Welcome to the podcast of Lotus Eaters for the 21st of January 2025. I'm joined by Dan and Andy Ngo.
Hello.
Thanks for coming in and joining us.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
And today we're going to be talking about, well, Trump's victory and the kind of aftermath of that, which is still going on.
The Axel Ridicobana information that's been released and the TikTok divestment.
So it should be quite interesting stuff.
We don't really have anything to announce, do we?
Not really.
Well, there's a merch, but we'll do that as we go.
Okay, let's crack on.
So, do you remember, it wasn't that long ago, you went to the White House website and you got this little mealy statement that was like, oh, if you're unvaccinated, you're going to have a winter of death and suffering ahead of you.
You go to the White House website now and you're greeted by this.
Let's just take a moment.
That's pretty good.
To appreciate that America is back.
The White House website now looks like that, which is very good, which is very good.
So in honour of Trump coming back, I will have to direct you.
We are briefly returning our Trump merchandise, which is very good, and you can get it now before tariffs are applied to the UK. So quickly, get to the store, pick your Trump merch, and yes, all will be well in the world.
Now, I say all is well in the world.
Some people are...
Oh really?
Yes.
They've decided to focus on...
Samson, why don't you...
Oh, he's just adjusting some cameras.
So Elon decided to throw out a Roman salute.
Thank you.
My heart goes out to you.
Now I know some people have been...
Trying to say that, you know, it's been clipped disingenuously and that he was just saying, you know, my heart's full of love and I throw it out to you and all that kind of stuff.
I think that's the wrong line to take.
I think the right line to take is, no, he meant it.
Deal with it, lefties.
And he's looking at me in horror there.
You know, the fact that leftists online and media is focusing on this as the attack point for the inauguration, I think, shows that they're They don't have really anything else to go on because this is a fabricated scandal.
It's not a scandal.
I watched the thing live.
And you can also look at the reaction from the people in the audience.
Nobody interpreted that to be a fascist salute at the time.
And this is also coming from a man who's been open about his own...
And that's also been ignored from the media coverage in this as well.
And they also haven't even reached out to him for comment on what he meant.
And if you watch any videos of public figures who have given speeches, any moment photograph can capture that same type of gesture.
Personally, I'm inclined to lean into it, but you do make some excellent points there.
But no, on a serious note, I will say to...
Those of you who are leftists, who are deeply concerned and you're feeling anxiety about the incoming presidency, I just want to say that we're not interested in olive branches at this point.
You know, after four years of your woke, tyrannical insanity...
It wasn't only four years.
Much longer than that.
Yeah, well, four intense years, but longer than that.
After all of your insanity, we are here to crush your evil dreams.
We are going to strip away your twisted achievements, and we will literally milk your rising stars on national television.
This, I understand, is actually an artificial intelligence generation.
Is it?
Yeah, unfortunately.
Oh, I thought that was a...
So there's a meme going around that's funny that AOC is going to get milked on stage.
Yes.
Disavow, disavow.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Don't approve.
Almost 100% of us disapprove.
Right, so what we are actually here to talk about is there has been a few executive orders signed yesterday that I thought we should really get into.
And I'm not going to play because he basically sat there for a couple of hours going through these things, just chatting to reporters as he went.
I'm only going to dig out this one bit.
Samson, do you want to play this one bit with the sound?
down because this is quite funny actually, this one.
So just in case you didn't hear it, he's handed an executive order and he says, "What's this one?" And the aide says it's withdrawing from the World Health Organization, to which he gets a large ooh out of that.
All of the executive orders can be found here.
There's quite a few of them.
I have read all of them, and I was basically just going to go through them and give a short summary on each.
Jump in whenever you want, but otherwise I'll keep it fairly brief because there are so many.
But I just wanted to get it on the record what is actually out there.
So, first one, guaranteeing the state's protection against invasion.
So he's basically invoking Article 4 of the Constitution, saying that the United States is under invasion, which sort of gives him additional powers to sort of go out there and get stuff done.
Deport legal immigrants.
Well, yes, yes, that as well, yes.
And yesterday there was these viral videos coming out on the Mexican side of the border south of El Paso, Texas, of migrants who were just in tears and infuriated that their appointments that were scheduled on the federal app were all cancelled.
Apparently that app stopped working very, very swiftly, didn't it?
Yeah, on day one.
That's not this EO, but it is one of them.
That's certainly on the list.
Next we've got Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.
So basically Mount McKinley is being Mount McKinley again.
And the Gulf of Mexico is going to be the Gulf of America.
Oh, did they change it to Honor Native Americans or something?
It was something like that, yeah.
So the park itself apparently stays the same, but the...
But the mountain is going back.
And in future, all landmarks and things like that are going to celebrate American heroes.
Good.
Which is very sensible.
Shouldn't really need to be said, let alone legislated for, but here we are.
This is a good one.
Designate cartels and other organisations as foreign terrorist organisations and specifically designate global terrorists.
So basically that's the drug cartels and MS-13.
They're going to be defined as terrorists so that...
Extraordinary legal measures can be used to combat them so the military can be deployed against them.
So all very sensible there.
It doesn't explicitly authorize the invasion of Mexico.
It's mainly focused on US soil at this point.
It's shocking to me that there's been this foot-dragging all through the years about...
Hesitation of designating some of these cartel groups as terrorists because these are paramilitary groups with access to weapons that are more powerful than the Mexican military.
They occupy land and the acts of brutality that they commit on American citizens who have been caught up in their territory.
Of course, Mexican citizens and others.
I mean, really horrible war crimes that I can't say on air.
Genuinely most atrocious things you can imagine.
Yeah, like what IS does is what they do.
And it's terrorist activity in addition to funneling in money and drugs that kill tens of thousands of Americans.
So this is the one that I think will restore the US military.
Because at the moment, if you join the military, what are you joining for?
To go and bomb random brown people?
Pride parades in Uganda.
Yeah, exactly.
But if you join now...
You get to shoot drug cartels.
Yeah.
It's actually a moral use of the military here.
Yeah, so that is much needed American restoration there.
Right, next.
Reforming federal hiring process and restoring merit to government services.
So basically what this is doing is saying you can no longer use sex or race as hiring factors.
It does make a carve-out for you, allowed to prioritise candidates who support constitutional values.
Government efficiency.
So basically this is the anti-twerking executive order.
Interesting that it has an ideological carve-out.
So there is a privileging of a more sort of traditional American ideology contained within it, which I think is completely appropriate.
There's no reason we can't privilege ideology.
It's actually one of the few things we're allowed to discriminate against now is a person's political beliefs.
Interesting how he's specifically put that in there.
Yes, so much less twerking will be taking place at the high levels of government appointments now.
Thank God.
Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programmes and preferencing.
So yeah, DEI is gone, at least as far as DEI as we know it.
It's now going to be Don, Eric and Ivanka.
But this one is actually already working and we can see...
If my link thing works.
There we go.
So that was a federal site yesterday, you know, with a DEI page.
And then you can see from today, it's gone.
So yes.
Superb.
And also I found out that the La Casa Blanca, which is the Spanish White House page and social media handle, has been deleted.
Oh good.
Excellent.
All of this is happening fast, which is good to see.
Right, what have we got next?
Oh yes, establishing and implementing the President's Department of Government Efficiency.
So DOGE, that's going in and the way that they're doing it is apparently they are going to rebrand the US digital services as DOGE. Right, okay.
So that gets around with things.
How are you going to establish a new department and staff it up and get it all done quickly?
Well, they're just going to take an existing one and modify it.
So it's already in the apparatus, and apparently that has tentacles, that digital service thing, it has tentacles into all of the other stuff.
Oh, okay.
So that's why they're using that.
Although they are giving themselves a time limit, so it's 18 months.
So this terminates on the 4th of July, 2026. That's actually superb, though, because that means that Elon Musk can't kick his heels and waste time.
The Department of Government Efficiency is going to have to be efficient itself.
Yes, superb.
In order to get anything done.
American first policy directive to the Secretary of State.
So basically this is saying that when the Secretary of State is doing stuff, he needs to put America first.
Which is kind of interesting that that needed to be said, but...
Evidently that it does.
We have to talk about the gender ideology one.
It was a couple up.
I think it got skipped.
Defending women.
Oh, yes, that's a good one.
Well done, Andy.
Two genders.
Yeah, so defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.
I love that term, biological truth.
That is a good term.
Can you click on it?
Yeah.
It just, like, I mean, this has been...
Debated in your country and my country for years now, this topic, and this is the clearest law I've seen defining what sex is, what gender ideology is, and how it's so destructive to women's rights, and also our understanding of...
