The Charlie Kirk Show - The Nord Stream Bomb Bombshell with Kimberly Fletcher and Mike Davis

00:00:00.000 Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Kimberly Fletcher joins us to talk about how we are going to hold the federal government accountable for calling moms terrorists.

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:08.000 And we talk about the Nord Stream pipeline, some breaking news from an award-winning journalist.

00:00:13.000 I don't know if he's award-winning, but he's certainly impressive, Seymour Hirsch.

00:00:17.000 And then we have Mike Davis, who says Biden's doing a good thing on big tech.

00:00:22.000 I am not convinced.

00:00:24.000 And more, email us freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:00:40.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:41.000 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 campuses.

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.

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00:01:27.000 One of the biggest stories of the last couple of years is how the Biden regime targeted moms and school boards, calling them domestic terrorists.

00:01:35.000 The new Republican Congress is going to get to the bottom of this, and hopefully people will be held accountable.

00:01:39.000 Joining us now is Kimberly Fletcher from Moms for America.

00:01:43.000 Kimberly, welcome back to the program.

00:01:45.000 Hey, great to be here, Charlie. 0.99

00:01:47.000 Kimberly, you know all about this and a lot of the moms you work with were actually targeted.

00:01:53.000 You've dealt with this personally.

00:01:55.000 Walk us through it and also tell us what do you think this new Republican Congress should do to get to the bottom of it.

00:02:03.000 Well, I would really like to see the questions that have been asked in the past and ignored being answered.

00:02:08.000 I think the fact that we now have control of the Congress, we have a better power play on getting those answers.

00:02:13.000 I really like what Jim Jordan is doing and Matt Gates coming out and putting the pressure on the various organizations to answer those questions.

00:02:22.000 We're dealing with it on the national level as well as the local level.

00:02:26.000 And what's really exciting about where we're at now is for years I had to try and convince people that everything was local and I don't have to convince people anymore.

00:02:35.000 And while a lot of people are really depressed about the last election, it was the best, most successful election in my lifetime because moms came out in droves.

00:02:45.000 And the biggest question they asked was, do we have to vote for every office on the ballot for my ballot to count?

00:02:51.000 And they came in and they voted the down ballot.

00:02:54.000 They voted the things closest to them, school board, city council, sheriff.

00:02:58.000 And when they had people that they believed in who they felt would stand for them, for us, our principles and our values and protecting our kids and our schools, then they voted for them on those levels too, which is why Florida did so well and Governor DeSantis did so well, because he connected with the moms.

00:03:13.000 We were at the table.

00:03:15.000 When we had concerns, he addressed them.

00:03:17.000 That's what I would like to see Congress do.

00:03:19.000 Yeah, so this is a very interesting story because it involves potentially three different agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Education, which we don't talk about a lot, which is this guy, Miguel Cardona.

00:03:39.000 And it seems to be the evidence suggests, and we'll get a definitive answer as Congress starts to do their job, that the National School Board Association, a non-government organization, lobbied the Biden administration, was able to get an audience with three different government agencies that resulted in terrorist type activity, mean terrorist threat level activity,

00:04:06.000 as if we were dealing with Al-Qaeda having a sleeper cell in Charleston, South Carolina.

00:04:13.000 That sort of law enforcement activity was then a result of the National School Board Association lobbying our government.

00:04:20.000 Do I have that about right?

00:04:22.000 You do have that right.

00:04:23.000 And here's the really scary part about that is when the federal government comes out with those kind of standards, then all of the law enforcement agencies on the local level act on it.

00:04:32.000 So we have had moms who have been going into the school board meetings, who have read from the books that their children are being exposed to, who have addressed real concerns that the school district should be paying attention to.

00:04:45.000 And they're being told that they can't talk about some of these things.

00:04:49.000 Like when they're reading the books, these excerpts, they said, you can't read that because it's public TV and that's against the FCC standards, you know, to have that on TV.

