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Jan. 8, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
53:25
20250108_maga-meta-more-with-tim-pool-kara-swisher-dave-smi
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Zuckerberg's Free Speech Reversal 00:07:24
Mark Zuckerberg blatantly admitted that both Facebook and the FBI interfered in the 2020 election.
You're equating Facebook or Twitter with the government.
It is not a public square.
No, no, I'm not.
I'm not square.
Mark Zuckerberg coming out and saying that now we're going to have more free speech or whatever it is he's trying to say.
This is not a pendulum swing.
If we were actually going to see a pendulum swing in the other direction, they would keep the fact-checking program, ban the liberal news outlets, and only allow conservative outlets to fact-check posts on Facebook.
We live in an oligarchy of plutocracy.
To be accurate, I don't know why you know what you're not paying like I am.
If the U.S. government, through Donald Trump, goes to Greenland and offers the people of Greenland a really great deal that improves their lives, I don't see why that's a problem for anybody.
Elon Musk is a cancer to democracy.
For what it's worth, I think Elon is a genius.
Maybe he does, but doesn't care.
Just how powerful his battering ram is when he tweets things like, free Tommy Robinson.
Why should Tommy not be free?
Today's headlines have been dominated by a media titan with a bold message on free speech and being uncensored.
But we begin instead with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has unveiled sweeping reforms to the world's biggest social media business, or as I would call it, a screeching 180.
And we've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.
The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.
So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.
Well, note that his admission that the re-election of President Trump, a man he once deemed too toxic to even have an account on any of his platforms, was pivotal.
Now he's announced a partnership with Trump to push First Amendment rights around the whole world.
Zuckerberg took a massive swipe at the quote legacy media and the infamous fact checkers.
Well, they've gone.
Have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S.
So over the next couple of months, we're going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system.
Well, CNN's Brian Stelter said the quiet part out loud when he posted all in line with the desires of President Trump and Trump voters out with the fact checkers that conservatives deride in with more permissive rules for posting conservative opinions.
Now, whether you're conservative or not, what exactly is wrong with permitting conservative opinions?
The fact is that fact-checkers have always been biased, as Zuckerberg now admits, especially when it comes to President Trump.
His decision to copy Elon Musk's community notes at a time where Musk is at the heart of the new administration and seemingly the whole of global politics is no accident.
I like community notes.
I think they're a good thing.
Of course, this could all be a cynical ploy to appease the new masters that is just as easily reversed in four years' time.
I don't think it is.
I think Trump's election is already reshaping our culture in seismic ways.
If he gets his way, it might also be reshaping the global map, planting a U.S. flag in Greenland and beside the Panama Canal.
Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion?
No.
Can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is?
Are you going to negotiate a new treaty?
Are you going to ask the Canadians to hold a vote?
What is the strategy?
I can't assure you, you're talking about Panama and Greenland.
No, I can't assure you on either of those two.
So King Musk, MAGA META, and a U.S. invasion of Denmark.
Quite a lot to unpack with my panel.
I'm joined by the host of the Part of the Problem podcast, Dave Smith, host of the Dean Obidala show, Dean Obidala, author and host of Pivot, Cara Schwisher, and the Tim Carr CEO, Tim Paul.
So I've got to say, an absolutely stellar lineup to kick off this panel.
Cara, I'll be trying to work out just how big your head may have been exploding.
It's a little bit loaded, Piers.
It feels a little loaded.
I guess it's just me.
Go ahead.
No, you can more than hold your.
I could have 10 men up against you, Cara, and I'd back you every time.
But I've been thinking about you because your head must have been exploding, hasn't it, the last week with all that's been going on with some of your favorite people?
No, my head doesn't explode, Piers.
No, this is what they're like.
You know, I don't know if you've read my book or not, but this is what they're like.
I did.
This is exactly the way Mark was, always was.
And he's like, I called him, you know, he's kind of a sad weather vein.
He just sort of tips and goes along depending on what's in his self-interest.
And this is what he is like.
He's always found it irritating that he has to have responsibility for anything or consequences anywhere in the world and doesn't consider himself a publisher.
And so he'll do whatever it takes at whatever time it takes.
So I find him disloyal to almost everyone, including back when he threw Trump off the platform.
I just don't trust him with anything.
And in four years' time, he'll switch again if it's in his best interests, financial interests, really.
I mean, he wouldn't be the first media titan to go where the power and money wind blows.
But on the detail of his statement yesterday, which is pretty extraordinary, reversal.
Well, it was also full of, it was a little mendacious on a number of things.
By the way, there are a lot of conservative fact-checkers in that fact-checking situation.
And many years ago, he talked about how AI was going to solve this.
And now it's community notes that's going to solve this.
It's a multifaceted problem.
And the real issue is the site is built for malevolent players and sometimes governments, sometimes people, to do whatever it wants on the system.
It's a system that's impossible to fact check.
It's a system that has no guardrails on it.
And it's a system in which he, you know, he uses the First Amendment when it suits him.
I actually don't think he's read it, even though it's short and first.
Governments shall make no law.
Like, it doesn't say Facebook shall make no law.
He makes rules and then he breaks them.
And he says, you know, with Alex Jones, he did that with all kinds of things.
And then he reverses himself.
Holocaust deniers was a good example.
You know, he told me in an interview and we got, you know, I was like, well, he said Holocaust deniers don't mean to lie.
And I said, well, that's kind of the definition of a Holocaust denier.
But and then two years later, reversed it.
And then who knows if he's going to, now he seems to have reversed it again.
And so I don't think he has any particular principles or values that are lasting.
He can do whatever he wants because he's king of that site.
Well, yeah, to a point, I guess he can.
Dave Smith, what did you make of this?
He's king of that site, Piers.
He can't be fired.
