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April 26, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:40
Elon Musk Drinks Leftist Tears | Ep. 1481
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Twitter accepts Elon Musk's offer to buy, and we examine all the panic and all the possibilities.
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Well, in one of the most dramatic business moves in modern American history, Elon Musk has now bought Twitter.
There was a lot of talk last week that Elon Musk had offered $56.40 or $54.20 a share for Twitter stock, and that Twitter had figured out how to avoid this.
That they had put a bunch of poison pills in the deal, that they had attempted to avoid Musk making some sort of hostile takeover bid.
And now it appears that Twitter is going to sell itself to Elon Musk and the company will be taken private, which means it is no longer subject to governmental oversight in the same way as any publicly traded company.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter accepted Musk's bid to take over the company and go private in a deal that would give the world's richest person control over the social media network, where he is among its most influential users.
The $44 billion deal marks the close of a dramatic courtship and a change of heart at Twitter, where many executives and board members initially opposed Musk's takeover approach.
The deal has polarized Twitter employees, users, and regulators over the power tech giants wield in determining the parameters of discourse on the internet and how those companies enforce their rules.
The two sides worked through the night to hash out a deal in which Musk plans to take Twitter private in a deal that values the company at $54.20 A share.
The takeover would mark one of the biggest acquisitions of a tech company and will most likely affect the direction of social media.
Musk will bring a commitment to a more hands-off approach on speech moderation to a company that has struggled to reconcile freewheeling conversations with content that appeals to advertisers.
So this was always the lie, by the way, that Twitter used when it would stranglehold content.
The idea was that if you allow people to speak freely, advertisers won't want to advertise anymore.
Or, alternatively, if you allow people to speak freely, then advertisers can pick and choose where they wish to advertise, and maybe everybody will stop harassing advertisers about where they choose to advertise.
The simple fact is that Twitter, as it was operated, was a leftist organ.
And you can see that by the freakout that Musk's takeover is now engendering in the left.
It is incredible to watch the left lose its absolute mind.
Because here's the thing.
Musk has not announced that he is going to be making any massive changes to Twitter.
The user experience is going to be very similar.
All he has said thus far.
Is that he is going to be in favor of more free speech on the platform.
He tweeted, quote, free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.
Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.
I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans.
Twitter has tremendous potential.
I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.
Now that sounds.
Pretty above board, right?
He's saying that he wants to make the algorithms open source, so you can actually see how the algorithms work.
He's saying that he wants more free speech on the platform.
That's it.
More transparency and more free speech, and the left is freaking out, which shows you two things.
One, the left really hates transparency and they really hate free speech, especially on these social media platforms.
And this has really been true since 2016.
I have been making this point for years on end, that up until 2016, social media was seen as an unmitigated blessing for the left.
The left loved social media.
After all, Barack Obama had effectively manipulated Facebook in 2012 in genius ways to achieve his own re-election.
Then, Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 and social media became the enemy to the left.
Social media had to be brought to heel.
Social media had been taken over by Russian spam bots and evil right-wingers.
And therefore, we needed governmental oversight.
You saw people like Kara Swisher constantly complaining at the New York Times that there just wasn't enough oversight.
There just wasn't enough censorship at places like Twitter and YouTube and Facebook.
You saw folks over at CNBC and MSNBC complaining routinely about how terrible it was that social media had allowed too many people to speak freely.
You saw Dianne Feinstein, the senator from California, openly say to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook that unless you crack down on content, we will find a way to punish you.
The left has hated free speech on these platforms for years, specifically because that free speech allowed alternative viewpoints to get out there.
And they successfully cudgeled places like Twitter and Facebook into doing their bidding, which is why at the end of the 2020 election, one month before the 2020 election, you saw the Hunter Biden story completely shut down on social media in coordinated fashion.
It's why you saw all of these social media outlets begin to coordinate in who they would ban.
They would wait until one day and then just Alex Jones was gone.
No.
I think Alex Jones is terrible.
That doesn't mean he ought to be banned from social media.
I think Milo Yiannopoulos is awful.
I don't think he ought to be banned from social media.
All of these outlets would simply, all at once, decide that they wanted these people gone and then they would, in collusive fashion, just ban them.
And that was the end of them.
You saw them all do this to Donald Trump in the aftermath of January 6th, for the most prominent example.
And this is something that the left loved.
And then they lied about it.
The left would say, you know, we're not anti-free speech.
We're not anti-transparency.
We just don't want any free speech or transparency.
Well, all Elon Musk has said in taking over Twitter is that he wants more free speech and more transparency.
And he tweeted out, I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means.
People on the left lost their ever-loving minds.
They've lost their minds.
Why?
Because they always knew.
Their assumption always was Twitter was on their side.
