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hey everyone hey everyone welcome your illustrious moderator jason
calcandis has been purged cancelled
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he's been canceled we canceled him for his
constant interruptions and low iq comments
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we decided that the minimum iq
required to be on this part of this you know 150 he did not make the cut and
so now it is just me chamoth and freeburg
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he is uh jason is away he is actively
implementing our jerk off to win strategy to solve the pandemic and free speech
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hey everybody hey everybody it is an emergency
podcast episode 16 hit number two in the
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uh rankings on the apple itunes podcasting store clearly we hit a nerve it's been an insane
week and the dictator dictated that he was
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not satisfied with doing our podcast once
every two weeks and so here we are on a sunday
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the queen of quinoa rain man himself david sacks
and the dictator chopping it up for you the loyal
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confused angry infuriated audience of all
in it's the craziest week of our lives
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jason plea please don't describe to the audience
the characteristics that describe yourself
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okay this has been a crazy 72 hours can anybody
remember us a week that has been more crazy in
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their life with the exception i guess 911
the financial crisis i'm trying to think of this level of crazy i think i think we should
start with what happened after the last all-in
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podcast between you and saks over text we should
get it all out there we should share it publicly
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and i think no no no no i think yeah i
think no we should i think it's worth doing we we talked about this before you joined us and
uh chamoth and i are having an intervention and uh
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you know i i'm going to say something
real quick i think it's worth highlighting that one of the things that i think we have the
opportunity to do as a group is to kind of elevate
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the conversation a bit and not frame things
as being black and white and not frame them as being one or zero or partisan or left or right and
everyone on this in this conversation has nuanced
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opinions about a lot of different topics and when
you sum up all those opinions it doesn't define a left or right person or democrat or republican
i think that's what makes us you know a compelling
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and interesting group to talk to sax has been
characterized as the trump guy he took offense to
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that um and in particular the heated conversation
you guys had last time and i do think it's worth kind of sharing that with everyone and letting you
guys reconcile publicly yeah have a group hug yeah
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and and reframe kind of how we talk about each
other and how so that we can kind of set a bit of an example on on how to do this well i can sorry
you can start david i'll i'll i'll start because
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objection you're the aggrieved yeah i mean so
look i i think that that j cow does an amazing
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job moderating the pod and it's a difficult job
um and you know the the the so i so i don't want
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to um you know this is not something i'm trying to
blame him for but i do have an objection to being
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labeled in a certain way i think anybody would
you know we we don't want to be misconstrued and
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and we want to be able to characterize our own
views we don't want to be labeled a certain way now i think jason has sort of branded me as a
trump guy because frankly it's amusing to him
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um i think he's mainly trolling me and but the
audience doesn't necessarily understand that i mean if you go back and look at my twitter feed or
my blogs i haven't written about trump for years
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i mean i haven't said anything really about it
that's not my agenda um you know and i think it
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i don't have a pro-trump agenda but i also don't
have a pro-resistance agenda i've described my position as anti-hysteria sometimes that means
criticizing trump like it did in the last pod
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sometimes it means criticizing the resistance so i
just don't like being labeled a certain way and i
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think jason and i sort of you know kind of resolve
this um you know if i label my politics just you
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know jason calls me the conservative i think
that's more accurate but the question is you know
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what am i conserving exactly and i would describe
myself more as like a 1960s style liberal you
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know i'm a believer in free speech you know aclu
style um believer in king's dream of a colorblind
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society you know if you know i'm against all
these you know foreign wars and interventions
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if i had been around the 1960s i would have
been protesting vietnam that's kind of more
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where i'm coming from and i guess the reason i'm
a conservative now is because the political debate
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has moved so far away from that but if i'm
trying to conserve anything it's really the liberal victories of the 1960s so in any event i
i don't think that qualifies me in any way as a as
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a trumper per se and um i just don't want you know
jason making jokes to somehow um have the audience