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Ever, his children can't be fired.
Just let me just be clear.
He has total control of that site.
But you're talking to the wrong accent when it comes to kings.
We like ours.
Equating Platforms With Government 00:15:38
I know.
You have a better king.
I'd rather have Prince Charles running that thing.
We believe in maniacal power.
So Dave Smith, I mean, I found it jaw-dropping, to be honest, notwithstanding a lot of what Cara just said, that she wasn't remotely surprised by the wind blowing.
to actually see him a trot down to Mur-a-Lago to kiss the Trump ring, as it was put, and to then do really what turned out to be half mere culpa and half screeching U-turn over pretty much everything that Facebook had stood for was pretty spectacular to watch.
Yeah, it was incredible.
And, you know, I want to be clear.
I think this is a really positive.
thing.
I don't believe in inner.
Yeah.
So like, I kind of want to be happy about it, but all of my instincts are just to rip the guy, especially because he doesn't acknowledge any, there's no acknowledgement that he did something wrong or that he's changed his mind on this.
It's kind of this just vague like, oh, I created this to give people a voice.
And a lot of people think this stuff went too far.
And like, yes, it reminds me of, you know, I debated Chris Cuomo last year and it reminds me of him coming out and saying like, hey, you guys, you know, this Ivermectin stuff isn't horse dewormer, it turns out.
It's people medicine.
And you're like, yeah, that's what we were all saying at the time, in my world at least.
And we got a lot of abuse for that.
One point, I do think it's worth just pointing out what happened over these years, even though I think there's a very positive change.
You know, I was just playing on my show the other day, a video clip.
I'm sure all of you guys have seen it.
But Mark Zuckerberg blatantly admitted that both Facebook and the FBI interfered in the 2020 election on the Joe Rogan experience.
And, you know, for all of the news coverage, and to some degree, rightfully so over the last four years, about January 6th, about some of Trump's claims of the election that him and his lawyers were really never able to demonstrate at all.
But how about that admission that the FBI came and told Facebook, be prepared for a Russian dump that's coming soon?
And then when the laptop came out, you have 50 plus intelligence officers signing on to this letter saying that this is the Russian disinformation.
And he admitted to censoring people for that.
This is like blatant election interference by the FBI and one of the biggest tech companies out there.
I mean, you know, I would think if you're going to reverse that, it would also come along with like an apology and some admission of what you were a part of.
You know, he says he created the site to give people a voice.
You robbed your fellow Americans of their voice in a very important, crucial point in American history.
Yeah, I mean, look, I was a New York Post columnist at the time that that all went down with their exclusive on Hunter Biden's laptop, which turned out to be a completely genuine story and certainly wasn't Russian disinformation.
And the way that all played out was quite extraordinary and pretty terrifying to see that the New York Post.
Although, guys, come on.
Tech companies make mistakes the way publishing companies make mistakes.
But that wasn't a mistake, Carl, wasn't it?
I mean, it wasn't a switch.
Hang on, hang on, make one point.
They actually banned the New York Post X account completely.
Completely.
Yes, they did.
If they didn't take down their true story.
I mean, that is the most blatant attack on free speech I've ever seen.
But it's not free speech.
It's not a government institution.
Companies do that.
Disney didn't put out a movie in China because the Chinese of course not.
But you're equating Facebook.
You're equating Facebook or Twitter with the government.
It is not a public square.
No, no, I'm not.
No, I'm not.
I certainly was not.
Listen, I was not equating Facebook and the FBI.
And I think it is reasonable to point out that a lot of these big tech companies were under duress really since Donald Trump won in 2016.
All the heads were hauled in front of Congress and threatened up and down if they didn't get this misinformation problem under control.
But are you, is the claim here that those intelligence officers made a mistake and really thought this was Russian disinformation and then realized Hunter Biden's laptop?
Our government doesn't judge it.
Go ahead.
Tim up.
No, let Cara finish her point.
I'm going to bring you in, Tim.
The government should constantly be talking to lots of companies because there are disinformation campaigns from Iran, Russia.
You can't pretend that China's not all up in our grill.
You just can't.
You just get.
And there should be discussions between government and companies.
They're going to occur, by the way, they've been occurring since the beginning of time, way back when.
You know, go watch Oppenheimer.
There's discussions happening all the time on all levels between companies.
The question is: what is pressure and what is important discussions that these companies, because they are at the nexus of all these information systems, should be having.
And what are the guardrails against government overreaching?
I am all for stopping government overreach.
I did a great interview with Edward Snowden about this issue.
You know, perhaps the way he did it wasn't right, but what the government was doing was wrong.
They fixed it.
There should be guardrails around these things.
The question is how it's done.
But what happens is there's a fever dream on the left and a fever dream on the right of what's occurring.
And it's a little less, you know, nefarious.
I think that Facebook unfortunately occupies a far too important role in news distribution as a kind of a monopoly.
And that's the problem we have going forward.
It's a private company that's determining what everybody sees.
And they're going to not just make mistakes.
We're at the behest of Mark Zuckerberg's obviously incompetent ability to decide what's right and wrong.
Nor should he, by the way.
Let me bring Tim in.
You've been waiting patiently.
Tim, your response.
Free speech is a principle.
When we say that Facebook, X, Twitter, whatever platform is silencing free speech, we are not talking about the First Amendment.
The First Amendment protects multiple rights, of which one of those is free speech.
So this constant conflation of a private company isn't violating your First Amendment.
I'm not going to bring up the First Amendment.
I'm going to talk about I'm going to go on a platform, I'm going to express my ideas and share news.
And if they silence me, they are violating my free speech.
Now, more importantly, this argument about, you know, you mentioned there's a fever dream on the left and the right.
I want to make one thing clear.
