Musk: Government Had "Full Access" To Twitter --- And, Bad Business From Budweiser
Elon Musk tells Tucker Carlson that the U.S. government had full access to Twitter activity, including "private" direct messages. This is yet another example of government and "private" businesses working together against individual liberty. Also, why did Budweiser go woke? There have been so many examples of companies making that mistake. Why didn't Budweiser learn from them?
Elon Musk tells Tucker Carlson that the U.S. government had full access to Twitter activity, including "private" direct messages. This is yet another example of government and "private" businesses working together against individual liberty. Also, why did Budweiser go woke? There have been so many examples of companies making that mistake. Why didn't Budweiser learn from them?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Chris Rossini, our co-host.
Chris, welcome to the program.
It's great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
And I have a short announcement.
This week, we are going to be recording our shows.
We're not going to be live.
Our studio engineer has taken a much needed break.
So we're going to be recording our shows, but they will be up on time each day.
Just nothing live this week.
Very good.
Chris, I want to talk about Elon Musk.
I think everybody knows who he is, and I'm still learning about him and figuring out exactly where he comes from.
And he certainly has gotten my attention because it looks like he's on our side on a lot of issues and wants more privacy.
Of course, he's in a business, and right now he's reporting.
And he's sort of in the middle of all this, and it has to do with the First Amendment.
And I think that's very important.
So he announced this week, and there was a sort of controversy, and a lot of attention was given.
Elon Musk just revealed that the U.S. government was using Twitter DMs to secretly spy on Americans.
Should everyone involved in the obvious violation of freedom of speech be arrested?
Hardly.
They have to deserve some consequence from all this.
And I think that's what we're going to work on.
What do you have to say about Elon Musk?
Is he helping us or hurting us?
Or do we have to give him a little encouragement?
My view of Elon Musk is he's a mixed bag.
But in this case, you know, in the case of Twitter, he's, you know, we could support much of what he does.
But yeah, he's, there's an interview that he's doing with Tucker Carlson, or at least he did, and it'll be up, I believe, today.
But a little snippet came out and was basically saying, you know, he was even surprised at the access the government had to Twitter.
Basically, they had access to everything.
And Twitter, you know, as the censorship was happening, there were a lot of people, a lot of libertarians too, that were saying, oh, this is a private company.
This is their property.
They could do what they want.
But it turns out, and we were saying, you know, at the time, Twitter is not a private company when you're doing the bidding of government.
And that's exactly what they were.
And this is the usual loophole, constitutional loophole that we deal with, crony capitalism.
That's why the Federal Reserve exists.
You know, government can't counterfeit money on its own.
So there's a private cartel that will do it on their behalf.
You know, Big Pharma was another one.
They were tied to the state.
They got immunity from everything, no matter who they hurt.
And, you know, the social media is just another arm of the state.
So we are not dealing with private companies here.
We should be.
It should be business should be separate from the government, but it is not.
The government and business work together.
And this is the result of it.
The government will do everything unconstitutional just through a proxy.
And that is a big problem, Dr. Paul.
You know, keeping up to speed with what the government's doing, and they gave a little bit of hint what they were doing when Ed Snowden discovered they were doing a lot more.
They were spying on the American people and they had the so-called authority, which they shouldn't have had as far as I'm concerned, that they were just going to spy on people overseas.
So I think you give them an inch and they take a mile.
And I think I sort of think along those terms here, because the big thing here is this direct messaging thing where they're actually recording it.
And the way I read it, Chris, you might make a comment on this.
Was it happening?
And Musk wasn't really aware of it.
It just sort of blows my mind.
I'm not aware of it, but I admit it, and I don't pretend.
But he runs a million-dollar business or a trillion-dollar business.
I would think that he would have known that.
But, you know, I guess libertarians are born a little bit skeptical.
And the longer you become a libertarian, the more skeptical you get.
But I think it's a healthy distrust because government has been so bad.
And there's been a trend here in these last several years away from the Constitution and away from privacy.
