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Jan. 11, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:42
Free Speech Freak Out: Censors Panic As Musk About To Purchase Twitter

The on-again, off-again Elon Musk purchase of Twitter has occupied the minds on both sides of the free speech debate. Musk calls himself a "free speech absolutist," sending mainstream media and pro-censorship commentators into a panicked frenzy. What are they afraid of? Also today: Oil production cuts have Biden Administration steaming mad and Berlin complains to Washington about high energy prices.

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Facebook's Disinformation Dilemma 00:15:27
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well, ready to solve another problem.
Of course.
Boy, if we keep solving these problems, what will we have to do?
I guess we don't have to worry about that, do we?
We'll find some problem out there.
But the problems are still there, and sometimes there's cover-up, and sometimes the government doesn't give us the full information.
That's what really keeps us in business of trying to sort things out.
If you want accurate information, let's say if there had been any danger with COVID virus and booster shots, whether or not anybody got sick or died from that.
It looks like nothing.
Nobody got sick from the shot.
But there's still some strong believers that indeed that was very dangerous.
And we will continue to try to sort that out.
But today we want to start off with Elon Musk.
He's a famous person.
He's pretty rich.
Some days he's richer than other days.
And I can't keep up with it because things move so quickly.
And I don't know much about automobiles, but I do know a little bit about the First Amendment.
And now he's talking about helping us out.
And that is us who are frustrated with how the Internet and social media handles the issue of free speech, where you're not censored by the government.
And lo and behold, in these last couple of years, they've come up with this unbelievable system where big business gives directions to the government when to punish somebody for free speech.
And so it's a little more complicated because in more simpler times, it would just be the owner of the company.
If you owned a newspaper, you couldn't lie.
You couldn't cheat and hurt people.
So there were restrictions and there were contracts, but that's long gone from the internet.
But there's a lot of frustration out there.
In some ways, the market has, from my viewpoint, has worked to some degree because I don't think as much of a free ride as Facebook has had for all these years, they got a little bit too close and a little bit too bold about how they worked with the government.
Now we find out that they're practically an arm of the government.
And guess what?
They have less customers too.
And YouTube is, I think, eventually going to face that same consequence because YouTube is not nearly as popular as it was earlier on.
So competition is a great thing to stop that.
But there are other, this is more difficult because we do have the internet.
The government's been involved in the internet.
And there's a lot of abuse.
It's a very sophisticated, sneaky way of regulating speech by punishing people who don't go along the party line.
And they've been doing that.
But now there's a bit of hope.
You know, we've heard about Elon Musk wanting to take over Twitter.
And this has been several months now.
And a lot of applause for that.
And anything to break it up might be helpful.
But then the negotiations sort of backed off.
They weren't doing well.
But no, Elon is back at it again.
He says, I'm serious.
And now he has really touched a lot of wire because Twitter's a big company and they have a lot of influence.
He says, guess what, folks?
I believe in the First Amendment.
I'm going to change some rules here.
And you think, boy, won't the journalists love this?
I mean, that they can start writing as honest journalists.
And Jonathan Thurley is one of our friends, an honest journalist.
He's saying, hey, this looks like a good idea.
But there is this interesting subject of why would anybody in the journalist business not applaud, even if you don't know all the details.
The suggestion and the movement in that direction seems to be something we should give deep consideration for.
It really is fascinating to see the reaction.
And it feels like we've been to this movie before because we did talk about this a few months ago when Musk put in his first bid to buy Twitter.
And that fizzled out because, as he claimed, the Twitter is full of bots.
Everything is inflated.
The value of the company is way inflated artificially.
So I'm going to, I'm going to back down and find out what's going on here.
And that's where we've kind of been.
And they've been in litigation over this because they say that you're obligated to buy it because we've already approved it.
And so, but now we're back.
And I think it might have been related to some of the things we talked about in yesterday's show, whereas Musk came back on Twitter and did this poll about Ukraine and there was a big freak out and everyone went insane because he had a peace proposal.