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get the wrong idea because i want to be heard
and i know trump's an extremely polarizing figure and the second you tell somebody you're frankly
pro or con trump the other half just doesn't
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even stop doesn't even want to listen to you um
and so my views are more complicated than that
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okay well thanks for everybody
for tuning in to the all-in amazing episode 17. thanks to our sponsors um
listen uh i think what makes this podcast great
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is the diversity of opinion and the respect that
we show for each other if my breaking chops uh
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which is as everybody knows here uh my superpower
in life and talk along with talking has pigeon
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holed you into being something you're not or if
you felt i've taken a cheap shot at you in any way
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uh i apologize and it was not my intent my intent
is to keep the conversation flowing to entertain
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the audience certainly but not at anybody's
expense david and certainly not yours because i do consider you one of the best friends i've had
in my life and one of the most supportive people
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in my life and anything we all feel that way about
each other that we go to bad for each other and support each other i do think that this highlights
and dovetails with what we and i've given it a lot
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of thought actually i've really spent since
the last podcast a lot of time thinking about
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your position david and where you're coming
from and then also where the people who maybe
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you know you maybe agreed with some of uh trump's
victories and certainly you're a conservative
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i don't know if you voted for him or not or if
you're willing to say if you did i'll put that aside for a moment but i do think that we're all
seeing in our families in our lives and now as a
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nation what is the off-ramp here to the people
who supported trump up until this coup attempt
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uh and this ugliness and then how do we reconcile
it right that is the grand reconciliation here is
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the thing that has me very concerned because
we're a microcosm david you and i are you know
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unbelievably close friends uh for a very long
period of time and we struggle with uh i think uh
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trump trump is as i was saying in our group chat
earlier it's like the trolley car problem like
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people will be pulling up how do you deal with
trump as the example of you know what do you
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do if the trolley car you know it's going to kill
one person or five and do you you know the breaks broken kind of situation it's and i think jack
and the platforms also have a difficult task
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do you leave this person up after what we saw on
wednesday and a lot has changed since wednesday can you say something i'll leave it at that and
then i'll throw it to your mouth i don't want to
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no jason here's the thing i think that um we all
have views i think the thing that i respect the
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most about saks is that his views are independent
of the candidate du jour and i think his views
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quite honestly are in many cases the most well
reasoned and well thought out because he's frankly
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you know one of the smartest people in our
friend group if not probably the smartest so i think what it speaks to is the fact that you
can have these momentary sort of pauses where you
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have these people that are so polarizing
that you forget that there are legitimate views on both sides i mean i would characterize
my political views as in some cases like deeply
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conservative meaning get the government out of the
way they're a bunch of incompetent [ __ ] buffoons
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and on the other side on some issues i think
that they should be extremely interventional like in healthcare or in climate change because
it's just so dire and there needs to be a public
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mandate in order to drive change i don't know
where i fit anymore especially because it's harder
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to be nuanced as friedrich said at the beginning
without sounding like a complete crazy person because one word triggers the other side against
you so i think the thing that i just want all
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the listeners to appreciate not just amongst the
four of us but also amongst their own friends is
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having a little patience and tolerance
here is really important because we cannot become the worst of ourselves especially
because of a single person who will be rendered
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with an enormous asterisk beside his name and by
him i mean trump for the rest of our natural lives
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and so let's just not allow what one person
has been able to do to malign all of our like
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natural ability to just not be completely stupid
quite honestly so um i just think it's important
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to realize that we all have completely completely
nuanced perspectives they're all worth listening
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to and i would just tell people don't fall for
the simple easy out to assume that you know being
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a conservative means you're a trump supporter or
being a liberal means you're not a trump supporter because i think that there's issues in which you
