Destiny Benson, Benny Johnson, and Dave Smith debate Donald Trump's character and policies on Piers Morgan's show, contrasting his alleged abandonment of Kurdish allies with Joe Biden's records on border security and the Ukraine war. They analyze shifting polling data among Black and Arab American voters, critique Senator Katie Britt's performative response to the Lake and Riley murders, and examine Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign hurdles regarding Israel. The discussion extends to Elon Musk's cancellation of Don Lemon and warns that proposed TikTok bans could precipitate broader government censorship across social media platforms. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Shocking Polls and Demonic Accusations00:15:21
Well, Presidents Biden and Trump have been confirmed as their party's presumptive nominees after the least competitive primaries in living presidential memory.
They have eight months to prove that they've got big answers to the big questions dividing America.
Should the U.S. continue to back Israel and Gaza?
How do we end Putin's war in Ukraine?
Should the U.S. keep funding it?
Who will fix the migrant crisis at the southern border?
An economy many people feel is broken.
Who stands to gain or lose the most from the continued momentum of people like RFK Jr.?
Our guests for this debate have strong views and a big influence in the digital space where so many schools are now settled.
Together at last, I'm joined by the streaming liberal Destiny, Benny Johnson, and Dave Smith.
I think that it's pretty undeniable that Trump is kind of a mean-spirited guy.
Every single thing that he does is just ultimately to serve his needs or his ends at the end of the day.
To call somebody demonic like Donald Trump, who's actually against the 10 million people who have been human-smuggled into this country, many of them children.
Have you ever been down to the border destiny?
Have you seen the rape trees?
Trump brought world peace.
How dare you?
Virtue signaling is off the charts.
I'm not, I didn't kill anybody.
And even in this state of the union, which, as you said, and I'll agree, he did better than if the standard is, he was able to walk and get up there and read words off a teleprompter.
For whatever reason, his position on the war in Gaza has just totally ruined his campaign.
This is just not the case for Donald Trump.
So welcome to all three of you.
I'd be looking forward to this.
I got to say, three titans of your businesses coming together to talk about what is probably, I don't know, depending on your viewpoint, this is either the most depressing moment in modern American politics or something that is, I don't know, indicative of a wider malaise, you might argue, about the way the world is going, where celebrity triumph substance, where age is no longer seen to be a problem.
Who knows what we're talking about here, but you guys can thrash it out between you.
I want to start by playing what this is Bill Maher's show from Friday night, and he had Robert De Niro on, who said this about Trump.
He's such a mean, nasty, hateful person.
I'd never play him as an actor because I can't see any good in him.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Nothing redeemable in him.
If he wins the election, you won't be on this show anymore.
He'll come looking for me.
There'll be things that happen that none of us could imagine.
I mean, okay, let's start with Destiny.
I got to say, when I saw that, I just thought, really?
Isn't this liberals falling into the old trap of over-demonizing Trump to the extent that actually just helps him?
I think that there is an issue when it comes to covering Trump because it feels like there is an over-demonization of Trump.
But also, Trump is kind of a demon.
Like, I think that it's funny because people will look at the left and they'll say that, you know, people are harping too much on Trump's rhetoric or how mean he is towards people on Twitter.
But then when you talk to conservatives, it seems like Trump's Twitter behavior is their number one selling point for why they like him so much.
Like, yeah, I don't know what he does policy.
I don't know what does the legislation.
But, you know, he's got a lot of really good singers.
Like, this is a guy who's known for giving mean nicknames to his debate stage opponents.
I don't think it's that crazy to say that Trump has some of the most divisive rhetoric and is one of the meanest people that we've seen as like a world leader on the world stage, at least insofar as like rhetoric and how he addresses people goes.
Yeah, but I always say, you see, about this, that there's a lot of hypocrisy about this based around Trump's rhetoric compared to his actions.
For example, you know, with Barack Obama, who obviously didn't tweet incendiary things about people and was the epitome of kind of civilized presidential public office behavior.
But he still deported over 3 million people.
He still ran a terrible drone program.
He still dropped more bombs in one year than any president in modern history.
He kept Guantanamo Bay open despite campaigning to shut it, etc.
He's the angel.
Trump's the devil.
And I don't think either's particularly accurate.
I don't think I would say that Obama is an angel, but I mean, there's a separate discussion between like, besides the character of a person and the actual policy positions or things they did in office.
I think Trump would lose on both counts.