And who knows, maybe that sparked it, maybe they didn't.
But interest, and if you look at Twitter share prices yesterday, they soared when he indicated that he was back in interested to do that.
Now that may be people interested in profits, of course, especially if it's overvalued, what have you.
But the other part might be that the market is interested in a free speech model.
And we don't know exactly what kind of protocols he may implement if he takes over Twitter.
But he has been on record saying, I'm a free speech absolutist.
Well, of course, that's what Jack, the founder of Twitter, said when he founded it, and things went very, very differently.
So we don't know.
But what we do know is that people who rely on Twitter censorship right now, because they believe it advantages them, are having a panic attack over the possibility that the advantages that they are getting from the current management and leadership of Twitter may actually disappear.
And as you mentioned, Turley, this is from his page today, put up that first clip.
Be afraid, be actually afraid.
Reporters panic at the thought of Twitter restoring free speech.
And he's quoting former political magazine editor Garrett Graff, be afraid, be actually afraid, having a panic attack over the possibility that Twitter may restore free speech.
And that's not necessarily changing the terms of the agreements.
It's sort of enforcing them in a more transparent way because now when people are banned from Twitter, and I know this personally, you never know what it was or why because other people do the same thing that you did and they don't get banned.
You know, people are banned for calling for violence.
And then when hundreds of people say that Senator Paul should be beaten up again, that's all, that's fine.
So there's a very selective enforcement.
So that's only part of it, whether they become more transparent in how they enforce it, whether they stop.
You know, conservatives think that they're the ones that are victims, but it's not the case.
Anyone coloring outside the lines finds themselves bullied and beat upon and kicked out of Twitter.
But here's a little glimpse into the thinking of the people who currently run it.
And if we can put on that next one, this is from Turley's article.
He's talking about Twitter CEO's Parag Agawal.
And he says very clearly, well, we don't believe in free speech.
He doesn't care about free speech.
And Turley quotes and says, he responded dismissively that the company is, quote, not bound by the First Amendment, technically true, and will regulate content as, quote, reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation, end quote.
Argoal said the company would, quote, focus less on thinking about free speech because speech is easy on the internet.
Most people can speak.
Where our rule is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.
That's kind of an honest admission.
We're going to decide who can be heard and who can't be heard.
And if that is overthrown with Musk coming on, then I think it's a great victory.
And the difficulty, I think, for a lot of us over several years now is how do you handle this?
Because the immediate early on especially there was a lot more, hey, this is a product company.
We can't do this.
And I still argue that that is not, that can't be the answer.
We can't just set up another commission and we'll make sure they are fair and balanced.
I mean, that is not going to work.
But what has to be done is looked into the favoritism given the social media companies.
I thought one of the worst things that I saw with this social media, we talked about the other day, was Facebook actually was collecting information that they shouldn't have been collecting.
Then they call the government, hey, hey, we have some suspicious stuff here.
So they give it to Facebook, and Facebook said, oh, Facebook gives it to the government.
So they get the FBI, they'll clean this up.
So the FBI says, hey, this looks like very interesting stuff you guys collected.
So I think what we ought to do is make it legal.
We'll get the search warrants so that we can go in and take this stuff.
And that shows you how locked in these people are.
But what I fear the most is no matter how well intended the people who are going to clean this up and how many people in a way support our position, they'll say, well, we just have to ban certain language.
We need somebody supervising this.
But there's a lot of free market principles that can protect this.
Newspapers, in history, has generally been pretty free to, they give their news, they make mistakes, but the news never was quite as political, but they had editorials and all these things.
But they didn't have free reign.
Free speech doesn't mean you can say anything you want.
You can't lie.
And you're supposed to be a bit responsible.
But the thing that I fear the most, we have a government, have an agency of government and say, yeah, well, that's unfair.
That's unfair.
We can't do this.
But there are some principles that we might mention.
I think like contracts.
Why can't a contract be solid if we go with a new company like we have with our platform, go in and say, well, we're not going to do this.
Well, YouTube, I think, sort of told us some stories.
