The Charlie Kirk Show - Why Elon Musk's Plan B Might Involve YOU
Aired: 2022-04-18
Duration: 33:08


=== Is Twitter A Company Or Super PAC (01:53) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, it's And the Charlie Kirk Show, the latest of Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter.
[00:00:03]  But what is Twitter?
[00:00:04]  Is it a company?
[00:00:05]  Is it a super PAC?
[00:00:06]  It's acting like something that is not a for-profit company.
[00:00:09]  We're going to explore that together in a very important episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:13]  If you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:16]  Get involved with Turning Point USA, which is your best bet to keep America free through an education movement that spans ages and demographics and places all across America.
[00:00:25]  tpusa.com.
[00:00:26]  We're going on tour.
[00:00:27]  We have one last tour stop at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, tpusa.com/slash tour.
[00:00:32]  The great Candace Owens will be joining me, tpusa.com/slash tour.
[00:00:35]  And support the Charlie Kirk Show at charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:38]  One last thing before we get started: Tuesday, April 19th at 6 p.m. at Bank of Springfield Center in Springfield, Illinois.
[00:00:44]  I will be coming and speaking at a dinner.
[00:00:46]  It's $100 per person, features a full dinner and a chance to support the local efforts of the Sangamon County Republican Party, the home of Abraham Lincoln.
[00:00:53]  And so I hope you guys check it out.
[00:00:55]  You guys can get tickets.
[00:00:56]  Type in Sangamon County Republican Party, your search engine.
[00:00:59]  I hope to see you there April 19th in Central Illinois.
[00:01:02]  Great folks there.
[00:01:03]  6 p.m. Bank of Springfield Center in Springfield, Illinois.
[00:01:06]  All right, everybody, buckle up.
[00:01:07]  Here we go.
[00:01:08]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:10]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:12]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:16]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:19]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:20]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:21]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:01:23]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:29]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:38]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:41]  Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
[00:01:44]  For personalized loan services you can count on, go to andrewandtodd.com, the wonderfulandrewandtodd.com.

=== Ideology Over Profit And Shareholders (10:26) ===

[00:01:53]  What is Twitter?
[00:01:55]  Many people would use a word to describe Twitter as, well, it's a social media application.
[00:01:59]  It's a marketplace of ideas, which would be laughable.
[00:02:02]  It used to be.
[00:02:03]  But no, I mean, technically, what is Twitter?
[00:02:05]  Is Twitter a non-profit?
[00:02:07]  Is it a charitable endeavor?
[00:02:08]  Is Twitter a super PAC or is it a company?
[00:02:12]  Now, on face value, it looks like Twitter's a company.
[00:02:14]  You can see what it's traded at.
[00:02:16]  You could see its stock price.
[00:02:17]  You could see how many shares are outstanding.
[00:02:20]  You could see all sorts of different information about Twitter.
[00:02:25]  However, it really does beg the question of whether or not it is actually a private company because evidence is showing it's actually a different type of thing.
[00:02:34]  The type of thing that we are dealing with is very important.
[00:02:38]  Twitter, as we know, is enthusiastic to censor political dissidents.
[00:02:42]  We are still suspended from Twitter because we refuse to delete our tweet.
[00:02:46]  Donald Trump has been kicked off Twitter, amongst many others.
[00:02:49]  Tucker Carlson, the Babylon Bee, this has all prompted Elon Musk into action to try and acquire Twitter, and we'll get into the latest news around that.
[00:03:00]  But we must study this carefully in case there might be a new type of thing coming onto the scene.
[00:03:06]  Something that is not a for-profit company, but something instead that pretends to be a for-profit company, but acts like something completely different.
[00:03:14]  And here's the evidence: is that a for-profit company would be deranged not to accept an offer much more valuable than what it's worth to sell to Elon Musk.
[00:03:25]  Any businessman who actually just wants to make money would be enthusiastic about selling their company to Elon Musk.
