Ezra Levant highlights SpaceX’s rescue of NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams—stuck 280 days due to Boeing’s unsafe capsule—while criticizing Biden’s NASA for rejecting the mission, possibly for political reasons. Antifa’s firebombing of Teslas in Montreal, framed as protest by figures like Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Moulton, exposes left-wing violence’s protected status, with Alan Bokhari linking it to groups like the May 19th Communist Organization. Trump’s JFK document release and Fort Knox mention may signal transparency to counter institutional distrust, while his appointments of critics like RFK Jr. and Kash Patel aim to rebuild public trust amid censorship. Meanwhile, reader letters attack Mark Carney’s dual passports and criticize Canada’s missed oil pipeline opportunities, framing them as geopolitical failures. The episode ties Musk’s rescue to broader themes of institutional accountability, media bias, and energy independence. [Automatically generated summary]
Boy, we're going to talk about Tesla and Elon Musk today.
Did you see how his SpaceX rescued those two astronauts that were stranded in space?
Sort of amazing.
Compare that to the left's response, torching Tesla dealerships.
We'll show you some footage, and then we'll talk to our friend Alan Bokhari, who has the latest inside scoop on censorship in the world of big tech.
That's ahead.
But first, let me invite you to get what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's a video version of this podcast.
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Tonight, Elon Musk rescues stranded astronauts while Antifa thugs torch his Tesla stores.
It's March 19th, and this is the Esper Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
The news of NASA.
Why were those astronauts stuck up in space for so long?
Two NASA astronauts, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams.
They were shot into space on a Boeing rocket, and they docked at the space station, but there was a problem with the Boeing spaceship, and it was determined to be too dangerous to take the crew back down.
So it was supposed to be an eight-day visit to space.
Went on for many months, I think around 280 days by the time it was done.
So why didn't NASA, under Joe Biden, send a rocket to rescue them?
I don't know.
And I haven't been able to find a good answer for that.
I think there is sort of one obvious answer.
And you can see why NASA didn't say it out loud.
It's because the only man who could do that quickly, the only company that could do that quickly and safely was Elon Musk's company, SpaceX.
SpaceX literally does 10 times more space missions than all the rest of the world does combined, 10 times over.
They're like more than 90% of all payloads to space.
Here's how Musk tells the story.
This is him telling Joe Rogan.
Are you still rescuing those people that are stuck in the space station?
Yeah, that's coming up in a couple weeks, I think.
Whoa.
They've been up there for how long, Jamie?
They were supposed to be there for a couple of days, right?
Actually, like four weeks.
They're supposed to be there.
They were supposed to be up there for like eight days.
Yeah.
And they've been up there for like, I think, eight months.
So a little longer than expected.
Fuck.
Yeah.
What is it going to be like for those people when they get back?
They're going to be a wreck for a long time, right?
Yeah, if long you stay up there, you get, you know, sort of in zero-g, you get increased bone loss.
So it ended up being like this political football and sort of sort of hotly contested topic.
We offered to bring them back early.
This offer was rejected by the Biden administration.
Why?
For political reasons.
That's so crazy.
Well, obviously that's true because as soon as Trump gave the order to Musk, Musk just went ahead and did it.
Here's a video of the actual moment of the rescue mission arriving.
It's sort of cool.
Now, and there you are getting a great view of Crew 9 inside Dragon Freedom as it returns back to Earth.
We are awaiting the drogue deploys.
This view coming from the WB-57 high-altitude plane.
And there you see it on your screen drone deployment.
You know, imagine being stuck up there for nine months in that tiny space.
And here's that rescue pod when it was coming down to Earth again, landing softly in the ocean with all those parachutes.
Take a look at this.
And splashdown.
On Crew 9, back on Earth.
Now, here's that rocket pod, if that's the right word.
Musk, floating on the top of the ocean, being prepared to be hauled aboard a ship.
You can see for scale, there's a man on the outside of the pod attending to certain things, a hook, I think.
And if you can believe it, I mean, speaking of pods, there's a pod of dolphins that have come to check out what all the fuss is about.
Seriously, I mean, what are the odds?
