80: Barry's Back

00:11 Mo Facts with Adam Curry for May 4th, 2022. This is episode number 80. And concerning today's date, may the Force be with you. I'm Adam Curry coming to you from the heart of the Texas Hill Country in FEMA region number six. And it's time once again to spin the wheel of topics from here to Northern Virginia. Please say hello to my friend on the other end, the ever unimitable. I'm trying to fill up the space because I know it'll sound really cool if I can stretch it all the way. Yes, please say hello to the one and only Mr. Mo Facts. How are you doing, Adam? Good. That was the freakiest DJ intro I've ever done. Oh, you landed it. Yeah.

00:52 Had to hit that post, brother. Hey, man, how you doing? I'm doing well. How about yourself? Yeah, well, good. You know, we're trying to get back on schedule here. All kinds of things got in the way. Travel. You know, I had an internment for my dad in New York. And so things just got all twisted around. You had like severe allergies. Anyway, no one needs to hear all that crap. We're here and we're ready to bring you the value that is Mo Facts with Adam Curry. And I'm very excited. Usually I have no idea what it's about, but I do see the clip list. I'm like, huh. Yeah. So

01:34 it's going to be an interesting ride, as always. And I guess we can go ahead and get right to the wheel. Yeah, well, let's go ahead and spin it. Let's see this wheel of topics. Round and round it goes where it stops. Nobody knows. What will we be talking about on Mo Facts with Adam Curry for episode number 80? Well, Mo knows because he chose it for us expertly. People are dying because of misinformation. Yeah, people are dying because of misinformation. Yes. Misinformation. Yes. Misinformation. We're seeing huge information platforms change hands. Yep. It looks like one political party is on the full attack, or even not even the party.

02:16 It's the two wings, right? What we were talking about before, the Pizza Party and MAGA. And there's a new wing, I guess, a MAGA called Dark MAGA. So we might even talk about that. Well, I haven't heard of the official Dark MAGA wing. Oh, yeah. I will say this: caution whoever's using that term. It could be another thing they loop you into. Just to say that, you know what I'm saying? You know how I feel about groups. Yeah, alert, warning, danger, Will Robinson. Pay attention. You never know what could be behind the curtain. Exactly. So I guess the main thing we got to get into is Elon. Yay.

03:01 Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, has reached a deal to buy Twitter for about $44 billion. Regulators and shareholders still need to approve the sale before it can go through, but Musk is on track to own the social media giant sometime this year. So for more on the sale, we want to bring in Dan Patterson to join us to give us a little more clarification. So Dan, great seeing you. Twitter sort of resisted Musk's earlier attempts to buy the platform. Though I guess when no one else is asking you to dance, because I don't think there were any other people, really. Nobody else came in. And this was pretty much it. It's hard to resist. What happened? Why did things change? I didn't even know Twitter was for sale.

03:42 It's good to see you both. Look, in a word, money. So Twitter's board and other executives close to the firm appeared last week to kind of rebuff Musk's offer. But that's what happens in public. What happens in private, very different story. Look, there just wasn't competition. There weren't a lot of other suitors here. There's talk for a brief period of time that maybe Cisco would step in or another very wealthy individual. That all seemed to be a lot of noise. There just was no one else with the capital and the desire to buy Twitter like Elon Musk. Much like the real world, when it comes to buying Twitter, Elon had very few peers.

04:28 Well, I'm not sure. Would you like my opinion of Elon Musk now or later? I had to let people know I haven't listened to No Jenna Show just for this reason. So I don't know how you feel about the whole Twitter thing, how it was received by the, you know, the two wings. So this is all new to me. Oh, good. Good. Well, because I have my story much tighter now. So good. All right. What did you make of this purchase? Well, the purchase is not complete. purchase will be complete, has to be completed before October 24th.

05:04 And that's what I find most interesting, where there have been seemingly some changes already to things happening or people being let back on, even though the purchase is not done. There's a breakup fee on both sides. If Elon can't, or if he walks away, there's a billion-dollar breakup fee. If Twitter goes with another suitor, then they would also pay a billion-dollar breakup fee. So, knowing how these things go and that now due diligence is taking place, I'm of the opinion that all these extra followers people saw were bots that were

05:46 unbanned. No, unbanned in order to show in due diligence that they have the number of users that they claim they do. So, I see that a lot more pragmatically. Now, about Elon Musk himself, I've been very vocal. I think he's the Kim Kardashian of tech. He's not an inventor. He's not that brilliant. He does have a whole vibe, which works really well with money raising, and particularly when you're working with government. All of his business is either subsidized directly or paid for through invoice by the U.S. government. Skylink is clearly a military project.

06:27 So, I only see a gain for him by having Twitter, not for the advertising model that it kind of is doing now poorly, but for the value of how he will fix Twitter, which is very simple. He will force everyone to authenticate and verify themselves with your driver's license, social security number, whatever will be required. You know, so-called KYC, know your customer. And that is how you combat bots, and that is how you at least bring a conversation back into civil discourse. Because, you know, if you slander someone, then your name is known and you can be reported and you can get into trouble.

07:11 Now, this will, and this was my prediction from early on: this will ruin Twitter. So, Elon Musk will ruin Twitter no matter what, but the platform will become a part of the grid that the U.S. government is spinning around its citizens and the globe. I find it fascinating that the guy that the so-called anti-establishment party is going to save them is the guy that wants to put chips in your brain. Like, that and I didn't even get to that. I didn't even get to that part of it. I'm just saying, just notice how weird this is.

07:50 They think the savior is the guy that wants to put a chip in your brain. Now, he says voluntarily, but still, I just found that fascinating that the anti-establishment party is looking for a multi-billionaire to save them. And that guy just so happens has the brain chips and the there's also predictive programming at play here, Moe. You know, the whole Iron Man, the you know, you know, all of that is predictive programming. It feels good, it's enhanced, and it's uh, and I got to tell you, there's something magical about fame and power and certainly wealth. You know, he is touted as the richest man in the world.

08:34 I'm not sure that's entirely true, but that's kind of how he's seen. And I'll tell you why I'm saying this, because I was on the way to get a box fan at Walmart of all places. And as I'm driving, Fox News, I usually scam between different things, but Fox News cuts off Sheila Jackson Lee, which normally I'm like, Sheila Jackson Lee is pretty annoying, but she was talking about some relevant stuff. And they're hurrying her along. Okay, we got to go. We got to go. Why? Because they had to switch to Amber Heard's testimony against Johnny Depp. But they went uninterrupted, no commercial. I sat in the parking lot for 20 minutes.

09:16 And I'm sitting there, and I'm realizing that, wow, this is incredible. Who gives a crap about these two people compared to even Sheila Jackson Lee has something more relevant to a news channel. But I also caught myself saying, This is riveting. I love listening to this. This is fantastic. That's exactly why they switched. They understand. Yes. And that and that's and that's what Elon Musk brings to the table. He brings some of that mystique that anybody can get wrapped up in. Right. So I guess let's go ahead. I'll unveil what I think about the whole situation. Oh, I got to do it in three minutes, and you're going to take a three minute. three hours with clips, okay? All right, Mo.

09:57 Way to go, man. I bought a knife and a rubber knife and a compass to a gunfight here. Let's see. Uh, so the funny thing I found was that once on the other side, the people that's anti-billionaire started begging for this quote-unquote white knight to come save the precious Twitter. And it was so disgusting to hear these people like, oh, there's got to be somebody they got, you know, they were just putting all kind of pressure. Yeah, I thought who would step in. I'm just telling you who I thought might have stepped in is the guy from the Mavs. Um, what is his name? I just drew a blank. The player from the Mavericks? No, no, no, no, no. The owner. Oh, Cuban? The Democratic Trump.

10:41 Yeah, Cuban. He's like the Democratic Trump. So I thought he might step in. I don't think he has that kind of money, though, but I thought he would be the perfect guy to step in. One other thing that really irritates me. This makes no sense that no one else is even making an offer. It would complete so many businesses, complete profile, LinkedIn. I mean, there's so many different companies that would totally make it work in their current business model, but no one's stepping up. And that's telling to me. And let's just go ahead and get into number three so we can hear those people begging. This is Jim Kramer.

11:22 Wide range of opinion about what's going on. Right. Now, best and final means no negotiation. Well, Brett Taylor represents the shareholders. He can't do that. You can't just say, hey, you know what? We'll take it. You can't. That's not fair to the shareholders. And I think we keep in all the covers this morning. I've not heard about the shareholders needing protection from Elon. He can't steal the company. Even if he thinks he has a better idea, that doesn't get him to be able to take the company. So I've left out. I'd like to ask David because I think this is really important. David, there's a fiduciary duty to the board, and they cannot abdicate just because they got a best and final deal.

12:01 This is not a piece of reality. He's not buying a house here. Jim, I think you're right on the key. The key question that's come up any number of times already in the calls that I've had this morning. Best and final. The use of that term, which we rarely, if ever, see, certainly in an unsolicited bid of this nature and the initial unsolicited bid. You know, you use this term in the UK and you're stuck with it. That's it. Here, of course, given it's Musk in particular, there is a level of unpredictability that we all know is quite high. Well, I don't think this board is taking that short-term review. By the way, David, if I were advising this board, I would say there may be personal liability if they agree to this.

12:45 This is one of those where they literally are not doing their job. There's no fiduciary responsibility if they just say, you know what, we take it. David, that opens them up. And you remember, there are times when individual directors are opened up for a level of lack of fiduciary that I think crosses the line. This crosses the line. Yeah, Carl, it's erratic. It's erratic behavior. It's not what people expect. That's a serious board. It's not a hack board. A lot of people felt that he controlled his own board. Maybe he thinks that that's what they've got here. They have no choice but to reject it. I think they can say, look, we're open to all offers. But beyond that, Carl, if they say we accept, they're phony.

13:30 All right, Jimmy. I've never heard this amount of begging. And what adds to the bizarreness of it is that the money guys don't want to make money. Everybody's standing to walk out and saying, walk away from this deal like fat cats. But they're telling them, no, it's against your, it's against your, you know, basically morals to sell to him. Don't make money. You just heard it with Jim Kramer. Right. Well, that, so there you're seeing different agendas. One would be, and that's all, and I think this board is probably very political. I know of a few people who are on the Twitter board.

14:09 And, you know, it is without a doubt the megaphone of the world. It's where you can gain traction. It's where you can get, you know, where you can get stuff done, where you can, you know, influence elections. There's all kinds of stuff going on. But that's why it's so truly unbelievable as in I cannot, I almost cannot believe that no one else wanted to buy this for that reason and that reason alone. I don't think it's as valuable to them as it is to him. That's why he put such a big number on it because the way I look at it is if they buy it, they're just going to run it the same way it is.

14:49 With him buying it, buying it, you know, he can take the counter narrative. You know, it's like he's capturing a major one of their pieces, but it's not worth them to save it. Well, it's a weird paradigm. So, so I'm just going to state it again: I don't believe that Elon Musk gives a crap what it's being used for, other than you don't, you don't think so? No, he no, I do not believe he is Mr. Free Speech and I'm going to equalize the world. Oh, no, I don't believe that at all. That's not his motivation. You're going to make me see, you're going to make me jump out of order just because of this. Let's go down to number five. Let me explain. I think Twitter is the AP. Well, I agree with you.

15:30 Twitter is the news machine that generates news. I agree. And now he has his hand on that button to say I can control whatever I want to be pushed. It's very to me. He can, but I don't believe that's why he's buying it. I don't think that's the reason. I think that's exactly why he's buying it. And like I said, it was no number big enough. Like right now, when he goes to negotiate, is Trump coming back? Yes or no? What could be talked about? And you think we got the whole COVID-19 thing. Nobody wants to talk about that. I've heard nobody talk about once they let people get back on there that will talk about COVID and can talk about it freely.

16:14 Because remember, that was the whole point of any people. No, Mo. He will. Everyone will be allowed to speak freely. You will be able to say whatever you want. Anybody. Trump won't come back. Guaranteed. He's not going to come back. He knows what's up. He knows what this is about. He's not going to come back. I don't think he wanted to come back anyway. I mean, because it would kind of shoot his way to do this. As far as I'm concerned, that's a failed idea he has over there. Yeah, I'm just saying he can't. No, it failed. It failed, and he's incorrect because,

16:51 look, Tina, she loves all this stuff. And she is my canary in the Twitter coal mine. And so she finally gets on Truth Social. And she logs in. And then, you know, and so there's a lot of people on there, but it's still a problem onboarding. It's iOS only, et cetera, et cetera. And I say, so what do you think? She says, it's boring. I said, why is it boring? She says, because there's no libtards to fight with. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I can't. That's the whole point. No, I know. That's the whole point of

17:28 wanting this. What I'm saying is that will be allowed, but it's not going to be the same because it will be MoFax and Twitter. It will know your real name, where you live, will know how to send lawsuits, torts, libel, slander, all of that stuff. He is an idiot. That's what. No, no, I'm agreeing with you. If he takes that model, because Twitter's not broken. That's the thing about it. Twitter is not broken. My literal words, Moe. My literal words, he's going to break Twitter. That's exactly what I said. If he does that, then

18:09 he is not right at all. I mean, because it works perfect for the exact reason you said it's like the battleground. It's the turf. And if I'm thinking he's smarter than me, then I would say, okay, he understands like he controls all the knobs now on what the conversations can be. And that's why everybody was losing their crap in the media. It was all about now. Let's go ahead and go to the number five and listen to how the AP is structured. And then we will probably better understand how I see him utilizing Twitter.

18:47 And our reporters are traditional reporters in the sense that they want to come up with stories that a lot of people are going to read. But sometimes we're giving you stories that are important and relevant that aren't necessarily big traffic drivers. And so the reporters at AP, I think, have a little bit of a barrier, a cushion between them and someone who's saying, you need to come up with a bunch of stories that generate clicks or you're out of here. I think that's one way that we benefit from the AP structure where we are providing news content to clients like Yahoo News and the Huffington Post and others.

19:38 It's a big sort of growing area of, it's the fastest growing area of revenue generation. for AP, the serving serving these digital clients. So I think that it helps that we are a B2B in that way. Yep. That's how I see him using Twitter is being, you know, saying putting the AP out of business because he'll be able to control whatever stories surface. And by him being able to do that, then he, okay, everybody is beholden to him.

20:17 You see what I'm saying? I see what you're saying. I just have a different opinion, but I'm open to listening to your argument. Yeah. And we got to look at all the political implications. So I just wanted to lay that out. That's how I see him, how he valued the company when he got to his number. And I think $44 billion is kind of cheap to be able to control the narrative because as we know, if we watch local news, that's where the memes make it jump off the internet and make it to the local news. That's a successful rollout of a narrative. You know, that's the goal to make it to local news in that 30-minute blog that they have in the afternoon or in the morning.

20:58 And he controls the source of what all you even used to talk about this: how they only go on social media to look for stories to talk about. And that's it. So he really controls, I mean, the American media or a good portion of it. Now, it might sound hyper, you know, saying like, what, hyperbolic? But no. If it was left the same, yeah, look at Lives, look at Lives and TikTok. I mean, right now, right now, Twitter controls all messaging and all memes. We know this. We know that now, in hindsight, of course, we have confirmation that the Hunter Biden laptop was real and that contributed to

21:40 possibly the changing of an outcome of a general election in the United States. So absolutely. He has that power. Well, he does. So he doesn't have it. He doesn't have it. No, no, no, no. Okay, if the deal closes. Now, I'm with you on this. I'm not, you know how I am. I'm very skeptical. So I won't, it's kind of like, what's it called? Brexit or things like that. It's like, I won't believe it. It's saying that it's signed, sealed, and delivered. But I'm just saying how he valued the company. I think that's how he looked at it because if you can flip that switch, I mean, we just talked about Pizzagate, what it did for 2016 on the last show, right? I mean, if you let these memes really flow, it's very dangerous.

22:24 Now, I'm going somewhere with this, so let's go ahead and get into four stop at. No, we yeah, we stopped it. Yeah, four. Let's go back to four now. So, Dan, help me understand. Um, what does Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter mean for the platform? And, and, you know, it's interesting to me. I know that there are people on that, there are conservatives and Republicans who are celebrating this, and there are liberals and people on the left who are, you know, running around scared out of their minds about what this could potentially mean. I find that fascinating because as Kara Swisher pointed out on CBS Mornings this morning, the majority of people are not on Twitter.

23:05 As I've been saying for a long time now, I only know people that are in DC or in the media bubble or people who like to make a lot of noise that are on Twitter. I don't know anyone in my family. And I have a lot. I have teenage, you know, my nephews are teen boys, you know, pre-teens and about to go to college. They're not on Twitter. They think it's for old people and insiders. So explain to me the strategy here and why you see the consternation or the exuberation from some in the political sphere. But Twitter is for old people and insiders. Look, that's reality. Twitter is not the largest social network in the world, but it is, at least in our world, it's the most influential.