Mark Zuckerberg coming out and saying that now we're going to have more free speech or whatever it is he's trying to say.
This is not a pendulum swing.
This is not the weather vein.
Certainly, I do believe the man is just bending the knee to whatever power structure he sees.
But if we were actually going to see a pendulum swing in the other direction, they would keep the fact-checking program, ban the liberal news outlets, and only allow conservative outlets to fact-check posts on Facebook.
When you look at all sides, when you look at ground news, the majority of U.S. fact-checkers had a liberal bias, and only one, which was associated with the Daily Caller, was considered to be conservative-leaning.
And when numerous outlets on the right made attempts to get access through Pointer to the fact-checking system, they were denied that.
So, now, once again, what do we see when real quick to another point?
Back to the First Amendment issue.
I just want to add the government had backdoors into X and Facebook where we actually got to click the link and go to the login portal for the federal government to go into Facebook to flag posts.
And there was an instance where if you said the name Eric Charamella on YouTube or Facebook, your post would be inexplicably deleted.
And everybody knew that was happening.
And this is real clear politics that it broke the reporting on Eric Charamella.
So, what we're looking at with since Elon took over Twitter and turned it into X, we have consistently seen a dominant liberal or Democrat Party bias on these platforms.
And when the problem is quote unquote resolved, you get neutrality.
There's been no circumstance where we have seen a right bias or a conservative bias or a pendulum swing in the other direction.
So, Mark Zuckerberg right now is declaring neutrality.
He's not actually swearing fealty or kissing the pinky ring of Trump.
Well, fascinating.
Are you kidding me?
The idea that what Mark Zuckerberg is doing is part of the plutocracy.
It is part of the oligarchy.
They're going down there and giving a million dollars each to Donald Trump, Tim Cook, Jim Bezos, Jim Bezos.
Now you have Elon Musk, who's been the biggest oligarch of all.
They're bending the knee.
They're doing whatever he wants.
And I wish that on the left and the right, we could put aside politics and say we need a system where big money is taken out and the power is given back to the people to us.
And then we can fight fairly on the issues without oligarchs spending millions and millions of dollars to corrupt our elections.
And on the right, you don't like George Soros?
Okay, let's ban his money as well.
I'm fine with that.
But Mark Zuckerberg, what he's doing is bending the knee because he is a fearful.
If Donald Trump says, yes, maybe he's afraid because I threatened to put him in jail.
for his entire life.
That's the big, that's the big protector of our First Amendment, the guy who threatens Mark Zuckerberg with jail for the rest of his life.
A guy who threatened ABC and CBS, a man who threatened Donald Trump's Saturday Night Live.
He wanted the comedy show canceled.
So he is not a bastion of free speech.
He is a strongman leader, a potential dictator, and they fear him, but they're about making money.
So Mark Zuckerberg now is changing these rules and putting Dana White on, Trump's big buddy, on the board at Meta to make Trump happy, leave him alone so he can make more money.
Same thing with Bezos.
Same thing with Cook.
The list goes on.
We live in an oligarchy, a plutocracy, to be accurate.
I don't know why in the right, you're not angry like I am about the wealthy controlling our collective destiny as a people.
Let's get their money out and we can fight over the issues.
I'm all for that.
This is the funny thing about what left and right really means.
I completely agree.
Billionaires, millionaires dumping tons of money to manipulate the is a bad thing.
What I'm talking to specifically, when I'm saying kissing the pink ring, if you want to make the argument that they're donating money to his inaugural inauguration and things like that, let's have that conversation.
But Donald Trump, if this is Mark Zuckerberg trying to placate or please Trump and he's settling with, I will let people speak, that's Trump accepting neutrality.
If Zuckerberg was actually going to try and play this game that we had seen over the past eight years or longer with Facebook, he'd say, you know what?
We're going to bring on 10 new fact checkers, the Daily Wire, Breitbart, National Review, and we're going to give them preference and we're going to remove politi fact and pointers authority.
But that's not what he's doing.
He's saying, you can finally post again, which it's funny because when he basically downranked politics, he nuked his own platform and it made most podcasters abandon the platform as a place where you couldn't do business anymore.
So again, you want to talk about that?
I do know why.
I got all my friends who posted about Palestinian issues, about Gaza, the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank, where my family lives in the West Bank under occupation.
Our stuff is banned.
We get thrown off the platform of Meta, of Facebook, of Instagram.
Let's not play games here.
These are oligarchs who have a financial motivation for what they're doing.
Tim, you know that Dave knows that paranoia.
We all know this.
We're on board.
What are we doing about it?
We live in a new gilded age of the rivalry.
Are we going to rise up with a backlash and have reform?
Are we going to let them control our collective destiny and be their serfs?
That's our question.
Well, I think, Dean, I think Dean touched on something that's very important.
And Pierce, you know, I've said this like so many times on your show that oftentimes people think of the divide as left and right, but the reality is usually that the divide is between the regime and the dissidents.
And so the point that you're making, Dean, about if you are critical of the current policy, which is to support Israel in their war in Gaza, then yes, then you're on the other side of the regime on that issue.
And same if you're against supporting the war in Ukraine.
But look, so it became, look, the thing that was the worst year of censorship was 2020.
Okay.
And in 2020, I mean, this is when I had a private group for supporting listeners of my podcast on Facebook that got completely nuked because you literally, I remember the video that got nuked was were two doctors.
This was in April of 2020 who were talking about how the ventilators were killing people.
And this wasn't like an accusation of a conspiracy.
Nobody was saying that like doctors meant to be killing people.
And of course the doctors realized they were right and ended up changing course.
But the point is that had nothing to do with left or right.
It was like we're doing lockdowns.
This is the policy of the regime.
And if you're out there opposing this policy, you're going to be silenced.
