The Tucker Carlson Show - Senator Rand Paul

The ban on TikTok amounts to the most far-reaching act of censorship in the history of the United States, and it's an attack on the right of American citizens to receive their information from any source they choose. Most of us believe that was a fundamental right, but of course, almost no one in Washington will admit that that's what's happening. They tell us no, instead they re framing what's very obviously censorship as an act of self-defense against a foreign adversary, and if that sounds familiar, it should be. It's the same rationale they used to spy on Donald Trump, among other things, once they designated him a tool of Russia. And as always, they're doing all of this in the bluntest, least restrained terms because it's your fault, because it s your fault because it is your fault for allowing the Chinese communist party to get their hands on our information and our thoughts and ideas. And if you don't agree with me, you're a bad American, which is a problem, aren't it? And if it's not, then you're not a bad one, because that's not a problem at all, it's a symptom of something else entirely, because you are the problem, and you're the one who needs to be dealt with, not the other way around, and that's why you need to wake up to the real problem, because the problem is not the one you're dealing with, and deal with it. it's the one that you're trying to deal with the one we're all trying to solve The one that's problem, the problem you're all of which is China, and China's . that's the problem and the one the Chinese Communist Party, which you're really trying to protect or in the first place , not because is what you're here to do a country that s our own people from? this is a country, not , right? This is not a country -- it s ? That's right here, right here right here in the USA, right here , you're in the middle of the middle on the earth? And What s going on here? What do you would do if you were in charge of the country you want to protect from China?

00:00:00.000 the majority of house republicans amazingly just aligned with the biden administration on one of

00:00:16.400 its top priorities to ban the social media app tiktok this amounts to the most far-reaching act

00:00:22.820 of censorship in the history of the united states it's an attack on the right of american citizens

00:00:28.120 to receive their information from any source they choose most of us believe that was a fundamental

00:00:33.360 right but of course almost no one in washington will admit that that's happening that's not at

00:00:37.800 all what's going on they tell us no instead they're framing what's very obviously censorship

00:00:43.160 as an act of self-defense against a foreign adversary and if that sounds familiar it should

00:00:48.700 be it's the same rationale they use to spy on donald trump among other things once they designated him

00:00:54.600 a tool of russia and as always they're doing all of this in the bluntest least restrained terms

00:01:00.860 because it's your fault actually quote voting against the bill is a vote for the chinese communist

00:01:06.880 party proclaimed neocon congressman dan crenshaw the nikki haley of texas quote the opponents of

00:01:13.580 this bill aren't defending free speech they're defending chinese access to american data and

00:01:18.760 american minds not a good look you're a bad american if you don't agree with me says dan crenshaw and the

00:01:26.620 rest of the liars said similar things and maybe some of them believed it that is possible given the

00:01:31.320 median iq and the congress but just for a moment let's consider their argument rationally let's just

00:01:36.880 assess it for a moment the federal government very much wants to protect us and our children from china

00:01:42.980 that's what they're telling us now let's assume for a moment that that's true and let's further

00:01:48.100 assume that the chinese government is in fact a greater threat to our happiness and well-being

00:01:52.760 than our own government is that's a stretch if you think about it in fact it's totally unsupported by

00:01:58.220 evidence of any kind but for the sake of argument let's just stipulate that that is in fact true

00:02:02.840 so if you were in charge how would you go go about protecting the united states from china let's see

00:02:09.920 the first thing you would do is prevent the ccp from buying american farmland and controlling our food

00:02:16.280 supply that way the chinese government a government they claim is our greatest enemy would not have

00:02:21.900 the power to starve our population to death that would be key you'd get right on that of course

00:02:27.700 you'd also want to make sure that the ccp had zero control over our water or energy or communications

00:02:34.520 infrastructure basic elemental things things you couldn't live without you wouldn't want the chinese

00:02:39.220 anywhere near those things you would not allow it those would be the first priorities on your list

00:02:44.140 and then you would make certain that the chinese didn't control your economy you would not for

00:02:49.860 example export your entire industrial base to china simultaneously making them rich and you poor

00:02:56.200 you would not do that nor would you allow them to hold a meaningful portion of your debt

00:03:01.060 that would be reckless as hell you wouldn't allow the communist party of china to send billions

00:03:07.200 to your most prestigious universities thereby gaining control of the minds of the next generation of your

00:03:12.260 leaders and needless to say you would not allow chinese citizens by the tens of thousands to invade your

00:03:17.900 country over your southern border that would be insane you would furthermore keep chinese citizens out of

00:03:24.340 medical scientific and r&d facilities you definitely would not fund their bio labs or cover up for them

00:03:31.180 when they unleashed killer viruses on the world no you wouldn't why would you do that and then in questions of

