The Charlie Kirk Show - A Look Inside Elon’s Twitter HQ with Dave Rubin and Citizen Kane Aired: 2023-02-03 Duration: 33:51 === Kane Joins the Show (02:22) === [00:00:00] Hey everybody, it's Anna Charlie Kirk Show. [00:00:01] Citizen Kane joins us and Dave Rubin also joins us about his visit to Twitter. [00:00:06] Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. [00:00:10] Get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com. [00:00:14] That is tpusa.com. [00:00:16] Check it out right now, tpusa.com. [00:00:20] Buckle up, everybody. [00:00:21] Here we go. [00:00:22] Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. [00:00:24] Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. [00:00:26] I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. [00:00:29] Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. [00:00:33] I want to thank Charlie. [00:00:34] He's an incredible guy. [00:00:35] His spirit, his love of this country. [00:00:37] He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created. [00:00:42] Turning point USA. [00:00:43] 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. [00:00:52] That's why we are here. [00:00:55] Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com. [00:01:04] Every day when I am prepping this show, there is one website that I start with. [00:01:08] It is a launching off point for other websites. [00:01:11] It is citizenfreepress.com. [00:01:15] It's a fabulous website. [00:01:17] And I think their traffic just keeps on building amazingly. [00:01:20] And the man behind this incredibly successful venture is Citizen Kane. [00:01:26] Get it? [00:01:26] And he joins us right now. [00:01:27] Mr. Kane, welcome back to the program. [00:01:30] How are you doing, Mr. Citizen Kane? [00:01:33] Doing great, Charlie. [00:01:34] Just knocking out headlines here in the People's Republic of Bloomington, Indiana. [00:01:39] How are things? [00:01:40] I was about to say Evanston. [00:01:42] One of these days we're going to have to talk about Evanston, but you're out in Arizona. [00:01:46] I am. [00:01:46] That's right. [00:01:47] And I would say glasnost, but I don't know if people still say that anymore. [00:01:51] So you run one of the most successful websites out there. [00:01:54] One of the reasons I love having you on the program is because you have a finger on the pulse of what the conservative base is consuming and thinking and their sentiment and their attitude. [00:02:05] Walk us through the month of January, things you learned, things you saw, articles that perform better than you would have otherwise expected. [00:02:13] That's, yeah, that's a good question. [00:02:16] So you and I spoke, I think it was the last, a few days before Christmas. === Fulton County Indictment Bets (13:47) === [00:02:22] So at that time, you know, one of the big things you and I spoke about was whether the MAGA base was being sort of psychologically forced away from voting because they thought everything was rigged. [00:02:36] And I still think that's happening. [00:02:37] Continue, though. [00:02:38] Yeah, I mean, it's definitely that's an issue we'll have to deal with. [00:02:42] You know, that talk, obviously, since the election is now further away, a couple, two, three months, that talk has died down. [00:02:53] It's, you know, the month of January has been mostly about Trump DeSantis, to tell you the truth. [00:02:58] You know, we're in a wolf, right? [00:03:01] There's not a lot that's going to happen outside of a Trump indictment. [00:03:04] And I figured we would probably talk about that there. [00:03:07] You know, we're waiting on Fannie Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County. [00:03:14] And there was a New York Times huge profile on her this morning that Drudgelink. [00:03:18] So that could obviously happen any day. [00:03:20] But those are sort of, you know, we're in an infra, kind of in a period where not a lot is going to happen, you know, unless it's a Trump indictment. [00:03:29] So it leads to a lot of DeSantis Trump discussion. [00:03:34] Yeah. [00:03:34] And so I'm going to read something. [00:03:35] I want our audience to email us their reaction, freedom at charliekirk.com. [00:03:40] And then I want your reaction, Kane, which is one of Donald Trump's postings. [00:03:44] And I'm a supporter of Donald Trump in 2024. [00:03:46] When I saw President Trump in Mar-a-Lago, I privately expressed my opinion that I thought that this line of attack is not effective. [00:03:55] And in fact, I don't think it actually helps him. [00:03:57] And I'll read it. [00:03:58] He said the fake news media was good yesterday in their coverage of my stops in New Hampshire and South Carolina, other than the globalist street journal, the Wall Street Journal, which is rarely accurate or good. [00:04:06] They said the day was really amazing. [00:04:07] The enthusiasm to make America great again has ever been stronger. [00:04:10] He continues by saying the revelations about quote Ron DeSanctimonius doing far worse than any other Republican governor, including that he unapologetically shut down Florida and its beaches, was interesting indeed. [00:04:22] DJT