Ezra Levant examines Elon Musk’s $43B Twitter acquisition, approved April 25 despite Saudi Prince Al-Walid’s opposition and ESG-driven board resistance. Leaked DMs hint at shadowy forces manipulating the platform, while Musk’s free speech push clashes with woke agendas and potential staff sabotage. Sandra Philosoph Schipper, BC Libertarian candidate, warns of vaccine passport overreach and healthcare inefficiencies—like 36-hour appendectomy waits—advocating private solutions. The episode ties Musk’s move to broader battles against elite censorship and government interference, questioning whether Twitter’s new era will truly break free from its past. [Automatically generated summary]
It looks like Twitter finally did accept Elon Musk's offer to buy them.
Oh, the company is in some sort of lockdown now.
I'll go through it, my thoughts on things, and we'll talk with Alan Bokari, who's a bit of an expert on Twitter's politics.
That's ahead.
But before we do that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
It's the video version of this podcast.
In addition to my own daily show, you get weekly shows from four of my colleagues.
It's a lot of content, by the way, for eight bucks a month.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
And, you know, in addition to getting all the good stuff, you are supporting Rebel News because we really do rely on our viewers.
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We wouldn't take it.
All right.
Here's today's podcast.
Tonight, Elon Musk succeeds in buying Twitter.
What happens now?
It's April 25th, and this is the Answer Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government.
But why publish it?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Big news today.
Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter for about $43 billion U.S. is accepted by the board.
That's about $55 billion Canadian money, by the way.
It's hard to believe it's worth that much economically, commercially, but then again, Facebook's market capitalization is more than half a trillion dollars U.S.
So maybe it's true then.
Maybe Twitter really is worth 10% of what Facebook is.
It's about one-tenth the size of it.
I was really worried that the board of directors of Twitter, you know, valued it not for its commercial potential, nor for its free speech potential, but actually for the opposite reason, that it was the biggest censorship device in the world and that censorship was more valuable than anything else.
It was very revealing when the Saudi Prince Al-Walid publicly denounced Elon Musk's offer right away.
Elon Musk's reply was spot on.
So I'm excited about this.
Earlier today, before the deal was formally acknowledged, I had a great chat about it with our friend Alan Bokari, the tech editor at Breitbart.com.
So that interview is up in a moment before we knew the deal was done.
I'm excited.
I don't know if Elon Musk will be allowed to get away with this, either by the staff of Twitter who hate their new boss or by the censorious world that sees him as a threat.
Look at this news that was released just today by coincidence, I'm sure.
FX and the New York Times announce Elon Musk Expose documentary.
Several former Tesla employees will be featured in the documentary speaking out against Musk for the first time.
But of course they will.
I mean, Elon Musk used to be cool to the left.
The electric car guy, reusable rocket ship guy, big thinker, but he's been doing a bit too much thinking lately, hasn't he?
Look at this.
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means.
I think Elon Musk believes that, by the way, but not a lot of other powerful people do.
I want to show you one more Elon Musk thing.
It's a joke.
Billionaires aren't really allowed to joke a lot, are they?
It was his tweet, in case you need to lose a boner fast.
That's pretty funny.
I don't know if billionaires are allowed to say the word boner like that.
Of course, that's Bill Gates on the left, a rival tech oligarch.
And on the right, a woke new emoji, like a smiley face, this one, an image of a pregnant man.
There's a lot of reasons this tweet is funny, but look at this exchange.
At first, I thought this was a hoax, a Photoshop.
But Elon Musk confirmed that this is real.
This is a text message exchange between Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
So apparently, Bill Gates hit up Elon Musk to discuss philanthropy on climate change, but Elon asked if he still had a half billion dollar short position on Tesla.
Bill said he hasn't closed it out, so Elon told him to get lost.
No idea if this is true.
Laugh out loud.
Now you can see the exchange.
Do you still have a half billion dollar short position against Tesla?
As in, are you betting in the stock market that Tesla will fall in value?
Are you shorting the stock?
Are you trying to make it fall?
Are you hoping it would fall?
And Bill Gates replies, sorry to say I haven't closed it out.
I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.
And Musk replies to him perfectly, sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change.
Boom.
I like that he's the boss of Twitter.
Shareholders' Dilemma00:15:16
I think he'll face some internal resistance.
Here's a note I saw on Bloomberg.
Just before the company announced they accepted Elon Musk's bid, they froze the app to stop staff from making unauthorized changes.
