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Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
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Hey, everybody. Big Tech goes to Washington. Peter Hassan from the Daily Caller is here on the Charlie Kirk show with insightful analysis on what happened in the hearings. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, they were all there. They answered questions from our lawmakers. Please consider supporting our program@charliekirk.com support charliekirk.com support. Please become a monthly supporter if you can at charliekirk.com support Big episode in store. Big tech was in D.C. we have the insight and analysis for you. Buckle up, here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
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Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
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C
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
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B
I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy, his spirit, his
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love of this country.
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B
He's done an amazing job building of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point usa. 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. That's why we are here. Hey everybody. Welcome to this special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show. I am joined by Peter Hasson. He's investigative editor at the Daily Caller News Foundation. He, he's also the author of the Manipulators, a critically acclaimed book exposing big tech's biases against conservatives. We're talking about that primarily today. Peter, first of all, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
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C
Absolutely. Charlie, thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
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B
Of course. So there's a little bit of a hearing that happened today. We had the biggest companies on the planet when it comes to tech and overall testifying in front of the house for I caught snippets of it and I caught bits and pieces. I was traveling today, caught the top line highlights. But for our listeners that didn't get a chance to watch the uninterrupted, let's just say procession of multi trillion dollar companies telling us how they've never done anything wrong. Give us the highlights, give us, give us the takeaways and let's dive into some of the policy implications.
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C
Yeah, well, so one of the most important things that this hearing did is at least forced these CEOs of the world's most powerful tech companies to at least go on the record about hot topic issues such as are your supply chains dependent on slave labor? Are you discriminating against conservatives? And so that really is something that hasn't happened enough is these companies being forced to answer, answering these important questions. And so, to me, it was kind of a. It was kind of an interesting hearing in that, you know, there were almost different avenues. You could see lawmakers going down. And a lot of the. Democratic lawmakers were focused highly on labor issues and things like that. And Jerry Nadler went on this whole tangent about how Facebook and Google are hurting journalism, which, of course, is his way of doing a favor for his friends in the media. But you also had a decent number of conservatives who really held these companies feet to the fire over important questions. I thought Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has been a very outspoken voice about these important issues, antitrust, political bias, being a better China. He's been kind of at the forefront of all of these issues. So he really had a standout hearing, as he often does, in terms of forcing these companies to address these important issues. To me, what I thought was a really telling moment was all of these CEOs were asked if they would admit that China is stealing technology from American companies, which is just a fact. Anybody who knows anything about tech or about China, and especially both, knows that that is the case. And what was really telling was that only one. And Mark Zuckerberg, who isn't a particularly courageous person, but Mark Zuckerberg was the one CEO to say, yeah, of course they are. And Jeff Bezos under Pincha would not admit that. And that really tells you all you need to know, because they're really more interested in coddling the Chinese Communist Party than they are in telling the truth.
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B
That's a great point. So let's just make sure I get the actors correct. We had Tim Cook Bezos, the guy from Google, who. I can't pronounce his name, and I don't want to mispronounce it. And then Mark Zuckerberg. Is that right?
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C
Yes, yes, that is correct. Of those four, Mark Zuckerberg was the only one to, you know, point out that the emperor had no clothes.
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B
That's good for him. I give him credit for that. He has been spoken against, outspoken against China, but let's put him in the hot seat. Was there any conversation around censorship of dissident voices, people that don't subscribe to the I hate America always, there is no God orthodoxy?
- [05:47]
C
Yeah, that's. You know, that is something that conservative lawmakers. You know, Jim Jordan did a good job pressing Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook. Matt Gates always does a good job on that. And there were a handful of others. Congressman Buck, Congressman Stubby, who did hold seat to the fire on that. And it was telling that his go to was always to dodge. So one point, Mark Zuckerberg was asked, does Facebook have ideological diversity among its content moderators? Which should be a really easy question to answer. And it's. You hope the answer would be yes, because they have so much power. Facebook's content moderators do. And yet he couldn't answer the question. He kept dodging and dodging and dodging. So it was really telling. And also, I thought Congressman Stubman made a. He had a noteworthy anecdote where he was saying he was trying to access Gateway Pundit's website through Google. And regardless whether you like Gateway Pundit or hate Gateway Pundit, it's a really telling anecdote where he was saying that he was trying to access their website just by typing gayly puddit into Google from his computer in the capital. And he couldn't find them. They would not show up. And then after the hearing was announced, he tried it again, and a second time, of course, he was able to find them. Because once they know people are watching them, then they try to cover their butts a bit. And that really is one of the reasons that these oversight hearings are so important, because it at least forces them to pretend, even if for a short period of time, it forces them to at least try to pretend like they're doing the right things.