And then all of a sudden, they were receiving money.
That's the other thing that I would say.
Anybody who receives contracts and money or protection and things like that in the media, they're not independent.
They're no longer.
They're part of the government.
And I think the mixture of the government is so bad in everything, not just in this speech area, but in corporations.
We talk about the pharmaceuticals.
I mean, the money is a big deal, and that's why separation of commerce and big government, I think, is pretty important.
Well, you talk about election meddling, and I think you can make a good case that Twitter threw the election for Biden over this past time because we talked about a poll that was taking 80% of the people, had they known about the Hunter Biden laptop, may have changed their votes, may have looked at things differently.
So Twitter, by actively censoring it, temporarily suspending the New York Post that had the scoop, not allowing that scoop to get out before the election, that was election interference.
And Twitter was involved in that.
But you know, the people who want to continue the current censorship protocols in Twitter, they say, well, if you just let it be a free speech site, it's going to be rife with disinformation and conspiracy theories.
And there's actually one of the commenters under Jonathan Turley's piece made a great comment.
He said, what are you talking about?
We've gone through four, five, six years of the Russiate conspiracy theory that these same people are the ones that have been promoting all the disinformation about Russian collusion.
They are the chief proponents of conspiracy theories, of disinformation, of lies, all the COVID lies, all the restrictions on people who challenge the COVID lives.
They are the conspiracy theorists.
They're the disinformation experts.
And they're afraid that it's going to get out of their control and they're going to lose power and lose the ability to control the narrative.
And once again, it's the separation is the big challenge because if you had a perfectly free market economy and people started doing that, well, if it involved defamation of character, if it involved lying and scheming and distortion, I think we should have recourse in the courts.
And of course, people, I'm amazed that customer numbers went down with Facebook.
I keep figuring these people here, well, I'm going to look at this stuff no matter what.
All of a sudden, people say, hey, I hear bad things about them.
And, you know, too many regulations.
A little bit of it works.
But especially when they get protection of the government, and they're part of the disinformation, that the disinformation, I was saying that, you know, the social media was provided for the government, vice versa.
The government has access to anything they want.
And that is what the real problem is.
And when they devise a better system, they have to be concerned about that because governors do what they do.
They govern with an iron fist.
And that's been around for a couple thousand years or more.
Yeah, and I think the argument is there's no transparency in it.
And I've talked about it on the show, how I am locked out of Facebook.
I cannot manage the Ron Paul and the Ron Paul Institute Facebook page.
They've given me no reason.
They've shown me no violations because there have been no violations and they refuse to help.
So there's some sort of thing happening behind the scenes where they don't want me to continue to post on Facebook.
And thankfully we have an assistant who helps us, but I literally can't do my job and they won't tell me why.
But anyway, let's go to one of our good friends and a great progressive, one of the few that are left that are really with us on speech.
Glenn Greenwald makes a great point.
He says the purported concern and even hysteria about Musk's purchase and control of Twitter has always been driven by an obvious fear, totally different from the one they claim.
Liberals are petrified.
Musk will stop censoring their adversaries.
That's all there is to it.
Extremely well said, as most of the things that Greenwald Wyatt writes.
They don't want their adversaries to have a chance to talk.
They want them to shut up, which is why we're having our conference, by the way, next month on it.
But that's what they want.
Well, one thing I'd like to see, the money is available if somebody wanted to do it, but for some reason, they're not much interested because we have billionaires that are sympathetic to what we're talking about.
Alex Jones' Tweets Matter 00:02:05
But wouldn't it be neat if people came around to thinking, you know, I wonder who's been canceled?
Have a site where you go for a rescue.
You say, oh, we got chosen to be on the cancel society.
This is where you can find the truth.
But you'd need a lot of money, but that would be disinformation.
And they would close it down.
This whole thing designed for getting out the information.
Oh, it's just disinformation.
And the funny thing is, if there are things on Twitter, and we don't want to beat this horse to death, he's already maybe dead.
But the thing about something like Twitter, you can already get rid of things that you don't like.