Biology and humanity as well.
It's really worth reading.
It's very clear.
Yeah, no, no.
It says that.
The efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.
The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women, but the validity of the entire American system.
And that is...
The key part of all of this, because philosophically what they've been doing is attacking our ability to categorize, to divide one thing from another and declare one thing to be different to another.
The very concept of differentiation was what they were attempting to undermine.
And so the fact that whoever's written this, it's probably going to be someone like Stephen Miller, who's written something like this, because he's quite sharp on all this stuff, or at least it will have had some sort of impact.
The fact that they are prepared to go this far with the statement is really, really encouraging.
Yes.
I mean, it's all quite obvious, really, but we've reached the point where...
The point is, it's actually not obvious, which is why we've been stuck in the mire of postmodern categorical deconstruction for 20 years now.
It's actually quite a difficult thing to be resolute on if you don't already have the sort of prior understanding of the thing.
But whoever has written that has just been well aware that what they're trying to do is dissolve all categories.
We're not having it.
I also wonder if the left-wing TERFs, and there are many of them, they've contributed a lot to this fight, if they're willing to give Trump credit or any gratitude.
I've seen a few TERFs who have basically come over to the right because of the position on this, so maybe.
Well, I mean, we're giving them basically their agenda.
But they deserve it.
It's right that women should have areas of life that are private to women.
Feminists aren't always wrong, they're just mostly wrong.
No, but you don't have to be a feminist to want that.
Someone like Mary Whitehouse would have wanted that.
It's actually unusual that women don't have their own private spaces away from men in society.
No, it's just the terms by definition are feminists.
Well, yeah, sure, but the...
They're more like womanist, I would say.
That's fine.
Because feminism's gone far beyond just women at this point.
But anyway.
When I was reading through these executive orders and directives, I was feeling like whiplashed.
Are any of you feeling that?
It's like in the span of 24 hours, we went from an administration as we saw from before and after.
Everything else was built from an agenda of DEI. And grievance ideology to this.
Yeah, it's great, isn't it?
Oh yeah, and it's this radical, it was like you were having a bad woke dream and somebody threw a glass of cold water over your face.
It's that kind of snap back to reality that we're getting.
Right, what have we got next?
Oh yes, protecting the United States from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats.
So that's basically boosting vetting as you come in.
It's basically just undoing a whole bunch of Joe Biden stuff.
So this is appealing a whole bunch of his executive orders on...
Well, trying to stop defending people against invasion, bluntly.
Right.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development, the OECD. So this is basically global tax stuff, getting rid of a lot of it.
Right.
Organisation for the National Security Council and Subcommittee.
So he's reorganising the National Security Council and its subcommittees.
Won't go into that one in particular detail.
Re-evaluating and realigning the United States foreign aid.
So this puts an immediate halt on foreign aid for 90 days while each programme is reviewed and the criteria for actually doing foreign aid is going to be that it aligns with US foreign policy interests.
Yeah.
but for whatever reason it did not.
So he's not going to be giving Iran any more money?
Yes, I'm pretty sure that will be one of them.
Temporary withdrawal on all areas of the Outer Continental Shelf from offshore wind leasing and review of the federal government's leasing and permitting practices for wind projects.
Did you see Trump talking about this?
No.
He said that the wind turbines are killing whales.
Oh, yes.
But the thing is, Trump failed to explain that this was offshore wind turbines.
Ah.
So, the windmills are killing the whales was how he framed it, which I didn't understand because I didn't realise he was talking about offshore wind farms.
But, I mean, that makes more sense, I suppose.
It probably is.
It creates this resonance thing, and whales, of course, they use them.
Yeah, yeah.
The sound emitter thing to find their way around.
But I actually thought that his secondary argument was more compelling, which is they're ugly and I don't like them.
Yes, that's also a pretty good argument.
I think that's a perfectly valid argument.
Just build nuclear.
What?
No, it's refreshing just to hear people would just be so direct and clear in their statements from these headlines and also what you just said.
Some things are just ugly and I don't like it.
And it's okay to say that.
Yeah, it's perfectly valid.
Right.
Totally.
Next one is declare a national energy emergency.
So that is basically saying they haven't got enough energy, and if they declare a national emergency, he gets additional powers, the federal government gets additional powers to go and do stuff to get energy online.
Well, that's only because the Democrats have been systematically attempting to reduce the amount of energy production the United States makes.
Yes.
I mean, I remember when Biden first came in, he started emptying the oil reserves.
His day one executive orders were basically doing the opposite.
Yeah, I know.
They were terrible.
Absolutely atrocious.
Was it the Keystone Pipeline?
He cancelled that and prevented further drilling for oil.
Against fracking.
Against fracking.
And so it's just like, okay, so you want the United States to be energy impoverished.
Yes.
That's all you can take away from that.
Restoring accountability for career senior executives.
So basically this is reminding them that they actually work for the president and it bolsters his authority to get rid of them if they do not get in line.
This is going to be from his experience in the first, isn't it?
They didn't do what I wanted them to do.
Yes.
So now I'll be watching them, and I will get rid of them.
This one, promoting beautiful federal architecture.
I won't go into any great detail, but actually, from a timeline of like 250 years, that's probably the most important one on the entire list, because that's what will stick around after all of these other things have been worked through.
You know, you want to look back, see some beautiful buildings.
Sorry, go on.
Yeah, it matters a lot.
I mean, just in England, Buildings from the 60s onward versus Victorian infrastructure.
One is such a blight on your country.
I go from town to town and you see these homes and buildings that look like they're from the Soviet era.
That's because they were built by the Labour Party in the 60s and 70s.
Brutalist architecture.
I think that's supremely important.
It is important to make sure that we love our own countries, and making them insanely ugly is a very easy way to make it look like your country doesn't matter to you.
Right.
Restoring the death penalty and protecting public safety, unlike Biden, who of course basically pardoned everybody on death row on his way out the door.
Quickly, I mention...
Putting people over fish, stopping radical environmentalism to provide water to Southern California.
So this is basically going to divert more water to Southern California, whereas they had been using the water for the interest of fish.
So that was actually a very important directive that Trump attempted during his first administration, but Governor Newsom in California stopped it.
Yeah, it diverts.
Well, if Newsom wants to stop it now, he's going to have to explain why people's houses are still on fire and he's stopping water getting in.
There's a sort of George Bushism from like 2004 or something where he was talking, I think it was probably about this subject, but there's this one line where he says, I'm sure that humans and the fish can coexist.
And Trump's obviously disagreeing now.
And there are a lot of fish.
So I think the fish are going to be okay.
And these headlines are so, it's inverting the leftist sort of language because they're like, fish over...
Or People Over Fish.
The original one is like People Over Profit.
These are really brilliant.
Whoever wrote these.
Kudos.
Securing our border.
So this is a couple of the points you've already touched upon.
So the key points here is build a wall, more personnel, end catch and release, criminal prosecution of anyone involved in people smuggling, and the key bit that you've already mentioned, Andy, is the ceasing of the CB1 app, which is basically their streamlining process of getting people across as efficiently as possible.
I believe it's off.
Yep.
Done.
So very important.
Well, they're all important.
Catch and release is just such a bizarre program as well.
It's like, OK, we've caught 10,000 murderers crossing the border.
Well, let them go.
What, in the United States?
Yeah.
In the United States.
It's mad.
Protecting the meaning and value of American citizenship.
So it lowers the amount of people who are going to get American citizenship.
It requires refugees to demonstrate close ties, and it is going to prioritize those who can integrate effectively without...
Interesting.
Which is, you know, why don't we do that?
Why don't we prioritise people who aren't just going to come on welfare?
So are you suggesting that Trump isn't going to be putting them in three-star hotels?
Seems not.
No.
Realign the United States refugee admission program.
So it's going to suspend US refugee admissions until they can basically decide what they want to do, which is going to be less of it.
That's probably what you were talking about with the crying refugees.
Unleash American energy.
So that's the EV mandates gone and a whole bunch of other things like that.
Clarify the military's roles in protecting the integrity of the United States.
So essentially more...
Affirming commitment to the southern border, and yes, we can use the military.
American first trade policy.
So trade policy is going to have a focus on putting America's interests first, and it is going to review the existing trade agreements, particularly with China.
I'm sure that's going to...
Yes.
It'd be very good.
A memorandum to resolve the backlog of security clearances for executive officers.
So you know they're going to...
Well, they have been holding up his appointment's security clearance.
But he says, fine.