00:04:57.000 And when the moms keep reading it, then we have had moms who've literally been handcuffed by police officers and taken out of these school board meetings.

00:05:06.000 Who are the terrorists?

00:05:07.000 So when you have the federal government basically arming or empowering local governments to harass parents, that is a big problem. 1.00

00:05:16.000 And the moms are starting to fight back. 0.66

00:05:18.000 In fact, we have a bill that we're pushing in several different states.

00:05:23.000 It was actually inspired by John Rich.

00:05:25.000 And I had a great conversation with him about some really cool things he did in Tennessee.

00:05:30.000 And we're labeling it, referencing it as the FCC standard bill.

00:05:35.000 If you cannot air it on TV or radio, then you cannot have it in the classroom.

00:05:42.000 It's pretty simple.

00:05:44.000 That's so smart.

00:05:45.000 Continue.

00:05:47.000 Yeah, so we have Texas, we have legislators in Texas who are picking it up.

00:05:51.000 Seven other states, we have legislators who are also going to be introducing it. 1.00

00:05:55.000 And this is giving moms power on the ground because a lot of times when you get a bill that you're pushing forward, the legislators get squeamish when it comes to the penalties. 1.00

00:06:04.000 But what good is a law if it doesn't have a penalty when you break it, right?

00:06:07.000 So what's really great about this, this bill that we're introducing is it takes the protection of the educational clause away.

00:06:14.000 So they hide behind this idea of educational.

00:06:17.000 When you throw that word out there, you can put anything behind it.

00:06:20.000 So what we're doing is taking away that protection.

00:06:23.000 And when you do that, penalty is already there. 0.73

00:06:27.000 They become pedophiles grooming and sexualizing our children just like anybody else.

00:06:32.000 And we as parents and local officials can then file legal charges against them.

00:06:37.000 We have had it with being on the defense and we're going on the offense.

00:06:42.000 And that's a simple point, which is if you can't air it on television, why should you be able to share it with a seven-year-old?

00:06:42.000 I love that.

00:06:51.000 And I discussed this with Pete Hegseth in his new documentary, The Miseducation of America, where it's just, this is a very interesting example.

00:07:00.000 So we have a very diverse audience of a lot of opinions.

00:07:05.000 And so sometimes I'll show the pornography that is showed in our schools on air, right?

00:07:10.000 And I'll say, hey, eight-year-olds are learning this.

00:07:13.000 And we get emails, Kimberly, of people that are really angry that I would dare show pseudopornography on our show.

00:07:21.000 I say, wait a second, why aren't you that angry to go to your local school board to make sure kids aren't learning it?

00:07:26.000 You're angry that I'm airing what's happening in our schools.

00:07:30.000 And so I just always find that to be very interesting where people will get so fired up, like, how dare you expose this to me, Charlie?

00:07:37.000 Like, well, it's actually in curriculum, okay?

00:07:40.000 Curriculum.

00:07:41.000 So, Kimberly, talk a little bit more about that. 0.99

00:07:44.000 You're leading a really heroic movement of moms.

00:07:48.000 I think it's just getting started.

00:07:50.000 And let's just be honest, this was the Biden regime's attempt to try to thwart and prevent a parents' party from becoming a serious political force.

00:08:04.000 Yeah, and it's not working.

00:08:05.000 It's actually backfiring.

00:08:06.000 And the thing is, if you're not being targeted, if you're not being attacked, if you're not being maligned, then you're not over the target.

00:08:14.000 We are over the target.

00:08:16.000 And we are literally standing in between those who want this country and the children that they think who they can mold into, making it what they want.

00:08:25.000 We are in their way, and they've known that.

00:08:27.000 So, there's a great book that came out.

00:08:29.000 I don't know if you had a chance to read it.

00:08:30.000 It's called None Dare Call It Conspiracy.

00:08:32.000 And it was a guy.

00:08:33.000 You got to be a little careful with that, but you got to be a little there.

00:08:36.000 Let's just be media matters.

00:08:39.000 That's an interesting thought.