[00:03:35]  Instead, what's happening is the Twitter board has now put forward poison pill amendments.
[00:03:42]  They're trying to do everything they possibly can to try and kill the deal with Elon Musk.
[00:03:46]  Elon Musk is coming in with a $42 billion cash offer, and the board is coming up with every sort of argument.
[00:03:54]  They're doing mental calisthenics, if you will, to try to block the offer that Elon Musk has put forward.
[00:04:03]  Why would that be the case?
[00:04:05]  The answer is right in front of us.
[00:04:06]  It's because Twitter does not actually care about making money.
[00:04:11]  Twitter is not a for-profit vehicle.
[00:04:13]  Instead, they are a regime megaphone and a censorship machine that camouflages as a for-profit company.
[00:04:21]  A for-profit company would be much more interested in trying to get the maximum for their shareholders.
[00:04:27]  Instead, what you have at Twitter is ideologues disguised as capitalists.
[00:04:33]  You have people that are left-wing activists that sit on the board of Twitter that almost own no shares collectively.
[00:04:43]  Now, this is a very important point because if you're not dealing with a company and you take a step back, you say, well, all of a sudden, do market principles still apply to that company?
[00:04:52]  You see, we have been led to believe that market principles drive all behavior, that people are going to want to get rich and make profit.
[00:05:01]  And that is generally the case in most business transactions.
[00:05:04]  In most business transactions and merger and acquisitions, you're dealing at the very end of it is who's going to make money, who's going to get paid and get them out of the deal.
[00:05:13]  This has happened with some of the most famous merger and acquisitions, whether it be U.S. Airways merging with American Airlines, the biggest merger and acquisitions of the last decade, whether it be cell phone companies merging, whether it be Comcast and NBC merging into NBC Universal, all these different types of merger and acquisition trends over the last 20 years, usually it comes down to is, okay, I need more money, buy me out of my deal.
[00:05:39]  You know, maybe you can guarantee the debt and let's move on.
[00:05:44]  That's what happens when you have companies dealing with companies, but Twitter is a different type of thing.
[00:05:49]  It's not a company.
[00:05:50]  It's never been a company.
[00:05:51]  It might have started as a company.
[00:05:53]  Some people might have got rich along the way.
[00:05:55]  Jack Dorsey definitely made some money, but it changed as the type of thing it actually is in 2015 and 2016 and 2017.
[00:06:03]  As Twitter metamorphosized and transformed from just being something that churns out money, like a restaurant or a dry cleaning store or an airline or a casino, it changed into something that was instrumental to the people in charge.
[00:06:19]  It changed to something completely different because the people in charge of our country realized that Twitter, albeit might be a private company, it is, as Tucker Carlson puts it, the incubator for elite opinions.
[00:06:32]  It's where the important people go to find out what they actually believe.
[00:06:35]  Now, they don't independently find their own beliefs by reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, and thinking deeply about things, but instead, if enough blue check people on Twitter are saying something, it creates this overwhelming cacophony of opinion, and therefore that is what ends up being elite opinion.
[00:06:50]  It's a new type of thing.
[00:06:52]  We have not seen this sort of power over discourse since the alleged cigar-filled rooms in Washington, D.C. of lobbyists and backslapping deal makers.
[00:07:04]  We have not seen the type of power that a certain platform or company can have in recent memory.
[00:07:10]  The closest would be what we were told of the Roman Senate of important people that go to hear themselves talk, and that's how they feel, how that's how they get the opinions of how they feel.
[00:07:17]  You see this beautifully demonstrated in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, where opinion can be quickly shaped and moved just based on who is saying it and when they are saying it.
[00:07:28]  But no, Twitter is a propaganda organ of the regime and the globalist agenda.
[00:07:33]  Robust free speech is a direct threat to that agenda.
[00:07:37]  So we have to stop acting as if we're dealing with a company here.
[00:07:40]  But that really should make you take pause and say, wow, are we still living under capitalistic market principles?