23:47 It's the most important social network. What Musk really bought was just like we had a celebrity president, now we have celebrity CEOs. He really bought himself influence and power. So it doesn't really matter that Twitter isn't the biggest social network in the world. That's not what the competition is. The competition that Elon is in is for influence. It's for power. It is to make himself the most buzzy CEO in the world. And he did that by buying Twitter. Yeah, that seems to be a general consensus. Also, he was bored. He had nothing to do. He wanted to do that. He put some of his, you know, Tesla in some light to moderate risk by doing this financing.

24:32 And not only that, but the reputation. Reputational risk. Right. I think it's if somebody. comes out with another EV, the government will be willing to work with them more than Elon. Yeah, especially since he's a non-with anti-Tesla. Who's understanding? Look who's, and it's all about narrative, right? Well, look who understand it makes your car. But also, I think he opened itself up to that. Also, the European Union is in the process, which you never know exactly how it works, but I guess it's kind of already there. Of passing the Digital Services Act. And they have made very clear that, oh, under Elon Musk, don't worry, man.

25:15 We're going to cut you off. There'll be no Twitter in Europe if you don't follow our rules. So there's all kinds of things that are going to make life very difficult for him, which again leads me to not believe that this is about a power play for him. I have a clip that I did not, that I played on no agenda. John couldn't hear it. So I stopped it. I want to play it for you. See if you can hear it. This is Jack Dorsey. It was a big conference, a Twitter conference, and he dials in Elon on video conference. And, you know, first he makes a joke. Like, if you hear, he says, hey, Elon. Hey, Elon, how are you doing? If you were running Twitter, he says, would you like to run Twitter? And, you know, joke, joke, joke, because this is from 2017 or something or 2019, a couple of years ago.

25:59 And then Elon is very clear what he would do to fix Twitter. And hopefully you'll be able to hear it. You might have to adjust your volume, your volume and stuff. Here we go. Give us some direct feedback. Critique. What are we doing poorly? What could we be doing better? And what's your hope for our potential as a service? Can you hear that? Yeah, he said he basically wants a critique. Yeah. I thought it could be better. Exactly. Okay, here we go. You're running Twitter. By the way, do you want to run Twitter? What would you do? I think it would be helpful to differentiate between real

26:41 and is this a real verified, like a real, not something like a verified text, but like, is this a real person or is it a botnet or a sort of troll army or something like that? You know, so maybe that's like you said, what are the comments from basically, how do you tell if the feedback you get is real or someone with a train manipulated system or probably real or probably trend meditate system? So some way to differentiate between this is a real person versus a, you know, someone trying to just gain a data system. So I don't know if you could hear that, but what he keeps coming back to the same. He can't tell who's real or not.

27:25 Yeah. He says, if you, his fix, and it's a real fix, it is, is to, you know, look, Twitter already has the verified badge, right? So now everybody will have to be verified. And when you log in, you will have to authenticate and you'll have to authenticate, you know, in some manner that shows it's not your secretary or your brother or an imposter, but it's really you. And that will remove 95% of all the problems of Twitter. And I think it removes 85% of the fun. I was about to say that because if everybody gets a blue badge, then what good it has to be? The game is over. You remove the how do we get this blue check kicked off Twitter?

28:08 I mean, that's the game. That is the game. Or how to how far? How tough am I going to do? How far can I go? Exactly. Right. But I think that. So let's, but for purposes of your preparation, I'm willing to go with any theory at this point. Okay. So I guess we need to get into the 4A free speech. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. There is almost no more contested phrase in America than free speech. In fact, freedom of speech has been, well, contested for millennia since the ancient Greeks first introduced the concept, at least in the Western canon, 2,500 years ago. And of course, the First Amendment to our Constitution protects freedom of speech, freedom of the press.

28:51 And in practice, well, it gets pretty complicated. As legendary reporter A.J. Leibling wrote in the New Yorker 1960, quote, freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. Pretty smart thing to say. It carried on for decades because we are now seeing that exact principle play out before us. This active desire to own a press, to control freedom of the press from some of the right, to control who gets to speak and how under the guise of free speech. That is what the celebration of billionaire Elon Musk buying Twitter is all about. Twitter. It's in Elon Musk's hands. Can you believe it? Count this one as a victory for free speech.

29:34 speech. And he may, in fact, save the town square. It could turn out to be a pivot point in our history. Elon Musk believes in free speech. He thinks everyone should be allowed to talk. People should be free to say what they want to say without just being shut down, silenced, and canceled just because it doesn't fit what their far-left narrative. They want everyone to be free to say what they want to say. Even if, in the case of Donald Trump, they use the platform to incite a deadly riot, like Trump did before he got kicked off Twitter. But okay, fine. Yeah, this is, I love, I love all these examples and this poo-pooing of the concept of free speech. Certainly on the

30:15 leftist media, it's really funny. And then the exuberance and the overjoyed nature of right-wing. Oh, it's Elon's saving. Joe Rogan had an orgasm. He's like, oh, Elon, he's going to save us. Like, oh, my. And Joe's a buddy. I got to call him out on that. I got to call Joe out on that. It's two camps on the and I'll just say the anti-democratic side or anti-liberal side is that one camp is just they're happy to see Twitter not they're happy to see people so upset over the acquisition of Twitter or the potential acquisition of Twitter and they don't really believe in Elon themselves but it's like yes

31:02 it's a part it's a part of the game it's like it's like you're playing uh call of duty and all of a sudden they change the game in your favor in your team's favor right and that's exactly what the symbolism of it sure uh but that's what makes it even more more bizarre is the counter narratives that that people are going against their own talking points you know um everybody's ready to stop on the dime of growing their own not say everybody but the people that say oh we need to go build our own we need to have our own we need to have our own space where we can say what we want to say right now that elon's quote unquote captured that piece for them they're ready oh let's run back to twitter you know yeah well the mastodon was up uh mastodon uh

31:48 usage uh increased a lot with with a lot of uh a lot of people who uh are definitely leftist which is kind of fun but you know it's like that that was exactly what they scoffed at with right with maga you know it's like well go build your own then you fools go see if that works and it doesn't it doesn't work i mean that's the funny thing about it it doesn't work it won't work for right it won't work for left that's why i find it fascinating the whole this whole thing so we got to keep keep the ball rolling all right we jumped over we already did fives um the most important part about twitter black twitter we had to talk about it um

32:29 this is the this is what showed the real how deep it went because like like maybe an hour after the the news broke la times wrote an article talking about elon mutton will elon musk kill black twitter you know that kind of thing and that let me know how valuable this acquisition is or potential acquisition to it to to the 2020 2024 you you they as you know they build these uh political uh campaigns out years and years in advance

33:09 no nobody accounted for twitter even being allowed to say some of the things that black people have been saying this thing you you thought black twitter represented not i mean like black thought or the average person when they went on twitter before you met somebody like me because well i'm not in black twitter i i wasn't they would never let me be there i wasn't i wasn't getting any black twitter the algos were not showing it to me they're like skip this guy but you you got it second or third hand so you will hear about it black twitter in the media of course yes so it was even more sanitized yes and

33:46 so that's true but that's everybody thinks so for okay let's go let's go back so we got tiffany cross here and i'm using a lot of ms nbc for some reason ms nbc nbc took this the hardest do you know what do you have for suckers yeah i mean because they're they were really hurt so we got tiffany cross here with michael harriot um he's a white white peopleologist on literally a white peopleology wait a minute who what is why people ologist so w-y p-i-p go to his um website website it's michael harry h-a-r-r-i-o-t michael Michael Harry.

34:31 You think I'm kidding? And it said the definition that professional who has specialized, specialized knowledge in the field of world-renowned whiteologist. Right. What is a white? Let me just see what this book is. I think it's people, people. White people. White people. Well, it's slang. Yeah, it's slang. It's not. Yeah. It's a black person. So is it? Yeah. Black person who studies white people or white people. Yeah. So the official definition on the website. I had to set this up because so you can hear what you're hearing. That's true. A professional who has specialized knowledge in the field of Caucasian culture, including the political, economic, and social habits of white people in their history.

35:17 I'm glad he knows me so well. I can't wait to hear what he makes of me. Number six. Talk to me about what you think this means for Black Twitter now that Elon Musk has taken over the platform. Well, you know, I guess we'll wait to see because we kind of don't even know if Elon Musk will really purchase Twitter. I mean, and I think, like, when we're talking about like Twitter and social media in general, we have to remember that it's not just like black people are cool and that's why they run Twitter. Like, you know, first of all, like black people hold three of the nine patents that created the personal computer and the cell phone.

35:52 And so, like, our intellectual property is what drives these, you know, vices and the phenomenon of cultural media. And I don't think that Elon Musk can stop that because he needs those black voices. Twitter knows it for the hire without us. Right. And they hire black creatives to kind of drive it toward our content. So they know that the valuation of their company, because you know, we can get into a conversation about how the valuation of all these companies is just. Wait, did he say that Twitter was hiring black creatives? Yes. Black creatives to kind of drive it toward our content.

36:34 So they know that the valuation of their company, because you know, hey, where's our money? Where's our check, Twitter? No, no, no, no. This will never ever be popular. Let's just be clear. I'm just kidding, Moe. I'm just kidding. You're just messing with the conversation about how the valuation of all these companies is just some imaginary numbers. I say you're worth $3 million. But if it is worth something, then it is because of black Twitter or the Black voices that drive social media. Yeah. And, you know, there are other communities on Twitter also, like the trans community on Twitter, the Latino community on Twitter.

37:16 A lot of different communities on Twitter try to, you know, create movements there. You always got to tie it back in. And that goes to show you wherever black Twitter goes, all those groups that she listed after it is like that black Twitter is the mama duck. Yeah. And all the other little groups, trans, every other group like that has to stay, they have to all work together because file of quote-unquote black Twitter. That's why I'm working at 80 episodes already. I've been working with you. My only mission is to get black Twitter to podcasting 2.0. That's all I'm in it for, Mo.

37:58 As you heard him say, they hire people. Twitter hire. They know. Yeah, sadly, we don't have any money to hire anybody. And just think, me and you, what we do is not taking one side or the other. That'll never be popular, no matter what the platform is. It's true. It's true. Yeah, because so this like now, half the people upset because you're not, you know, saying taking the hopium of Elon buying Twitter, you know, and then the other half may be like, you know, it's all, you know, it's really, it's really interesting in the past two and a half years, because I do think I'm pretty much, I mean, I, my personal thinking is more conservative than liberal, uh, but you know, I, I can, I can't objectively view things.

38:45 It's just it's so often so obvious where, where, you know, where things are where the right side is. But when it gets personal to someone, everyone's always laughing until it gets personal. You know, so everybody was, everyone laughs about all the jokes and COVID and everything. But then all of a sudden, if it's about Ukraine and I'm saying, yeah, okay, we've seen this movie before. You know, in fact, literally, I saw this in the video game. And, you know, not all, not all of this is real. Then people are like, wait a minute, I'm in Finland. This is pretty close by. You know, Russia's right here. And you guys, that's not funny, man. That's not funny. So I'm used to that. That's how it goes. But luckily, mature adult people cool down and come back.

39:29 And that's no place for Twitter. Not at all. Not at all. Twitter is the bar. You know, you go, it's like, you always wonder why all the games went to that one bar. It's like, have a bar fight. It's like, that's why you go there. You know what I'm saying? To tear the club up. And that's you want to go get some scalps. And that's both sides. That, you know, the screenshot of somebody blocking you or, you know, that kind of thing. Just to even say it goes in our vernacular. Oh, he has me blocked. It's a super fun game. It really is. And my wife, she's good at it. I love watching her play the game. And she knows she's playing the game. Especially when you get one hooked.

40:12 When you get one hooked. In my former years, I wasn't. I was a legit, like back in like 20, pre-20, 2016. Super troll. I was super troll. So when you get one hooked, it's no rush like it to see how many replies you can get out of it. I understand. Super troll mode. I had no idea. But that's why Trump did it, right? You know, just this is what the screenshot is. This is what the, you know, what they call quote unquote the clapback. I mean, which is why I can't understand why Trump doesn't see that this is a failed idea.

40:52 It's a true social. No, that's that. That's the layer. That's that's where you go and compare scalps after you understand after you come together. Yeah, but it's not, it's, it's not what he wants. Yeah, I understand. It's the, but you know, yes, exactly. But you know, you can go back to 4chan or Mastodon or whatever. You know, there's a lot of places you can go and look at your scalps, but the scalp-looking place is not where the action is. And Trump needs the action, and that's never going to get him the action that he wants. It would never be the bar. No, it would never, no, yeah, you can never, you know, so I mean, that's where these little pocket things are going to be, you know, for true social, where you can go back and show off your wares.

41:35 Yeah. I'm like, oh, I got blocked. You know what I'm saying? Call me a true social, you know, that kind of thing. So it's like, and then you come back to Twitter. And then the great thing about it is now you can, if he buys it and he uses that option, well, we might ban you, but not forever. So it's kind of now it's like it's like a prison sentence. Yeah, you get it. So you can show your scar. You see, show your stripes. You get an extra life. You get an extra life. You can re-res. That's what it is. Right. That's what it is. Yeah, sure. Oh, I can see all that. Yeah, totally. All right. Go ahead. No, that's it. Oh, so well, now we got to get into the background of what black Twitter is because, like I said, I've never, my brand of thinking is not welcome there for various reasons.

42:18 And it's a very, you have this. Well, let's just go ahead and get into it. And this is, I think, from PBS, Say It Loud. And this is the reason why hashtag Black Twitter exists. And it's totally awesome. All right, everybody. We all just heard what happened in the news. We have a 60-second window to react before another thing happens in the news. You create a hashtag that is scathing, culturally relevant, and hilarious all at the same time. You remix the footage so that it becomes a meme referenced more than the original source material. You patrol all news outlets so that when they speak of this day, they call us by name.

43:01 And you get someone fired. Someone like, like, should I get on LinkedIn? You know what? I fire me. Look, we'll give you a quick rundown, but we're not here to convince anyone that black Twitter exists. If you know, you know. We want to explore why it exists and what happens both online and IRL when culture and connectivity collide. Stay woke. As far as black Twitter's origins go, here's what we found. In February 2009, about three years after the platform's creation, the term first appeared in Google's search volume index.

43:43 That just means that someone somewhere tried looking it up enough times that Google started tracking that particular search. In October 2009, Pew Research Center reported that Black Americans use Twitter more than the other demographics polled. And in November 2009, writer Corey Sika published a short blog post titled, What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night? In it, he revealed his obsession with the unique way black users use hashtags. Obsession. Hmm. Obsession. And I've always stated that I think we're. that's the real value that we bring to America is our influence on culture.

44:27 I mean, you hear it in music, you hear, you see, you're seeing you see it hands down, hands down, hands down, no argument. So that you take that and you can weaponize that around or utilize that around a hashtag. Look at ADOS. I mean, when I talk about ADOS, I always have to let people know that hashtag and the power that it had and seeing the Democratic Party stamp out. It was so powerful. It was so powerful, they had to classify it as Russian bots. And that's the fear. And this is the fear that you hear from, who was that? Tiffany, Tiffany Cross and Michael Harriet. This is the fear. It's like, oh, now

45:13 we can't silence all the black people. Just like, you know, if you want a real cross-section of quote-unquote blackness, YouTube is a far better source than Twitter because they control what hashtags. And I've seen it, I've seen hashtags be suppressed and I've seen them be amplified. And this is a great control mechanism when you talk about activating, going back to politics to activate, you know, look at Black Lives Matter. That was a hashtag. And what correct me if I'm wrong, but did hashtags exist before Twitter? No, hashtags were a, excuse me. I followed this very closely because I was there.

45:55 Hashtags were an invention by the users of Twitter. And they just kept doing, you know, hash mark, which I'm not quite sure who coined the term hashtag. And that was just something users were doing. And then Twitter finally, it was like, I think it was two, well, two years into it. And people were taking big ownership of the platform. This is the genesis of Twitter, which is not often discussed, but it was very open. Any developer could go in and create an app or create a different version. Or, you know, you had these scheduling things, which you can still use today, but you could view Twitter in a different way.

46:36 It was really an interesting platform. So people took ownership. And then when the hashtag was finally recognized by Twitter itself, and then they made it searchable by hashtag, et cetera. That was, you know, that was kind of a very cool community thing that Twitter had done, recognizing that the users had contributed to the platform and built that out. It was quite astonishing. And it's still, and you got to remember, like, this is how old I am in a way, but I look at a hashtag and I still see pound sign. Yeah, of course. You know, like, I don't think kids or young adults understand that. Like, I mean, because like that was one of the symbols on the phone

47:20 itself. Bottom right. Bottom right touchstone pad. Yeah. So how ingrained it is. We talk about memes and symbolism. That, you know, that's ingrained in us as all of them. There were jokes at the time. I recall comedians making jokes about how the pound sign had been transformed to the hashtag. Yeah. I can't tell any of the jokes, but that's how culturally significant it was, this change was created. And for they're saying the quote-unquote black community, and it allowed what they call, see, black Twitter is not a place.