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B
That's a great point. I am kind of confused why a Democrat led Congress was able to pull this off. And that's interesting. I mean, this is the first time we've seen all these four oligarchs together, right?
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C
Yeah, yeah. You know, we've had. Sometimes we've had one or the other, but this was the first time we've
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had all four of them.
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B
Yeah, that's. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. I have a question on that, Peter. So was there any conversation about the recent censorship around the virus and hydroxychloroquine, or was that topic just kind of avoided?
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C
Yeah, no, there were a number of GOP congressmen who brought that up. And they made the point that, look, it's not about whether you think someone should take it or whether you don't think they should take it. The point is that these big tech companies, these Silicon Valley oligarchs without medical degree degrees are censoring people who do have medical degrees and are giving their opinion based on their expertise and what they've learned on this crucially important topic. And it was really telling that they just kept falling back to the same old like, well, we don't want to promote misinformation, so that's what we're doing. But it's misinformation. According to whom? According to these left wing hacks out in San Francisco. And that is really just so telling about how these companies approach everything is it's only misinformation. If it's misinformation that the left or if it's information that the left doesn't like, and if it's genuine misinformation that helps people on the left, they don't count that as misinformation at all. And same thing with quote, unquote hate speech. It's not hate speech, it's the left wingers like it. And I thought that was really telling just throughout the hearing of all these oligarchs, as you correctly called them, pretending like they don't have real political bias issues at their companies. As I point out in my book, I document it thoroughly that these are real problems across the board. One example I cite in the book is Google employees are more comfortable with colleagues who openly support antifa than they are with colleagues who are conservatives. And there are Google employees who use company resources to organize anti Trump resistance protests. Of course, if they even know you're a conservative, they're coming for your head. And these are the kind of people that conservatives are up against are the people who only see the world through a single lens in which they're right, conservatives are wrong, and you're a hateful person who doesn't deserve to speak if you disagree with them. And that is who is running the world's most powerful companies. And it really has far reaching impact for politics and for people who don't agree with the mainstream or not even the mainstream view, people who just disagree with the elite viewers. Because you know, that's something where oftentimes the elite view is out of touch with the majority of the American people. But because that they control the tech companies in the mainstream media, they decide that we can't air that. I thought to kind of jump off the tech discussion for a second. Tom Cowton's op ed was a great example of that which he articulated a view that was supported by the majority of Americans and he had the elite media and politics say, oh no, how dare somebody say this? And it's the same phenomenon in tech, in which case if you have people state obvious facts that the majority of Americans agree with, if the left wingers who run these companies don't like it, they're going to shut you up. And so it really is just such a crucial fight. I'm glad that a lot of conservatives are really starting to wake up to it, because at a certain point, it's going to be too late.
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B
That's well said, Peter. And so was there conversation around the Sherman Antitrust act and breaking up these companies?
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C
You know, there was not really. And I think that's kind of telling about how kind of it really is. I think there's a problem with, with Washington politicians being so in bed with these tech companies that sometimes they'll mention things in passing, but they aren't really caring about it. And a lot of that is because you have to look at who their donors are. And if Google's a donor to you, if Google employees are donating to you, you're a lot more likely to turn a blind ey to the abuses that these companies are so clearly, so clearly carrying out at a daily basis.
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B
Peter, were there any people that were involved that were funded by Google politically?