Twitter was their outlet.
Twitter was their friend.
The same thing with Facebook.
The same thing with YouTube.
And so the minute that somebody threatens that monopoly, They freak out.
The minute somebody says, listen, I'd like more openness and more transparency, they lose their minds.
Which shows you again, they were lying the whole time.
They kept saying to all of us on the right, oh, you're crazy.
You're crazy.
Twitter is the town square.
You're complaining about the way that they are manipulating information or strangling off information or bottlenecking things or shadow banning people.
You keep saying this sort of stuff, but it's all in your head.
It's not real.
Okay, well, if it's not real, then why are you freaking out now that Elon Musk has threatened to open up the process a little bit?
Well, Elon Musk is going to run the business differently over at Twitter.
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So all of this has raised the question as to what exactly Elon Musk is going to do once he takes over.
By the way, Twitter shares did rise almost 6% on Monday to close at 51.70 each.
The stock, according to the Wall Street Journal, has been an anemic performer in an era of huge returns for technology companies.
Its shares jumped on their first day of trading in 2013 to close at $44.90, within a buck of where they were more than eight years later when Mr. Musk made his approach.
Okay, so what exactly is Elon Musk committing to do?
Well, as I've said, he hasn't actually committed to do much at all at this point other than more free speech and more transparency.
There's some speculation as to what he is going to do.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk wants to make substantial changes to Twitter.
He reiterated his push to soften Twitter's stance on content moderation.
He also promised new features like making algorithms open source.
He indicated through regulatory filings, tweets, and interviews at a TED conference how he thinks the company ought to run and what he would do if he were to successfully acquire the social media site.
Here's a list of what he said.
He said he would soften its stance on content moderation.
He is the self-described free speech absolutist.
He said that instead of just taking down tweets or permanently banning users, timeouts are better.
He says the platform should follow the laws of the countries in which it provides its services.
He would create an edit feature for tweets, which presumably would allow you to see the original version of the tweet and then also the edited tweet.
He wants to take the company private, because he says that there is no way to make the changes he wants without taking it private.
He wants to give users who pay for Twitter Blue authentication checkmarks.
So maybe the idea here is that in order to monetize the service, to get your account authenticated, you pay for that pleasure.
He wants to rely less on advertising, He says Twitter should shift toward a business model that relies more on subscriptions, which again, makes some sense.
He wants to stop spam and scam bots and allow for longer tweets as well.
So maybe move toward a more sub-stacky type model so you can actually subscribe and then you can put out longer tweet threads.
Okay, all of that is fine.
Here is what Elon Musk actually should do.
There are four things in particular that Elon Musk really needs to do.
Thing number one, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
So you keep hearing from the left after January 6th, we need a Truth and Reconciliation, like South Africa, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to see who, who was a supporter of Donald Trump.
Okay, what we need in order to restore trust in Twitter is we need to see all the old algorithmic changes and how exactly they impacted user experience.
So we need to see who was shadow banned.
We need to see which keywords allowed for people to be banned.
We need to see the standards that were applied.
We need the books open and we need to see the history of what exactly happened with Twitter.
How was the decision made to get rid of the Hunter Biden story?
How was the decision made to get rid of the Babylon Bee?
How was the decision made to shadow ban particular accounts or quash the reach of particular accounts?
How did that happen?
So we need a truth and reconciliation commission over at Twitter.
That is step number one.
Step number two.
We do need transparency in the algorithmic selection process.
So, Musk is already committed to this.
He says that he wants an open source algorithm, meaning that we can all see how content is being elevated or how content is being suppressed.
That is a very good thing and that promise needs to be fulfilled because how are you going to trust the process if you can't actually see the process at work?
If Musk does that, there'll be a major change because that does establish credibility.
That does mean, you know, you don't like how it's being run, well, at least you can see how it's being run.
Right now, the lack of transparency in Twitter is what has led to the massive distrust.
Because your tweet goes down or you're suspended and you have no idea.
There's no feedback mechanism.
You have no idea what you did wrong.
You have to wait for like a week for some Twitter low-level employee doing scut work to get back to you.
Making the algorithmic process more open and transparent at least allows us to know why these things are happening.
Whether it's a glitch or whether it's a problem or whether it's an actual concerted attempt to shut down particular points of view.
There need to be clear rules of the road.
So Twitter has had very, very vague rules of the road.
This is also true of Facebook and YouTube.
Basically these rules of the road have allowed for bans on anything that Twitter doesn't like.
And so you've seen this very inconsistent punishing of things like quote-unquote deadnaming, right?
This is why the Babylon Bee got banned because the Babylon Bee made the tremendous mistake of saying that a man is not a woman and a woman is not a man.