And then with the technology, I always hope the technology would help us protect ourselves.
And we can to a degree, but there's always something that's going to allow the government to go, or at least they will push it.
And this to me sounds rather serious, but I work on the assumption, and I keep thinking the last couple of days, what can I do less?
You know, will they be able to follow me less often if we have a verbal, just a verbal conversation like we are today?
Like if you get called up on a phone call, they're going to know who called whom.
And they might have audio, but they might not have video.
Maybe if you didn't put it in print, it seems like when it's in print, once it's on the internet in print, it looks like it'll be there forever.
But will all the videos be there?
And so it looks to me, if I'm a little bit confused and the others, the real experts, that bothers me.
Who's really in charge of our privacy?
Because it's a lot more complex than when the Constitution was written.
But I think the more we learn about it, but it's an issue that has to be resolved because some people are absolutely innocent and then they say the wrong word and they get put on a list and they lose their jobs.
They're not political correct.
It's that attitude that is so dangerous.
And then they have these tools of electronics and all the recordings that they have.
And now they have artificial intelligence.
My goodness, what's that going to mean?
They don't even have to record what we're saying.
They're going to create what we said.
And they're going to watch us for it.
And then we're going to be related.
I say we have a big job trying to watch this stuff and trying to protect privacy.
But in a way, I see a little bit of a movement of people getting disgusted with it.
We have been disgusted and worried about government all along, but I keep thinking, you know, I always tell Daniel when we do these programs, I said, Daniel, don't worry too much.
This will wake up people, you know, more and more.
So that's what we hope to do with this program today.
Right, Dr. Paul.
And yes, even Elon Musk, he was asked direct messages too.
Now, direct messages in Twitter are private messages, supposedly.
They're obviously not private.
Government has access to them.
And Elon Musk says, yes, they have access to those too.
And it's really pathetic, this whole thing, because it also shows you the nature of power.
It shows you why the founders wanted a limited government.
They understood what power does to people.
And Dr. Paul mentioned trust.
Government lives on trust.
And they are blowing it from every conceivable anger angle because their lust for power is that great that they're willing to throw out everything.
So that's what we're dealing with.
And that's why eventually, after enough suffering, people want their freedom.
They've had enough.
They don't want to be spied on, injected, sent to wars that are inconsequential to the security of our nation.
So, yeah.
And the thing is, the government is such a small minority of people, and they wield this power over the multitudes.
And that's they get a charge out of it.
But yeah, we're dealing with the masses and a tiny minority of people that are just, they want all the power in the world.
And eventually they're going to push too far and people will start, you know, finding different ways to be free.
You know, the big thing is, when do they have legitimate access to information for the businessman?
I think one place where it happens, which people could be more cautious, is when the corporations become partners with the government.
Therefore, the social media, they were cooperating with the government.
The government was involved and they know everything.
But even a company that has, I mean, he has a lot of involvement with government.
I was trying to figure this out once.
How do you restrict this?
And I said, well, anybody who gets a check from government has donated their privacy to the government because they always just want to watch.
Nobody's going to cheat.
But that doesn't solve the many problems because how do people live?
How would we live without the postal?
Oh, we could be private, couldn't it?
There's all kinds of options, but we have drifted so far.
But I still am delighted when people wake up.
And I mentioned it so often about when the people started to wake up over lockdown and over COVID.
And that's still going on because there's still a lot of bad things that are residuals from that.
But at least there's more people that know about it.
And this whole idea of artificial intelligence, yesterday we talked about this a little bit, but what about artificial intelligence that comes down on the side of the doctors and say, don't you ever practice medicine believing there's natural immunity?
That is a big problem for me.
Power of True Democracy00:09:18
And that is also in here.
If you talk about the Second Amendment, oh, that's anachronistic.
That's what I was told when I told the Congress when they were trying to go to war in the Middle East that you have to declare war if you're going.
You're not allowed to do that.
And then the chairman said, Run, Congressman Paul, Dr. Paul, you don't know what you're talking about.