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C
Well, Jim Jordan has. He's received money from Google in the past, and that's so it was interesting that he was toughest on Facebook and Twitter, which you can draw your own conclusions, but it was noteworthy that he was really toughest on those companies. And he didn't really touch the antitrust angles of the antitrust problems with respect to Google, which it's kind of an interesting thing that there are are multiple problems with Google. There are the political bias problem, and then there are also the antitrust problems because they're so big, they're a monopoly. And so they really would like conservatives to only talk about the political bias issue and not the antitrust issues. And so, you know, it's kind of telling which Republicans are only willing to talk about bias, which is important. I wrote a whole book about it. It's so important. But the other part of that is that Google has a monopoly. And the reason that bias is so important is because they have a monopoly. And so in some ways, it's kind of a shame that the hearing was in the House, not in the Senate, because I know a lot of people would have loved to see Josh Hawley really put these tech CEOs on their heels by asking them all these important questions.
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B
These companies have supergovernmental sovereign power. And one thing that people like you and Tucker have been railing on correctly is what is the line of saying we're going to break them up. And if you say that line doesn't exist, then just make your Position clear. Just say, then we should repeal the Sherman Antitrust Act. And I don't believe that. I don't. And I think that we, as conservatives, we talk about how we love freedom, we talk about how we love liberty, but we don't talk about how that freedom and liberty could ever possibly be infringed upon by something other than government. And I think it's mostly government that does that. I don't like the government, obviously. I built a whole movement around that. But what happens if a private company becomes more powerful than your government? And that's where I really wrestle with that. If that private company starts acting like, you know, an Argentinian dictatorship from the 1960s and wants to, you know, put dissidents in prison, you know, political prisoners, and kick them off the platform, what do you do? So I guess, yeah, that's a very interesting point. And that's disappointing that some people would take money from Google. I think it's inexcusable, and I guess people can draw their own conclusions there. Any comments on that, Peter?
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C
Yeah, well, you know, I think it's important to note that there are some people kind of on the right who act like no one's ever allowed to criticize corporations because, you know, free market. But that's not at all the case. You look at the, the conservative tradition, you can shrink it back. There's always been this skepticism of power wherever power is.
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B
Exactly.
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Even Abraham Lincoln in this, in, you know, in 1864, expressed his concern that corporations would have too much power. You know, he got, quote, in front of me, he said, I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, causes country, goes on to say corporations in this future, he's concerned about it. Corporations, if they become enthroned, then rupture will always fall. And that's really what we see when you have these companies that are so large because they're so powerful. And we all know that when someone has too much power, attempts to corrupt them, attempts to corrupt those around them. And that's what we've seen here.
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B
So let's dive deeper into that. Peter, why is that the conservative movement is so, let's say, convinced of fundamentalist market dogma?
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C
Well, I think a lot of it has to do with, you look at the think tanks who kind of tend to set the tone for a lot of the establishment gop. If you look at where their money comes from, if you're taking money from, you're probably a lot less likely to say, well, maybe these corporations deserve skepticism as well, as the government. I think another part of that is because the left has gone so far just overboard. It's now you have people embrace their most prominent party members, like aoc, embracing socialism. I think a lot of Republicans have kind of walked into this trap where they think if you criticize corporations at all, then you're. You're the same as, you know, aoc or that. Because the left is so you know
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that you really have to. That you therefore have to worship everything corporations do. And so that really hit. Is kind of how we've gotten to this point, and it's kind of long overdue for correction, because so much of the. Just so much of the mainstream Republicanism is to say that if business is doing it, then it's okay with us. And that really is not where. That's kind of a. It's a manipulation of what conservatism is, which is at its heart, a skepticism of power where it's solid.
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B
Yeah, that's exactly right. And we love liberty, and we hate anyone who infringes upon it. And mostly that kind of liberty would be infringed upon by a governmental bureaucracy, but not limited to that. And I think that's a great point. So can you talk about any takeaways from this hearing as far as policy implications, major winners and losers, promises that they made that need to be followed up upon? Because what ends up happening at all these hearings? This happened with the Zuckerberg hearing about two years ago. He's like, I'll have to get back to you. I'll have to get back to you. I'll have to get back to you. And he basically never did. So can you fill us in on that?
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Yeah. So that was honestly the number one phrase that we heard.