And so the Babylon Bee had its account suspended despite the fact that it is a satire site.
So we need clear rules of the road.
And what would that mean?
That'd mean no violent threats, no intimidation, no pornography.
There's some pretty clear rules of the road.
And then everything else goes.
And I think that Musk is likely to re-implement something like that.
And then finally, and this is the most important thing, Musk needs to come in and he needs to fire everyone.
I mean everyone.
Hundreds if not thousands of employees.
There have been studies done of the donations, the political donations of the people working at Twitter.
98.7% of all donations from the people working at Twitter went to Democrats in the last election cycle.
98.7%.
So it doesn't matter what rules Elon Musk sets top down if the so-called Twitter deep state is still implementing its favored policies.
Because this is the thing.
Donald Trump found this out when he was president.
You can name the policy top-down, but if everybody at the State Department hates your guts, they're just going to undermine your policy.
You can name the policy top-down, but if everybody at the FBI decides to spend the next four years ginning up nonsense about Russian conspiracy theories, you can't get much done.
When Musk takes over the company, he should do what every boss at every company does, and he should review the employee list and figure out who is good and who is bad.
Not purely on the basis of politics, but on the basis of performance.
So there are a lot of reasons why Elon Musk needs to fire, like, all of his employees at Twitter.
We'll get into that in one second.
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So, in the past several weeks, while there's been talk about Musk taking over, the Twitter employees are going nuts.
Nuts.
So, for example, Nolan Weinstein is the global head of brand experiences and engagement at Twitter.
Ariel Adkins is the curator of art, culture, and community at Twitter.
Here's an exchange that they had just a few days ago, demonstrating that they're not going to go along with anything that Elon Musk has to say.
Ariel Adkin says, is it too early for wine?
This was yesterday.
Nolan Weinstein said, no.
It's time to drink, guys, because Elon Musk is taking over.
Well, you can also drink on the unemployment line.
So why don't you head on over there?
Other Twitter employees freaking out.
Chloe Barnes, for example.
She, her.
She's the curation lead at Twitter.
I don't know what the curation lead means.
Presumably she curates tweets.
Totally understand that this is entertainment for some.
But please know, this is certainly not entertainment for me.
Wow.
Okay, well, you know what else might be entertaining?
You're not working here anymore.
Addison Hauenstein.
He, him.
Software engineer at Twitter.
He tweeted, point of view, you asked me why Elon Musk buying 9.2% of Twitter and getting a board seat is bad, and I'm explaining why this was clearly not his end goal, and things will certainly get worse and potentially be dangerous for democracy and global affairs.
Well, um, I hope that you enjoy working somewhere else.
Geraint Davies, real-time media infrastructure at Twitter, currently working on Twitter Spaces audio engineering.
This person tweeted out, anyone in need of a software engineer with 40 years of experience?
Asking for a friend.
Well, I mean, I hope that your resume is ready, Geraint.
Jay Holler.
He, him, his.
Engineering manager at Twitter.
Hashtag.
Until we all belong.
Hashtag Black Lives Matter.
He tweeted, okay, I'm radicalized now.
Says it's broken me.
Said the problem with Elon Musk is that he has demonstrated a pattern of harmful behavior consistently that disproportionately impacts marginalized people.
So maybe let's not give him any more power than he already stole.
Um, well, again, the nice thing about Elon Musk being your boss is that he doesn't have to make you his employee.
Haraldur Thorleifsson, something-something director at Twitter from San Francisco, California.
Elon Musk just temporarily leased, made me a lot of money, and I still dislike him.
Well, I hope that, um, I hope that money is enough to pad you through retirement.
Kramit Dekasi, astrophysicist, lady, feminist, demisexual, genderqueer, trans woman.
A lot of words to say, Biological Man.
A prominent transphobe buying a large stake in Twitter is not at all funny.
This is from April 4th.
I mean, it's a little funny.
And he's not a transphobe, Elon Musk.
He just says that men and women exist.
So, here's the thing.
Elon Musk, note to you.
When you take over Twitter, Everybody over there who is deeply opposed to the kinds of changes that you are making, they're free to use Twitter.
They should not be running Twitter.
You can fire them.
And you should.
Do not leave people inside your company who are going to try to thwart everything that you do on behalf of their own political priors.
Again, the confusion reigning at Twitter right now is pretty astonishing.
So, there was a Twitter all-hands meeting last night, according to Alex Heath, who is a senior reporter at The Verge.
He says it seems clear who will be CEO after the deal closes hasn't been decided.
A board chair did confirm the board would cease to exist once the deal closes in roughly six months.
The current CEO, Parag Agrawal, said no plans for layoffs, quote-unquote, at this time.
Apparently, Parag Agarwal said he will stay as CEO until the close.