This executive order basically says that they can have top-secret clearance for six months until you get through the vetting.
Yeah, just straight over the top of their delaying.
Who's in charge now?
Declaring a national emergency at the southern border of the United States.
So again, a number of measures there about using the military and other such acts.
Holding former government officials accountable for election interference and improper disclosure of sensitive government information.
So this is the one that basically, you know those 51 intelligence agents who did that thing on the Biden laptop?
They've all lost their...
Security clearances.
Really?
All 51. And they're the ones who use their position of clearance to go to media and say that they believe the Hunter Biden laptop was fake.
But they're all out now.
They have no more privileged access to information than any member of the general public now.
It did also name one other person.
John Bolton.
Oh really?
Yes.
Old Walls chops is off the list as well.
Right.
I love that Trump's been stewing on this for four years.
Yes.
He's just been drawing up Sulla-style drawing up lists.
Oh, you're all in trouble now.
Yes.
Well, that's really what we should have all been doing over the last four years is drawing up lists.
Restoring accountability to policy influencing positions within the federal government.
So basically this is saying, if you are going to be a member of the federal government, you are going to have to faithfully implement the...
President's policies.
And it bolsters a whole bunch of basically discipline for non-compliance type stuff.
So, very good.
Oh, this is a good one.
This is the one that's gone ooh from Trump himself.
We've drawn the United States from the World Health Organization.
What, the Communist-controlled World Health Organization with Tedros, who happens to be in Hockwood, China, because he is an Ethiopian communist.
Exactly.
What you're saying is actually right.
Right.
I actually used to be a very big advocate of WHO.
I think, you know, international cooperation on health matters is important.
And it is important, but WHO has been compromised through Chinese placing people who are favorable to China in positions of power.
And you can see how the WHO disgraced itself in its handling of COVID and trying to cover up and protect China when the international community wanted to investigate the origins of it, which still to this day we don't know.
And it makes me really furious that people kind of just moved on.
The executive order doesn't explicitly cite the response to the pandemic.
It does or does not?
It does.
It does, yeah.
Oh, next one is something that I know you're going to be wanting to come back to in your segment, Andy.
So this is the Application of Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to TikTok.
So basically, he's suspending the getting rid of TikTok for another 75 days until they can have a bit of a rethink on that one.
So, very good.
Not good.
I don't think it's good, but let's carry on.
Oh, really?
Oh, okay.
fair enough um granting pardons and uh commution of sentence for certain offenses relating to the events at or near the united states capital on january 6 2001 21 but yeah yes 21 yes um So it's commuting the sentence of 14 individuals already convicted.
It grants an unconditional pardon to all other convicted individuals from those events.
It orders the immediate release from prisons for those pardons and directs the dismissal of all pending indictments.
Superb.
That's the money shot, that one, right there.
If he only did one executive order, it should have been that one.
But that's good.
He's finally rewarding his friends.
So, yes, we are very happy with that.
Right, putting America first in international environmental agreements.
So this is basically the Paris Agreement.
Yeah.
Booted.
Good.
Yes.
I understand that the members of the Japanese government are already saying, well, why are we in it then?
Great question.
What's the point?
Great question.
Yes.
Because if China and the US isn't in it, there's really...
China doesn't do anything in it either.
China doesn't follow the rules.
Yes.
So there's no point to this.
Delivering emergency price relief for American families by defeating the cost of living crisis.
So basically, this is the anti-inflation one.
Now, you remember that Joe Biden also had anti-inflation measures, and what his attempt was was by printing a vast amount of money.
Now, if you're not an economist, that doesn't work.
Whereas this is basically getting rid of regulation.
And that actually probably will work.
So very good.
Hiring freeze.
You can probably guess, but basically new hires have been frozen with the exception of military, immigration, national security, public safety, social security, Medicare and veterans benefits.
So just the outside of the necessary functions, quote unquote, of the state.
Yes.
It's going to prevent state expansion.
Yes.
Yes, at least until they decide to go somewhere else with that, but for now.
Also, regulatory freeze pending review, so there's a pause on all new rulemaking and a postponement of any recent rules to allow the president and his team to review and approve them.
What he's doing here is going after the civil service.
He said this when he was signing them.
He's like, we don't know who's in there, we don't want them doing stuff until we've got...
A handle on things.
And so, perfect.
Yes, just stop it.
The return to in-person work.
That's a very short one, so I'm going to read it in full.
All heads of departments and agencies in the executive branch of government shall, as soon as practical, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work.
Good.
That's to the point.
I mean, I like that.
Ending weaponisation of the federal government.
Reviews.
So this directs federal law enforcement and intelligent agencies over the past four years to identify and remedy politically motivated actions targeting opponents.
So that's obviously gearing up to something quite fun.
Restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.
So this is the Mark Zuckerberg EO. So his point basically there was that if the US government is going to defend free speech, we can't stop the EU going after us.
So now the government is going after that.
Right, last few now.
Initial rescission...
Sorry, just on that last one.
I mean, it's also in direct contradiction to what the Biden administration did, which is actively censor people.
Yes.
So it's good that...
They weren't supposed to be doing it with the First Amendment anyway.
No, of course.
It's totally anti-constitutional, yet they were doing it anyway.
Initial recession of harmful executive orders and actions.
So that's basically revoking a whole bunch of other Joe Biden stuff not covered previously.
Fly the flag at full staff on Inauguration Day.
Because they only flew at half-mast because of Jimmy Carter.
Yeah, apparently because they couldn't have picked any other day.
What they were trying to do is signal the United States is in distress.
There were a lot of Liberal governors who suspended that for Inauguration Day.
Which was the right thing to do.
It's a ceremony one should honour.
Except in my home state of Oregon.
The Oregon Governor, Democrat Tina Kotick had the flag still flying at half-mast.
Flying the flag at half-mast indicates distress.
Quite.
But like you were saying earlier, I'm kind of in favour of them being distressed.
I will bang through the last four in one go.
This is basically Trump making various appointments to chairmanships, cabinet-level positions, sub-cabinet appointments, and cabinet-level appointments.
So let's just go into the last one.
We'll finish off with that.
Some notable names.
Scott Benenson is going to be the Secretary of the Treasury.
He seems like a good chap.
Pamela Bondi, Attorney General.
Very good.
Peter Hegseth, Secretary of Defence.
RFK, Health and Human Services.
Kristi Noem is going to be Homeland Security.
Marco Rubio, not sure about that one.
Secretary of State.
And Tulsi Gabbard is going to be Director of National Security.
And there's a whole bunch of other ones in there.
So, those are Trump's executive orders.
I think this is based Christmas.
Like it very much.
What do you think, Japs?
Very happy.
Are you happy with day one, Andy?
Well, the big takeaways for me are the eradication of gender madness in federal agencies, the end of DEI, all the measures related to securing the border, given the crisis that's been happening there for years now, and the pardoning and commutations of the January 6th convicts.
I was thinking last night when I was looking through these, I know that the last four years have been quite painful for a lot of Americans under the Biden administration, but if Trump had won a second term in 2020, he would not be governing as he is now.
Turns out they did us a favour.
Trump needed four years in the wilderness to stew on this.
Be persecuted by Biden to come back with such a great slate of day one decisions.
Yes.
Very good.
We should thank them for their malfeasance.
Right, well, we've got a bunch of Superchats.
Let's quickly burn through these.
The Shadow Band says, My heart goes out to you, Lotus Eaters and Andy.
Oh, that's very kind.
Neorealist says, Be honest.
Did you drop to your knees and pray that something like this would happen for England?
Well, obviously, every day.
Trump needs to reforge the statue of Robert E. Lee, like the Shards of Narsil.
You know, that would be a great thing for him to do, actually, is have a new statue of Robert E. Lee created.
Because Trump did speak in defense.
Because, like, Robert E. Lee was a patriot.
A great man.
It shows support for his cause so as much.
But anyway, I think that would be a good thing to do.
And just undo everything the left have done.
Just undo it.
What do you think of the criticism, though, that...
Presidents enacting so many executive orders that that is tyrannical.
I wouldn't say it's tyrannical, but it shows that there's been a definite shift towards an executive model of the presidency in the United States.
Because of Obama.
Because of Obama, yeah.
Right.
It is their rules, and we're playing it by now.
Exactly.
And if Trump wanted that to change, I mean, he could produce legislation that doubtless he could get through the House and Senate that would mean that there would be a limit to the executive orders a president could do, perhaps, or something like that.
But the fact is that there isn't, and they are allowed to do this.
It's perfectly legal.