leading big. [00:04:24] I'm curious in our audience, you guys can email us throughout. [00:04:28] Do you agree with Donald Trump preemptively attacking Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSanctimonius? [00:04:33] And Kane, I want your thoughts. [00:04:36] Is that resonating with the MAGA base? [00:04:38] Is that kind of going over with murmurs? [00:04:40] What are you hearing or seeing? [00:04:42] No, it's not really resonating. [00:04:44] People understand that's Trump's personality. [00:04:46] I mean, we can really get deep into this as to why Trump psychologically would decide to make these preemptive attacks. [00:04:54] But no, it's more hurting to a certain degree. [00:05:01] You know, there are people who really, really want unity and they see DeSantis as the future, whether that comes in 28 or 32, they see Kerry Lake in the same way. [00:05:11] And so to this certain cohort of the MAGA base, they do not want to see attacks. [00:05:17] They do not want to see infighting. [00:05:18] They don't want to see Trump reaching out and speaking ill of Governor DeSantis. [00:05:25] Then there's the other part of the crowd that could care less. [00:05:28] They actually think that DeSantis, they agree with Trump. [00:05:31] They think DeSantis has been not sure what the word is, not thankful enough, perhaps for the help that Trump gave him in 2018. [00:05:41] And it's true. [00:05:42] It's a legitimate point. [00:05:43] DeSantis was trailing in that primary in 2018. [00:05:46] Trump endorsed him. [00:05:47] It boosted him in a big way. [00:05:49] And a certain part of the Trump crowd, you know, very loyal part of that crowd, feels like Governor DeSantis, you know, should stay in his lane. [00:05:59] And, but then here's the last part of it, Charlie. [00:06:03] As you know, three-quarters of this is coming from lefty media, right? [00:06:08] Trying to create, they want to create a conflict between Trump and DeSantis. [00:06:12] DeSantis has been wise. [00:06:14] He said nothing. [00:06:15] Now, we've seen reports that he's courting, you know, courting big donors, probably just in case, and that makes sense. [00:06:25] But so I'll shut up for a minute and let you restrict. [00:06:27] No, I think that's really smart. [00:06:28] I think that there is a split, but it doesn't seem to be resonating the way that Little Marco or Lion Ted or any of those kind of hits in 16 did. [00:06:40] And absolutely not. [00:06:41] Do you agree with that? [00:06:43] I agree completely. [00:06:45] And part of that is because, you know, the MAGA base viewed Rubio as an enemy and Jet Bush as an enemy. [00:06:53] But that same base loves Governor DeSantis. [00:06:56] And so when you're trying to destroy a guy with a nickname or just take shots at a guy, you know, there are millions and millions in the base who love, who just absolutely love, adore Governor San DeSantis, what he's been through with his family, with Casey and her tough battle with cancer. [00:07:13] So there's a lot of personal feelings that are involved. [00:07:16] And so no, you know, calling Rubio, I mean, you know, the little robot, that was hilarious because, you know, our side wasn't really supporting Rubio. [00:07:28] So it's a challenge. [00:07:31] You know, you got to thread the needle here. [00:07:33] I, you know, if you're asking my personal opinion, I'm covering it, right? [00:07:38] So I enjoy the battles, but I would like to, I don't want to see a public battle between Governor DeSantis and President Trump, not even close. [00:07:47] I would like to, I would like them to work it out privately. [00:07:51] I wish we wouldn't have attacks like this. [00:07:53] But look, I don't second guess Trump. [00:07:56] You know, he does what he does and he's been pretty successful. [00:07:59] Yeah, just based on the emails we received, since I asked the question in just the last couple of moments here, overwhelmingly negative on Trump attacking DeSantis. [00:08:08] The sentiment, and I'm summarizing hundreds of emails that come in just like this: is Charlie, I love Trump, but this is not the way that he should be running. [00:08:17] Basically, he should be more magnanimous. [00:08:20] And DeSantis is not the same as attacking Liz Cheney. [00:08:25] I mean, DeSantis has been a rockstar conservative governor that has made Florida a very freer place, a more prosperous place. [00:08:34] He's also picked the tough fights. [00:08:36] And so I don't think we're going to escape this kind of DeSantis-Trump binary back and forth for quite some time. [00:08:45] I think we're entering kind of into the new head-to-head, but you made a smart point. [00:08:50] The media actually is really going to enjoy this, right? [00:08:53] In some ways, we're almost falling into their trap. [00:08:57] Yeah, exactly. [00:08:58] It is a trap. [00:08:59] And that's what I called it for the first three months. [00:09:01] I wouldn't touch this story from May through October. [00:09:06] I would not post anything about Trump, Trump, DeSantis on the site. [00:09:10] So I didn't want to touch it because I didn't want to fall into play. [00:09:15] You see who's writing