The Charlie Kirk Show - Why Elon Musk's Plan B Might Involve YOU

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's And the Charlie Kirk Show, the latest of Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter.

00:00:03.000 But what is Twitter?

00:00:04.000 Is it a company?

00:00:05.000 Is it a super PAC?

00:00:06.000 It's acting like something that is not a for-profit company.

00:00:09.000 We're going to explore that together in a very important episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:13.000 If you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:16.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA, which is your best bet to keep America free through an education movement that spans ages and demographics and places all across America.

00:00:25.000 tpusa.com.

00:00:26.000 We're going on tour.

00:00:27.000 We have one last tour stop at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, tpusa.com/slash tour.

00:00:32.000 The great Candace Owens will be joining me, tpusa.com/slash tour.

00:00:35.000 And support the Charlie Kirk Show at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:38.000 One last thing before we get started: Tuesday, April 19th at 6 p.m. at Bank of Springfield Center in Springfield, Illinois.

00:00:44.000 I will be coming and speaking at a dinner.

00:00:46.000 It's $100 per person, features a full dinner and a chance to support the local efforts of the Sangamon County Republican Party, the home of Abraham Lincoln.

00:00:53.000 And so I hope you guys check it out.

00:00:55.000 You guys can get tickets.

00:00:56.000 Type in Sangamon County Republican Party, your search engine.

00:00:59.000 I hope to see you there April 19th in Central Illinois.

00:01:02.000 Great folks there.

00:01:03.000 6 p.m. Bank of Springfield Center in Springfield, Illinois.

00:01:06.000 All right, everybody, buckle up.

00:01:07.000 Here we go.

00:01:08.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:10.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:12.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:16.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:19.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:20.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:21.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:01:23.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:29.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:38.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:41.000 Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.

00:01:44.000 For personalized loan services you can count on, go to andrewandtodd.com, the wonderfulandrewandtodd.com.

00:01:53.000 What is Twitter?

00:01:55.000 Many people would use a word to describe Twitter as, well, it's a social media application.

00:01:59.000 It's a marketplace of ideas, which would be laughable.

00:02:02.000 It used to be.

00:02:03.000 But no, I mean, technically, what is Twitter?

00:02:05.000 Is Twitter a non-profit?

00:02:07.000 Is it a charitable endeavor?

00:02:08.000 Is Twitter a super PAC or is it a company?

00:02:12.000 Now, on face value, it looks like Twitter's a company.

00:02:14.000 You can see what it's traded at.

00:02:16.000 You could see its stock price.

00:02:17.000 You could see how many shares are outstanding.

00:02:20.000 You could see all sorts of different information about Twitter.

00:02:25.000 However, it really does beg the question of whether or not it is actually a private company because evidence is showing it's actually a different type of thing.

00:02:34.000 The type of thing that we are dealing with is very important.

00:02:38.000 Twitter, as we know, is enthusiastic to censor political dissidents.

00:02:42.000 We are still suspended from Twitter because we refuse to delete our tweet.

00:02:46.000 Donald Trump has been kicked off Twitter, amongst many others.

00:02:49.000 Tucker Carlson, the Babylon Bee, this has all prompted Elon Musk into action to try and acquire Twitter, and we'll get into the latest news around that.

00:03:00.000 But we must study this carefully in case there might be a new type of thing coming onto the scene.

00:03:06.000 Something that is not a for-profit company, but something instead that pretends to be a for-profit company, but acts like something completely different.

00:03:14.000 And here's the evidence: is that a for-profit company would be deranged not to accept an offer much more valuable than what it's worth to sell to Elon Musk.

00:03:25.000 Any businessman who actually just wants to make money would be enthusiastic about selling their company to Elon Musk.

00:03:35.000 Instead, what's happening is the Twitter board has now put forward poison pill amendments.

00:03:42.000 They're trying to do everything they possibly can to try and kill the deal with Elon Musk.