That's a pretty incredible decision to make.
But I think that Elon Musk will have problems, but he'll have some help too.
For example, from some of the original staff and executives of Twitter that believe in free speech, maybe he'll bring back the founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, who recently said that the board of Twitter was a real problem, but he was prevented from speaking out about it, probably by a non-disclosure agreement.
There's a lot of questions.
There will be some tweaks to the app itself I'm looking forward to, but what about its politics, the stuff that the left cares about?
Will Donald Trump be let back on?
Even if he is let back on, will Trump go back on if he's permitted, or will he still try to set up a rival company called Truth Social, as he's been doing very slowly?
How about others who have been banned, including political pundits, some of whom even used to work for Rebel News but became banned?
Will Twitter reveal its internal rules?
Will it become transparent about its algorithms, who it boosts and who it hides?
Will it become transparent about which governments ask it to do what?
I think we've told you before about foreign countries ordering Twitter to ban people even around the world.
The government of Pakistan, you might remember, ordered that some of my tweets be banned.
I wonder if we'll find out what's going on now.
And I wonder if we'll find out what was going on historically.
I'm excited, though.
How can you not be when the richest man in the world solves a big social problem with a big check?
That's almost a dream scenario.
Of course, the left hate him.
They don't believe in free speech anymore.
They don't believe in debate.
Half of what's considered journalism in 2022 is just hounding people who have the wrong point of view and trying to get them canceled.
Just for a small Canadian example, Pierre Polyev.
He had an event at a rentable event space at a brewery here in the greater Toronto area called Steam Whistle.
And the brewery, for some reason, felt the need to denounce Pierre Polyev and distance themselves from him.
I'm guessing because if they didn't, they themselves would be denounced by some mob.
So they joined the mob and denounced their customer.
It happened again.
Polyev wasn't even in a pub.
He was just drinking from a beer glass with the company logo on it, and they felt compelled to denounce him for drinking their beer.
Imagine living in a world like that, but who do we learn such intolerance from?
Who taught these breweries to be so hateful?
Our leaders in the media, Justin Trudeau in particular, who personally denounced and then demonized and seized the bank accounts from people he wanted to cancel over the vaccine mandates.
Elon Musk is fighting back.
A lot of people have bet against him over the years.
So far, he keeps coming out on top.
I'm rooting for him.
Up next, my conversation about this with Alan Macari.
Well, I woke up to some good news this morning.
Rumors are that Twitter's board of directors was actually going to accept Elon Musk's $43 billion offer.
This, after resisting it, we told you about how a Saudi Prince Al-Walid said he had no interest in selling his shares, even though Elon Musk's offer was at a significant premium to the price the stock was trading at.
The stock had been on a downward trend for more than a year.
We saw others on the board who have very little skin on the game, as in they themselves didn't have a lot of shares of Twitter.
They never used Twitter, seemed to be against the idea of turning it into a free speech platform.
In fact, many Twitter staff said they found that Elon Musk's offer, while it would personally enrich them, they found it odious because he had such a commitment to free speech.
My favorite reaction was that of the Washington Post, owned by Jeffrey Bezos, what, the second or third richest person in the world.
They objected to Elon Musk buying into Twitter because he was a rich man and no billionaire should own a communications media, said the Bezos Amazon Post.
Well, today's rumors suggest that, in fact, the deal is going through.
And joining us now, ViSky from Austin, Texas, to talk about it is our friend Alan Bokari, Senior Tech Editor for Breitbart News.
Alan, great to see you.
I don't want to believe this until it's done because I won't be able to have the emotional downfall if it turns out that the rumor is false, but it seems fairly well sourced.
Tell me the latest.
The board hasn't made any announcement yet and likely won't until the market's closed.
But what do we know from the gossip on the street?
Well, the gossip on the street is that Twitter has come to a deal with Elon Musk and that will be announced shortly.
Obviously, we can't know that for sure until it's fully announced.
But as you said, it's pretty well sourced.
It's looking good so far.
And according to reports, Twitter was getting a lot of pressure from shareholders that didn't want to see this deal slip through, slip through the cracks, because it was fundamentally a good deal for shareholders.
The shareholders are going to make a lot of money if the deal goes through.
And not all of Twitter.
Twitter's obviously a publicly traded company.
Not all of Twitter's shareholders are of the opinion that letting elites control the flow of information is more important than making money.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
In a company, you have a fiduciary duty, you have a responsibility, and you can't oppress other shareholders.
