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March 13, 2024 - Louder with Crowder
01:11:30
BREAKING: TikTok "Ban" Bill Passes the House! Guest Vivek Ramaswamy
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
🎵 Music 🎵 🎵 Music 🎵
🎵 Music 🎵 Don't you want to show me your symphony?
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And here I thought you could talk to me.
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I'll be thinking about you during Yom Kippur when I'm repenting!
Let me tell you about that black thing.
That ain't no myth.
I was in between Lorenzo Bollier, and then there was another guy, Davey Johnson.
Literally, last name Johnson.
Even for black guys, we're like, what the f***?
He used to go in the shower last because he didn't want us to f***ing joke him up.
Imagine having a d*** so big you don't want people to pick on you for it.
Oh, woe is me.
Yeah, exactly.
Woe is you.
He's the OG.
He has his own show here in Mug Club, Monday through Thursday, 5 p.m.
Eastern.
Nick DiPaolo.
I'm going to follow.
What?
What?
A quiet sip.
Now you're judging my sip?
A little soft.
A little dainty.
A little soft, a little far away from the mic.
Yeah, whatever.
It'll be whatever sip I damn well please because it's fair.
Note the louder.
Yes.
I thought it was quite a professional.
Insubordinate, churlish.
I've got pad thai over here.
All right.
Hey, let's bring up the rundown.
We have Vivek Ramaswamy on the show today.
Yeah.
Because today is a concept episode.
And what do I mean by that?
No, it's not going to be just one of those episodes where we do flashbacks and montages because we're lazy.
It's an episode where we are going to discuss specifically free speech in the area of big
tech and now TikTok, because there is a bill that will be discussed today that very likely
will result not in the ban of TikTok, but in the, I guess I should say, subjecting TikTok
to the authority of the constitutional parameters of the United States.
So there are a lot of claims out there surrounding this bill and a lot of mistruths.
I understand kind of two sides of the as free speech absolutists.
However, freedom of speech ceases to exist if the platforms that claim to allow freedom of speech are subject to a communist foreign entity.
So, very different from what we've had to deal with in the past.
And we'll look at what the global threat to free speech looks like, what it looks like on different platforms, and specifically TikTok, what the alternatives are.
TikTok is very likely not going anywhere.
It just comes down to if it will remain under the control of the Communist Chinese Party.
So you can comment below before we bring Vivek on.
First off, if you're in chat right now, Mug Club, we'd love to see your questions.
We can try and ask them of Vivek because he seems to be against this bill.
I wouldn't say supportive of TikTok, but he has some arguments to make.
We like Vivek.
I want to hear what he has to say.
Do you think it's a slippery slope?
Do you think this bill is the right call?
And of course, because we will be speaking out against the demented circus monkeys at YouTube and Facebook, if at any point today you see this, You know, head on over to Rumble anyway, who may purchase TikTok because they actually do allow freedom of speech.
Yeah.
If you don't see us here on YouTube, as in very likely election night coverage, you know, it's just, it's a live show.
Weekdays, 10 a.m.
Eastern.
You want to know?
Watch the show.
Absolutely.
By the way, they are voting on that bill right now.
Really?
We'll be able to update you guys live here, I think, in about 10 minutes.
Well, I turned to CNN and it's about a new aid package to Ukraine.
Yeah.
Don't forget!
Trying to make you have an aneurysm, sorry.
You know what I say to that?
I would go on the floor and they would say, uh, uh, Representative Crowder, how do you vote?
I would go... Sir, that doesn't register as a vote, you have to hit a button.
I'm sorry, I meant... My lips aren't moist enough, I didn't... It's with the beard, because it creates, it's, there's no longer a seal.
Yeah, you gotta get the suction.
You gotta get a seal.
Yeah.
Can you do it?
Can someone do it with the two hands?
Because I knew a kid in school... I can't do that.
Can you do the two hands?
Let me see.
Let's see.
Noodles?
That sounded like Pete Buttigieg.
No, I think the beard makes it impossible.
It's actually how I sound when I fart, though, so it's pretty accurate.
Gabe William is watching the show going... In third chair, you know him, you love him.
When you hear this, you mostly thank him for his service, but he'll be at Wise Guys Comedy Club in Las Vegas Friday, April 5th, Saturday, April 6th.
Very funny guy, Josh Feierstein.
How are you?
I'm good.
Good to be here.
Good for the concept.
I am excited.
Don't oversell it, Josh.
Take a soft sip, Josh.
That's more of a slurp.
So this does sort of relate today, right, this bill.
And this bill is going to be voted today by whom?
What do you mean?
Who's going to be voting on the bill today?
Senate?
No, Congress.
Yes, Congress.
I wasn't a trick question.
You know this, Joe.
That was called a layup, dummy.
Well, I thought it was so simple that I'm like, he's playing 8-D chess.
What do I know?
I'm confused.
The American people?
I don't know!
I'm playing guess who?
Does your senator have glasses?
Guess who?
The lesbians.
The lesbian with the afro.
I want to play Woke Guess Who.
Yes.
It'd be pretty easy to lose.
I think we did do a sketch of Woke Guess Who.
Did we?
I don't know.
We've done so many things.
So, it sort of, it lends itself to this conversation at large, right?
Censorship.
Now, to be clear, we have been the target ourselves here, from YouTube, from Facebook, from Twitter.
And this isn't just people going out there wanting to be martyrs saying, no, they're shattered.
No, no, these have actually been Uh, sort of a matter of legal precedent and new rules that have been changed on YouTube.
Sorry, but not really sorry, because we're glad that's what helped foster an environment for places like Rumble.
So, the TikTok bill.
A lot of the argument surrounding this bill is focused on censorship and free speech.
Okay, I'm on the side of free speech, I'm anti-censorship.
However, that usually relates to the dynamic here in the United States government.
Uh, for example, Jen Psaki calling on Spotify.
Uh, Fly, as she calls it.
Spotify, that's what she said.
For example, Senator Hirono Nancy Pelosi calling for the banning of us from YouTube, right?
That's a problem, that's tyrannical when you have people who are beholden, who've taken an oath to the Constitution, who support censorship and free speech.
I know what you're gonna say, businesses can do whatever they want.
It's not a business doing whatever it wants when the government leans on the business.
Okay.
You now add a different dynamic.
A platform, an app, that is ubiquitous in the United States, largely with young people, okay?
A growing voting demographic that is controlled by a foreign communist entity with a vested interest in the destruction of the United States.
As a matter of fact, I don't know if we have this quote.
Someone from China, I don't remember which representative, came out and said this is an act of bullying from the United States against China.
Hold a second!
If you have nothing to do with it, why do you care?
I can't tell you that.
You're a stranger.
So let's walk you through history before we get to TikTok so you can understand where it is that we come from.
We have been censored here, demonetized, Vivek will be coming on very soon, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and of course, yes, yours truly has been completely banned from TikTok.
So while we're talking about free speech, we were banned from TikTok for saying that Xi Jinping has a small penis, which he does!
I've seen it.
Community note, true.
So let's first walk you back to this.
This was a big moment in our history.
We survived this because of you, Mug Club.
We make $0 off of YouTube.
We make, I think, like $49 a week off of Twitter, which, you know, spare no expense.
We are entirely funded by viewers like you.
We would have never been able to survive this.
This was known as the Vox Apocalypse.
What happened is people at Media Matters and then people in the mainstream media scene and they picked up a hit piece, a highlight reel of all the horrible things that we've said.