00:03:46.000 Elon Musk is coming in with a $42 billion cash offer, and the board is coming up with every sort of argument.

00:03:54.000 They're doing mental calisthenics, if you will, to try to block the offer that Elon Musk has put forward.

00:04:03.000 Why would that be the case?

00:04:05.000 The answer is right in front of us.

00:04:06.000 It's because Twitter does not actually care about making money.

00:04:11.000 Twitter is not a for-profit vehicle.

00:04:13.000 Instead, they are a regime megaphone and a censorship machine that camouflages as a for-profit company.

00:04:21.000 A for-profit company would be much more interested in trying to get the maximum for their shareholders.

00:04:27.000 Instead, what you have at Twitter is ideologues disguised as capitalists.

00:04:33.000 You have people that are left-wing activists that sit on the board of Twitter that almost own no shares collectively.

00:04:43.000 Now, this is a very important point because if you're not dealing with a company and you take a step back, you say, well, all of a sudden, do market principles still apply to that company?

00:04:52.000 You see, we have been led to believe that market principles drive all behavior, that people are going to want to get rich and make profit.

00:05:01.000 And that is generally the case in most business transactions.

00:05:04.000 In most business transactions and merger and acquisitions, you're dealing at the very end of it is who's going to make money, who's going to get paid and get them out of the deal.

00:05:13.000 This has happened with some of the most famous merger and acquisitions, whether it be U.S. Airways merging with American Airlines, the biggest merger and acquisitions of the last decade, whether it be cell phone companies merging, whether it be Comcast and NBC merging into NBC Universal, all these different types of merger and acquisition trends over the last 20 years, usually it comes down to is, okay, I need more money, buy me out of my deal.

00:05:39.000 You know, maybe you can guarantee the debt and let's move on.

00:05:44.000 That's what happens when you have companies dealing with companies, but Twitter is a different type of thing.

00:05:49.000 It's not a company.

00:05:50.000 It's never been a company.

00:05:51.000 It might have started as a company.

00:05:53.000 Some people might have got rich along the way.

00:05:55.000 Jack Dorsey definitely made some money, but it changed as the type of thing it actually is in 2015 and 2016 and 2017.

00:06:03.000 As Twitter metamorphosized and transformed from just being something that churns out money, like a restaurant or a dry cleaning store or an airline or a casino, it changed into something that was instrumental to the people in charge.

00:06:19.000 It changed to something completely different because the people in charge of our country realized that Twitter, albeit might be a private company, it is, as Tucker Carlson puts it, the incubator for elite opinions.

00:06:32.000 It's where the important people go to find out what they actually believe.

00:06:35.000 Now, they don't independently find their own beliefs by reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, and thinking deeply about things, but instead, if enough blue check people on Twitter are saying something, it creates this overwhelming cacophony of opinion, and therefore that is what ends up being elite opinion.

00:06:50.000 It's a new type of thing.

00:06:52.000 We have not seen this sort of power over discourse since the alleged cigar-filled rooms in Washington, D.C. of lobbyists and backslapping deal makers.

00:07:04.000 We have not seen the type of power that a certain platform or company can have in recent memory.

00:07:10.000 The closest would be what we were told of the Roman Senate of important people that go to hear themselves talk, and that's how they feel, how that's how they get the opinions of how they feel.

00:07:17.000 You see this beautifully demonstrated in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, where opinion can be quickly shaped and moved just based on who is saying it and when they are saying it.

00:07:28.000 But no, Twitter is a propaganda organ of the regime and the globalist agenda.

00:07:33.000 Robust free speech is a direct threat to that agenda.

00:07:37.000 So we have to stop acting as if we're dealing with a company here.

00:07:40.000 But that really should make you take pause and say, wow, are we still living under capitalistic market principles?

00:07:48.000 If we were, the people in charge would be the people in charge of Twitter, the shareholders would just be, yes, not just the shareholders, the board of directors, because there is a difference.