I'm using business law jargon.
What I mean by that is if there is a deal that is in the interests of the shareholders, you have an obligation as managers, as a board, to do that, even, frankly, if a minority of the company feels that way.
I don't know all the ins and outs of a battle, a shareholder's battle, but I suppose there could have been a ballot sent to everyone, every single shareholder.
It could have gone around the board to every, I mean, it would have been a real brawl.
It's interesting.
I was looking at the biography of Robert Zellek, the former deep state diplomat and White House boss who's on the board.
He's never tweeted once.
He has just a handful of shares.
And I started to do some more due diligence into Bob Zellek.
And one of his specialties is fighting against shareholder activism.
And I thought, boy, I bet you Bob Zellek's working the phones trying to fight off Elon Musk.
The other day I was quite pessimistic because although Elon Musk is the richest man in the world and he's very clever, there are other smart people and frankly they have collectively more money than him.
I was very pessimistic.
Were you pessimistic too?
Did you think that the empire would strike back and stop him?
Frankly, I was a little.
You could see all these giant corporations teaming up with this poison pill approach to stop Musk's takeover.
A poison pill approach is where a company makes it easier, makes it cheaper for board members and existing shareholders to buy up more stock in order to make it harder for any one person to take a majority, a majority shake, stake in the company.
So certainly I was a little bit pessimistic about that.
You have to remember, Twitter board is made up of giant corporations like Vanguard and State Street that manage trillions of dollars in assets.
So if those corporations wanted to team up to stop Musk, they could have.
These are the same corporations, by the way, that are pushing so-called ESG ethical sustainable governance across the corporate world.
That includes diversity and critical race theory and wokeness in general.
A little bit comes from them.
And you also saw other board members like the Saudi prince indicating they wouldn't take a deal.
And lastly, as you pointed out, you have these other people on the board who have very little financial interest in Twitter.
Their share is very minimal, but they're members of the establishment who probably recognize that Twitter's value is more than just money.
It's about controlling the global flow of information, controlling narratives.
However, I think what has happened is they couldn't get around, as you said, that fiduciary duty.
The board of directors ultimately has to make a profit for their shareholders.
And Elon Musk is going to be a very compelling offer there.
Yeah.
You know, I've been thinking a lot about Twitter.
And, you know, this saying on Facebook, if you're not paying for the product or service, it's because you are the product and service.
And on Facebook, that's obviously what is being sold.
Your eyes and ears and your data are being sold to advertisers.
And I think Zuckerberg is fairly candid about it.
On Twitter, it's not just your interests and your eyes and ears that are being sold.
It's your mouth that's being sold.
And that's the thing.
On Facebook, yeah, censorship's important there.
But Facebook is not where all the politicians quarrel and go back and forth.
It's more for family and friends and affinity groups, but Twitter is really the journalistic political public square.
And I think that was the intangible value to Prince Al-Walid of Saudi Arabia, to Bob Zellek, the master of the universe.
Sure, they like selling ads to eyeballs, but it's not the eyes and ears, it's the mouth.
They wanted to be able to turn off voices, for example, that were critical of big pharma.
They wanted to turn off voices that claimed the 2020 election for president was rigged.
Those are some of the rules, by the way, on other social media.
So while it pretends to be an advertising service, it was actually a censorship service the same way the Ministry of Propaganda in the book 1984 was called the Ministry of Truth.
I think that Twitter's real value to the Black Rocks and the all-wheel leads of the world was they got to listen in on every private conversation amongst Twitter users, and they got to throttle the public conversations they didn't like.
That's correct.
I think it actually became the case over a period of time since the 2016 election.
You have to remember, Twitter was originally a free speech platform.
That's how most of the original users of the platform remember it.
And that is the case for most Silicon Valley platforms.
In effect, Facebook originally had very light moderation.
Reddit had free speech written into its terms of service.
This was, to quote a Google document that leaked to me in 2018, free speech was in the DNA of Silicon Valley from the beginning.
But I think what happened since 2016 is the elites realized how much control they'd lost because of this decentralization of media and this decentralization of information.
They hadn't really realized it until the Trump election, how much control they'd lost over the narrative.
So in their scramble to get that control back, they tried to exert control over all of these platforms.
But I'm a bit more optimistic.
I think it was really a counter-revolution.
And as a counter-revolution, it's kind of failed because the mainstream media is still in decline.
