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00:01:44.000First, I want to get to some news of the day that is unfolding that is highly consequential to the thing that is fundamental to our civilization, our society, which, of course, the founding fathers agreed, and that's why they put it in the First Amendment: our freedom of discourse, dialogue, the ability to disagree with conventional wisdom.
00:02:59.000Elon Musk is getting involved in this because he believes that if you do not have a platform where ideas can be spread without an oligarch or a tech censor coming in, then that civilization will always be controlled by whomever those gatekeepers actually are.
00:03:18.000Speech is the most fundamental right that we have as human beings.
00:03:29.000Now, if you look at the reaction to Elon Musk wanting to buy Twitter, it should tell you everything that you need to know about how important it is to censor dissident ideas.
00:03:45.000We are seeing a coordinated, multi-institutional, international backlash against the world's richest man who wants to buy Twitter.
00:03:58.000Twitter right now has called an all-hands-on-deck emergency meeting.
00:04:04.000A Saudi prince who owns a big part of Twitter comes out and he tweets that he's going to reject the offer.
00:04:11.000And then Vanguard comes out and buys another 7% with other people's money, OPM, to try to block Elon's takeover of Twitter.
00:04:20.000Why is it that a Saudi prince, Vanguard, and all of the really angry, unhappy people on television are going from not caring at all about Elon to a straight 10 out of 10 to try to prevent him from buying Twitter and turning it into a free speech platform?
00:05:18.000So here's how it works: Jeff Bezos can buy the Washington Post.
00:05:21.000Elaine Powell Jobs is able to run The Atlantic.
00:05:25.000Bill Gates can dictate global health policy, but Elon can't buy Twitter.
00:05:30.000It's because Twitter really has become a place where the most consequential ideas and mostly journalists get their stories, and it's the top of the tributary.
00:05:42.000It's the beginning of the downstream effect.
00:05:46.000Is that if you are able to have a free and open Twitter, it will then open and liberate the conversations in op-eds.
00:05:54.000It'll open and liberate the conversation in newspapers.
00:05:58.000Tucker Carlson beautifully put it: it's where elite opinion is incubated.
00:06:03.000I'm saying it differently, but we're saying the same thing.
00:06:17.000I'm a big fan of all these alternatives.
00:06:19.000But those are means to a different end.
00:06:23.000We all know that New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post journalists are not going to flock to Getter.
00:06:30.000Getter is simply a means to a separate problem, which is if we can't be on Twitter, we as conservatives need some place to be able to at least notify ourselves of what's happening and workshop our ideas.
00:06:41.000Twitter was always something different, though.
00:06:44.000When I started on Twitter, I had no followers.
00:06:46.000Obviously, when you start, I started, I first created my Twitter account in 2011.
00:06:50.000Now, I'm not going to try to, let's say, play into this too much, but I was probably one of the few pioneers of conservative Twitter.
00:07:00.000In our heyday, we were getting 120,000-plus retweets a day.
00:07:05.000And one of the reasons was Twitter was kind of the open wild west of speech.
00:07:10.000And it was fun because you would tweet something like, there are only two genders, and not only would you receive positive, but every journalist and activist could come after you and quote tweet.
00:07:20.000And it was like this mishmash of different ideas.
00:07:27.000You could, all these different things were a component of it.
00:07:30.000But of course, as the country started to correct itself politically and started to become more Republican politically, Donald Trump winning in 2016, Twitter started to get blamed and then eventually infiltrated by people that realized that free speech actually was an impediment.
00:07:51.000They believe that freedom of speech is an impediment to Democrats running the country.
00:07:57.000Twitter saw Trump and all of his allies, myself included, as an existential threat to them trying to be able to control the country.
00:08:07.000Now, if you're on the political movement that is trying to increase speech police and content moderation, maybe your ideas are awful and garbage and terrible, and maybe you're a really sad person because you are.
00:08:21.000And we are seeing this at every corner.
00:08:23.000The reaction from people that are otherwise considered to be smart is extraordinary.
00:08:44.000He's one of the most thin-skinned people on social media.