That part of the Constitution is anachronistic.
Oh boy, what is that?
And I'm afraid the whole Constitution is becoming anachronistic.
So I, and I also believe people who wake up in the true sense of the word and not in this wokeism stuff, that people who know what's going on, we have to do our best to study and understand it, find what the truth is, and strive for that and get people involved.
And, you know, even in a short period of time, I think of it, a short period of time since I first went to Congress in 1975, that there's been a movement.
Not that I would take any credit for it, but what I'm saying is that things are going on.
People are doing the government's getting so bad that people are waking up.
So I think that is very good.
And an episode like this, people, if Elon Musk seemed to be a little bit surprised, I think we better wake up.
You know, he can't keep tabs on it.
So I don't know what to figure on now.
Yeah, Dr. Paul.
I do have one final thought on this subject.
You know, on Friday, Dr. Paul and I did a show on artificial intelligence and made the point that all tools, man-made tools, can be used for good and for bad.
And that applies to social media, internet.
Everything is being used for bad against us, but the more the people see it and understand it, then the creative juices start flowing.
And there are a ton of brilliant people out there.
And when they have an incentive to create using the same exact tools for our freedom instead of our enslavement, then there's good stuff that can be on the horizon.
Government likes to do things quietly without being exposed.
But Elon Musk going on Tucker Carlson is yet another expose of what they're doing.
And everybody that watches that, there's a lot of brilliant people are thinking, you know what?
I got to do something about this.
I have this knowledge, this technical knowledge, and they will get together with other people and create some decentralization.
So as bad as this is, good can come from it.
And I believe that good will come from it.
So we have another story.
It's along the same lines of government and corporations.
And Dr. Paul will get into that.
Yes, very good.
I was fascinated with and continue to be fascinated with this Budweiser.
And I don't even drink beer.
So, but it looks like Budweiser, very, very big company.
I think they make a lot of money.
I think I've heard people really like the beer before last weekend.
Wokeism overstepped their bounds.
And I find it delightful because here, I think this might have awakened the people in the true sense of the word about, you know, big companies.
If Budweiser is their favorite beer and they're willing to cut it off like that and bring that company down just because they went over the top with this wokeism and this political correctness nonsense and then they're willing to give up their beer.
Wow.
I think we're moving along here because I think this is just wonderful that people do wake up.
But, you know, to me, this thing, Chris, is brought to my attention about the idea of democracy.
I think most people in our program today would know that we're not a fawn of democracy.
The founders were not a fawn of democracy.
They never used the word democracy.
They used the word republic.
But there is something about democracy that it's close to democracy, but not a political democracy.
And that's when people have a consensus.
You know, there was a democratic revolt against COVID, but that is not the democracy that people want.
They want absolute democracy because it's the dictatorship of the majority.
And as long as you can get enough special interest groups together to gang up against the people who have to pay the bills, then they're going to do it.
Well, that's the wicked part of democracy.
But I think this whole thing on the marketplace is where the democracy is.
It used to be that every dollar you spent, you were voting.
A dollar, it's not big enough to spend, so you can't influence anything.
No, but when you spend the money, you're really voting.
And it's powerful.
It's stronger than the profiteering.
It's stronger than the labor union, because when they go and send, this means they're voting for a particular product.
And it could be the usefulness of the product, but it also could be a political thing.
I was raised at a time when business people steered away from getting too much involved in politics because there was no benefit to it.
Their job was to produce a product and make a profit, take care of their shareholders if they had shareholders.
But now it's quite different than that.
They're too close.
And we saw it with social media getting together with the corporation.
And this is what happened here.
This Budweiser got too close to the political correctness and of wokeism.
It changed the advertising.
And you wonder, well, were they dumb?
Well, I think there's evidence that they probably were pretty dumb doing this ad, you know, putting that ad out.
And it invites these kind of problems, but it also invites a rebuke.
And I think I saw that at the end when Lockdown was losing its enthusiasm and people were resisting it.
And that was a benefit.