And the precedent was set by Obama and carried on by Biden.
So why wouldn't you?
I wonder if the GOP-led House and Senate will take this opportunity to actually pass legislation.
That would solidify these beyond executive orders.
Well, they should, because one of the problems with executive orders, as we're seeing, is they can just be undone.
Random Name says, I remember leftoid saying things like the adults are back in the White House when Biden won.
I think we should throw it back at them now.
Well, I mean, I think that's what's happening.
Neo Unreal says, The insanity of this list of wins Dan read off is just how much of this would have seemed unthinkable to be needed in 2010. An executive order declaring there are only two sexes, this would be seen as parody.
So, yeah, but we've had four years of Biden and about a decade of left wing hegemony.
So that's the position we're in.
But anyway, let's let's move on for the sake of time, if nothing else.
So the information about Axel Rudakabana has finally been released.
And I will be quoting extensively from the Daily Mail reporting on it, which seems to be fairly good, to be honest.
But this is the mugshot that was released.
And you can see why they were using the picture of him as a child instead of this one.
Can't you?
Yes.
Your shark-like eyes, just...
He looks...
Soulless eyes.
He looks exactly like the kind of person who could stab eight children.
Yeah.
The question, of course, is...
Eleven.
Was it eleven children?
Eight were wounded and three died.
Oh, right, right.
And there was also the teacher.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
But...
Why is this person in our country?
Why is he our problem?
Anyway, so the Daily Mail have been able to finally release some information, which is very interesting.
Because if Axel had been treated as an outsider to our society, one could understand why he might feel resentful.
But that's not the case.
So, throughout his life as a child, he was integrated into our society.
I mean, for example, there you have him being the star of a Doctor Who advert.
In fact, when he was 11, he was billed as a stage school superstar.
He appeared in the Doctor Who advert.
And in 2017, he got Performer of the Week at the Southport branch of the Pauline Quirk Academy of Performing Arts.
He was a part of a local youth drama group through which he performed on a West End show at the Shaftesbury Theatre.
The drama group created their own movie, which was shown at View Cinema, where children walked down a red carpet.
He was cast in a Children in Need clip after being billed as a superstar by a talent agency.
What more could have been done to integrate?
Every opportunity was extended to him in his chosen field.
Yes.
The country could not have been more welcoming and more generous.
No.
I don't know what more could have been done.
Somebody could have been deported.
Well, that wouldn't have integrated him, would it?
I suppose not.
But nothing more could have been done to integrate him.
And his brother seems to be friendly and smiling, elder brother.
For some reason, he apparently was just a bit of a loner, which is interesting, because on one hand, he's a popular theatre superstar.
On the other hand, he's a loner.
It's like, right, okay.
But theatre kids normally loners?
I don't know.
I mean, actors are a bit weird, but...
Yeah, but they're usually quite social.
But anyway, he had a history of violence.
He had a history of causing trouble.
So when he was 13, he was wearing a hood, burst into his school after he'd been barred from the premises for bringing a knife in.
So apparently he'd been arguing with some of the boys or had been bullied by some of the boys.
And so he'd brought a knife to school.
He got barred from the school.
And he returned, brandishing a hockey stick, which he began to attack, presumably, his bullies, breaking one of their wrists.
Right.
Bit of a red flag.
Yeah, bit of a red flag.
He was disarmed after being overpowered by a teacher.
And then another time he attacked a teacher in which he had to be restrained by three of his classmates.
He wasn't armed in this other attack.
So low impulse control is what I'm picking up here.
No concern.
So there's a kind of...
A kind of psychic map that people have of the place around them, and things in this map are valid or invalid, right?
So, Dan, if I had an argument with you, and you were like, nope, okay, we'll take it outside, we would take it outside and we'd have a fistfight.
I wouldn't be trying to murder you, right?
I wouldn't be trying to eradicate you from the sort of psychic map of the country, because I recognize there's a fundamental legitimacy to your existence, even if we're having a conflict.
Yes.
Right?
Well, that's not what he does.
I would go and get my dueling swords and it would be to first blood only.
Precisely, right?
So I'm not trying to kill you, but we are going to use violence to resolve a conflict.
Well, that's not something that it seems Axel held in his heart for the British people.
No, it seems that just as, you know, out and out and quite brutal violence.
I mean, it's possible that he just didn't understand the concepts.
Possible, but there's no reason to think he's actually stupid.
He seems to have actually been quite intelligent.
I watched the clips that he was in.
Even as an 11-year-old, he seemed perfectly intelligent, perfectly articulate.
He's not someone who's a moron.
And so it seems that he just doesn't seem to like the people around him or have any respect for their existence.
I'll take your point.
The world around him, he just considers invalid.
He just doesn't.
He's not a part of Western civilization in his own mind.
He just doesn't recognize the validity of the existence of the people around him.
I don't want to go any further than that because that's the only safe thing I think I can say with certainty because otherwise you wouldn't murder people or attempt to murder people prior.
I don't know about the rest of it.
But anyway, he obviously did have...
0.5 milligrams of ricin, which is a small amount of ricin, which is obviously a toxic biological substance.
Mind you, any amount of ricin is...
Yeah, apparently it got on one woman's cat and killed her cat.
Somehow.
Right.
Which is bad.
And he'd also downloaded terrorist material in the form of an Al-Qaeda training manual called Jihad Against the Tyrants.
Now, whether this means he is a Muslim or not, it's hard to say.
His mother is a Christian and is a practicing Christian.
He may well have just been looking for techniques to engage in terrorism with rather than following the jihadi line on...
The metaphysics of the universe.
Unknown, frankly, at this point.
So, but I mean, can you rule it out?
No, absolutely not.
Is it known as if his family, who are originally from East Africa, if they were given asylum in this country?
They were.
So, Alphonse Ridicabana was a refugee from before the Rwandan genocide.
Apparently he had previously fought in the Tutsi Patriotic Rwandan Defense Force, or whatever it was called, and fled Rwanda before the genocide.
Apparently he is a Tutsi as well.
This just reminds me of also the Ariana Grande Manchester ISIS suicide bomber who also killed a lot of British children.
He was a child of a refugee family from North Africa.
We have this phenomenon that can be observed actually through data of children of refugees who've been given so much opportunity, not just them but their parents and family, going on to kill the children in the countries that have welcomed them.
They clearly don't feel at home in the place they've gone to.
They clearly don't feel that they belong there and they don't really care about the people around them.
If anything, it seems that Axel seems to have hated everyone around him.
We'll carry on.
He's fundamentally mismatched with his environment.
Yeah, he didn't feel like this was the place that he belonged.
And he, despite being given all of the opportunities that he was given, doesn't seem to engage with them at all.
Again, this particular school called him a quiet loner.
He is understood to have spent time in a children's home, although the timeline is a bit confused on this, so I'm sure at some point we'll get more information.
In fact, there are other articles.
And his father apparently said that he was planning to commit the UK's first high school massacre and was stopped by his dad a week before the massacre, planning to perform a massacre on that week.
Right?
So, they say he was armed with a kitchen knife and wore a green-hooded sweatshirt, which is the one he wore to commit the massacre, and he was getting into a taxi outside of his home when his father, Alphonse, ran out to him, pleaded with the taxi driver not to take him on the 15-mile journey from the family home to, presumably, the same performing arts school where the Taylor Swift dance class was going on, because I imagine that was a weekly thing.
But the Daily Mail say, there is no suggestion that Rudy Cabana's father knew what he believed to have been planning at school.
Why were you stopping him from going then?
I'm sorry, I think he obviously knew.
And that's why you say he had to be talked out of it by his father.
And okay, so that's concerning.
If my son had been armed, getting into a taxi, and I had to persuade him not to do it, I would...
Certainly have gone to the police.
So look, my son, judge me as a father, my son is going to go and kill some people.
I would like some help with this.
Well, it's better that that happens than he actually does it and then he goes away for life.
Yes.
It is the right thing to do.
Yes.
But anyway, the Daily Mail said they didn't know, but an eyewitness said there was a confrontation and he was eventually persuaded to leave the vehicle.
Rudokabana had rung Childline when he was 13, saying that he was going to bring a knife into his school because he was being bullied.
Bullying happens to us all, but it doesn't mean we bring a knife into school.
And this is an earlier time, obviously, and this is when he brings a hockey stick in.
Police were called after an incident in December 2019. He was given a 10-month referral order by a youth court.
Which is believed to be his only brush with the law prior to July's atrocity.
So again, in the previous examples, it doesn't seem the police were contacted.