And just to the one point that was made earlier about misinformation from Iran or China or any of these things, I'm not, I'm a libertarian.
I don't like governments much anywhere.
And all of them are guilty of misinformation and lying.
But the point is that we were talking about our government who were the ones involved in the misinformation.
Claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation, that was the lie.
And so you've got the fucking walls of disinformation.
You're being willfully naive.
This is a worldwide information war going on with these companies.
And Tim knows this.
Tim knows this.
Like they're infected everywhere.
Many years ago, you know, I wrote a column about seven years ago about TikTok and the possible national security issues surrounding it.
I got pilloried for it, anti-China, this and that.
And I said, well, it makes sense that they would come here because they have this massive landscape in the United States that is so porous and so easy to manipulate and so easy to enrage, whatever side you're on, that it's almost laughable how much we're all the victim of, in many ways, of the ability of our incredible innovation, right?
And the problem is the people making the decisions, like you can debate all you want whether you should have taken Trump off of Twitter during the things.
Everyone has a different opinion.
But the fact of the matter is, my issue was two people made that decision in our country to do that, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
Two people got to decide something that is a much, which is a much bigger debate that has to happen within our country.
It is about the concentration of power at the top.
And right now, Elon Musk is paying $2,000 a night to be 300 feet away or probably more from Donald Trump.
We can't do that.
We can't have the same thing.
They're all handing over money and Donald Trump likes money, apparently, from what I've read.
And they're able to access and get what they want, which is no ability to have privacy laws to protect consumers.
No ability to have new antitrust laws, for example, that are critical to creating innovation.
So both conservatives and liberals can create new media companies.
They can quash us because there's no, oh, there's so many laws that aren't passed.
And there is, let me just say, there's one industry in this country in a capitalist society that has everyone else has to have some regulation, some of it good, some of it bad, but every other one has to have it.
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Except for the tech industry, there's exactly zero laws on the books about them.
And the law that exists protects them from immunity.
Can you imagine?
I'm like that.
I'm sure Peters would like it.
Ruther Murdoch would love it.
But you opened this by saying I was being naive and then just totally sidestepped my point.
The Addictive Nature of Tools 00:03:34
I think you're naive.
No, I think you're naive that foreign governments see this and think candy fucking stores.
Sorry, I don't know if I can say that.
They say candy store and look at our country that way.
Again, this again, that still has naive.
I didn't argue.
But I think what I would say is that we are in an information war with these countries.
And if we don't understand that we have to have some ability, given that the U.S. companies are at the center of it, we have to have some way for our government and these companies to talk to protect U.S. interests, at least in the UK.
Yes, but you're dodging my point.
You're dodging my point, which is that the American...
I'm sorry, I lost it in perfection, but go ahead.
Go ahead and teasing you.
Okay.
All right, fine.
Well, my point is that we're also, American people are also in an information war with our own government.
And that has actually been the most dangerous enemy in this information war over the last 25 years.
The most dangerous people are powerful private interests that are interested in their own self-interest.
The government is not our, it's like, it's like when the Hollywood people are fighting with each other, with the Hollywood companies, do you know who their enemy actually is?
Apple and Amazon and Netflix, and they're fighting with Disney.
What's happening is these companies occupying every single part of our world and quashing innovation that's necessary so that many more voices can be heard.
But you know, to take it back, let Dean jump in there, Dean.
One quick thing here, Piers.
And to me, banning speech is not good.
The answer to speech you don't like is more speech, right?
You encounter it.
Unless it's really inciting violence.
I'm a lawyer.
So at that point, we're really as fall for violence.
That's criminal.
But what we need in America is to invest in critical thinking skills to Americans on their own don't believe something just because they like it.
And I say that on the left, as someone on the left, my friends forward me something, I go, there are no links to any sources here.
They're like, oh, it's great, though.
I get, but there's nothing backing it up.
And you're being misled.
And some on the right, the same way.
We get misled because we like what we're being told.
If you have critical skills to go, I'm going to, I like this, but let me go Google it.
Let me go search it on any other platform.
Let me fact check it on my own with some reliable sources like you, then this misinformation doesn't get drafted.
It doesn't resonate.
We go like, you know, it's that's my technologies are different.
Today, maybe they think it's different.
If people are taught the skills to question, then it makes it buffers it.
It makes it.
I have confidence in people.
These tools are addictive.
These tools are addictive.
They're necessary and they're ubiquitous.
And they're also, they flood the zone with so much information that it's impossible for the human brain to take it in in a lot of ways.
And so it's a little, it's a, it's, it, it's so super, if people want to learn, if people want to learn, if they want a question, if they're like, nope, I love it.
I get this, whatever it is, too social or a liberal posting, and that's it, that's life, you can't reach them.
My question, look, I don't want to agree with MAGA.
I don't think we should all agree in America.
I think we should debate in good faith and passionately and argue with each other.
That's the beautiful thing.
But we shouldn't be misled.
And people are, there are bad actors at the top who are misleading good Americans.
Okay, let me bring in.
My thing is angry with Trump.
Covering Up Online Grooming 00:07:33
Let me segue just slightly with Tim, just to Elon Musk specifically, because over here in the UK, he's been basically taking on the country in spectacular fashion, calling for our prime minister to be in prison, calling for the king to dissolve parliament, which he can't actually do, backing this thug who's in prison called Tommy Robinson as some kind of Nelson Mandela figure and so on.
Now, look, I, for what it's worth, I think Elon is a genius, albeit like all geniuses, he's flawed.
And one of his flaws is he's got this tremendously powerful tool now, which is his 200 million followers on his own platform.
And whilst I like the fact he's let everyone come back on to X, I think that's definitely balanced things up.
And I think he is genuine about his desire to want free speech to return.