Just so you know, foreshadowing, guilty!
Boy, you want to have a surreal experience?
Have the Hodge twins call you from the airport hotel going, Man, we just saw Don Lemon on TV saying, Here's Steven Crowder!
And your dad was on there going, Queer!
Queer!
No, that was taken over years.
It was a montage, guys.
And then Don Lemon came back on camera.
He said, Disgusting.
So you're watching this going for jokes, and we were demonetized on YouTube.
They created a whole new policy because of a smear campaign, and actually Google's stock took a nosedive because as a result, YouTube demonetized thousands of channels, including historical documentary channels, because we didn't violate any guidelines, so they created new ones.
Here is actually just a brief memory trigger.
Controversial YouTuber named Steven Crowder.
It's very offensive.
Very offensive.
YouTube dragged its feet before taking any action against conservative commentator Steven Crowder.
We have a higher standard for monetization so then we did announce the monetization change that Steven Crowder was his monetization.
So was that in reaction?
Update on our continued review.
We have suspended this channel's monetization.
Okay.
Very offensive, Steven.
I love how they just refer to that as though that's just a benign thing.
It's like, yeah, we took away his ability to ever make a living on this channel, which would be millions and millions of dollars a year.
Right.
And by the way, they also wouldn't allow us back on YouTube until we removed the Socialism is for Figs shirt.
I know, that's weird.
At the Crowder Shop.
Which is completely off platform.
They created new rules for that, where then YouTube could demonetize or remove you for what is on platform.
So they changed their harassment rules.
After this took place, this had taken place, to remove more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube, sure, but then they created what is known in the industry, I'm sorry to say, is the Crowder Guideline, uh, the reduce borderline content and raise up authoritative voices.
Authoritative according to you.
That was new in response to that.
You screwed it for everyone!
I know, borderline content.
They said, this isn't a violation of policies.
It's borderline.
Sorry, guys.
That's why you all have to censor the word damn when you're on YouTube.
Isn't it crazy right now that we used to have the FCC, at least you had an R rating, but you knew what you were in for.
And if you went with someone who was 18 years old, like a cool babysitter, now everyone censors themselves.
You have these rough and dirty bad boy comics who everything is like...
That's a bad word.
It's like, oh, what happened to you being a rebel?
What happened to you saying, oh, we're the same all the time?
Everyone censors themselves.
It's not a few suits at the FCC.
It's collectively society at large has forced everyone to turn everything on YouTube and
Facebook and Instagram to be G-rated shit.
And by the way, not good G, not like Pixar, just boring G.
Not like G-spot.
No.
Nobody's getting pleasure from this, G. Well, G. Spock.
The man was a lover, not a fighter.
More like G. Williker.
They want you to be like Miss Rachel.
They want this show to be like Miss Rachel.
Yes.
That's what they want.
Where it costs four dimes to make and a hairnet and you're worth nine billion dollars.
So before we get to TikTok, Bill, then this also happened to us with Facebook.
So Facebook, this is actually how I met my half-Asian lawyer, Bill Richman.
There was a Gizmodo article that named pages that were specifically selected by hand to censor and remove from Facebook.
Keep in mind, this is how I made A living, largely, at that point in time.
Mug Club had not grown to the level that it was now.
So we made a lot of our revenue off of the website, because we would have many, many millions of people read the articles.
And that traffic came from Facebook and auxiliary sources.
So there was an article that said, hey, we decided to throttle Ted Cruz Pack for President, Breitbart.com, the Chris Kyle Foundation, And me!
One of these things is not like the other, but at that point in time, it was the top page on Facebook.
And so they specifically chose it to throttle it, so that people who liked the page could not see the content of the page that they liked.
We also ran into this on Twitter, where we were suspended for hateful conduct, despite the fact that there was no hateful conduct.
It was about gender fluidity, which is not a thing you can go screw yourselves if you think it is.
You can go screw the other half of you, depending on which half you are that day.
And if you've kept it in a jar.
Yes.
Where else are you going to keep it?
And again, we give this to you because this is the reason for Mug Club.
You guys can go to lightoffcredit.com.
You can join it for a $9 mug list.
There's still the promo code SCOTUS, $10 off.
PBS, we are funded by viewers like you.
It's why we're able to have the YouTube dump button, why we are able to not care if we're banned from TikTok, demonetized on YouTube.
That's what you have to do.
You have to uncouple yourselves from these social media ghettos.
So I say that so that hopefully you understand we have a long and storied history in fighting back against big tech and censorship.
That's the reason that this exists.
You are the reason that it exists.
That is not the case with TikTok and this bill that is happening today.
This is about a foreign entity, half of the employees of whom have been banged by Eric Swalwell in control of American speech.
Imagine that!
The Chinese Communist Party in control or altering, alter-algorithming American speech.
They are not subject to the Constitution, neither are your representatives.
That is the complication in today's story, wrinkle, bill.
And also, I need to let you know, today's show is brought to you by our sponsor, Woke Word of the Day.
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You have an update there, Gerald.
Yeah, we do have an update.
This bill did pass.
The TikTok ban bill is kind of what people are calling it online.
197 to 29, I believe, was the final vote, with one person voting present.
It looks like 197 to 30.
Ah, it changed a little bit.
This is just the House, so the Senate now has to act on this or do something they can act in kind of a lot of
different ways to either change this bill, approve it as is, and then we
go to the president. So again, Little School House, rock for you. This is not the
bill being done.
I hope I become a law or ask Wal-Mart to make a Chinese spy.
He's already done that. I don't think he needs laws to do that.
And apparently the time doesn't mean anything.
Lane just sent in that it did get two-thirds.
So apparently a bunch of people voted after.
Thank you!
It voted.
It passed by a lot more.
And we're going to look at the no's on that.
So at that last shot it was 46 no's.
Let's see if anybody else votes no.
We won't go into that.
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I don't know what this means.
Real quick, bring this up.
Judge dismisses some counts against Trump in Georgia case.
They say it's breaking news, but that doesn't mean it's breaking news.
I'm interested to see what that is.
So let me research.
Let us know what that is.
Yes.
Just out of curiosity.
Did we get the Eric Swalwell clip, by the way?
Yeah.
Okay, good.
So let's move on here to TikTok.
We talked about freedom of speech.
We've talked about the other platforms.
TikTok, this bill that just passed.
Okay, we're going to have a vape on because the vape was opposed to this bill.
This is important because this is going to be ongoing now and you're going to see more wrinkles kind of highlighted.
This vote had taken place, well just now, we know how they voted.
Some people were making the argument That like Facebook, like Twitter before it was purchased by X, like YouTube, Google, of which there can be no doubt, they were attacking free speech, that the TikTok bill would be an attack on free speech.
Here's the claim.
Huge news!
I will be voting no on the bill to ban TikTok that hurts the free speech of influencers, creators, activists, and organizers.
This is a platform used by both the left and the right to challenge the political establishment for justice and cleaning up politics.
If you want to protect people's data, pass an Internet Bill of Rights to do that.
Don't ban the political speech of 170 million Americans.
I'm a no.
And it's funny because they will say that this is a Trojan horse.
Look at the Internet Bill of Rights.
There's a Trojan horse.
It's not even a Trojan horse, it's just a condom penetrating freedom.
So Eric Swalwell, everyone's favorite, bang the Chinese spy, came out defending the Communist Chinese Party owned app under the guise of, I know Eric Swalwell, you're gonna say this doesn't make sense, I'll give some context after, the guise of free enterprise.