[00:07:48]  If we were, the people in charge would be the people in charge of Twitter, the shareholders would just be, yes, not just the shareholders, the board of directors, because there is a difference.
[00:07:56]  I'll explain that difference.
[00:07:57]  They would just be screaming and jumping for joy.
[00:08:00]  Now, over Easter weekend, this momentum behind the story has just intensified.
[00:08:08]  And so this goes down to an analysis of human behavior.
[00:08:12]  What drives people?
[00:08:15]  Now, to a pure market capitalist, which I am a market capitalist, but not in the puritanical sense, they would say that profits drive all behavior.
[00:08:27]  The profit motive is everything.
[00:08:29]  That at the end of all this, and when it comes down to it, when the rubber meets the road, you can use whatever sort of filler term you want.
[00:08:36]  People want to get paid.
[00:08:39]  People want money.
[00:08:40]  They want value.
[00:08:43]  Now, the problem with this is it's not true.
[00:08:46]  And this is beautifully depicted in the Twitter example.
[00:08:51]  Profits do drive some behavior, but so do power and prestige.
[00:08:57]  And so does ideology.
[00:08:59]  What you're seeing play out at Twitter with their seeming rejection of Elon Musk's offer, and don't worry, Elon Musk has a plan B, and I'll tell you what that is, is they are sidelining the ability to get paid and what would be good for their shareholders and even their fiduciary duty.
[00:09:15]  And they are elevating on the hierarchy ideology, power, and prestige, and loyalty to the machine.
[00:09:26]  So many nefarious intentions have been exposed to what's unfolding at Twitter.
[00:09:31]  We now learn that the people, the elites in our country, it's not that they hate the idea of rich people owning stuff.
[00:09:39]  They just don't like the wrong rich people owning stuff.
[00:09:41]  Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post, perfectly fine.
[00:09:44]  Laurene Powell Jobs owning The Atlantic, perfectly fine.
[00:09:46]  Elon Musk coming out and trying to buy Twitter, a threat to democracy.
[00:09:54]  So what drives human behavior?
[00:09:58]  Market economists in the Austrian economic sense would say in praxeology, which is the study of human behavior, that it is incentives.
[00:10:06]  The question, and the thing that we have been under a delusion is we act as if only money is an incentive.
[00:10:15]  What if I told you that ideology can be more tempting, can be more alluring than money in your bank account?
[00:10:23]  That is what's unfolding in Twitter.
[00:10:24]  An unprecedented, unique, once-in-a-generation event where people decide not to get rich, but instead decide to remain loyal to an abstract ideology.
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[00:11:50]  The failure to understand human behavior is one of the reasons we are in the mess that we are in.
[00:11:55]  Not everyone wants to get rich.
[00:11:57]  Some people want to be powerful.
[00:11:58]  Some people want to be prestigious.
[00:12:00]  And other people, they just want their ideology enacted.
[00:12:05]  They're really living out the Twitter board, these group of activists, they're living out their belief by money is not as important as the ideology that they hold near.

=== Elon Musk's Backup Plan For Free Speech (05:34) ===

[00:12:19]  So, as a counter to all of this, it looks like Twitter has enacted a poison pill.
[00:12:25]  Now, a poison pill was conceived by someone by the name of Martin Lipton, partner at the white-collar firm Wattel, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz.
[00:12:34]  The poison pill is used to do one thing and one thing only: make a proposed acquisition like Elon Musk less appealing for the acquirer.
[00:12:44]  The poison pill, named after deadly pills used by spies to avoid interrogation if they were captured, really came out of the scene in the 1980s as merger and acquisition lawyers came up the go-to defense against the feared corporate raider.
[00:12:58]  Now, the most common thwarted takeover of a company would be Netflix.
[00:13:02]  In 2012, Netflix successfully used a poison pill to fend off a takeover bid from Carl Icahn, one of the most famous corporate raiders in the 1980s, who is now worth over $16 billion.