know frankly look let's be honest the the wall
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street journal opinion by uh was it lisa lasser
what was her name lisa uh amy lassell somebody um
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sky posted into the group chat nick can you find
it i can't remember it sassel or lasso is her last name anyways oh kim strassel kim strausel journal
yeah she she had a paragraph intro where and again
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i wasn't a trump supporter have never been a
trump supporter i do have those some sympathy
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to some of the things he did and the way
that she described his four years although you know she was selective it was impressive
actually you know meaning getting the rhetoric
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right on china getting the rhetoric on trade right
um the deregulation that he's created in some ways
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so there there is very much a reasonable
narrative up until the capital storming where
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the glass was definitely half full and it could
have legitimately been viewed half full and it
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was just a matter of opinion because he was just
such a crazy person and his style was so shitty i think the thing is david said this on the last
part after storming the capital it is very clear
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100 categorically this guy is just a complete
piece of [ __ ] and so now the people that stand
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with him are extremely isolated and so i just
want us to remember that there there is probably
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something to learn from everybody he actually
did some reasonable things intelligently well until he [ __ ] self-immolated himself um and so
let's just not give in to our basic instincts here
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and i think there's a lot to learn from uh
i think the frustration of a lot of people is some people saw this coming and some people
you know when peter thiel said things like hey
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you know don't take trump literally and all this
kind of stuff some of us were taking him literally
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and some of us were very concerned and people were
saying oh you're being hyperbolic he's not hitler
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he's he's not dangerous you know what uh [ __ ] he
is dangerous and you should take him literally and
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i think a lot of the folks who enabled him and
who thought it was funny um who weren't on the
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other side of his vindictiveness his dog whistling
uh and the anger and the violence he put out into
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the world and he consistently did this you know he
he he started by saying you know get that person the hell out of here like i would in the old
days the cops would have thrown him down the
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stairs kind of thing he he is like tony soprano
or any other mob boss who knows how to incite
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people to do dangerous things without having the
culpability himself as you pointed out chamath he
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he might be the one who gets off scot-free while
they're rounding up all these people and you got this prediction right like yeah these people are
going to go to jail there's multiple felonies
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he's not going to get off scot-free he's not
well i mean do you think he's going to jail and do you think the people who broke into this
you think you think trump's going to jail yes
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oh my lord i'm i'm not i'm not sure about that but
i i i do think that you know like i said last time
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uh trump is now the first uh sitting president
to cost his party the presidency the house and
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the senate since herbert hoover uh jason if you're
right about trump i mean the voters have certainly
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been able to see that and they've punished him and
his party at the polls i do think that whatever
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you do to trump individually at this point is sort
of redundant with that um you know he has now cost
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his party uh any share of power everything any
share of the power in washington so can i ask
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you a question david when i made that point about
peter thiel and the people who supported him early
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do you have any regrets in your own thinking
about being supportive of trump in his early years
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you're coming at this from a place i've never even
come at it from which is i'm not like a partisan
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person uh when trump won the election in 2016
my first reaction was not is this you know har
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right or wrong i don't it's you know what side am
i on my my first reaction was why did this happen
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you know i tried to understand it you know i
read you know the the hillbilly elegy author um
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you know i was you know my my surprise at that
happening caused me to ask questions and you know
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what i think became really clear is that trump won
despite his manifest you know flaws because of a
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uh because of the failure of the elites i mean he
he was you know he's a sort of outsider populist
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and the country was trying to send the a
bipartisan i should say bipartisan elites
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and what was that message that to chamas point
for the last 20 years uh the bipartisan consensus
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in washington has been to feed this chinese tiger
into the wagon is now potentially on the cusp