I am concerned that he doesn't quite understand, or maybe he does, but doesn't care, just how powerful his battering ram is when he tweets things like, free Tommy Robinson, who is, to most people in my country, an extremely insidious individual who should absolutely not be freed right now.
Why should Tommy not be free?
Well, because he's not the Nelson Mandela freedom fighter that most people in America seem to think he is.
He's a convicted football hooligan who beat up a policeman and got convicted of that.
He was convicted of passport fraud trying to get into America, convicted of mortgage fraud, convicted of two contempts of court where he nearly wrecked trials involving the rape gang suspects when they were on trial, nearly literally avoiding justice for the girls in those cases.
He's now in prison, nothing to do with the rape gang scandal, but entirely to do with his defamatory conduct towards a 15-year-old Syrian refugee boy, who he first of all defamed, trying to make him the villain of a video where he'd been bullied.
This ended up with the Syrian refugee boy suing him, winning £100,000 in damages and nearly a million pounds in costs, and the judge telling Robinson, do not repeat these lies.
And then he repeats all the lies in a movie that he produces as a so-called journalist, and he goes to prison for contempt of court, which he knows he's committing.
So on every level, you can agree with his message about the rape gang scandal, where he's been right like a lot of people.
But you can also think he's about the most despicable messenger imaginable.
So Mrs. Lincoln, how is the play?
Right.
We don't believe you because for decades.
You don't believe me.
What have I said was wrong?
They're facts, Pierre.
Just to be clear, which part of my rant?
Which part of my rant is untrue?
So let me explain, not that I said you were wrong, but why we don't believe you.
Because how long has this been going on in the UK?
These grooming gangs were being covered up.
As the Telegraph reported, it was covered up to present the image of successful multiculturalism where fathers were being threatened with arrest.
Then you come to me and you say all these things about Tommy Robinson.
And I tell you this, maybe you're right.
I have no idea.
I'm not from the UK.
I'm seeing this story that's been bubbling up for some time now about how your country allowed little girls to have their bodies to be...
I can't even describe the things that came out in those transcripts.
Despicable.
No, despicable is an understatement.
It was torturous.
I agree with you.
So when I see Elon say something like, this country is, the government of this covering this up, the police covering this up.
He's right.
I'm sorry.
And right.
So when people, when I see Tommy Robinson in the United States, and again, I'm not telling you you're wrong.
I'm saying we don't believe that the attacks against Tommy are all entirely based on he's a bad guy who did bad things.
You may be right.
I don't know.
I'm not from your country.
What I see is your country covered this up.
The things that were done to these little girls, I'm going to say it.
They put a pump in the anus of a 12-year-old girl to expand it so multiple men could rape her.
And your country covered that up and then told me Tommy was the bad guy.
And so I'm just like, look, man, I don't know.
But when I heard that, I said the U.S. should be sanctioning the UK or doing whatever they can to remove all of those from power.
I think they deserve prison for covering this up.
Yeah, but I think if you don't mind me saying, I think you're conflating two things, and that's my point.
I totally agree with everything you've just said, but I also believe that there is a completely weird misunderstanding of who Tommy Robinson is and what he represents in America because he's managed to position himself very cleverly as this kind of freedom fighter who's only in prison because he blew the whistle and all this stuff.
So they've silenced him by putting him in prison.
None of that is true.
Except you did silence everyone else.
And I shouldn't say you, sorry, I apologize for that.
Your government was actively covering this up.
So it creates a plausible scenario when Tommy Robinson is locked up over and over again.
And people are like, here's a guy calling out the grooming gangs the government is actively covering up and now they're imprisoning him.
By all means, I don't know about his trials or what happens.
All I would ask, Tim, you're a smart guy.
All I would ask is, I just think it would be reasonable for me over here in the UK to say to all my American friends, just go and look at his criminal record, see what he was actually convicted of and why and draw your own conclusions.
And then I would say, then I'll hang on.
But hang on.
Then I would say, go and look at the judge's verdict in the defamation case, where you'll see a very, very well, it's just worth it.
It's actually worth 20 minutes of your time.
Because what you'll understand is no understanding.
That's what Elon Musk wants you all to do.
I'm sorry.
All right, Carol.
Tim, like, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story as an expression of journalism.
They pulled 34 charges with beyond the state.
There is no evidence.
There is no evidence that they resisted prosecutions out of political correctness.
The person who was the actual chief prosecutor has supported.
No, you're misreading.
Well, whatever, Tim.
Well, actually, to be fair, to be fair, Cara, to be fair, on that point, there is a growing body of thought across the board, actually, that political correctness did contaminate the local counselors.
Well, hang on, hang on.
Let me finish.
Hang on, let me finish.
That it did contaminate the thinking of local counselors, of the police, who clearly were corrupt in some cases, of senior government people as well.
That there was a general fear that enveloped them all that they couldn't take the action they felt they should take because the repercussions would be they would be branded a bunch of words in the Times investigation by Andrew Norfolk, which I think was a terrific investigation.
They counted 14 grooming gang prosecutions in 2022.
There were 35 grooming-related convictions in Starmer's last three years.
This is Elon doing his Elon thing, which is exactly what he does.
He takes a small bit of possible problem and mistakes and books it out.
And then Tim gets a hold of it and decides and conflates three or four different things together so that, you know, possibly you could, and there was a lake.
And, you know, it's just the same thing that the Loch Ness monsters.
I'm not excited for my own agent.
I don't get my news from Elon Musk.
I get that, but it's just this is an attempt by him.
I bet what my guess is, I always look for whatever the griff, the business grift, happens to be.
They probably don't much like the Online Safety Act there at Twitter.
They probably, that you have in Britain, which has controversies.
Believe me, we have the same issue with COSA here in the United States.
Lots of things you can debate back and forth over how it should be done because it's a very difficult issue around kids' online safety.