He didn't address what happens after.
He said the plan is to bring Elon Musk in for a Q&A.
As far as the possibility of President Trump coming back on Twitter, Parag Agarwal says once the deal closes, we don't know which direction the platform will go.
It's a question we should address with Elon Musk.
He said he wants Twitter to be a powerful force in the world, just like all of us.
He said there's indeed uncertainty about what will happen after the deal closes.
We'll hear directly from Elon, and I'll continue to spend time with him.
And then he said, we don't have all the answers.
This is a period of uncertainty.
Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, Parag Agarwal should go the way of the dodo bird.
And Parag Agarwal recently suggested That his role was not to be bound by the First Amendment.
So, anytime he wants to leave, the door can, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Parag.
So, all these people are freaking out.
And again, Elon Musk's core mission here is pretty simple.
Open up Twitter, make it more transparent, and the left is freaking out.
And the people inside his company are the first who needs to go.
Those are the people who need to go first.
And if I were taking over a company, and I knew that the company was hostile to me, that the huge number of the people inside the company hated my guts, That's fine.
They can all go work elsewhere.
There are plenty of jobs in America right now, thanks to that booming Biden economy.
So go enjoy yourselves out there, gang.
Meanwhile, the White House is freaking out.
So, Jen Psaki suggested that Joe Biden was concerned, concerned about Section 230.
Suddenly, He's very concerned about social media.
Weird, weird how the minute that Elon Musk takes over Twitter, suddenly their concerns grow.
Almost as though government has acted as a behind-the-scenes sponsor of social media on behalf of left-wing causes, bullying and cuddling social media into doing what they want social media to do.
And Elon Musk might not do what they want Elon Musk to do, and now they are very mad.
What I can tell you as a general matter, no matter who owns or runs Twitter, the president has long been concerned about the power of large social media platforms, the power they have over our everyday lives, has long argued that tech platforms must be held accountable for the harms they cause.
Yeah, so they're going to ratchet up the pressure on Elon Musk.
The good news for Elon Musk is that he doesn't care.
Dude doesn't care.
Even though the government has been attempting to crack down on him, the use of the Securities and Exchange Commission to go after Elon Musk has been a frequent feature of the relationship between this administration and Musk's companies.
Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, the fully delusional are in charge of the asylum over there.
So Ari Melber, over at MSNBC, he dropped what I thought was the funniest comment.
So yesterday, after it became clear that Musk was going to take over Twitter, he said, this is really scary stuff.
You might secretly, like, ban one party's candidate or something.
Does anyone have a mirror for Ari Melber?
Mirror anyone.
We need a mirror.
Write a stat.
Mirror stat on aisle nine.
You own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you.
You don't have to explain yourself.
You don't even have to be transparent.
You could secretly ban one party's candidate or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it till after the election.
Elon Musk says this is all to help people because he is just a free speech Well, that'd be so scary.
I mean, if they, if they like turned down the reach of particular politicians just before an election, that wouldn't, I mean, now that Elon Musk took over, that might, wait, that's exactly what happened right before the 2020 election.
Kayleigh McEnany got knocked off of Twitter.
The Trump team got knocked off of Twitter.
The Hunter Biden story got completely knocked off of Twitter.
So yeah, Ari, that's that's sort of the problem that Elon Musk is trying to solve.
So the left continue to lose their minds.
And the simple fact of the matter is one of the reasons is they do not understand tech properly.
Well, one of the things that they don't like is crypto.
Elon Musk is big into crypto.
And let's be real about this.
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Meanwhile, again, the entire left is losing their mind over this because again, they were lying to you.
They were lying to you for years.
You kept saying, wait a second, isn't social media run by a bunch of people who hate the right?
I was like, no, no, no, no.
It's a town square.
It's all in your mind, guys.
It's just because you're crazy.
And then, the minute Elon Musk comes in, he's like, you know, I'm gonna open up the books, and I'm gonna open up the algorithm, and I'm gonna let people talk.
They're like, no!
We can't do that, no!
No!
Okay, right.
Because we know this was a left-leaning outlet, staffed by leftists who hate people on the right.
We know that.
And the fact that you are protesting demonstrates this fact very, very clearly.
It's fun to watch some of Elon Musk's and these kind of jealous billionaires going after one another.
So Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post.
Democracy dies in time.
Jeff Bezos, he tweeted, interesting question, did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?
The idea being, of course, that because Tesla has parts that are made in China, then it must be that Elon Musk is going to allow Twitter to be run by the Chinese.
Okay, Jeff, I have a couple of problems with this.
First of all, according to Beckett Adams over at the Washington Examiner, the Washington Post published Agiprop produced by China Daily.
The official propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party, as disguised as legit news.