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Again, I caught the highlights, but I just could imagine, by the way, they're trained to do that. They're trained by their $6,000 an hour attorneys. Just say you'll get back to them, and then we'll just put everything in writing.
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Yeah, and it's kind of amazing that you called that, because that's exactly what. But they did throughout the hearing. It's like, well, you know, I don't know the specifics of that, but all of my staff follow up.
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B
And what's amazing, Peter, before you continue, how can you be a CEO and not to know that? I mean, it's just like. I mean, at what point are you able to defer blame anyway? Go ahead.
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Exactly.
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C
Yeah.
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Well, because you think you would know what's going on in your Own company. Right. Theory. If you're one of the most powerful people in the world, running one of the most powerful companies in the world, but you apparently have no idea what your company does, it's kind of hard to believe, but. So that's kind of something where, you know, especially on political bias, there was a lot of, well, we'll follow up with you on that. And that's something where, you know, Republican politicians are really going to have to demand that these. They're really going to publicly call out and these companies, if and when they don't follow up or give, you know, BS answer. I will say, honestly, I think a lot of the Democratic politicians seemed eager to defend these tech companies from charges of political bias. And I think in that respect, I think that's one reason the tech companies kind of emerged from this doing all right, because they know that the Democratic politicians will defend them as long as they slant these platforms towards Democratic politicians. And so really, the oligarchs, honestly, I think when it was nowhere near as bad for them as it could have been. I will say, though, I don't think Facebook was a winner here, but I think everybody but Facebook definitely lost by just blatantly lying under oath about how China is stealing technology.
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B
Can you. Yeah. Was there any conversation by any of the Republicans about the leaked video from Google where they said they're gonna do whatever it takes to defeat Donald Trump again that we saw thanks to Breitbart? Or was there any conversation on how Breitbart doesn't show up in Google search results?
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Yeah, yeah, that came up. And I'm sure you can predict what happened, which was the usual hand waving and like, well, you know, sometimes employees go rogue and things like that.
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C
And
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Jim Jordan actually brought up, again, he focuses on political bias, but not antitrust. But it's good that he does at least talk about bias. He brought up that they had talked about, that Google employees had talked about in these leaked emails, how they had really just admitted that they were kind of a silent vote for Hillary Clinton. And he said, how do we know that that's not going to happen again in 2020? Which of course it will. And the Google CEO basically said, well, I'm not sure what you're talking about, but we're unbiased and kind of just skirted around the question. And so there was kind of some talk of that. And several of the GOP committee members did bring up the fact that conservative websites have been targeted by Google. And again, the answer was always like, well, you know, These are glitches. These employees went rogue. You know we would never do that intentionally, but of course they absolutely do. And I talk about in my book the Manipulators, how I obtained these internal documents where Google employees like a few days after the election are already talking about how do we keep this from happening again? And their answer was to bury conservative sites in Google search because if people can't find them, people aren't going to be able to read them, people aren't going to be able to be convinced by them. And Google VP was part of that conversation. So this idea that oh, the only people that ever go rogue are these bottom tier people is just absurd because it really is, from the VPs on down, a whole culture dedicated towards enforcing their left wing view on the world. And what's also telling, and one of the reasons Google really, really wants Joe Biden to win is because, and you can look this up, is Google had a massive revolving door with the Obama administration. It was really, really corrupt that you have people go from Google to the bomb administration back to Google and they know that that cozy relationship is going to just pick up right back where they left off if Joe Biden wins and Google is going to be in the White House and people from the White House are going to be heading over to Google after a year or two and it's going to be a really cozy relationship. That, that's great for Google, great for Obama, for Biden bureaucrats, and really so great for your average American who wants to be treated fairly.
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B
There should be something illegal about that. I really believe that if you're a senior administration official, you should be part of your compact that you have to go do, I don't know, community service for five years or something and you can't be employed. I guess no one would want those jobs, but maybe the good people would because they actually would do it for the right reasons. I don't know. Call me a radical. Tell us about TikTok. I think that it should be banned from our country. It's a CCP infiltration to get our children data mined by the communist dictators. Tell us about TikTok.