You got to look at this.
Megan, we can see that recovery vessel slowly but surely closing the distance there between dolphin cam back again.
We can see that the dragon capsule and the recovery vessel at distance is closing.
I tell you, the whole thing, it feels a little bit like a miracle.
It probably was a little bit.
Attacking Tesla: Political Fervor00:09:54
But it was also science and technology and will and leadership.
I mean, this is the guy who can do the miracle of landing a rocket booster backwards perfectly to be recovered and reused on those.
He calls it the giant chopsticks.
Remember that?
It was one giant step for SpaceX as it launched its most powerful rocket ever built.
We're now down to three Raptor engines and then flew its first stage booster back to the launch pad where giant metal arms called chopsticks grabbed it just seven minutes after lifting off in Boca Chica, Texas.
I mean, that looks pretty miraculous too.
Boeing can't do that.
Biden can't do that.
The Chinese can't do that.
The Russians can't do that.
Trump and Musk rescued some astronauts and it worked.
Two astronauts were saved.
And imagine the horror of if they had died up there.
I don't even want to contemplate it.
Now, if you're in space for nine months in a small place, I mean, there's some psychological challenges too, but physically, your bones and your muscles get much weaker because there's no gravity.
You're not standing.
You're not working.
You're not moving.
I wonder if it would be a little bit like being in a bed for nine months.
Not healthy.
That's why they had to be taken out of the spaceship in a kind of wheelchair.
Musk saved the day.
He just did.
He's our generation's Thomas Edison.
The left hate him viscerally because he's friends with Trump.
That's the only reason why.
They used to love him.
And fair enough.
But they have announced their new goal to destroy him by destroying his main company, Tesla.
Tesla, by the way, is a major employer.
I think they have 80,000 jobs in America.
Actually, it's the number one selling make and model of vehicle and actually the most American content for parts.
Like they don't have parts coming in from Mexico or whatever.
A lot of people like the Teslas because they're cool and high-tech and now they have features like self-driving.
Excuse me.
Some people like the no-gas feature.
I think it used to be the environmentalist car.
It still is.
But it's also the main reason Elon Musk is so rich.
And that's what enabled to do things like buy Twitter, for example.
It lets him find his super back that he did in the 2024 election.
So they're targeting him and they're targeting Tesla because that's the source of his wealth.
Take a look at this Democrat senator.
Hey, folks, Mark Kelly here in Washington.
Driving to work for the last time in my Tesla.
When I bought this thing, I didn't think it was going to become a political issue.
Every time I get in this car in the last 60 days or so, it reminds me of just how much damage Elon Musk and Donald Trump is doing to our country.
Talking about slashing Social Security, cutting healthcare benefits for poor people, for seniors.
It's one bad thing after the next.
He's firing veterans.
I'm a veteran.
So I have a really hard time driving around in this thing.
So I think it's time for an upgrade today.
So this is going to be my last, last trip in this car.
There are some things I really liked about it.
There are things I didn't like about it, but that doesn't matter.
What matters is, you know, doing the right thing.
I think it's time to get rid of it.
You know, Elon Musk kind of turned out to be an asshole.
And I don't want to be driving a car built and designed by an asshole.
So looking forward to my new ride.
Now, a lot of leftists are doing that.
Some are destroying their own cars, which is sort of weird.
Now, it's one thing to say you don't want to drive a car or own a car that symbolizes someone you disagree with.
And I can actually understand that.
And I think I'm sort of the same in my own life.
I wouldn't buy a car from communist China, I don't think, because of that.
I mean, would you buy one made by China in Tibet?
I'm guessing you wouldn't.
So I don't mind people voting their conscience with their dollars, but they've gone much further than just selling their car or speaking out personally.
Here's the failed vice presidential candidate for the Democrats under Kamala Harris.
Maybe you've forgotten about him.
Same as Tim Wallace.
And here he is.
I don't know why they trotted him back out.
I didn't think he was appealing at all.
And he's rejoicing in recent stock market troubles for Tesla, the company on the stock market.
Take a look.
Saying on my phone, I know, some of you know this on the iPhone.