If say if Alex Jones were back on Twitter and you couldn't stand Alex Jones, you could mute him or block him.
You would never see one of his tweets and he would never see any of your tweets.
But that's not enough for them.
They don't want you to go away.
They want you to shut up so that nobody can hear you.
And that is the totalitarian instinct that sadly is infecting the left and some of the right.
And it's very, very dangerous.
But oh, sorry.
No, go ahead.
I'm just saying maybe we'll go on from here because we could talk forever.
And we hope that Musk, we hope that he is a free speech absolutist.
That's a great thing.
That's what we like.
If you don't like it, don't listen.
As you always say, we don't have free speech, the First Amendment, so we can talk about the weather.
So I hope he does it, and I hope it works out.
Well, we've got other things going on, Dr. Paul.
We've got other problems to solve.
The Biden administration is not happy.
Let's turn to the next link.
This is CNN inside the White House's failed effort to dissuade OPEC from cutting oil production to avoid a, quote, total disaster.
And as we read on Zero Hedge this morning, it looks like they're going to cut OPEC Plus, which is OPEC plus Russia and other countries, are going to cut production by 2 million barrels a day, just as our strategic reserve has been emptied by Biden while taking credit for lower gas prices, and just as we're just weeks away from the midterms.
Ukraine's Oil Manipulation 00:02:57
What do you think is all about?
This chaos we have here is because there's a rejection of the marketplace.
It's, you know, we have a strategic petroleum reserve in case there's a war.
We have to be protected.
But then it's used to manipulate prices.
And they talk about manipulating prices, and that's constant.
And all this activity in these last several years, and oil, you know, going up and gasoline going up $5, $10 a gallon, it's always price, price, price.
And who's at fault?
The politicians are at fault or profiteering is at fault and on and on.
But the one thing they never talk about is why are the prices, where's the pressure coming from?
And of course, this whole thing got started before.
It was certainly the case in the 1970s.
And that is that this is a monetary issue just as much.
Because, you know, when they mess up the money and devalue the currency, the only thing that the market will do, natural forces will be that the adjustment is made.
The invisible hand comes in and say, you know, the currency isn't worth as much.
We know it prices are going up, so we're going to, you know, impose controls and things.
They do this, but they never talk about, well, the people are hurting.
Oh, that's okay.
You know, the people are hurting.
There's a virus out there.
Trillions of dollars today.
It's announced definitely over $31 trillion.
And they don't say, every once in a while, people say, you know, spending can cause inflation, but then they do it in a technical fashion.
They don't say, the spending issue is important because they print the money.
The value of the money goes down.
And this is the reason.
But all this tinkering around with it and thinking that they can manage it, it can lead to violence, you know, violence and war and fighting.
And look at what we're doing.
We did okay in Syria.
We get a few gallons of gas out of there.
And that's essentially ours now.
For now.
But in Ukraine, it's really the same thing.
We're very much involved.
You know, the other day I made the point that they suspected the two countries that were capable of blowing up those oil lines, U.K. and U.S., and that is such a possibility, but it's really rather sad that that is the case.
But they've been doing that, like I made the point since 1953.
U.K. and U.S. get together and control the oil market because then some people are going to be unhappy that prices are up, but they're not going to blame the right thing.
You know, the needlessness of the inflation, the wars that go on, and the warmongering that goes on.
People Pay The Price 00:11:12
And then once again, under those conditions, it's much easier to control speech.
You know, we're talking about speech in a sinister way, but it is control of speech.
But in wartime, it's much easier to control speech.
I mean, you go to prison.
I think that started during the Civil War period where you could put in jail if you had any disagreement whatsoever.
So yes, we should complain and fight for what we think is necessary.
But even back then, governments ganged up on anybody willing to speak out and tell the truth about what they're doing.
Yeah.
Well, CNN, in the same article, they got a hold of, somehow got a hold of some talking points at the White House about this 2 million barrels per day cut.
And let's put up that next clip.