But I mean, separate from policy or, you know, effectuality or ineffectuality as a leader, I think that it's pretty undeniable that Trump is kind of a mean-spirited guy.
And then when you look at how he runs his campaign, when you look at how he runs the country, he's a very self-driven person.
Like every single thing that he does is just ultimately to serve his needs or his ends at the end of the day.
Whether that means throwing political opponents under the bus, whether that means throwing political allies under the bus, whether that means not helping Georgia's Senate elections because he's so angry that Raffensburger wouldn't turn over enough votes for him.
And now Georgia has two blue senators.
Like, I don't know.
Trump is a really mean dude.
And again, yeah, you can switch over.
You can look at the foreign policy position too.
But I mean, you can talk about Obama's follies, but Trump also abandoned our Kurdish allies in Syria to Turkey.
Trump also inflamed tensions in the Middle East when he recognized moving the embassy over to Jerusalem and the United States' recognition of Israel annexing East Jerusalem and everything.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I don't think Trump wins on any count where he would come off as a nice guy.
Okay.
I mean, Benny Johnson, does anyone, does it matter whether Trump's a nice guy or not?
I think people have baked in now what he is.
He's a shoot from the hip, you know, guy that loves to talk.
He's pretty narcissistic.
Okay.
He's pretty bombastic.
He's pretty pugilistic.
If you read his book, The Art of the Deal, he says if somebody punches me metaphorically or real, I'll punch them 10 times back.
There's nothing new about any of Trump's behavior if you have studied his behavior for the last 40, 50 years.
He just happens to be a guy who won the White House and right now is actually looking like he's favorite to win it back.
So for all the rhetorical issues around Trump and the supposed meanness, there are tens of millions of Americans who are queuing up to vote for him.
Yeah, so let's talk about tens of millions.
I particularly take quite a bit of umbrage with the description of Donald Trump as demonic.
I think that is quite shocking as a Christian myself to call somebody demonic like Donald Trump who's actually against the 10 million people who have been human smuggled into this country, many of them children.
I remember a time not too long ago when people cared about the left, cared about children in cages.
Yet now they're calling Donald Trump demonic.
He wants to stop these human smuggling by the cartels.
Have you ever been down to the border destiny?
Have you seen the rape trees?
Have you seen the little children's toys that are left down there from the human smuggling that is created by Joe Biden, the biggest human smuggler in human history?
Do you know the carnage and the horror that is being created by those policies?
Let's not even talk about how what Joe Biden has done to the world stage.
Donald Trump brought world peace.
You're going to talk about Kurds and wars?
How about Ukraine?
Joe Biden could have stopped that war before it even started.
Joe Biden continues that war and continues the funding of that war that is leading to the wholesale slaughter of an entire region.
Joe Biden could stop it right now.
Joe Biden has brought war around the world.
And then let's talk about the fentanyl poisoning America.
You want to talk about cruelty.
It took Joe Biden 400 days to go to East Palestine in Ohio, a city that was poisoned by our federal government in a chemical explosion, much less the chemical explosion that is happening all throughout America with fentanyl, slaughtering 100,000 Americans.
And the final thing I'll say here, how dare you call Donald Trump demonic when Joe Biden hasn't even said Lake and Riley's name correctly, called her Lincoln Riley when he was forced to.
This woman was slaughtered by a criminal alien who was in this country illegally, who was released by Democrats and went on to slaughter a nursing student in Georgia with his bare hands.
And Joe Biden apologized to the murderer.
How dare you say, Joe, that Donald Trump's demonic?
Can you defend any of that behavior?
Final thing I'll say here is Joe Biden wouldn't acknowledge his own grandchild.
Even the New York Times said that is a sick, evil behavior.
So if you're looking for demonic behavior, my friend, I got it for you.
It's sitting in the White House in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in a diaper right now during nap time.
Wow.
Okay, that's what I call a rebuttal.
Let's come to Dave Smith.
Before we do, let's play that clip that Benny referenced.
This is when Joe Biden in the State of the Union address did not pronounce Lake and Riley's name properly.
It's not about him.
It's not about me.
I'd be a winner.
Not really.
Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.
That's right.
Now, Dave, the issue of Biden.
If I may.
Sorry, Benny?
If I may, if I may, just since I brought up the clip, if you don't mind, Piers.
Sure.
Could I ask Destiny right now, would you like to apologize to Lake and Riley's family for her murder since this open border Democrat policies that you promote on your program, would you like to apologize to the parents of Lake and Riley for the murder of her children?