these stories. [00:09:16] It's Danielle Beast, Washington Post, at least originally, you know, this summer and the early part of the fall. [00:09:22] Those were the groups that were trying to stir up this battle between the two of them. [00:09:25] But, you know, what you see really quickly, what you see in those emails is essentially what I see on the site. [00:09:31] People still love Trump. [00:09:32] They're going to forgive him, but they wish he wouldn't attack DeSantis. [00:09:37] Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here. [00:09:38] Thanks to your support, Patriot Mobile has emerged as one of the leaders in the parallel economy, and they have big news. [00:09:44] Patriot Mobile now offers services with all three major networks. [00:09:47] This means if you're with the big three and like the service but hate their values, you can access them with Patriot Mobile. [00:09:53] They also offer a performance guarantee. [00:09:54] If you're not happy with your coverage, then you could switch between the three major carriers for free. [00:09:59] Patriot Mobile, America's only Christian conservative wireless provider, offers nationwide coverage of the best 4G and 5G networks. [00:10:06] So you get the same great service while supporting a company that fights to preserve our God-given rights and freedoms. [00:10:11] This new year, resolve to stop supporting companies that don't align with your values. [00:10:14] They're 100% U.S.-based customer support team. [00:10:17] Helps make switching easy. [00:10:18] Just go to patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call them at 878-Patriot. [00:10:23] I think very highly of Patriot Mobile. [00:10:25] I love their team, Glenn and all of them. [00:10:26] They do a wonderful job. [00:10:28] Get free activation today with offer code Charlie. [00:10:30] That is patriotmobile.com slash Charlie or call 878Patriot, patriotmobile.com slash Charlie. [00:10:38] We received tons of emails, well over a thousand emails here. [00:10:42] And the consensus is that, and these are from people who support Trump, as I do for 2024, that it's not a good look and doesn't help him. [00:10:51] So we'll see. [00:10:55] Maybe there's something we don't see, but I will reiterate this. [00:10:58] And, you know, Kane, I'd love your thoughts on this. [00:11:01] I would rather see Donald Trump attacked Lindsey Graham than Ron DeSantis. [00:11:05] Your thoughts? [00:11:07] Yeah, give me a chuckle. [00:11:10] Pedro Gonzalez wrote a good piece on, I have it up on the site. [00:11:15] It's called The South Carolina Sellout. [00:11:17] It's one of the headlines. [00:11:18] And he was talking about that exact same thing, like, you know, attack Lindsey, not Ron. [00:11:23] Yes. [00:11:24] You know, hey, first thing, man, you've got some power. [00:11:26] A thousand emails in 15 minutes. [00:11:28] That's something for us. [00:11:30] We have an audience, man. [00:11:31] I got to tell you, we got some viewers. [00:11:34] I'll tell you what. [00:11:36] We got an interactive audience. [00:11:38] And they love you, by the way. [00:11:39] A lot of positive citizen free press listeners, I got to tell you. [00:11:43] So let's just kind of walk through then the next couple of months then, outside of the politics stuff. [00:11:49] What are the stories that you see starting to bubble up to the surface? [00:11:52] The Biden thing, where should we be focusing? [00:11:55] What do you consider is more kind of vapor and smokescreen versus legitimate stories that we need to zero in on? [00:12:02] I see a lot of energy towards the kind of vaccine justice issue, which I find to be super interesting as the Pfizer cover-up is really starting to be revealed. [00:12:12] Your thoughts? [00:12:14] Yeah, that's a good point on the vaccine justice. [00:12:18] That more and more, you know, people have been fighting for almost three years now, and more and more it seems like we're getting some wins here. [00:12:25] And again, that, you know, news naturally fills a vacuum. [00:12:30] So with fewer political stories, because it's an off year with 2023, hopefully we can get some work done there. [00:12:37] And I posted the live link yesterday to the very first House COVID hearing on the waste and abuse of tens and tens of billions of dollars. [00:12:47] So, but let's get into it. [00:12:49] I think, so here's what we got for the next six months. [00:12:53] We've got COVID stuff, we've got Trump DeSantis, and we've got will they indict or won't they? [00:12:59] So you mentioned those Biden documents. [00:13:01] I want to hear your thoughts. [00:13:03] I feel like that finding the Biden documents completely takes a Mar-a-Lago indictment of Trump off the table. [00:13:10] What do you think about that? [00:13:11] Yeah, I think that might be right, which actually reinforces something you teased earlier. [00:13:16] I think Fulton County is the plan. [00:13:18] I think Fulton County is actually where the regime is now placing their bets, just based on the profile pieces, the pub pieces, the leaks, the focus and the attention. [00:13:28] I think that they are turning down, they're lowering the