00:03:37.540 foreign policy you would not spend a ton of time worrying about taiwan it's far away and honestly

00:03:42.800 who cares no because you don't have all the money in the world or all the time in the world you would

00:03:48.880 narrow down your priorities and you would spend your energy and military might on your own hemisphere

00:03:54.560 where you and your population actually live the people you want to protect they live in the western

00:03:59.220 hemisphere so you would not allow the chinese government to colonize pretty much every country in the

00:04:05.340 americas including canada and mexico no and you certainly wouldn't let the chinese of all people

00:04:12.280 build the infrastructure in places that you directly control like the supposedly american virgin islands

00:04:18.140 where the roads are paid for by china that would be crazy and humiliating and very easy to stop

00:04:23.760 you wouldn't have to put up with that so you wouldn't put up with it not for a second and just to make

00:04:30.660 sure that china understood you're doing all you could to protect your own people because that was

00:04:35.820 really your goal because being dan crenshaw you really care about your own people in your own

00:04:40.660 country because of that you would immediately shoot down any spy balloon from china that floated over

00:04:46.580 montana obviously that's some of what you would do and yet somehow the u.s government even dan

00:04:53.600 crenshaw who really cares about your children protecting him from china has done none of that and has no plans

00:04:58.760 to do any of that ever so china still makes our antibiotics and our vitamins but what dan crenshaw

00:05:07.040 is doing is banning a social media app and probably not the first social media app dan crenshaw will call

00:05:14.660 for banning or the biden administration with the help of republican leaders will try to ban

00:05:19.620 so what is this about well it's not about china it may be about other foreign countries it's definitely

00:05:26.280 not about china because pay no attention to what they say watch carefully what they do

00:05:32.240 rand paul of kentucky who's of course a sitting united states senator seems to be one of the very

00:05:37.180 few in washington who's watching what they do not what they say and so he is opposing this effort to

00:05:43.060 ban a social media app not because he is a tool of china though of course they're doubtless calling him

00:05:47.380 that now but because he is a dot connector from way back and we are honored to have him join us now

00:05:52.840 senator thanks so much for coming on thanks for having me tucker i'll go ahead and presume to speak

00:05:56.740 for you too i don't think most people are really that in favor of tiktok or the chinese government

00:06:01.380 i assume you're not i'm definitely not um but republican leaders seem to believe two things that

00:06:06.780 contradict one another one they believe that on some evidence that um joe biden is like kind of

00:06:13.480 controlled by china and that joe biden is pushing transgenderism and yet and that is true but they're

00:06:19.300 aligning with joe biden who is suddenly claiming that tiktok is bad because it's too chinese and

00:06:24.200 it's pouring filth into the minds of our children now he can't be sincere about that obviously so why

00:06:29.700 would they be joining him in this do you have any idea you know my concern has always been with the

00:06:34.000 centralization of power with giving up power i don't care whether it's a republican or a democrat

00:06:38.400 president i don't want any president to have the power to ban apps that are sold on an app store

00:06:43.360 and that's essentially what this is going to happen 180 million americans uh put dance videos up and

00:06:49.380 whatever else is on tiktok and they choose the terms of those service the same way people on facebook do

00:06:54.720 and does facebook scrape your data sure does google scrape your data do all of these soft these giant

00:07:00.500 tech companies scrape your data they all take your data but the thing is is there are now accusations

00:07:05.640 they say oh tiktok's owned by the chinese government the chinese communists own it well that's not even

00:07:12.000 true you can't say stuff just over and over again that's not true tiktok is owned by about 60 of it's

00:07:18.260 owned by international investors from all over the world 20 is owned by the two chinese software

00:07:24.760 engineers that created the app and 20 is owned by the employees of tiktok which 7 000 of them are

00:07:31.540 americans so there's a significant nexus of americans in the ownership and then there's a significant nexus

00:07:37.040 of americans using this and they say oh well the chinese government owns it it's just frankly

00:07:41.980 not true now the company that owns tiktok also owns something like tiktok that is censored and

00:07:48.740 the chinese let that be broadcast throughout china the chinese government does have a member of the

00:07:54.860 board it's called doyen it's the chinese tiktok but they don't have a member of the board of byte dance

00:08:00.900 they don't control byte dance and the data is now kept in oracle cloud uh centered in texas and this

00:08:07.660 has been done because the company wants to try to exist it's a very popular app they it has a great

00:08:13.720 deal of value so they're doing anything they can to comply and yet the hysterics in the house are just

00:08:20.620 shut them down shut them down communism this communism that look i've written two books about chinese

00:08:26.540 communism and what it does both during the covid leak and also what it did during mao's reign so i am

00:08:32.380 no fan of chinese communism but at the same time we can't sort of like you know emulate the chinese

00:08:39.320 to try to protect our way of life becoming like the chinese and banning things tiktok is banned in china