Some of the draft talking points circulated by the White House to the Treasury Department were obtained by CNN framing the prospect of a production cut as, quote, total disaster, and warned it could be taken as a hostile act.
It's important everyone is aware of just how high the stakes are, said a U.S. official.
And the White House is having a spasm and panicking.
The funny thing about this, Dr. Paul, and it's not funny, but the Biden administration has been kicking Saudi Arabia in the teeth for two years, really.
They were bullying them about you got to get tough with Russia, you got to stop doing business with Russia.
We say so, you better do it.
There's a whole issue of whether he's going to shake Mohammed bin Salman's hand, this, that, and the other.
Of course, he said he wouldn't meet him.
And people that watch this show know that we're not big fans of Saudi Arabia.
But when you kick a country in the teeth for two years, and then you say, hey, you got to keep selling this cheap oil, and they say, nah, we'll pass on that.
You can't act surprised when you do something like that.
No, they shouldn't be.
But the frustration I have is we haven't been able to get into the conversation of how does it happen.
You know, they're there.
Oh, it's a political thing.
Somebody's making too much money.
It's Biden's fault.
Yeah, it is his fault.
Then they just go on and on, but they never stop and think about, you know, what exactly has brought this about.
This whole thing about manipulating prices by using up the strategic petroleum reserve.
And I think the British have done the same thing.
So it's really just an economic manipulation of prices.
So it's a form of price control.
It becomes, you know, they become more sophisticated how they regulate and cancel people who won't want to speak out.
But that's the same way with these price controls.
They will do it, and they will blame everything except big government.
But that's easy.
It's an easy sell because they'll say, you mean we should spend a little less money.
But the thing of it is, we've mentioned it quite a few times on this program, is, you know, if you have, and I did it in the Congress, I had the legislation, you remember that.
If there was a tragedy, and you know, it sort of is overwhelming because the system helped create the conditions, I would say, yes, go ahead and help them out, but start, but you have to pay for it by cutting spending somewhere else.
And that would be a twofer.
You'd be helping people, but you would also be curtailing the manipulation of money and credit and interest rates.
And why the process will always take you to the period of time of the correction.
And that's where we are today.
So we compound COVID and what's going on in Ukraine with the correction that is coming or that we're in the middle of, and the people suffer and the people pay.
They're the ones who get the biggest tax on this.
Well, the next story is kind of related in a way.
And, you know, Germany, it's really interesting to see what's happened.
It's kind of sad to see what's happened to Europe's powerhouse.
They became drunk on Russia's sanctions.
They were intoxicated.
It was a huge party.
No downside.
Unfortunately, now they've woken up to a bad hangover.
And let's put on this next clip.
German minister criticizes U.S. over astronomical natural gas prices.
So the Germans, and this is Richard Haybeck, he is their economy minister.
The Germans shot themselves in the throat, in the head, in the legs, in the foot by saying, We're not going to buy any gas from Russia.
That's it.
Forget it.
We're done with this.
We're not going to open Nord Stream 2.
We don't even want a Nord Stream 1.
We're going to wean ourselves off.
And all of a sudden, they wake up with the hangover and realize, well, hang on a minute.
That gas was cheap.
And now you want to sell us gas at twice the price?
Well, that doesn't seem fair.
Let's put on this next clip.
Here's what he's saying, Robert Haybeck.
Some countries, including friendly ones, wink wink, sometimes achieve astronomical prices for their gas.
Of course, that brings with it problems that we have to talk about.
So they're shocked, shocked, shocked that now sending liquefied natural gas all the way across the ocean to Germany is costing more than just putting on a switch in the pipeline and getting it practically for free.
And now they're upset that they're having to pay the market prices because they went along with the whole thing.
Yeah, and just think the cost of the energy to get the ships over there.
That should push their costs up a little bit.
You know, there was just recently, yesterday or today, there was an argument that said the title was, what economic issue have we had that's been completely wrong for years and years and years that we have revealed.
I thought, well, that'll get my attention.
And what they have figured out, it's been the biggest fallacy in the world, is that if you trade with countries, that you're not likely to fight with them.