expectations of a federal indictment, and they're going to try to indict Donald Trump in a state that he needs to win the presidency and Republicans need to win, and where a local grand jury actually might be more flexible. [00:13:42] Your thoughts? [00:13:44] Yeah, Fanny. [00:13:46] Well, okay. [00:13:47] So there were always two possibilities for DOJ indictments of Trump, right? [00:13:52] It was Mar-a-Lago and it's January 6th and the, you know, the whole insurrection stuff. [00:13:57] So I feel like Mar-a-Lago is completely off the table because they know that justice is often about public opinion and there is no way they can indict Trump. [00:14:07] And obviously you can't indict a sitting president. [00:14:10] So they wouldn't be able to indict Biden while he's president, but it just isn't going to flow. [00:14:14] So that leaves the insurrection thing in Georgia. [00:14:16] So let's get into Georgia. [00:14:18] I read that New York Times profile piece this morning. [00:14:21] It was long. [00:14:21] They are puffing up Fannie Wills. [00:14:24] She sounds like a, she's, she's tough on gangs, tough on crime in Atlanta, and they kind of threw some shade on her. [00:14:30] So she's not a totally typical Democrat. [00:14:33] But I think, you know, look, if Merrick Garland brings a case and loses, it's a stain on him forever. [00:14:40] If an unknown prosecutor from Fulton County brings a case and loses-she just made herself more famous for three months of discussion on MSNBC. [00:14:50] I don't think she has nearly as much to lose as Merrick Garland would. [00:14:55] So that's another factor leaning towards indictment. [00:14:58] Then when you, I was following the, you know, the judge 10 days ago was making the decision about whether to make the grand jury report public. [00:15:06] And he ordered that they should make it public with heavy redactions. [00:15:11] But all of the comments from her office at that time were, don't do it. [00:15:15] We're on the cusp of making our decision. [00:15:18] It just, to any reasonable reading person, it smelled like she was saying, look, we're going to indict the guy. [00:15:24] So back off. [00:15:26] So I think it's coming now. [00:15:28] Then you get to, can she win? [00:15:32] And I don't think she can win. [00:15:33] I think it's a 6-6 jury in, because I think these are political cases and it's going to be, you know, that's a good point. [00:15:41] It's not Washington, D.C. at all. [00:15:44] But I think you're right. [00:15:45] I think the document Mar-a-Lago case, not as strong. [00:15:48] There might be this, whatever, this guy's named Tim Smith or Jim Smith, the special counsel. [00:15:52] There might be a January 6th thing. [00:15:54] The insurrection, it's insane. [00:15:55] That's not even in the realm of, that's the word they use unnecessarily. [00:15:58] But then keep your eye on Fulton County. [00:16:00] All right, we're out of time. [00:16:01] CitizenFreePress.com. [00:16:03] Citizen Kane, thank you so much. [00:16:05] Love being here and good luck with the Bolsonaro event in Miami, brother. [00:16:09] It's going to be fun, man. === Musk Calls and Twitter Chaos (15:16) === [00:16:10] God bless you. [00:16:10] We'll send you links. [00:16:14] Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here. [00:16:15] When Roe versus Wade fell as the law of the land last year, all it did was increase what pro-abortion states are doing to entice and mislead women to abort their children. [00:16:25] States are now advertising to travel just to get an abortion. [00:16:28] It's become abortion trafficking. [00:16:30] So the need to provide the truth as girls and women are contemplating what to do about their pregnancy is greater now than ever before. [00:16:37] Ultrasounds save babies because ultrasounds give the truth at a time everyone else is saying it's not just a baby, it's just a clump of cells. [00:16:45] When you introduce a girl to her baby by providing an ultrasound, you are giving her the truth at the most important time of her life. [00:16:53] And more than 85% of the time, she will choose life. [00:16:57] You don't have to make a lot of noise to make a big difference for life. [00:16:59] Just give an ultrasound at preborn.org to be a hero for life. [00:17:02] That is preborn.org. [00:17:04] $140 gives five mothers a free ultrasound and saves babies. [00:17:08] $200 can save 10 babies. [00:17:09] Go to preborn.org. [00:17:11] I love this organization. [00:17:11] I'm a donor to it. [00:17:12] Check it out, preborn.org. [00:17:17] Joining us now is one of my favorite guests, and I have a lot of questions for him. [00:17:21] And I saw his recent Twitter thread, and I said, man, we got to talk. [00:17:25] It's Dave Rubin from the Rubin Report. [00:17:27] Dave, welcome back to the program. [00:17:29] Charlie, I have to say you've become a fine broadcaster. [00:17:32] You know, when we met you many years ago, you were just a kid and you were going to these college campuses and arguing with these leftist maniacs. [00:17:41] But look at you. [00:17:42] You've got a shirt and a tie, a microphone, you read copy. [00:17:46] It's very impressive, my