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A
Yeah, TikTok is just a tool of the Chinese Communist Party and it's dangerous for a number of reasons. One, because I would bet both of my arms, because it's what's happening, that the Communist Party is just hoovering up that data that TikTok absorbs from its users. And TikTok mines way more data. As bad as Facebook, Google and Twitter are, TikTok mines way more data and they send it straight to the ccp. And then the other threat that TikTok poses is that you essentially have the CCP acting as like the news aggregator for America's teens. And so it's not surprising that a lot of these riots and things like that, they get tons of momentum on TikTok because when you have the Communist party choosing what your 18 year old or 16 year old sees, perhaps it's not surprising that he ends up turning out to be an anti American radical who hates his country. And so really TikTok is just an enormous threat, both long term, short term, medium term. And what's really staggering is how the mainstream media outlets aren't interested in holding them accountable. You look at the Washington Post, they have sunk the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos. They have devoted a ton of resources towards building their platform on TikTok. And so all of their incentives are to not undermine TikTok but to build it up. Because they're bringing in page views from TikTok. And then you look at the New York Times, of course they have this joke of her reporter named Taylor Lawrence who her whole job is basically just to write on what the teens are doing. I jokingly call her like the New York Times teen reporters. And really it's the same phenomenon there because her whole job is to pretend to explain to adults what the teens are doing on TikTok. And so where the hearthen journalism would be to say, well, why is TikTok behaving the way it does? What are the threats posed by it? Her personal self interest is to be a shill for TikTok and to say no, everything is great. That's what we've seen is she has really just hand waved away all these concerns and she's accused people of xenophobia and racism or criticizing TikTok, which I mean, tell that to the Muslims that China is putting in concentration camps. It really is just so absurd that criticizing China makes you xenophobic when China is literally the most racist country on the face of the earth. And there are too many people, mainstream media, who just really aren't interested in holding TikTok's feet to the fire or even pretending like it's an actual problem, but it really is and it's a problem now as we see with like these riots, because TikTok is definitely pouring fuel onto the fire. But imagine in 10 years, you have 10 years of American youth just being fed this propaganda a day to day basis, it's going to Be really dangerous for our country. You think our youth hate America now? Far too many of them do. Imagine how, like how. How angry.
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C
Yeah.
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A
In 10 years.
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B
I have a question. So people say there's a lot of conservatives on TikTok. Is that true? I don't go on, by the way. I just have to say I was introduced to TikTok 18 months ago. I find it to be a repulsive platform aesthetically. It's all a bunch of garbage and teenagers and nothing interests me. I just think it's not my style. And I'm not trying to insult anyone listening to this that enjoys that. So God be with you. But are there conservatives on there? Because we get a lot of emails that say, you don't understand. There's a lot of conservatives here, I guess.
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A
I mean, maybe a few. And maybe like, in terms of content consuming, not so much in terms of content creation. And even to the extent that there are, that's still playing the game on the Chinese Communist Party's terms, because at the end of the day, you're feeding them your data, you're encouraging people to use this dangerous platform and to kind of go off of what you were saying. It really is just kind of an awful platform in that it's kind of mindless content. Free stuff, dancing, right? And then the only content you get is like, well, now here's a snippet of anti American propaganda. And now back to the mindless dancing. And here's a little propaganda.
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B
I have a curveball question. You might not know the answer. I'm trying to figure out why Bezos would be favorable to China. They shut down Chinese operations. Alibaba hates them. What is. What am I missing here? Is it because of all the cheap plastic they sell on their website that no one really needs, that is made in slave labor camps? What am I missing?
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A
Yeah. You know, I think for a lot of these tech CEOs, it's that, you know, they are. At least they're salivating at being able to enter the market, the Chinese market, even if they aren't in there right now. And so even just kind of like the winning the lottery is, you know, it's kind of the, like, you know, carrot, you're hanging in front of the donkey, that's like, well, it's right around the corner. Just be more sympathetic to us.
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B
Well, yeah, I guess for Jeff Bezos, it's like, I'm worth $180 billion. I want to be worth 360 billion. I mean, at what. I mean, this guy, I. I Try have to be very careful with my words. I try to be. But what drives him anymore? I mean that the fact he won't speak against China. It's not. Alibaba hates him. He can't sell his products in China. I guess he wants to be able to sell them eventually.