00:07:56.000 I'll explain that difference.

00:07:57.000 They would just be screaming and jumping for joy.

00:08:00.000 Now, over Easter weekend, this momentum behind the story has just intensified.

00:08:08.000 And so this goes down to an analysis of human behavior.

00:08:12.000 What drives people?

00:08:15.000 Now, to a pure market capitalist, which I am a market capitalist, but not in the puritanical sense, they would say that profits drive all behavior.

00:08:27.000 The profit motive is everything.

00:08:29.000 That at the end of all this, and when it comes down to it, when the rubber meets the road, you can use whatever sort of filler term you want.

00:08:36.000 People want to get paid.

00:08:39.000 People want money.

00:08:40.000 They want value.

00:08:43.000 Now, the problem with this is it's not true.

00:08:46.000 And this is beautifully depicted in the Twitter example.

00:08:51.000 Profits do drive some behavior, but so do power and prestige.

00:08:57.000 And so does ideology.

00:08:59.000 What you're seeing play out at Twitter with their seeming rejection of Elon Musk's offer, and don't worry, Elon Musk has a plan B, and I'll tell you what that is, is they are sidelining the ability to get paid and what would be good for their shareholders and even their fiduciary duty.

00:09:15.000 And they are elevating on the hierarchy ideology, power, and prestige, and loyalty to the machine.

00:09:26.000 So many nefarious intentions have been exposed to what's unfolding at Twitter.

00:09:31.000 We now learn that the people, the elites in our country, it's not that they hate the idea of rich people owning stuff.

00:09:39.000 They just don't like the wrong rich people owning stuff.

00:09:41.000 Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post, perfectly fine.

00:09:44.000 Laurene Powell Jobs owning The Atlantic, perfectly fine.

00:09:46.000 Elon Musk coming out and trying to buy Twitter, a threat to democracy.

00:09:54.000 So what drives human behavior?

00:09:58.000 Market economists in the Austrian economic sense would say in praxeology, which is the study of human behavior, that it is incentives.

00:10:06.000 The question, and the thing that we have been under a delusion is we act as if only money is an incentive.

00:10:15.000 What if I told you that ideology can be more tempting, can be more alluring than money in your bank account?

00:10:23.000 That is what's unfolding in Twitter.

00:10:24.000 An unprecedented, unique, once-in-a-generation event where people decide not to get rich, but instead decide to remain loyal to an abstract ideology.

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00:11:50.000 The failure to understand human behavior is one of the reasons we are in the mess that we are in.

00:11:55.000 Not everyone wants to get rich.

00:11:57.000 Some people want to be powerful.

00:11:58.000 Some people want to be prestigious.

00:12:00.000 And other people, they just want their ideology enacted.

00:12:05.000 They're really living out the Twitter board, these group of activists, they're living out their belief by money is not as important as the ideology that they hold near.

00:12:19.000 So, as a counter to all of this, it looks like Twitter has enacted a poison pill.

00:12:25.000 Now, a poison pill was conceived by someone by the name of Martin Lipton, partner at the white-collar firm Wattel, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz.

00:12:34.000 The poison pill is used to do one thing and one thing only: make a proposed acquisition like Elon Musk less appealing for the acquirer.

00:12:44.000 The poison pill, named after deadly pills used by spies to avoid interrogation if they were captured, really came out of the scene in the 1980s as merger and acquisition lawyers came up the go-to defense against the feared corporate raider.

00:12:58.000 Now, the most common thwarted takeover of a company would be Netflix.

00:13:02.000 In 2012, Netflix successfully used a poison pill to fend off a takeover bid from Carl Icahn, one of the most famous corporate raiders in the 1980s, who is now worth over $16 billion.

00:13:14.000 I'm reading from Fortune magazine.

00:13:16.000 Now, Twitter is following suit, enacting a flip-in poison pill strategy in an attempt to prevent Musk from acquiring the company.