But this is something that shows the power of true democracy, how you spend your money.
And it might be price, it might be service, but it also might be don't push it down my throat of some political idea that's idiotic.
And maybe that maybe that is what is helpful.
So I was really glad to see this.
And it'll be interesting to see if other companies, because a lot of people went through there, went along with it just because of the pressure.
We saw that with ESG.
Oh, well, we have to buy an AESG company because that'll make us woke.
And that'll make us like we care about, we care about, you know, racism and all these things.
We want to stop that.
So the pressure was tremendous put on there.
And companies would just invest no matter what they were doing in companies.
And now it's proving, which I predicted a long time ago, if you start investing for those reasons and not for other reasons, it's going to finally cave in.
And right now, I don't think they're doing as well, even though a lot of people made a lot of money doing this.
So I think that's what's going to happen here.
Let's hope that this is contagious.
Jeff Tucker wrote a real good article on this on Bronstone Institute.
And I think it was delightful to know that he really understood this issue.
And maybe it's going to usher in a new age and a new day where we can look at this thing and see a reversal because people were complacent and allowed this nonsense to happen and this polygenderism and all the nonsense.
Probably about one or two people believe in that.
Libertarians say, so what?
Do what you want, but you don't have any right to force it on me.
And I guess this got a little bit too close to intimidation.
But fortunately, the people who drank Budweiser had something to say about it.
And very quickly, it gave them a bad weekend.
And I think that's a great form of democracy.
That's right, Dr. Paul.
And, you know, as I was thinking about this, those who hate the market, hate private property, hate capitalism, they usually hate advertising too.
You know, those on the socialist commie left, they blame advertising.
Oh, you just like that product because it was advertised.
Oh, you only think she's beautiful because you see the magazine covers and that's why.
It's false, because if advertising was the key to riches, then no business would fail.
All you would have to do is advertise.
So it's much what advertising is, is to alert you of a product and to find out.
Hate for Advertising?00:08:10
You know, these companies, they spend an R D, they spend money trying to figure out.
They have focus groups.
What do people want?
What do people want?
Do you like this versus this?
And then they advertise based on what people want.
It's much easier and costly, less costly than to try to force people.
This is what you want.
This is what is beautiful.
This is what, and that's what wokeness is.
Wokeness is trying to force people into a certain ideology and it does not work.
You know, you can't force people to like a certain thing or to think a certain thing.
They have their own opinions, whether you like them or not.
And, you know, this go woke, go broke is true.
And that's what's stunning about this is Bud, hasn't Bud been paying attention?
Those who are going woke are losing money.
People do not want this stuff, and yet they do it anyway.
And it's shocking because, man, people care about their money.
They do not want to lose money.
Yet this wokeness, they're losing money seemingly on purpose.
It's very fascinating.
That just shows you how strong this ideology is with these people, that they're willing to throw away fortunes.
Instead of having money in their pockets and having people throw their money at you, you're having them run away from you.
It's such bad business, but this is that ideology.
They hate business.
So they're going to destroy business and they're destroying their own businesses while they do it.
You know, one thing about what's going on in the marketplace and they do really dumb things, if you think about, say, energy legislation from the governor of California, why do they do this?
It just wrecks everything.
And so much of that happens.
Why do they run up these debts?
And why do they start wars they can't pay for?
And I've come to the conclusion that the one thing that helped me the most is that if you understand Marxism, the old type and the new part, they believe that in order for them to have their paradise, you have to get rid of this nonsense, you know, corporations and marketplaces and, you know, sound money and the Constitution, because you have to have to have chaos in the streets.
I'd say they're doing pretty good.
And then you say, well, you mean you don't think they're dumb?
Yeah, they're probably dumb, but they're also quite satisfied.
I mean, why should the people put up with somebody gets arrested 27 times in two days and then they never put him in prison?
And then he's back on the street killing people.
I mean, it makes no sense.
And I keep thinking, well, how could I apply that to this?
And the one thing is, they put a rule out here.