00:08:42.000 There's some elements that I don't agree with, but please continue.

00:08:45.000 Yeah, okay.

00:08:46.000 Well, but the point of the beginning of it that's really good is it says that the objective of every conspiracy is to convince people that there is no conspiracy.

00:08:55.000 And so they want to make you out to be crazy or a domestic terrorist, or they want to malign you in every way you can to disparage you so that people won't listen to you.

00:09:07.000 And that's what they've been trying to do.

00:09:09.000 Everybody has a mom.

00:09:09.000 But you know what?

00:09:11.000 And it is a game changer when moms show up empowered with who they are, what America is about, what your rights are, where they come from, and then they know how to effectively exercise them. 1.00

00:09:23.000 And that is what we do.

00:09:24.000 We are now in the process of actively recruiting and training moms and grandmas across the country to fill a role as a school district ambassador in every one of the 13,452 school districts in the country to counter these negative influences of the associations that our tax dollars, district money is paying for, and the teachers' unions.

00:09:46.000 And we need to take their money away.

00:09:49.000 And this is what these school district ambassadors will be trained and knowledgeable to do.

00:09:53.000 And they're already doing it.

00:09:54.000 We have now a counter force when moms show up. 0.89

00:09:57.000 They're not just angry. 0.99

00:09:59.000 We can give them tools to be empowered and effective.

00:10:02.000 I love it.

00:10:03.000 And you're doing wonderful work, Kimberly.

00:10:05.000 I'm going, I'm speaking at a mom's event in Illinois in a couple of weeks.

00:10:10.000 I'm sure you've involved in that.

00:10:14.000 Great.

00:10:14.000 I say yes.

00:10:15.000 I am.

00:10:15.000 Yeah.

00:10:16.000 Our moms are, our moms for America is a partner in that.

00:10:19.000 I love it.

00:10:20.000 I won't be able to be there.

00:10:20.000 I'll miss you.

00:10:21.000 I'm sorry.

00:10:22.000 And Tifa is threatening us and all this.

00:10:25.000 And I hope it wakes some people up.

00:10:27.000 The actual terrorists are going to be the ones trying to prevent our holiday and our event at the holiday in the holiday.

00:10:33.000 Thank you so much.

00:10:33.000 God bless you, Kimberly.

00:10:35.000 Thank you.

00:10:39.000 All right, everybody.

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00:12:24.000 Full transparent, this is a very complicated story.

00:12:28.000 Our team has done a fabulous job summarizing it.

00:12:31.000 You remember five months ago, there was this mysterious explosion in the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which is not an insignificant pipeline, that routes natural gas from Russia to Germany.

00:12:45.000 Now, remember, it was such a big pipeline, they wanted to have the second one.

00:12:48.000 They wanted to have Nordstream 2.

00:12:50.000 Now, it wasn't clear who exactly was responsible.

00:12:54.000 But one factor of this, if I remember correctly, it was the ambassador from Poland, the Polish ambassador or something to NATO.

00:13:02.000 Somebody in the Polish government tweeted out, thank you, America.

00:13:04.000 Do you remember that?

00:13:05.000 And then he deleted that tweet.

00:13:07.000 Something of that variety, which did suggest that there was some intelligence there.

00:13:10.000 I don't think it was the Polish prime minister.

00:13:12.000 It was some external Polish government official.

00:13:17.000 Anyway, so we weren't sure who did this, but the narrative that was introduced by the American government was this is Russia bombing their own pipeline.

00:13:27.000 Now, that would always potentially could be true, but it was just very unlikely that Russia would destroy their own cash cow into Europe. 0.55

00:13:38.000 That would only further jeopardize their ability to pay their bills, keep the petrodollar afloat.

00:13:44.000 So that didn't make a lot of sense.

00:13:46.000 It was potential.

00:13:47.000 Now, Russia benefits from Nord Stream 2, gave them leverage over Europe.