00:13:25.000 So, what is the significance of this?

00:13:27.000 The significance is that this is not in the best interest of Twitter.

00:13:32.000 It's not in the best interest of the shareholders.

00:13:34.000 Now, if anyone out there owns Twitter stock, you should be calling lawyers and seeing what your options are.

00:13:43.000 Because your ability to make money is now being thwarted by this poison pill strategy, and the fiduciary duty of the board has been put aside.

00:13:51.000 But Elon Musk has a backup plan.

00:13:53.000 Elon Musk has a plan B. In fact, Elon at a TED Talk last week said he does have a Plan B and he's going to be willing to use it.

00:14:03.000 Now, before we get into what that Plan B would be and what it is, let's first talk about what the media thinks about all of this, and why does the media think the way they do?

00:14:16.000 Well, on Cut 21, MSNBC is talking about Elon Musk.

00:14:20.000 It's Mika Brzezinski in Morning Joe.

00:14:22.000 And she says very clearly: Elon is trying to control people how to think.

00:14:26.000 That is our job.

00:14:27.000 That's the media saying it's our job to control how you think.

00:14:30.000 Mika Brzezinski from MSNBC.

00:14:32.000 Of course, Elon is not controlling, trying to control how people think.

00:14:36.000 Elon's trying to liberate how people talk and therefore end up thinking.

00:14:40.000 Play Cut 21.

00:14:42.000 While unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think.

00:14:53.000 And that is our job.

00:14:55.000 Yeah, if you look at the issues.

00:14:58.000 That is our job.

00:14:59.000 How dare you get in the way of us manipulating minds?

00:15:01.000 How dare you get in the way of us controlling people's thoughts?

00:15:05.000 But Twitter, I think we have underestimated how valuable Twitter is to the current propaganda regime.

00:15:13.000 We're seeing how important it is.

00:15:14.000 Look, no one got in Elon Musk's way when he wants to go start car companies.

00:15:19.000 In fact, that's helpful to them.

00:15:20.000 They want more electric car companies.

00:15:21.000 No one got in Elon Musk's way when he wants to go send rockets around the world.

00:15:24.000 They don't care.

00:15:25.000 In fact, it's somewhat helpful.

00:15:26.000 They don't get in Elon Musk's way when he wants to start Neuralink and mess with the human mind.

00:15:31.000 They don't get in Elon Musk's way when he wants to start the boring company and dig holes underneath Los Angeles.

00:15:36.000 In fact, it's well supported.

00:15:37.000 Mayor of Los Angeles, City Council.

00:15:39.000 Oh, yeah, Tony Stark is going to stave us.

00:15:41.000 He's going to be great.

00:15:42.000 No, but as soon as Elon Musk wants to spend some of his own money on a platform that is increasingly less valuable with less users, everyone freaks out.

00:15:52.000 Because they know what the world will look like under Elon Musk controlling Twitter.

00:15:56.000 It'll be a freer world.

00:15:58.000 They know that people will be able to express themselves easily, that there will not be the sword of Damocles hanging above your head that might drop on you at any time if you dare say something incorrect, like what happened with us on Twitter.

00:16:10.000 They also know that Elon Musk will do exactly what he said he would do in the Twitter shareholder letter, which is unlock Twitter's potential.

00:16:17.000 Now, I know a lot of you listening right now are not big fans of Elon Musk.

00:16:21.000 We have a split opinion on a lot of his stuff.

00:16:22.000 I don't like how he does as much work as he does in China. 0.73

00:16:25.000 I don't like the good things he says about China.

00:16:26.000 I certainly don't like Neuralink.

00:16:28.000 Do I want to live in a country where the world's richest man has to swoop in and parachute in his spare time to try to buy a platform to liberate our speech?

00:16:35.000 Of course not.

00:16:36.000 It's very unhealthy.