Between 2016 and 2020, the CCP paid the Washington Post $4.5 million.
Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013.
Honestly, Bezos complains a little too much here.
It's just...
Well done, Jeff Bezos.
Meanwhile, Donnie Deutsch over on MSNBC says, this is just not great, guys.
It's just not great.
What are we going to do?
It's just not great.
Man, the leftist tears, this Tumblr right here, let me tell you.
When you subscribe, you become an annual subscriber.
This thing, it's been overflowing all morning.
I mean, we need Cardi B back here with a bucket and a mop.
That is what we need.
It's just been flowing everywhere.
The tears, the tears, they are rich and salty.
Here's Donnie Deutsch on MSNBC in a state of panic.
To me, when the richest guy in the world takes over the most important social media platform, that's just not a winning formula to me.
It reminds me of old Bond movies where Dr. Evil and guys like that, or Goldfinger, were going to take over the media.
My tummy meter says there's something just not great about this.
Oh man, his tummy meter says there's something not great about this.
Wow.
I mean, wow.
If Donnie Deutch opposes it.
But it's not just Donnie Deutch.
I think the funniest group to oppose this, this is really funny.
The funniest group to oppose this is the ACLU.
So the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, is now raising hate speech concerns over Elon Musk.
It's so good.
It's so good.
So the ACLU is very, very concerned.
So is the NAACP.
To the ACLU, which is designed, as I say, to preserve civil liberties.
They've offered a statement by Anthony Romero, quote, while Elon Musk is an ACLU card carrying member and one of our most significant supporters, there's a lot of danger having so much power in the hands of any one individual.
Weird because I don't see you guys complaining about Mark Zuckerberg all that often.
In today's world, a small handful of private tech companies, including Twitter, play a profound and unique role in enabling our right to express ourselves online.
Social media is a critical tool used to share ideas, express opinions, and consume information that has real-life impact and discourse in the offline world.
We should be worried about any powerful central actor, whether it's a government or a wealthy individual, even if it's an ACLU member, having so much control over the boundaries of our political speech.
No, much better that you should have Parag Agrawal or Jack Dorsey or some other left-winger in control of this mechanism of distribution of information in the Nilan Mosque.
Oh, slow clap for the ACLU.
Amazing.
The reason that they're worried, of course, is because he is going to broaden out the speech protections and the ACLU long ago stopped worrying about civil liberties and started worrying about equity.
They made this very clear.
I mean, they put out a press release a few years ago where they basically said, we have to balance the needs of civil liberties with equity concerns, which means you're no longer the American Civil Liberties Union.
You also have Human Rights Watch very concerned.
Any human rights group who's putting out a statement about Elon Musk taking over Twitter because, oh my God, now people might be able to say things we don't like.
It just demonstrates they never cared about human rights.
You know, like the rights of humans, like the right to free speech.
They don't care about any of that stuff.
It makes no difference to them at all.
Meanwhile, leaving Twitter trended.
So you remember after George W. Bush won in 2000, there was all this talk by leftists about how they're going to move to Canada.
So the new move to Canada movement is, I'm leaving Twitter.
I'm taking my tweets and I'm leaving.
Okay, well, you know, as I have been told many times, go build your own.
Go build your own Twitter.
It's fine.
You know, it's a private company.
Go build your own Twitter.
It's fun to watch the left flip in real time on most of the things they've been saying over the past several years.
So they kept saying, we need more transparency into social media, more transparency, guys, radical transparency.
We just don't know what's going on behind the scenes.
And then Musk is like, I'm gonna give you transparency.
They're like, no, not like that.
No, it can't be Elon Musk.
It's gotta be Elizabeth Warren doing it.
And then it was, Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post.
Well, it's probably fine.
It's probably okay.
And then it's like, no, Elon Musk is endangering democracy.
And then it was, you know what?
If you don't like it, you can always go build your own Twitter.
What, you want to regulate them?
Go build your own Twitter.
After all, it's a private company.
They can do what they want.
And then Elon Musk's like, okay, I will buy that private company.
Like, no!
Can't be like, no!
No, I'm not gonna.
No, that's fascism.
My favorite is that literally yesterday, literally yesterday, the idea was that Ron DeSantis was brutally assaulting Disney's speech rights by getting rid of a special tax dispensation for Disney in the state of Florida.
And now it is, we need the government to step in and stop Elon Musk from taking over Twitter and broadening free speech rights.
Slow clap for all you hypocritical jackasses, really slow clap for you.
But don't worry, I mean, the list goes on and on of the people on the left who have lost their ever-loving minds.
So Elizabeth Warren, of course, she tweets, this deal is dangerous for our democracy.
Billionaires like Elon Musk play by a different set of rules than everyone else, accumulating power for their own gain.