You had CNN Plus just shutting down recently.
They were trying to do a streaming service and that completely failed.
No one under the age of, you know, I'm exaggerating, but few people under the age of 45, 50 will be watching, will be getting their news from CNN or the New York Times.
It's all decentralized now.
And the only way elites can maintain control is if they control content moderation on platforms like Twitter and Twitch and YouTube and Facebook, which are the home to these decentralized creators.
And losing control over Twitter is, I think, the first domino.
Once one major platform goes back to free speech, the elite's chokehold over information will start to crumble.
Well, here's hoping.
You know, you mentioned CNN Plus.
Netflix had a disastrous financial announcement.
Disney has lost tens of billions of dollars of market capitalization in its woke battles against Ron DeSantis.
Spotify, I hear they're not renewing their deal with the Obamas.
Spotify, am I getting mixed up?
I mean, there's been a number of cultural institutions where wokeism has been in retreat.
Let me just tell you something you might not know down there in the States.
Justin Trudeau has proposed a bill called C-18 that would have heavy content moderation in Canada.
You would have to take down a tweet within 24 hours of it being reported, obviously no due process.
And Twitter filed a briefing with the government in response that was confidential.
It was only released last week in access to information.
And Twitter, however much you and I criticize it, and this is pre-Elon Musk Twitter, told Justin Trudeau that his proposals are akin to those in China, North Korea, and Iran.
So I'll send you a copy of that if you don't have it, Ellen.
So Twitter, even though it's not as free speechy as we would like or Elon Musk would like, even so, it had the courage to call out Justin Trudeau for his censorship.
Did you know that?
So I'm with you.
I shouldn't be so completely down on them.
There is still some free speech DNA in Twitter.
If they're willing to tell Trudeau to buzz off, that's impressive.
That is impressive.
And The big tech debate is a lot more complicated than many people realize.
It's not simply a case of big tech versus everyone else.
There are multiple power players here.
So there's big tech, which is an independent power in many ways.
There's the media, which is trying to control big tech.
There are politicians who are trying to control big tech.
There are corporations that are trying to control big tech.
And then, of course, there's the users and the creators on the tech platforms themselves.
That group is the group whose side I'm on.
And sometimes they're at odds with big tech.
They certainly have been a lot as the content moderation rules have changed over the past four years.
But oftentimes, actually, in many cases, we need to be on the side of the tech companies against governments and against media companies.
This is why I spent a long time this year writing about the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the United States, this proposed bill that they've tried multiple times to get through both the House and the Senate.
It's a bill that would force tech companies to pay the New York Times.
Why Tech Giants Pay News00:03:48
Well, it's a bit more complicated than that.
It will allow the New York Times and other big media companies like CNN to form a legal cartel to band together in order to put pressure on the tech companies for special favors, such as paying them for content and privileging them in search results.
So that's a case of media companies trying to impose a new set of rules on the tech companies to favor themselves.
And on things like that, we need to be on the side of the tech companies against the media companies.
That's exactly what's in Canada.
Yeah, this Bill C-18 that Twitter was reacting to, it precisely contains what you just described there.
It would compel Facebook and Google to pay the legacy media.
And the Canadian twist on things is it would also demand that licensed Canadian journalists would be boosted in the algorithm and unlicensed journalists like Rebel News would be throttled.
So they've gone full, full authoritarian in Trudeau's bill.
I want to ask you about Elon Musk.
I mean, he's such a delight to watch because he's thoughtful.
He's a bit of an intellectual.
He claims he's not living the billionaire lifestyle.
I don't think he has a yacht.
He claims he doesn't even actually own a house.
He just stays with friends.
He does use a private jet, but I give the guy some leeway on that.
It would be impossible for him to move around, especially as quickly as need be without it.
I don't think he's living a high life as you would expect the richest man in the world.
He's known John Rockefeller, how he's throwing his money around.
He seems to talk about freedom.
He's got a bit of a blind spot with China because he doesn't want to get offside with them.
Tesla's really going big in China.
But on most other issues, he claims he's not for subsidies in America.
He says GM lobbied for those.
He said we need to produce more oil and gas to liberate Europe from Russia.
That's like that.
He's not a doctrinaire leftist.
He's anti-woke.
He's got a great sense of humor.
I think he's a little nerdy.
I really like the guy.
Now, maybe I'm setting myself up to be disappointed, but what do you think he's really going to do with Twitter?