00:13:51.000 And so the most plausible culprit was, of course, America. 0.56

00:13:54.000 Now, I think there's some tape here.

00:13:56.000 This is Victoria Newland in January saying, look, if Russia, this is January of last year, if Russia does indeed invade Ukraine, Nordstream 2 will not move forward.

00:14:04.000 Very short clip, Victoria Newland, PlayCut 84.

00:14:08.000 And I want to be clear with you today.

00:14:11.000 If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nordstream 2 will not move forward.

00:14:18.000 Now, she's saying Nord Stream 2.

00:14:20.000 So we have to be very clear.

00:14:22.000 That's the new pipeline.

00:14:24.000 That is not Nord Stream 1.

00:14:26.000 Okay, so Nord Stream 1 is what was bombed.

00:14:29.000 Nord Stream 2 was still being created.

00:14:31.000 Now, remember, this was an underwater natural gas pipeline.

00:14:37.000 So now journalist Seymour Hirsch, very interesting man, has a very, very long and in-depth bombshell story arguing that, yes, definitively, the demolition was conducted by the United States and that it was being planned months before Russia ever invaded Ukraine.

00:14:58.000 His argument, first and foremost, more about him, his articles exposing the Central Intelligence Agency's anti-war activists are credited with leading to the 1970s church committee.

00:15:09.000 This is a very credible man.

00:15:11.000 According to Hirsch, the U.S. intelligence agencies anticipated the Russian invasion and came up with a demolition as a way to force European allies to stand up against Russia.

00:15:24.000 Quote, as long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.

00:15:40.000 It was at this unsettled moment that Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring a really qualified guy to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.

00:15:49.000 Now, look, this is important for a couple reasons.

00:15:52.000 The big quote is this: last June, Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized midsummer NATO exercise known as Battops 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that three months later destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

00:16:13.000 Now, I can keep on going through this.

00:16:15.000 Our team did an amazing job summarizing all this, but let me just editorialize for a second.

00:16:19.000 If this is true, this is an act of war on behalf of the United States against the Russian government.

00:16:26.000 There is no question of that.

00:16:28.000 If this is indeed true, which I believe it is true, you don't get to bomb countries' pipelines and act as if that's not an act of war.

00:16:38.000 But who is it an act of war against exactly?

00:16:41.000 Is it an act of war against Russia, an act of war against Germany, an act of war against NATO?

00:16:47.000 And or is this a false flag potential operation just to get everybody mad at Russia to be able to send more money and weapons into Ukraine?

00:16:57.000 I don't exactly think, I don't, I do not know how anyone could make an argument that this is responsible.

00:17:03.000 According to Hirsch, Navy divers were there because they're not special forces.

00:17:07.000 Special forces operations require White House briefing.

00:17:10.000 The White House briefed congressional leaders.

00:17:12.000 Hear that?

00:17:14.000 So according to Hirsch, the divers were chosen because they're not special forces.

00:17:19.000 So they were able to bypass Congress.

00:17:23.000 Biden didn't want them to know, so the operation was downgraded from covert to a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support.

00:17:32.000 With one weird trick, Biden was then able to keep Congress out of the loop.

00:17:37.000 Hirsch said the attack was conducted in coordination with the Norwegian Navy while we kept other nations in the dark.

00:17:45.000 Did our government bomb Russia's cash cow and the energy source for Europe? 0.73

00:17:52.000 Why would we do that?

00:17:54.000 So the Nord Stream story is very interesting for a variety of different reasons.

00:17:59.000 So look, this is very dark.

00:18:01.000 Basically, we attacked our allies to force them to stay on our side in the war.

00:18:07.000 But it is also an it isn't not also an attack on Russia because it is also Russia's leverage over Europe.

00:18:16.000 And so this was, we asked the question when it happened.

00:18:20.000 It is the Latin phrase, qui bono.

00:18:25.000 Who benefits?

00:18:28.000 Yeah, I mean, I agree.

00:18:29.000 I'm looking at our team discuss this right now.