We need a wealth tax and strong rules to hold big tech accountable.
So again, she had no problem whatsoever with Disney injecting itself into politics in Florida.
Disney is one of the wealthiest and most powerful companies on planet Earth.
But Elon Musk is bad.
He plays by a different set of rules than everyone else.
No, he plays by the same set of rules.
He just wins.
That would be the difference right there.
And I love that she thinks that a wealth tax would solve all of this.
They've tried a wealth tax in Europe.
They had to revoke the wealth tax because it turns out everybody who had the money just went away.
The deal is dangerous.
Elizabeth Warren talking about democracy is always a laugh because this lady hates democracy more than pretty much anybody else in the Senate.
All she wants is regulatory agencies like her cherished Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to simply run how the economy works without any sort of democratic input.
There's Elizabeth Warren.
Genius.
Oh, but the list goes on.
There are so many of you.
Charles Blow.
He aptly named Charles Blow because his columns blow.
He writes for the New York Times.
This one is pretty funny.
So he tweets out, looks like I'm about to say goodbye to Twitter as well.
I've been pulling back a bit from social media anyway.
This will be just the push I need to go all the way on this app.
By all the way, as it turns out, he doesn't mean all the way.
He's still gonna use Twitter, as it turns out.
He says, well, I'm out.
I will now use Twitter like I use Facebook, only for promo purposes, to post my columns, TV and speech appearances, and book info.
No content specifically for it or created on it.
Because after all, every time you post, Elon Musk makes money.
We wouldn't want to make more money.
So instead, Charles Blow is only going to post his columns from the New York Times in order to maximize his own engagement and also make more money for Twitter.
By the way, he used to trend like every single time in a sort of astroturfed campaign for his column.
This was about 2019, 2020.
Meanwhile, Tim Jacob Wise tweeted out, F Elon Musk, apartheid baby.
Because he has no evidence that Elon Musk is a racist, but you know, he's from South Africa.
You, your company, and everyone who stands for you.
I'm saying this on your platform now, and we'll keep saying it.
Let's see how committed you are to free speech when we start roasting your ass.
I have a feeling that...
Elon Musk doesn't care.
That feeling is reinforced by the fact that Elon Musk does not care, because he is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Tim Weiss tweeted, we're going to have to deal with Nazis like our grandparents did, because Elon Musk is going to let them say whatever they want in the name of free speech.
Cool.
There are other options.
Okay, well, we will catch you later.
Also, Tim Weiss ain't dealing with Nazis.
No way, no how.
I mean, like, really, all these, all these guys who are announcing on Twitter, they're about to charge the beaches of Normandy by logging off Twitter.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
You are unconvincing.
Meanwhile, Wajahat Ali, who's a garbage columnist for the New York Times, he tweeted, I love how you notice this only when it's rich people you don't like.
When it's rich people you do like, then you're rooting for Disney.
You're rooting for Abigail Disney, the heiress.
You're rooting for Jeff Bezos.
Pramila Jayapal doing the same routine.
Just a reminder that from 2014 to 2018, Elon Musk paid an effective tax rate of 3.27%.
The average working family pays an average tax rate of 13%.
It's time for a wealth tax in this country.
Okay, stop on this one for a second.
I just want to point out that she's lying.
That's not true.
From 2013 to 2018, Elon Musk paid an income tax rate of about 27%.
The only way that you get to that number, 3.27%, is if you are going to tax his unrealized capital gains, which as we have discussed before, that's stupid.
That's like I own a stock and I don't sell the stock and now you're going to tax me on the increase in the value of the stock.
Are you going to give me a tax rebate when the stock goes down?
But you have to lie.
You have to lie in order to make it seem like Elon Musk has unfairly benefited here.
Elon Musk, honest to goodness, the man may be the greatest living American, Robert Reich says, when oligarchs talk about freedom, beware, says Robert Reich, who wants the government to run everything.
By the way, oligarchy is where the government is run by the richest people in the land, meaning that government and industry are fused.
What I'm seeing right now is the government is very opposed to Elon Musk.
Robert Reich says, for Jeff Bezos, it means his freedom to set prices.
I love this.
So I just have to point out here that Robert Reich is not contending with Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post.
That was not a threat to freedom of speech.
He's only worried about Jeff Bezos setting prices.
By the way, the prices set by Amazon Prime are way below anything else, which is why it is great for the consumer.
So, Robert Reich doesn't like that Jeff Bezos has freedom to set prices, even if those prices are better for consumers.
For Jamie Dimon, it means his freedom to consolidate the banking industry.
For Elon Musk, it means his freedom to set the terms of political debate.
Don't get it confused.
Well, hold up.
It seems like you're confused because Jeff Bezos, again, owns a major media outlet and you have no problem.
