The first week of President Trump's second term has been a whirlwind - a marked contrast of when he first took office in 2017. What has he achieved? Is there more than hype and spin? Are expectations too high? Can he fulfill his promises?
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Executive Order on Censorship
00:01:57
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| Here's another like initial win. | |
| I think it's very good, which is the presidential executive order on censorship. | |
| And what it basically, I think it's an attempt to root out a cancer that has infiltrated the government. | |
| And of course, we see it with all these DEI offices and they're all being vacated. | |
| And it's actually, Chris, I was surprised. | |
| I mean, it actually is happening. | |
| I thought they would resist it. | |
| But we saw from the CIA, we saw from NASA, we saw from a few other agencies. | |
| They leaked the memos from the heads of the agencies saying, listen, guys, this is serious. | |
| Not only are we shutting down all DEI, but if they try to change the name, you are obligated to report it. | |
| So for him, for President Trump to be rooting out a lot of this governmental censorship and censorship by proxy, and that's what we learned from great journalists like Matt Taibbi and others, how they did this with Twitter, censorship by proxy. | |
| We even learned from Mark Zuckerberg, although he's hardly the hero that maybe an Elon Musk was for resisting it. | |
| But the government was calling him all the time saying, hey, you got to get this guy out. | |
| You got to get this guy out. | |
| And so this executive order that President Trump has signed is a very good first step, but it is only a first step because, unfortunately, like with cancer, you can zap it over here. | |
| You can get this tumor, but when it's already metastasized throughout the body politic, you're going to have to do a more systemic, systemic excisation of the problem. | |
| So I hope that they stick with it. | |
| These guys are not going to go quietly into that good night. | |
| There's no question about it. | |
| And the other point I just wanted to make, Chris, and this might probably irritate some people, but there is a danger that, okay, now Republicans are very happy now because of the censorship under the Biden administration was severe. | |
| And a lot of it was directed toward conservatives. | |
| A lot of it was directed toward progressives as well, who aren't on board with foreign policy. | |
| Nevertheless, there was a lot of direction toward conservatives. | |
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Free Speech vs. Anti-Semitism
00:03:53
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| And they're rightly happy that this is an end to censorship and a victory for the First Amendment. | |
| Nevertheless, conservatives have their own favorite areas that they don't like hearing people talking about. | |
| And, you know, we just had a, I think it was the New York Post just came out with an article saying that President Trump has signed a, he's expected to sign today an executive order to punish anti-Semitism and kick people out of the country for anti-Semitism. | |
| Now, as we all know, and I'm sure everyone with a rational mind believes it's a very, very ugly thing, real anti-Semitism. | |
| But one of the things that's happened is that they've redefined, and this is the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, redefined what anti-Semitism is to include criticism of Israel. | |
| So you've changed the terms. | |
| And then so when someone is critical of Israel, then that person, the state of Israel, not the people, that person could fall into this. | |
| So the thing about free speech, and this is where I think libertarians with clear heads on understand it better, Chris, is the thing, the thing is being in favor of free speech means that you have to allow free speech that you do not like. | |
| Dr. Paul says we don't have free speech to talk about the weather. | |
| So if you find anti-Semitism and speech of that nature repulsive, well, you have some options. | |
| You can certainly block people if you're on X, or you can walk away from a conversation, what have you. | |
| But trying to use the power of the state against people who have otherwise committed no crimes other than saying ugly things, that's a dangerous, slippery slope. | |
| Republicans need to keep that in mind. | |
| And if I could just quickly address one other thing, Chris, because every time I talk about this on X, and maybe I'm just wasting my time, but there will always be commenter after commenter. | |
| They're always right-wing, and they always say, Well, the Constitution doesn't apply to non-Americans. | |
| Well, of course it does. | |
| And as we know from our good friend and board member of the Ron Paul Institute, Judge Napolitano, the Bill of Rights only recognized an existing state of nature, which is through our creator, we have been granted these rights. | |
| And so the Bill of Rights restricted states from interfering with that which was given to us by our creator. | |
| So of course it applies to everyone. | |
| Everyone in the US, everyone anywhere should not be subject to a law in their own nation interfering with this natural law that we have that we've inherited from our creator. | |
| And it's getting a little tiring to hear conservatives keep saying this over and over again. | |
| Yes, if someone is a foreigner and they come over here and they start breaking stuff, then you get in jail for breaking stuff. | |
| But if you say stuff that's ugly, you know, then you have the same rights as anyone because the rights weren't granted by government, Chris. | |
| They're granted by the creator, as you well know. | |
| That's right. | |
| And yeah, if anti-Semitism, which is wrong, of course, is expanded to mean that you can't criticize the government of Israel, that's very bad, obviously, because we should be able to criticize. | |
| There's no problem with criticizing China or Russia or any other government in the world. | |
| And our government participates. | |
| It enables. | |
| It funds. | |
| It gives weapons. | |
| So we have to have the ability to criticize that too, if they do that with Israel or anybody else. | |
| So yeah, that's a slippery slope. | |
| I hope President Trump doesn't go down that road because that's different than anti-Semitism. | |
| You're criticizing our own government. | |
| We're citizens. | |
| We have to be able to criticize our own government. | |
| And if they're in league with another government, we have to be able to criticize that. | |
| So let's hope that that doesn't happen. | |
| The free speech stuff that we're seeing, the executive orders, it's the by proxy that worries me, even if it's illegal, A, because politicians break the law. | |
| They all swear to the Constitution. | |
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Critiquing Global Interests
00:00:53
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| They don't follow it. | |
| So breaking the law is nothing for them. | |
| So it's the by proxy that concerns me, though it's secretly. | |
| And maybe they don't even have to do it themselves. | |
| You know, these private corporations that own the social media, they have their own private interests and they have global interests. | |
| They're not necessarily attached to the United States, even if they're based here. | |
| They have their own politics that they favor, their own positions. | |
| They have a lot of money on the line. | |
| So if there is criticism that is going to cost them money, the temptation to squash that criticism is going to be great. | |
| And we saw during the Biden administration that they just went hot wild in censoring people. | |
| So even though President Trump has signed these executive orders, we are dealing with very creative human beings that find ways to get around things. | |