So bringing a knife in school and attacking someone with a hockey stick and attacking a teacher doesn't seem to have triggered them going to the police, although he was referred to prevent three times over the years, and nothing happened.
Well, prevent as in prevent terrorism.
The organisation designed to prevent terrorism, yeah.
So, the guy who committed one of the worst acts of terrorism in the last few years had been referred to the Terrorism Prevention Agency three times, and it still happened anyway.
That's quite common for a lot of terrorists in your country and mine.
So, again, these are anonymous sources speaking to the Daily Mail, who are apparently close to it.
So, they say, the source added, by all accounts, he was a normal Year 9 pupil until the...
The incident with the knife and the hockey stick occurred.
That was the spark that started everything.
The Daily Mail has also seen a video showing Ruda Cabana being restrained by his fellow pupils when he was trying to attack one of the children he accused of bullying him.
I'm sure that he had been bullied.
I mean, who hadn't been bullied when they were at school?
This happens to everyone.
I guess everyone has a different reaction to it.
But the source says that he had no religious links whatsoever, even though he was raised as a Catholic.
He wasn't a religious person, so, I mean, it's common.
Lots of kids don't have any interest in religion because there's no social structures enforcing it these days.
They think that, quote, he was just pure evil and wanted to hurt people.
I would describe him as generational evil, which is a very strange way to describe anyone.
Well, they must have met his dad then.
Well, I mean, who knows?
He was seen by multiple medical professions and diagnosed with autism, of course.
And he became obsessed with wars, conflicts, and genocides.
And that's how he came to be referred to prevent and counter-terrorism.
So he was expelled from his school, and Rudokabana attended specialist education in the Southport area, but he only attended two or three times, 1%.
So he basically just dropped out.
And his dad was just fine with this.
Like, my kids would not be allowed to drop out of school.
I would make them go.
But apparently he just bunked off all the time and didn't go and his father didn't try and make him do it.
Well, there's clearly more to know about his father.
There is.
And the thing is, police were regularly called, sorry, social workers were regularly called to attend his family home and every time the social workers went to his family home, they brought the police with them because they feared for their safety in his presence.
Oh, right.
Quote, social workers who visited him always brought their own security, a source said.
It was felt that for their own safety it was better to have someone to keep them safe because they were so worried about what he was capable of.
Anyway, on the day of the killings he donned an identical outfit to the one he'd worn a week earlier when his dad had persuaded him out of going on that massacre.
And again, I don't know how you can just sit on that information.
Okay, yeah, it's your own son, sure, and that's tough.
But if he's got enough, he's going to kill a bunch of people.
You have to act.
Anyway.
So, this time his parents weren't there, so nobody stopped him.
Apparently he became obsessed with socio-political history, focusing on the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
Apparently it was all he would talk about, all he wanted to read about.
Just as some children are fixated on football, they know all the players, all the stats, he was the same about genocidal killers and bloody dictators.
He collected books and literature and read up on it obsessively.
The nastier it was, the more interested it was to him.
And of course, his family fleeing the genocide in Rwanda was evidently part of the obsession with violence.
The Rwandan genocide was, of course, one of the many conflicts he was fixated with.
Which is, again, interesting because his father actually did leave before the genocide.
So, strange.
But again, like the Daily Mail say here, Alphonse is believed to have fled Rwanda with his mother well before the killings began.
So, I don't know what the connection is there.
I'm sure this will all come out in time.
Why did they flee?
Do we know?
Well, he was because he fought with the Patriotic Rwandan Army, which is a Tutsi army that fought against the Hutu government.
And so I guess he's fleeing from reprisals or something like that.
I see.
The entire area is an S-show and a patchwork of states that comprise multiple ethnic groups that have a history of...
Committing massacres against one of them.
And when you say fought against, I mean, that covers a lot of territory.
I mean, his father could have been involved in all sorts of horrific things.
There were definitely Tutsi pogroms of Hutus, and there are Hutu massacres of Tutsis.
So, yeah.
Who knows what his father was involved in?
I don't have any information.
But one of the sources said that they think that basically his trauma and autism...
It caused a mental health issue, and they think that this was caused by exposure to violent materials online.
So censorship is going to come from this, I'm afraid.
So anyway, that's the majority of the information.
The BBC did a kind of live ticker.
Just to point out that what's going to come from this is going to be more censorship and not deportations.
Yeah, that's 100% what's going to happen.
So there were various links that I saved during the live reporting.
But basically he pleads guilty to all offences and...
Sorry, go on.
The way this case concluded is a bit tragic for the public in that the court in Liverpool scheduled the trial to start on the 20th of January.
So all of the media coverage was focused on the American inauguration event, for one.
He also then, at the very beginning of trial, pleaded guilty to all the charges.
So the public was denied an opportunity to hear all the evidence in the prosecution.
There was no defense mounted for Ruta Cabana.
So it was just a fait accompli.
Just like, yeah, I'm guilty, I'm guilty of all the terrorism, and we don't need to have the trial.
So bear that in mind for claims of people worrying about prejudicing the trial, which didn't happen.
And this is the story that kicked off the race riots last summer.
Yeah.
Actually, just credit to you, Carl.
It would have been very easy to have forgotten this story of everything that's going on in the US at the moment.
And you were like, no, I'm going to do a segment on this.
This needs to be talked about.
One of the main problems is there's going to be no catharsis for the British public on this.
He's just going to be kind of memory-old.
And we'll be told, don't look back in anger.
Of course, we can't talk about any communities.
We can't describe any kind of ideological motive to him.
And so nothing substantive will change until, again, you know, however long another terror attack will happen and it will be some deranged foreigner who just hates this country.
And we'll be like, right, okay.
I guess we can't do anything about that either.
But anyway, just to summarise on this, yeah, so he was sullen in court, although apparently he was smirking at one point.
He didn't respond for a long time to any of the charges, and then when they started laying out the charges, he would say the word guilty to himself, which is strange.
He pleads guilty, no trial, and therefore...
There's going to be no particular discovery or information that comes out of it that we don't already have, which is very convenient for the powers that be, isn't it?
Very convenient for Keir Starmer.
Very convenient, yeah.
And so Nigel Farage has been kicking up a big stink about this because he alleges that when this first happened, of course, Keir Starmer, being the Prime Minister, was privy to all of this information on the day before any charges had been brought against Rudy Cabana.
And so Farage was apparently, all of the MPs had their parliamentary privileges revoked, and he was not even allowed to ask questions about this in the Parliament.
That's clearly a cover-up.
I mean, this is Britain.
We're a permanent member of the Security Council.
We have a decent intelligence service.
There's no way the Prime Minister did not know all of this stuff on day one.
He absolutely did.
And Keir Slummer actually came out and admitted that as well.
But the narrative, and we'll get to Keir Starmer's statement in a second, has been, well, we didn't want to risk prejudicing the trial.
It's like, the identity of the killer doesn't prejudice the trial.
One of the reporters, actually, asking Keir Starmer, said, well, and Lord Carlisle pointed out, as Farage cites, that knowing the identity of the killer is not the same as discussing the details of the case, which is true.
And there was a window before...
Rudy Cabana was charged, while he was in custody, that Keir Starmer could have released at least his identity to show people that there wasn't a cover-up happening, and he chose not to.
But Farage is banging this drum, and Keir Starmer came out and gave a very...
I don't know how to describe it.
In a way, tepid, but kind of insufferable way of...
Well, I can make some suggestions.
You can, but he's not going to take them.
And he says that, oh, okay, we'll get to the very bottom of this.
We're not going to be politically correct about it.
But he said, if this trial had collapsed because I or anyone else had released crucial details while the police were investigating, then the vile individual who committed these crimes would have walked away a free man.
well that would require a judge to allow him to walk away a free man what judge in this country is going to be like yeah no i'm abandoning this trial so rudy kubana isn't charged because this trial was unreasonably prejudiced by you knowing his identity well if if that is true why hasn't every case against tommy robinson always collapsed because Because he has been the most prejudiced individual in this country.
The most vilified person.
Exactly.
I mean, it would be up to the judge to do that, as I understand it.
In the most strict legalistic way, Starmer does have a point, because it is possible, and there are examples of trials nearly being prejudiced, nearly being dismissed, such as the Rebecca Brooks trial of 2014, the Joanna Yeats murder case of 2011, the Christopher Jeffries one in 2000 and I don't even know what.
Oh no, 2011. Levi Belfield in 2008 and George Barry Case in 2001. Sorry, Barry George Case in 2001 with the murder of Jill Dando, alleged.