48:00 It's not really a thing. It's like an energy. You know what I'm saying? If something's going on and everybody, it's kind of like what Versus was. Remember, Versus? Of course. Now everybody was locked in. It was COVID. They said, okay, let's take some of our older black celebrities and let them have like a competition and how natural it was. No, nobody said, okay, no, a big rollout for Versus. You know, you see it on television shows or, you know, TV ads or radio ads. It was just kind of like, oh, it's the thing. If I may analyze from afar, Black America has always communicated through media. And hip-hop, of course, that was Black CNN.

48:44 And it was obvious. So, you know, MTV played a role in that. But really, it was more the original rap battles on the street. It was cassette tapes, passing them around, playing the shit loud in the car. Gang culture plays into that. But communication, since it's always been underrepresented in the media landscape, communication has always gone through self-invented means. And use the existing infrastructure. Yes. Whatever that is. Yes, exactly. You party lot from party lines to the sector. Yeah, yeah, I know.

49:25 I know this really well. And then they would mix the two together where you put the telephone with the radio. That way the callers could call in and get, you know, get the response. Oh my God, Saturday night or Friday night, everyone listening in their car. It's like, hot 97. Hey, Shaniqua. Hey, Shaniqua, how you doing? You know, and we are just out here. It's totally. It's a total feedback loop. Very even a shout out. I mean, shout out. The term shout out by itself was invented during the was popularized during the area era of Arsenio Hall, I think. Right. Shout outs and in the house, these types of things. So that's this black Twitter people may say, oh, no, that's just, it's not non-important.

50:10 No, because if you run a foul of that energy, you can get canceled very fast. That's why George Floyd was such a thing because you had this image, you had this video, and then they were able to, you know, channel that energy successfully. And they ran it into the hashtag Black Lives Matter. You know, that hashtag was sitting there kind of dormant in the in-between time, but that energy that was got behind the whole George Floyd thing was channeled through Black Lives Matter and gave it life again. So, and if you don't become a hashtag, that's the thing. That's the actual thing. It's like, do not become a hashtag. So I guess we can go ahead and move to part two.

50:51 And okay, that's that's how I think we stopped at not. Yeah, there was eight. Yeah, so this is part two of the PBS, The Reason Black Twitter Exists. Okay, let's go ahead and get into that. The following year, articles from Slate, The Root with Alternating Opinions, Gawker, and NPR all take notice of this phenomenon. Across the platform, about 500 million tweets are fired off per day. So how do individual black people come together to form black Twitter? Hashtags. That's what made black Twitter so innovative and disruptive. Its members used hashtags to talk about seemingly random, regular, not time-sensitive stuff with such veracity that it would trend.

51:32 Since that original Pew Research Center study in 2009, more people have researched what makes the internet such an active place for black folks. I oftentimes say that, you know, in my sort of research and looking at black Twitter and young people's use of Twitter, that they move from kind of power users to powerful users, right? And power users, right, are people who might use Twitter at an exceptional rate compared to other populations or segments of the population. But powerful is something different, right? Powerful is sort of used in a way to have social impact. And so in that sense, I think as people begin to understand the potential that social media provides in terms of a tool for connecting, a tool for building, a tool for communicating, a tool for organizing, that they're beginning to understand how to be powerful and not just power in terms of how they use the technology.

52:20 Trending topics were usually about current events, but you know your black if black moms be like and late night, you ain't hitting it right that Corey referenced in his piece were all forms of storytelling as opposed to updates. Okay. So that's that's the hashtag. And that's a pretty good explanation, actually. That's well done, PBS. Surprising. That was a good one. I found, you know, not to be cringy. Yeah. But of course they had to stay. But once again, that's why you hear you have to stay on message because I've said this a lot of times. The conservative, they are their party is created around principles and morals and that kind of thing.

53:05 The liberals is more a coalition of different agendas and they can step on each other's toes. This is the language that you hear of black and brown, or when they say black, they had to come back with the LGBT trends. It's like you got to give a shout out to the other groups because if you don't, then it can, you know, you, this is where you see kind of people, you know, looking to, you know, make sure their agendas are ripped or their hashtags are ripped. So I guess we can go ahead and get into 9 A. But I have to say, like, Black Twitter is probably the most robust in terms of engagement.

53:46 And it's something that so many people have asked me about. What is Black Twitter? Where is Black Twitter? If you don't know, it's not for you, probably. But I'll ask you this, though, because I know you're saying like we can't leave or we shouldn't leave because that's where we create change. But we could go to other platforms to do that. Because I think if he brings, opens this platform up to other people, you know, do you want to be entertained? entertainment for the white supremacists that are going to flood this platform again if he's going under free speech as you suggest? I'm not saying that we can't leave what we should have to leave. But where we're going to go because, first of all, there are a number of

54:25 where's this from? This is from MSNBC. And that's pretty unbelievable to say, hey, you know, Elon Musk, you know, I mean, what's implied, what she's saying is clearly his skin is fair complexion, so that means it's got to be white supremacists. He's bringing in. I mean, that's not. Oh, you didn't know that? No, no. He's the great liberator of white supremacist trolls everywhere. Well, that's so racist, late age. Supremacists that are going to flood this platform going under free speech, as you suggest. Well, I'm not saying that we can't leave what we should have. But where are we going to go? Because first of all, there are a number of people.

55:07 There's Black Planet, right? I got on Black Planet because you said you tweeted the answer is Black Planet. This is the most unlikely comeback that I thought would happen. You know, Isaac Hayes III has a whole platform that pays black creatives, right? So there are a number of platforms. Like, it's not like black people are out here just tweeting and saying we ain't going to create our own. We're creating our own. And so we can feed that because where we go is where people will go, you know, whether it's music or TV or all parts of the culture, right? So I don't think that we are like held hostage by Twitter, right? It's just the most popular black platform.

55:49 But wherever we go, we'll be the most popular platform. Yeah. Okay. So this is very interesting. I was unaware of Black Planet. I'm seeing it now. Oh, Black Panet Planet. That's old. That's what, maybe my late 20s? Yeah, but there's, it says right here, rebooting. Why reboot? Is it a re-emergence? Yeah, why reboot Black Planet now? It's rebooting because we recognize that this moment is an opportunity to come together. So it would never happen. You can't take your blue check with you. Go ahead, Beth. Well, that was what I was going to ask. Intuitively, I'm like, nope, that's not going to work. I can't explain why. But is there,

56:29 it feels to me like there's black Twitter works because of some certain confluence of features that make it work. And I think we could probably define what that is, the hashtag being a very important part of it. Is it possible at all, in your professional opinion, as a person of color? I can't even say it with a straight face. I try to say it with a straight face. What do you think? Is it possible? I mean, first of all, I know many people have tried with, you know, certainly YouTube, you know, oh, Odyssey, they're paying black creators.

57:13 Ultimately, it has to really be a grassroots. It has to be a thing that just you can't build this type of thing and say, oh, this is what black people will need. As far as I don't know why that is, but it is. It's just like with tennis shoes. Anybody can make a sneaker. There you go. But Nike will always be Nike because the brand that it holds. And you can't, the blue check, that blue bird. For the people that's talking here for that class, having that blue check is making it. That's the crowning achievement of them. And there's two things that you didn't point out in that clip.

57:57 She said, we're going to become entertainment for white trolls. Her biggest fear is being ridiculed. And this is why these people don't represent quote-unquote black people because they want to be in a safe space where they can throw things over the wall and not get the pressure back. Where, you know, if you stood on facts instead of talking points, it wouldn't be an issue because you're saying your story or your narrative would be airtight. Okay. Okay. So I just need to ask you a couple of questions because I think I know the answer now. So without a doubt, for black Twitter, maybe for all black American media communications, all

58:41 inter for black communications, because that's really what we're talking about. It's, you know, is how black America has, you know, it's always been through gospel. It's been through blues. It's been through predominantly music through old spiritual, you know, the whole thing. There has to be, I believe, an element of danger for. for it to work. And the danger can be, on one hand, you know, we're going to lynch you. Sorry to use trauma-based entertainment. But then there's the digital lynching, which is we, you know, we kick you off at Twitter. Canceling. Canceling. So I believe that in order for the community, but it's the same with hip-hop.

59:25 You know, it's like you push, you push the edge, you push the edge, you push the edge until, you know, so that so that you still are on the radio and you don't get banned from the radio. And do you think that that's true? Yeah, it has to be some kind of, and this is why these, and I'll speak specifically about the professional black Twitters, the super users that I think are power users. They don't understand. Like, you've been cradled by the establishment. You know, you don't want you notice. Nobody wants to smoke with me. And I'm not saying it like that because, and people that think like me, because we're based off facts and you'll get roasted.

1:00:08 So it's like, no, we want to stay in our little safe space right here, but we want to be provocative at the same time. It's this weird thing that they want to be safely provocative. Right. Like, you know, you can't punch me back, put on the kid gloves. But I can throw haymakers at you. And that's why you heard her say, we'll become entertainment for them. But they don't want a fair fight. But she's not black Twitter. Yo, she is. She see, black Twitter. How can I explain it? Black Twitter is the accepted blackness by the tech industry, the technical, techno-political industry. Okay.

1:00:50 Right. No, what I'm saying is not going to ever make it to black Twitter. Ados, you saw what they did to them. Did you see Black Twitter come in come step up for ADAS? No. No, no. They said they were Trump, they were Black MAGA and Russian bots. But Russian bots, right? That was the whole narrative. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Hold on. Hold on. Then back up now. So Black Twitter, maybe the hashtag. Okay. I think there's two different because there's got to be a Black Twitter, which is where I find Mo. I mean, that's there, right? Okay, I'll give you a perfect example. Black Lives Matter.

1:01:30 Brown people. Got it. Yeah. You see things that you're saying, like they see actual true injustice and they'll put Black Lives Matter on it. But hashtag Black Lives Matter Inc. is something totally different. And we're dealing with the inks out of Black Twitter. This is Black Twitter Inc. Okay. So, but what, but in the beginning, I believe, you know, we have to see how Black America influences the rest. And Black America in its purest form was using Twitter in a novel way and got a lot going. But then, as is typical, it was quickly captured because it turned into a safe space for the check marks.

1:02:09 Right. But it's still a battleground. They were actually elevated. Yeah. Okay, this is your, this is your safe. We know you're a safe Negro if we give you this blue check. You know what I'm saying? That kind of thing. That's what that was, especially when you got it came up through the Democrat. I mean, the, let me just not say Democrat. If you can't, what's the analogy for that? There must have been an analogy in the slave days for the safe Negro. That's, I mean, that was the old, well, but you ever seen Life with Martin? Yes, of course. Yes. Remember how the black guy was trusted to have the gun? Yeah. Notice the guard would unarm himself. Right. It's like, here, here, you got the gun. Now keep them in line. Right. All right. And he would tell him, I'm not that nice, boss. And I'm not nice as bosses.

1:02:53 That's kind of how black Twitter Inc. is. It's like, if you go say something like right now, if you were to go say something on black Twitter about, you know, saying, and I don't want to trigger anybody about abortions right now, the pushback will be so hard against you if you say anything against trans or, I mean, even to the point of like, I don't think kid, like Zaya Wade situation, I don't think you should, kids to be transitioning. Oh, you, you're not going to, they're going to come for you. They're going to call you misogynist. And that's why I said people like me would never be welcome there. All right. So just one more question. Where is Black America communicating then? Not black Twitter, but where is the real conversation going on?

1:03:33 I told you, YouTube gives you the best cross-section because you go all the way from the far to the far left and from Marxist to fascist almost to super modern to super traditional that you know and that's why that's why people gravitate towards YouTube the way they do right because I was confused starts on Twitter Twitter Twigger. Twigger. Black Twitter, now known as Twigger. Way to go, Mo. So you caught me. No, but it starts. The argument starts on Twitter. Then it goes to local news.

1:04:18 Then it comes to black YouTube for reaction. Right. This is. And that's why I said when a meme makes it to local news, that's means it's been successful. That's me. It's ready for the. So you had me confused earlier because I really thought, oh, okay, black Twitter is where Black America really communicates. Now I understand. That's what they want you to believe. It works. It works. Let me see what the black folks are thinking. Hashtag Black Twitter. Oh, they're pro. You're saying whatever this is. Then this is where the, you know, that, okay, you know, black Twitter is now Malcolm Nance going to Ukraine. I mean, that's what the CIA going to help fight Nazis.

1:05:01 Yeah. I mean, like, I'm shaping that in the media meme narrative. You know, that, because that was how you were laid out in the meme. It's like, when did black people start being supportive of XCIA going going to help Nazis fight? All right, I know. It's great. Yeah, that'll get zero likes. But that's why shadow banning is so just saying, just quickly touch on a topic, because you think you're saying something, but they put a, and you, it's like a dome around you. You're sitting here talking your head off, but that is nobody's actually seeing it because you don't know they're not seeing it. Originally, we called that the bozo filter. And that's back in the day, way before you were born

1:05:45 on forums. You had a bozo filter. So exactly that. Someone could be posting like crazy and saying all kinds of stuff, and you just flip the bozo filter on, and no one would see it. So hopefully we understand that black Twitter does not represent, black Twitter represents whatever is acceptable politically. Got it. And socially. You know, by the council culture. You know, and that's why with me, I say it again. I would never ever be allowed to give, you know, be given the boost of the algorithm. No, this kind of message, oh, no. No, I mean, that's, it's too, you can't, you can't box that in once you have people start thinking for themselves.

1:06:27 It's like, no, that's very dangerous. So let's go ahead and get into number 10. We wanted to know exactly how one becomes a member of black Twitter. Are there rules or at least consistent practices? So I reached out to my friend Kiana Tipton for help. She has a master's degree in Twitter. Well, actually, my alma mater didn't quite offer a master's in black Twitter, although sometimes I tell people I have a master's in black Twitter and nobody's checked me on it. So Black Twitter is not an actual space and it's also not a homogeneous group where everyone looks the same, everyone talks about the same things and everyone cares about the same things.

1:07:08 I think in order to participate in Black Twitter and to be a part of it, you have to have that cultural competency. Essentially, it mirrors in real life conversations that black people are. Oh, please tell me this is a white girl, please. Please. Oh, she's so. Oh, that's too bad. I almost thought that was perfect. That would have been perfect. Oh, listen to her. So some of those things are community call and response that is really common in black language. And of course, there's humor. And I think both community and call and response lend itself to that humorous aspect. It's not all fun and games on Twitter. Black Twitter consistently uses hashtag campaigns to organize around a social or political cause.

1:07:49 Say Her Name, created in Sandra Bland's honor, highlights the often hidden plight of black women affected by political injustice or police brutality. Mainstream media's tendency to publicize a victim's most stereotypical photos after an unarmed black person is killed sparked if they gunned me down. And of course, Black Lives Matter, which is now an international activist organization. Yeah. And if you see, remember She Will Rise from the last show? Yep. And who would they bring in? The same one, Oscar So White. And these things, like I said, these are astro turf. I want people to be very clear. These are the ones that somebody picks up the phone over, calls over to Twitter, hey, I need you to put some sauce on this one.

1:08:32 And it's like, okay, okay, yes, boss. And then they understand they let it. Nobody's saying Oscar so white. You know, and then the way, you know, they stamp out other ones and label them as like toxic, you know, that kind of thing. So it's control. Now, do you think that? Black America understands that this place is being controlled? What percent is all in and thinks this is groovy? Well, the average person is not on Twitter.

1:09:09 I'll say that first of all. The average black person is not on Twitter. Right, but that's actually worse because they get the local news version and they just go with whatever is being told. Correct. But they have the reaction to it and see if it's something that they think, like, okay, I'll give you a great example. Remember the Kente cloth? Yeah. Yeah. Right. You know, at first, the hashtag was like, okay, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Look at a slate. Slate. Slate. And it's like, and then when it hit, it was like, this is cringe. This is no good. Right. Yeah, they suppressed. They suppressed. They suppressed that. They suppress the anti-hashtags about that.

1:09:50 And then they go to play cleanup too and wipe clean, you know, the original post. Just memory hold them. For my edification from this clip. Call and response. Oh, it's like, can I get a hay? Can I get a hoe? Ho. You know what I'm saying? That's the. Okay. Wow, that's hard to do. And then, of course, the black humor. I feel like I can't keep up with that. Well, it's a lot of stuff is based in culture. You know what I'm saying? So you might have lines from movies. Yeah. And it's not like that. It's not the ones you see on trailers. It's like those funny lines. It's not like I'll be back. Yeah, no, not those.

1:10:37 Like, if somebody says, oh, yeah. Well, they tend, but I keep them clean, though. Or my classic. Damn, Gina. Does that still work? Or is that? No, that's that's that's a that's that's a good one. That's a boomer. That's a boomer one. No, not really because the other one like what's up? You know what I'm saying? You said that one that's still good. That's still good. What's that? No, it's that's cringy. So I just want to say that will be the catch line from the show. So everybody would know that one. But you know what I'm saying? If I say you ain't got no job, man, you know what I'm saying? They know that, oh, that's talking about Tommy. You know what I'm saying? Like from Marty. So this is the timing thing. And it's also when you somebody say, say, can I get a hay? Yeah, you're late with the hay.