[00:13:14]  I'm reading from Fortune magazine.
[00:13:16]  Now, Twitter is following suit, enacting a flip-in poison pill strategy in an attempt to prevent Musk from acquiring the company.
[00:13:25]  So, what is the significance of this?
[00:13:27]  The significance is that this is not in the best interest of Twitter.
[00:13:32]  It's not in the best interest of the shareholders.
[00:13:34]  Now, if anyone out there owns Twitter stock, you should be calling lawyers and seeing what your options are.
[00:13:43]  Because your ability to make money is now being thwarted by this poison pill strategy, and the fiduciary duty of the board has been put aside.
[00:13:51]  But Elon Musk has a backup plan.
[00:13:53]  Elon Musk has a plan B. In fact, Elon at a TED Talk last week said he does have a Plan B and he's going to be willing to use it.
[00:14:03]  Now, before we get into what that Plan B would be and what it is, let's first talk about what the media thinks about all of this, and why does the media think the way they do?
[00:14:16]  Well, on Cut 21, MSNBC is talking about Elon Musk.
[00:14:20]  It's Mika Brzezinski in Morning Joe.
[00:14:22]  And she says very clearly: Elon is trying to control people how to think.
[00:14:26]  That is our job.
[00:14:27]  That's the media saying it's our job to control how you think.
[00:14:30]  Mika Brzezinski from MSNBC.
[00:14:32]  Of course, Elon is not controlling, trying to control how people think.
[00:14:36]  Elon's trying to liberate how people talk and therefore end up thinking.
[00:14:40]  Play Cut 21.
[00:14:42]  While unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think.
[00:14:53]  And that is our job.
[00:14:55]  Yeah, if you look at the issues.
[00:14:58]  That is our job.
[00:14:59]  How dare you get in the way of us manipulating minds?
[00:15:01]  How dare you get in the way of us controlling people's thoughts?
[00:15:05]  But Twitter, I think we have underestimated how valuable Twitter is to the current propaganda regime.
[00:15:13]  We're seeing how important it is.
[00:15:14]  Look, no one got in Elon Musk's way when he wants to go start car companies.
[00:15:19]  In fact, that's helpful to them.
[00:15:20]  They want more electric car companies.
[00:15:21]  No one got in Elon Musk's way when he wants to go send rockets around the world.
[00:15:24]  They don't care.
[00:15:25]  In fact, it's somewhat helpful.
[00:15:26]  They don't get in Elon Musk's way when he wants to start Neuralink and mess with the human mind.
[00:15:31]  They don't get in Elon Musk's way when he wants to start the boring company and dig holes underneath Los Angeles.
[00:15:36]  In fact, it's well supported.
[00:15:37]  Mayor of Los Angeles, City Council.
[00:15:39]  Oh, yeah, Tony Stark is going to stave us.
[00:15:41]  He's going to be great.
[00:15:42]  No, but as soon as Elon Musk wants to spend some of his own money on a platform that is increasingly less valuable with less users, everyone freaks out.
[00:15:52]  Because they know what the world will look like under Elon Musk controlling Twitter.
[00:15:56]  It'll be a freer world.
[00:15:58]  They know that people will be able to express themselves easily, that there will not be the sword of Damocles hanging above your head that might drop on you at any time if you dare say something incorrect, like what happened with us on Twitter.
[00:16:10]  They also know that Elon Musk will do exactly what he said he would do in the Twitter shareholder letter, which is unlock Twitter's potential.
[00:16:17]  Now, I know a lot of you listening right now are not big fans of Elon Musk.
[00:16:21]  We have a split opinion on a lot of his stuff.
[00:16:22]  I don't like how he does as much work as he does in China.
[00:16:25]  I don't like the good things he says about China.
[00:16:26]  I certainly don't like Neuralink.
[00:16:28]  Do I want to live in a country where the world's richest man has to swoop in and parachute in his spare time to try to buy a platform to liberate our speech?