00:18:31.000 It's an attack on both.

00:18:32.000 It is an attack on both Russia and Germany. 0.89

00:18:35.000 It certainly is a fact. 0.98

00:18:37.000 I mean, I have friends right now in Germany that are saying this has been an awful winter, that they go into restaurants that have had to truncate their hours because they are not allotted enough, I guess what they call it, heating units because of how cold it is, and they do not have widespread access to natural gas.

00:18:59.000 You can thank the environmentalists for that.

00:19:01.000 Apparently, the French are having a really tough winter as well.

00:19:04.000 They're freezing their tails off.

00:19:06.000 And so the Americans did this.

00:19:07.000 Did we do this in tandem with our European allies?

00:19:10.000 Did we do this in harmony with them?

00:19:14.000 So the White House continues to categorically deny this, obviously.

00:19:18.000 It's just a further exposure of an economic act of war conducted not just against Russia, but against our own allies.

00:19:24.000 And so instead of trying to broker peace, we're sending deep sea navy divers who then could circumvent and avoid Congress to attack Germany.

00:19:39.000 Now, this is a very simple observation that will be made on Twitter and on most conservative media.

00:19:47.000 We tend to not do simple around here, but it is necessary.

00:19:51.000 Could you imagine if Donald Trump did this?

00:19:55.000 Again, it's simple, but it is a necessary observation.

00:19:59.000 Could you imagine if Donald Trump enlisted a team of Navy divers that would intentionally not have to be briefed to Congress to attack both Russia and Germany simultaneously, that would further inflame a deadly and catastrophic border dispute war.

00:20:18.000 Could you imagine the coverage?

00:20:26.000 So, look, maybe this article is not accurate.

00:20:28.000 It certainly reads like it's accurate.

00:20:30.000 It's incredibly detailed with sourcing that is there's no way it's fabricated.

00:20:36.000 I mean, either somebody's lying to him or he has the source, or he's definitely talking to somebody who's giving him information.

00:20:42.000 So, either that person is lying to him or they're telling the truth, probably telling the truth.

00:20:46.000 And so, it is a question: is this an act of war?

00:20:51.000 And by the way, just so we're clear, the article is phenomenally detailed, and he is a very credible person.

00:20:58.000 It's not just some schlepp off the street that was like, Yeah, I think this happened.

00:21:02.000 Well, who are you?

00:21:03.000 I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, like, Yeah, that's not this guy.

00:21:06.000 This guy actually has detailed clandestine activity by the Central Intelligence Agency for quite some time.

00:21:14.000 So, if Seymour Hirsch's story is accurate, Biden then attacked our own allies and Russia in order to force them to stay on our side in the Ukraine proxy war.

00:21:26.000 But I'm just more kind of interested in the Russia element of this.

00:21:31.000 Is this going to sound, I'm going to have to be, I'm going to have to say this correctly without it coming across.

00:21:40.000 If this is true and we did this, should we not be rather impressed by Russia's restraint?

00:21:47.000 Now, I mean that actually very clearly.

00:21:49.000 If you bombed a piece of critical infrastructure that was leveraged for Russia and they did not respond in kind, I mean, that's that's pretty interesting, isn't it? 0.94

00:22:05.000 Now, you might say, well, how are they supposed to respond and all that?

00:22:07.000 I mean, fair enough, but this was a cash cow for the Russians. 0.99

00:22:14.000 Should it have ever gotten approved in the first place as a separate issue?

00:22:19.000 But also, the Germans just took it.

00:22:25.000 So, the Germans have to have a now, they have a below standard of living to get them further into a proxy war, makes them look super pathetic, and then the Russians lose their cash cow and they don't retaliate. 0.94

00:22:46.000 That seems to be against the narrative that Putin and the Kremlin are sociopathic warmongers that want nothing but destruction and carnage and are going to nuke the entire continent. 0.80

00:23:03.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:24:05.000 Joining us now is Mike Davis to talk about big tech, Joe Biden's focus on big tech, and whether or not we can find some agreement on that.