1:11:18 Then you're saying it's like, you're like a half a beat. Wait a minute. That's almost like church, though. Church is also like all kinds of callback stuff. It is. Hold on a second. Yeah. I like it. That's exactly right. That's the interaction. You know, and that's the that, like I said, that's what makes it the living spirit of it. And that's, I don't know, that's our people just bring that to the table. I don't care what it is. We, just like I tell people all the time, like the turntable. When they sit down and made the turntable, they didn't make it for scratching. They didn't know that. That's not exactly. Exactly. You know what?

1:11:58 Yes. Make a turn show we can scratch on. No, it's like, okay, here. And then somebody got a really nice turntable and it had, you know, the anti-reverse on it. And like, like, okay. Right. But, you know, when Kanye first got the Roland 808 drum machine, he did shit with it that no one had heard either. Right. You know, now, even the sampler or the drum machine itself. Yeah. The drum machine was not meant to, that was actually, so if you didn't have a drummer, you could set a beat, you know, and you could play the guitar, you would piano, whatever to it, until the drummer got there. Yeah. And it was like, no, let me get that. Let me hold that for you. You know what I'm saying? And like,

1:12:42 that's what I, that's our superpower is to take something and make it make it do something that you haven't seen. TikTok, look at TikTok dances. Yeah. These kind of things. And this is where cultural appropriation and culture vulturing comes from. Like, you can have an appreciation for the culture, but when you come in and take it, and the funny thing is, we have a, not these going on a tangent, but we say, okay, take that. We just create something else. And we're like, okay. Well, but when you say take it, what do you mean? I mean, it's when you mean, so, okay, so white people are now doing the dance on TikTok. That would be taking it. Yeah, because they don't bring, I know it's not the same, but

1:13:26 you can't be mad about it. I mean, it's that it's actually a really sincere form of flattery. Well, just they take it to music for a second. It's like when you have your favorite band, right? With like Nirvana, like the people that were day one Nirvana fans. Like when they blew up and went like nuclear, you know what I'm saying? Celebrity. Mm-hmm. they would have the same thing. Like, take it. I know you're going to make it commercial. I know you're going to take the, you know what I'm saying, ruin it. You know, you're going to corporatize it. So it's like, take it. Not like you're stealing something. You know what I'm saying? It's just like here. Now you're like, like all music. Like, look at.

1:14:06 But that's, that's kind of my point: is that when you say, well, then, then they take it. I'm just saying that's how culture works. I mean, and America is a beautiful, better place for it. I don't think that's something that needs to be paid back or, you know, look, you know, the turntable came from some white dudes. And, you know, actually, it came from a white dude, Thomas Edison. So it's building on top of that. I'm talking about the trigger to podfather. When somebody takes your invention and says, we can monetize it. No, that doesn't bother me that way. No, no, I'm saying, like, you, you know, it's like, it's not meant for that.

1:14:51 Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. No, that's fair. But, but it, yeah, okay. That you got me on that one. That's a very good. That's a very good analogy. That gives me something. It's not meant when you hear somebody does a corporate podcast. You know, it's cringe. It's like, no, no, no, no, it's not. No, no, no. That's, that's, that's not. You had the right example. Okay. And the right example was trying to monetize podcasting in all these crazy ways. That's the right example. Now, for me, I think it's a very good example because I'm not mad. I just go, I just shake my head. Like, it's not going to work. Good luck with that.

1:15:33 And I think that's probably. What else do you say? I'll listen to you. You can't monetize them. No. They never talk to me. No. They never come talk to me. So that's like the guys that created something. It's like, but they never come talk to us. Right, right. But just want you to understand that I don't feel like someone took something. I'm happy. I'm pleased. I'm just always flabbergasted that no one ever comes to talk to me. But I'm not angry. I'm just saying that when it comes to culture and how it's created and how things are built on top of each other, even if they stray completely from the original intent and idea, I'm okay with that.

1:16:17 And I think that it enriches everybody. And it's really good. Just like I detected from you a little, hey, you know, you're taking our stuff or it's cultural. It's almost like saying cultural appropriation. That's how it felt. There is a cultural appropriation and there are culture vultures because when you take something, that's why I use podcasting. The people that make these corporate podcasting platforms, they don't care anything about podcasters. They don't care anything about podcasting. It's like, how can we profitize this? And it's like, it's not meant for that. Just like with Bitcoin. You know what I'm saying? Like when people come in and try to use it for a

1:16:59 asset or a monetary vehicle. Okay. Okay. So we're talking about two different things. That's changing the use versus hip-hop and Eminem. Right. Eminem generally accepted because he respects the craft. He respects the craft, but he's not from the culture per se, but he built on top of it, brought his own culture to it, and I think has enriched everybody in the process. So that to me is like, so if it's TikTok videos, I think that there are some people who do it with, there's a lot of people who do it with the same vigor, the same idea.

1:17:43 And then there's a whole section that doesn't that is just laughable. Well, it's some people that do things that are not appreciation. It's more like a mockery. And that's where that's that fine balance, you know, of how people can make certain movies. Like Quentin Tarantino, he's allowed to make certain movies because people believe that he does it in an artistic way. Where you're saying, other people might not be able to get away with it. So not to be able to point, but that's, I think this is the crux of everything: are you in it for the appreciation of it? Are you in it, you know what I'm saying, for a cash grab? And that goes for whatever. I mean, we have it like YouTube content creators.

1:18:26 You know, it's just people that want to play the numbers. They don't really care what they talk about. They just, whatever the latest story is, you know, I'm going to talk about it because this is what, you know, it's good monetarily. I really like this because that to me, that's the beauty of value for value and the streaming payments because I want anybody. to come up with any crazy idea from any culture and immediately have a monetization model built right in. So that no one has to worry about someone. And because inherently, I hope all the stuff is completely not brand safe. That's the only good stuff. That's why I think it's perfect for people just to experiment.

1:19:10 The next thing that comes up, we won't have to worry about, okay, well, how do we pay for it? Let's bring this conversation full circle, right? Everybody has a number to sell out. I'm going to just be honest with you. Everybody has a number. Twitter was $44 billion. Like, don't get it twisted. You know what I'm saying? They didn't want to sell, but Elon knew their number. And that's kind of like the same thing with, you know, that's why people get so mad at the corporation. It's like, you gave him a number he couldn't resist. Right. And that was the whole, that was the whole David Chappelle thing. Like, they'll come by me. You know what I'm saying? Like, this, yeah. He was, it was said in jest, but,

1:19:52 you know, when they put the 50 million on the table, he knew up front it was going to be bad when he signed it. But it's just like, but then luckily, you know, he came to his senses, you know, but that's, that's what they mean by, you know, taking something. When you put something on the table where even like with the Democrat, like we're talking about now, a lot of these people know better on black Twitter, but that check is good. They check, you know, saying, and they go and spew the talking points that they do. And a good example of that, we can get into, it's a throwback clip from show 18. This is Joy Reed with Shireen Mitchell. And this is just show you how they know better, but they'll do whatever they got to do or saying for the bag.

1:20:37 So it's the indication that they are someone who was born and, you know, as a descendant in the United States, who is representing Black America and has the vernacular and the language that people would believe is someone who's a part of our community, who's either debating about Camilla or debating about because that's just announced and trying to say, we know who's the most, you know, who's black in America and making sure that they are, you know, sort of talking in this vernacular that makes it look like that they are in supply of American. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I did see a huge uptick in bot activity when it came to what Kamala Harris announced. Like it just dropped like a bomb. It just happened really quickly. And she was accused of being not

1:21:22 really black. Not really black. And that kept going. You could see that happening. But actually, there was an uptick of those bots just before she was about to announce. So they were preparing for her announcement. Hey, just before you... I really love this show. I really appreciate our conversation that we just had was one of the most open, honest, racial conversations I think I've ever heard myself. I really appreciate this. I do too. And that's why this, you can't, you can't make this in a lab or a boardroom. No, that's that's why we take an oath of poverty. Exactly. That's the thing is, and it's not for me. I

1:22:08 don't want to be controlled. And that just, you're saying, just to let it shine some light in that that was the whole thing with the shot with me. Like, no, you can't have that. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's certain parts of me, no, you can't have that. You know, and it's belief in self. And you heard that in all the past clips with us, Tiffany Cross. It's like, where are we going to go? You know what I'm saying? Like, what do you mean where are you going to go? Either you stay on the platform and you get crafty enough where you dip, duck, dodge, and dive. You know what I'm saying? The censorship. Or you're saying, I'll make a stellar product where I'm saying people just might be naturally gravitate and love to share it. Or you go build your own. But that's the thing.

1:22:51 They want to be handed something that comes at price. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so just getting back to this clip, they know better. If they're truly tapped in and Joy Reed enjoys black Twitter and the support it gives, you know what I'm saying, her. If they knew like they said they knew, they would understand, okay, Kamala seems like an Obama 2.0 and Obama didn't really do anything for us. So that's maybe why some black people are upset with her. But just to come out and say, oh, no, it's Russian bots. That's because they were told to say that MSNBC signs her check to tell her to say, oh, you know what?

1:23:36 We're going to push these Russian bots. I am extremely. extremely grateful to Joy Reed because this very clip is what brought Adam and Mo together. Right. Because I was struggling with what is this bots and descendants of slavery, and I was trying to figure it out. And I was talking about it with John. You know, it's like, I love John, but he's not gonna, he's not gonna help me with this. Uh, and then that's when you reached out to me. And the fact that you picked up on the hashtag DOS. Yeah. See, that was the, and it was like, no, it's this is refined because we're talking about descendants of American slavery.

1:24:18 Right. It's more. See, they're okay with DOS. Of course. Yeah. That's why it reached you. It's like the ADOS, though, that's problematic because that fractured the whole Caribbean and African block. Right, right. You know, that we're building in. And that's where that goes to show you the Twitter filter right there. It's because you got DOS, but you didn't get ADOS. Yep. And if you went and got it from the mainstream media, such as this, you'd be like, oh, they're Russian bots. Well, that's what I that's why I smelled it right away. I'm like, no, no, no, something's going on. What is this Russian bot shit with ADOS? Yeah, it was good. But interestingly, you reached out, but also Antonio Moore, the hashtag ADOS people. Right.

1:25:01 Very interesting. And the thing was with them, I would just say, this is my critique of the ADOS that downvoting that it didn't meet the litmus test of the people. See, this is the power of like when you have a true callback, you know, that kind of thing, or you listen back to the, you know, what the sentiment is, you would say, okay, this down vote thing, that was dumb. Like, you know what I'm saying? That, that, just admit to it and get, but if you stand on, it's like, well, you, it's not like you're still trying to get us to vote. And we don't have nothing tangible on the table. So that's just going to show you how even organic hashtag can

1:25:41 run into trouble if you don't stay true to the message. Okay, so let's go ahead and get to let's go ahead and play 13. And then you're saying, because I want you to hear the talking for people. It's just another throwback clip. But I think it's important to hear them being negative towards things that can only be seen as positive. Because if we know, as we've seen, that the ones who are the most valuable to the Democratic Party is black women. We have identified at least five existing campaigns that are focused on getting black people to do only one thing.

1:26:18 What not vote for the Democrats. And can you name one of those five campaigns? I mean, we put up from the report that you're saying that there's a conversation about reparations that has to do with it. There's a criminal justice conversation. There's an immigration. Reparations, immigration, and sorry, reparations, immigration, and anything that has to do with the criminal justice system. So the reason that the targeting of Kamala around being a cop is important is because anything that hinges on criminal justice becomes a divisive issue. Seriously, we're out of time, but how can people tell the difference between the real genuine thing of Black Lives Matter and the ones that are just designed to make you not vote?

1:27:01 How do you even tell? So you could tell right away by the language that they use most of the time. But if you see anyone who says basically tangibles or you're not getting our vote without us getting something back, you should start to pause and take a better look at what they're saying. Better look at those accounts and seeing what they're saying. Come on, Vladimir Mo. I know you're a Russian bot. These are things that you're saying. You sell for your vote. Just imagine. I love that. That's you. That's you. They just described you. Exactly. Thank you. Yeah. And I, but I couldn't imagine if they say they're tapping into the sentiment of the people like they say they are to say if it says tangibles that's probably a bottled.

1:27:48 Yeah. That's that's that's not real. Or we want something for our vote. No, no, no, that can't be. That can't be a real black person. No. Imagine the mental gymnastic you have to do to make that work for you in your mind. So speaking of that, so we can go now to the second setup I found or second set of clips I found from the root. And this is how black Twitter changed the world. Think back on your favorite Twitter moments of the past decade. I got beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes. Human! Why are you always lying? But OBT because it's never enough. What do they all have in common? Melanin. Today's baggage, Black Twitter.

1:28:32 Where do politics means? black culture, and activism come together online? You guessed it. Black Twitter. Black Twitter is Twitter. It's a congregation, a community. Church. Heck, I'd argue that black Twitter is the most popping space on the internet. But what kind of legacy has it created? Now, where can I find someone who's an expert in all things Black people? Yadam. Professor Meredith D. Klux, pretty much a Black Twitterologist.

1:29:10 When people try to juxtapose Black Twitter versus, let's say, mainstream Twitter or just Twitter, the assumption that they're making is that white users and the people who created Twitter are the default. And so whatever white users are doing, that is mainstream or regular Twitter. And we know that that just isn't so. Black Twitter makes Twitter what it is. It is what drives the pithy conversations. Hmm. I'd love to see numbers. I'd love to, because I think that there's also a Latino Twitter, a French Twitter, a German Twitter. I mean, there's all kinds of Twitters that we don't see, which are segregated.

1:29:53 Well, see, here's the thing: every one of those groups you named are equally distributed across the left-right political spectrum. Or at least 30, you're saying 30, 70, 60, 40, that kind of split. The fact that this is where I'm saying, black people, the fact that it's a code, you know what I'm saying? It's an unwritten code of how, you know, okay, you know, we look out for each other, that kind of thing. And then you factor that in with that code has been hijacked and weaponized and also politicized to say, if you don't agree with this, if you don't say if you don't like Obama, if you don't like, you know, what they're filling the blank, then you ain't black.

1:30:42 Like the Joe Biden thing. Yeah. Vote for me. You ain't black. So that's why I think it's more stringent. And then the fact that it's manufactured to be that way. Because just like my whole point of Twitter itself being AP, black Twitter is the black journalism. It's the black AP. So, so that's how they're very influential. Got it. Yep. Makes sense. Soup is not only influential to 2022 and 2024. See, because they said that black Twitter is the most impactful or whatever words you use on the on the internet.

1:31:21 No, you black YouTube is. And then I'm telling you, because you get a far more balanced distribution. And you find that you're on sides with other people saying with people that you might not on certain topics, but other topics you can hear from them. Right. It's a whole different system. It just works completely differently. Yet they have a common algo of recommending. And that works really well. Okay. I understand. I'm down with it. Yep. I got it. And so black Twitter is also the most manipulated part of Twitter. Oh, it's man. It's a restaurant refined narrative. And I'm going to give you an example with these three.

1:32:01 We might not listen to all three, but I just want to hear you see how an example of a rogue hashtag and how it's handled by black Twitter. And this is going back to 53, show 53. And this was the hashtag blame black men. Also, I'm going to talk about black men today. Hi, Larie. Hi. I love black men. Mary is a lovely one. That's one of my favorite topics. Hold on. Some of my best friends are black men. Friends of black men. Jamal Hill tweeted something out. And I think it's time for us to have a conversation.

1:32:40 I've been nibbling around the edges of this conversation. We're going to have it today. So Jamal Hill, she said, she tweeted this yesterday. I've increasingly found that black men, oh, excuse me, I've increasingly found that many black men just want better access to patriarchy. They don't actually want it dismantled. And when I saw that tweet trending and she was trending, I said to myself, is this helpful? That's the first thing I said. Why? Why? Why? Why? And then that started a blame black men hashtag. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember this show. You bet. And that was after the whole, this was the show 53 was 2020 vision.

1:33:24 And this was around the whole Ice Cube thing. But they blamed us for everything because on one side, the you know, the mainstream media was saying, Oh, black save us, Democratic Party. And the only thing that could really ruin it for us is the patriarchy-loving black men, right? These misogynists, and just once again, they have its own brand of misogyny called misogyny and war. Uh, so it's like misogyny and the war mixed together. So, black misogyny is what it represents. But as I was processing it, I said that this narrative bolstered by the Ice Cube's 50 Cent P.

1:34:09 Diddy conversations has and there have been several women. I'm not, you know, gonna get into those names saying these things. Is that the only black men she knows? No, that was the ones that, no, no, that was the defectors. Remember that that's the ones that were pushing the Trump's tax cut. Ice Q was like, let's go talk to Trump about, see what I'm saying, see what the platinum plan had. Oh, yes, the platinum plan. Oh, man, that was so hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 50 Cent stepped down the line and said, I'm not paying 60 something percent taxes. Joe Biden tripping, that kind of thing. So, this is this is why she's laying their names out. Right, I remember now. Yes,

1:34:51 I just remember Trump's platinum plan. That was fantastic. How hilarious was that? Yeah, great marketer. Women, I'm not, you know, gonna get into those names saying these things about black men in particular. I'm saying to myself, Why is this happening? Why are you doing this? Why now? Why? And you know, why was it necessary? So, apparently, she was having some conversations with somebody and then went to the Twitter sphere. And I'm saying at some point, we're gonna have to have Twitter discipline. All things are permissible, all things are not beneficial.