[00:16:35]  Of course not.
[00:16:36]  It's very unhealthy.
[00:16:37]  I wish that wasn't the case.
[00:16:38]  I wish we had a functioning government that actually protected the rights of the citizens to be able to speak online.
[00:16:43]  But you have to deal with the cards that you have.
[00:16:45]  You have to play with the team that you have fielded.
[00:16:48]  What we have right now is the world's richest man that wants to do what the government should have done a long time ago, to do what the market should have done, who's now starting to realize that it's not actually dollar incentives that drives human behavior, but it's a group of people that are incentivized by power, prestige, and abstract ideology.
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=== Public Hostile Takeover Of Twitter (15:14) ===

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[00:18:21]  So Elon has a plan B. Elon has a backup plan.
[00:18:25]  Since there was a poison pill executed, what other plan would he be able to put forward?
[00:18:31]  Well, Elon Musk is tweeting rather, let's say publicly, and he says, love me tender, which of course is a song, and he's talking about a tender offer.
[00:18:43]  Here's what a tender offer is.
[00:18:45]  In corporate finance, a tender offer is a type of public takeover bid.
[00:18:49]  A tender offer is a public open offer or invitation, usually announced in a newspaper advertisement, by a prospective acquirer to all the stockholders of a publicly traded corporation to tender their stock for sale at a specific price during a specific time.
[00:19:05]  In a tender offer, the bidder contacts shareholders directly.
[00:19:09]  The directors of the company may or may not endorse the tender offer proposal.
[00:19:16]  Now, the significance of this is that you would then be able to vote whether or not you want Elon Musk to be on the board.
[00:19:23]  Might be a good time to go buy some Twitter shares just so that you might be able to vote on it.
[00:19:28]  It doesn't matter what the board wants.
[00:19:29]  You can go around the board.
[00:19:31]  Now, only Elon Musk with his megaphone, with his ability to communicate, all Elon Musk would have to do is this.
[00:19:37]  I think plan B involves our favorite psychedelic mushroom-loving podcast host in the hills of Texas.
[00:19:44]  All Elon Musk has to do is go on Joe Rogan Experience and say, go buy a Twitter share, vote for this, and crush the board.
[00:19:54]  Tucker Carlson agrees, play cut 22.
[00:19:58]  Musk himself has a ton of options aside from buying all the shares he wants.
[00:20:01]  For example, he might think of this: Elon Musk could enlist the public, the pro-free speech public, in his hostile takeover of Twitter.
[00:20:11]  So anyone who is against censorship could buy Twitter stock and then pledge his or her proxy votes to Elon Musk.
[00:20:20]  So you can go buy Twitter and then you could pledge your proxy votes to Elon Musk.
[00:20:24]  I'm going to do that.
[00:20:26]  If this ends up being the plan B, if this ends up being the backup plan, so be it.
[00:20:33]  Because Twitter is not a company.
[00:20:34]  It operates more like a Democrat super PAC.
[00:20:36]  In fact, Twitter operates similar to an ideological vehicle.
[00:20:42]  Dare I say Twitter operates like a government agency.
[00:20:46]  Twitter operates very similar to the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
[00:20:51]  You see, we've always been told that private companies are immune to the same type of behaviors that happen to the government.
[00:20:57]  And that's a lie.
[00:20:58]  That's a lie by strict puritanical market types that say the laws of the market apply to all things.
[00:21:04]  Actually, no, they don't.
[00:21:06]  They apply to some things.
[00:21:07]  In fact, most things they apply in the market.
[00:21:10]  But there are certain things that end up being immune.
[00:21:12]  There are certain things that end up being untouchable.
[00:21:16]  And one of those is Twitter.
[00:21:18]  Twitter is such high importance of what people think and how people think it, they must be able to shut up dissident opinions there.
[00:21:27]  So as this saga unfolds, Elon Musk continues to try to find either plan B or plan C.