It's only Elon Musk you have a problem with.
It's just amazing, amazing stuff there from a mentally underdeveloped former Secretary of the Treasury.
Anand Jurathardis, who writes sometimes for CNN, he says, what Elon Musk is doing is what plutocrats have been doing, using money to buy power and power to protect their money, taking control of media to rig the discourse and hedge against resentment and branding themselves the solution to the very problem they are.
So I have a question.
How is him opening up debate on Twitter being the problem?
How?
And how exactly is him saying that he wants more dissent on the platform the big issue?
Meanwhile, Ibram X. Kendi, grifter extraordinaire, he went on Twitter to quote Robert Reich saying, when billionaires like Musk justify their motives by using freedom, beware!
They want to use their vast fortunes to do whatever they please, unconstrained by laws or regulations, shareholders, or even consumers.
Well, I mean, isn't that the nature of freedom?
I thought that freedom was being unconstrained by stupid laws and stupid regulations.
And as far as shareholders, Elon Musk is currently paying Twitter shareholders like way above market value.
Sean King, or as he's known online, Talcum X, because he's probably not actually black.
Sean King tweeted, at its root, Elon Musk wanting to purchase Twitter is not about left versus right.
It's about white power.
Well, Sean King should know something about that.
The man was raised in apartheid by a white nationalist.
He's upset that Twitter won't allow white nationalists to target and harass people.
That's his definition of free speech.
Is it, though?
Has he said that from now on, the N-word will be totally allowed?
Also, we will see you later, Sean.
Bye.
Don Winslow!
Who actually is a pretty fun author, but awful on Twitter.
He tweeted, even if Musk takes over, I urge people, especially resistors to remain on Twitter for a very simple reason.
Facebook is an aggressive propaganda machine for the far right and the beliefs and ethics of Donald Trump.
We cannot concede Facebook and Twitter in this war.
This is so delusional.
It's so delusional.
The idea that Facebook and Twitter are propaganda machines for the right, that Facebook is a propaganda machine for the right.
If by that you mean that we write headlines on Facebook that people click on, that is true.
Also, it happens to be true that the left still represents the majority of clicks on Facebook, and that Facebook will routinely change its algorithm, disproportionately damaging the right.
It happens all the time.
Yvette Nicole Brown tweeted, how many Russian oligarchs are propping up this Elon Musk Twitter bid right now, do you think?
Man, it is amazing how much the left sounds like paranoid John Birchers circa 1954.
It's amazing.
Everything is the Rooskies now.
The Rooskies are hiding under their bed, the Rooskies are in the telephone booth next door, and the Rooskies are backing Elon Musk.
By the way, I would just like to note at this point that Elon Musk His net worth is supposedly about $265 billion.
The complete GDP of Russia every year is about $1.3 trillion.
In other words, Elon Musk's total wealth is worth approximately one-fifth of the entire Russian economy.
So I'm pretty sure he doesn't need Russian money, Yvette.
It sure would fix everything for Putin, Tang, and the rest of the complicit super-rich if this platform was run by them.
After the takeover, I wouldn't DM anymore if I were you.
Nailed it.
Nailed it.
Probably Elon Musk is only buying it so he can be used as a cutout by the Russians.
That is genius.
Genius stuff.
Rob Reiner.
The director, who hasn't made a good movie in quite a while, he says, now that Elon Musk is buying Twitter, the question for all of us is, will he allow a criminal who used this platform to lie and spread this information to try to overthrow the U.S.
government to return and continue his criminal activity?
And if he does, how do we combat it?
Well, I mean, you would just sound off on, I assume you're talking about Donald Trump, you would just sound off on the stuff that Donald Trump is saying, you know, like in regular life, like when somebody says something you disagree with and then you, and then you disagree with them.
Like that's, that's a, that's a thing.
So it's, um, it's pretty impressive to watch how the left is having an absolute, absolute freaking meltdown over this entire thing.
insane to watch. But again, indicative of the fact that the left always knew that Twitter was their favorite outlet and now they are super mad that their favorite plaything might be taken away from them. So yes, a toast to Elon Musk with all of the leftist tears that fit in this mug. And again, they are consistently overflowing the Tumblr at this point.
So in one second, we'll get to Hollywood's attacks on Elon Musk because they're about to begin.
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Well, meanwhile, Hollywood has announced its intention to go after Elon Musk, because this is the way that it works.
Harvey Weinstein rapes everyone in Hollywood for like 30 years and Hollywood has nothing to say about it.
Elon Musk buys the company where they all spend their free time tweeting stupid nonsense to one another.
And now they're super angry about it.
They have the angers about it.
So, according to Variety, Elon Musk's Crash Course is the newest production from FX and The New York Times, as part of their collaborative documentary series The New York Times Presents.