Everyone is ready to vote for this.
In fact, Eric Swalwell said earlier on our air that he is planning to vote against it.
Here's why.
I want to find ways, you know, to better, you know, restrict the use of data without, you know, taking away a platform that so many small businesses rely upon and so many young people, you know, use to communicate.
And this would do nothing to look at other social media companies and, you know, and their data.
So I, I just, I don't like bans on speech.
You know, we really rely on young voters who don't know a whole lot and illegal immigrants who don't speak the language, so we don't want anything that might negatively affect that.
This is the same guy, keep in mind, who said this about social media in 2021.
It shows that we're not doing enough.
I couldn't agree with the Senator more that if we were to just go after solely Facebook, that is not going to solve the problem.
We need something much larger.
I would call it a digital convention to rewrite and re-examine Privacy, data security, algorithm laws to make sure that we can protect consumers and they can still be connected in this new digital environment.
So something like the Internet Bill of Rights, maybe?
Protecting user data from the CCP!
Maybe start with them!
How about protecting them from your seed?
Oh my gosh.
How is this guy still allowed to be represented?
Can someone, can someone comment below?
Is there something I'm missing?
Who votes for this guy?
To me, you bang one Chinese spy, that's it.
You don't get a grace Chinese spy bang.
No?
No.
You sure?
How many foreign assets does this party have in our Congress?
Even though the U.S.
So, there also by the way again some of the Chinese actors were able to get, here's the
China foreign ministry said, even though the US has not found evidence of how TikTok endanger
its national security, it has never stopped going after TikTok, resorting to act of bullying.
Why do you care?
Why do you care?
If this has nothing to do with China, how is it bullying China?
Then China, just because, you know, they're looking out for you, right, the people who put Uyghurs in concentration camps and they arrest people if they have the wrong Bible, says, the U.S.
cracked down on TikTok Trimpole upon its First Amendment rights!
Did we?
Did we Trimpole?
How do you know what a First Amendment right is?
You don't have it, China.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
Don't interrupt when propaganda!
Now, some of the arguments are coming from right-wing figures.
First, let me give you something very clear.
This bill is very narrow.
I will tell you exactly what it encompasses.
But first, here's a claim that people are making.
And I would love to hear the vague make the case here.
Maybe there's something I'm missing.
They're trying to say that this bill is a Trojan horse, right?
That it allows more unfettered authority, which would be absolutely a problem.
Okay?
So this comes from Massey, Thomas Massey.
He said, uh, the so-called TikTok ban is a Trojan horse.
The president will be given the power to ban websites, not just apps.
That's not true, to be clear.
Uh, let's go to the truth.
Yes, thank you.
The bill applies to... it's a very, very narrow scope.
All references are available at ladothcratter.com.
Okay?
Link in the description.
It applies to four countries.
Okay, that are listed.
North Korea, Russia, China, Iran.
And it applies to companies that have ownership or control, right, that would be exhibited by these countries, that would be exerted by these countries, influence.
So the ownership must meet this criteria.
So those four countries, and the ownership has to be based on being headquartered or domiciled in said country, having their principal place of business in said country, or be organized under the laws of one of said countries, which are foreign adversaries,
and the ownership stake must be at least 20 percent, again by one of said listed four
countries. This would not apply to websites here in the United States. This would not apply to
businesses that have distribution centers, for example, in China or in Iran. Yes.
No, this isn't going to- I'm sure they have Sunglass Hut.
I was a little confused by Matthew's thing.
Do you think that TikTok does not have a web application and an app for phones as well?
Yes, it says the word websites in there because it's being very broad in what it defines so somebody can't just skirt the rules and go, well, it's not an app.
It's a website.
We still collect data, right?
So, it was very, very, very clear though, later on, what is a foreign controlled company?
There you go.
From these four countries, very, very specific.
These four countries, and this is what would constitute control.
In other words, if it's a company that's based in Canada, and they have 50% ownership, as much as Trudeau's a dick, it wouldn't count.
We don't like Canada.
Even though I think we're getting pretty close considering that it's a communist hellhole.
So I would like to ask you, knowing that that is what this bill entails, do you think it's appropriate?
Do you think it's appropriate for the United States government?
Is it the legitimate purview of the United States government?
Those who are sworn to the Constitution to say, yeah, foreign adversaries, namely these four countries, if it is owned, operated, or headquartered by these four countries or affiliates therein, people who are affiliate-like companies who have Communist Chinese Party has direct ownership in, then you cannot operate in the United States because we don't know what your algorithms do and we know that you want to subvert our constitutional republic.
Remember Russian interference?
Remember that?
You don't think there's going to be Chinese interference if they can determine exactly what you see and exactly what anyone under the age of 25 sees?
Okay.
So they claim to, here's another claim, that the bill threatens freedom of speech.
This is from TikTok.
Should I do the accent again?
I might as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
Every time.
Oh, please, do it.
This registration will trample.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans deprived 5 million small business of a platform they rely on to grow and create job.
I like how you didn't do the plural.
You mispronounced slaves.
Sorry, that's your country.
I love how they care about freedom of speech and job growth.
Well, they're sending all their people here, so that makes sure they have good jobs when they get here.
No, no, no!
They're going to grow weed farm!
All your weed belong to me!
You smoke, you get killed!
Send bullet to your family!
Freedom of speech!
Shoot him, he go, ah!
He speak!
He say, please no!
He say, please no!
I say, you speak, now I shoot!
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to speak.
No consequence.
Consequence, I shoot you.
I kill you.
Who gives a rat's ass what China wants?
I want the opposite of what they want in general.
Here's the truth, okay?
This bill is not about free speech at all.
Alright.
For this premise to work, you would have to believe that TikTok, the CCP byte dance, that they are champions of free speech.
Well, I'll get to some of the data here, but we know that TikTok doesn't care about freedom of speech.
Why?
Because we spoke freely in ways that would of course be in line with the First Amendment, Constitution, freedom of speech rights in the United States, and TikTok banned us quickly.
I am going to close my TikTok.
The 9-dash line isn't real.
Mao's great leap forward led to the death of 45 million Chinese citizens.
Taiwan is in fact a real country and not a part of communist China.
From 1279 to 1368, China was ruled by the Mongols.
to die!
From 1279 to 1368, China was ruled by the Mongols.
Tick tock.
During World War II, Mao's commies hid away in the hills like the cowards that they were
while Chinese nationalists fought the Japanese.
Also, Mao's commies killed millions of people during the Cultural Revolution.
Taiwan's GDP per capita is nearly three times larger than China's because they're better than you.
Communist Chinese Party, just to be clear, not the citizens of China.
By Communist Chinese Party, I mean owners of TikTok.
By the way, you know what to...
Eric Schwabl calls that dirty talk.
I like it when you put me in my place!
We really had to come up with things like, gosh, we got to say this a little bit more.
And you put the outfit on and we added the music.
Exactly.
Nowhere in the United States would that be impermissible.
No.
It was banned.
This has been banned.
So whoever maybe gets control of TikTok, at least push for us to be reinstated.
There you go.
That's not even hate speech.
It's just hate speech against the Communist Chinese Party.
We were very clear to delineate.
They removed us later in the dead of night.
They didn't remove us when we did the campaign.
They removed us about two months later once it had died down.
And here's another truth.
The First Amendment does not protect espionage from foreign adversaries, enemy states.