I mean, $43 billion is like, obviously, he wants to get a rate of return.
Do you think he really is going to keep it free?
He says that's what he's about, but you can't trust anyone these days.
Well, look, I mean, he's been very, very clear.
Like, his statements have not been ambiguous.
He calls himself a free speech absolutist.
In his letter to Twitter with his takeover offer initially, he said, you know, he wants Twitter to fulfill its potential as the global town square.
He then went on a panel discussion at a conference later saying, you know, he believes in maximum free speech, that content moderation and bans should be a last resort.
Something you do.
So he's outlining a direction that is very different to the rest of the social media platforms.
And if you look at Elon Musk's career, he hasn't really gone after things or tried to tackle challenges that are easy.
You know, whether it's building reusable, relaunchable rockets, which people said couldn't be done, he did it.
The electric cars, he got into it right at the start of the industry when a lot of people had doubts.
He's arguably gone too far with the grand visions in some cases.
You know, the whole tunneling under LA thing does not seem to have worked out.
But the pattern, I think, is that he goes for big challenges that he finds very interesting.
And I think restoring free speech on social media has become one of those challenges.
Now, of course, we have to wait and see how things progress, especially if there are going to be any personnel changes and who's going to be replacing some of the personnel at Twitter if Musk takes over.
Musk's First Question00:09:25
Is it going to be business as usual?
Is Jack Dorsey coming back?
Is Donald Trump going to be reinstated on the platform?
He'll certainly have a lot of pressure from people to keep things the way they were, or largely the way they were.
So we have to wait and see to some extent.
But I certainly think Elon Musk is not really not like the other billionaires in many regards.
I want to tell you a quick billionaire story.
About 20 odd years ago, I don't know if you know this, Alan, but I ran for Parliament.
I won the nomination for the leading Conservative Party.
I was running in the strongest Conservative seat in the country called Calgary Southwest.
It was five weeks till election day.
I was in.
But then the party chose a new leader and he had to get into parliament quickly.
And he, Stephen Harper was his name.
He went on to become prime minister.
He needed a quick entry into parliament.
Safest seat in the country, by-election five weeks away, made sense for me to step aside.
I did not want to.
I'm almost done with my story.
You'll see why I'm telling it.
The owner of the leading newspaper in the city was a billionaire named Israel Asper, who was a supporter of mine.
And the Calgary Herald was the name of the newspaper, was saying, get out of there, Ezra, get out of there.
And I called up Izzy and I said, look, do you want me in parliament or not?
You made a little donation to me.
I need your help.
You own the largest newspaper in the city.
They're devouring me every day.
I need your help.
And he said, okay, we'll do it.
Okay, so the next day, this tiny little editorial, the size of a postage stamp, appears in the most grudging language saying Ezra has the right to remain as the candidate.
And surrounded by it were five very long, absolutely brutal op-ed columns kicking the tar out of me saying Levant must go.
And I did go three days later.
And my point for telling you that story is I had spoken to the most powerful media magnet in Canada at the time.
It would be like calling Rupert Murdoch directly.
He was a supporter of mine.
I said, will you help me?
He said, yes, I will.
And he made a phone call to the Calgary Herald.
But if he was not prepared to watch them like a hawk get into the weeds, they would just give him a perfunctory obedience and then do what they wanted to do.
And this is, besides telling you a fun story that I wanted to tell you, Twitter has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ideological underminers who despise Elon Musk.
And like my friend, the late Izzy Asper, he can take over as the captain of the ship.
But if he gives an order, stop shadow banning people, stop banning people who are skeptics of the lockdown, stop censoring Trump people.
He can give that order like my friend Izzy Asper gave the order.
And they can obey in a perfunctory way, but they can undermine it.
Frankly, that's what happened to Donald Trump throughout his term of the White House is that they nodded along, but then they undermined.
And thanks for letting me tell you my story from when I ran for Parliament.
But my point is, how does Elon Musk take control of a company whose political staff so clearly hate him?
First of all, that's a fascinating story.
I wonder how different Canadian politics would be if you had made it into Parliament.
Yeah, that probably would have, I think, Canada would have been served a lot better by you in Parliament than perhaps even Stephen Harper.
Oh, Harper was great.
I regret taking so long to step aside.
It was just very hard to let go of a dream.
Anyways, back to your answer.
Sorry.
But so on the question of, yeah, so there will be lots of Twitter employees who will attempt to sabotage anything Musk wants if he successfully takes over Twitter, which is now looking likely.