Elon Musk's Victim Narrative 00:10:18
And the fact of the matter is, in the United States, we protect kids offline more than we protect them online, which is really quite something.
It's an astonishing situation.
We over-protect them offline and under-protect them online.
I've just done a series of really important interviews with people at Character AI and how kids are used.
I just had the Yonder CEO where you put phones away and the deleterious effects of that.
But what's happening with Elon is he has gotten a taste of power and he says, this seems to work here.
And I'm going to create all kinds of business.
Now, one, he's not a British citizen.
It's none of his business.
It's none of his fucking business, first of all.
He wants political power and the ability to turn into, which I said right when he bought Twitter, a modern-day Rupert Murdoch is what he's going for.
He wants media power and control for his own self-interest and his own financial interests and his own ability to influence things.
If you think it literally, it makes me laugh when you think about the idea of, first of all, they all act like victims.
Elon's always on some victim thing that someone's out to get.
When the world's richest people whine and moan about how they're victims, how they're misunderstood, how they don't have the thing, when they have got the power and the influence and the money over everything in their own business self-interest, something has gone desperately wrong with what we are.
We have an idolatry of innovators, innovators that are that it has become undeserved for these people.
It's all about their men.
They're just all about their money.
Every single thing leads to some financial okay, Dean.
Dean, you respond.
Then I'll come to Dave after you.
Quick thing, Piers.
First of all, today you call Elon Musk a genius.
Yesterday I watched this show.
You called him a genius numerous times.
He's not a genius.
Piers, you are a genius.
He is a genius.
I say that.
He's not a genius.
Look, it's my first time on the show discussing up to you.
I do think you're a genius in certain ways.
You know, success on different platforms.
Elon Musk, my friend, is a cancer to democracy.
That's what he is.
His goal, and I challenge everyone watching, Google Elon Musk and criticism of China.
And what you'll find is article after article about, well, Elon Musk refuses to criticize the Chinese leadership.
Even Steve Bannon, the philosopher king of MAGA, just said Elon Musk's paymaster is China.
Pivot Rivaswamy said in 2023 that Elon Musk is a circus monkey.
That's his word.
A circus monkey for China.
You know, you just have Elon Musk block a budget deal, according to Democrats in Congress because he had a provision banning investments in China.
And Elon Musk wants to build a battery factory and AI storage plant there.
Elon Musk's biggest factory outside of the U.S. is in Shanghai.
50% of his cars come from China.
This man's all about the money.
That's why Pierce goes after Pierce Stormer and Nigel Farage.
But yeah, I would say this, though, in response to that, I would say you can be all about the money, but you can also come from inherently a good place, right, in your heart.
And the reason I say that is I look at what he's well, let me just present the argument.
You can hold on.
I think that what he's done with, what he's done with Starlink, what he's done with Neuralink, what he's done with Tesla, what he's done with all these things, what really is motivating him?
Yes, to make money, but also actually to save the planet, you could argue from itself.
I mean, I sat with him for a couple of hours in the summer, listening to him talking about why we have to colonize Mars and humanoid robots.
And of course, part of it is he's going to make himself even richer.
He admitted that.
But also, I just got a feeling of a guy who genuinely thinks the planet is eating itself alive and people like him have to save it.
Now, you might not agree with that.
No, no, Pierce.
Pierce, there's one thing.
Let me tell you, I think that's true.
He does have those interests.
And I've probably done more interviews with him than anyone else, long form.
Not anymore.
We don't speak.
But one of the things that has occurred to me over the many years is he doesn't want to just save humanity.
He thinks he is the savior of humanity.
In one interview that we did when Tesla was on the ropes and was actually getting money from the federal government, he said, if Tesla doesn't survive, humanity is doomed.
And I thought that was an unusual and disturbing thing to say.
Well, he said if Trump didn't win, I think humanity was doomed.
Yes, he's very dramatic.
He's a bit of a drama queen in many ways.
I think he thinks, and one time we did an interview, he thought we all live in a simulation, which I thought was interesting.
Which, by the way, we might.
How do you know we don't?
Well, it feels like it.
Every day, it feels like it.
You and I have no idea if we're even ready.
Some teenager of the future is fucking with all of us.
I get it.
I get the whole idea.
And they're just playing a video game now.
Now, now Amazon funds Melania's movie.
Now, this.
You can just see them just doing things like this.
All right.
I want to bring in Dave because he'd be very patient.
Let me say, I think he thinks he's ready.
He's a big video game proponent.
He's very good at video games, by the way.
That is one thing I think he's quite good at.
He thinks he's ready player one and the rest of us are NPCs.
Is that right?
And non-player, whatever they call characters.
We are all NPCs in the world of Elon Musk in his brain in some fashion.
So that's he actually said, he actually, in fact, let me get the exact wording of this because he posted to me yesterday, Piers' brain hasn't received its software update yet.
Well, my heart is seething with hate.
So that's better.
That's better, I guess.
Dave Smith, Elon Musk, a force for good or bad or a bit of both?
Well, I'm sure he's a bit of both, like everyone else.
I don't, look, I try not to get into this like game of psychoanalyzing what people's motives are.
I'm sure I'm guilty of it at times too.
Look, obviously there are conflicts of interests and there are, you know, Elon Musk is going to have his own incentives, which is true for every rich, powerful, you know, donor.
It's the way the American political system is set up, whether or anyone on the panel likes it or not.
We weren't choosing between no influential donors or Elon Musk.
We were choosing between, you know, George Soros and Miram Adelson.
I mean, that's just the reality of the situation.
I think that Elon Musk, by buying Twitter for $44 billion, which certainly it's going to be pretty tough to convince me that that was motivated financially.
I don't think that that was like the best money-making scheme, but I think by buying Twitter.