1:35:29 This was not beneficial, and here's what it does: because let me just be 100% clear: black men are important, black women are important, all black people are important. You know, like it's silly for us to have these conflicts and they're not real. So, let me just give you the real: here's the real: the real deal is there's no war between black men and black women. There seems to be on social media a very, very small, minute, very loud faction on both sides doing this thing. Now, is it beneficial? No, it's not. As a matter of fact, it is detrimental to the things that we want to get done.

1:36:14 Ooh, stop doing that, and that's to get Biden elected, just to give people for things we want. And this is why she's so torn up over this is because, like, don't you see we need all the votes combined? You know, these wedges is going to ruin it for you know, the uh, for the chance of Joe Biden to get elected. You're hearing this, so that's the spectrum that she's looking through to say, and there is a gender war, don't no doubt about it, and it's not just only in black people saying with black people, but it's it's far more um

1:36:52 impactful, I would say, because when you factor in poverty, then you factor in the family court system, how it leans heavily. This goes this goes back to no man about the house, exactly. But, but for some odd reason, no, actually, no, we've dealt with the black man, we just we could kill him and then martyr the black man. Now, we're just now everything's the white man's fault, but at the same time, they have to do things like this, they have to do things like Joyanne Reed that some white man somewhere is telling them what to say. Yes, and it's like, okay, so and this is what goes back to the point about like taking

1:37:37 from us. This is the, this is the, I'm gonna say it, and if people might get mad at me, I don't care. You can't cancel me. A lot of people feel like the white power structure have taken our women. Oh, I understand that. The same way we say about taking our culture, they have taken our and let me flesh that out when you look at the Supreme Court justice, when you look at Kamala Harris, when you listen to these women talking, Joyanne Reed, you will give the perception that they're going to side with white supremacy, the real white supremacy, the one world government, white supremacy over their own men.

1:38:19 And we should just shut up and, like, okay, I'm going to do what Master tell me to do, and you just shut up and be. be okay with it. And a lot of men, like, no, I'd rather be alone. And this is what this is the whole root of the black gender war. Now, I can't speak for any other gender war. I mean, I know there's some commonalities, but let me understand. Let me play this back to you. So, you just mentioned a whole bunch of black women who are not ADOS. So, when you say taking our women, do you mean taking the identity of the women? Or literally taking the identity. That's what I got it. Yeah, so by saying Kamala, Joy Reed,

1:39:01 the British names. It's like, yeah, you're from Island, from Caribbean descent. Not exactly the same thing, yet you're representing ADOS women. Exactly. Got it. Okay. That's 100% true. And the ideas that come with that. I mean, like, because it's a set of ideas that black men shut up, get to the back, you know. Well, also, by that logic, they took the presidency from you. Yes. Because Obama was not ADOS. Exactly. Still isn't to this day. It's not going to change. He's still the president. It's not who we are.

1:39:43 So I guess let's go ahead and wrap up this last clip and then we can thank some people. Everybody's blaming black men for Trump, right? I'm going to give you the actual numbers. Here are the numbers. Black men with college degrees, 78% of black men with college degrees voted for Hillary Clinton. Hillary R. Clinton. 78%. Larie, I'm not good at math. Is that like the vast majority of black men with college degrees? All right. Oh, black men with no college degrees, 82% of black men without college degrees voted for Hillary Rodden Clinton. 11% voted for Trump. 16% of black men with college degrees, which I think is interesting.

1:40:28 Because that's a whole other conversation that we should have at some point, too. But they're different conversations. You know, it's not all. And we're doing this lumping in like all black men. No, no. Matter of fact, 78% with degrees voted for Hillary. 82% without degrees voted for Hillary. Now, in juxtaposition of black women, 91% of black women, 91% of black women with college degrees, 6% of those same black women voted for Trump. So let's just, you know, I don't know who y'all are. You know, I want to shame you. Woman with a college degree, 6% of you voted for Donald Trump. But yes, that's your right. You know, it's your right. You know, we are free people.

1:41:09 We're free to do dumb things. Are we? Are we? But don't you dare do that again. Are we free people? Is anybody free, Mo? Is any people free? Yeah, we are. That's right. That's right. That's right. Exactly. First, the white man and the black man have to be able to sit down at the same table. The white man has to feel free to speak his mind without hurting the feelings of that Negro. And the so-called Negro has to feel free to speak his mind without hurting the feelings of the white man. Then they can bring the issues that are under the rug out on top of the table and take an intelligent approach to get the problem solved. That's the only way that they'll ever do it. Exactly what we do here.

1:41:53 And as we've discussed throughout the show, this is a value for value production, which means we have taken that vow of poverty. There is no way that walking down the middle, walking down the middle of the aisle, is a very profitable business. But that's also not why we're doing it. We're here to learn and here to make things better. You just heard the legendary words of Malcolm X saying that that is the only way, and that's exactly what we've chosen to do. Now, we do have bills to pay. And as you know, Mo has stood up for himself and chosen this life over the virtual servitude to the man, including something he did, a medical procedure he did not want.

1:42:39 And I'm patently unhireable, so help, please. Thank you. You could do that by going to MoFax.com and going to the donation page or directly to that page at MoFundMe, M-O-E-F-U-N-D-M-E dot com. And we'll talk about the way to do it in a modern podcast app in a moment. So let's thank our executive producers for episode number 80. And we kick it off with, well, our big baller for the day. This is Sir Vince. $400. And we really appreciate that. He's the Baron of Flora Obama. And he says, keep up the great work.

1:43:19 We appreciate it. Sir Vince. Aug Fomp Arts, O G-F-O-M-K. We've seen this name pop up in several shows. $200, paying attention to everything. Augfomp.com supports MoFax, O-G-F-O-M-K.com. Check it out. Since we missed the show, we have a couple of doubles, so we've added those up. By the way, Mo, if I can just compliment you, I think the show has really turned a corner. We now have color coding on the spreadsheet. This is improvement. He's professionalized. I'm very impressed. I like it a lot. Michael's a pivot as I say was here.

1:44:01 Careful. Careful. Slow down now. Ramon Lerma comes in with two donations, $100 and $25. So we combine those to $125. Appreciate it. And he says, thank you, Mopes. This $100 from Derek Hawkins is from Derek Hawkins, who asked me to help send money to produce the show. This is Derek's first donation. Oh, okay. That's nice. So please D-Deadbeat him. Congratulations. You're no longer a deadbeat. And then he also says the $25 is for me. The next few months are going to be tight, but I'll promise I'll come in higher in the summer. Appreciate what you and Adam are doing, Ramon Lerma. So we should make at least, we'll put them both on the list.

1:44:42 I want to make sure we get Derek in there since it was, after all, his donation. Yeah, and that's, I think combining them was probably the wrong thing to do in high school. Yeah, but that's okay because they're brothers helping each other here. So it'll work out. And it's time to start calling out Deadbeat. So that's the Deadbeat Deluxe. You want to premiere that? The Deadbeat Deluxe. Oh, wait. Yes, I do want to premiere that. It's the Deadbeat Deluxe, actually. Sorry. Nice. I got to find a spot for that on the jingle rack. We move on to Lacey Romo with 111 for the Facts Family Projects.

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1:46:09 Everybody's doing well. So you're in the hustle. I'm hustling every day. Getting highly. You know what? Can I share a quick story? I'm going to make it short. Of course. So I'm going to meet the rep for the business I'm working for. You know what I'm saying? And he's just there for orientation. And I show up like 15 minutes late. Imagine that me being like. No, no, no, no, no. That's so stereotypical. Don't say these things. Right. So I walked through the door and he's like, like, when I say six o'clock, I mean, like, kind of like, I mean six o'clock. And I was like, you know what I'm saying? Hold on a second. I was like, I invested in my own business so I could be 15 minutes late. And like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that feels so good. Exactly. Isn't that nice? I know.

1:46:53 It's worth every penny. It's worth every penny where you can be able to say, not in a bad way, but just like, oh, whoa, whoa, I don't have no bosses. I don't have no bosses. Easy. I had my own experience like that. Now, I've been my own boss for well over 15 years. And I love it. And so recently I had one of those moments myself where for a whole bunch of reasons of where I was living at the time, for over a decade, I've been getting up at 5 a.m. twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays to do the No Agenda show. And that's just for the prep and I need to do it on the day of, et cetera. And I finally said, you know, this is crazy. It's like, I'm the boss of me.

1:47:34 It's a podcast. I want to get up at seven. Because, you know, what happens is you get up at five two days a week. You get up at five every day. It's something about men, too. It's like, that's it. We got one time and we program it in our brain and that's what we do. I want it to be seven, you know? And I said it. I wanted to be, and, you know, people push back, like, oh my God, you're going to upset the balance of the universe if we can't listen live. Hey, I live in India. That sucks. It's too late for me. And I said, no, I am my own boss for a reason. I want to get up at seven. I'm moving up towards 60 years old. And you're able to do that. And it's great. Now, it's still a vow of poverty. So,

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1:52:59 All right. So kind of laid out the Elon Musk thing. And well, I feel like it's an important move because I think this could really shape which way this. this country goes. You know, I mean, and that's not, and I'm not being overinflated when I say that. We're teetering right now. Well, what's interesting now that I understand black Twitter and the manipulation and how powerful it is, certainly what it did with Black Lives Black Lives Matter Inc. I wonder if Elon Musk understands that mechanism.

1:53:44 Yes, he understands how powerful it is. Yes, I'm sure he understands. He sees how it drove Black Lives Matter. But I'm not sure if he completely understands the whole mechanism as we just discussed in the last two hours. I don't think so, actually. I don't think a lot of people do. And not just to toot our horns, but I think it's when you get caught in the echo chamber, you believe black Twitter is black representing of representative of black. Exactly. Exactly. And then you hear people like this guy. So this is a power user, Ellie Mistal. Are you familiar with him? Name rings a bell, but no.

1:54:25 I'll give you an image. A black guy with a big white afro. Oh, that guy. Oh, yeah. MSNBC. Oh, I love to hate that guy. He's a hate watch. Yeah, so number 20. I can't even get it out. Go ahead, 20. My next guest has committed to making a few changes over the next 50 weeks. He's listed his goals for all to see, but the one that got me listening is the last one. He says he's going to avoid Twitter fights with white people he doesn't respect over issues that they don't understand. And my friend is here to talk about that with us today. Welcome back to Ellie Mistel, justice correspondent for the nation and social media sage.

1:55:10 I would love for you to just start off by, you know, as one of the most prolific voices, I believe, on social media, talk to us about your strategy for using those platforms to have conversations. Yeah, it's going so poorly for me in my attempts to keep my blood pressure down from engaging with these fools on social media. But let's start at the beginning, right? Like, why do I do this at all? Right. And a big part of the reason why I am vociferous and bombastic and always kind of ready to throw down and throw hands on social media is because I have a platform and thus I believe a duty to do it, right?

1:55:52 There are a lot of people who agree with me. There are a lot of black people, especially in professional environments who cannot say the kinds of things that I can say to these people because they have to worry about their job. They have to worry about their paper. They have to worry about the boss that might be listening, looking over their shoulder. There are lots of good reasons why lots of smart black people, smart lawyer-type black people cannot go all in on these people. I can't. Huh, this guy, smart, dedicated. This guy has very little background. I mean, Harvard. Very little backbone. Why you're

1:56:39 yes, but it's really interesting. Where's this guy from? He fell out, and one of those other people fell out the sky. Well, his wiki page reads like, interestingly enough, a spook. I mean, it doesn't even have where he grew up. I mean, they're always trying to get that balance right. Him and Malcolm, you mentioned his name before. They're not the same. Malcolm Nance, they showed up about the same time. And he's like being pushed as the authority of the Constitution. Yeah, which means it's trash. Yeah, his book is Goggles Curry. He thinks his book is

1:57:24 like, so he's on the front of his book cover, and he has his big white afro. He looks like a toe stool off of Mario Brothers. And yeah, I'm roasting him for the simple fact is he goes out here like he represents all black men. You know where he's from. You know where he's from? Where he was born? Where? Where do you think? Quantico. Haiti. See? Has anybody realized, and this is not, this is no distance in the non-ADAS, non-foundational black people in America? Because we have a lot, way more allies than detractors. But do we see an overrepresent?

1:58:04 overrepresentation of in the media of non-yes, non-As? Yes, yes, of course we do. And that's because they either don't. When I was saying about Joy and reading the other clips, there's something inside of me that wouldn't allow me to say those things and portray black people in that way, knowing how they were done with COINTELPRO, knowing how the Panthers were done. Putting aside how this Panther was put together, but just talking about the media, the illustration, how they were illustrated in the media. But I think they lack that in some ways. Yes. Well, they're phonies.

1:58:48 They're just phonies. Yeah, they're phony. They're imposters. And you have this guy coming up here. He represents, like I said, Black people and he goes on Black Twitter. But you've noticed he was very specific and even, you know, saying, oh, the professional. No, this is that Boogle Age. It's that blue. Here's the question, though. So I'm looking at older pictures. This white pro is a new deal for him. It is. And I'm going to go to that. I'm going to continue with the rose. I have learned so much about black. I'm so proud of black. A white-headed black man is often seen as less threatening.

1:59:31 See, Uncle Ben. No, Benson's not going to be able to do it. How about Benson? Benson. Yeah. That's that all white. You say he has no facial hair, no hints, no, nothing, a semblance of masculinity. And I'm not, like I said, he put himself in this position to say he speaks for me. So this is my critique of somebody that said that they speak for me. No, you don't speak for me. And I don't speak for all black men. That's why I always say these are my, this is, I speak for myself. And now there, are there people that think like me? Yes. But I don't go out there and say all black men think this and all black. No. But he does that and he's brought in to do that. And he said some very

2:00:17 use their term, problematic things about black men. So that this is this is where this is coming from. So because when you start having, it's kind of like when you have a person of that group go out and criticize that group, it has, it holds more weight. Right. And that's why they're using him. But he does not, you know, like I said, not very, that, that white Afro is very non-threatening. Yeah, purposeful. Right. So let's go ahead and get into 21. My starting point for a clapback, I should say, is there something that I can say or do or point out here that other people, you know, are going to, you know, are going to are going to agree with or want out there to be said, but I'm one of the only people that can

2:01:01 say it kind of correctly. And if that bar is crossed, I am happy to kind of get in there, get into the weeds, get into the muck, and throw down. You know, they say that, you know, you wrestle with the pig, don't wrestle with the pig because you're both going to get dirty. Yeah, whatever. I take shout. All right. Like, I don't mind getting dirty if that's what it takes to push the point across. Wow, this is so offensive. Now that we know this guy's from Haiti, she's like, oh, you know, oh, yeah, it's just as bad for me, bro. Now you see what I'm saying. They take our stuff. And did he take, did he take your, your, did he take Black America's favorite cleaning product and appropriate that too?

2:01:45 What's that? He said shout. Oh, yeah, yeah. You said shout. But wait a minute. Isn't it tied? Isn't it tied? I mean, shout is what you put on the really tough stain. So he's appropriating everything. I mean, it's one thing to use it because that's how I learned to wash from my black roommate in college. Right. But you're not going to virtue signal with that if you're from Haiti. Everything about them is learned through pop culture. Oh, yeah. But that's why it's over. It's not rooted in anything. It's not, you know, the it's certain things you can say, and it's just that it's, it's rude.

2:02:24 It's a certain, like I said, it's a, it's, it's a lived experience. And that's why you can tell the authentic version of it against, you know, the manufactured version of it. Yeah, this guy has not lived the shout, a shouted out life. Right. Like he does his own laundry. You know what I'm saying? Come on, come on. I'm going to continue with the clip. But hold on, hold on. Let me say this right quick because this is on the BNC, the Black News channel, which is now defunct. And that just goes to show you that you can bring in your Charles Blows. You can bring in your Mark Lamont Hills. It's not going to work. work. These people don't speak. They don't have, they have, it's kind of like when people buy Jordans, but they don't know how to do the laces.

2:03:07 You know what I'm saying? It's like you can have the shoes, but you don't know how to rock them right. And they just don't know how to rock it right. And it shows. Well, you know, you do wallet with a lot of dogs, but I got to say, I don't think you get up with fleas. And I actually appreciate you taking off of the team and being our voice out there because you say a whole lot of stuff that I wish that I would say. And I don't even know why. I just don't. I would love for you to tell us some of the craziest fights that you are having on social media right now that are really meaningful. You're engaging in them because you really see an opportunity to move the conversation or at least to my goodness. So this, so he's the warrior. Now I get it. That's what he does.

2:03:53 He does that all day professionally on Twitter. But that's the thing. The irony of it is like all Trump does with Twitter finger 45 Savage does with Twitter thing. But they want scalps. Like this is the point of it. Yeah. Okay. There's more. Yeah. Look, I focus on the courts. And so I get a lot of, I get a lot of people who are kind of from that world, who have some legal training, who simply aren't used to having to hear what the courts look like and how they sound like from the perspective of a black person.