They've got that little stock app.
I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day.
225 and dropping.
So.
And if you own one, if you own one, we're not blaming you.
You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off, you know, and take out just telling you.
So cheering when an American company is losing market value because you don't like its CEO's politics, that's quite a look.
Cheering on economic failure, the failure perhaps of 80,000 employees.
Democrats can't build much, can they?
But they sure can tear things down well.
So their street gangs are getting in on the action too.
Here's Antifa across America torching Tesla dealerships.
Today that actually came to Montreal too.
Hey, everybody, I'm currently at Tesla dealership in Montreal.
And as you can see behind me, this is what happened this morning.
There's two activists who came here to true pain in paint at the Tesla dealership.
This is the first attack against Tesla here in Canada.
It's quite a contrast, isn't it?
On the one hand, the Thomas Edison of our age rescuing stranded astronauts.
That's just unbelievable.
On the other hand, mobs torching something they could never make.
That really does sum up the distinction, the state of the two major parties in America, doesn't it?
Stay with us for more.
I know, some of you know this on the iPhone.
They've got that little stock app.
I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day.
225 and dropping.
So and if you own one, if you own one, we're not blaming you.
You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off, you know, and take out just telling you.
He's so excited that that's Tim Walz, in case you've forgotten, which most people have.
He was the vice presidential candidate with Kamala Harris.
And he's rejoicing.
He's exuberant over apparently Tesla stock falling.
And one of the reasons Tesla stock may be falling, and one big reason is that many tech stocks are down these days.
But another reason is that Tesla has found itself the target of terrorism, of domestic terrorism.
Just like in the 2020 election year, there was George Floyd racial terrorism, Black Lives Matter terrorism, fires and riots.
The far left has decided that that's their terrorist target.
In fact, we hear that just today in Montreal, Tesla vehicles have been torched by Antifa.
Our own Alexa Lavois is on the way there.
Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Alan Bokari.
He's the managing director of Foundation for Freedom Online.
Alan, great to see you.
There is no doubt about it.
The left has decided to go after Tesla, not just the company, but individual vehicles.
Am I right?
That's right.
There have been a string of attacks on Tesla stores across the country.
There have been fire bombings.
And just the other day, I saw they're now releasing the location of individual Tesla owners across the country.
So it's really a targeted campaign of destruction and violence against anyone who owns a Tesla.
That's really terrifying.
I mean, I see images on social media of people just randomly keying a Tesla.
By the way, a lot of Tesla drivers would probably call themselves liberal or environmentalist.
I mean, until six months ago, I think the Tesla brand was still pretty environmentalist.
And now they've changed its public reputation.
And they said, basically, if you want to hit back at Elon Musk and Donald Trump, hit back at any physical object in your vicinity.
So you're victimizing an individual owner.
Maybe you're victimizing an insurance company.
But there's a political rationale for that attack.
That really is one of the definitions of terrorism, isn't it?
To have some sort of violence or threat of violence in service of a political motive.
That's terrorism.
That is terrorism.
And, you know, people don't have to die for it to be terrorism.
You know, airplane hijackings back in the 1970s often had no deaths.
You know, hostages were taken, but there were no deaths.
It was still an act of terrorism.
And, you know, in the 70s, you also saw strings of bombings across the country, bombings of government buildings, bombings of monuments, statues.
And yeah, that was terrorism.
Not all of the events had casualties.
But when there's an organized campaign of violence and destruction, whether it's against property or anything else, for political reasons, that's terrorism.
The definition of terrorism is violence for political purposes.
FBI's Role in Terrorism00:15:47
And that's what we're seeing here.
And it's also something that seems to be tacitly encouraged by some people.
I thought I saw a clip of Jimmy Kimmel laughing about the attacks on Tesla stores just yesterday.
Vandalizing Tesla vehicles, new Tesla vehicles.
Please don't vandalize, don't ever vandalize Tesla vehicles.
And so there seems to be no appetite for even condemning this on the part of the legacy media or the opposition to the Trump administration.
Yeah.
You know, I saw a startling video.
I'm sure you did too.
It went super viral.