We already have laws, for example, that ban foreign ownership of broadcasting here in the United States.
Right?
We have laws that are very ineffective, and if you go and watch our piece on marijuana grow farms in Oklahoma, but there are laws that exist to prevent China, for example, from purchasing farmland.
I believe they should be able to purchase zero farmland.
Zero land at all.
Zero land at all.
But I also understand the logic, because if crap goes down, we just say, eh, it's our land now.
Eh, it's a wasted investment.
Oh no!
What happened to my dividend?
A lot of people don't understand this.
This is like during the Cold War saying that, you know, Russia could basically buy some TV stations and do propaganda in the United States.
An actual war with Hitler saying, yeah, let's let Goebbels propaganda that you're playing in Germany.
Let's let that be broadcast in the United States.
Like, of course we're not going to do that.
And all they're doing is saying you have to divest.
You have to have a divestiture where you reduce that 20% down to something else.
You have to meet these standards after 180 days.
There's a process.
The president just doesn't do it in the dark of night.
He has to notify Congress 30 days ahead of making that declaration, and then you can appeal it.
Like, it is not something that the president goes, yeah, we don't like this guy.
There you go.
Right?
There is a whole process.
Do you think if Mangala was alive today, he'd become a Pimple Popper MD?
I like Dr. Pimple Popper.
It's kind of fun.
Yeah, it's a lot.
I love it, dude.
I get hours I can go watching that stuff.
Well, that's weird.
A little bit is fine.
I don't touch myself or anything.
No, but one time.
Vivek's coming on soon.
Alright, Vivek's coming on soon.
Well, come on, he doesn't care.
That guy's never had a zit in his life.
Have you seen his porcelain doll skin?
That skin is perfect.
It's perfect, dude.
I saw him in person and I just wanted to be like, uhhhh.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Not like that.
Not like that.
No, not like that.
I can lift your skin, baby!
That's why I said that.
I bet it tastes like sugar.
Brown sugar.
Like caramel, yeah.
Maple syrup.
Oh, yes.
I'm glad he's not hearing this.
Yeah, it's okay.
Are you sure he's not?
I think he doesn't know that he has perfect skin.
I think we lost the feed, actually.
Oh, what an insult!
Oh, you have such great skin!
Oh!
Superior genetics!
He has good skin and he doesn't look like he has an ounce of fat on him, ever.
Alright, here's another claim, okay?
That the Chinese don't even have that much influence over TikTok here in the USA.
Here's Rand Paul, who I really like, by the way.
He's a friend of the show.
I agree with him probably on more than almost any other representative, even though he is grading.
He said, reactionaries who want to ban TikTok claim the data can't be secured because of the algorithm is in China.
Not true.
The truth is the algorithm runs in the United States in Oracle Cloud with their review of the code not in China.
Maybe we should examine the facts before committing violations of the First and Fifth Amendments.
Here's the truth.
The TikTok data is not secure in the United States.
He's referring to this Project Texas where Oracle stores data and then walls it off from China.
However, there was a report from the Wall Street Journal that references are made publicly available.
Here's a quote.
The Project Texas workers soon found a mountain, keyword mountain, of code from ByteDance waiting for them to verify each morning.
Under pressure to work quickly, employees found the task to be impossible without more personnel, according to the people familiar with the unit.
TikTok said, Oracle is monitoring all the data leaving Project Texas, but Oracle doesn't monitor- oh, it's TikTok, so.
Oracle doesn't monitor the data employees share with each other over TikTok's internal messaging tools.
Your Google Chat belong to me!
Slack?
My Slack!
And here's the truth too.
The CCP, the Communist Chinese Party, Has a golden share in ByteDance.
Okay, let me just read this for you.
Golden shares have become a useful tool to keep companies like these in line with party objectives without the need for the state being a major stakeholder.
Now, this is something that people will bring up, just to be clear, if there's a potential conflict of interest.
I'm not saying that there is, but this is relevant.
Rand Paul, Thomas Massey have received very large swathes of funding from Jeff Yass, who owns a $33 billion stake in ByteDance.
Now, it doesn't mean that you can't—and this is a chicken or the egg, by the way.
Any biologist will tell you that—chicken?
I'll get into that another day.
Because maybe they have a stake.
Someone has a stake in ByteDance who is saying, hey, there's a way to improve this, and we believe that through more effective legislation, you can improve the problems that exist within this company.
It's not necessarily mean they're trying to get a leg up for their company, just to be clear.
I just think it's relevant, it's worth noting.
Another vocal opponent of the bill that just was voted on, sorry I don't want to say passed because Schoolhouse rocked this, but is Vivek Ramaswamy.
President Trump just came out against a legislative measure that would require the owner of TikTok to divest it.
It's currently a Chinese owner, a company called ByteDance, or else that it would be banned in the United States.
President Trump just came out opposing that.
I think that's the right decision, actually, of President Trump to oppose that legislation because it doesn't make any sense.
This point about the divestment relates to a different concern.
The use and provision of data, U.S.
user data, potentially to the Chinese Communist Party.
And I think that is a major concern.
But here's the rub.
It isn't limited to just TikTok or even Chinese-owned companies in the U.S.
It expands to include even so-called U.S.
companies that are still beholden to the CCP because they do business in China.
So we have to ask ourselves the why.
And if the real concern we have, and I think it is a real concern we ought to have, Look at his skin!
It's like a Maybelline commercial.
and user data to the Chinese Communist Party, that's what we should be legislating against.
Ban US companies from providing US user data to China.
I think it's a sensible measure regardless of the company.
Look at his skin.
It's like a Maybelline commercial.
If he was going to be offended, if he was going to be offended at our compliments of
his skin, I have ginger white guy skin.
You have any idea what happens when I get in the sun?
It's like a gremlin that ate after midnight.
Good tan lines, though.
Yeah, I do.
Well, I do the highline bikini.
By the way, do you ever sleep on your shoulder?
Can you guys hear this?
Look, can you guys?
Oh, I want to put this right up.
Bring up my mic there.
Can you guys hear my shoulder?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do we have a baby crying sound?
I mean, I want to keep doing it.
I popped it out of my sleep.
Hopefully Vivek has some, you know, because there's Ayurvedic herbs.
I don't know, like Oshawa Gondar or something.
So we're going to bring him on here in a second, but I do think, look, and I want Vivek to
explain, because he's very sharp.
I'm sure that he has some reasoning here that, not that we've missed, but I would like to
have a productive conversation with someone who I believe is an honest actor.
In February of 2023, Vivek did tweet out, and yes, I'm very open to banning TikTok outright.
In the meantime, we sit on our hands and do nothing as kids get addicted to it like it's digital fentanyl.
Now, to be clear, he said, I am very open to.
He didn't say I want to ban it outright, right?
He did make sure to couch his words very carefully, but I would like to understand why his position has, according to some people, seemingly changed or what his position has always been, where it is right now.
He's a friend of the show.
Here to clarify this and more is Vivek Ramaswamy, Flying V.
Flying V!
Come on! Flying V!
Alright.
Mr. Ramaswamy, how are you, sir?
Doing well.
How you doing, man?
Good.
Did you hear us for five minutes talking about your porcelain doll skin?
I heard the tail end of that and I was wondering what the heck is going on.
Well, we're all... Would I be offended at it?
I'm not offended.
No, we're all aging white guys with crow's feet and when you left we're like, does that guy have a wrinkle?
We're like, I don't know if it's just...
The presidential thing didn't work out.