2:04:33 And they show up on my feed with like concerns, kind of not understanding that I'm an expert in this, that I've been doing this for 10 years, that I that I'm black. That's a power user right there. So in this next clip, you said it, and that's why I told you goggles because you're going to hear him try to launch a meme or launch a hashtag. What you just said was him trying to launch a hashtag and it failed. So let's go ahead and listen to it. And I want to hear your opinion on the other side. I live in Florida, so I'm like on ground zero of where all of this is happening.

2:05:17 I'm out of my mind about the bills banning conversations about race and ethnicity and LGBTQ just even mentioning gender identity in primary schools. But some will say, okay, so are you arguing for throwing out the Constitution? Should the Constitution be thrown out? What do we do? Is it a living document? Or is it a sacred document? It's certainly not sacred. All right, let's start there. The Constitution is kind of trash. Let's just, again, let's just talk as adults first. What did you say? It's what? It's kind of trash. It was written by slavers and colonists and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn't ask anybody look like me what they thought about the Constitution. They didn't say, oh, Jim, come over here. What do you think about this old Constitution?

2:06:00 Well, NASA, I sure don't like how you sell my children. But I gotta say, man, this King Jack. His ancestors spoke French, you phony. Oh, he needs to be stopped. My grandpa used to say, ain't no taxation without representation from Massa. Like, that's not what happened. Okay. This document was written without the consent of black and brown people in this country and without the consent of women in this country. And I say that if that is the starting point, the very least we can do is ignore what those slavers and colonists and misogynists thought and interpret the Constitution in a way that makes sense for our modern world.

2:06:40 That's what I'm saying. Do you want to rewrite it? Do you want to rewrite it? I could, right? I could rewrite parts of it in a tweet, right? Like, how about popular election for the president? People vote, not land. That's not even in there, is it? I'm saying if I was rewriting it, we could do it in a tweet, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, term limits for Supreme Court justices. And how about no states' rights when it comes to health care, elections, policing, and guns? Right. That's just better. That's just, that's just better. And you can do that in a tweet. Oh, my. That whole riff was fantastic. And he was trying, the meme he was trying to launch was constitution is trash.

2:07:22 Kind of trash. Kind of trash. Yeah. That's, that's, these are how they try to launch these hashtags. That way, somebody, oh, constitution trash is kind of trash. You know, these kind of netness, they'll have different variations. And whichever one people kind of latch on to, this is how it works. And he was trying to make that happen. But you, you can't. It's not, it's, it's the, I know his message, he's not a creative hashtag. No, I mean, and this is because he's not, because he's not really black. He doesn't have the grass. groove, doesn't have the vibe. He doesn't know how to do that. It's the timing that comes with it. And the fact that when you say, get rid of the Constitution, whoa, you know what I'm saying?

2:08:04 Now you're talking about get rid of the First Amendment. Now you're talking about getting rid of the Second Amendment. Now you're saying these, well, hold on. Now, what are we playing by? And you notice how he had to do the black and brown, the woman. He had to hit this is that coalition. They have to always check those boxes. He didn't do LGBTQ, though. He screwed that up. Well, but you saw, what's her name? No, yeah. Navarro. No, Navarro. Yeah, she threw it in there. She checked it for him. So she's like, I got it. I got you. I got you, bro. I got you. You can run with the Mammy shit. I got this one. Wow. Right. So this is how they try to do it.

2:08:47 And now this is where the second part comes in. And why I felt that the whole Elon Musk thing is a big problem for a certain group of people. I want people to pay attention to the two timelines that we're going here. Elon Musk by Twitter, and then all of a sudden, Obama comes with the disinformation governance board. This is so interesting that you bring this up, Mo. Again, I love you for this. Do you mind if I just tell you that I noticed the exact same thing? And there was one extra piece. It was Obama showing up. It was the disinformation board. And by the way, he showed up at the cyber Stanford Cyber Policy Institute, where he spoke for that hour.

2:09:30 And there was also another Brookings Institution piece about podcasting. And it was weird because we've already seen these, oh, podcasting has to be moderated. It's dangerous. This is the whole reason for Podcasting 2.0 because I knew this was coming. And I'm like, wait a minute, why are they doing this piece again? And so Dave Jones and I go and through it on the board meeting for Podcasting 2.0. And I start clicking on some of the links. Like, oh, oh, my God, it's all about Bannon and disinformation and how disinformation kills people, the exact words that Obama used. And so it was this.

2:10:08 And so, kind of the punchline is they set up this whole thing with all these different messages of disinformation. They bring out Obama for the disinformation. And then they choose this Nina Jankowicz, who was so obviously mockable for so many things. It was just like, wow, you put a lot of effort into bringing in this candidate who is there because her specialty is, wait for it, Russian and Ukrainian. So, you know, everything that is uncomfortable, in my opinion, through this governance board will be run through the lens of Russian disinformation.

2:10:47 And the thing was, I've been champing at the bit because we had to postpone the show from last week. I saw this language, all these clips, except for a few that I'm saying at it later. This is like 90% of the show because I saw it come and I was like, oh, Elon buys Twitter. They have to go governmental. Yes. They can't control him. And that's why he bought it. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. Okay. I'm going to blow your mind now. Okay, please. I'm going to blow your mind. I'm going to blow your mind. This is a clip that I'm going to play on tomorrow's No Agenda show. And it's from 2016.

2:11:29 We played this on No Agenda. And this was Obama. And I think it was before the election. I'm not sure. Yeah, I think it was before the election. Listen to this. Have to rebuild within this wild, wild west of information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to. You know, I use the analogy in politics. It used to be there were three television stations and Walter Cronkite's on there. And not everybody agreed. And there were always outliers who thought that it was all propaganda and we didn't really land on the moon and Elvis is still alive and so forth.

2:12:13 But generally that was in the papers that you bought in the supermarket, right, as you were checking out. And generally people trusted a basic body of information. It wasn't always as democratic as it should have been. And it's always exactly right that, for example, on something like climate change, we've actually been doing some interesting initiatives where we're essentially deputizing citizens with handheld technologies to start recording information that then gets pulled. They're becoming scientists without getting the PhD.

2:12:49 PhD. And we can do that in a lot of other fields as well. But there has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests. Truthiness. And those that we have to discard because they just don't have any basis in anything that's actually happening in the world. And that's hard to do. But I think it's going to be necessary. It's going to be possible. I think the answer is obviously not censorship, but it's creating places where people can say this is reliable.

2:13:35 And I'm still able to argue about safely about facts and what we should do about it while still not just making stuff up. So to me, what Musk is doing and what Obama is describing here in 2016 is the same thing. See, and it doesn't really matter. The outcome is the same. Whether Musk is the shill or whether he's sincere, the truthiness test is coming

2:14:12 through regulations. I think he's the opposition to what Obama's trying to do because you have two schools of thought. Should corporations own it and like the owners of those companies, or should the government control it? So this is where I think they part ways. Now, like we talked about on the last show, when they build these systems, anybody will be able to wield the power of it. But it's about who's going to have that power. Is it the boards and the CEOs? Or is the government coming in telling you what you can say and how you can say it on your platforms?

2:14:51 Well, the government is not just the U.S. government. So the European Union government has already stated their case. Elon will adhere to them or he will not operate in the European Union. And in the United States and globally, ESG scores dictate what companies do. So they will do all, they will, if he's not playing on their team, they will annihilate him. So Twitter, let me get this straight because I have a few questions about this deal. So Twitter will no longer be publicly traded when it goes through. How does that work? I mean, if he owns it. Yeah, all the shares

2:15:34 are bought by Elon. And so everyone gets $54.20 a share. And then he takes it. He delists it, takes off the stock market. It's no longer a public company. So he can do whatever he wants. So does ESG really have an impact on you then? I believe so. Obviously, he can't be delisted. Taxation, there's many different ways that that's going to play. You can't de-platform me because I am the platform. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is, I'm fascinated by this because this is letting your, you're saying, but I'm. Like, I bought the building. I'm just seeing, I'm seeing it differently.

2:16:15 Yeah. What I see is when you say he said op, I was almost going to agree. I think he's the operator. I think he's. I think he's the opposition. No, I think he's the opera. I know what you think. And I just disagree. I agree from your side, too. But I'm just saying, it's fascinating that we're looking at the same set of information, the same set of facts, and coming away with two totally different, I mean, which if this is the same result. Same result. But it's the same result. Either way, Twitter is going to be regulated. And Obama's been out here for over a month pushing this.

2:16:55 That Stanford wasn't the first speech. I have the first, we're going to get to that, but let's go. This is the local. This is the local news talking about the Disinformation Governance Board in Sioux City. The Department of Homeland Security tonight is taking on dangerous disinformation. They've created a new board dedicated specifically at tackling that issue. But some lawmakers are raising concerns. Hannah Brandt explains why. The government is launching a new effort to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities. I'm not sure who opposes that effort. It turns out some lawmakers do. They want to police the speech of American citizens.

2:17:36 It is absolutely insane. The Department of Homeland Security insists their new disinformation governance board is meant to combat dangerous misinformation. Disinformation that imperils the safety and security of our homeland. The board is brand new, so exactly how they'll do that is unclear. But many Republicans are sounding the alarm bells and even comparing it to the Ministry of Truth from the dystopian novel 1984. This is nothing more than a blatant attempt to install a Ministry of Truth in order to push Biden's propaganda. Congressman Andrew Clyde calls the board unconstitutional. And Senator Marsha Blackburn says it's censorship.

2:18:15 They're going to say, we're going to step in here and we are going to take control because there are some things we want you to know and there are some things we don't. The Biden administration argues there's a major need to combat the lies and conspiracies that mislead people and so division. There has been a range of disinfo out there about a range of topics. I mean, including COVID, for example, and also elections and eligibility. But Senator Josh Hawley wants the board to be dissolved. Just because you disagree with your opponent doesn't mean it's disinformation. In Washington, I'm Hannah Brandt. Yeah, that was, you know, that's the type of piece that everyone gets the same copy for. Goes to all the local stations. And that could very well come from AP. You're right in that. And by the way, Mo,

2:19:02 we're coming to different conclusions just for different reasons. I would love to see Twitter be freed and for it to work and become the cesspool that it can. It'd be great. That would be hilarious. It's great for business. Yeah. But it's not moral. This is not. Yeah. It's great for business. This is not Elon Musk coming through with his bulletproof Tesla to save Twitter. No, this is about who controls the way the country goes. Well, company, I mean, that was almost a 40-year slip. Who controls the way the company goes? Does it go with the corporation calling the shots or the government calling the shots?

2:19:43 And I think what Elon Musk did, the way he did it, to say, I can buy something that's not for sale, that's very threatening to the government. But yeah, again, this is something that just doesn't fit with me. Twitter has been for sale for a long time. For a long time. To who? To who? Anybody, anybody. Google, Facebook, Amazon. That's all the same side. All of them. Why would I buy more of what I already got? You know what I'm saying? Like, that's how they look at it. No, no, no. In my eyes.

2:20:21 It was just in my eyes. Google is Facebook. A better example. Facebook is incredibly political. Why would they not want to control that? Why would they not tell me why would the people who control the political messaging on Facebook not want to add Twitter to their portfolio? The way I see it is this. They all were asleep because it's like, nope, nobody with differing views will buy it. So we don't have to worry about buying it. And then you have this guy come in that says, okay, I see what you're saying. It's like a robber bearing kind of thing. It's the same way that Rockefellers will operate, right? It's like, we're going to buy all the train tracks. You know, we're not going to buy the train tracks.

2:21:05 What about a steel company? By the way, Dvorak is also on your side of this argument. Okay. Well, I'm in good company then. So yeah. That's right. An even older white man. Go for it. I tell you who from the guy from Billions, you know, hey, that's my guy. Oh, Prince, Michael Prince? No, no, the daddy. Oh, Charles Sr. Oh, yeah. That's my kind of guy right there. I'm glad he stayed on throughout the new series. Yeah. Him and Wags keep it real. But once again, that's how wolteness ruins things.

2:21:48 Just mean as just a quick aside. So now, but I find this interesting because CNN, this is Dana Bash, and this is her talking to Alejandro Majorkis. Yes. Listen to her tone. It's getting weird out here, folks. That's all I got to say. Let's talk about a different topic, which is what you are calling, your department is calling the Disinformation Governance Board. You unveiled that this week. Republicans are calling it Orwellian and comparing it to the Ministry of Truth in the novel 1984. Can you clarify what exactly is this? What exactly will this disinformation governance board do?

2:22:31 Will it monitor American citizens? Dan, I'm very pleased to do so. It's clear. I mean, those criticisms are a prestigious. precisely the opposite of what this small working group within the Department of Homeland Security will do. And I think we probably could have done a better job of communicating what it does and does not do. The fact is that disinformation that creates a threat to the security of the homeland is our responsibility to address. And this department has been addressing it for years, throughout the years of the prior administration, and an ongoing basis.

2:23:12 Disinformation from Russia, China. We know the problems, but it's still not clear to me how this governance board will act. What will it do? So what it does is it works to ensure that the way in which we address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence are addressed without infringing on free speech, protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right of privacy. Oh, okay. I can't wait to see how he didn't actually explain how they do it. No, that's what's it called? Craft secrets, Tracy? Trade secrets, yes. Sources and methods.

2:23:51 Sources and methods, Moe. They got to tell you how. But isn't this a weird tone from CNN, who's been pretty much the governmental lapdog up until this point? You mean that they're changing tune a little bit and becoming a little more adversarial? Yeah, because, I mean, especially Dana Bash, you know, she's all in for whatever it is, as you would think. Like, this is anti-maybe. You have more? Maybe it convince me more in the next piece. Let's go. Let's do the second piece. And the board, this working group, internal working group, will draw from best practices and communicate those best practices to the operators because the board does not have operational authority.

2:24:38 Will American citizens be monitored? Operators. Guarantee that. So what we do, we in the Department of Homeland Security don't monitor American citizens. You don't, but will this board change that? No, no, no. The board does not have any operational authority or capability. What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries, from the cartels, and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years. Republicans are criticizing your decision, the administration's decision, to choose Nita Jankowitz to lead this disinformation board.

2:25:22 They say she is not somebody who is neutral. Your response? Eminently qualified, a renowned expert in the field of disinformation. Absolutely so. Would you be okay if Donald Trump were president, if he created this disinformation governance board, or if it is in place and he wins again in 2024, that he's in charge of such a thing? I believe that this working group that gathers together, gathers together best practices, makes sure that our work is coordinated, consistent with those best practices, that we're safeguarding the right of free speech, that we're safeguarding civil liberties, I think is an extraordinarily important endeavor.

2:26:05 No, Dana Bash is playing along. I think she's playing controlled opposition here. Once again, I see this is what I'm saying. But let me tell you why I feel that. When he said not once, but three times, the operators, we give that to the operators. No follow-up, no question. Who is that? Who are the operators? They've been doing this for decades. What do they do? What exactly is that FBI? Is that NSA? Is that local police? Is that Twitter themselves? She wasn't asking that. She was, in my opinion, she was throwing up the opposition, giving him softballs to address them with non-answers.

2:26:48 And she did not question any of his non-answers. The way I see it is this. The typical CNN interview would have went. So tell me how this is going to be good for banning white supremacists. I agree with you that I missed that. Yes, I agree. I missed the January 6th. I missed that. I wanted to know how is this going to impact our business. See, because at the end of the day, the governance board is governing the media companies. And they're looking at it. Look, we took your 2016. We took your Black Lives Matter.

2:27:28 We took your pro LGBTQ. We're bleeding out. You're doing good. You're doing good. Yep. You're dragging me over the line. You're getting me closer. I got one toe close. So, what? So, what? They lost $300 million for like a month's worth of service because their news is so sanitized that you may talk across the scene radical. All right. I mean, like, just like that. Hold on a second. Yeah. The C, you're talking about CNN Plus? Yes. Don't get caught up in that. They got bought. They got bought. The new owners didn't want it. It didn't get shut down because it had no one watching. It got shut down. It was not ever in the plan.

2:28:10 But that's my point, though. They threw $300 million away on something they couldn't even salvage. They couldn't even say, you know what? Let's bring in new talent. You know, let's shake it up a little bit. No, they said we had to scrap this whole thing. And I think they're scrapping the whole woke business model. It's like, you know what? We'll go back to fair and balance. We will ask the safe questions like she was doing. Yes. That was an act. I got there's another thing that we've noticed. So Discovery bought Warner, ATT, and Warner. And so they bought CNN with it. Right. So this is all Discovery. So the big man

2:28:54 who's really in control of this whole deal is Malone, John Malone. Okay. I mean, the Warner Brothers CEO is a different guy, but John Malone is the chairman, and he's a 45 Savage guy. That's what's going on here. And that's what I'm saying. The tone is switching. And we've noticed, you know, they've cleaned up. They cleaned up the Cuomo kids. They cleaned up all the pedophiles. Yeah, they got all this. Well, I think not all. Not all. I think they got the tip of the iceberg, maybe. But yeah, they got some of the Pedo's out of there, the Pedo Bears. Who else did they? They cleaned up the Cuomo, the Cuomo kid. Cuomo cleaned up his shit. Yeah. Yep. Cleaned all of that up, got rid of it. And I'm sure there's been internal shake-ups.