00:08:45.220 they don't have tiktok they have a censored version in china that the chinese government does control but

00:08:50.600 they don't control tiktok over here if we ban tiktok we're simply becoming and acting like the chinese

00:08:56.080 so there is a hysteria afoot but you in america there are things that protect you can't just take

00:09:02.640 people's stuff in america if you have a company i can't come take tucker carlson network just from

00:09:07.780 you because one of your investors is from chinese from china i have to go to court i have to prove that

00:09:13.300 somehow you're a chinese communist and that you're giving data to them these are all allegations they

00:09:19.000 may or may not be true but you can't take someone's company worth billions of dollars without

00:09:23.960 proving it in a court of law likewise you can't take the rights of freedom of speech of 170 180

00:09:29.860 million people who want to express themselves so i think the courts will rule against this they did

00:09:35.240 twice in the last four years in federal court and they just recently overturned the montana ban so i

00:09:41.420 think there's a very good chance this is unconstitutional but that doesn't seem to be deterring any of

00:09:46.120 my colleagues in the house hillsdale college offers many great free online courses including a recent

00:09:56.460 one on marxism socialism and communism today marxism goes by different names to make itself seem less

00:10:02.800 dangerous names like critical race theory gender theory and decolonization no matter the names this

00:10:09.560 online course shows it's the same marxism that works to destroy private property and that will lead to

00:10:14.660 famines show trials and gulags start learning online for free at tucker for hillsdale.com that's tucker

00:10:24.220 f-o-r hillsdale.com tucker says it best the credit card companies are ripping americans off and enough is

00:10:34.080 enough this is senator roger marshall of kansas our legislation the credit card competition act

00:10:40.760 would help in the grip visa and mastercard have on us every time you use your credit card they charge

00:10:47.340 you a hidden fee called a swipe fee and they've been raising it without even telling you this hurts

00:10:52.960 consumers and every small business owner in fact american families are paying eleven hundred dollars

00:10:59.080 in hidden swipe fees each year the fees visa and mastercard charge americans are the highest in the

00:11:05.980 world double candidates and eight times more than europe's that's why i've taken action but i need

00:11:11.900 your help to help get this passed i'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the

00:11:18.460 credit card competition act paid for by the merchants payments coalition not authorized by any candidate or

00:11:24.140 candidates committee www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com

00:11:27.980 their argument doesn't even make sense i mean they're saying that tiktok is foreign controlled

00:11:35.700 i'm willing to believe that and that they're spying on us i i definitely believe that but google and

00:11:41.780 facebook are spying on us on a much greater scale and they're foreign controlled too they're run by people

00:11:47.360 who hate the united states demonstrably they say so so google and facebook are not a threat but

00:11:53.620 tiktok is so if you're making that case like i know you're lying immediately right and the thing

00:12:00.760 is is that the bill is written such that if 20 percent of ownership is foreign that's about what

00:12:07.260 tiktok is or if you're controlled by a foreign entity but that's someone's opinion they're just

00:12:12.220 saying it's controlled by a foreign entity um i think it's probably controlled by profit like most

00:12:16.620 things in the marketplace they want to make a profit they've spent about a billion dollars trying to

00:12:21.200 comply through this organization called cifius which has to do with companies that have some

00:12:26.680 foreign ownership trying to comply and have an american board have the data kept over here they've

00:12:31.840 done nothing but try to comply and the hysteria goes on and on and on but the first amendment's more

00:12:38.220 important than anything they're talking about and so is the fifth amendment but there are many people

00:12:42.480 including some of your former colleagues at fox who believe that there's an exception to the

00:12:47.300 constitution that it doesn't apply when there's national security the problem with that is there's

00:12:52.440 always a national security for any excuse for anything you want to do and so i don't think you

00:12:57.900 throw out the constitution when there's allegations of some kind of connection you have to prove that

00:13:02.540 before you take someone's stuff and before you take someone's first amendment privileges well and of

00:13:08.160 course it's not so we know it's not what they say it's about um obviously and i know there's a

00:13:13.200 furious lobbying campaign by various investors hoping to scoop up tiktok cheap and from competing

00:13:18.640 companies that want to crush a competitor i get all of that and some people are really bought and

00:13:24.220 paid for in washington i don't want to blow your mind but that's true but there's also an ideological

00:13:28.640 battle here and a lot of the people voting to ban tiktok object to the messages on tiktok like

00:13:37.400 that's true yeah it's content once you start objecting to content what you're objecting to

00:13:43.840 is speech and i object to a lot of it i don't use it i've never been on tiktok i read about what's on

00:13:49.140 tiktok but i don't use i don't use tiktok but the thing is is everybody wants the government to be the

00:13:55.220 parent they're like oh my my teenagers they've got phones and they're on all this stuff i just can't