Was deported members of one of the most dangerous drug cartels, Trent De Agua, if I'm saying it right, I know I'm saying it wrong.
They were recently classified by the Department of Homeland Security, and actually up here in Canada too, as a terrorist organization.
So it was a drug cartel.
Trump declared it a terrorist organization, and then they didn't just arrest and deport, I think they were largely Venezuelans, they took them to El Salvador to the ultra-high security mega-prison.
So they're not just in any jail, they're not just being deported home, they're in Nayeb Bukele's mega prison.
And it was such a dramatic video, it looked like it was from a James Bond movie or something.
I don't know.
And all I could think of was: wow, what a great way to move these prisoners beyond the reach of district judges who might want to overturn it.
But mainly, as they would say, pour encourage les otre, to send a message to the others that if you come to America, you're going to have an extremely bad ending.
Like it was so shocking.
The reason I mentioned that story, Alam, is because, at least in that one case, and perhaps some others, perhaps some of his moves in the Middle East, Trump is signaling, don't mess with me.
And so here's my question for you: Do you think that between Trump and his friendship with Elon Musk and the new FBI directors and the new Department Secretary, the Attorney General, do you think that the force of the United States police and perhaps others could be used to find out who's organizing and causing these?
Because I don't believe it's organic.
I believe, like Antifa, it's funded and directed by sophisticated operatives.
But I believe that if the NSA and the FBI and others were dispatched, they could actually crack the code here.
It's a very, very long preamble, but here's my question: Is Trump going to fight back?
So there are two elements to what you said there.
The first is, is there anyone funding it?
Which is a very interesting question.
I'll tell you one quick story on that point before I get to your second question.
So an individual, you might have heard of an individual called Susan Rosenberg.
She was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization.
They were a far-left terrorist organization in the 70s and 80s, one of many far-left terrorist organizations in the 70s and 80s, carried out a string of bombings across the country.
They even bombed the U.S. Senate in 1981.
Anyway, the FBI caught her.
She was in prison for a long time.
Bill Clinton pardoned her on his last day in office.
And then what does she do?
She joins a foundation called the Thousand Currents Foundation as a VP.
And that foundation goes on to fund Black Lives Matter, which were responsible, of course, for all the deaths, the violence and the destruction in people getting killed even in the summer of 2020.
So you can actually trace present-day unrest, present-day political violence back to the people who perpetrated political violence in the 70s and 80s.
And again, that's a foundation that gives out grants.
It funds organizations.
And it has a, or had, I think, I think she's left now, but it had a former left-wing terrorist as a VP, which is incredible.
So don't think for a second that any of these, that, you know, these foundations that fund these left-wing courses are all opposed to political violence.
And in at least one case, they weren't.
And to address your second question, and that goes into your second question, really, What's going to stop it?
The only thing that will stop it really, because it's being tacitly encouraged by people on the left, by people in the legacy media, the only thing that will really stop it is an unequivocal response from the authorities, from the FBI, from law enforcement.
That'll be the only thing that will actually deter these people because they're perfectly happy to make heroes out of the perpetrators of violence.
An excellent recent example is Luigi Mangioni, the person who is accused of killing the United Healthcare CEO.
He's a hero to many people on the political left.
So, you know, in the minds of many of these people, there are no bad tactics, only bad targets.
And, you know, when you're dealing with an attitude like that, then the only possible way to deter it is a stern response from the authorities.
Wow.
I didn't know that about Susan Rosenberg.
You make me think of Bill Ayers, who was also a 70s activist, good friend of Barack Obama.
Luigi Mangione is a very interesting story because he was handsome.
I think that played a part in it.
There was a kind of glamour to what he did.
At least he tried to glamorize assassination.
And what was so important about that video that I think I'm not sure if it was the American administration or the El Salvador, the Salvadorian administration that made this little theatrical quality film real, but that deglamorized that gang more than anything I could possibly imagine.
Like it showed them being humbled.
It's sort of like when Saddam Hussein was arrested in Iraq and they sort of, frankly, humiliated him by shaving him and cutting his hair on camera.