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A
Yeah, you know that's, it's as far as I know that would be my best guess.
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C
That's well informed.
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A
The guy's just apparently appears to be driven by, you know, just power and ego and it's kind of telling where his morals are when you look at his charitable giving or lack thereof. He's not tithing or anything close to it like under 1%. And so he doesn't seem to morals at all. He just seems driven by money, power and ego. And that's dangerous when you have someone that powerful driven by that toxic combination.
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B
I've talked about this with many people. Chris Buzkirk from American Greatness. I've been inspired by Tucker Carlson on this where Bezos is different then JP Morgan Chase and John D. Rockefeller because they actually loved America. They had a ton of money obviously, but they loved America. He hates our country and he's just able to continue to amass literally $180 billion. I have one question that I want to get to your book in the couple minutes we have remaining. I'm looking at Elizabeth Warren's tweet here. It says Mark Zuckerberg's emails confirmed Facebook brought Instagram to buy off competition. Bezos couldn't guarantee that Amazon wasn't using seller data undermine small businesses. Apple and Google couldn't answer why they bully their competitors. Robert Reich similar. Was there any agreement here between the right and the left that maybe these companies shouldn't be more powerful than our government? Was there a synergy possibly that was there.
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A
You know, there was some of that, you know, like there are a few Republicans who have been good about it. You look at, you know, Matt Gaetz has been good about calling out these antitrust issues. So there was a bit of that. But you know, it did seem like a lot of the Republicans seem to care, you know, and again the political bias thing is so, so important. But it can't be only that and it can't be that can't be calling out the antitrust issue because it has to be both that they're, they're, you know, two sides of the same coin.
- [35:13]
B
You're right.
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C
Yes.
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B
Yeah, I see that. I see some of these guys that will they use the anti bias is kind of Like, I'll pay the toll.
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C
Yeah.
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B
And. But they won't be bold enough to say, oh, maybe it's not a good thing that Google's more powerful than the Pentagon.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's really kind of. They're doing it disservice to their constituents who actually care about these issues to just give the passing. The passing mention of bias. And what's also frustrating is they're not even good about talking about bias. You had one congressman asking why his emails were going to spam. It's like, that's not helping anybody. That really is not a Q. That's just that, believe it or not, campaign emails oftentimes go to spam.
- [36:07]
B
Well, maybe because you're spam.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Maybe because they are.
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B
You are. Maybe because your message is spam.
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A
Yeah, yeah, it's.
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B
Well, I. One of these guys, you know, they should have really. They should have yielded their time to people like us that actually understand the platform. I mean, one of these guys was asking Mark Zuckerberg about Twitter or something. Am I mistaken here?
- [36:30]
A
No.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Like, the ranking GOP member asked Mark Zuckerberg and demanded an answer why Donald Trump Jr. Was suspended. And Mark Zuckerberg is like, well, that was Twitter. That wasn't us. And so that's kind of just the. It was like the microcosm of, like, issues with the Republican Party.
- [36:52]
B
My gosh. Is that what that is? So well put. Where was Twitter?
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A
They chickened out and they wouldn't. Would not show up. And, you know, it's also telling that they wouldn't show up to defend themselves. And maybe that's because they didn't want to be put under oath. And, you know, if you look at, like, the last time Jack Dorsey was under oath, he was asked, you know, if. If you would apologize to Meghan McCain for not taking down death threats against her. And he said he would. Undergrowth. He said he would, and then he didn't. Months went by, months went by, months went by and he didn't. And it took like, six months for him to keep a simple promise like that. And so that's kind of, you know, I imagine that was like, part of the issues that Twitter and Jack Dorsey don't want to have to keep their word. And so they don't want to have to give their word under oath. And so I think they just said, screw it, we'll skip the whole thing.