00:24:18.000 Mike, welcome to the program.

00:24:20.000 Thank you for having me on, Charlie.

00:24:21.000 So, Mike, you sent a tweet about Biden and his stance on big tech.

00:24:25.000 I'll allow you to make the case.

00:24:27.000 The floor is yours.

00:24:28.000 So, I disagree with President Biden on just about everything. 0.99

00:24:33.000 I think he is a bumbling buffoon of a president. 0.98

00:24:37.000 We saw last night at his State of the Union address. 1.00

00:24:40.000 He's just this angry old man screaming at the TV screen.

00:24:44.000 But I'll tell you one area where I think he's gotten it right is his big tech antitrust proposals and appointments to rein in Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.

00:24:56.000 And I think that is critically important that that happens.

00:25:00.000 We've seen with President Biden appointing Jonathan Cantor to the critically important antitrust division at the Justice Department.

00:25:10.000 Jonathan Cantor is the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division at the Justice Department, along with Lena Khan as the FTC chair.

00:25:18.000 These are two appointments that show that President Joe Biden is willing to ignore Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple's big campaign contributions and their dark money contributions and work with Republicans on a bipartisan basis to finally end big tech's gatekeeping power over information and commerce.

00:25:40.000 And I think this is where Republicans and Democrats must come together to hold big tech accountable because it's becoming too late.

00:25:49.000 Big tech is China-controlled.

00:25:51.000 Big tech uses their market power to crush competition, shutter small businesses, and cancel conservatives and others with whom they disagree.

00:26:01.000 And the stars are aligned right now.

00:26:03.000 We have this rare bipartisan opportunity with populist Democrats, with Joe Biden and the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democrat Party, along with the Trump wing of the Republican Party, to finally hold big tech accountable.

00:26:17.000 And I think we need to take advantage of this opportunity.

00:26:20.000 So let me challenge one part of it.

00:26:23.000 I don't know that I do not know this topic nearly as well as you do.

00:26:26.000 So you'll be able to, I'm sure, push back rather effectively, which is, so let's say Biden put forward a good appointment at the DOJ on this issue.

00:26:38.000 Is that something you'd say is fair?

00:26:40.000 Yes, very much so.

00:26:41.000 And we supported Jonathan Cantor.

00:26:44.000 And I don't know anything about him, the details of it.

00:26:48.000 So I suppose a counter that I would love to have you navigate through are two of the following.

00:26:53.000 Number one, is it possible that Biden is and his allies are threatening big tech to try to get them to do more censorship and to try to use these as threats to get them more sympathetic to Democrat causes?

00:27:09.000 For example, I'm going to use the FTC to threaten Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and therefore they'll be more likely to do the bidding of the FBI.

00:27:18.000 What do you say to that argument?

00:27:19.000 Well, I mean, that's certainly possible that different parts of the Biden regime are using this for nefarious reasons, but I'll say this: that the reason that YouTube can censor Senator Rand Paul, a medical doctor and a top policymaker in our government over his COVID statements is because Google owns YouTube.

00:27:41.000 Google is a trillion-dollar big tech monopolist.

00:27:44.000 And instead of competing against YouTube, Google simply acquired YouTube.

00:27:48.000 And if Google and YouTube actually competed against each other, there's no chance that YouTube would have censored Senator Rand Paul.

00:27:58.000 And that's the point with antitrust.

00:28:00.000 When we break up big tech, when you break up Google and YouTube, when you break up Facebook and Instagram, it makes it much less likely that they're going to censor people.

00:28:12.000 They're going to be competing for users instead of censoring their users.

00:28:15.000 And that's why.

00:28:17.000 No, I'm totally sympathetic to that.

00:28:19.000 I'm just cynical about complimenting Biden on anything.

00:28:21.000 So you're going to have to keep on defending it.

00:28:23.000 So the second argument would be that it's going to be unsuccessful because it will either be challenged in the courts or these companies are so big that they actually might invite the regulation.