And whether or not you think that that was appropriate, or you might even call that a war crime, treatment of prisoners, it served to reduce the morale of the fighters left in his cause.
Even, I mean, frankly, I think it probably was a violation of some Geneva Convention to show a prisoner like that.
But so what?
There's a war afoot.
I think that there is a tremendous risk of violence becoming cool again.
And we've already seen several assassination attempts against Donald Trump.
Elon Musk says he has assassination threats all the time.
I think this really is an extremely serious event.
Do you think the same way the FBI went after the January 6 meanderers, that's what Gavin McInnes calls that, the great meandering, literally thousands of FBI agents were tasked to January 6, which there may have been some minor offenses there, but I think it was overblown and politicized.
Do you think the FBI could be tasked to going after these actual violent firebombers?
Well, I think that's the biggest threat right now in terms of domestic political violence.
It's people who feel their political power has been taken away, people who feel that they're not going to get political power back through the regular democratic process and are lashing out in a very violent way.
I think that that should be a focus for the FBI.
It's what they're supposed to investigate.
But, you know, as we know, the FBI and the security state over the past 10 years was completely radicalized and politically weaponized and really went after targets that, in my opinion, were not a really big threat at all.
People like the January 6th protesters are now dealing with the state of actual violence.
And I'm not sure who at the FBI, who in the security state is really looking at this.
I mean, they should be, that's for certain because you're not going to, like I said, you're not going to have that condemnation from the legacy media or from members of the political opposition to the administration.
At least we haven't seen that so far.
All we've seen is tacit encouragement, late night posts laughing about it on their shows.
There was even Seth Moulton, who a Democratic congressman, who went on CNN and seemed to frame the attacks on Tesla as a legitimate form of protest.
Question: Public backlash against Elon Musk.
The Trump administration is now saying that, like, if you are attacking Teslas or dealerships, going beyond vandalism, that that could be an act of domestic terrorism.
But I do want to ask about this as resistance.
Is this what resistance should look like?
So Trump thinks that if you try to kill cops to overthrow the government and change an election, that's not domestic terrorism.
But somehow having a protest in front of a Tesla dealership is.
So that's where we are right now.
The only thing that will deter this from happening, from continuing to escalate, is the authorities.
You know, I remember 2020 very vividly.
And by the way, Trump was still president in 2020.
He was still president until January of 2021.
So in a way, all that violence, I remember the Democrats saying that.
This violence is on Donald Trump's watch, which is, I tell you, the height of chutzpah, that's like the old joke: the definition of chutzpah is murdering your parents and then asking the court for mercy because you're an orphan.
That's the proverbial definition of chutzpah.
The chutzpah of the Democrats is they're the ones orchestrating this violence.
And they were saying, well, it's happening under Trump's watch.
The whole country's chaotic under him.
But it was true.
He didn't stop it.
He was rhetorically critical of it, but the deep state, the security state, didn't do anything.
I think I look at the FBI, I see Kash Patel.
I don't know much about him, but he seems to be literally the most hardcore person in the administration, other than maybe Stephen Miller.
I see Dan Bongino, who at least is a rhetorical pundit on his live streams, was as tough as it gets.
I would just hope that they move into action.
And, you know, there's this, I love watching Scott Jennings.
He's a conservative pundit on CNN.
And he talks about how the Dems keep on taking the 20 side in 80-20 debates.
Like on stopping transgender athletes from going into girls' change rooms.
The Democrats are taking the 20% side of that.
He's describing what is currently the dumbest strategy in politics, which is Democrats taking the 20% side of every 80-20 issue in America.
Do you think this would be another 80-20 issue?
Do you think if the government cracked down on these domestic terrorists, do you think the population would cheer?
Or do you think it would be a Luigi Mangione moment?
Obviously, I think the people who support this violence won't cheer for it, but I think it's ultimately a minority of people engaging in the violence and supporting it.
And the only way it'll escalate is if there isn't a crackdown.
2020 is a great example because I believe it was more than two dozen people who died in the rioting of 2020 of the summer of 2020.
And the media downplayed it.
We don't even remember the names of most people who are most of the victims of the 2020 George Floyd riots, but there were at least 25 of them.