But none of these were actually dismissed because of prejudicing.
He's taking a tiny, tiny grain of truth and using it for a whole cover-up.
Yeah, because in the Barry George case, prejudicial reporting about his character and lifestyle could have influenced the jury, but this...
This was overturned later anyway.
So it's not that it's a guarantee.
Well, if we talk about this case in any way, even knowing the guy's identity, that that's it, we're putting the case in jeopardy.
That's the decision of the judge.
And you'd have to have a judge who wanted that guy to go free effectively, which is an unlikely thing to find.
So in this case, Stammer admits that this was terrorism.
Although he kind of tries to sidestep it by saying, well, we see extreme acts of violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, and young men online desperate for notoriety and fixed on violence for its own sake.
So it's just young men.
It's just young men fixed on violence.
Well, basically, he doesn't think it's going to happen to his kids or his friend's kids, and therefore he doesn't care.
Yeah, but he's also kind of trapped in a position where, what can you do against insane, lone, radicalised nutjobs?
And the answer is not that much, actually.
Well, there's certainly something you can do.
Well, from his perspective.
Right.
Okay.
But there's not that much.
It's difficult to legislate against this sort of stuff.
And so he says, well, there's a tidal wave of violence online, video after horrific video, and this shouldn't be viewed and accessible on social media.
So what we're going to get is censorship.
That's the only tool that they have.
It's a blunt one, and they're going to apply it liberally.
Right.
Does he regret blaming the far right?
No, of course not.
He doesn't in any way regret blaming the far right, even though essentially they were correct.
He goes on to defend Muslims at mosques, even though the guy had now created a terrorist manual.
Who knows?
And he basically just has nothing but praise for public servants in this.
So we're going to get more of the same, basically.
We're just going to get more censorship.
Nothing's going to change.
They're not going to prevent any further terror attacks.
There will always be the open saw of the lack of justice brought against Rudy Cabana because he will still be walking the earth.
Any thoughts on this, Andy?
Just that terror attacks in the West are so part and parcel, using Sadiq Khan's words, that people forget about very quickly.
Just two and a half weeks ago in America, there was a mass deadly attack in New Orleans.
That was an IS-inspired attack.
People, including many conservatives, have just moved on.
The news cycle is so fast.
And that's what's going to happen in this case.
They're going to do everything they can to essentially bury it because there's no organization that they can target.
They can only lock him up.
He's actually too young to get a whole life order, but it's possible that...
In 10 or 15 years' time, he's just out and wandering around our country.
Although it's likely that what they'll do is, I don't know, somehow load the charges so he will have to spend 500 years in jail or something.
So it's not a whole life order, but they'll make it so he can't come out.
But really, he should get the rope.
And everyone knows he should get the rope.
But obviously, we can't do that anymore.
Even the rope's generous, he should be boiled.
Yeah, it just...
I mean, I'd better not go into it.
For the sake of propriety.
But yeah, so nothing's going to change.
It's a foreigner who was brought to England and decided to go on a killing spree out of resentment against our country.
Anyway, moving on.
Let's talk about the TikTok divestment.
So the TikTok thing has been very interesting to me because I don't like TikTok.
I don't like the platform itself.
I don't like the concept of 60-second clips.
I'm worried about what that does to a person's ability to concentrate for any period of time.
And I don't like the fact that it's owned and controlled essentially by the Chinese Communist Party and is allowed to operate in the West unfettered with whatever they want to pump into the soft heads of our young people.
So there are two arguments happening.
Simultaneously about TikTok, there's the criticisms that have until very recently existed, primarily on the right, criticizing the way that the way the content algorithms are manually programmed to drive certain type of political topics that can really, I mean, they push DEI topics, racial grievance.
And very politically divisive stuff.
And TikTok has the power to shape the political discourse among primarily young people in the US and other countries.
It's a very, very powerful tool.
Just as a quick aside as well, as I understand it, there are something like 157 million Americans who use TikTok.
Yes.
That's a massive number.
That's half?
Almost, yeah.
And of course, all the issues you bring up about what it does to young people's attention span.
So that is a criticism of the content.
The other one that has been discussed, particularly through the legislation, is the national security risk.
And we should not conflate these two different things because the legislation has nothing to do about criticisms you and I and others may have on the actual content.
On TikTok.
From a national security angle, and this is extremely important, not to do free speech.
That's a red herring that's being thrown out there primarily by TikTok influencers and those who would stand to benefit for the platform remaining in the hands of China.
So in China, there is a law that any business operating there by law is required to turn over information about its users to the government if the government requests it.
It's the law there.
So ByteDance, who owns TikTok, is based in China.
And so the bipartisan legislation that was passed in the U.S. Congress and then approved by Senate and signed by President Biden was one of the few bipartisan pieces that Democrats and Republicans agreed on is that this is a national security issue.
Because imagine TikTok, like many of these other apps, it has the ability to track what you type, who's on your contact list, et cetera.
Google and some of these other apps have the ability to do that too.
That's how it's able to curate certain specific content to you.
That's how it knows what I want to see in the adverts.
Exactly.
But all this type of information potentially being in the hands of the Chinese government.
That's a big security issue.
And there are governments around the world who have banned, like in Australia and other places, who have banned TikTok from government employees having it on their government-issued devices.
There are countries who have banned TikTok entirely, aren't there?
There's that as well.
Albania, for example, has banned it on the content issue, which is a separate discussion here.
So right now...
So just that China has also banned TikTok?
TikTok is not allowed in China.
There's another version of it, but the content, if you go on it, is entirely different.
It's none of this woke and politically divisive stuff.
It's highbrow cultural content of people playing violins and doing dances, ballet and stuff like that, isn't it?
So they know that they are curating for their young people highbrow content and allowing the absolute slop of intellectual degeneration.
To everyone else is.
But how do you get around the First Amendment issues?
Because, okay, yes, it's spying on people, but all of the apps are spying.
It's spyware.
Yeah, but all of them are spyware.
But it's a national security issue.
Yes, okay, fine.
But if you have a First Amendment and you say you've got free speech, why should the onus not be on, if you're a government employee, it's up to you to make sure that it's not in your household.
Why does somebody who's got nothing to do, why does somebody work at a corner shop have to lose it when they want to use it?
Just because some, you know, three or four guys up the street might work for the government in some capacity and they can't police their own household.
Because the issue isn't with that person's ability to spread their message on social media.
The issue is the platform itself being a tool of a hostile foreign power.
So even if that is...
I mean, it's not like this is the only social media platform that there is to use, right?
They could easily use a Western platform, which again is banning China, as all of them are.
The government isn't preventing them as in intercepting their ability to upload to social media or the internet in general.
What they're intercepting is the Chinese Communist Party's ability to take advantage of Americans.
What's happened with TikTok is not without precedence.
In 2019, the US government pressured the Chinese owners of Grindr.
and for those who don't know, Grindr is a gay hookup app to sell to an American company because you can imagine the national security risks for all the politicians and diplomats who use Grindr, who send messages on there that are compromising pictures and also STD who send messages on there that are compromising pictures and also STD status and other things Having that information that can be accessed by foreign hostile power is extremely compromising to lots of people.
And the company is sold.
Pardon?
Wouldn't that be awful if that were to all leak out?
Yes.
But this is not about, like, a leaking out.
It's about, like, a hostile foreign power having access to this type of personal information that can be used to blackmail politicians.
But also it can be used to, like, identify their location and things like that.
Yes.
And TikTok's bite-down staff have actually, they've been forced to admit that their staff has spied on American and British journalists.
This is another, like...
TikTok...
From a national security argument, it is a security risk.
And the conservatives completely understood this until 48 hours ago.
And there's been lobbying now by conservatives in D.C. to flip the script on TikTok.
Now, it's very intentional.
The discussion is no longer about national security.
It's about free speech.
This is the PR that TikTok is going to.
It's a free speech issue.
TikTok's saying we're so looking forward to working with President Trump and trying to warm and get the graces of conservatives who have hated the application for the content stuff up until a few minutes ago.
And rightly so.
And there's particularly one billionaire donor who was one of the top donors in 2024 to conservative causes.
His name is Jeffrey...
Yes, who owns, through his company, 15% stake in ByteDance, and then personally 7%.
So he's worth an estimated $33 billion.
The sale and the instability of TikTok changing hands would be catastrophic to his finances.
So he's funding a lot of these conservative influencing and lobbying operations in D.C. I think where the Conservatives are probably coming from on this one is that basically all of the apps were hostile until five minutes ago.
Yes.
So, you know, am I that concerned about the Chinese government knowing all my secrets?