You know, there's always the Mach 3 commercials.
Yes, exactly.
Maybe you can get Mach 6.
More razors!
Let's give it six razors.
Okay, so Vivek, let me ask you this, because some people are characterizing this as flipping, meaning that you called it digital fentanyl, said you were open to an outright ban, and now you're saying, you know, don't pass the bill.
The bill was just voted on, I'm sure you know, overwhelmingly.
Okay, so clarify what your position was there and where it is now, what your opposition is to this, please.
So first of all, TikTok has major problems.
I have probably been, if you rewind even a few years, even before I was running for president, at the leading edge of pointing out a lot of the issues with addictive social media across the board, particularly with TikTok.
And a position that I've adopted since the start of the campaign, I think I said this on day one, And I maintain today is that I think there is a reasonable case to be made for addictive social media, algorithmically powered addictive social media, to be banned outright in kids under the age of 16.
That would include TikTok, it would also include other platforms.
But here's where I land.
I prefer to, all else equal, when we have a choice, ban the bad behavior, not the individual actor or the individual company, because that sets a terrible precedent.
So there's three major issues with TikTok, as I see it, right?
I'm not some sort of TikTok fan apologist.
To the contrary, we've got to see the problem with clear eyes.
Problem number one is addictive tendencies in kids.
Problem number two is forced data transfers or the potential of forced data transfers to the Chinese Communist Party.
And problem number three is the people who run that platform, which could be the CCP, engaging in system-wide persuasion control, effectively tilting the levers of what people do or don't see.
Sure.
Each of those are three separate problems.
Here's my issue with this bill.
Is that this neither addresses those concerns, any of them, and I can explain why, while also massively expanding the authority of the federal government, particularly the executive branch, particularly President Biden right now, to be able to censor the speech of political opponents in ways that have nothing to do with TikTok.
So the bill is both over-inclusive while also failing to do the thing that it supposedly is purporting to do.
And the reason why is anytime you're in the business of creating a bill to go after one company, one actor, what our founding fathers referred to as bills of attender, this is a constitutional prohibition.
Anyway, I think there's a good chance this will get challenged in the courts and thrown out for this very reason.
That's a formula for abuse.
And so I can go into detail on each of those points.
You listed three points, right?
I believe three points.
Number two, I just want to make sure this right number two was that it is overly expansive.
Do I have that right?
I would say just to go clear, it doesn't matter what order we go in.
One is addictive tendencies in kids.
Two is forced data transfers to the CCP of U.S.
user information.
And number three is broad-scale persuasion, using the tool as a persuasive tool to ideologically shift the U.S.
dialogue or discourse in a way that might favor a foreign adversary rather than the United States.
So those are three independent concerns, which I think are serious.
Yes, no, and I agree with you.
But here's the thing, this bill does address number two and three.
It doesn't address the addictive tendencies.
It does address two and three.
And especially people, like, I do think, and here's the thing, sitting around with Section 230 and having been banned, you know, demonetized on YouTube, banned from TikTok for literally making fun of Xi Jinping.
That's why we were banned from TikTok repeatedly.
This is addressed in a way that says, OK, look, I didn't know that.
That's interesting.
Yes.
It's disgusting.
It's disgusting when China does it.
It's disgusting when we do similar things in the United States.
I don't know why you're demonetized on YouTube, but I suspect it could relate to speech that the U.S.
jokes towards Xi Jinping. I think he's earned it, but you know, that's just me, Mr. Old-Fashioned.
It's disgusting. It's disgusting when China does it. It's disgusting when we do similar
things in the United States. I don't know why you're demonetized on YouTube, but I suspect
it could relate to speech that the U.S. government finds offensive, and it's bad no matter who does.
Well, when senators like Hirono and Pelosi are out there saying Mr. Crowder needs to be banned,
and they say he hasn't violated policy, so we'll just remove millions of dollars.
However, nothing ever happens with those.
This is a rare instance where something can happen and I would actually argue that the reason this can get bipartisan support is because of the specificity.
Because of the specificity that says, for foreign adversaries, 20% ownership, you know, if the data transfers occur, if they are headquartered or domiciled in these other countries, it is more specific than, for example, some of the left's legislation of hate speech or misinformation.
So it's one of the rare instances, you know, I don't believe in common ground based on a lie.
If I may, I may push back on that for just a second.
Sure.
So this is an issue near and dear to my heart.
I wrote about this in Woke Inc.
It is a myth that Chinese ownership of the company is the only source of leverage that China has in order to decide how, say, data is or is not transferred to the behavior of companies.
To the contrary, we have far greater evidence of even U.S.
companies that do business in China handing over U.S.
user data to the CCP than we have for TikTok itself.
I'll give you a very specific example.
Airbnb, a U.S.
domiciled company, supposedly with principally U.S.
shareholders.
A few years ago, Solid Wall Street Journal reporting on this.
I talk about it in greater detail in my book, Woking, my first one.
Handing over U.S.
user data of its customers.
People probably used Airbnb.
The private messages sent between renters and hosts.
Geolocational data.
The private data of U.S.
users handed over to the CCP, presumably as a condition for Airbnb being able to do business.
in China. So the fact that Airbnb isn't Chinese owned, it doesn't stop it from doing that. So my point about this
bill building under inclusive is if the problem is transferring
us user data to the CCP, transferring the ownership matters very little as long as there's another lever for
actual control over those companies. I agree with a major problem.
I do agree with it. Good. No, I agree. So I think that I think
that the idea that we're just gonna Oh, now we change the ownership of this one company, massively expanded President
Biden's authority to determine what platform does or doesn't count as being controlled by a foreign adversary to be able
to shut it down, I think is a massive civil civil libertarian
Without really any juice to address the core concern of Chinese leverage over the United States, when in fact that leverage plays out through so many levers other than equity ownership, against the backdrop of the further irony that we have companies from Google to Airbnb that have shown greater leverage to the Chinese Communist Party than this Chinese owned company.
If I may push back, I agree with you, by the way.
Last time I was in an Airbnb, I found a camera in the two-way mirror.
I knew it was the CCP, and I said, get a look.
Get a look.
Because I'm confident, you know, I'm right at the bell curve of average, but you know, it's okay.
So my point here is, I understand that, however, those bills don't exist.
TikTok does, there is not, I agree with you, this happens not only with Facebook and with YouTube, in the terms that they want their content to be palatable to foreign countries, right?
And so they throttle content, just like we saw with the NBA, for example, where they couldn't speak out, they couldn't even acknowledge Taiwan.
NBA, Black Rock, Disney, you go straight down the list.
There's a lot of leverage for expanding.
I completely agree on that.
We spend a lot of time on that.
Your point is there is a starting point, right?
You're not going to get a bill that will establish, hey, you guys can't allow this leverage even in catering to the content of foreign adversaries or transferring data.
I think there's a very clean bill that should be passed.
This is one that I would vehemently support.
I'm not in Congress right now, thank God, but I think I would be able, if I were, I would push for this.
Is a clean bill, irrespective of ownership, irrespective of domicile, it is fundamentally illegal for any U.S.
holder of U.S.
user data to transfer that data to the Chinese government or its affiliates.
Period.
Put an end to the practice.
And that's how we do things in the United States of America.
There's an undesired behavior.
We go after that regardless of who's actually doing it.
And that reveals what's really going on, because I do think we're falling for a kind of trick here.