The individual that did it probably thought she was real smart and she wanted some bragging points.
That might have been the biggest motivation and really was naive enough to believe that the country was ready for her.
But it also means, what if it happened that she was really into this stuff of cultural Marxism?
The cultural Marxists aren't giving up their wealth and their privileges.
It's you that has to give them up.
So, but if they say, well, you know what?
What could we do in this advertising thing to cause more chaos?
And if we could get people really confused about what's going on with the beer, maybe they'll be fighting among themselves.
The results were not quite different, but maybe they were just looking for chaos.
And so I think so often there's always chaos.
You can't argue about that.
The thing of it is, you never know exactly what has been the motivation for them to do so many dumb things and have all these unintended consequences, accidents happens and beyond their control.
And that is why a free society and individualism is so much better.
Does that mean the individual is going to take perfect care of oneself and the family?
No, that's going to be a problem.
But what happens if these scoundrels get into government and then they start running an entire state?
And what if they want to run the whole country?
And then they want to go, well, we'll move up to the World Bank and the IMF and we'll really conquer the world.
And that'll be a good deal for the people like fun.
It'll be a good deal for them and the people will suffer.
So anyway, Chris, do you have another statement or are we about ready?
Yes, I have one more just to close out for my end.
We live in a world of power versus freedom.
That's how it always has been, probably always will be, certainly in our lifetime.
And we as individuals have a choice of which side of the ledger we're going to place ourselves on.
People make rules for a government and government breaks them.
That's what the U.S. Constitution is.
Government makes rules for the people, endless laws and regulations.
My gosh, there are so many that they can't even enforce them or even know that they exist.
And because people find ways to counter them, go around them, find new ways.
And in both situations, we are dealing with human creativity.
People are creative.
They will take their situation and try to maneuver themselves, whether they're for power or for liberty, in order to survive and have their ideas prevail.
So we're not going to fix anything while we're here.
But what we can do is nudge things in the right direction.
And that's what ideas do.
And you can, in your own personal life, choose the side of freedom, which is what we advocate, and then live your life in that way.
Because the side of power is ugly.
It's the ugly side of humanity.
So while we're not going to fix anything here, we can at least help ourselves and help those who wish to be helped and want to live good lives.
Very, very good, Chris.
You know, I'm going to finish up by talking about something I talk about frequently, and that is the issue of corporatism, the transition from a free market over to one where you have authoritarianism, either fascism or communism or some force of controlled society.
And I think that the corporatist system, where you talk about a lot in social media, getting mixed up with private businesses.
And now we have CD's investments anticipating that, well, if we know what's best for Budweiser and the world, we have to do it this way.
But it's this invitation, but sometimes it's deliberate.
The corporations want to be business with government because if they're in the military into complex, military industrial complex, that's what they want or pharmaceuticals or medicine, all this.
They have a monetary benefit from this.
And then that's not a major step from that system into one of a total authoritarianism.
So I think our position certainly is that government should be very small.
They shouldn't be in the business of dealing and becoming partners with government.
And governments do have some responsibility.
One is to stay out of wars.
And the other one would be maybe sound money, you know, becoming the counterfeiters of the world.
So and that would simplify things that wouldn't be, get rid of some of those regulations that Chris was just talking about.
And we could go back and work in an imperfect society, but the responsibility would be on the individual.
By the way, if we mess up, I always told my crowd, crowds would be that if you mess up, well, if you do something good, you benefit from it and you're not going to be taxed and regulated to death.
But if you mess up, you're responsible for yourself.
You can't go to the government and say, I want to bail out.
And even on the college campuses, even the liberal campuses seem to receive that message.
If We Mess Up00:00:25
If they had their, if they could connect it, if I have my freedom and I can do what I want, what is the price I have to pay?
If I really mess up, I have to pay the price.
That did not turn them on because they said, Oh, if I could take care of myself and I didn't have to pay all those taxes, it wouldn't be that difficult to deal with it.
I do want to thank our viewers for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.