00:14:00.700 deal with it will you help me by taking stuff off of there but once you start doing that there's a

00:14:06.320 whole host of things that can be taken off of there what about you know people who say that

00:14:10.920 you should have religious liberty or that we shouldn't teach transgenderism in the in the

00:14:15.600 elementary schools you know those are you know heretical views as well should those be taken down

00:14:21.080 so i think it's the opposite with tiktok i think they're promoting a lot of left-wing things

00:14:25.340 but then there's also people on tiktok and my wife's always telling about the liberals of tiktok

00:14:30.320 these people that are exposing the liberals on tiktok and apparently they're pretty good

00:14:34.200 investigative i think it's a woman that does this and she's pretty damn good at finding things out

00:14:39.880 and exposing things but the bottom line is the more information the better if you don't like it

00:14:44.120 don't use it that's what happens in a free country but it happens in an authoritarian country when you're

00:14:48.900 connected to government if you don't like something and you shut it down and that's what's happening now

00:14:53.600 they don't like the content they make an allegation that is controlled by the chinese government

00:14:58.380 which there isn't objective evidence of and you probably have to go to court to prove something like

00:15:03.280 that yeah but i don't know i'm disappointed by this area because there are some people who have

00:15:08.620 been relatively good in looking at government and the constitution who actually on this go completely

00:15:13.420 uh insane and just throw out all rules and say oh we got to do something about chinese communism and

00:15:19.340 this isn't the way emulating chinese communists is not the best way to combat chinese communist yeah

00:15:25.140 and they're almost exclusively neocons which should tell you a lot but last question um

00:15:29.880 this action is supported by like the you know the left the real left um and by the neocons

00:15:40.200 it seems to me if this precedent stands then the next target for shutdown by the government or for

00:15:48.260 sale by the government would be x which is of course the platform they hate most because it's the freest of

00:15:52.640 all the platforms in the world and so what would stop the congress or the next administration from saying

00:15:59.820 you know elon musk is effectively a tool of russian disinformation doing what they did to him

00:16:04.980 what they did to trump to him and forcing a sale of x i mean what would stop them the thing is is i

00:16:12.100 don't know enough about x to know who his other investors are probably some of them live in foreign

00:16:16.380 countries but think of the whole list of countries that have unsurvy things i'm not a big fan of egypt's

00:16:22.180 government they don't have elections they have indefinite detention they prosecute political and

00:16:27.460 religious opponents so do most of the countries in the middle east but i'm not about uh i wouldn't

00:16:32.660 give i wouldn't give each of any more military money frankly but i wouldn't ban your ability to

00:16:37.140 trade with them if you want to trade with egypt having embargoes is different than me not giving

00:16:41.940 them free money so i'm not forgiving most country including china any money i don't want to give china

00:16:46.140 research money i don't want to share secrets with them i don't want to share arms with them there are all

00:16:50.380 kinds of things i don't want to do with china but i'm not ready to forbid people trading with them

00:16:54.840 and that's sort of where we're headed from this but you can see the potential of look a lot of

00:16:59.880 people have saudi arabian investors but saudi arabia did some things that i don't find you know

00:17:04.560 they don't really have a free country they killed a journalist they chopped him up and threw him out

00:17:08.360 of a plane so these are things i object to but i'm not sure i want to prevent anybody from having a

00:17:13.720 saudi arabian investor like uh you know live golf or something we're going to say they can't exist

00:17:18.660 because we don't approve of the saudis and so that's what we're headed towards though and there's

00:17:24.160 every bit the argument that a regime like saudi arabia collects data on their enemies you think

00:17:29.200 any shiite muslims in saudi arabia don't are not followed by the police and don't have their data

00:17:34.440 being collected so all the things we accuse china of of doing are being done in dozens and dozens

00:17:39.680 of countries vietnam's a communist nation are we going to say that nobody does business with vietnam

00:17:44.740 most people argue that it's a little better since we do business with vietnam even though they still

00:17:49.660 don't have the basic freedoms that we have people would actually even argue that the the trade with

00:17:53.920 china overall that the people are freer than they were under mao it's gone backwards a little bit in

00:17:58.980 recent years but it's still way better than it was under mao and their level of living is better in

00:18:03.720 china and their level of freedom is probably better than it was but to say we're going to get rid of

00:18:08.540 all that and have no trade you can't own anything with these people is really a recipe for war when you

00:18:13.660 quit trading with people and you forbid interactions with other people or that's when war occurs yeah

00:18:18.600 and we should keep our own country free it seems like that would be a top priority uh senator rand paul

00:18:23.940 of kentucky thank you very much for joining us and good luck with us

00:18:27.160 you

The Tucker Carlson Show - March 14, 2024

Senator Rand Paul

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