The election signaling is off the charts.
I didn't kill anybody, so I'm not going to apologize to anybody for somebody getting killed.
But there are apologies.
There are a lot of people that get killed in the United States for a large variety of reasons.
If anybody gets killed, especially based on the background of this guy, this guy definitely should have been deborted.
I don't think anybody disagrees with that.
But hey, listen, if you want the border stuff to be cleared up so much, why don't you tell Republicans to stop turning into a game in the White House or in the in Congress and actually approve legislation to get more funding down for the border?
Right now, it's Republicans who hold the plug on that because Trump wants to maintain the one little bit of electoral advantage he might have, which is you guys trying to stir stuff up over the border.
And it's funny also how you frame this all like, oh, they're trying to stop human smuggling.
No, they're not.
They're just trying to secure the border.
Humans are going to be smuggled all over the place, regardless of whether it's into America or not.
It's not like Trump actually can't get it.
You're destiny.
What I would say about that is, whether you're on the left or right in America, nobody can dispute that the southern border is in complete and utter turmoil.
And I'm afraid if you're the president of the United States and you've been there for three years, it's on you, Right.
He's done nothing to stop it.
In fact, he's made it a lot worse.
Dave Smith, you've been very patiently waiting.
Get stuck in.
This is the most patient I've ever been in my life.
I know.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate it.
But get stuck in now.
Yeah.
Well, look, I mean, I think probably Destiny, even you could admit that it just shows such a tremendous disconnect and a contempt for the voters and this weird woke progressive value that after getting her name wrong,
he apologizes in his next interview for calling the guy an illegal and says he should have said undocumented, but doesn't say, hey, like, can you at least grant that apologizing for calling an insensitive name to the murderer and not apologizing for getting the actual name of the murder victim correct?
It's like, are you trying to throw the election?
It's almost as if like these woke progressive values have taken people to a point where they can't even do what's in their own political interest because you would just think that the vast majority of voters would be like, well, clearly you owe an apology to one of these people and it's not the murderer.
Dave, what do you think is going to happen in November?
Well, I mean, this is a really, a really tough election to predict.
I mean, I'll tell you, I think that the three-letter organizations that really run the United States of America and have much more power than the elected representatives, I think they have pretty clearly signaled that Donald Trump returning to the White House is unacceptable to them and they are going to use whatever means necessary to not let that happen.
And in that case, like if you're betting against the CIA, you may not win.
If there is a democratic process and Trump is not removed, as of right now, I think there's absolutely no question that Donald Trump gets elected.
Look, if you look at any of the polling, the major two issues are the economy and immigration.
And Trump is where the American people are much more than Joe Biden is.
He can try to spin it now and say, oh, well, we're trying to do border security, but the Republicans aren't playing ball.
But you just can't ignore the last since 2016, Trump was demonized viciously by every single progressive for talking about building a wall, talking about having border security, to try to turn it around now and be like, no, I'm really the border hawk and the open border is Donald Trump's fault is just not going to sell.
Their message on the economy is essentially the economy is really good.
You're just too stupid to realize how good it is.
And also, I think Donald Trump, at least rhetorically with foreign policy, is much closer to where the American people are right now, which is after 20 plus years of terror wars, every last one of them an absolute disaster.
The funding, the war in Ukraine, everything they said was going to happen has not happened.
And I think that the kind of non-interventionist America First, again, at least rhetorically, there's a lot of things Trump did on foreign policy that I don't support, but I think he's certainly much closer to where the American people are than Joe Biden on all of the biggest issues.
And by the way, I would just add that that is what is appealing to Trump supporters.
And I'm not a Trump supporter, but that's what's appealing to Donald Trump supporters, not the fact that he sends mean tweets.
And you're talking about the public.
I think what's really fascinating to me are two recent polls, Destiny, which I think should send a shiver down the spine of all Democrats, which is a poll from March the 3rd.
Donald Trump's support among black voters has grown by 500% in the last four years.
According to the New York Times, his support among black voters is now 23%, marking a 19% increase since October 2020.
And a poll from the Arab American Institute from the end of 2023 showed support among Arab American voters for Biden has plummeted by nearly 60% in 2020 to 17% today.
I mean, those two things are quite extraordinary when his main opponent is somebody that the Democrats love to demonize, quite literally.
You use that word yourself, but they demonize him constantly as the worst racist in America.
Why is it that those two things are happening?