But a few months later, the same legacy media was happy to accuse the meanderers, as you call them, of domestic terrorism.
So it's what I call, I published an article recently on Twitter called Forgiveness Asymmetry.
And the general gist of the argument is that for decades, for decades, there's been a general sense that if you engage in violence on the left, there'll be some form of clemency.
There'll be some form of forgiveness.
And you mentioned Bill Ayers earlier, Bill Ayers and his partner, Bernardine Dawn, they founded the Weather Underground, which carried out so many bombings across the country in the 1970s.
They faced almost no consequence of that.
I think Bernardine Dawn spent six months in prison.
Ayaz didn't spend any time in prison at all, as far as I know.
And by the 1980s, they were being hired by prestigious law firms.
And by the 1990s, they were being given university professorships.
So that's how left-wing political violence has been treated by elite institutions in this country going back decades.
So correcting that asymmetry, I think, is a fundamental problem of American politics.
You know, I first learned the word denormalization when I was studying tobacco and how tobacco was denormalized.
It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when tobacco was the leading industry in America.
It's really the crop, as much as cotton, that got the 13 colonies going.
The number one thing that the founding fathers had in common is they grew tobacco.
And over the centuries, tobacco was such an industry, and to be a tobacco executive was to be a leading member of society, enormous philanthropy from the tobacco companies.
But over the course of a generation, a very careful denormalization, not just of smoking, but of like now the word tobacco executive is the lowest slur you could throw at someone.
I think that it's a very powerful thing, denormalization.
I think what's happening is they're trying to denormalize Trump and Trump supporters.
Obviously, this has been going on for a while.
While they're normalizing terrorism as an act of patriotism, as an act of defiance and resistance, they're denormalizing.
And here's my point.
They're trying to make it scary for an individual person to buy a Tesla.
They're trying to make it scary for an individual person to wear a MAGA hat.
They're trying to make it so that at the very least, you'll be shunned, if not physically attacked.
And I wonder what your thoughts are on the way to resist that.
Because, you know, a lot of people wear a She Guevara shirt, and no one ever punishes or shuns them, even though Shea Guevara is actually a murderer.
How do we stop this cultural denormalization of anyone who supports, or does it even, or have we passed that in America?
Do Americans no longer care about that kind of cancel culture media knows best approach?
So this is where censorship comes in.
And obviously, I work for a foundation that is completely concerned with online censorship and its effects.
So I think what I just called forgiveness asymmetry, where left-wing terrorists are basically forgiven, but if you're on the right, you can have your career destroyed over a mere opinion or an offensive joke or an offensive statement.
Resisting Censorship Culture00:09:42
I think that was a product of information asymmetry, right?
So the total control of every information-dispersing institution by the pro-blob political establishment.
And, you know, when I say information-dispersing institutions, I mean the legacy media, I mean the education system, I mean universities.
All of these things were in charge of teaching America's young people.
They were in charge of distributing the news.
And because That system was so politically partisan.
That's why we had this asymmetry.
That's all broken down now, and it broke down very, very recently.
And I think the fact that it's broken down might give us some hope when it comes to correcting this.
What I see is a fundamental imbalance of post-war American politics.
You know, I was thinking about a change that I've observed, and I'm not part of Silicon Valley.
I know you were really in the heart of that battle, and you still are.
Think about the tech people who have moved away from the Democrats over the last 10 years.
And I think, by the way, that Tim Walz video of him laughing at the falling stock and cheering it, I think that will hit hard in Silicon Valley because he's saying, I'm rejoicing in the failure of an American corporate champion.
I mean, Tesla is the largest car company by far, measured by market capitalization.
It's got 80,000 employees in America.
It's actually the most popular particular brand of car sold.
So I think that Democrats in Silicon Valley, achievers, innovators, founders, I think they'll sort of be shocked by that.
Maybe I'm wrong on that.
But I look at people like Bill Ackman, David Sachs, Elon Musk, Chamath, I can't say his last name, even Peter Thiel.
I mean, he's the original.