00:16:37.000 I wish that wasn't the case.

00:16:38.000 I wish we had a functioning government that actually protected the rights of the citizens to be able to speak online.

00:16:43.000 But you have to deal with the cards that you have.

00:16:45.000 You have to play with the team that you have fielded.

00:16:48.000 What we have right now is the world's richest man that wants to do what the government should have done a long time ago, to do what the market should have done, who's now starting to realize that it's not actually dollar incentives that drives human behavior, but it's a group of people that are incentivized by power, prestige, and abstract ideology.

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00:18:21.000 So Elon has a plan B. Elon has a backup plan.

00:18:25.000 Since there was a poison pill executed, what other plan would he be able to put forward?

00:18:31.000 Well, Elon Musk is tweeting rather, let's say publicly, and he says, love me tender, which of course is a song, and he's talking about a tender offer.

00:18:43.000 Here's what a tender offer is.

00:18:45.000 In corporate finance, a tender offer is a type of public takeover bid.

00:18:49.000 A tender offer is a public open offer or invitation, usually announced in a newspaper advertisement, by a prospective acquirer to all the stockholders of a publicly traded corporation to tender their stock for sale at a specific price during a specific time.

00:19:05.000 In a tender offer, the bidder contacts shareholders directly.

00:19:09.000 The directors of the company may or may not endorse the tender offer proposal.

00:19:16.000 Now, the significance of this is that you would then be able to vote whether or not you want Elon Musk to be on the board.

00:19:23.000 Might be a good time to go buy some Twitter shares just so that you might be able to vote on it.

00:19:28.000 It doesn't matter what the board wants.

00:19:29.000 You can go around the board.

00:19:31.000 Now, only Elon Musk with his megaphone, with his ability to communicate, all Elon Musk would have to do is this.

00:19:37.000 I think plan B involves our favorite psychedelic mushroom-loving podcast host in the hills of Texas.

00:19:44.000 All Elon Musk has to do is go on Joe Rogan Experience and say, go buy a Twitter share, vote for this, and crush the board.

00:19:54.000 Tucker Carlson agrees, play cut 22.

00:19:58.000 Musk himself has a ton of options aside from buying all the shares he wants.

00:20:01.000 For example, he might think of this: Elon Musk could enlist the public, the pro-free speech public, in his hostile takeover of Twitter.

00:20:11.000 So anyone who is against censorship could buy Twitter stock and then pledge his or her proxy votes to Elon Musk.

00:20:20.000 So you can go buy Twitter and then you could pledge your proxy votes to Elon Musk.

00:20:24.000 I'm going to do that.

00:20:26.000 If this ends up being the plan B, if this ends up being the backup plan, so be it.

00:20:33.000 Because Twitter is not a company.

00:20:34.000 It operates more like a Democrat super PAC.

00:20:36.000 In fact, Twitter operates similar to an ideological vehicle.

00:20:42.000 Dare I say Twitter operates like a government agency.

00:20:46.000 Twitter operates very similar to the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

00:20:51.000 You see, we've always been told that private companies are immune to the same type of behaviors that happen to the government.

00:20:57.000 And that's a lie.

00:20:58.000 That's a lie by strict puritanical market types that say the laws of the market apply to all things.

00:21:04.000 Actually, no, they don't.

00:21:06.000 They apply to some things.

00:21:07.000 In fact, most things they apply in the market.

00:21:10.000 But there are certain things that end up being immune.

00:21:12.000 There are certain things that end up being untouchable.

00:21:16.000 And one of those is Twitter.

00:21:18.000 Twitter is such high importance of what people think and how people think it, they must be able to shut up dissident opinions there.

00:21:27.000 So as this saga unfolds, Elon Musk continues to try to find either plan B or plan C.

00:21:34.000 Now, I know some of you listening on the radio say, Charlie, why are you spending so much time on this Twitter story?

00:21:39.000 I'm going to say this respectfully.