[00:21:34]  Now, I know some of you listening on the radio say, Charlie, why are you spending so much time on this Twitter story?
[00:21:39]  I'm going to say this respectfully.
[00:21:42]  If you're saying that, you have no idea how important Twitter is in the American discourse.
[00:21:48]  If you're like, oh, no, I'm not on that Twitter stuff.
[00:21:50]  Well, guess what?
[00:21:51]  The talk show hosts that you watch on TV gets information from Twitter.
[00:21:55]  The newspaper columnists that you read in the newspaper gets information from Twitter.
[00:21:59]  It is where important people, I put that in quotes, important people get their opinions.
[00:22:05]  It is the top of the tributary.
[00:22:07]  It's the beginning of the assembly line.
[00:22:09]  It's the first step.
[00:22:11]  If you're not able to have speech in that area for people like me to be able to contribute to that when we had our heyday, 1.8 million followers, then your entire civilization is just living through a simulation.
[00:22:25]  That's exactly what they want.
[00:22:27]  Elon Musk, Cut 27 says there is a plan B, play cut 27.
[00:22:33]  If in this case, you are not successful in, you know, the board does not accept your offer.
[00:22:38]  You said you won't go higher.
[00:22:40]  Is there a plan B?
[00:22:45]  There is.
[00:22:50]  There is a plan B. Elon wants Twitter not for money, and this is every person in the media, they're attacking him.
[00:22:59]  He just wants power and all this.
[00:23:00]  No, he doesn't.
[00:23:01]  Elon Musk wants to be able to look at himself and say, I did something good for humanity.
[00:23:05]  He knows that we are the speaking beings.
[00:23:07]  If you do not have discourse, then what are we exactly?
[00:23:10]  Well, you're like Shanghai.
[00:23:11]  You all kind of live in these vertical housing units under the oppression of some sort of tech tyrant.
[00:23:19]  Cut 28, Elon Musk continues about saying that if I were to control Twitter, this is from a TED talk just recently, I want to be very reluctant to delete things and just be very cautious with permanent bans.
[00:23:30]  Play Cut 28.
[00:23:33]  I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and have just be very cautious with permanent bans.
[00:23:44]  Timeouts, I think, are better than sort of permanent bans.
[00:23:51]  But just in general, like I said, it won't be perfect, but I think we wanted to really have, like I said, the perception and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible.
[00:24:07]  As free as reasonably possible.
[00:24:10]  And that has sent the entire elite class into a frenzy.
[00:24:15]  How will you be able to prevent the distribution of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, if you had a free Twitter?
[00:24:22]  Let's play this out.
[00:24:23]  If there was a free Twitter and Elon Musk was in charge, then there wouldn't have been COVID lockdowns the way that there were.
[00:24:30]  If there was a free Twitter, then people would not have been able to have the same, they wouldn't have been as afraid of the virus as they otherwise would have been.
[00:24:38]  We would have had robust discussion with people like Dr. Robert Malone, banned.
[00:24:41]  Dr. Peter McCullough, censored.
[00:24:44]  Dr. Pierre Corey, censored, to be able to have a contrarian viewpoint when it came to COVID.
[00:24:51]  With a free Twitter, we would not have had mass mail imbalance.
[00:24:55]  You see, a free Twitter very well could have fixed some of our more frustrating structural issues.
[00:25:03]  Why?
[00:25:03]  Because a free Twitter with a publicly published algorithm like we had in 2016 results in people being able to make independent decisions and challenge authority and not live in a place of fear.
[00:25:15]  With a censored Twitter, people are far more likely to want to resort to a power structure, obey that power structure, and not think independently or freely.
[00:25:28]  With a free Twitter or a free internet, you'll be able to search for any topic, issue at your choosing, and you will not have to feel as if you are being sandwiched between mandatory opinions as if there's people in charge that always want to keep you down.
[00:25:48]  It is the kind of ultimate utopian idea of the marketplace of ideas.