One of the people playing the trick is it's a combination of, I think, a Biden-led administrative state that wants to expand its executive authority, an administration that's already been using platforms like Facebook, pressuring them through the back door to go after its political opponents.
To expand the range of who they're able to go after, but to bring this full circle, here's the dirty little secret in Washington D.C.
You know who's advocating for this bill?
It's really the lobbyists hired by that very company, Facebook.
And so we are falling for a Facebook-led lobbying campaign to deflect attention from the reality of Facebook engaging in some of the same behaviors it's accusing TikTok of, getting in bed with the government actor, not quite the CCP here, but the The deep state in the United States of America doing the same thing, deflecting attention, effectively sidelining one competitor, while actually being the product of one company's self-interested lobbying, as opposed to a full-fledged ban of the underlying behavior that actually would ensnare Facebook and Google and Airbnb, but which those companies have effectively lobbied their way out of being
Well, that's the point, right?
Nothing's going to happen there.
You're not going to... Here is a bill where something can happen.
In other words, how would bringing TikTok under a U.S.
entity, right, hinder our ability to restrict it?
It's a step.
You're not going to get... This is the same reason that the Democratic... By the way, I'm agreeing with you.
The radical left Democratic wing opposed this bill.
The AOCs of the world.
Why?
Because they love being favored by the algorithms of Facebook and X.
That's independent.
Sorry, not X, but what used to be Twitter right at one point in time, YouTube of course.
But at this point there's something before us that says, okay, here's a way to take a
step.
And by the way, President Trump supported it back then until he was against it.
I'm sure that you've heard people say.
Well, first of all, federal.
Well, I would say one thing about that.
Federal courts rescinded that ban, right?
And I do think that federal courts, and I think the Supreme Court, will come down against this one as well for some of the same reasons.
Came down against that because that was an executive order, but will come down against this one in part because of the expanse of abuses inherent in a law that's this vague and this broad, directed effectively at one company that vests this much authority in the chief executive and the president.
And I don't think we do ourselves any favors by saying, oh, there's a bill, only to see it rescinded, just like it happened last time around by the Supreme Court or by federal courts.
I think that there's an opportunity where if you're just a consumer and I take an average person home and say, OK, something's come up.
Why not just sign that?
I'm interested in the process by which it comes up.
Well, just to be clear, they rescinded the bill.
I want to be clear.
They rescinded the bill because they said it was outside the purview of executive order.
The bill did go through Congress.
And I guess this does bring me to my question.
Authority in the executive.
One thing in this bill is it's the sole authority in the U.S.
President to make these determinations, which I think is a civil libertarian nightmare.
If you think President Biden has unfairly, indirectly censored political opposition through the back door of tech companies, then it's probably a bad idea to give him even greater latitude to do it directly through the front door of this law.
I completely agree with the sentiment.
And you know that I've been, this has been my cause du jour long before anyone else has even come along the trail.
We were demonetized.
I've been on YouTube since 2009.
Well, 2006, I've watched it grow.
I agree with everything you've just said, except this bill is specific enough that it doesn't do that.
And I think you're going to have a really hard time saying, well, this bill is too broad, and then get any kind of traction with a bill that would say, Undue influence and the ability to have data transfer to a foreign entity of any kind.
This is four specific adversaries listed, a specific type of ownership listed, either it being headquartered or domiciled.
Something that specific, if we say that that can't happen, something more broad has no chance in hell.
That's a worry.
I respectfully, yeah, and there's a good dialogue.
I just respectfully disagree with that because it's too specific in some ways and too broad in others.
It's too broad in the authority that it gives the U.S.
president to make a determination, and it's randomly specific in a way that's specifically designed to exclude the very U.S.
companies that lobbied for it.
That's where the specificity comes from.
Ownership is not the only lever that matters when you have the likes of Google that claimed, publicly told all of us, that it was exiting China under its don't be evil mantra, only to see years later that they had Project Dragonfly working with the CCP to create a censored search engine in China that was completely publicly not disclosed, a government contracting project with China, until leaks actually revealed it.
The instances with Airbnb, I could enumerate other instances.
The specificity was paid for by the lobbyists to carve out U.S.
companies from being excluded.
The very U.S.
companies that are threatened by TikTok's growing market share, not by TikTok's actual behavior.
Versus the actual breadth and specificity is this.
If a U.S.
user has not expressly consented, not in some litany of general warranties that you just sign at the bottom through an adhesive agreement, But specific express consent to have their user data transferred to a government, either domestic or foreign, then a company cannot do it.
Period.
I think it's that simple.
And I think if we go to the hard nuts and bolts of the real issue lurking underneath all of this, Which is the data privacy and who owns the data of individual users that we're handing over to all of these tech companies, from TikTok to Chinese-owned to American-owned but Chinese-influenced.
That's what we need to do.
And I think we should have broad bipartisan support.
And if we don't, it smokes out the reason why.
It's because U.S.
companies are lobbying against doing the thing that actually needs to be done.
And so I don't take that for given, right?
Because there's a reasonable point of view to say, OK, we live in a broken system.
There's all kinds of broken lobbying from these Silicon Valleys who control these congressmen anyway.
And so if the Silicon Valley companies control them and we take that for granted, then if this is the best we're going to get, let's at least go for it.
I don't take that for granted.
I think the best way to deal with that broken system is to name the problem.
And that's why I'm naming exactly what's going on here.
Anybody in Washington, D.C.
knows the dirty little secret here is this is Facebook paid for multi-million dollar lobbying campaign.
The fake specificity is designed to exclude the very companies that have lobbied for it.
And I say hell no to that system.
There is a serious problem here of forced data transfers to the CCP.
Deal with it.
Deal with it directly.
And you know what?
If Airbnb or Google or anybody else is ensnared, so be it, because they should be.
And the fact that they paid a bunch of lobbyists here more effectively than the other guys should not determine which laws we do or do not pass.
I agree with everything in spirit.
I would have one disagree... Well, I would ask you to just blaze in on one point here.
You said, because of TikTok's ownership, not their behavior.
Do you actually believe that TikTok's behavior, their algorithms, and how they control content is not at least as egregious as Facebook?
I don't have as much evidence for that.
The truth is we don't have as much transparency into TikTok, but the ultimate irony of this, Stephen, is that if you look at the most egregious behaviors in the last 10 years of state actors pressuring a tech company to censor or moderate content in a particular way, engage in persuasion, tilting the scales of elections, engaging in forced data transfers to governments without permission, The places where we have greatest evidence of that, hard evidence, is actually for our US tech companies in Silicon Valley, working hand in glove in bed with US deep state actors.
I completely agree.
That's where we have the plainest evidence.
So it's beyond bizarre that where we have the plainest evidence, we turn the other way.
But where we have good circumstantial evidence to be concerned, that's where we've created the lightning rod when it advantages the very companies for whom we have the most damning evidence.
So I just think we've got to be data driven there.
No, I completely agree.
But look, come on, Vivek, you're also, you're a brilliant man, you're a genius, far smarter than I, and you know that it will always be circumstantial evidence because we can't get to the evidence because of the lack of transparency of TikTok because of the Chinese ownership.
Sure, and I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything.
I'm saying we should do something that will have a significantly restrictive impact on TikTok, but it will also have a restrictive impact on anybody else who's trying to do the same thing.
And let me just give you one more example here.
Many of the top apps in the App Store are Chinese, actually, in the Apple App Store.
TikTok is the one that managed to capture the public imagination right now.
Even if you're looking at Chinese ownership, what are they going to do?