Well, I suppose I'm mildly concerned.
But I'm not that bothered, to be honest.
I'm far more concerned with my government.
Yeah, but the issue isn't so much with you.
As in...
It's one thing if Facebook, Meta, Apple, YouTube, and now X have access to my data.
I not only personally have constitutionally protected rights, even in Britain we actually do, and there are limits to the amount that that government can do.
do the issue for us becomes a one of censorship and political and ideological differences right as in facebook doesn't like the fact that you go based on facebook and therefore censors your account or youtube demonetizes you or the platforms you or something and that is personally difficult for you and therefore these are an anti they become antagonistic to us personally
but what andy is saying is on the level of the state if the foreign government can have access to the location of any state officials at any time well Why can't they bribe our diplomats or blackmail our diplomats?
Spy on journalists?
Radical thought.
Government employees and journalists should not be using these apps then.
Sure, but why have the open line at all?
Why leave the door unlocked?
You might have, for example, a staffer around President Trump who is a Zoomer and therefore addicted to gay stuff on TikTok, as all Zoomers are.
And he just secretly has it installed on his phone.
But that means the Chinese government can track wherever Trump is at any time.
Do you want them having that?
Of course not.
Of course they can't have that.
And so some irresponsible Zoomer staff who doesn't understand the gravity of what they're doing might end up essentially opening the door for the Chinese to be able to assassinate Trump or something like this.
It's just got to be closed.
And then there's the subsidiary arguments of, well, what's the content doing to young people anyway?
Why are Zoomers so retarded?
Yeah, I'm more specific to that argument, I've got to say.
TikTok might actually have quite a large role in that.
Who's curating the content to make our Zoomers retarded?
Oh, the Chinese Communist Party!
Look what it's done to our young people.
We've had a firebombing of the office of a congressman in Wisconsin hours after TikTok was banned, and police are saying it's because the person wanted to...
Enact revenge on the lawmaker for voting in support of that legislation.
That's the behaviour of an addict.
An insane addict.
I get this, it's just the whole argument doesn't quite add up for me that, okay, you're not allowed to have TikTok because it's...
Going to degenerate the culture.
So Lily Phillips is going to have to do her stuff on all the other platforms.
That's not the argument in the law, though.
Yeah, but that's not the legal argument, which is the argument for state security is much stronger on a practical and direct level.
The argument for the cultural...
The integrity of the West being damaged by TikTok is a lot more diffuse and abstract, but on a very practical level, having it so that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't have access to where our functionaries and government officials are at any given time is probably important.
You know, TikTok hosted an inauguration ball in DC. I did not know that.
And they had conservative influencers, quite big figures that came as talent and stars for the event, who were posing in front of signs that said, "Save TikTok." So this is a huge, I mean, multi-billion dollar campaign by Chinese interests to keep it in Chinese hands.
Think about it.
How they were willing to shut it down preemptively rather than to sell.
They'd rather not operate at all.
Rather not operate at all in the US than to sell.
And the legislation, by the way, didn't require them to actually shut down on Sunday at midnight.
It could have continued to remain online.
Actually, the way the legislation was written was Google and Apple iOS had to remove it.
So new people couldn't download it and you couldn't update it, therefore.
So then eventually the app would become obsolete weeks and months down the line.
Not immediately.
What TikTok did in immediately shutting it off and having this statement that came on for the millions of people.
So it's playing a very, very wise...
PR campaign.
I would say it's the psyops.
That was a political psyop.
100%.
To get 157 million Zoomers.
Well, probably not that many, but 157 million people to feel as if this was a necessary and almost political attack by the Trump administration.
And the fact that Trump backed down on it is essentially an L for Trump on this.
So one of the executive orders was a delay of implementation of the legislation for an additional 75 days.
So TikTok's back online in the US, the status quo is remaining for another 75 days.
We'll see what happens.
The national security risks, I cannot overstate that.
People are looking at it the wrong way when they're thinking that this is about free speech.
That's the secondary argument.
It's not related to the legislation.
It's also a bad argument.
It's not about free speech.
You still are able to upload to social media platforms.
There's nothing about free speech that means you have to be able to have access to a foreign Chinese Communist Party's app.
That's not a free speech argument.
But also, people forget just how awful the CCP is.
I mean, they're the party of Mao.
They've turned China into a one-party fascist dictatorship.
They have clearly designed to, for the next hundred or so years, expand their influence around the world.
We should be taking action to withhold that.
They are undermining Western dominance.
I don't know why we export anything like our manufacturing to them.
It's such short-sightedness.
But honestly, they're not trustworthy people in the slightest.
That's true.
And there are also safeguards in place in this country, in the U.S. If law enforcement wanted access, for example, information about a user on an app, which they do all the time, people who send CP and other types of stuff on social media, you have to get a court order or a warrant and all that.
And it goes through a process that can be transparent in the investigation process.
And there's been people...
Also, if your information's been wrongly released by...
One of these companies, you have grounds here and also in the U.S. to sue massively civilly as well for violation of your personal information that you gave to them in a very narrow, restricted context.
In China, they have none of that.
They want any of that information by law, they can get it completely unrestricted.
And you, as an individual, would have no idea what the government is doing about your contact, the people on your contacts, what websites you access, your geo locations.
And the thing is, there's no such thing as really a private corporation in China, because the Chinese Communist Party will just take it.
I mean, there have been a bunch of billionaires who have just disappeared in China.
The state just disappears these billionaires and appropriates their holdings.
So you're not getting any argument from me that the CCP is bad.
And I think the strongest argument here is going to be it's just a national security risk.
It's a little spy on your phone and a spy on the phone of the people around you.
And for that reason alone, we're going to get rid of it.
If we're going to try and make the argument that it's got something to do with protecting the culture, I mean, the culture is so debauched outside of TikTok that it's just a drop in the bucket.
TikTok's a part of the debauchery process.
If you want to ban TikTok and also section Lily Phillips and do a whole bunch of other things...
Yeah, I support the Turkish government.
If it was all of that, I'd be like, yeah, fantastic.
But let's not pretend we're going to get rid of TikTok and all of a sudden the Zoomers are going to be saved.
Possibly.
But yeah, so anyway, I don't think that TikTok should be allowed.
But I actually think that all of those are perfectly valid grounds, but if nothing else on the national security ground, it's surely enough.
That is the strongest argument.
What are your thoughts then, to close that off?
Be mindful of how you're being misled by influencers and others.
Those who, not that long ago, you can look on their tweets and see what they were saying about TikTok.
Last year versus now.
That's not organic.
I'll just end it without naming anyone.
No, absolutely.
It's not organic.
And it's literally turned into a culture war issue where they think TikTok's going to be based.
TikTok was the most censorious leftist platform out of all of them.
I don't use it, so...
Well, anyway, on that note, let's go to some comments.
So there are lots of comments saying, yay, Andy is back.
We're very happy to have you in the studio, Andy.
So I'm just going to summarize all of those.
We're happy to have Andy back as well.
Hector points out that Trump did predict that we were going to get tired of winning.
Are we tired of winning yet?
Not yet.
I'm quite enjoying winning.
Are you tired of winning, Andy?
No, I'm still...
I'm still in shock.
I'm in shock, actually.
It is whiplash.
I do agree with that.
Compared to where we were six months ago to now, this is the best timeline.
It could have been the bullet through the ear.
It could have been through the head.
Particularly, for me, being based in the UK now, the changes from a Labour to Conservative government are largely the same.
I mean, there's not really that much change.
Yeah, but that's because Labour and the Conservatives are basically two cheeks of the same arse.
There's no difference between them.
They're both left-wing.
Parties.
Who knows what...
I mean, maybe if Nigel Farage wins, he can do something.
Maybe he wants this.
Who knows?
I'm not going to put any hope in Farage, really, but it'd at least be something different, I think.
So, that'd be nice.
Andy Nohomo says, I thought Trump's inaugural speech was great, but there's a bit much when he used the hard arm when talking about Obama.
Well, thankfully he wasn't.
That's fake news.
George says, I'm very happy so far.
The Jan 6th prisoners are pardoned, which is a must, but I honestly didn't expect withdrawal from the WHO and pause on foreign aid.
Trump keeps the same pace.
There may actually be hope for the US and the world.
Yeah, I mean, like you were saying earlier, I think the fact that he's had four years to stew on this and should write up a list.
Here's a wish list.
Everything I'm going to do on day one.
You know, get the executive...
Obviously, there must have been a lot of preparation getting these executive orders written out by people who know how these things ought to be worded and make sure they do what they do.