friend. [00:17:48] Dave, all of this is temporary because some chat bot is going to take over my entire job in five years. [00:17:55] No, listen, we're dinosaurs, man. [00:17:57] It's over for us. [00:17:58] They're just going to have some little virtual man doing everything that we do, which is why we have to enjoy it now. [00:18:04] Yes. [00:18:04] I mean, we're going to have driverless cars and machines doing our radio programs. [00:18:10] So, Dave, you had a chance to go into the labyrinth itself, the Twitter headquarters first. [00:18:17] How did you pull that off and what did you learn? [00:18:20] Yeah, well, labyrinth is the right word. [00:18:22] I'll get to that in a sec. [00:18:24] How did it happen? [00:18:25] Well, basically, you know, there's been a lot of wacky stuff going on with Twitter. [00:18:29] You're a power user there, and you're one of the guys that in the original Twitter files, it was exposed that your account was being hit. [00:18:36] So you're well aware of the specifics. [00:18:38] But to your audience, you know, for people that are not on Twitter or don't pay that much attention, you know, you really can tell if you're a big Twitter user when people are seeing your stuff, when your relevant stuff's really breaking through, when things are going viral, when you may not see other people that you follow, and a whole bunch of other problems. [00:18:55] So for the last couple of weeks, it seems like those problems have really ramped up after about a three-week period when Elon made the acquisition, when suddenly Twitter felt like the old days. [00:19:05] People were seeing tweets again. [00:19:07] I was starting to see people I had long forgotten about because they had been shadow banned into oblivion and everything else. [00:19:12] So I was fortunate enough to get in touch with two engineers over there, and they were doing a deep dive on my account and asking me what I was seeing for about two weeks. [00:19:21] And we're doing a text chat on this. [00:19:23] And then I got a call last Tuesday basically saying, hey, can you get to San Francisco today? [00:19:29] Elon wants to meet with you. [00:19:31] And basically, when the world's richest man who's running Twitter wants to meet with you, you get on a plane, Charlie. [00:19:36] And I sat in the last row, row 32E, with a in the middle seat with no reclining back to it. [00:19:44] It was not working, but I made it to San Francisco. [00:19:46] I got there a little bit after midnight. [00:19:48] He was there. [00:19:49] You know, a whole bunch of engineers still burning the midnight oil. [00:19:52] He came up to me. [00:19:53] We chatted for a few minutes and then he said, and this, this really sets up everything you need to know about the guy. [00:19:58] He's had meetings all day long. [00:19:59] I think he was testifying in a court case earlier in the day. [00:20:01] He had the Tesla quarterly earning meetings the next day. [00:20:05] And he says to me, he says, Dave, you know, I'm extremely tired, but if you need me to stay right now, if you need us to sit down and deal with this right now, we'll do it. [00:20:15] And I was like, no, Elon, it's okay. [00:20:17] We could do it tomorrow. [00:20:19] And then we ended up meeting the next day, again, after midnight, because he was so busy for about two hours. [00:20:24] And that's where we got into some of the nitty-gritty. [00:20:26] But I thought that that little moment alone, the fact that this guy, you know, I'm just one of a gajillion people on Twitter, but that he was willing at 1 a.m. basically to stay up later to continue trying to fix these problems. [00:20:40] Like he did not need this problem, Charlie. [00:20:42] This thing is a freaking endless headache as he described it. [00:20:46] It's a fractal Rube Goldberg machine. [00:20:49] Everyone may remember the Rube Goldberg machine from the original Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure. [00:20:54] And they have basically built a system that is tenuous at best. [00:20:59] This thing could fall apart at any moment. [00:21:02] He spent $44 billion on it. [00:21:04] He believes in the public square. [00:21:05] He believes in free speech. [00:21:06] He's trying to fix it. [00:21:08] But as he said, the more that you go in and you fix things, the more things start breaking. [00:21:13] And he has a big problem on his hands, but he seems interested in doing it. [00:21:17] It seems to be the modern Gordian knot of technology. [00:21:23] Maybe he's Alexander the Great. [00:21:25] I don't know. [00:21:25] So that's an amazing story. [00:21:28] Just the details of you met midnight to 2 a.m. [00:21:33] And just, I mean, that is perfectly consistent with all the folklore around Elon Musk and kind of how he operates and his eccentricities. [00:21:42] So, but what did you leave Twitter with a greater understanding of what they're dealing with and or more trust that they're trying to accomplish legitimate free speech ends? [00:22:00] Yeah. [00:22:00] So I'll answer the second part first. [00:22:02] As long as Elon is in charge from everything I saw out of that guy, I 100% trust that he is trying to keep it