The biggest thing that I think he ought to do is look at the content moderation department.
Now, most Silicon Valley companies, certainly Facebook does this, and I think Google does it as well.
They contract out their content moderation to external contractors.
So the first question I think Musk needs to ask is: is there an external contractor that does content moderation that is not biased, that is not filled with social justice warriors and communists and censors?
I'm not sure one exists currently.
It wouldn't be hard to set one up.
Certainly, he can't suddenly dispense with all content moderation because then he immediately gets Twitter kicked off the App Store and the Google Play Store.
So that's something to consider.
He could take cues from the Coinbase CEO.
So what the Coinbase CEO did a couple of years ago is he put out a message to employees saying political discussions are completely banned in the workplace, no more politics in the workplace.
And if Coinbase employees disagreed with that, they were given an opportunity to leave with a very generous leaving package.
That is something a future Musk-backed CEO of Twitter could do.
Now, probably a little harder to do that with Twitter than with Coinbase because a lot of people in crypto are already not on the side of social justice warriors and crazy censors and progressives.
So probably the ratio of those employees to normal employees at Coinbase was a lot better than the ratio at Twitter.
But ultimately, he's going to have to do some major, major personnel changes to avoid the kind of sabotage you mentioned.
And I think the first thing is replacing whoever does content moderation at Twitter.
Yeah.
Well, and I'm not sure if the CEO Parag Agrawal can survive the new owner either.
Last question for you.
And thanks for indulging me.
And I'm sort of embarrassed that I took up so much time with my story, but it reminded me that you can be the owner of a company.
You can be a billionaire.
You can be the most powerful man around.
But if you're part of a large organization where people are willful and there's political wiggle room, if you're not going to bird dog every single thing, if you're not going to check, check, double-check, and if you don't have deputies that are going to do the same thing, you can be the boss in name alone.
That's why I told you that personal anecdote.
But let me ask you one more thing.
And a few years ago, a number of Saudi staff at Twitter were prosecuted for using their position to spy on Saudi democracy activists, Saudi dissidents.
And of course, I'm very concerned about that.
no longer put confidential things in my Twitter direct messages.
I just say, hey, can we take this to an encrypted app like Signal.
Not that I think people are hacking me, but I think that there are content moderators or other staff at Twitter who probably are reading my Twitter direct messages.
And I just don't even think that's a really stretch to say.
And in the case of the Saudis, they were spying for the government.
And my question is, do you think Elon Musk will ever know, and do you think we will ever know, what has been done in black ops inside Twitter?
Who has been shown what?
What has been done for political or international intrigues like that?
It's not a stretch to say at all.
And I've always considered Twitter DMs to be one of the least secure ways of direct messaging.
I always tell people do not post anything sensitive in Twitter DMs.
There's nothing stopping a Twitter employee from reading that.
You should always take it to a platform like Signal or even better, Telegram, frankly.
And it's important to remember how important Twitter and these social networks have been to the United States foreign policy and security establishment.
These are platforms that were quite critical to fomenting unrest in foreign countries, such as in Libya and in the Middle East during the Arab Spring and elsewhere as well.
You often see third world countries outright banning Twitter, outright banning Facebook, because they see it as an arm of American foreign policy interests and influence.
So, yeah, we can't rule out the idea that intelligence services are monitoring direct messages.
You remember Julian Assange's and WikiLeaks' DMs also leaked, and there was never really an explanation as to how that happened.
Because you're absolutely right.
Be careful on DMs.
And the answer to the question is, I don't think we'll ever know how Twitter was being used by these shadowy forces.
Yeah, including the shadowy forces on its board.
Well, hopefully we'll have the news perhaps even by the time this show goes to air tonight.
Alan, great to see you as always, and thanks for fighting for freedom.
Good to see you, Ezra.
All right, there you have it.
Alan Buccari, senior tech correspondent at breitbart.com.
Stay with us.
Racist Accusations and Police Protection00:04:15
Moran.
Hey, welcome back.
Your viewer feedback.
Nat Calverly says, it is disgusting to portray Pierre as a racist.
Constantly calling people you don't agree with racist devalues the meaning of the word.
It is very tiresome.
It's tiresome, but it still stings.
I think it's done for two reasons.
I think good faith people who are not racist react, they're stunned by it.
I think an actual racist wouldn't be called, wouldn't mind being called a racist, because that's what they are.