He's done very well with it.
He's done very well with it.
Well, okay, so you're kind of stuck.
Okay, well, you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place now because that does seem to make him a genius, which you wanted to deny.
But I'll tell you, Dave, just on that one point, on the one point of view.
He is a genius investor.
Well, let me tell you why he's a genius.
He bought X, then he went all in on Trump.
Trump wins.
And just by Trump winning, his must stake in Tesla made him $100 billion, which is more than twice the valuation that he's paid for X.
But let me just say Kesla's car deliveries are down, which is astonishing.
But again, I would say that's a form of genius.
Dave, Dave, finish your point.
Others would.
Well, look, I mean, the broader point and the reason why Elon has gained so much hardcore support over the last couple of years is just, again, it goes back to the stuff that we were talking about at the beginning.
He bought Twitter and promised to make it a free speech platform.
Now, by the way, my biggest criticism of him is that he's fallen short of that goal.
And there are still people who are censored.
There are still people who are kicked off.
And I don't think he's done a great job of making the rules very clear and then applying them equally across the board.
But there's just no question that for so many of us, this was the big fear over the last eight years was that we could be silenced.
We wouldn't be allowed to speak up and tell the truth as we see it anymore.
And he protected a lot of us, or at least gave us the feeling that we're much more protected than we were back then.
And so that is going to get like people like me and Tim who are people who were, let's just say, we were saying a lot of the things that put you at risk of being censored.
Yeah, and also I would say it's not a small thing.
Yeah, look, I want to get into Greenland in a moment, whether it should be invaded, which is a couple of years of saying that.
But before we do that, Tim, I mean, it seemed to me when they banned Trump from social media, but they still allowed the Ayatollah of Iran and Putin and the head of the Taliban to have accounts.
There, right there was the absurd double standard of what they were doing.
But Elon does that too.
Elon does that.
No, I'm not saying he doesn't do that to a degree.
He forces you to watch him.
Listen, I'm not saying by any means he's without.
Pretending he doesn't use it.
No, no, but nor should we nor should we pretend that the liberals, when they were in charge of the trade set, weren't doing ridiculously.
I'm saying the roi c'est moi.
He does whatever he feels like.
And by the way, he should.
He owns it.
Yeah.
But don't let's not pretend he doesn't.
When he's in India, he does a different thing than when he's in.
No, no, I agree.
I agree.
I agree.
Yes, yes, but there's a difference in scale and kind.
Oh, yeah, because it's him.
Because it's him.
Well, hold on.
Well, let me finish the sentence.
Instead of just cutting me off, that's obviously not what I'm saying.
And I'm not friends with Elon Musk.
I've never met the guy.
I'm not like saying anything.
There is a difference between the fact that, yes, you're right.
It's not a perfect free speech zone.
I just made that same criticism of him.
But there's a difference between that and what was done through the COVID years, where people were straight up.
I mean, people were censored for telling the truth.
They were censored for telling the truth about enormous changes in society.
It's true.
I'm afraid I'm not afraid of it.
I'm afraid the censorship that was going on was completely outrageous.
But it's a private platform.
This is my, I'm like, what do you, this is not a government entity.
It is.
It is a private platform.
It's very involved.
That doesn't mean you're immune to criticism.
Tim, we've only got a few minutes left.
Should America Invade Greenland 00:06:34
I do want to get into whether America should be invading Greenland.
The chief counsel of Twitter was having regular meetings with the federal government being advised on what to remove.
And both X at the time of Twitter and Facebook operated back doors, which we got to click and we got to actually load up the login screens for to do this.
And we all got the emails from the Eric Berenson lawsuit showing that they were regularly saying we're flagging this for removal.
And everybody knows when the federal government comes to you and says we're making the suggestion wink wink, we know it's not.
Okay, Tim, should America, before we run out of time, should America be seizing Greenland and the Panama Canal?
Seizing.
I don't understand why there's this presumably fake outrage over Donald Trump trying to trade negotiate control of certain regions.
I think war is bad.
I think territorial gains should be handled through beneficial trade between all parties.
If the U.S. government, through Donald Trump, goes to Greenland and offers the people of Greenland a really great deal that improves their lives, I don't see why that's a problem for anybody.
The Panama Canal, I mean, we built it.
There's a question about what it's being used for.
It's falling into disrepair.
I don't like the idea of military force.
That's insane.
But if Trump goes there and says, look, we're going to offer you X amount of dollars in investment.
We're going to grow the region.
It's going to be good for you, good for me.
That sounds awesome.
Yeah, Dean.
I mean, is there any?
I mean, I think the problem was Trump didn't rule out military force, which was, I think, an overreach to put it mildly.
But in terms of, I didn't know much about Greenland or the Panama Canal's history.
When you actually look into it, you know, I saw John Federman talking about it.
He seems to be a voice of common sense amid all the partisan triakium these days.
But actually, when you look at it, there's a perfectly sound argument why America might want to take territorially Greenland if they were up for it and the Panama Canal.
Hey, you're Greenland.
Negotiate.
Trump was looking for a trip.
Hang on, Carl.
I will come to you.
If Trump's looking for an island to take, I would recommend Aruba.
I go there every year.
It's really warm.
It's nice.
I want to look at customs.
I hate to take it selfish.
So that would be start with Aruba.
We'll go from there.
Look, with Greenland, the idea, let's remind Americans, we bought Alaska from Russia in the 1800s, right?
If we made a deal with the people of Greenland, because they have the right to choose their way, and they wanted to join America and become a state, and we can work a deal with Denmark.
I have an idea that can actually work.
You make Greenland estate, Puerto Rico, and DC Estate, all three at the same time.
That's a deal.
You'll get Democrats on board.
We expand the Senate.
Two Democratic senators from each state, probably.