open. [00:22:10] He is trying to even the playing field. [00:22:12] He is not trying to censor people. [00:22:14] He's trying to have a transparent set terms of service, you know, all that sort of stuff. [00:22:19] So on that end, as much as I can trust someone that I don't live with, that I don't know to that degree, I do trust he's doing his best on that front. [00:22:26] We also talked about politics a bunch, and he was well aware of sort of my political evolution, which in some ways mirrors his own political evolution because, you know, he was only a Democrat voter his entire life until this last election, the midterms. [00:22:39] He voted for Myra Flores in Texas because he's a resident of Texas. [00:22:42] Now the Tesla is over in Austin. [00:22:44] He has said he would support DeSantis, but the point is, this is not somebody, you know, the media treats him like he's some scary far right winger. [00:22:52] And it's just, it couldn't be further from the truth. [00:22:54] So we did a whole bunch on the politics side as well. [00:22:57] As far as fixing some of the problems, Charlie, you'll find this one particularly interesting. [00:23:00] When the original Twitter files came out and they listed you as one of the people that had a label attached to your account, and that meant you were being shadow banned or your views were being depressed. [00:23:11] And it wasn't even totally clear what else it could mean as well. [00:23:14] So that was one version of it. [00:23:15] The reason they called me in was as they did this deep dive on my account, what they found was my account didn't have any of the outward labels that someone like your account or Dan Bongino was another one that had it, a couple other people. [00:23:28] My account, what they found was they had to go deep into the code, meaning just looking at my account. [00:23:34] And that's where they found things like, I had been labeled not safe for work, which basically means that my account was porn, which it obviously is not. [00:23:42] I had been labeled not safe for ads, which meant that when ads were put in the feed, my tweets could not appear above or below them. [00:23:50] So you could see how that would hurt within the algorithm. [00:23:52] And then I had also been hit with, I think it was the recent misinformation, the recent misinformation tag, which I don't know what I've spread that's misinformation. [00:24:03] I mean, if they want to go after misinformation, they should be going after the New York Times and NBC and CNN and the rest of them. [00:24:08] But the point was this stuff was buried under the hood. [00:24:12] The original Twitter files showed you what was there fairly obviously. [00:24:16] And now they're realizing, whoa, there is way more here. [00:24:19] And I would guess. [00:24:21] And I bet he already has answers on some of this. [00:24:23] There is way more that they've found just in the last five or six days since I left San Francisco. [00:24:28] So these are, I mean, these are like landmines that are in the inner workings, in the grass, if you will, of the fields of your code. [00:24:38] That if you're just kind of looking at a landscape painting, like, oh, look at what beautiful, peaceful. [00:24:42] Like, actually, no, if you walk through there, you're going to get your leg blown off. [00:24:45] And what you're saying, though, is that they wouldn't know that unless they went deep into the coding underneath it. [00:24:51] Let me ask you a question. [00:24:52] You might not have the answer. [00:24:54] Were any of those kind of coding landmines added post-Elon purchase? [00:25:01] So I don't know the answer to that specifically, but I think there's an inkling of something like this. [00:25:07] You know, when he got there and he made the acquisition, which is what, about two and a half months ago, he fired half the company. [00:25:13] I mean, the company went from 7,500 people to about 3,500. [00:25:17] The pictures that I showed in the Twitter thread, you know, you see this really empty, giant space. [00:25:22] It's very dystopian in nature because nobody's there because so many of the employees are still working remote. [00:25:27] He doesn't want them to work remote. [00:25:28] There's a fight about that. [00:25:30] The question is, how many bad actors were writing this stuff into the code on their own? [00:25:35] Meaning there might have just been some guy at Twitter that was a programmer that didn't like me and decided to do this, you know, just completely as a bounty hunter on his own volition. [00:25:44] Or was it coordinated? [00:25:46] Do they have emails from Jack Dorsey, the former CEO, saying go ahead and do this stuff? [00:25:51] Or did he just turn a blind eye to it? [00:25:53] And then really to your question, does Elon know if he got rid of all the bad actors? [00:25:59] I can't speak to that exactly, but my guess is, you know, he did a pretty hardcore blanket firing of half the people. [00:26:06] You got to imagine, knowing how wokeism has infected every institution, educationally, technologically, governmental, whatever it might be, you can't, you have to imagine that there's still some of them