They said that's, and they tried to get some examples to do that.
You know, that's going to be a hard time sell for me to say that it's better to just have wars than to trade with companies, countries.
But that's exactly what was happening right after the Cold War opened.
I mean, why was it that we started traveling to China?
And why were the doors open for us to travel to Russia?
And there was a lot of trading.
And then it seems like the mess was artificial.
It was unnecessary.
And it was a bit of profiteering, but there was also some politics involved in that.
Of course, the breakdown in Europe has to do with the permanent structure.
Well, they have NATO.
That's to stop those Soviets.
Oh, the Soviets aren't there yet.
They're the Russian people.
Oh, yeah, we have to stop it.
I have to stop it.
And just think how much has been justified.
You know, even from the beginning, they set the standard that, oh, no, and Russia said, well, just leave us alone.
You know, just stay a couple hundred yards away from our border.
Oh, no, we're going to stand on your borders and do that.
And then look at what's happening.
And that is, to me, so tragic that I would say, believe me, under the system that we would like to see, there'd be nobody blowing up oil wells or pipelines that hurts everybody, except a few people who wants to sell energy at a slightly higher price.
Exactly.
Well, in case anyone is wondering, and we hope that next picture, Richard Haybeck, who's whining about having to pay more for oil, here he is.
He's from the Green Party in Germany.
They're the ones that have destroyed Germany's economy by closing down the nuclear, closing down the coal, closing down the oil, and thinking that a couple of windmills is going to power the powerhouse of Europe.
He's the guy responsible for Germany returning back to the dark ages, and now he's whining about not having any oil.
Dr. Paul, I'm going to close with something funny because we need to cheer up a little bit.
The Babylon Bees is such a great website.
Unfortunately, they were also banned from Twitter, I think, for joking about things because you're not allowed to do that.
Let's put up this next one because we know that Biden just announced another $600 million for Ukraine.
We didn't mention that today, but of course, another $600 million.
What's that?
But the Babylon Bee did a funny thing.
There's a picture of the Ukrainian flag.
It says, hurricane ravaged Floridatown, raises Ukraine flag so Congress will send aid.
That is great.
The Floridians are struggling.
They've got no power.
They haven't showered in weeks, you know, and it's terrible.
Another half billion to Ukraine.
Won't the real irony be?
And they were preparing and people were getting a little worried about it.
Wouldn't it be so ironic that Europe is going to be heated this winter by burning wood and coal?
It's the dark ages.
So this is not surprising because there are some pretty strong records for, and you could make the case for saying that when the government pretends to do something, usually the opposite happens.
Matter of fact, sometimes that's on purpose.
Sometimes when they're up to no good, the headline is wonderful.
Nobody could disagree with the headlines.
And yet, eventually, though, the people catch on.
Oh, well, there's no inflation.
The government said there's no inflation.
Oh, yeah, I guess it'll be transitory.
Oh, but there's no inflation at all.
Oh, yeah, sure.
So, no, the lies can go so far, but the truth wins out in the end.
It's just so tragic how many people have to suffer from this.
And as blasé as so many people are, and they don't pay much attention until they need more money, and then they think about the policy.
The innocent people who don't pay attention are going to be victims because it will be taken advantage of, and they're the ones who are going to suffer from the higher prices.
So it's to me so tragic because the answers are out there.
The answers found in Liberty and Peace are so beneficial, and yet those are off-limits.
Boy, I'll tell you, and off-limits for, you know, it's a bipartisan effort.
A lot of stuff we've been complaining about is bipartisan.
That's one thing I have a little bit of concern about in the election because characteristically, every election I remember in the first election I remember was Woodrow, you know, Wilkie.
And so they always promise these things, and it doesn't happen, so I'm a skeptic in that sense.
But still, the best thing to do if you're a little bit worried about who might take over, believe me, getting rid of some in the incumbency who have proven not to be beneficial to the economy or to the people or to the cause of liberty, yes, it's good to have a turnover and then do our best to try to keep them honest.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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