2:29:38 And of course, Zucker himself left. So yeah. Okay. I think people are very cautious. Dana Bash, she's not going to get another gig. She's auditioning to stay. Yes. And it's going to be reporting on missing airplanes. We're going back to that business. We're going back to that business model. Yeah, possibly. Hey, you know, just do more Amber Heard. I'll even watch that. That was exactly. I think the woke media is like old news. And I think they don't want Obama looking over their shoulder. What CEO will want the government, give the government more power? This is not about ideology. This is about, do I want the government looking over my shoulder to say, oh, that's disinformation?

2:30:23 Right. That's different. You know, that's bad for business. And that's why I said that they bleed out that way. So just to go to the other side of the spectrum, now we have Tulsi Galbert. She was on with Will Kane on Fox News, and she's saying it's a both sides are in on it. Is Joe Biden that radical that he's relying on Orwellian tactics to hold on to control? Or like on everything else, is he just the front man for someone else in the Democratic Party? Tulsi Gabbard is a former Hawaii congresswoman and a former presidential candidate, and she has some thoughts on who might actually be pulling the strings on Joe Biden. Hi, Tulsi. So if Joe's not really in charge, who is?

2:31:09 I think it's no surprise to know that it's not just Obama, but it's the whole Obama-Clinton machine that has been in power for a long time and continues to pull the strings behind the curtain in the Biden administration. But when we're talking about this Ministry of Truth, Will, what's even more disturbing than the fact that you have all these Democrats who are supporting it is that there are powerful Republicans who are supporting it as well. There's one in particular over the last couple of days who's been very vocal on television about this. And I want to read his direct quote because it was very disturbing to me. He says, this is an important function of the Department of Homeland Security, but they put the absolute wrong person in charge of it.

2:31:50 Ooh, who was this? Hold on. The fact that she didn't say who it was. Yeah, she said important Republican, but she never said his name. Isn't that weird? I mean, because you picked up on it because you said, who is this? The fact that you quote somebody and don't give their name lets me know that's a friend of ours. Remember, Tulsi is, of course, one of the World Economic Forum young global leaders. And that's my whole point. That's my whole point: is that I think that they want to get back to business as usual. Both these media operations are controlled, as you just heard with her. She couldn't even say.

2:32:29 the Republican's name because they showed that Republican is a friend of who at the Fox News Network. And it's like, okay, you can get on here and talk bipartisan, but you can't say his name. And I've never heard somebody give a quote where you know who said it, but you don't say who it is. Do we know who said it? No, she never said. Damn. And they didn't ask. The same thing like you said with the Dana Back. No follow-up, no nothing. I think the media is like, we're tired of playing this game. It's back to business. And they're okay with Elon getting Twitter because both sides, guess what? You want to get good hashtags now?

2:33:09 You know what? You know what really brought them all together? War in Ukraine. War in Ukraine brought the news media together because they all bow to the military-industrial complex. They all have to do it. That's so much money. Brought to you by Boeing. The new thing is going to be Boeing brought to you by Boeing. Well, look at PBS. It's often brought to you by Boeing. Boeing is just another contractor. So, yeah. Yeah, this is a good observation, Mo. This is good. I'm just looking at the timing, and I think somebody may have tipped, you know, because, of course, I'm sure. It was super coordinated. And you're right. I think you're right. All right.

2:33:54 So let's go ahead and get into 26. Well, the problem here is not the person they put in charge of it. The bigger problem here is the board itself. The bigger problem here is that unfortunately we have powerful Democrats and Republicans who are supporting this Ministry of Truth, who do not believe in the Constitution and freedom of speech, who have no faith in the American people and are willing to put our taxpayer dollars towards this propaganda department, this Ministry of Truth. It's something that belongs in a dictatorship. A Ministry of Truth does not belong in the United States of America. You know, the Ministry of Truth thing is, unfortunately, it's a misnomer.

2:34:34 It's not what the Ministry of Truth did in 1984 in the movie, in the book. What they did is change history to fit the current narrative. That's what the news media does. They're the Ministry of Truth. Exactly. Exactly. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Right? Don't tell us how to, what did God say? This is our job. This is our job. This is our job to tell you what to think. Yeah. Not the government. I think that's the pushback. I don't know. Yes. There's nobody that's benevolent in this or no, you know. Okay, hold on a second. Now, yes, now I know what I hear in Danabat, Danabash.

2:35:15 She's sad. She's not mad. She's sad. Well, what are you going to be doing with this Ministry of Truth? Because weren't we doing a good enough job? It was okay. So aren't we good at shaming people? Why do you have to do it different? That's what I heard in her voice. And they can change whatever they under the rubber stamp of what's disinformation. So when it comes back and say, oh, CNN, you are pushing a lot of this agenda. And we see that this is disinformation or whoever, Fox News, the same thing. Oh, yes, you've widened my perspective to this entire gambit.

2:35:54 I appreciate it. All right. So we're going to remind people that I, for the longest, said Obama was in power as soon as the election was over. Yes. Let's just remind people from the throwback clip that he said it himself that he was up for a third term. And what you know now, do you wish you had a third term? And I used to say, you know what? If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff. And then I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony.

2:36:39 I'd be fine with it. Yep. Yeah. No, that, and you know how that was really clear? What was going on? And it's interesting because JCD, I can't get him to believe this because we've talked about it and I agree. And I said, dude, it's so obvious. He said, well, who's really in charge? It's the whole group. It's the whole cabal. And I think Obama is the spokeshole of the cabal internally. They all worship him. So he's the guy. And whoever's got his ear, he communicates. Well, part of it. Yeah. He's the alpha dog. But it was so apparent when he was at the White House. And this is one shot.

2:37:22 Obama and the vice president. they're working the crowd and they're working like president and vice president. And Joe Biden is behind them. I thought you meant the vice president, Joe. Exactly. And Biden is behind them. Now, we've all seen that he's kind of looking lost and stuff. But then he tries to get President Obama's attention, puts his hand on his shoulder. And I hadn't seen that the first time I saw the clip. And he holds his hand there. And Obama does kind of like a quarter, not even a quarter, like an eight turn with his head. And out of his peripheral vision, sees it's Joe and just looks right back and keeps talking with people. And Biden still has his hand on his shoulder. He completely ignores him.

2:38:07 I don't know what his falsehood that Joe Biden, I mean, Obama likes Joe Biden. He never liked Joe Biden. No, he hates Jidden. He's a clean. He's a clean. He never liked him. He just needed him. I know. But he's, but that was a public display and it was a mistake. On Obama's part, it was a mistake. And that will ultimately trip him up in this little thing they've got going on because he does love the attention. And vanity. Vanity is the one that'll get you. And wait till that Obama third term hashtag comes.

2:38:49 You know, wait till that comes. I mean, that's going to be the one, but we got to thank some people first and appreciate some new money. I like brand new money. I just, I don't want any money around me. It's not. I'd almost rather have a new one than an old 20. That's kind of dumb, isn't it? But there's something about new money that excites you. You like $100 bills? Oh, man. I like new money too. Oh, most beautiful thing on earth is a $100 bill. I haven't seen a woman as good looking as a $100 bill. There's something about $100 bill that excites you. And when that was recorded, that $100 bill was worth $100, and now that's probably worth about $40, maybe even less. We love new money as well. We love your fiat fun coupons.

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2:45:17 So I mentioned before that, well, you brought up the Stanford speech. And that was the final draft. He did one at the Chicago U or University of Chicago. And this is WGN News, the local news that covered it. And it says former President Barack Obama was back home in Chicago on Wednesday with an urgent warning about disinformation. Six. A conversation with former President Barack Obama just wrapped up at the University of Chicago and how disinformation spreads, the war in Ukraine, among the number of topics he addressed. WGM political reporter Jamon Bradley's there and he joins us now with more. Come on.

2:46:01 Micah and Ray, good evening. The Atlantic and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics teamed up for this look at disinformation. It's a topic the former president says he spent a lot of time thinking about. Former President Barack Obama back home in Chicago tonight with an urgent warning about disinformation. The way I define disinformation is if you have a systematic effort to either promote false information to suppress true information

2:46:46 for the purpose of political is Obama high you know I think part I understand what you're asking part of it's the compression of the audio I think that it makes it really sound like that not that I'm talking about how slow he is speaking and choosing his words very he was always known to be that flow Oh, no. You know, this is an interesting observation. In the Stanford, because I watched the whole thing, the Stanford speech, it was an hour-long speech, really only 30 minutes of speech.

2:47:29 He was doing six, seven, eight-second pauses in between his sentences. I found it very hard to listen to, and that's why I brought it up. Like, what, what, I mean, like, is it long COVID? I mean, like, what, what is it? I mean, that he has to stop and collect his words when he would, like I said, the true talent of him was like that flow and that vibe that he had when he just information. And I observed this, and he still has that flow. It's just he's in when he stops, he stops for a real long time.

2:48:11 Like someone said, man, that's really impressive when you do that. That's what it feels like to me. Oh, man, that really gives you power, and it makes you feel like you're the top dog of the world who can do that. You can make everyone wait and listen in silence for seven seconds. I just found it weird and very hard to listen to. Information to suppress true information for the purpose of political gain, financial gain.

2:48:47 The former president telling this conference held at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics that normal debate of ideas is fine, but systemic disinformation is destructive. Okay. Financial gain. Yes. I think that they really want to hijack corporate media and turn it to state media. It makes things a hell of a lot easier. They don't have these problems over PBS, you know, because his state is state funded. And I think that's the way you brought up Europe and saying, okay,

2:49:29 we won't let Twitter in. I think that's what they crave. It's that now he got me doing it. It's that kind of control and power. Huh. So it's not about Twitter then. That's a very good point. Huh. And there's a buying of all the newspapers. Yeah, this is what they did. I mean, what was the guy's name, Hearst? Yeah, Will Hearst. Randolph Hearst. Randolph. Yeah, the big newspaper. I mean, he went and bought all the small newspapers. I think this is the similar thing.

2:50:08 This is the print press. But they're going to do it through regulation and legislation. I think that's the control mechanism the government wants. And the corporate media is still corporate at the end of the day, and they want to make money. And severe oppression from the government is not good for business. They've done this long enough. So let's go ahead and get to the second piece of this clip. It is difficult for me to see how we win the contest of ideas if, in fact, we are not able to

2:50:55 agree on a baseline of facts. The former president also offered thoughts about Russia's attack on Ukraine. He said Vladimir Putin's aggression should serve as a reminder to the world that democracy is fragile. It is a tragedy of historic proportions. It is a bracing reminder for democracies that have gotten flabby. What's happening there is not isolated. What we're seeing is a reversion back to old ways of thinking about power and

2:51:45 place and identity. So Mr. Obama's answers for disinformation. For starters, he says America must grapple with the internet's fascination for crazy. And he says, there's no silver bullet. We can't make no promises. Do you understand that we're going to fix it? Right. In true. government form. So when I heard this and I heard Chicago University, that rung a bell with me. And we got to go all the way back to show five. And that was the Popeyes chicken sandwich

2:52:25 and nudging episode. Ooh, yeah. I remember this. Okay. Yeah. And this is Professor Richard Thayer. I think that's how you pronounce it. And he's from, he's a graduate of Chicago University. And he talks about nudging. Yeah, some people worry that the idea of choice architects and nudging is somehow leading to Big Brother. And that's not the way we think about it. One of the points we stress in the book is that there has to be some choice architecture. So the person who designs that cafeteria downstairs has to put the food somewhere.

2:53:03 The salad has to be in front of the burgers or behind the burgers. Given that you have to arrange the food in some order, we argue, why not have the choice architect arrange the food in such a way that people will be happier and healthier and maybe live a little while? Choice architects. Yes, I'd forgotten that term. And the nuts. So the nudge is the gas. Like, think this. Let me put this in front of you. Nudge, nudge, nudge. Right. Now, what they want to put in is the brakes, this disinformation thing. Like, okay, the choice architects are saying, okay, this is good for you. This is good for you.

2:53:43 This is unhealthy. We can't talk about this topic. We want to shape this topic this way. And I think this is what you were talking about, the procedures of the board. Yep. The governance board, I think this is it. They are choice architects. Because you remember, Obama's the one that brought the nudge. It was official. I forget the name of it, but the nudging wing of the government in. You mean the after the Smith-Munt Act was. No, this is way before that. This is when he said, okay, we can bring in.

2:54:21 They were basically saying we could do open propaganda. This predates the Smith-Munt Act because that was in 2015. Well, it was 2012. It was overturned or it was kind of nullified in the National Defense Authorization Act in 2012. I think we're talking about the same thing because they removed, they overturned that. And so now it was possible to go ahead and propagandize Americans. Yep. So, I mean, but it was a government organization that was doing the nudging. And then they kind of went private after Trump came in. They all went into the private sector. Yeah, I'm trying to,

2:55:06 this rings a bell. I can't remember what it is. What was the name? I can't. It'll come back to me. You go listen to episode five. We talked about it in detail. Yeah, it was the nudge unit or something. Yeah. So I think this is just another, you know, saying another piece of that. So now I have this piece from, this is from local five in Iowa. And this is like, this is reaching the, you know, the masses. And I could have, I could have made a supercut out of at least seven or eight that I saw in this search review of local news pushing what explaining what disinformation and misinformation was and the difference between the two.

2:55:46 But this one was special because they include a third form of bad information. If you were to dive into the dark web, you'd find a lot of information you couldn't find with, say, just a simple Google search. And a lot of what's down there is simply false information. In recent years, that false information has made its way to mainstream platforms. Now, a simple Google search will show you ideas, thoughts, and movements previously hidden away from the dark corners of the internet to protect yourself against what's false and harmful. You need to understand how that information comes to exist in the first place and how it comes across your social media feeds.

2:56:25 Now, there are three different types of content as identified by FirstDraft. That is an organization fighting to bring you truth on what you read and watch. Disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation. Collectively, these three groups are known as information disorder. Let's start with the first. Disinformation is intentionally false. It's designed to cause harm. That's often backed by motivations to make money, to have political influence, or cause trouble just for the sake of it. The second, misinformation. That's also false content, but the person sharing it doesn't realize it's false or misleading.

2:57:03 This is driven by sociopsychological. socio-psychological factors. These people want to feel connected to their tribe, whether that's the same political party, activists for climate change, or those that belong to a certain religion, race, or ethnic group. Finally, malinformation. This is genuine information shared with the intent to cause harm. An example is when Russian hackers hack the Democratic National Committee in Hillary Clinton's campaigns and emails. They leak certain details just to damage reputations. So before you hit or share or retweet, stop and ask yourself how that information came to exist and whether it's at all credible. It was the social one second.

2:57:47 I got it here, Mo. It's like it's a mouth, it's a mouthful. It's a mouthful. It's the social and behavioral sciences team. That's who President Obama used to get insights from psychology, behavioral economics, and other decision sciences to improve federal programs and operations, also known as the nudge unit. That's when he was in his first term. First two terms. Now he's in his third term. But this malinformation, did you pick up on what they were saying there? Yeah, I had heard this. I didn't like that. I didn't think their example was correct because that wasn't malinformation.

2:58:33 That was true. That was real documents. So that's not what malinformation is. But yes. That's exactly what it is. Listen to what he said. He said, it's true. It's genuine information, but you're using it to hurt people. Let me listen to that again because there was something in there that made me think differently. Misinformation. That's also false content, but the person sharing it doesn't realize it's false or misleading. This is driven by socio-psychological factors. These people want this for climate change or those that belong to a certain religion, race, or ethnic group.

2:59:14 Finally, malinformation. This is genuine information shared with the intent to cause harm. An example is when Russian hackers... Okay, all right. Now, the thing is, he's explaining malinformation with disinformation because Russian hackers did not hack the DNC DNC server. It was stolen from inside, most likely Dorseth Rich. But he's justified to do it to save you from the malinformation. I understand. It's medical. This is their psychology. But it's okay to do it. It's okay to do it. It's okay to use any tactics.

2:59:54 No, these people, look, I know bugs are back. No, it's a tough, you know what I'm saying? Tough pill to swallow to eat bugs. But we're making it popular. So it's for it's good for you. Because if you go back and look at what the guy Thayer was saying, let me get the name of his book one more time. It's the nudge, improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. So we nudge you because we love you. That's right. These people tell you the truth because they hate you. Even though it's true, it's malinformation. Now we can start saying, even if it's true, we can ban it.

3:00:35 Where do we end up? Yeah. People who do that, I mean, so that inverse of, hey, when it's truth, that's really bad and they're trying to hurt you, but we're lying to you because we love you. Isn't that literally the work of the devil? Yes, it's got to be. Yes. It's upside down world. Okay. Or they're playing God. Right. Let's just do that in the inverse of that. Also, also a no-no. Yeah. In other words, they're saying, trust me, just like with Joy Ann Reed and Shireen Mitchell. Right. They knew what they were saying was bad, but they're like, okay, but this will get Trump out of office.