00:08:47.000And this week, he tried to come for Senator Elizabeth Warren, who tweeted, let's change the rig tax code so that the person of the year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.
00:08:58.000Well, Elon wasn't happy, so he did what he always did and stomped his little feet and insulted Senator Warren, calling her an angry mom and referring to her as Senator Karen.
00:09:11.000They need to be able to control Twitter.
00:09:13.000Max Boot, who I don't really know why people listen to this guy anymore.
00:09:18.000He's verified on Twitter, says, quote, I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter.
00:09:25.000He seems to believe that on social media, anything goes.
00:09:28.000For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.
00:09:33.000So we need more people to be banned from Twitter because their ideas are so terrible and they spread disinformation.
00:09:39.000Speech is the only thing that keeps us from anarchy and chaos.
00:09:45.000If you're not talking, you're going to be fighting.
00:09:48.000MSNBC analysts say this is why we must abolish billionaires.
00:09:52.000When people are allowed to acquire this must concentrate influence, they'll inevitably man spread economic power into every other form of power.
00:09:58.000So Elon has made a $42 billion cash offer to buy Twitter, which, according to his own goal, would liberate Twitter from the occupation of the censorship regime.
00:10:12.000Let's get to another piece of sound here.
00:10:15.000So Elon Musk puts forward a bid to buy Twitter $42 billion.
00:10:20.000He is trying to be the liberator of Twitter.
00:10:22.000Twitter is currently under a tyrannical regime.
00:10:28.000Cut 88, Elon sees this as a moral good, and he is right that if we are going to have a functioning and decent civilization, then we must be able to have a town square or a public square where you're able to speak your mind.
00:10:45.000My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.
00:11:28.000One person who is an award-winning multimedia journalist says, if Elon Musk successfully purchases Twitter, it could result in World War III and the destruction of our planet.
00:11:37.000Well, you know, we wouldn't want to get ahead of ourselves here or start exaggerating things.
00:11:41.000Some of the other responses include just blue checks one after the other, blue checks being verified, people, saying that this is the death of democracy.
00:11:56.000Started Cut 77, Tucker Carlson had this on his program from an op-ed written from a Reddit CEO, written from former Reddit CEO, on how Elon's vision of free speech is bad for Twitter.
00:12:09.000But at the Washington Post, they served up something slightly different, a little more stealthy.
00:12:13.000They enlisted the former CEO of Reddit, an activist mediocrity called Ellen Powell, who couldn't manage to actually run Reddit, to write an op-ed with this title: quote, Elon Musk's vision of free speech will be bad for Twitter.
00:12:26.000And then the piece contained this line.
00:12:28.000Now, this line doesn't so much reveal a lack of self-awareness as it does commit murder against the entire concept they're trying to support.
00:12:35.000And here's what it is: quote: Musk's appointment to Twitter's board shows that we need regulation of social media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.
00:12:46.000Says the person who wrote the op-ed in the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, the world's formerly richest man.
00:13:32.000Look, is it ideal to just kind of have one billionaire after the other try to bail out the common cause of the commoner or people like us?
00:13:38.000No, it's not ideal, but I want to win.
00:13:41.000And if all of a sudden we have a fighting chance because Elon wants to go put on a jersey of Team Western civilization, team reality, and team humanity, sign it up.
00:13:50.000I'm in the business of defeating the left and winning.
00:13:53.000And if that means that all of a sudden we're going to be like, wow, I never thought that we'd all of a sudden be okay with the world's richest man swooping in and helping us out, let's do it.
00:14:02.000You know, some people, you know, they email me and say, Charlie, you know, I have a lot of principled problems with, you know, a rich person thinking they can solve a lot of problems for us.
00:14:10.000Okay, you might have some principle problems for it.
00:14:34.000In fact, he's at something more fundamental that if Elon said something racist, which he wouldn't, if Elon would have even gone after the environmentalists, which he wouldn't, if Elon would have gone after the trans lobby, nothing pales in comparison to the fight that Elon has now picked.
00:14:50.000Because now you got Saudi princes and the Department of Justice and the Security Exchange Commission, and you have billionaires and Vanguard all on the same page.