Well, for people voting from the Middle East or of Arab dissent or whatever, right now they're probably going to be heavily influenced by stuff going on in Israel-Palestine, obviously.
But I think that Americans' memory when it comes to foreign policy tends to be pretty short.
So we'll have to see where Israel-Palestine is at in six months to see how much that's on the forefront of people's minds.
Trump's Star Power vs. Biden's Loss00:08:29
But again, for any person that's not supporting Biden because they think he's being too harsh on Gaza, it's not like Trump would be any better.
Again, Trump is a staunchly pro-Israel supporter.
Trump was the one who recognized the moving of that embassy.
The idea that the idea that Donald Trump is going to try to rein in the leash on Israel more than Biden has is ridiculous.
As for minority votes for Trump, again, it's hard to say.
Everything is so up in the air.
There were just some polls that came out recently that show that there was almost like a 10-point swing in how people are viewing Biden's senility just after the state of the union, where Democrats and independent voters now have a much more favorable view of Biden after the state of the union in regards to his senility.
And I also saw that the AP posted something today showing that a lot of a majority of American voters think that both Biden and Trump are too old and senior to be in office.
So I think that we're going to have to wait a few months until we get closer to the election to see what people actually care about, because every time an issue comes up, people think they're going to be, this is going to be the election-deciding issue.
But then, you know, in a couple of weeks, something else comes up.
In a month or two, something completely different is being talked about.
And we'll see what happens when the actual election rolls around.
I would like to remind people, though, for as much as people say, this is why Trump is popular, this is why most Americans support Trump.
Trump has never won a popular election in the entire history of the United States.
Conservatives enjoy a great deal of structural advantage, whether it's the composition of the Senate and each state getting two votes, whether it's the composition of the House and a disproportionate amount of voters in conservative states being represented, or whether it's the Electoral College where somebody like Donald Trump can lose to Hillary Clinton by millions of votes and still somehow come away with the presidency.
So don't fall for this illusion that Trump has ever been the most popular candidate in the United States.
That's not true.
Even in the elections he's won, he's only won it because of the structural advantages of the United States.
Okay, so he was the US.
Dude, have you read the founding documents?
We're a constitutional republic.
We're not a direct democracy.
That's not how this country was founded.
If you want that, go to move to a different country.
That's nothing.
The presidency was never supposed to be what I just said.
But this idea of the whole system is pointing to the popularity of the president isn't exactly accurate.
Are you following the conversation?
The popular vote, the popular vote argument was never part of the founding of this nation.
It was never designed to be the way that we elect our leaders.
So, I mean, again, that's the same thing.
Do you want to say any other obvious facts about how the United States works?
Yes, so I mean, I guess what I'm saying is your argument is specious.
Your argument is totally irrelevant because you're saying Donald Trump never won the popular vote, but who the hell cares?
Yeah, look, I think the bottom line is the bottom line is the most popular colour.
Let me just jump in.
Let me jump in.
I think the bottom line is, regardless, Donald Trump won the White House in 2016, and all the polls suggest he might well win it again, which for a guy who literally was never a politician, but was a real estate magnet and a TV star, is pretty sensational, and some might think pretty damning of the American political system.
One of the reasons, Benny, I think that Trump is so popular with so many Americans is he does not behave like a regular politician.
It's part of his charm to them.
And one of the examples I'll be giving was his reaction after the Biden State of the Union thing.
He put out some Snapchat filters, morphing Biden's face into Pinocchio, a woman, and a dog.
And we have some pictures here.
And you can't look at that and not laugh.
I mean, even if you hate Trump, it's funny.
Also, Captain won't even go into effect until 2025.
And by the way, that law was written and the benefit expires in 2025.
New electric grids that are able to weather major storms and not prevent those forest fires.
You see, Benny, this is part of the magic of Trump as a politician.
Putting aside whether you think it's good or bad magic or, you know, nice fairy dust or evil fairy dust, he is very, very smart at making Americans laugh, right?
You can't watch one of his rallies with his free-rolling addresses to the world without laughing quite regularly, even if you hate the guy.
And that is part of the reason that people gravitate to him.
He's not like a normal politician.
Right.
So Trump is the most famous man who has probably ever lived and most powerful, quite frankly, man who has ever been a celebrity because Trump's been a celebrity for 50 years.
He really knows that industry.
And it was quite interesting.
If we want to go back to last weekend, we were able to sit ringside with Trump at UFC.