Democrats will control the Senate going forward.
I love this idea.
Wrap it up here's I think I solved it all.
Yeah.
Interestingly, Greenland was for Greenland was for Kamala Harris 83 to 13% or something like that.
Some number.
Cara, did you even besides the paranoia?
Cara, did you, Cara, be honest?
Did you know, Cara, that Denmark owned Greenland?
Because I didn't.
I did not know that.
I actually, but here's the thing.
They're looking for rare earth minerals there and military installations.
That's what's happening.
Again, I always go to business.
I'm like, what's the actual business?
There are rare earth minerals there that are necessary.
As usual, Trump, who likes, this is, it feels like a game of risk for dummies.
Like, I'm going to take it.
I'm going to take it.
It's fine to do those deals, Tim.
If they want to negotiate them, people should have their own self-interest in mind and stuff like that.
But he just likes to throw in these dumb.
I could take it militarily if I wanted to.
Like, it's so inane to do that.
If you want to do a good deal, you don't send your son to take photos with your little jackets with your names on them in green.
It's so, it's such a, it's such a circus.
And the only thing that is the circus about it is, you know, you have a state like California burning, like having very significant wildfires at the time.
It seems, it makes us look so stupid.
Just say we want the rare earth minerals and we want a military base for our subs because we want to counter the Russians.
And over in Panama, we need that.
It's a critical, it's a critical thing and we need it in good shape.
Just saying instead of that.
Well, he has to be fair.
To be fair, he did phrase it collectively as military.
Well, yeah, but he did.
I think that was a misstep.
But he did say that this was all for America's security.
He said it would be improved by having both.
And there is an argument, indisputably.
They're absolutely fine.
But at the same time, misstep is a nice way of saying, like, why do that?
Why create, why not be very straight?
I think politics in the future should be straightforward with the people.
We want to do this and put it out as good ideas versus to create everything.
I think, you know what?
I want to bring Dave Smith in.
I want to bring Dave in.
The truth is that Trump, it's a bit like his 60% tariff for China.
Nobody actually expects him to level 60% tariffs.
He's taking a battering ram to get what he really wants.
And it may be with Greenland.
He's just letting it breathe for a bit that America may invade the place.
Of course, he's not going to invade Greenland, but he wants people to be a little bit twitchy.
So when he comes with a nice little deal, they're like, you know what?
I prefer that to an invasion.
I mean, as coarse as it is, I suspect it's just Trump being Trump the negotiator.
Well, I think that's right.
I think this is Donald Trump's art of the deal philosophy that, like, why would I ever take coercion off the table if I have that in my back pocket?
Why would I start the negotiation by taking away my strongest overt play?
The other thing is that, and look, we like we've lived through this once before, right?
Donald Trump was president for four years.
Donald Trump says wild things that drive the news story.
And then everybody's talking about the latest thing we have to say.
And it's part of this, whether intentional or unintentional.
This is part of how he floods the zone with constantly talking about Donald Trump.
But if you're asking me sincerely what I think about this policy, I mean, I guess I wouldn't be much different than the rest of the panel.
Negotiations and things like that are fine.
The idea of any type of like expansionist military move is insane.
And personally, I think, personally, I think we're way too big of a country right now.
And the last thing we need to do is be absorbing more territories.
I think America has many very, very serious problems.
And coming off of 20 years of disastrous terror wars and now the proxy wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, I think the last thing America needs to do right now is say, hey, what else can we take on?
So look, America is the global empire.
We're the most powerful government in the history of the world.
We don't need to seize the Panama Canal in order to make sure that we can do business there.
There's lots of other ways that we can do it.
Why We Are Too Big 00:02:21
You know what, though?
When I read that Jimmy Carter gave it away for a dollar, I think it was in 1977, I didn't know all that stuff.
And actually, when I saw Trump's argument about the Panama Canal, I was like, you know what?
He's got a point.
She often does.
I remember Reagan did that.
Dean, I'm afraid we're running out of time.
I just wanted to ask Carl one last question, which is this, which is this.
Because I think you're the best person on the panel equipped to answer this.
Many people believe it is a matter of when, not if, Elon Musk and Trump have a spectacular falling out.
Do you agree?
And what timeline are you giving him?
Well, I just interviewed actually Maggie Haberman for an hour on the podcast, and we talked about that.
And I definitely have been getting calls from Trump people who are at first were like, Elon's the best.
Elon's so fantastic.
And they're like, wow, he's strange, Carol.
You were right.
Or he can be erratic and this and that.
And they go, what do we do?
What suggestions do you have?
And I just say, good luck.
And I hang up because I'm like, he's yours.
He bought you.
He broke you.
That's how I feel about it.
And, you know, she thought, and I think she's correct, Trump is irritated by his presence.
And it probably will change once he gets to the White House.
It's a very different thing.
The question, whether he gets a West Wing office, whether he gets one of those blue cards that allows you instant access, that's a good question.
See what happens there.
I think that she feels like Trump is a one-ring circus and there's only one ringmaster.
And he is irritated behind the scenes.
And if you bother him in front of the scenes about it, he'll say he loves him because why not love the world's richest man who gave you all this money to help you get elected and was critical to that and can be used as a cudgel against other congressmen and everything else.
I suspect there will be a breakup and it will be spectacular and we will have to endure it, unfortunately.
Personally, I would like to get better characters in a new season of something, but probably in the end, it is a one-ring circus.
I think Maggie's right and her reporting is correct that there is irritation.
And in the end, Trump will prevail in that regard.
Although Elon will still be the richest in the world.
He will.
I've got to leave.
I feel sorry for none of these people.
I've got to say that was a brilliant panel.
So thank you all very much indeed.
And I wish you all a very happy new year.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thanks, Paris.
Thanks, Chris.
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