I think a lot of people have been shocked by the anti-freedom, anti-industry mindset of a lot of the Democrats lately.
Can you comment on that?
Like, has Silicon Valley, which was forever known as the most Democrat place in the world, Nancy Pelosiville, that was where Kamala Harris made her mark?
I'm talking about San Francisco in general.
Is there a rebellion there now?
What's the split?
I'm guessing it used to be 95-5 Democrat.
What's it today?
You know, I think the biggest mistake that Silicon Valley companies made in the 2010s, especially Facebook, actually, especially Facebook, but also Twitter under Jack Dorsey, also Google, all of the big companies, the biggest mistake they made was believing that the political establishment and the legacy media was on their side.
They were never going to be on their side forever.
I think they were on their side maybe in 2012 when Facebook was praised for its role in helping Barack Obama win re-election.
The media loved Facebook in 2012.
The blob, the foreign policy blob, also loved social media around that time because they saw social media as helping them destabilize countries in the Middle East during the Arab Spring.
They saw it as a tool of American statecraft.
But there was a fundamental problem with social media in that it undermined that information dominance I was talking about earlier, that dominance of the legacy media and universities and elite institutions in controlling the flow of information.
And social media was a fundamental threat to that.
And you first saw that in 2016.
And that is the moment when the political establishment completely turns on Silicon Valley.
And they're not going to be friends with Silicon Valley again.
They're just not, because they recognize now that the free flow of information online, the uncensored flow of information online, is a fundamental threat to their power because it breaks down that information monopoly.
Give me 30 seconds on the release of 80,000 documents touching on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Obviously, that suggests that not all documents were released, but quite a few.
Is there any political meaning there?
Why did Trump do it and not others before him?
Is this some sort of proof point for the Trump Republicans that they're more transparent than other parties?
I'm sure no one person has a chance to gone through much of them.
There's so many documents.
Is there any meaning there that we should take away?
Yeah, I certainly haven't looked through them myself.
I know the founder of my nonprofit, Mike Benz, has been looking through them.
I know people on social media have been looking through them.
I think the bigger point is just the level of transparency we've seen from this administration.
They've been released pretty much unredacted, as far as I can tell.
And, you know, this has been something that has been sought after by so many people for so long.
And I think there's a general recognition on the part of this administration, I think, that transparency is the way forward, especially in the era of social media, especially when you have the 24-hour news cycle and where people will discuss non-establishment theories.
People will find information on their own.
Trying to conceal information, trying to suppress viewpoints doesn't really work in the modern era.
And I think the total collapse of Silicon Valley censorship demonstrates that.
You know, I think the COVID experience of community guidelines banning you from being a skeptic of even banning you from even talking about other possible remedies besides Pfizer's drug.
I mean, the Nobel Prize-winning low-cost remedy you weren't allowed to talk about on social media.
You weren't allowed to speculate if it was a release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
And so many of those things, I think the level of distrust in institutions is so high.
I think that might be part of this.
And I was thinking, why is Donald Trump talking about going to Fort Knox?
I don't know if you saw that interesting conversation he had a few weeks ago.
I thought that's really weird.
Like, where did that come from?
And I'm going to do something.
I'm actually going on this one.
You know, all my life I've heard about Fort Knox.
That's where the gold is kept, right?
I heard Fort Knox.
Oh, but you know, we're getting a little bit shaky.
We're getting the yips on this stuff.
Like, I want to find out.
So we're going to open up the doors.
I'm going to see if we have gold there.
We want to find out.
Did anybody steal the gold in Fort Knox?
It's a pretty amazing place, but I'm going to actually go.
We're going to open the doors.
We're going to inspect Fort Knox.
We want to make sure that we actually have, you know, 400 tons of gold or whatever the hell it is.
It's a lot of gold.
I don't want to open it and the cupboards are bare.
Could happen.
But the only way it makes sense to me is he's trying to say, look, I'm going to show you all the secrets.
And if you have any curiosity or conspiracy theory, let me just show you the truth.
So you can trust me now.
I won't try and keep things from you.
I won't try and trick you because I'm going to show you secrets that others have speculated about and others have hid from you.