It's the unfairness of the accusation that is meant to stop you in your tracks.
And there are still some people who say, well, where there's smoke, there's fire.
The prime minister of the country and the media of the country wouldn't be calling him a racist if he's not a racist.
And just to be sure, I should steer clear of him.
So it's a very bad faith criticism.
And it's really what's had Justin Trudeau elected three times in a row.
Barry Thompson says, you know what, Rupa?
Old white Canadians are happy to see people from other backgrounds showing up in union with them.
They get some exhilaration out of it.
All of us who want to make our own nation in this piece of geography have to find spokespeople.
I feel the same way.
I find it very validating because I believe that every human yearns for freedom.
I don't care where you were born or what language you speak or what race you are.
I just think it's a human condition.
We want to be free, right?
And, you know, the saying, man's born free, but everywhere he's in chains.
And I think all of us want to be free.
And that's why I love Taiwan so much.
That's why I like South Korea versus North Korea.
They're proof that even in cultures that are historically different than us, obviously racially different, People love freedom.
And Taiwan has not been free for very long, only about a generation.
They were under martial law for the longest time.
And some people say, well, China cannot truly embrace freedom.
It has sort of a Confucian mindset.
Well, no, Taiwan is the counterproof to that, that Taiwan is a very vigorous liberal democracy.
And I know I'm talking about foreign countries now, but I agree with the letter writer.
I find it deeply reassuring when people of all backgrounds unite around a love for freedom and personal autonomy.
I do find it exhilarating too.
I feel the same way.
A Tedasso is writing about the RCMP hiding their tracks when their WhatsApp group mocked people who were abused by cops.
Need to make cops legally responsible for their actions.
That will stop all of this.
They should have to pay for their own lawyer to defend themselves.
Well, look, I think police should have some degree of immunity for what they do on the job, just like any employee when they're acting in good faith for their company is really an agent of the company.
They're not on their own.
But I think that with that, there has to be internal discipline.
And as far as I know, there has been zero internal discipline either to the cop that stomped on the disabled lady or those who made fun of it.
So I agree that to a large extent, police who follow the rules and are not grossly out of bounds should be protected by the police force.
It would make no sense if police had no protection for what they did in the course of their duties.
But I think that with that comes other forms of accountability.
And so far, the government has done the opposite.
They've hidden the identity of the cops who were bad.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
Let me leave you with our video of the day from Drea Humphrey.
Freedom for Vancouver Rights, BC Libertarians hopeful message ahead of a by-election.
All right.
Good night, everybody.
All right.
So this is Sandra Philosoph Schipper.
Now, you are the deputy leader for the BC Libertarian Party, and you're a candidate in Vancouver's upcoming by-election, right?
Elections BC Options00:08:16
Yes, in Vancouver, Kulshana.
Okay.
Well, thanks for being on Rebel News.
Now, I'm finding there's a lot of people who are kind of just getting into politics right now and starting to learn about how things work.
So for some of those people who don't really understand what a by-election is, can you kind of give a little rundown on that?
Absolutely.
So I am running for a member of Legislative Assembly.
So that's for the BC legislature.
And the reason we're having a by-election, which means an election that falls in between regular elections, because we're expecting a provincial election in about two years.
So the by-election is happening is because someone has resigned and there's a spot open in our riding, Vancouver, Kulshana.
So I'm running for that.
And I think it's interesting that you mentioned a lot of people are getting into politics.
And that's why I'm in it.
I've been noticing some changes in Canada.
I come from an immigrant family.
So my dad's shaking his head saying we could have stayed in Turkey for that.
So I became involved, not because I need a new career, I don't, but I feel duty bound to stand up.
So even if I don't win, if I could get people talking and paying attention, and I have to say, Canada is such a great country, NBC is the greatest of that.
It's been easy to just be apathetic because things are pretty good.
And relative to other places in the world, it's still pretty good.
But we need desperately to hold on to that.
The fact that there's a vaccine passport is frightening.
Not because I'm anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine.
As a matter of fact, I am vaccinated and generally in my life, pro-vaccine.
My children are vaccinated.
But the fact that our government or any government thinks they should have dominion over my body, let alone my home, is unacceptable.
It sets a very frightening precedent.
And it's for that that I am running.
So you're running on a sort of civil liberty platform.
Is there any other issues you're also running on?
Maybe some that are specific to Vancouver rights?
Well, Vancouver rights are paying an abnormal amount of tax.