And he just had it all there.
And you see him with the pens just signing.
Check this out.
With any job, if you could suddenly get four years thinking time added into your working day, your next working day would be massively productive.
And that's effectively what's happened here.
Yeah, it's great.
The fact that Trump hasn't...
Been slack.
And he's just been preparing.
No, I'm preparing for the win.
I'm preparing that he's fought for it.
And I think this pace that he's set is probably going to keep up for a while, yeah?
Yeah, at least for a couple of weeks.
But yeah, no, it's great.
Kevin says the best clap back to Elon's Roman salute was someone who posted a shock report that one of the village people did a double Roman salute.
What?
Is that correct?
Actually, I did find a whole bunch of...
It's just part of the dance with the two arms out.
Oh, right, yeah, of course, yeah.
Good point.
There is somebody who put together a compilation of a whole bunch of characters, so if you freeze it just right, you can get Cameron doing it, you can get Biden, you can get all of them doing it.
It's just a person putting their hand up.
The media always does this tactic of...
Taking out of context some type of movement in the body.
They do that with like the okay hand symbol, you know, and all these things.
It's desperation.
It shows their It's pathetic.
They do it more, and it's really common when they're creating hippies on people, to get them with a sort of mean expression on their face.
There's a particular picture of Elon where he's looking down like this, as if he's like, ah yes, this is the picture of Elon just before he eats a puppy or something.
And it's that kind of, yeah, because someone, again, when you're looking around, it's very easy to catch someone with an unpleasant expression on their face.
It's really not hard to do.
And so they do this all the time, and they know what they're doing when they do it.
They did it to make people think badly of them.
So to hell with the media.
Roman Observer does say, well, look, are we expecting every new administration to come in with a flurry of executive orders on day one?
Isn't this a bad symptom for a sort of republic?
Yeah, I think it would actually be wise if at some point during his tenure, Trump legislated and militated against this.
Putting a cap on the number of executive orders a president can do is probably a good idea.
I mean, the president is the head of the executive, and if the head of an organization wants to issue a mandate to his workers, why can't he?
Well, that's a fair argument, but the alternative is you get this whiplash back and forth where, oh, well, if everything comes to be done by executive fiat...
Well, that becomes the easiest way to get things done for that period of time, but then it means the next guy is going to do the same, and so the next guy is going to do the same, rather than going through the effort of getting it through the legislative process and actually making it law.
So there are arguments on both sides.
Well, I mean, it's better to go through the legislative process if you can, and we should focus on that if that's possible.
Well, again, there's a reason to limit the number of executive orders there, isn't there?
Presidents shouldn't have unlimited unchecked power.
Should you have a limited number of things that you can tell the staff at the Lotus Eaters to do?
Well, I mean, if this was an elective position, maybe.
Not sure.
It's not the same thing, though, is it?
Kevin says, Trump's signing his orders like it's political WWE. I love it.
That is one of my favourite parts, the fact that he was, you know...
An arena or something.
Signing the orders on a desk with a big crowd cheering.
What is going on, man?
Just riffing the entire time.
It was so refreshing compared to dealing with Biden.
It's a refreshing change.
Biden, of course, was very stiff.
Often didn't answer questions.
Often was kind of out to lunch.
Choreographed.
Choreographed.
Every step.
Yeah.
Whereas Trump totally relaxed.
I mean, like after he gave the initial inaugural address, he just came out to another, I don't even know what room full of other people this was.
And he just starts rambling for an hour and a half about whatever it was.
And it was just like, it's just like he's at his rallies, you know, and it was just like, oh, this is superb.
Someone online says, I'm stunned, but pleased that Trump is keeping his promises.
Did you think he would or wouldn't?
Well, you know, regarding one example, the 6th of January convicts, he seemed to Have signaled that he would only pardon some of them, but in the end it was for all of them.
Commuted sentences of some of the ones that were convicted of more serious offenses, and the rest were pardoned, which would wipe their convictions clean.
I didn't think he would actually do it for all of them.
I think, in my view, I wonder if there was a radicalizing effect on Trump in that Biden, in his final weeks and days and minutes in office, was pardoning his family, friends and loyalists.
And so if this is the rules of your game, then all of us are going to play by it.
And we're going to win.
Yeah, no, I think that's a fair question, you know, because there was definitely a kind of galloping speed that Biden ramped this up with.
Pardoning his entire family.
Pardoning Millie, Fauci and the Jan 6th committee in advance.
Say, okay, come on.
This is getting to Banana Republic stuff now.
That Texas gal says the best part of the inauguration was Zuck getting caught in 4K. Did you see Zuckerberg getting caught in 4K? What does that mean?
It means that he was checking out some girl's boobs.
Oh, right.
And it was really, really funny because, breaking news, Mark Zuckerberg is heterosexual and human.
Who knew?
Well, he can't be compromised on Grindr then.
Well, that's...
So there you go.
I imagine the owner of Facebook probably just uses Facebook.
Possible, yeah.
Angel Brain says, Yeah, the fact that no defence at all was mounted.
There's just nothing.
There's no trial to be had.
Was he promised anything if he just did this?
Who knows?
But you'll get a bigger TV in your jail cell, or whatever it was, or maybe even an early release.
I tell you what, there can't be.
There actually can't be a bloody early release.
There can't be any release.
I mean, we have rape gang leaders who did horrific assaults on multiple children who did less than three years in jail.
So, actually, we could.
That's the problem with your country's sentencing laws and also that there aren't enough prison spaces.
Yeah.
I think sentences for crimes should be voted on.
Geordie Salzman says, is there no sign of remorse link in the show notes referring to Starmer or the Stabber?
Well, the Stabber, actually.
I imagine Starmer has a great deal of remorse for Riddikabana now that he's murdered someone.
Not even a joke.
I mean, literally he does.
Literally he will.
Because as we talked about, the only time that we've ever seen Keir Starmer express genuine emotion is when he went to a prison camp full of child murderers and he showed genuine concern for them.
Yeah.
So now, doubtless he'll visit Rudikabana in jail.
I'm doing everything I can.
No, I'm joking.
Federal agent says, we need an AI at the border that screens people for demonic physiognomy and bans them for entry.
The thing is, I don't know if he might have been born in this country.
He was born in the UK. So, Welsh man.
Matt says, Yeah, it's horrific.
Yeah, he will.
He absolutely will.
And Arizona Desert Rat says, Iran calls me no end when behaviour and actions like this are blamed on autism.
Autism does not cause one to be automatically violent and aggressive.
No, it just causes Roman salutes.
I tell you what, when I saw that last time, I was like, oh, did you have to?
Just think about it.
But yeah, autism isn't something that makes people go and stab someone, so there's no excuse at all.
Totally agree.
Baron von Mohawk says, The guy had more red flags than the Chinese Communist Parade.
Let's be frank about the situation.
If he wasn't black, then he would be expelled immediately after breaking the wrist of other students with a goddamn hockey stick.
Instead, he got pass after pass, and now three children are dead.
Possibly.
A guy from Hungary says, Will it be safe to go back to Portland again?
Could anti-Antifa reclaiming of the Pacific Northwest become a reality?
The political culture in the Pacific Northwest is on its baseline.
Leftists.
That's not going to change.
And so anti-Antifa, I doubt it.
Since Antifa became a mainstream phenomenon, there's been such an effective propaganda effort to portray them as merely anti-fascists who are opposing racism and fascism.
And that's a position that, unfortunately, the mainstream left still believe and propagate a lot of those lies, even at the executive level, like in the Biden administration, things that Harris and such were saying.
Would you like to have seen Trump add Antifa to that executive order on domestic terrorist groups like the cartels and MS-13?
That's a good question.
So when he was president the first time around, he declared not as a executive order, but just sort of as a proclamation that...
His administration was treating Antifa as a terrorist organization.
A statement like that, I guess, is fine as a statement.
It just illuminates how his administration would view the movement.
But legally, I don't think he wouldn't legally be able to do that as an executive order.
It couldn't be into law because by the First Amendment, no law can...
be established to ban or curtail the activity of the group based on its ideology, domestically.
Terrorist groups are different because written into law, there's an international angle to that.
That's why Antifa can operate, that's why neo-Nazi groups can operate in the US. None of that by law can be banned or curtailed in any way.
That's the First Amendment.
Right, so we are out of time there.
Andy, thank you so much for joining us.
I assume that if people want more from you, they can go over to your massive Twitter account.
Yes, my Twitter handle is at MrAndyNGO and my website is andy.ngo.com.