00:28:35.000 I mean, you see Facebook, they have this ridiculous website where they say, we actually want Congress to act.

00:28:43.000 We want Congress to pass data reform.

00:28:47.000 You've heard this argument plenty of times.

00:28:48.000 Big companies actually like regulation because for Facebook, another $70 million of legal fees is a rounding error.

00:28:55.000 But for their competitor, that is the difference between survival or oblivion.

00:29:00.000 What is your thoughts on that?

00:29:02.000 You're exactly right, Charlie.

00:29:03.000 And that's why you want to do antitrust because antitrust is law enforcement.

00:29:08.000 It is the opposite of regulation.

00:29:10.000 With antitrust, you are targeting the anti-competitive tumor on the market.

00:29:15.000 You use criminal antitrust law enforcement and civil antitrust law enforcement.

00:29:20.000 You file a lawsuit against Google.

00:29:22.000 You file a lawsuit against Facebook.

00:29:24.000 You target the bad actors.

00:29:26.000 You do not do industry.

00:29:27.000 It's the opposite of industry wide regulation.

00:29:31.000 As you said, Charlie, Facebook wants industry-wide regulation.

00:29:34.000 Of course, they do.

00:29:35.000 Trillion-dollar companies want regulations because they're entry barriers to startup competitors, as you just described.

00:29:41.000 You're exactly right.

00:29:42.000 That's why you want antitrust.

00:29:44.000 That's why, for example, there are two lawsuits right now from the DOJ antitrust division against Google.

00:29:51.000 One is against Google's search monopoly, Google search, and one is against Google's advertising monopoly.

00:29:59.000 If these two lawsuits succeed, particularly the advertising lawsuit, the antitrust lawsuit that Jonathan Cantor just filed, along with Republican state attorneys general across the country, including the Virginia attorney general who joined this lawsuit, Andrew Ferguson, the Solicitor General of Virginia, clerked with me on the Supreme Court.

00:30:18.000 He clerked for Justice Thomas.

00:30:19.000 When I clerked for Justice Gorsuch, he worked with me on the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirming President Trump's judges.

00:30:26.000 He's no liberal.

00:30:26.000 He's no squish.

00:30:28.000 He's very much behind these antitrust lawsuits that they're filing against Google's advertising monopoly.

00:30:35.000 Totally.

00:30:35.000 So let me entertain another piece that I would like to have you respond to is regulation of whom.

00:30:44.000 One of the issues with a voluminous regulatory code and Stalinistic bureaucrats is they get to decide who actually gets more pressure or scrutiny than others.

00:30:55.000 So for example, there is this kind of new fake big tech, let's just say posture, anti-big tech posh that Biden is having like, whoa, we're banning TikTok or University of Texas.

00:31:08.000 Now, they're banning.

00:31:09.000 I totally support it.

00:31:10.000 I think TikTok should be totally banned, but they're doing this because Google is calling them and saying, hey, we want this done because YouTube Shorts is not exactly as successful as we would like.

00:31:22.000 TikTok has seriously deteriorated the Gen Z market for Facebook and YouTube.

00:31:27.000 Let's just go this a level further.

00:31:30.000 Who's to say that with this robust antitrust regulation that might be passed or potentially enforced, that they'd go kind of soft on Google, soft on Amazon, but hard on Elon Musk's Twitter?

00:31:43.000 Your thoughts, Mike?

00:31:45.000 Well, again, this is antitrust.

00:31:47.000 This is the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act.

00:31:49.000 This is antitrust as law enforcement.

00:31:51.000 It's not regulation.

00:31:52.000 It's actually a statute.

00:31:53.000 It's a statute that's been on the books for 100 years that needs to be updated to address big tech.

00:32:01.000 But it's not regulation.

00:32:02.000 It's antitrust.

00:32:03.000 No, no, I hear that.

00:32:04.000 But even with law enforcement, they get to choose who they get to go after more than others, right?