We didn't know Trump was going to be there, but this weekend in Miami, in walks Donald Trump.
70,000 people in Miami cheering for Donald Trump.
This used to be a blue city and the roars were like a 70,000 person army taking the field of battle.
It was really something to behold.
But this is what was very interesting, Piers.
And this is something I think you'll appreciate because you interview a lot of celebrities.
At that event, there were NFL quarterbacks, billionaires, tech titans, media moguls, people that were leftists, people that were Democrats, every single one of them coming up to Donald Trump to say hello, to clap him on the back, to get a photo.
Now, normally it's the politicians running up to the celebrities to try and get brushed the shoulders, right?
They were running to Trump.
What does that say?
That says Trump is culture.
That says Trump is the epoch of where they actually want to be.
The masculine American celebrity that has truly conquered and that has power.
And that's actually what a lot of these people want.
And so it was really quite remarkable to see that happening in real time.
It really clicked for me that Donald Trump is the creation of culture.
And this is why they hate him so much.
I read a survey several years ago when he won the first time.
And it said that Trump, it was a study, a proper data analysis of celebrity power based on media coverage of celebrities around the world.
And Trump had more media coverage than the next thousand most famous people combined.
I don't think there's any doubt that Trump is the most famous person in the world.
I would have put him up there with the late, great Queen of England, but now that she sadly died, I think Trump is the biggest star on the planet for better or worse.
And that, Dave Smith, is actually a problem for the Democrats.
It's been a problem for the other Republican candidates to be nominee.
They got completely blown away.
And it's going to be a big problem for the Democrats if Joe Biden, who looks increasingly senile, can barely string a sentence together.
He did okay actually at the State of the Union, but the perception of American voters right now, particularly Democrat voters, two-thirds of whom don't want him to run again, is that he's just too old.
And Trump is, all right, is not far off him in age.
But in terms of vitality, it's like chalk and cheese.
And you combine that with Trump's star power and a general sense of Biden's lost it.
And if Biden's a candidate, I think Trump wins.
Yeah, I mean, look, again, like I said before, if Trump is not removed somehow, I think right now that's overwhelmingly what it looks like is going to happen.
You know, as far as yes, Donald Trump is old too.
I think most people in general would agree that, generally speaking, people this age shouldn't be present.
The obvious difference is that if you go look at a tape from Donald Trump 10 years ago giving a speech or you listen to him today giving a speech, he sounds exactly the same.
That is not true for Joe Biden.
He has very clearly lost a step.
And even in this state of the union, which as you said, and I'll agree, he did better than if the standard is he was able to walk and get up there and read words off a teleprompter.
He did pull that off.
Bar is very low.
But literally, we're all sitting here going, He pulled it off.
He actually spoke words out of the teleprompter.
This is just not the case for Donald Trump.
And as far as the point of Donald Trump being so famous for so long, look, I'll tell you: like, I'm a stand-up comedian.
So I've performed a lot in my career in front of an audience.
And there is something about, you know, like when you first start stand-up, it's a very nerve-wracking experience to go up in front of an audience.
After you've been doing it for a long time, you're kind of used to it.
Donald Trump, from the minute he started running, when he would go into the debates, if you can just imagine, put yourself in Jeb Bush's position.
You've been the brother of the president, the son of the president, a successful governor.
But have you ever been on that stage before on that big of a stage and called low energy Jeb Jeb?
The moment he said low energy, Jeb, he either looked like he had low energy or he overcompensated and looked like a Juracell bunny.
Either way, why is it Donald Trump gets out there?
He's already been hosting the number one television show in the world.
Katie Britt Takes the Stage00:06:39
He gets out there and cracks his neck and he's like, I'm right where I belong.
Let's go to work.
And I think that is a big advantage over other politicians who tend to be dorks.
No question.
No, I want to come back to Destiny.
I want to give you a little bit of fun here, Destiny.
We're having a lot of fun at Biden's expense.
But this lady, Katie Britt, who popped up after the State of Union to give the Republican response, let's take a little look at her in action.
Good evening, America.
My name is Katie Britt, and I have the honor of serving the people of the great state of Alabama in the United States Senate.
However, that's not the job that matters most.
I am a proud wife and mom of two school-aged kids.
My daughter Bennett and my son Ridgway are why I ran for the Senate.
I'm worried about their future and the future of children in every corner of our nation.
And that's why I invited you into our home tonight.
Well, Scarlett Johansen popped up on Saturday Night Live and gave this version of Miss Britt.