These projects provide in-depth looks at prominent people and events, ranging from Janet Jackson to Juul to the 2020 Australian bushfire disasters.
The most famous of these documentaries so far were popular documentaries about Britney Spears, framing Britney Spears and controlling Britney Spears.
By the way, we did do a critique of those documentaries.
They are garbage.
They are garbage.
The entire documentary is predicated on the notion that Britney Spears is completely mentally healthy and then goes after everybody who had her in a conservative ship and all of that.
The expose will focus mainly on the negative aspects of Tesla, according to Variety.
They say that the documentary will explore the future-minded company and the development of self-driving cars.
The publication shared, quote, featuring the reporting from Cade Metz and Neil Boudette of the New York Times, the film will dive into how Tesla's autopilot program has resulted in several deaths.
And Musk and the company have yet to publicly acknowledge and details Musk's efforts to kill government investigations into the incidents.
Several former Tesla employees will be featured in the documentary, speaking out against Musk for the first time.
Oh, wow.
I can't imagine why they're doing this.
What a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
Our media, they are completely unbiased.
Except when they are unleashed against the world's richest man.
Who makes, by the way, a product that I thought was good.
I've been told by Joe Biden and company that electric cars are the future.
I've been told that getting off of carbon-based emissions is the most important thing that you can do as a human today.
And yet the number one electric car maker on planet Earth, Elon Musk and Tesla, they're the bad guys now.
Why, it's almost as though your priorities have nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with your own political agenda.
The Hollywood Reporter says the deep dive will also examine pressure Elon Musk has put on government officials to quash investigations.
By the way, when it comes to, you know, deaths caused by so-called self-driving cars, typically what happens in those situations is human error.
But put that aside, it's very obvious what Hollywood is attempting to do right here.
Very clear what Hollywood is attempting to do.
So they're now going to go after Elon Musk with all of their fury.
By the way, Elon Musk is not a Republican.
Elon Musk has donated to both sides.
He donated to Hillary Clinton, I believe, in 2016.
He spread his political donations out.
This idea that he's like a hardcore right-winger is just not true.
But it's fun to watch.
Man, the tears are worth the $44 billion.
That is for sure.
And again, so much of what is happening right now is just about the bluff of the left being called and them being really, really mad about that.
Them saying they love free speech, but don't, whatever you do, no more free speech.
Them saying, well, you know, go build your own Twitter, but don't, don't buy Twitter.
Don't do that.
That would be super, super duper bad.
That's really, really bad.
And what is happening right here is that the pushback against corporate wokeism is taking place.
And it's taking place on a couple of fronts.
You have legislative attempts to curb it in places like Florida.
You have market attempts to do so, places like the Daily Wire going into competition.
And most importantly, people like Elon Musk actually buying giant companies and then attempting to open them up.
And the left doesn't know what to do because this has been their most clever concerted attempt of the last 20 years in the United States.
After the era of big government ended under Bill Clinton, the left then apparently decided, you know what?
We can't do this directly through government, so what we will do is we will use government threats in order to essentially consolidate corporate America as a left-wing outlet.
This is our, this is their plan.
They will, they will live in this, in the gray area between public and private.
They understand the right doesn't like encroachment on private sector spaces.
And so what they will do is they will use unofficial and sometimes official pressure by the government in order to get those private sector actors to do what they want.
And then if the right complains, they'll say, Hey, private actors.
Okay, but now the pushback has begun.
And that pushback is likely to continue unabated.
So Musk is part of a broader trend here.
He is not the only one.
What he's doing is super important.
And honestly, what he's doing with Twitter may in fact actually shore up institutional credibility through further transparency.
That's a really good thing.
Like if you are worried about social media tearing apart the social fabric, you ought to be happy about the fact that now we actually get to see under the hood.
And we actually get to see who is controlling what you see and what you hear.
You want to get rid of conspiracy theories, transparency is the best disinfectant.
But this is part of a broader pushback that has been a very, very long time in coming.
And that pushback is happening on a lot of fronts.
It's happening again against everything from Walt Disney Company to, for example, the S&P 500.
The S&P 500 actually rates companies based on ESG, which stands for Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance, which is the S&P 500's way of basically dinging companies that don't reflect the left.
Now places like Utah are pushing back against that.
All of this is good.
All of it is necessary.
So, hats off to Elon Musk, and we look forward to seeing what he does next.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out one of our newest podcasts, Morning Wire.
On today's episode, they discuss what France's presidential election means for Europe.
That episode is available right now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, so make sure to tune in.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Editing is by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Fabiola Cristina, production assistant Jessica Kranz.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2022.
John Bickley here, Daily Wire editor-in-chief.
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