[00:25:53]  And dare I say, I would say it would be unachievable because people say, oh, they're so cynical.
[00:25:57]  That's never going to happen.
[00:25:59]  Well, I lived it.
[00:26:02]  I was one of the first people on Twitter.
[00:26:04]  If you actually go to my Twitter account, which I can't even access right now, I started Twitter.
[00:26:08]  I was on Twitter in like 2011.
[00:26:12]  That was early.
[00:26:14]  Very early.
[00:26:16]  You can go all the way back to my old tweets.
[00:26:18]  I was asking for Donald Trump to run back in like 2011.
[00:26:21]  Anyway, it's a separate, separate issue for a different time.
[00:26:26]  And so the Twitter that existed in 15 and 16 made the country a lot more enjoyable.
[00:26:33]  It was fun.
[00:26:34]  And it also challenged authority.
[00:26:35]  And all those super weirdo Huffington Post people that write columns all day long that no one reads, they were so angry that people like Charlie Kirk were able to amount a following.
[00:26:48]  According to Axios in 2018, we had the third or fourth most engaged Twitter account on the planet because we understood the medium.
[00:26:56]  We were getting it.
[00:26:56]  That's when Twitter was fun.
[00:26:58]  It's when Twitter did not have the finger on the scale.
[00:27:00]  It's when they weren't shadow banning thanks to James O'Keefe.
[00:27:03]  We know that they were shadow banning.
[00:27:05]  And slowly and surely, all of a sudden Twitter, the window started to close on the ability to freely express on Twitter.
[00:27:13]  And it wasn't just the window to be able to freely express.
[00:27:15]  It's that content wasn't able to spread at the same sort of virality it was previously.
[00:27:22]  To go viral on Twitter was a lot harder because they totally changed the formula or the algorithm of what gets recognized and what actually spreads on their platform or as a publisher because they really are kind of a publisher.
[00:27:36]  And so as the window closed and it closed and it closed, we started to realize that our country actually became less free.
[00:27:43]  Is it any correlation that as Twitter became less free, so did the country?
[00:27:49]  Maybe that they're one and the same.
[00:27:51]  Maybe one caused the other.
[00:27:52]  Maybe one pushed the other.
[00:27:54]  Or maybe both matter.
[00:27:55]  Because if you have the place where people speak, it's going to be controlled, then your country will be controlled as well.
[00:28:03]  What's so fascinating about this Twitter saga is that both sides don't care about the money.
[00:28:09]  So you have Twitter that openly says they do not care about the money.
[00:28:12]  And you have Elon Musk openly saying he doesn't care about the money.
[00:28:16]  Play Cut 29, Elon Musk says, I don't care about the economics at all.
[00:28:19]  Play Cut 29.
[00:28:21]  My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.
[00:28:38]  But you've described yourself.
[00:28:40]  I don't care about the economics at all.
[00:28:42]  Okay, that's cool to hear.
[00:28:45]  He doesn't care about the economics at all.
[00:28:46]  Now, it's amazing how Elon Musk has gone from idol of the left to the villain of the left.
[00:28:52]  Isn't that amazing how quickly it can happen?
[00:28:53]  Elon Musk, man of the year, time man of the year last year, quickly turns to now being a villain.
[00:29:00]  Now, if Elon was saying he wanted to buy Twitter and make it more censored, in fact, he needs to have more sensibilities to the trans people or whatever, then people would be all for it.
[00:29:12]  And what's so, and we don't know how this is going to play out.
[00:29:14]  So anyone who's predicting, oh, I know how, you don't really know how it's going to work.
[00:29:18]  You know.
[00:29:19]  You've got a guy that's worth $300 plus billion dollars.
[00:29:21]  We don't even know his true net worth because we have no idea how valuable SpaceX is.
[00:29:24]  We can only speculate how valuable SpaceX is.