00:16:22.000Well, we still have a tour stop left, actually.
00:16:25.000And we have a really big one coming up next week with Candace Owens as we've been blitzing the country.
00:16:33.000We are going to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee next week.
00:16:36.000So you guys can get tickets to our UW-Milwaukee tour, tpusa.com/slash tour.
00:16:42.000And I just want to give a shout-out to our incredible, our brave, our courageous Turning Point USA students who have done such an extraordinary job planning these events, starting chapters, getting into the weeds.
00:16:58.000And our Turning Point USA staff, they have a very well-earned day off today as we remember Easter here at the beginning of Good Friday all the way to Easter.
00:17:08.000Okay, so you guys can check that out tpusa.com/slash tour.
00:17:13.000Okay, it says, this is a little confusing, but there's a, so Twitter has just, it's only confusing just because it's very technical financial language about public security law.
00:17:23.000So Twitter has now announced that its board unanimously voted to adopt a limited duration shareholder rights plan.
00:17:30.000The rights plan will reduce the likelihood that any entity like Elon, person like Elon, or group, gains control of Twitter through open mark accumulation without paying all shareholders an appropriate control premium or without providing the board sufficient time to make informed judgments and take actions that are in the best interest of shareholders.
00:17:52.000Under the rights plan, the rights will become exercisable if an entity, person, or group acquires beneficial ownership of 15% or more of Twitter's outstanding stock in a transaction not approved by the board.
00:18:05.000In this event, that rights become exercisable due to the triggering ownership threshold being crossed.
00:18:11.000Each right will entitle its holder, then the other person, triggering the rights plan, whose rights will become void if not exercisable, to purchase at the then current exercise price additional shares of common stock, having then current market value of twice the exercise price of the right.
00:18:25.000So if that's making your head spin, let me tell you what it really means.
00:18:29.000In layman's terms, this is saying that if Elon acquires more than 15% of the company, in order for him to exercise his voting rights, he must pay a 100% premium over the current price.
00:18:40.000They're basically creating an Elon clause.
00:18:44.000They lock Elon out of buying the stock, then they give him the rest of the shareholder, the stock at a discounted rate, hoping to level the playing field and driving up the price to show that the stock is more than what is offered.
00:18:56.000Now, so if Elon doesn't, it doesn't work here, then what Elon needs to do, and I think this is probably Elon's plan B, which we're going to noodle around with in the next hours, Elon will just start his own Twitter.
00:19:10.000Elon will then say, okay, I'm going to go sell all my shares.
00:19:12.000Since all you guys want to go buy shares now, I'm going to go sell my $12 billion of shares or whatever, however much he bought, or $3 billion of shares.
00:19:19.000And what if Elon dedicated $15 billion of shares to starting his own Twitter?
00:20:04.000It happens in merger and acquisition deals.
00:20:06.000Remember, when deals are about to go through, there's a much higher likelihood that they get killed than they actually happen because only one thing that is disagreeable has to pop up to actually kill the deal.
00:20:18.000So basically, what they're trying to do is they're trying to put forward clauses that make the hostile takeover of Twitter unlikely.
00:20:29.000Again, because the ability, the power, the capacity to shut people up is central to everything they're trying to do.
00:20:43.000If they are not able to shut people up, if they are not able to make you disappear from online discourse, then they immediately become less powerful.
00:20:54.000In an interesting turn of events, if Elon is able to take over Twitter or start his own, it would be one of the great death blows.
00:21:02.000It'd be great, one of the great blows of power to the very same people that seem to be untouchable, the World Economic Forum types, the Great Reset types.
00:21:13.000Big tech is monitoring, censoring, mining, and selling your online information.
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00:21:46.000They do not censor, mine, profile, or sell your information.
00:21:49.000I have gotten to know the SquadPod team quite well, and they are true patriots with a mission of dedicating themselves to your privacy, safety, and freedom of speech.
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00:22:16.000We're going to keep on going into the Elon story, but we do want to take pause and talk about Good Friday.