3:01:18 Yeah. So it's all justified. Justified, yes, of course. Yeah. So that's how they look at it. So that malinformation, we got to keep an eye on that one. But once again, I have some more clips of Obama, and this is 33. So after years of dangerous disinformation being spread on social media, it is time for Silicon Valley Valley's unregulated days to end. That is the message President Obama delivered to an audience actually at Stanford University just this week, where he said, quote, people are dying because of misinformation. People like Putin. And Steve Bannon, for that matter.

3:01:58 There it is. Understand, it's not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. Now, I applaud the president's message, but I have to ask: where have you been?

3:02:36 This is a speech that should have been delivered years ago and not on some random Thursday in April at a California university, but on a platform the whole world would pay attention to. If governing me harder, Daddy was a person, that would be it. Yeah. Where were you? Where were you to protect us? Govern me harder, daddy. It's like what? Sick. It's sick. Would you ever think we'll be in a day where the media, especially the left-wing media, will be telling the government, yes, yes, governance harder?

3:03:17 No, no, but it's, I mean, left is right, right is left, up is down, red is blue. Who the hell knows who's who? Or you have people on the right-hand side, you know, supporting Russia or don't want conflict with Russia. It's completely weird. And I know I say it weird a lot, but I don't know a better word for it. It's just the brain. Yeah, that shows you that it's not about conviction. It's about other things. And I would say money. Money drives a lot of decisions people make. That's our only hope. That's all we got. And that's sad. That's sad.

3:03:55 That's why Twitter was sold. At the end of the day, if they could have somehow said, okay, we cannot sell it and not get sued and lose a bunch of money, they wouldn't have sold it. But it's kind of like that's why capitalism is a good thing. Yeah. I mean, I hate to say it, but like greed is good. I mean, that's so bad to say, but that's the only logical thing we have left is if it's monetarily beneficial or not. Everything else is just propaganda. Yes, sir. All right, so let's go ahead and get to People Are Dying Part 2.

3:04:33 Our panel is back with us. Maya, correct me if I'm wrong here. Those are my thoughts. I am a firm believer that we have a disinformation pandemic around the world. Your reaction to Obama's speech. Well, A, I'm glad it gave it. I'm glad that he was fairly unvarnished. I'm glad that he actually. Hold on. Is there any more Obama in this clip? It was just them talking about it. I think they're just even talking about it. All right, because I want to share a clip that I clipped from this that completely corroborates with him being in charge.

3:05:10 The First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn't apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter any more than it applies to editorial decisions made by the New York Times or Fox News. Never has. Social media companies already make choices about what is or is not allowed on their platforms and how that content appears, both explicitly through content moderation and implicitly through algorithms. The problem is we often don't know what principles govern those decisions. And on an issue of enormous public interest, there's been little public debate and practically no democratic oversight. Any rules we come up with to govern the distribution of content on the internet will involve value judgments.

3:05:54 None of us are perfectly objective. What we consider an unshakable truth today may prove to be totally wrong tomorrow. But that doesn't mean that it gets better. Some things aren't truer than others. Some are truer than others. You know, you've got your alternative reality. Or that we can't draw lines between opinions, facts, honest mistakes, intentional deceptions. We make these distinctions all the time in our daily lives. At work, in school, at home, in sports.

3:06:30 And we can do the same when it comes to internet content. As long as we agree on a set of principles, some core values to guide the work. So, in the interest of full transparency, here's what I think our guiding principles should be: the way I'm going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet. There it is. You picked it up on it. it immediately. The way I'm going to evaluate any proposal. I mean, hello. I mean, it's one thing to say, hey, man, you know, before I make a decision, I'm going to look at every single proposal.

3:07:09 Before I give a judgment, before I discuss anything, I'll look at all the proposals, but no, here's how I will evaluate what you will have to deal with. He's in charge. This is it. What I think our guiding principles should be: the way I'm going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy. Whether it encourages robust debate and respect for our differences. Whether it reinforces rule of law and self-governance. Whether it helps us make collective decisions based on the best available information.

3:07:53 And whether it recognizes the rights and freedoms and dignity of all of our citizens. Anyway, I thought I'd play that to corroborate. No, no, that's spot on to say unshakable truth today. It could be facts not being like not true tomorrow. Yeah, isn't that great? You got me on that. You got me on that one. Just think of that. When I hear that, what I hear is, yeah, the facts about the vaccine that we had, the information we had two years ago, it was unshakable truths.

3:08:33 But, you know, as you know, as our learning increased, we found out, yeah, it's not good. You can't hold that against us, though. Science, science. All right. Now we'll go back to the panel, the second part of the panel discussing this very speech Obama. No, you actually, no, you don't even have to play that now. Okay. All right. We could just jump. We could jump straight to how you asked the question about how they're going to do it or who's going to do it. I guess we can go ahead and jump into 35. I think he reminded us that there's choices made in every piece of tech that gets built, in every piece of software that's compiled.

3:09:12 If we can leverage those choices to be not around our anxieties and fears, but to be around hope, I think we can start taking the right steps in a direction that regulates what's happening in the world out there so that democracy is ensured for everyone. Some of it has to do with political and financial forces that are deliberately manipulating and spreading falsehoods that can have really dire consequences. The good news is, I think, that everybody's identifying this now as a problem, partly because of what we've seen with the anti-vax movement online, what happened after January 6th, and the mythology that somehow last presidential election wasn't fair.

3:09:52 They're seeing vividly in places like Ukraine the consequences of when you have dictatorships controlling information. Now, what we have to do is start figuring out what are the solutions. It is unlikely you will be able to change those political structures immediately. That then connected with the broader conference and conversation I had on stage about disinformation, misinformation. Our goal in the foundation is to train the next generation of leaders and give them platforms and connections and make sure they're not isolated and that they're learning from each other across borders.

3:10:31 And uniformly, they're all confronting these issues about how do I deal with misinformation in my country, in my town? How do I get access to the public so that they know the facts that are affecting their lives? And so, you know, through the foundation, we're really soliciting from young people ideas and trying out a bunch of things. Ah, the foundation. Okay. The foundation. This came from the Obama Foundation website, YouTube channel. And it's pathetic.

3:11:07 It only had 4K views. I mean, for you to be the most popular president in history, your video had no comments and 4K views. This is why we're kicking their ass. And I just had to say it. They don't have any pizazz. The biggest cap in the world or the biggest lie told in the world, everybody loves Obama. Nobody really cares about Obama. This is why his podcast got canceled. This is embarrassing. You say you let the podfather and a guy that never podcast before beat you. Kick your ass. Kick your ass. And the Bambruce Spring scene. Kick both your ass. Kick it out.

3:11:50 Yeah, I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a minute. It's embarrassing. You do it. You do it. Yes. And we already have that big team. What we got? Two laptops, some rents, some gear? A couple of strings and some gaffer tape. You got you tapped out. No. So that's why they're worried. That's why they had to control the narrative. That's why they get threatened when somebody goes and buys Twitter because they're getting beat by us. So you think somebody has the whole platform? And like I said, I'm not caper for Elon at all because I can't get past the brandship thing for me. And then the funniest thing was out of all of it, and we can get to the last two clips.

3:12:32 Is I had guys I know that are flat earthers or pro Elon. It's like, hold on, what about that dome over the earth that you talk about? Oh, now you're Mr. SpaceX? Not me. I'm consistent. Firmament first, baby. As above, so below. Firmament first. No, but that's that's how crazy, what crazy time are that people are go against things that they are steadfast in to support the hot new thing. And just to wrap up these last two clips, I sent you a PDF. And this is the House Resolution

3:13:16 1154. Would you like to read some of that before we get to these next clips? Sure. What it is? I don't believe I've seen this, but here is. Whereas, oh, this is a resolution. So just so this is not a bill, but a resolution. Yes, a resolution is where, in this case, the House of Representatives is going to make a statement as to what they believe in on a certain matter and that will, to some degree, will determine their policy. Whereas, October 2nd, 2020, 2020.

3:13:56 Whereas, throughout history, conspiracy theories that falsely blame secret cabals or marginalized groups for society's ills have fueled prejudice, genocide, and acts of terrorism. Whereas QAnon is a movement promoting a collection of unfounded conspiracy theories that have spread widely on the internet since 2017. Whereas QAnon initially alleged that prominent Americans are engaged in a secret plot to control the world while using their power to exploit children and has expanded to embrace virtually every popular conspiracy theory of the last several decades, from questioning the truth about the September 11th terrorist attacks to believing in alien landings to denying the safety of vaccines. Oh, this is good.

3:14:40 Whereas many QAnon followers express anti-Semitic views and the anti-defamation, this is our show. And the Anti-Defamation League has said that the movement's central conspiracy theory includes anti-Semitic elements. See three episodes ago. Whereas conspiracy theories have been a central driver of the anti-Semitism for centuries, and QAnon conspiracy theories are fanning the flames as anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States around the world. Wow. I've never seen this document. Mo. Well, not only see it, now let's go and listen to how these people speak about fellow Americans.

3:15:21 HRES 1154 from Representative Malinowski is a bipartisan resolution. It is co-sponsored by Representative Riggleman, Brian Fitzpatrick, Adam Kinzinger, Josh Gottheimer, and Elaine Lauria. And it is specifically about QAnon. QAnon is a movement promoting a collection of unfounded conspiracy theories that have spread on the internet over the last several years. These conspiracy theories undermine public trust in our democratic institutions and our election process. QAnon initially alleged that prominent Americans are engaged in a secret plot to control the world while using their power to exploit children and now extends to a range of dangerous conspiracy theories.

3:16:10 The FBI has assessed with high confidence that, quote, fringe political conspiracy theories, including QAnon, very likely motivate some domestic extremists wholly or in part to engage in criminal or violent activity. And that these conspiracy theories, again, this is a quote, very likely encourage the targeting of specific people, places, and organizations, thereby increasing the likelihood of violence against these targets. Oh, okay. Since that was at the beginning, which was by far. far, you know, just my opinion, having followed the QAnon movement, I guess,

3:16:53 quite closely. They put this up front in this. This is all about QAnon to discredit the Pizza Party play. Yeah. And not only that. We have a thing we say in parlance: thou doth protesteth too much. No? It's like, come on, what are you trying to prove here, people? And we have a thing in Proverbs in the Bible that says, oh, is that an unsure man, a wicked man, pleas when no one chases?

3:17:34 Ooh, it's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. But this is fill in the blank. Because they say every popular conspiracy in the last few decades. So fill in the blank. That throws you in there, you flat earthers. Oh, yeah. It throws you in there, the people that question the election. That throws you in there. I'm surprised that this isn't called the Adam Curry House Resolution. Yes, this is House Resolution 1154, also known as the Crackpot Resolution. The Crackpot Resolution. But they had to use a QAnon because that goes to January 6th, and that's the justification that these people are violent.

3:18:18 And one last thing, if you could go down and list the crimes. Now, these are the crimes that they listed as being problematic from QAnon. It's like four of them, I believe. Well, I'll read a little bit of the preamble before because they say the Federal Bureau of Investigation has assessed with high confidence, high confidence, were they high when they came up with the confidence? That fringe political conspiracy theories, including QAnon, very, quote, very likely motivate some domestic extremists wholly or in part to engage in criminal or violent activity. And they list some of these. One, a man arrested in 2018 for plotting to plant a bomb in the Illinois Capitol Rotunda to make Americans aware of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

3:19:04 There you go. Two, a man arrested in 2018 for using an armored car to block bridge on the Hoover Dam bypass bridge. I forgot about that one. Three, a man in Arizona arrested in 2019 for vandalizing a Catholic church. Well, that's an odd one. Four, a woman in Colorado arrested in 2019 for plotting an armed raid to kidnap her child who had been taken from her custody. Her child. Her own child. Five, a man charged with the murder of an organized crime boss in New York in 2019. What isn't that supposed to be a hero? Okay.

3:19:46 Last time I checked. And a woman arrested in New York with a car full of knives after posting a video accusing Joe Biden of participating in child sex trafficking and threatening to kill him. Man, of all the things to wow. This is their list of things that's problematic that caused them to have this House resolution. These people got problems. Oh, it gets worse. Listen to how they talk about American citizens in this last clip. These are online conspiracy theorists who believe that the world is run by devil-worshipping pedophiles, or that people like Oprah Winfrey or the Dalai Lama, who I very much respect, are killing people and drinking their blood in order to live longer.

3:20:39 Unfortunately, these people do not leave their conspiracy theories to themselves, but to their inner circles. They're online and they have committed crimes like murder and they have plotted to kill one of the presidential nominees, Vice President Joe Biden. Today they spread a rumor that Joe Biden was wearing a wire at the debates. The FBI identifies this group as dangerous, whereas President Trump has called them people who love our country. If the President of the United States will not denounce this insane rhetoric, this cult,

3:21:24 us as members of Congress must do. And I want to thank the ranking member for standing up against this cult. I urge my colleagues to support both of these resolutions, and I yield back. Did this. pass? Did everyone sign them? I couldn't find an update on it. But a cult, bipartisanship. If you don't believe what the states want you to believe, you're in a cult. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty. That's let me see. HR 1154.

3:22:04 These are our politicians. Yeah. That you say that they're supposed to work for us. No, you gotta be a thing. I'm just saying that's in the perfect world. They should be doing our bidding, but no. It's uh, let me see. Uh, text amendments, co-sponsors. Did it pass? Um, actually, I couldn't find much on it. I mean, I found this clip. I mean, this was actual hearing on YouTube, but I couldn't find any more information. I don't, I don't know if, uh, is that the one?

3:22:42 No, that's something different. I don't know if that, well, it doesn't really matter. Uh, the timing of it, you know, right before the election is very obvious what they're doing there. You know, what's interesting is that, and you know, just our friendship is in is also a part of it, but it's all of this crazy that for me, there's enough evidence to believe. It's just the evil, which is what I'm seeing Obama doing with the minute, all of this stuff. That has brought that has because I, the biggest conspiracy theory of all is God.

3:23:18 And I've been approaching the God conspiracy theory from the same way I can approach everything else that I look at because I'm a conspiracy therapist. And one, besides having read evidence that demands a verdict, which really blew my mind, the whole amount of evil that I'm seeing in the world, there has to be a counterbalance. You can't have otherwise, it would just all be evil, and it's clearly not. So that kind of literally drove me right into Jesus's arms, to be quite honest. And it's been very interesting to view all of this through that lens

3:24:03 or through believing. Yeah, because that's the trend, right? I mean, just the unique transparency of it. I've never seen anything like this in my life of just how transparent they are on, you know, blatantly open, you mean? Just open to the point where it's reshifting the alliances, like with Tosi Gabbard coming over to the Republican side and CNN, you know, pushing back the way they are.

3:24:39 And, you know, it's just making for strange bedfellows, which I think we're past the old political divide and it's becoming a good versus evil kind of thing. And it's not all even about believers, you know, because you have some people that are just good people that aren't believers, but they're like, hey, man, this is getting crazy. Right. It's a little too crazy for me. Right. But we sometimes you got to fight something with different kinds of weapons. Yeah. So. Okay, Mo. Change in everybody's life once again. This was a good one. Now, we'll see what happens with Twitter.

3:25:19 This will unfold and things will start to take shape and we know what to look for because we have somewhat varying opinions. But I love that we both nailed the whole coordinated Obama Ministry of Truth, the Disinformation Board and the governor of the board. We both saw that. We saw through that shit right away. But I really like what you brought in now with this backstory. And yeah, it's creepy now. It's real creepy what they're doing. And I think we both agree on this. Don't want people to get confused.

3:26:00 There is going to be more control. Oh, yeah. Don't get me twisted on that part of it. It's about their fighting who's going to have the keys. Is it going to be corporations or is it going to be government? And I think this is the real battle that I see playing out. Which is why we hold the true keys to freedom, and that is the podcast. And we are completely free and clear of any of that mess. There's technically no way they can really get rid of us or stop us. There's no way they can, you know. that's why we also accept Bitcoin. There's no way to deplatform. We are uncancelable.

3:26:40 And a lot of that is thanks to the producers who we really appreciate for their support. Yes. And I thank them very much. And as I always say, pay attention to everything and the truth will reveal itself. And that may be sooner than we all know with this particular one. Can't wait to see. Hey, Mo, can't wait to talk to you in two weeks. Have a good one, brother. All right, talk to you later, Adam. Remember us at MoFacts.com. Ready or not. Here I come. You can't hide. Gonna find you and keep you handy. Ready or not. Here I come. You can't hide. Gonna love

3:27:23 you and make you love me. Can't fall away. There's no baby. Hey, baby. Cause I got a lot of gold baby. Hey, baby. You can't hide your love enough. Ready or not. Here I come. You can't hide. Gonna find you and keep you out of me. Ray or not. Here I come. You can't hide. Gonna love you

3:28:09 and make you love me. Anywhere you go, you know me. Hey, baby. And you can't find your love enough. Ready or not? Here I come. You can't hide. Gonna find you and keep you happy. Here I come. You can hide.