there. [00:26:18] And the question is, what are they up to right now? [00:26:21] Yeah, I mean, I have so many questions, Dave. [00:26:23] The engineers that you met with, and you're good at reading people, and I trust your judgment. [00:26:28] Did you get a sense that they were trying to fix this, that they shared values? [00:26:33] Okay, explain that. [00:26:34] 100%. [00:26:35] The two guys, the two guys that I spent most of my time with, I'm telling you, these guys brought their laptops up to me, opened up all the internal stuff. [00:26:42] You know, there's certain things they can't, you know, you're not seeing people's passwords and things of that nature, but they're showing me all their analytics related to my account. [00:26:49] And I gave them a list. [00:26:51] I think you were on one of the lists, actually, but I had given them a separate list because you were called out in the original thing of people that I thought it might be worthy of looking into. [00:26:59] I'm telling you, every single question that I asked these guys, they had their laptops right in front of me and they were not hiding their screens. [00:27:06] So they were showing me things. [00:27:07] They were showing me graphs. [00:27:08] They were showing me as they were uncovering these things. [00:27:11] So I felt very good. [00:27:12] And I will say that the two guys that, and I'm still working with them, by the way, they are new hires at Twitter. [00:27:18] They've been working with Elon before. [00:27:20] So he trusts them, but they are new at Twitter. [00:27:22] So these are fresh eyes that are looking at this. [00:27:24] And I mean, I can't imagine they're even able to take all this, the volume of information in. [00:27:30] Because as you said, you fix one problem and you break three, it seems, or you look into one thing and it only reveals another. [00:27:37] So at least this is giving me some comfort that this is being addressed and there's a venue to talk about it. [00:27:44] My Twitter's been a mess the last couple of weeks. [00:27:46] Engagement. [00:27:47] Oh, it's worse than ever right now. [00:27:49] It's worse than ever. [00:27:50] It feels worse since I got back. [00:27:51] Yeah, it's worse than when, you know, Stalin was running the place, right? [00:27:56] That guy was the worst of all the Twitter CEOs. [00:27:59] Buddhist Stalin, or Jack Dorsey, I'm sorry, I get him confused all the time. [00:28:05] So Dave, what you're saying is that the DNA of the company, the fiber, he might have to rewrite the whole thing. [00:28:11] I'm a layman. [00:28:12] I have no idea what that would even take. [00:28:15] So share with our audience other things that you learned in that. [00:28:20] compressed meeting with Elon and his team. [00:28:23] You obviously came with a lot of questions and concerns. [00:28:26] As I mentioned before the break, my Twitter has just been a horror show the last couple of weeks. [00:28:32] It's worse than it's ever been. [00:28:33] What can you share with us in that regard? [00:28:35] Well, I can give you a first-hand account on that one. [00:28:37] I mean, I could tell you, Charlie, I don't think I've seen one of your tweets in probably weeks, probably weeks. [00:28:42] Me and you used to interact on Twitter quite a bit. [00:28:45] I never see you anymore. [00:28:46] I'm not retweeting you because I don't like you. [00:28:48] I just don't see you anymore. [00:28:49] I was wondering, Dave, was it something I said? [00:28:52] And I was just, man, I just don't see you. [00:28:54] But I'm guessing you don't see me either. [00:28:56] I see that. [00:28:57] And that is what the problem is. [00:28:58] I'm walking in blindness. [00:29:00] And I don't have time to look everybody up. [00:29:02] I mean, that's not, if I wanted to do that, I'd use MySpace, right? [00:29:04] Twitter is supposed to be, it's supposed to profile people you actually want to engage with. [00:29:09] Please continue. [00:29:10] Well, I'll give you one that's a little bit of insider baseball that I did learn. [00:29:13] You may have noticed that, you know, when we all signed up for Twitter over the years, what we all thought we were signing up for was, oh, you follow this person, you're going to see their tweets in a chronological feed with no manipulation or anything else, right? [00:29:26] I follow Charlie Kirk. [00:29:28] I follow Candace Owens. [00:29:29] I follow Ben Shapiro. [00:29:30] I'm going to see all their stuff as it comes out. [00:29:32] That's what we all thought was happening. [00:29:34] Then obviously there was all this under the hood stuff that was manipulating it and the shadow banning and all that. [00:29:39] But one of the things that I think he's now realizing was a bit of a mistake. [00:29:43] He's even tweeted this in the last day or two that they're going to try to fix it is they created a tab called For You where the algorithm would then recommend things for you. [00:29:52] But people did not realize that that was what they were seeing. [00:29:55] So suddenly you're seeing all of these things that you did not sign up for and you're not seeing the things that you actually did sign up for. [00:30:02] So