We have housing problems.
And there's definitely a supply and demand problem, but I think the supply problem could be eased easily with, frankly, the government stepping out of the way.
Just the cost, let alone the time it takes to go through the red tape.
I read an article that says the cost of red tape is about 26% for a builder.
I talked to builders and they're saying, no, it's more like 40%.
So if you could take most of that away just by government getting away just off the top, supply and demand being factored out of the equation, that brings prices a lot lower.
So I think that that's important.
Government needs to stay in its lane.
And the very basic things that government should be doing, a military, a court system, things like that.
They don't need to be involved in every single thing we do.
It just becomes cumbersome, complicated, and very expensive.
So for the people in your area, or this riding, I should say, who are going to be voting in this by-election, what would you say should qualify you for their vote over maybe somebody who has had longer experience in politics?
That's exactly why.
Because that's exactly why.
I'm not a professional politician.
I'm someone who lives here, who works here in Vancouver, and who pays taxes here and has children here.
And enough is enough.
I don't need the job.
I already have a job.
I'm doing this out of a sense of duty.
And I think that is why you should vote for me.
And what would be your promises, maybe your first course of action if you were to be the next MLA in this riding?
My first course of action?
Well, as an MLA in a single riding, there's not much our party can do.
However, I will certainly be the voice of protest for government overreach, which is really what libertarianism is about.
It's consensual interactions, financial and otherwise, between people.
And I'm not saying it's lawlessness.
Some people assume that we are full-on anarchists.
Maybe some of us are.
That's certainly not what the party is about.
We want the government to take a step back and get out of where it doesn't belong, starting with vaccine passports, also federally, which is not our jurisdiction.
But the fact that Bonnie Henry is requiring physicians to disclose to the College of Physicians and other healthcare colleges their vaccination status, what is next?
Again, what precedence is that setting?
So the first thing we would do is get government out of things like that, pull government right out, not completely out of healthcare.
I think out here in Canada and in other countries as well, there are many countries with health care is universal.
And that's okay in principle.
But the more I dig into it, the worse it looks.
And we were already struggling pre-COVID.
So what we would like to do is allow more private options, more co-pay options, and that's the first thing.
And also adopt different models.
For elder care, for example, I know my husband's father in Holland had a nurse come into his house every day and check on him.
Hello, Mr. Shipper, are you okay?
Yes, I am.
No, I need this, et cetera, et cetera.
And he was able to stay in his house till he was really old.
And I think that helps older people live longer lives.
And he wasn't lonely.
I had someone to check on him.
He had kids anyway, but they get busy too.
They don't get to check on dad every day.
So I think we need to adopt that model really quickly.
And not just that, it's actually a lot cheaper.
Another thing, we are spending more money in Canada than just about every other country in the world for healthcare, including private, public, and mixed systems.
But our results are, depending again on who you ask, probably out of 35 countries, number 24, number 28, depending on what specific things we're talking about.
We want to loosen up some of the administration money we spend in Canada, and BC is even worse.
Don't get me started on that, the employer health tax, which doesn't go to health.
And as a business owner, that offends me.
But we want to, Germany, for instance, spends 11 times less than Canada does on administration.
So what does that translate to?
They spend only slightly less money than us, like maybe 1% per capita or something like that.
So for the same money, they're getting a lot more.
So we're talking, they have triple the doctors per capita, double the nurses per capita, double the equipment, MRIs, CT scanners, et cetera, et cetera.
We should get that for our money.
I don't mind spending money.
Just ask my husband.
But we should be getting something for our money.
And we're paying more and more and getting less and less.
Personally, I had to wait, and this is pre-COVID, 36 hours for an emergency appendectomy.
And where was I waiting?
The only spot they had for me available for me after spending the entire day in the emergency, like in the triage area, was in the tuberculosis wing.
And that's all they could offer me.
That's not acceptable.
And things get worse.
And the people they kept bumping me for were genuinely sicker than I am.
This is not a slight at all on our health care workers.
Our healthcare workers here are excellent.
Excellent.
Well, yes, BC is in a health care worker crisis.
More options are needed.
The BC government is putting millions, 12 millions they just announced into getting foreign nurses to come work here.
And yet they still have thousands of healthy health care workers at home without pay due to not being vaccinated for COVID-19.
What do people need to know about where and how to vote for this election?
This is just in the by-election.
You can vote at the Elections BC office, and there are going to be several voting places.