So to me, going to Fort Knox is about saying you can trust me not to lie or to hide things from you.
Is that your theory too?
I agree with that, actually.
I think political institutions and the government for so long have just had this reputation for secrecy and for hiding things from the public.
And I think this administration is completely reversing that.
It's a really radical move on their part, actually.
But I think it's the right move because, like you said, there are all these theories that circulate online about anything, you know, whether it's JFK or Fort Knox or the moon landing, you name it.
By finally ending the secrecy on the part of the government, I think Trump is, Trump is going to win over a lot of people.
He's going to win, win their trust.
Let's put it that way.
And you mentioned the COVID censorship as well.
That was it's fascinating that the current health secretary was one of the most prominent victims of that censorship, right?
And that was, you know, he was banned on Instagram, I believe, banned on many platforms.
And that was the work of this private, this public-private partnership that the previous administration had with censorship organizations.
That was actually the work of one of my least favorite censorship organizations, the Center for Countering Digital Hate in the UK.
They put RFK on a list they call the disinformation dozen, 12 social media users that they accused of spreading the majority of COVID disinformation.
And the Biden White House took that.
They went to the tech companies and said, you've got to shut these people down.
You've got to censor them.
And now the most prominent target of that is the health secretary.
Yeah.
It's funny how that works.
In fact, if you look at so many of Trump's appointment, he takes the biggest victim of the institution and makes it their boss.
Tulsi Gabbard, as Director of National Intelligence, RFK Jr. in health, Kash Patel.
It's a very interesting strategy, and I think it's wonderful.
Listen, it's great to catch up with you.
I remember when we first interviewed you many years ago, and I think your title back then was Senior Tech Editor at Breitbart.
European Oil Pipelines00:02:51
And I thought, is that really a big enough beat?
I mean, in my mind, I thought, how is that anything other than science talk?
No, it's an everything talk.
It's because through tech, you control the whole world.
You can certainly control our perception of the world.
I did not, my mind could not imagine back then how enormous a project and a file this is.
So it's a delight to catch up with you.
And you certainly were a pioneer in this journalism.
So it's fitting that you're now the managing director of the Foundation for Freedom Online.
I wish you so much good luck and success because so much of our freedom counts on what you and your team are doing.
I know your boss is really ubiquitous now, just fighting the bad guys.
So you really are a key player in freedom.
And thank you for doing that, Alan.
Thank you, Ezra.
It's great to be on, as always.
All right.
We'll keep in touch.
There he is.
Alan Bokari.
Stay with us.
Your letters to me next.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me.
Rock and roll daddy says, good.
Mark Carney can stand with Europe in Europe.
Keep him, please.
We do not want him back.
He's a very European guy.
He said that.
I mean, he was giving a speech when he says, as a European.
He's got a couple of European passports, England and Ireland.
He's a board member.
He just quit on the World Economic Forum.
He really does have a European mindset, doesn't he?
It's just sort of weird.
And when he came back and sort of said, I'm coming back and doing you a favor, it felt like Michael Ignatieff and sort of felt condescending.
Kurt Laub said, Canada should be an oil powerhouse.
Now this guy's in charge.
I mean, imagine if we had built the pipelines.
Imagine if we had built Energy East to New Brunswick.
Imagine if we had built the Keystone, sorry, the Keystone Excel pipeline to the United States.
Imagine if we had built the Northern Gateway pipeline to BC.
Those three pipelines together would have about 2.5 million barrels of oil in additional capacity.
That's such an astonishing amount of money.
And by going to Blue Waters and not just, you know, Keystone XL goes to America, but the other two, we could be selling to Europe.
We could actually, from New Brunswick, you can actually sail more quickly all the way to India, given how large the Pacific Ocean is.
So we could not only be helping other countries displace their OPEC conflict oil, and in the case of Europe, displace Russian energy, but we'd be getting rich off it ourselves.
I always say a barrel of oil bought and sold from the oil sands is one last barrel bought and sold by Qatar, the terrorist supporters, or Iraq or Nigeria or Venezuela.
Only Canadian liberals are so stupid as to destroy our oil.