Ep. 985 - Elon Musk's War For Twitter
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
175.64206
Summary
Elon Musk is trying to take control of the world s most popular social media platform, and he s doing it by buying it back from the company that gave it its name. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? And what happens if it doesn t work?
Transcript
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For years, the Libs told conservatives that if we don't like the way that they censor us
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on big tech platforms, that we should build our own.
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Maybe in the very earliest days of social media, there was room for competition.
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Remember MySpace, LiveJournal, Zanga, Friendster, lots of other sites.
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Eventually, a handful of platforms reached a critical mass and ensconced themselves in power.
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And they formed cozy relationships with the federal government.
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And they exploited legal liability protections.
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And they even outright defrauded the user base that gave them the critical mass in the first place.
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With the understanding that they would be able to see and post whatever they wanted to.
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Then the big tech companies pulled the rug out.
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It is simply not possible to build our own Twitter.
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And leftists know it, which is why they keep making the suggestion.
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Conservatives could try to wield the government to bring these massive corporations into line.
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And lots of conservatives don't have the stomach for it.
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And even those of us who do have the stomach for it don't have any real political power in a system dominated almost entirely by the left.
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But it turns out there's a third option beyond build your own Twitter and break Twitter.
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Buy Twitter, which is what Elon Musk is apparently willing to do.
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Spending more than $41 billion right now on offer.
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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.
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So republics govern through speech in the public square.
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Twitter makes up a huge portion of the public square.
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And Twitter is keeping lots of Americans out of the public square, including really prominent ones, including Donald Trump, right?
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Including the duly elected sitting president when they took him out.
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Which means as a practical matter that right now we are no longer living in a functioning republic.
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So Elon Musk is going to mount a hostile takeover to take it back.
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And what happens if that takeover attempt doesn't work?
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OK, so so you don't like to lose if in this case you are not successful in the board does not accept your offer.
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I think I think we would like to hear a little bit about plan B.
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Elon, of course, could have anything up his sleeve.
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He's currently got more than 9% of the company up his sleeve, meaning that he could sell all of it and tank the stock.
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Or he might have something even more creative planned.
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Or, or it might all just be a giant troll to expose the hideous corruption at Twitter and throughout Silicon Valley.
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Either way, it is the most hopeful moment for conservatives that we have had in politics since election night 2016.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from AI Survivor 2020, who says, wow, the show hasn't even started yet.
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And YouTube already has a warning underneath this video.
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Guess they all fear the raw power of an Olstradamus.
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I actually sort of like it when, when YouTube puts that banner, the CDC, go listen to Dr. Fauci, do whatever we tell you to do beneath my videos, even, even before they begin or when they've only been out for an hour.
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Because that's an advertisement to people to say, hey, come here to learn about what's actually going on with COVID today.
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He's going to tell you stuff that we don't want you to know.
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Twitter users love the potential Elon takeover.
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I'm talking about the leadership over at Twitter.
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Just to be sure that we're not here knocking down straw men, that we're not here stuck in our own echo chamber.
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I'm really pleased to be joined right now by the staff and leadership over at Twitter headquarters.
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And two, what is your reaction to the news that Elon Musk might be taking over Twitter?
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It's about as articulate as I thought it was going to be.
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And they're upset because they're going to lose a lot of political power.
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The stock soared when Elon Musk announced that he had bought some of it.
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It's about the real value of Twitter, which is that Twitter allows you to control discourse in America.
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By the way, Twitter is the smallest of the big tech platforms by far.
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It doesn't have a particularly large user base.
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Facebook, for instance, has a much, much larger user base than Twitter.
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And Google controls way more information, really, than either of them.
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But Twitter sets the news cycle because of the people who are on Twitter, you've got a ton of journalists.
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You've got a ton of those blue checks who have a lot of influence.
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And so if you can control the narrative on Twitter, in many ways, you're controlling the news cycle.
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That's the reason that Elon's going in there to buy it right now, I suspect.
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That's at least why people are excited that he's going to do that.
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And there's a lot of powerful entrenched interests who want to make sure that that doesn't happen.