00:21:42.000 If you're saying that, you have no idea how important Twitter is in the American discourse.

00:21:48.000 If you're like, oh, no, I'm not on that Twitter stuff.

00:21:50.000 Well, guess what?

00:21:51.000 The talk show hosts that you watch on TV gets information from Twitter.

00:21:55.000 The newspaper columnists that you read in the newspaper gets information from Twitter.

00:21:59.000 It is where important people, I put that in quotes, important people get their opinions.

00:22:05.000 It is the top of the tributary.

00:22:07.000 It's the beginning of the assembly line.

00:22:09.000 It's the first step.

00:22:11.000 If you're not able to have speech in that area for people like me to be able to contribute to that when we had our heyday, 1.8 million followers, then your entire civilization is just living through a simulation.

00:22:25.000 That's exactly what they want.

00:22:27.000 Elon Musk, Cut 27 says there is a plan B, play cut 27.

00:22:33.000 If in this case, you are not successful in, you know, the board does not accept your offer.

00:22:38.000 You said you won't go higher.

00:22:40.000 Is there a plan B?

00:22:45.000 There is.

00:22:50.000 There is a plan B. Elon wants Twitter not for money, and this is every person in the media, they're attacking him.

00:22:59.000 He just wants power and all this.

00:23:00.000 No, he doesn't.

00:23:01.000 Elon Musk wants to be able to look at himself and say, I did something good for humanity.

00:23:05.000 He knows that we are the speaking beings.

00:23:07.000 If you do not have discourse, then what are we exactly?

00:23:10.000 Well, you're like Shanghai.

00:23:11.000 You all kind of live in these vertical housing units under the oppression of some sort of tech tyrant.

00:23:19.000 Cut 28, Elon Musk continues about saying that if I were to control Twitter, this is from a TED talk just recently, I want to be very reluctant to delete things and just be very cautious with permanent bans.

00:23:30.000 Play Cut 28.

00:23:33.000 I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and have just be very cautious with permanent bans.

00:23:44.000 Timeouts, I think, are better than sort of permanent bans.

00:23:51.000 But just in general, like I said, it won't be perfect, but I think we wanted to really have, like I said, the perception and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible.

00:24:07.000 As free as reasonably possible.

00:24:10.000 And that has sent the entire elite class into a frenzy.

00:24:15.000 How will you be able to prevent the distribution of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, if you had a free Twitter?

00:24:22.000 Let's play this out.

00:24:23.000 If there was a free Twitter and Elon Musk was in charge, then there wouldn't have been COVID lockdowns the way that there were.

00:24:30.000 If there was a free Twitter, then people would not have been able to have the same, they wouldn't have been as afraid of the virus as they otherwise would have been.

00:24:38.000 We would have had robust discussion with people like Dr. Robert Malone, banned.

00:24:41.000 Dr. Peter McCullough, censored.

00:24:44.000 Dr. Pierre Corey, censored, to be able to have a contrarian viewpoint when it came to COVID.

00:24:51.000 With a free Twitter, we would not have had mass mail imbalance.

00:24:55.000 You see, a free Twitter very well could have fixed some of our more frustrating structural issues.

00:25:03.000 Because a free Twitter with a publicly published algorithm like we had in 2016 results in people being able to make independent decisions and challenge authority and not live in a place of fear.

00:25:03.000 Why?

00:25:15.000 With a censored Twitter, people are far more likely to want to resort to a power structure, obey that power structure, and not think independently or freely.

00:25:28.000 With a free Twitter or a free internet, you'll be able to search for any topic, issue at your choosing, and you will not have to feel as if you are being sandwiched between mandatory opinions as if there's people in charge that always want to keep you down.

00:25:48.000 It is the kind of ultimate utopian idea of the marketplace of ideas.

00:25:53.000 And dare I say, I would say it would be unachievable because people say, oh, they're so cynical.