00:32:08.000 There is, we see this with DOJ, right?

00:32:10.000 They'll go raid a pro-life leader's home, but they won't go after people that bomb pro-life clinics.

00:32:15.000 That's the argument I'm making is that there will be enforcement bias baked into this.

00:32:18.000 Well, of course, there could be, but there aren't that many monopolists in the market.

00:32:22.000 No, that's fair.

00:32:23.000 That's a good counterargument.

00:32:25.000 You're right.

00:32:25.000 I mean, the whole point of antitrust is to go after the monopolist, go after the people who are using their market power to crush competition in the market.

00:32:33.000 And really, there are only four in the big tech market.

00:32:36.000 It's Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.

00:32:38.000 So if the DOJ antitrust division files a lawsuit against any of those four, two of those four, three of those four, four of those four, it's a good thing.

00:32:46.000 So then the final argument that I'd like to have you respond to is how successful was, in your estimation, the Microsoft 2001 landmark case where Microsoft had to defend its pseudo-monopolistic practices.

00:33:01.000 It got upheld and then overturned.

00:33:03.000 It was a mess of lawsuits.

00:33:05.000 Did it really result in Microsoft being less powerful?

00:33:07.000 Because they're still one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

00:33:12.000 It actually did.

00:33:13.000 I mean, it led to what we saw in the tech market for 15 years after that with Google and these other platforms that were able to come out of that.

00:33:22.000 The problem is that we have the problem with our antitrust laws is the way that our antitrust laws are written, the plain text of our antitrust laws, it is very clear that our antitrust agencies can law enforcement agencies, the Justice Department's antitrust division, the FTC, state attorneys general should be able to break up big tech.

00:33:40.000 The problem is we have what's called the consumer welfare standard.

00:33:44.000 And what the consumer welfare standard does is it essentially says that if the anti-competitive actions don't affect price, there's not an antitrust violation.

00:33:53.000 Well, here's the problem.

00:33:55.000 Google, how much does it cost to do a Google search?

00:33:58.000 You think it's free?

00:33:59.000 Gmail is free.

00:34:00.000 Facebook is free.

00:34:01.000 Twitter is free.

00:34:02.000 All these big tech platforms are supposedly free.

00:34:04.000 They're not free.

00:34:05.000 What they're doing is they're turning us into the commodity.

00:34:08.000 They're gathering as much intel as they can on us and selling us to advertisers, right?

00:34:14.000 That's how they make their money.

00:34:15.000 They look at our searches.

00:34:16.000 They look at our movements.

00:34:18.000 They look at everything that we do online and they sell us to advertisers.

00:34:23.000 They micro-target us to advertisers, and that's how they make their trillions of dollars.

00:34:28.000 But under the consumer welfare standard, we're not paying for the Google search with dollars.

00:34:33.000 We're not paying for Facebook with dollars.

00:34:35.000 We're not paying for YouTube with dollars.

00:34:38.000 And so therefore, these lawsuits oftentimes get kicked under the consumer welfare standard.

00:34:43.000 That's why we need to update our antitrust laws to make it very clear that this judicial activism called the consumer welfare standard does not apply to the tech market, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.

00:34:54.000 I hope you're right, Mike.

00:34:55.000 I'm going to remain cynical that Biden really wants to break up his biggest super PAC.

00:35:01.000 I don't think that I don't think he wants it.

00:35:04.000 I think it's smokescreen.

00:35:06.000 I hear you and I trust you, but I think when the pressure starts to come upon Biden, he's going to defend those people that put him in the White House.

00:35:15.000 Mike, final thoughts, I hear you, Charlie.

00:35:20.000 We'll have you back on.

00:35:21.000 Thank you, Mike.

00:35:21.000 Appreciate it.

00:35:23.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:35:24.000 Email me your thoughts as always: freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:27.000 Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.

00:35:33.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 09, 2023

The Nord Stream Bomb Bombshell with Kimberly Fletcher and Mike Davis

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