They're going to effectively divest them through intermediary shell companies that have ownership that isn't technically Chinese at the top.
It's gameable.
And so the specificity The so-called specificity of this that was designed to exclude U.S.
companies that lobbied for it will also render this ineffective.
Play this forward two years.
This bill is going to have no impact other than forcing a divestment of one random company and a bunch of virtue-signaling Republicans patting themselves on the back.
Twenty years later, when you have a regime that's been censoring political speech, using this as the basis to do it, decrying how we ever got here, exactly what we say about Republicans passing the Patriot Act 20 years ago.
And so I just think as a Republican Party, we need to grow up and get back to first principles.
Stop being pawns of the lobbyists that pay these politicians and use them as puppets.
And see if there's a behavior that's problematic, and identify three that are relevant to tick tock that are absolutely problematic.
Sure, great, ban the behavior, have the courage to do it, rather than have Facebook's write up some sort of legislation with some fake specificity to exclude Mark Zuckerberg founded meta, and then put it up and say, this is what we have to sign.
That's garbage.
And I refuse to just Play by the, you know, be a price taker, if you will, of what that broken lobbyist-influenced system puts up.
And instead go back to actually first principles to say that if we're at first principles, this isn't the bill we'd be passing.
We'd be stopping forced data transfers to the Chinese.
We'd be protecting young people from addiction on social media.
And any time a content platform is working with any state actor to engage in persuasion by up-regulating or down-regulating or censoring speech, that's a backdoor constitutional violation.
And we deem it to be illegal.
That's the course of action we should take, and I would be the first and strongest proponent for it.
And so, you have others.
Now you go to the AOCs of the world, they're not going to be for that.
No, of course not.
You go to many on the left, they're not going to be for that.
That's what we need to be for rather than... And by the way, there won't be enough...
There won't be enough Republicans for that.
I can't tell you how many conversations that we've had here with congressmen and senators who've talked about it.
Then we hear them quoting us and using our data in Senate hearings and doing nothing.
Why?
Because they all have podcasts and they all have giant Facebook pages and they want to play ball with them.
So I agree with everything you said.
Let me say a word about this.
There's a reason why Trump, Elon Musk, Rand Paul, Thomas Massey, myself, I think Tucker I was reading, it's a diverse array of libertarian and libertarian nationalist voices.
I don't consider myself just a pure libertarian.
I'm a libertarian nationalist.
I do believe that the world stage is a jungle, and we have to play by the rules of the autocrats on the globe.
We don't have to play by their rules, but we have to acknowledge that they're not playing by our rules when we protect ourselves as a country.
So I'm not some blithe, Friedmanite, dreaming libertarian just believing that everybody plays by our fantasy rules.
No.
We have serious issues with foreign adversaries that we actually need to deal with.
But don't be duped into tricking ourselves to think that we did it when we didn't, while actually behaving more like the adversary in the process.
That's where I land.
Well, one final question, and Vivek, you know that we love you, appreciate you, of course.
One thing I will say too, because you've talked about and I agree on the foreign, not only foreign adversary, but on the funding that comes from lobbyist groups.
Everyone you just mentioned, including yourself, money from Jeff Yass, who owns a $33 billion stake in ByteDance.
You're never going to get away from that question from your critics.
Everyone you just named, it's a diverse coalition, except for one true... Everybody should ask the question, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think for a lot of politicians, that'd be a reasonable question.
Just get to the truth of the matter, right?
In my case, you got a guy who's funded a bunch of Republican candidates, as far as I know, Yeah, in my case, look, just look at the facts.
People know what my net worth is.
It's public.
Look at how much I put into the campaign.
It's public too.
Yes.
Do you think that the positions that I've taken in the campaign, do you think that those have been ones that have earned me more donors or lost to me more donors?
I probably lost tens, if not maybe even a hundred million dollar plus donations over the course of the campaign because of positions I took on foreign policy and elsewhere.
And I put 30 million on my own and probably would have put a lot more on my own if I stayed in the race.
So if, you know, everyone has to make their own judgments, but put yourself... Well, that's a lot of money I put in.
I can't say what a lot of what someone had to consume.
But what I will say is that people should make their own judgments, right?
Think for yourself, think independently.
And I just encourage you to do the same thing with respect to who's actually putting up this particular bill.
And I do think that it's important not to... See, the equivalent of me in this debate would have been to say, not make any of the points I made, but just say, Facebook is funding the bill, and that's it.
Right?
Not offer any other kind of argument on the merits.
And you didn't do that.
Okay.
Well, like, that would be like an ad hominem attack on Facebook.
Right.
But you can't use that as a substitute for engaging on the merits.
Right.
So if you want to say that, you know, any of these politicians or myself or whatever else was supported by some guy, great, say it, but then don't use that as a substitute for engaging on the merits.
I agree.
Because the merits should be what govern.
I agree.
I do think very important merit would be that entire coalition, putting together and pushing for a bill that would require the kind of legislation that you claim would be productive, that would relate to Facebook, YouTube, X, and TikTok.
And TikTok.
Yep.
I haven't seen it yet.
That's the issue.
It doesn't exist.
And it's never going to happen until we start with something specific.
Because you know what?
If I ran for president, and I've been talking about this in the campaign, John, if I ever were president, you can take it to the bank that I would push head and shoulders all the way down for actual robust legislation to deal with this threat, but actually want to deal with the threat rather than pretending to while creating a civil libertarian nightmare in the process.
And I hope that you would push head and shoulders, or at least sell some blue, for me to be reinstated on TikTok.
I was setting you up for that.
Yeah, there you go.
Alright.
Vivek, I know you gotta go.
Where's the best place for people to find you and support you?
I appreciate you making the case here.
Any social media, whatever I should, you know.
TikTok him!
TikTok him!
Alright.
Hey, Vivek, hope to have you back in studio soon, brother.
Thank you very much.
Let's hold it for a bit, but you'll let it through later.
I liked and didn't like some of those answers, and I think he was trying to be as honest as he possibly could.
If you want, we can get into that a little bit in Mug Club after we go through it, or we can talk about it right now.
Which one?
I know we went a little long with Let's give it a brief recap.
Look, I agree, and I don't want to bring up the funding from Jeff Yass, but again, we've been sitting here for so long where nothing happens, and I do think that this bill is specific enough where, look, there's a world in which, he said fast forward it two, three years.
I understand the concern of the executive power, right?
However, this is something that Donald Trump did support at one point in time, and all these people did support at one point in time.
He signed an executive order on it!
He signed an executive order on it, right?
He did exactly what- And it's not like the bill changed much since then.
As a matter of fact, it's not like the bill got more broad.
If you look at anything right now, you could argue that it got a little- it became a little bit more specific.
Two years' time where TikTok has basically American ownership or American control over what happens in the United States, which I cannot see as a net negative at this point.
I don't believe that any type of foreign adversary should be able to operate in the United States.
And then maybe work on some legislation that also would include Facebook, YouTube, Airbnb, you know, the people spying on me there when I was at Opossum Kingdom, like, will grow up never feeling like real men.
But start with something, and the issue that we see so much is nothing happens because they say this is, you know, a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
Right.
And the irony is not lost on me, the idea of giving control over to the government, but they already control.
I don't see this as giving control to the government so much as putting reins in on foreign governments and how the government can manipulate the digital town square, because they're doing it now.