00:25:57.000 That's never going to happen.

00:25:59.000 Well, I lived it.

00:26:02.000 I was one of the first people on Twitter.

00:26:04.000 If you actually go to my Twitter account, which I can't even access right now, I started Twitter.

00:26:08.000 I was on Twitter in like 2011.

00:26:12.000 That was early.

00:26:14.000 Very early.

00:26:16.000 You can go all the way back to my old tweets.

00:26:18.000 I was asking for Donald Trump to run back in like 2011.

00:26:21.000 Anyway, it's a separate, separate issue for a different time.

00:26:26.000 And so the Twitter that existed in 15 and 16 made the country a lot more enjoyable.

00:26:33.000 It was fun.

00:26:34.000 And it also challenged authority.

00:26:35.000 And all those super weirdo Huffington Post people that write columns all day long that no one reads, they were so angry that people like Charlie Kirk were able to amount a following.

00:26:48.000 According to Axios in 2018, we had the third or fourth most engaged Twitter account on the planet because we understood the medium.

00:26:56.000 That's when Twitter was fun.

00:26:56.000 We were getting it.

00:26:58.000 It's when Twitter did not have the finger on the scale.

00:27:00.000 It's when they weren't shadow banning thanks to James O'Keefe.

00:27:03.000 We know that they were shadow banning.

00:27:05.000 And slowly and surely, all of a sudden Twitter, the window started to close on the ability to freely express on Twitter.

00:27:13.000 And it wasn't just the window to be able to freely express.

00:27:15.000 It's that content wasn't able to spread at the same sort of virality it was previously.

00:27:22.000 To go viral on Twitter was a lot harder because they totally changed the formula or the algorithm of what gets recognized and what actually spreads on their platform or as a publisher because they really are kind of a publisher.

00:27:36.000 And so as the window closed and it closed and it closed, we started to realize that our country actually became less free.

00:27:43.000 Is it any correlation that as Twitter became less free, so did the country?

00:27:49.000 Maybe that they're one and the same.

00:27:51.000 Maybe one caused the other.

00:27:52.000 Maybe one pushed the other. 0.94

00:27:54.000 Or maybe both matter.

00:27:55.000 Because if you have the place where people speak, it's going to be controlled, then your country will be controlled as well.

00:28:03.000 What's so fascinating about this Twitter saga is that both sides don't care about the money.

00:28:09.000 So you have Twitter that openly says they do not care about the money.

00:28:12.000 And you have Elon Musk openly saying he doesn't care about the money.

00:28:16.000 Play Cut 29, Elon Musk says, I don't care about the economics at all.

00:28:19.000 Play Cut 29.

00:28:21.000 My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.

00:28:38.000 But you've described yourself.

00:28:40.000 I don't care about the economics at all.

00:28:42.000 Okay, that's cool to hear.

00:28:45.000 He doesn't care about the economics at all.

00:28:46.000 Now, it's amazing how Elon Musk has gone from idol of the left to the villain of the left.

00:28:52.000 Isn't that amazing how quickly it can happen?

00:28:53.000 Elon Musk, man of the year, time man of the year last year, quickly turns to now being a villain.

00:29:00.000 Now, if Elon was saying he wanted to buy Twitter and make it more censored, in fact, he needs to have more sensibilities to the trans people or whatever, then people would be all for it. 0.99

00:29:12.000 And what's so, and we don't know how this is going to play out.

00:29:14.000 So anyone who's predicting, oh, I know how, you don't really know how it's going to work.

00:29:18.000 You know.

00:29:19.000 You've got a guy that's worth $300 plus billion dollars.

00:29:21.000 We don't even know his true net worth because we have no idea how valuable SpaceX is.

00:29:24.000 We can only speculate how valuable SpaceX is.

00:29:27.000 We have a guy who's worth $300 plus billion dollars, has Tesla, has Neuralink, boring company.