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B
So your book is called the Manipulators, right? Tell us about it. Tell us how people can purchase it and learn more because you're on this issue. I grew up in the conservative movement that believed in fundamentalist free market dogma that now I have come to now understand that it was funded by the very companies that don't want to be touched so that they can remake America in their ridiculous image. And they have more power than our government, they work harder, and they have more technology. And I'm very worried about it. Tell us about your book.
- [38:33]
A
Yeah, so, you know, it's basically like the. One of the biggest untold stories of the Trump era is just how these companies have really just been turned against conservatives like never before. I think a lot of that can be traced back to Trump winning in 2016, because that was the moment that the institutional left realized that they had lost control of the American thought process. Because it used to be you'd have the few major newspapers and the handful of networks, and they really just had a stranglehold over what people could see and hear and read, and therefore a stranglehold over what they thought. And one of the reasons social media has been great for the conservative movement, or, you know, one of the reasons it is a threat to the institutional left, is because it allows conservatives to really outflank the left and just, you know, and people can spread the message themselves to their. Their mom, to their neighbor.
- [39:42]
C
Exactly. Right, yes.
- [39:43]
A
So that would. Trump's election really was just a shock to the institutional left, especially the ones in Silicon Valley. And that is why we've seen that, you know, this whole panic about misinformation online and hate speech, and it's all about tightening control over what people say online because they want the only things you can say online to be what they believe. And maybe they'll have like the token Republican, but essentially they want the Internet to look like an MSNBC panel. You know, you have like 80% left, and then the one like token Republican, like a Max who's.
- [40:24]
B
Yeah. Or who's like George Scarborough and he hates half the country anyway.
- [40:27]
C
Yeah.
- [40:27]
A
And so just this kind of rigged game. And so that's really what we've seen. And as I show in the book, these companies are top to bottom, staffed by left wing radicals who not only hate large swaths of America, a lot of them hate America itself. And these are the people who are deciding what you can say online. There's one kind of just mind boggling anecdote that I talk about in there where Google employees. It's like the worst excesses of campus radicalism, which I know you've fought against all those Same like safe space. Crybabies are now at Google, Facebook and Twitter. They had to graduate. And so to give an example of that, it was there was an internal Google presentation where someone used the word, an executive used the word family friendly to refer to something to like mean child friendly. And there was this internal uproar because Google employees without kids were offended that they weren't considered a family. And one person said, well, you know, my family is me and my family for polyamorous roommates, and we count as a family, too. And just the same people you would see melting down over a Ben Shapiro speech are now at Google melting down over a Ben Shapiro Facebook post. And these are the people who are wielding the levers of power at these companies. And as I show in the book, these companies are really on one hand, they've been gradually tightening what you can say, but they've been smart in that they haven't done it too quickly. And so they can really just gaslight people and just say, well, Facebook isn't that different today than it was yesterday, and yesterday wasn't that different than it was two days ago. But if you look at a scale of months or years, it's a radically different platform because of the way that they're tinkering with their algorithms and because of who's tinkering with their algorithms. And it really, if Democrats take power in the election, it's going to get much worse because one of the few things keeping these companies from just entirely deplatforming conservative thought is fact that there are at least some conservatives in power. It trumps in the White House. But they will lose any such fear of that if, you know, if you have wholesale Democratic government, get rid of it. It's going to be pretty rough.
- [43:30]
B
I agree. Peter, thank you so much for joining us. Check out his book the Manipulators. You can follow him on social media. Peter J. Hassan. And he does great work at the band website daily caller.com so make that your homepage and screw Google. Stop taking money from Google Republicans. All right.
- [43:51]
A
Thank you so much for having me on, Charlie. I appreciate it.
- [43:55]
B
Thanks, Peter. Talk to you soon. Thank you.
- [43:57]
A
You're welcome.
- [43:59]
B
What a great episode that was with Peter Hassan from the Daily Caller. Please consider supporting our program@charliekirk.com support. Email us directly at freedomarliekirk.com get in the running to win a signed copy of the New York Times bestseller the Maga Doctrine. Type in Charlie Kirk. Show to your podcast provider. Hit that subscribe button. Give us a five star review screenshot it and email us@freedom charliekirk.com and send me your story of social media censorship. I might profile it on an upcoming episode. Thank you guys so much for listening. God bless.