00:22:21.000Last night is where we remember the Last Supper, and the scriptures tell us that Jesus and his disciples went up to a place to pray and rest, and his disciples were supposed to stay awake and they fell asleep.
00:22:37.000And Jesus said to the Lord, not my will, but thy will be done.
00:22:45.000And then started what is now known as Good Friday.
00:22:48.000With us to help just tell that story and to communicate that to people that might not be Christian or serious about their faith or might be curious is my pastor and very good friend, Rob McCoy.
00:23:24.000Why do we take pause to remember what happened this day?
00:23:27.000Well, you know, if you search the scriptures, you never find the two words together, Good Friday.
00:23:33.000The reason why you call it Good Friday is it's from Aristotle, basically.
00:23:37.000It's that I think it's pronounced eudaimonia, which is the highest good.
00:23:44.000And as you've studied Aristotle, Charlie, the idea is that an object is good based on its ability to accomplish that for which it was created to do.
00:24:58.000And the idea that we would make jewelry out of the most painful capital punishment ever designed by man, which is the crucifix, the cross, where you basically suffocate because you have to pull yourself up on the nails.
00:25:17.000And one of the reasons why they went to break his legs was so that you would collapse on your lungs and suffocate, but he had already died prior to them coming to expedite his death.
00:25:31.000But all of this is the simple fact that God left the glory of heaven's throne for the humiliation of an earthly cross because he knows that mankind's purpose is far greater than to wallow in the slavery of sin.
00:25:50.000And that's why it's Good Friday, because not only was it good what the Lord did, he was born to die in our place, but it's good because he threw that death on that cross, paid the penalty to redeem man, to set us free from the slave block of sin, that we would know the truth and the truth would set us free.
00:27:19.000As it says in Philippians 2, let the mind that was in Christ Jesus be in you.
00:27:25.000Christ, though, being God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but took on the form of a servant unto death, even death on a cross.
00:27:38.000He brought a love that would love your enemies and do good to those who would spitefully use you.
00:27:46.000It's the only kind of remedy this systemically tainted world would find healing from, that he would go into the darkest heart, into the meanest character, and transform you because his kindness would lead you to repentance, which is change, and his spirit would take up residence in your life.
00:28:07.000If I have a moment, I just, can I say this last thing, Charlie?
00:28:12.000What I wanted to point out was simply this, that Christianity is different from every religion in the world.
00:28:18.000Because when we talk about sin and why this is Good Friday and why we have to deal with sin, people struggle with that word.
00:28:39.000But what happened is in every religion in the world, man's trying to reach God by hitting the bullseye, and we're never going to obtain perfection.
00:28:48.000I'm sorry, but it's just not going to happen.
00:28:50.000But in Christianity, Christ moved the bullseye to where our arrow is and gave us his righteousness and put it on our account and paid the penalty for our sin.
00:29:01.000And he's forgiven us past, present, and future.
00:29:04.000And we don't obey him in order to earn this.
00:29:09.000We obey him because he's done this for us.
00:29:12.000It's not out of obligation, but out of adoration.
00:29:16.000And this is the most beautiful thing about Christianity.
00:29:18.000It is a love relationship with our Creator restored through the blood shed on the cross by our Savior Jesus.
00:29:25.000Now, without getting too far ahead of ourselves, but the story starts with the sacrifice.
00:29:30.000Well, it doesn't start there, but then it results in a resurrection.
00:30:05.000And you can read works by Lee Strobel and many others who take a look at the tomb itself and Josephus and historians that articulated that moment in history.
00:30:22.000But it was the resurrection that changed it all because mankind has something in common.
00:30:30.000For time to exist, there needs to be a beginning and an end.
00:30:33.000And that when we breathe our last on this earth, we step into eternity.
00:30:41.000Now, every religion leads to God, but only one religion leads to heaven because the Bible says that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.
00:30:52.000But there will be the sifting where depart from me, I never knew you.
00:30:55.000Because if we try to stand before God in our own righteousness, there's none righteous, no, not one.
00:31:01.000But if we stand before him covered in the forgiveness of the blood his son shed, he's our advocate.