Good evening, America.
My name is Katie Britt, and I have the honor of serving the great people of Alabama.
But tonight, I'll be auditioning for the part of Scary Mom.
And I'll be performing an original monologue called This Country is Hell.
You see, I'm not just a senator.
I'm a wife, a mother, and the craziest bitch in the Target parking lot.
I'm worried about the future of our children.
And this is why I've invited you into this strange, empty kitchen.
Because Republicans wanted me to appeal to woman voters.
And women love kitchen.
Well, Destiny, before I get your reaction to this, Charlie Ko, the CEO of the Trump affiliated group Turning Points USA, said Joe Biden just declared war on the American right.
And Katie Britt is talking like she's hosting a cooking show.
So even a lot on the right were like, you know, creeped out by this.
I mean, it was completely, but it reminded me a lot of Sarah Palin when she came along.
And John McCain inexplicably decided to go with Palin, which probably cost him an election.
What did you make of this when you were watching it?
I feel like it's a perfect summary right now of where the Conservative Party is at in the United States.
This is like fake, this feigned outrage for what's going on.
It's these impassioned pleas to save the country.
It's the horrendous missiting.
Like we just got, you know, all of this, all of these people upset that Biden mispronounced the one lady's name.
And here, this lady is completely and totally misrepresenting this story, trying to blame Biden for the woman that had basically been sex trafficked, what, I think it was like 10 or 20 years ago.
This lady's been traveling around the country telling this story for like some decades now.
And Katie's trying to pretend like this happened under Biden.
I just think it's a perfect summation of what the Conservative Party stands for right now, which is like all outrage and no substance.
Benny, have you got any defense of Miss Britt?
Did you think this was a powerful moment for the Republicans?
This is why you're so good at what you do, Piers, because I like on its face, I agree with Destiny, because we deserved better as a response to the state of the union.
Like, I can't believe I'm saying this, but like, you can't.
That's my headline, that's my headline for the TCP.
You can't do it this segment.
Benny Jones, I agree with Destiny.
Katie Britt deserves a Razzie for that performance.
And if you listen to the way that she talks as like a normal person, that's not the way she talks.
She's totally performative.
And there are real serious persons.
It's not just a girl.
It's Lake and Riley.
She's an American.
Her family is mourning.
And they deserve, obviously, to have their daughter alive and not slaughtered by a criminal alien.
But as a Republican Party, messaging matters.
It's really important.
And you can't put up somebody like that.
I don't know why they didn't pick Vivek.
I got to be honest with you.
I don't know why they didn't pick Vivek.
This is absolutely a time to have Vivek Ron Swami talk.
And he's a great communicator.
Why they went this way, I do not know.
It was a gift.
This is the final thing I'll say.
It's a gift.
Because then suddenly the pivot goes from Joe Biden sort of screen, sort of angrily screaming for 90 minutes, getting Lake and Riley's name wrong, and having a number of hot mic moments saying that Bibi Netanyahu needs a come to Jesus moment, saying that he wishes he had cognitive decline, which is both things Joe Biden said after the speech.
Strange.
Whatever.
And Joe Biden getting yelled at by a father who lost his marine son in Afghanistan.
Steve Nakui was up there in the audience.
He got arrested by Joe Biden afterwards, or at least by the Capitol Police.
But all of that aside, Katie Britt then becomes the joke.
And so then you sort of like move, the target moves over to Katie Britt and SNL doesn't open on her.
A cold open on her instead of Joe Biden.
I completely agree.
I was going to pivot, if I can, Dave, with you to RFK Jr., who I know you've interviewed recently.
He's a very interesting character.
And I've interviewed him several times now, and I find him very interesting.
I think he's a really charismatic, experienced guy.
He seems to wind up all the right kind of people.
Clearly serious, and he comes from a serious political family.
And he's raising money and he's got popularity.
What do you think of his significance in this race if he has any?
Well, I agree with you.
I mean, I think he's a very impressive person and he's very smart.
I mean, look, he's a guy who you want to listen to who can't speak.
So that's pretty impressive.
He makes people want.
He's going on a national speaking tour and resonating with millions of people.
And he has major issues speaking.
And you can get past that because he's just got interesting things to say.
I got to say, I do think that for whatever reason, his position on the war in Gaza has just totally ruined his campaign.
And all you have to do is run the counterfactual here.
I mean, imagine he had come out against that war and against U.S. support for it.
