enemies.
00:31:36.000I mean, Russia is in a very unenviable and difficult position geopolitically.
00:31:42.000Putin's decision to invade the Ukraine has proved disastrous for Russia.
00:31:46.000And this story about Nordstream is yet another example.
00:31:50.000Darren Beatty, right of time, revolver.news, check it out.
00:31:53.000And also support Douglas Mackey at meme defensefund.com.
00:31:58.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:32:00.000Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:32:03.000Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.
00:32:08.000For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.