[00:29:27]  We have a guy who's worth $300 plus billion dollars, has Tesla, has Neuralink, boring company.
[00:29:36]  And he really doesn't, economics doesn't drive him.
[00:29:38]  Bezos economics drives him.
[00:29:40]  He bought the Washington Post as a rounding error to try to protect his regime.
[00:29:45]  But the other side also doesn't care about the money.
[00:29:47]  So who's going to win?
[00:29:49]  Well, only one of them is really, let's say, held hostage by security laws, and that is Twitter.
[00:29:57]  Musk can do whatever he wants until, and it's just by coincidence, of course, Joe Biden launches a criminal investigation into Elon Musk the moment that he announces this is going to happen.
[00:30:14]  He says that, and this is amazing, the Department of Justice and the Security Exchange Commission partners together to say that they are going to launch a criminal investigation into Tesla and some of the open market practices.
[00:30:29]  Of course, just a coincidence.
[00:30:31]  You know, this is one of the most consequential fights of a generation.
[00:30:34]  Whoever ends up winning this will then be able to decide and therefore control what can be said online.
[00:30:41]  And with that, the entire civilization will really be determined.
[00:30:45]  Yes, Musk could start his own Twitter.
[00:30:48]  I've said that.
[00:30:48]  That's hard.
[00:30:49]  Not that he doesn't have the money not to do that, but you have to rebuild a whole audience.
[00:30:52]  That doesn't solve the problem of Twitter already existing and people already using Twitter.
[00:30:57]  But when you have two sides that don't care about the economics, well, then they're both going to have to prioritize what they care about.
[00:31:05]  And what's amazing is that Musk and the Twitter board have something in common.
[00:31:10]  They both are prioritizing ideology above profit.
[00:31:17]  They are both prioritizing their vision of what they think Twitter should be.
[00:31:21]  Really, kind of treating Twitter like a nonprofit.
[00:31:24]  Both companies are.
[00:31:25]  Twitter only made $51 billion last year.
[00:31:29]  Usual EBITDA, earning before interest taxes deduction accrued.
[00:31:33]  EBITDA, usually you get maybe 10 times EBITDA in a tech deal.
[00:31:39]  Musk offered 45 times EBITDA.
[00:31:41]  It's an amazing deal for the company, and they know it.
[00:31:44]  They know that it's a great deal.
[00:31:45]  And Twitter is doing everything they possibly can to try to take the hostile takeover.
[00:31:49]  No, that's not a hostile takeover.
[00:31:50]  This is a liberation mission.
[00:31:53]  This is a rescue operation for speech in the West.
[00:31:58]  This is not a hostile takeover to try to turn it into pieces and break it apart.
[00:32:04]  Musk is not a corporate raider.
[00:32:06]  He's a liberator.
[00:32:08]  He is trying to bring this company back to what it could be and with it to have humanity be able to be more decent to one another, to be able to speak freely.
[00:32:19]  And boy, they're doing everything they possibly can to stop it.
[00:32:22]  How will this end?
[00:32:22]  I don't know.
[00:32:23]  Musk's plan B is probably going to tender offer, having everyone who owns shares be able to vote proxy to him.
[00:32:28]  I know I'll do it.
[00:32:29]  If that ends up being plan B, I'll be the first one to buy Twitter shares to do that.
[00:32:32]  Don't do that yet.
[00:32:33]  It's not sure we're going to do, and the price will go up dramatically if that ends up happening.
[00:32:37]  We'll go to $100 a share almost overnight.
[00:32:41]  Be one way to circumvent these people on the board of directors.
[00:32:44]  Musk has stumbled into, and I think he's even surprised, something that is so valuable to the machine.
[00:32:52]  And that's Twitter.
[00:32:53]  The ability to control your thoughts and your speech.
[00:32:56]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:32:57]  Email us your thoughts as always.
[00:32:58]  Freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:33:00]  Thanks so much.
[00:33:01]  Talk to you soon.
[00:33:04]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.