Right now, 50% of Democratic voters call it a genocide.
In other words, they believe that Joe Biden is funding and facilitating a genocide.
There's also a good amount of non-interventionists on the right.
He could have pulled in so many voters, been the real anti-war candidate, opposed to our proxy war in Ukraine, opposed to backing Israel in this war.
And instead, as was pointed out earlier by Destiny, and I think he was right about this, that there's really nowhere else to go for a political camp because Donald Trump is out there saying, I'll be even better for Israel.
And then RFK is going around with Rabbi Shmooly and letting everybody know that he'll be even more pro-Israel.
Elon Musk and Free Speech Limits00:06:33
And there's this enormous contingency that is appalled by what's going on over there and wants no part of it, certainly not to be funding it.
But he, for whatever reason, feels differently.
And so I do think it's a real shame.
I want to bring in just some news that's broken while we've been talking actually.
It's quite fascinating.
And I've got a sort of personal view on this.
But Don Lemon, you may remember who got fired from CNN.
And he then got offered a lifeboat by Elon Musk who said, look, come and do a show for me on X, rather like with Tucker Carlson.
So the Don Lemon show was announced quite recently.
And he then announced in the last two days his first interview was going to be with Elon Musk, technically his employer and certainly his bankroller for the new show.
And he did the interview and announced it, and it was all going to happen, all going to be revealed, I think, on Monday.
And Elon Musk has now canceled Don Lemon's show because of the way the interview went, which has stunned Don Lemon, who said that he felt it went pretty well.
But he said, Elon Musk is mad at me.
It doesn't change my relationship with him, except that it'll have to now be on YouTube.
X have come out and said the Don Lemon show is welcome to publish his content on X.
But we, like any enterprise, reserve the right to make decisions about our business partnerships, not a cover consideration, decided not to enter a commercial partnership with the show.
I mean, Destiny, Elon Musk is a mercurial character.
In my view, he's a genius who's done incredible things.
But he has a very thin skin.
I mean, I was supposed to interview him in January, was dealing with him directly, was going to go to Austin, and then he saw a clip of me and Zuby where I was criticizing his decision to allow Alex Jones back on the platform, which I still think was wrong.
I gave him a mild chiding over it, and he canceled the interview, just like that, bang, and said he lost all respect for me.
Can a guy be the king of free speech in the way that Elon Musk wants us to think he is and do this kind of thing?
I don't think very many people hold freedom of speech as a principle.
I think freedom of speech tends to be weaponized by the side that feels like they don't have a voice at any particular moment in time.
So right now you see conservatives championing freedom of speech while simultaneously supporting Donald Trump, who said he would want to open up defamation lawsuits against media companies, or he would want to revoke the citizenship of Americans who have set the flag on fire, or he wants to suspend the Constitution to run for office and investigate voter fraud claims, right?
I don't think that people have these very like principled commitments to freedom of speech.
I think that they tend to just weaponize them when they feel like they're not getting their voice heard.
I think for a long time for Twitter, conservatives felt that, and honestly, rightfully so.
I think that some of the censorship stuff that was being exercised across a lot of the social media platforms was pretty heavy-handed.
And I think, thankfully, a lot of policies have started to be rolled back.
So YouTube doesn't censor people as aggressively as they used to.
That being said, if you look at Elon Musk, you should have known from day one, as soon as the Twitter files dropped in the way that they did, where Elon Musk basically brought in a bunch of PR journalists to go over files that his employees would make available for him, for them to blow up the prior owners of Twitter.
You should have known that his commitment to freedom of speech was only insofar as it would serve his needs and his ends.
And I think you've seen that show up basically over and over again as he's ran Twitter.
So it's no surprise that if he feels like somebody's not giving him the favorable type of coverage that he'd want, that he would probably try to axe these people from his platform or he wouldn't be interested in working with them in the future.
Benny, it's pretty extraordinary to cancel a show that you have bankrolled after one show and it's an interview with you.
So I think we're missing the entire point here, which is the difference between Twitter 1.0 and X, called Twitter 2.0, Elon's Twitter.
Twitter 1.0 wasn't just canceling shows.
There were no shows, by the way, on Twitter 1.0.
They were deleting accounts.
They were deleting the voices of people.
They were stopping you from speaking.
They were deboosting your content.
They were making it so people couldn't find you or you couldn't grow on the platform.
I was one of those people.
I'm in the Twitter files.
So is Charlie Kirk.