00:29:36.000 And he really doesn't, economics doesn't drive him.

00:29:38.000 Bezos economics drives him.

00:29:40.000 He bought the Washington Post as a rounding error to try to protect his regime.

00:29:45.000 But the other side also doesn't care about the money.

00:29:47.000 So who's going to win?

00:29:49.000 Well, only one of them is really, let's say, held hostage by security laws, and that is Twitter.

00:29:57.000 Musk can do whatever he wants until, and it's just by coincidence, of course, Joe Biden launches a criminal investigation into Elon Musk the moment that he announces this is going to happen.

00:30:14.000 He says that, and this is amazing, the Department of Justice and the Security Exchange Commission partners together to say that they are going to launch a criminal investigation into Tesla and some of the open market practices.

00:30:29.000 Of course, just a coincidence.

00:30:31.000 You know, this is one of the most consequential fights of a generation.

00:30:34.000 Whoever ends up winning this will then be able to decide and therefore control what can be said online.

00:30:41.000 And with that, the entire civilization will really be determined.

00:30:45.000 Yes, Musk could start his own Twitter.

00:30:48.000 I've said that.

00:30:48.000 That's hard.

00:30:49.000 Not that he doesn't have the money not to do that, but you have to rebuild a whole audience.

00:30:52.000 That doesn't solve the problem of Twitter already existing and people already using Twitter.

00:30:57.000 But when you have two sides that don't care about the economics, well, then they're both going to have to prioritize what they care about.

00:31:05.000 And what's amazing is that Musk and the Twitter board have something in common.

00:31:10.000 They both are prioritizing ideology above profit.

00:31:17.000 They are both prioritizing their vision of what they think Twitter should be.

00:31:21.000 Really, kind of treating Twitter like a nonprofit.

00:31:24.000 Both companies are.

00:31:25.000 Twitter only made $51 billion last year.

00:31:29.000 Usual EBITDA, earning before interest taxes deduction accrued.

00:31:33.000 EBITDA, usually you get maybe 10 times EBITDA in a tech deal.

00:31:39.000 Musk offered 45 times EBITDA.

00:31:41.000 It's an amazing deal for the company, and they know it.

00:31:44.000 They know that it's a great deal.

00:31:45.000 And Twitter is doing everything they possibly can to try to take the hostile takeover.

00:31:49.000 No, that's not a hostile takeover.

00:31:50.000 This is a liberation mission.

00:31:53.000 This is a rescue operation for speech in the West.

00:31:58.000 This is not a hostile takeover to try to turn it into pieces and break it apart.

00:32:04.000 Musk is not a corporate raider.

00:32:06.000 He's a liberator.

00:32:08.000 He is trying to bring this company back to what it could be and with it to have humanity be able to be more decent to one another, to be able to speak freely.

00:32:19.000 And boy, they're doing everything they possibly can to stop it.

00:32:22.000 How will this end?

00:32:22.000 I don't know.

00:32:23.000 Musk's plan B is probably going to tender offer, having everyone who owns shares be able to vote proxy to him.

00:32:28.000 I know I'll do it.

00:32:29.000 If that ends up being plan B, I'll be the first one to buy Twitter shares to do that.

00:32:32.000 Don't do that yet.

00:32:33.000 It's not sure we're going to do, and the price will go up dramatically if that ends up happening.

00:32:37.000 We'll go to $100 a share almost overnight.

00:32:41.000 Be one way to circumvent these people on the board of directors.

00:32:44.000 Musk has stumbled into, and I think he's even surprised, something that is so valuable to the machine.

00:32:52.000 And that's Twitter.

00:32:53.000 The ability to control your thoughts and your speech.

00:32:56.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:32:57.000 Email us your thoughts as always.

00:32:58.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:33:00.000 Thanks so much.

00:33:01.000 Talk to you soon.

00:33:04.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 18, 2022

Why Elon Musk's Plan B Might Involve YOU

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