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So in response to Elon Musk's potential takeover, Saudi Arabia has just come out and said,
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listen, the kingdom has a lot of stock in Twitter.
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And we don't think that the price that Elon is offering, which is at a huge premium, by the way,
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It's over 50% over what the price was when Elon bought into Twitter and the 38% over what the price
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was right before Elon announced that he had bought into Twitter.
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But the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for whatever reason, says, no, we don't think this is high
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How much of Twitter does the kingdom own directly and indirectly?
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And two, what are the kingdom's views on journalistic freedom of speech?
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And that second question is important because we know that Saudi Arabia likes to take a hacksaw
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And notably, in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, who was not merely just some independent journalist
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Jamal Khashoggi did write for the Washington Post.
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He also was on the wrong side of political issues in Saudi Arabia.
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This became a big political football a few years ago.
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What is it, Saudi Arabia, about Twitter that is so valuable to you?
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Saudi Arabia just pumps money out of the ground.
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Some, the smallest big tech company doesn't matter as a financial issue to Saudi Arabia.
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It matters as a political issue to set the agenda.
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And so frankly, even if the Elon takeover doesn't work, or even if he backs out in the end,
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the fact that he's exposing all of this corruption there is a service into itself, unto itself rather.
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And you're seeing this kind of bare knuckle politics throughout the system.
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The RNC has just made an excellent announcement.
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So rare to say that about the RNC, which usually only does extremely stupid things and clutches defeat
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The RNC is going to pull out of the Nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
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That commission, it sounds really nice, doesn't it?
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No, the commission on presidential debates is a rigged game.
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Bob Dole, who was the 1996 Republican nominee for president.
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Bob Dole, major force in Republican politics for half a century.
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Dole came out and he said, this is not fair to Trump.
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Because yes, while technically the nonpartisan commission on presidential debates
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Dole said, no one on the commission supports Trump.
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Even the Republicans on the commission are those squishy Republican types
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who were effectively working for the Democrat campaign.
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And we know this in all the major presidential years.
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And for the past, well, I don't know, 20 years or so, quarter century.
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the debate moderators have tried to throw the debates for the Democrat.
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Certainly you saw this with Chris Wallace just outright lying
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Candy Crowley during the debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
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contradicted Mitt Romney dishonestly and through the entire debate.
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It probably wasn't sufficient to actually throw the election.
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And something that I think conservatives have woken up to,
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We're going to take the wins when we can get them.
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There's always so much bad news for conservatives,
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And not only that, but they say flattery will get you nowhere.
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Ron DeSantis, as he's signing this major abortion ban,
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You see how that type of mindset has led to things
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that really shocked the conscience in our society.
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We just saw this terrible scandal in Washington, D.C.
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and they found five who were basically infants, premature.
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They would have been, but they would have been able to survive,
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just like we would treat the trash from our lunch or something like that.
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And it's really horrifying to see that that could go on in our country,
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And I want to thank her and Daily Wire for exposing it.
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I'm glad that Governor DeSantis recognized Mary Margaret Olihan,
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There is a good chance that Roe versus Wade will be overturned
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This would be the most important political development,
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If you're talking about now saving hundreds of thousands of babies per year,
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One, they set the stage for the court challenge.
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And then two, what happens in a post-Roe versus Wade world.
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And I think DeSantis has a really good political compass.
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And I think as far as politicians go, at least,
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The other reason he's doing it is because it's a political winner.
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because it means that there are now real incentives
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for Republican politicians around the country to follow this stuff.
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And oh, by the way, it's the right thing to do.
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For years, the other side muddied the waters on abortion
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We just think it should be safe, legal, and rare.
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that the old Clinton answer, safe, legal, and rare,
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Two major problems here with what she just said.
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You're only gonna get that in eternity in heaven.
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some artificial sense of celebration and happiness,
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Because it involves a mother killing her child.
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We're talking about emotional trauma here, right?
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You have to turn the way you're thinking about it
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and you've got a couple of kids in the background.
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in this woman's understanding of what happened,
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because abortion means killing someone in your family, right?
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if they were really confident in their decision,
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I suspect neither of these ladies watch my show
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I suspect they've probably ensconced themselves