So is a bunch of other people.
They banned the sitting president of the United States who had 88 million followers at the time.
It's totally different to say, I'm in a business relationship with you and I decided this business relationship doesn't work.
Elon Musk does that all the time.
He's a very shrewd businessman.
That's what makes him the richest man on earth.
And so Elon Musk isn't canceling Don Lemon's voice.
That would be actually anti-freedom of speech.
Anti-freedom of speech isn't, I refuse to pay you money.
I'm innocent.
I think he's perfectly entitled.
He's perfectly entitled to cancel the show if he's put money into it.
Of course he is.
It's the optics of it to me are a little bit like, come on, Elon.
You give this guy a show.
You do an interview and whatever went down.
I mean, everyone will watch that interview now, but how bad was it really to justify canceling the show?
They debuted whole platforms that people do.
Like if you do a Substack link in your Twitter post, because Elon's so asthmat about Substack trying to creep with Twitter, they'll literally deboost that tweet.
So this still happens.
The algorithm is open source.
Well, Dave Smith, let me bring in you on something else that's broken, which is the UK, sorry, the U.S. House of Representatives has approved a landmark bill that could see TikTok banned in America.
This has been a raging issue for quite some time.
Growing concern about China's influence over TikTok, despite TikTok saying that they have a US entity that's very separate, 150 million people in America use TikTok.
It is the number one news source for people under 24, I think, now in the world.
Is it actually a good thing if America bans TikTok or is it a bad thing?
No, I mean, I think it's horrible.
At least the text of the legislation that I had seen as of yesterday, and I'm not sure if that's changed as it passed today.
But Thomas Massey, who is, I believe, the best congressman in the country, he was sounding the alarm bells on this and that there is the language is so vague and so slippery that it would give the government the ability to control all types of different social media sites and to censor all types of content.
And keep in mind that the U.S. federal government has been trying to regulate the internet and censor people online for years, from back when they attempted with SOPA to the net neutrality stuff to all of the stuff we learned of in the Twitter files where the FBI and even the CIA are coming in and talking about which accounts they want to be banned and asking Twitter why this person is still on there and things where it was just people during the COVID lockdown saying like,
Vaccine Myths and Myocarditis Risks00:02:15
hey, I don't think these lockdowns work or hey, I don't think this vaccine actually does stop you from getting COVID.
My point is many of the people who were vindicated and turned out to be right.
And so, yeah, I think there's a real problem with TikTok.
But you don't think that was, they were vindicated to be right, Destiny, when they said the vaccine.
Of course not.
The vast majority of the COVID conspiracies were absolutely false.
There is no worldwide vaccine passing.
Oh, the visitors.
They're doing all these people dying from vaccines.
There wasn't created a bioweapon lab.
But you're arguing with something I didn't say.
I'm saying the official narrative was that it didn't come from the lab.
If you get the vaccine, you cannot get it and you cannot transmit it.
These were huge stories that were flatly wrong.
No, you're shaking your head.
That's not wrong.
The official position of the NIH or the government was not that if you get vaccinated, you will never transmit it and you will never get sick.
I know that there is one quote that people, yes, I'm aware that she said that multiple times.
Anybody that honestly said that.
It is unfathomable to me that people that will make so many excuses for every single Trump gaff will come out and take like seven words coded for the president.
Oh my God, they said the vaccine was 100% effective.
It would never, that's unbelievable.
Nobody really thought that.
That was, that's an unbelievable thing.
But also LARP has the idea that all of you have to do it.
Nobody really thought it, but the president.
Okay, you're right.
First off, I haven't made any excuses for Trump gaffes.
I think you're just trying to create something that you assume is me.
But nobody said it.
Nobody thought it except the president of the United States of America and Fauci.
You're right.
Nobody else ever said that you can't.
I think you need more than one sentence of a thing to see if they genuinely thought that the vaccine would be 100% preventive.
Like none of our vaccines are 100% effective or prevent the transmission of 100% of a disease card.
There's no vaccine like that.
Can I just say, chaps, can I say, chaps, you have all, three of you, lived up to every expectation as a collective unit.
So thank you very much indeed.
We've covered a wide range of things.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I appreciate you coming on Long Censor.
Thank you very much.
You got to ask that, Piers, because that was getting hot.
You got to talk about myocarditis.
We got to talk about myocarditis.
Well, you know what?
We will.
We'll talk about myocarditis.
I'm very happy to do that, but I'll do it another time.