it was doubly compounded. [00:30:04] So I think they're going to reverse that, but even reverting that is tough. [00:30:08] And he mentioned how, you know, we talked earlier about how when you fix one thing, you break something else. [00:30:12] They had an issue about a week ago with Twitter Spaces, which is their audio platform, like sort of the Twitter radio show sort of thing. [00:30:19] And they tried to fix that. [00:30:21] And by fixing that, they actually downed the Twitter Android app for a day. [00:30:26] So these are big, serious problems that he's got to figure out. [00:30:30] But you asked me what else I learned there. [00:30:32] I mean, this isn't exactly about Twitter, but man, Charlie, I don't know when the last time you were in San Francisco was. [00:30:37] Actually, I was there with you a couple of years ago and our car got broken into and they stole my bag with my laptop and everything else. [00:30:44] But San Francisco is an unimaginable human disaster. [00:30:49] The drugs and the homelessness, it was sprawling throughout the city. [00:30:54] Look, I lived in New York City. [00:30:55] I lived in Los Angeles. [00:30:57] I've been around the country, even Portland and Seattle. [00:31:00] I have never seen anything like this. [00:31:02] Yeah, and now these people want to run the country. [00:31:04] A lot different than Miami. [00:31:05] Miami is full of life. [00:31:07] Oh, man. [00:31:08] When are you visiting me in Miami? [00:31:09] It's a freaking joy out here. [00:31:11] No, it's so hilarious. [00:31:11] I got iguanas. [00:31:12] I got lizards. [00:31:13] What do you need? [00:31:13] You and I should talk off air. [00:31:14] I'm actually flying there to go interview Bolsoniro tomorrow. [00:31:17] So you and I should, I'll text you and we'll talk about it. [00:31:19] What are we doing? [00:31:20] Yeah, we got to figure it out. [00:31:21] It was a last minute thing. [00:31:22] Similar to when Bolsoniero calls you, like when Elon Musk calls you. [00:31:25] You got to go interview him. === San Francisco Human Disaster (02:24) === [00:31:26] Right. [00:31:27] When the deposed Brazilian leader. [00:31:29] Of course, obviously. [00:31:30] That's an interview you don't want to turn down. [00:31:32] So, but in closing here, Dave, look, I believe it's important for our civilization that Twitter gets sorted out. [00:31:40] I hate to handicap the odds, but did you leave at least with some clarity that, hey, we got a fighting shot? [00:31:50] Yeah, yeah, but it's 50-50. [00:31:52] It's 50-50. [00:31:53] But, you know, to loosely quote Han Solo, I'll take those odds. [00:31:56] I mean, you know, he wants to fix it. [00:31:58] He has every resource in the world. [00:32:00] He's bringing in tons of great people. [00:32:02] The problems just may be that crazy. [00:32:05] But, you know, Charlie, you know this. [00:32:07] And as a capitalist and as a lover of America and the human mind and the individual, we will always find our way out of these things. [00:32:15] So even if Twitter was to fail, and trust me, I do not want it to fail. [00:32:19] Even if Twitter was to fail, we will find a new public square and we will build new things. [00:32:24] You know, obviously you and I are big supporters of Rumble and I do, which merged with Rumble and Rumble's doing incredibly well. [00:32:31] So the pipes and the alternate rails are being built. [00:32:34] And, you know, you never want to put all your chips in one basket, right? [00:32:37] So Elon is an extraordinary human being. [00:32:39] There's absolutely no doubt about it. [00:32:41] He is a modern Renaissance man. [00:32:43] He's basically a modern iron man. [00:32:45] Yes. [00:32:46] Yeah. [00:32:47] But maybe he can't fix everything too. [00:32:50] So I would say anyone listening to this, like go out there and keep building things. [00:32:53] That's the most important thing that you can do. [00:32:56] I totally agree. [00:32:57] 20 seconds. [00:32:58] Did you get the sense that Elon shares the values of free speech? [00:33:04] Is this a moral crusade for him? [00:33:06] Yes, it's a moral crusade. [00:33:08] Absolutely. [00:33:08] And that was extremely refreshing, by the way. [00:33:10] We didn't just dive into tech stuff. [00:33:12] And I'm not a techie. [00:33:13] You know, I have a fairly decent understanding of this stuff. [00:33:16] But like you, you know, I talk about politics. [00:33:19] I understand the political and philosophical underpinnings of this stuff. [00:33:22] But he absolutely is, I would say, on our side when it comes to free speech. [00:33:26] Free speech should not be a side. [00:33:28] Free speech should be the uniter, not a side. [00:33:30] You and I both know that. [00:33:31] I'm going to text about Miami, Dave. [00:33:32] Great job. [00:33:33] Thank you for going out. [00:33:34] That's Roll, man. [00:33:34] Stake on me. [00:33:38] Thanks so much for listening, everybody. [00:33:39] Email me your thoughts as always. [00:33:40] Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. [00:33:42] Thank you so much for listening and God bless. [00:33:47] For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.