Yeah, so he kind of undercut his own argument in one way, and you lasered in on it a couple of times, but if Facebook and those other companies were so effective at fighting or getting this bill done on TikTok and making sure they were excluded, how much more effective, how much more money, how much more fight would they give if the bill actually targeted practices that they were engaging in specifically?
So they've been effective here and got bipartisan support.
Pretty much everybody jumped on board except for, I think, around 50 people in the House.
We'll see how the Senate handles this.
They would be very effective there.
So I don't think that bill has much of a chance right now.
And so again, we go back to, oh, we just can't do anything about it right now because this is the perfect way to do it.
The president has to present a report to Congress 30 days before making this declaration.
That's also in the bill.
The president doesn't, in my opinion, and I'm not a legal scholar and I'm not a constitutional scholar, get more power than they already have here.
What happened is that the court basically, Biden took over and did not pursue defending Trump's ban.
That's what happened.
Exactly.
It wasn't necessarily that it went all the way through the process and would have gone as far as Trump maybe would have pushed it had he stayed in office.
So I have a problem with that.
I also think what we're trying to do as conservatives, Republicans, whatever you want to label yourself, as people who defend free speech, we want to make sure that you don't look like you flip-flop for money.
That's why we brought up Jeff Yes.
Because somebody is going to bring that up and it might not be somebody who aligns with you and goes, You're just bought and paid for.
I have a problem with Thomas Massie misrepresenting what is in this bill to people on Twitter so he can get clicks.
I have a problem with Rand Paul making an argument that he knows is probably not true based on the reports that we have from the Oracle stuff and the New York Times article.
I have a problem with Elon Musk saying the things that he's saying when you can go into the bill and see it's specifically for foreign adversary countries and specific indications on ownership.
And I get that that's not broad enough and we can go a little bit further.
They're not all making the same argument.
That was going to be one of my points.
Elon Musk has also been, I love what he's done to a very large degree.
You won't find a greater Achilles heel than how soft Elon Musk has been on China.
I know!
Let's be really clear about that because it's a very important market to him.
And you will see a lot of, and I'm not saying Vivek, a lot of conservatives, a lot of quote-unquote populists who play ball For Elon Musk to get, you want to get in good with X?
Don't talk about China so much.
Just do me a favor, go and do your own research.
The people who really rely on X, the people who maybe start their programs on X, the people who partner, tell me where they truly criticize China in a way that is actually damaging, in a way that is actually quantifiable.
You won't see it.
If you play ball, you want to play ball with X?
You play ball with China to a degree.
That is a fact.
It's something that you can see.
It's something that, again, two things can be true.
No people are perfect.
You can agree with people on some issues and disagree with them on others.
And hey, you know what?
Maybe we're wrong about all of this.
Maybe Jeff Yass would be thrilled to find out that Rumble would purchase at least the American portion of TikTok, have a controlling stake in the American portion, and allow freedom of speech and disallow foreign communist Chinese influence Maybe Jeff Yass actually could use the influence there to encourage the sale.
Now I know obviously with ByteDance it might be a little bit complicated, but maybe there could be something that would be worked out where he would be looking out for you and guaranteeing that let's take steps in removing the power from foreign adversaries like the Communist Chinese Party and then stepping towards removing that influence through, for example, data, through, for example, algorithmic favors being done with companies like Facebook and YouTube, etc.
You can find the same thing on YouTube.
China's a big market.
It's why John Cena apologized for even acknowledging that Taiwan existed.
Can we bring up that clip, guys?
People may have forgotten about it.
What?
That's what he said.
Hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt.
I mean, ever since Vic hung up, we've been getting a call from Segoeville Minimum Security Prison.
Oh, that's prison gear.
That's Prison Gare. Put him through.
Prison Gare again.
Prison Gare, how you holding up there, brother?
mother.
The name is Vlad now.
I am new leader of Bratva prison gang.
Yeah, I'm not calling you that.
There is a new boss running the yard.
Gary, the only thing running is the train on you.
You're like the Forrest Gump of finding ways to get raped in prison.
Stephen's rape joke's so funny, Vlad forgot to laugh.
Ha!
This is what I think of Stephen's prison jokes.
Vlad, Gary, that's impressive artwork.
And in prison?
Jeez.
Wow.
My new lieutenant is the tattoo artist.
That's excellent work.
Wait, what?
Stephen, how could I get tattooed in the dark?
The lights were on while his assistant kept me secure while I was bent over, exposing my back.
You have a tattoo of Satan in the afterglow of raping you on your back.
Did you get that tattoo before or after it was dark and you banged your head, prison gare?
Steven, how could I get tattooed in the dark?
The lights were on while his assistant kept me secure while I was bent over, exposing my back.
No.
You both wanted to make sure I didn't squirm and ruin the artwork.
No, goodbye Vlad.
We're gonna need a new social media guy.
We can't have him.
We can't have him!
We gotta get- get him!
Go.
All right.
Geez.
It looked pretty cool.
Pretty impressive.
It was honestly cool until you saw the face.
I think that's still cool.
You think it's still cool?
Oh, yeah.
Still cool.
Oh, yeah.
I put his face on a baby.
I don't think he put the face on the baby face.
I think someone else put the baby face.
Well, yeah, he didn't tattoo himself.
Well, no, I know he didn't.
That'd be hard.
I'm afraid when you are incarcerated, there is not much else to do but desecrate the flesh.
Name that movie line.
Let us know what you think.
The Sina thing, by the way, if you want to hit that before we leave.
The Sina Hunt.
Okay, so before we go, we're going to, if you are watching, we're going to continue discussing First Amendment and all of the speech infringements that take place across the globe right now.
For example, people being arrested for karaoke singing, kung fu fighting.
Or making fun of Prime Ministers in foreign countries.
Literally making fun of them.
Jokes.
We're going to continue with this so you understand how this affects you on Mug Club.
You can click that button right now if you're watching on Rumble.
None of this happens without you.
We have some investigative journalism coming down the pike.
None of that happens without you.
And let us know what you think.
Hit the like button if you appreciate the dialogue.
I really, I do like Vivek.
I can disagree on this specific bill, but I agree with the spirit of his criticisms.
Yeah, and that's what we wanted.
We wanted to understand where they were coming from because I know what people will do.
They'll play the clip and then they'll look at the tweet from before and go, well, you flipped on the issue and it's because of money.
Right.
And look, if it is because of that, then that is wrong, right?
But you have to have an opportunity to make your case.
And we didn't see them making their case as effectively as Vivek did, where he's like, hey, it's about a bigger, broader bill.
Facebook is really the driver behind this.
Okay, let's dig into that and see if that is 100% true.
Right.
And that at least gives us something to work with instead of going, well, they just flipped because some guy donated money to their campaigns.
I think it's important to be able to articulate that argument.
Before we leave, hey, Mission Control, get us the update on the judge dismissing some of the counts against Trump in Georgia.
I'm sure people will want to know about that.
Let's talk about that on Mug Club.
Before we go to Mug Club, and of course we will see you tomorrow, we have the clip now just so you can see the undue influence of the Communist Chinese Party.
Here is John Cena on his knees, Jacob Marley, on his knees apologizing to China for acknowledging that Taiwan might actually exist, and then it's pissed off YouTube.
I have one mistake.
I have to say it now.
It's very, very, very, very important.
I love and respect China and the Chinese.
I'm very, very sorry for my mistake.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm very sorry.
You have to understand.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry.
You must understand, I love and respect China and the Chinese.
I love you.
Oh Bye!
What?
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