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of supplanting us as the sort of richest economy
in the world we have admired ourselves in these
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forever wars in the middle east i mean again
these were things that both democrats and republicans got us into so my reaction you know
was first and foremost to try and understand it
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and then once he was in the presidency you
know i didn't see my job as being to be part
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of some crazy resistance i mean there needed to
be a rational opposition to trump and there was
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never a rational opposition um people would
basically object to anything he said just because
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he said it which ben made your side and i'm going
to say your side the conservative side i wouldn't
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say your side the conservative side dug in because
they were like well the left's being hysterical
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not not really i mean if you've been reading
national review for the last few years and especially the last two months there's been plenty
of criticism of trump well i was thinking more ted
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cruz lindsey graham all these people who said they
would be never trumpers became right in line trump
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supporters and they're in their partisan they're
they're politicians they're part of the the party
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for people who care about ideas what i would
say is i didn't change my ideas one way or
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another because trump might happen to agree
with one of them freeberry what's your take
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i don't like talking about trump well that is
kind of i think where we where we're getting to
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this is that look what's the off ramp
here friedberg um what's the end game you guys remember how the emperor came
to power in star wars it was palpatine
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turned the republic against itself and then he
emergency powers emergency powers um look i i what
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i to sax's point like i care um more deeply um i
care very little about trump the person um and i
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care more deeply about the motivations of people
that that want a person like that um in power and
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i care more deeply about the way the dialogue
is happening um to resolve ideas and to resolve
00:18:12
to decisions in this country right now um that is
why i think that you know my vote last year in our
00:18:18
last two podcasts ago which seems like 10 years
ago was that um the biggest political failure
00:18:25
of 2020 is the institute of american democracy
and it's only gotten worse in the last two weeks
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and i think that the mechanism
by which we have debate is lost it's from everyone from the
republican to the democratic leadership
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uh it is attacking and finger-pointing and there
is no um resolve for forgiveness um there is no
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everything is all about justice and winning
and there is no resolve for objectivity and
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discovering the truth and doing the best thing for
people not the best thing for party and doing the
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best thing for country and that's really easy
to say and really really hard to do as i think
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everyone is realizing because as soon as you say
let's bring the country together half the country raises their hand and says but i want justice
and we can't come together until we have justice
00:19:18
and so at what point do you break the cycle you
know revenge never ends until someone steps down
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first and says you know what i give up i'm not
gonna i'm gonna end up in the losing position
00:19:29
but at that point maybe reconciliation can begin
um and i'm more concerned about the the heat the
00:19:35
temperature and everyone says turn it down but no
one's actually turning it down um and so you know
00:19:43
the legacy of trump i i i honestly care less
about i care much more about going forward how
00:19:49
do we resolve to decisions that aren't all about
the democrats overrunning and i you know i was
00:19:54
i was actually upset about georgia because i do
think it's a problem if you have a one-party state
00:20:00
and we don't have balance and we don't have a
forum for conversation we don't have a forum uh you know for for coming to uh to kind
of you know objective sentiment that that's
00:20:09
best for the people um and so i you know
i'm much more interested in flipping the conversation away from trump and trying
to think about you know going forward
00:20:18
what are the things what are the forums what
are the mechanisms that we can have to to create equity in the country to create reconciliation
to create balance in decision making and to
00:20:28
turn down the temperature so that chancellor
palpatine doesn't become the evil emperor and that we don't lose to china and you know all
the things that are kind of emerging as being the
00:20:38
unfortunate outcomes yeah we have three or four
major wars we need to solve the pandemic china
00:20:45
wealth inequality global warming chamoth uh do
you think at this point in the podcast we should
00:20:53
walk through what's happened since wednesday
vis-a-vis you know trump being de-platformed or
00:20:58
do you think we should uh talk a little bit about
and skip to reconciliation i think we have a fork
00:21:03
in the road here as the moderator i'll just ask
chamoth maybe you could pick which direction we go well i think it's important to talk about
what happened um and i'll frame this in the
00:21:15
in the context of peter thiel he has a philosopher
that he's talked a lot about renee gerard and
00:21:22
um you know basically the the girardian philosophy
is essentially that you know people come into
00:21:28
conflict because they're extremely similar and
you know they effectively want the same things and they're competing for the same sort of essentially
scarce resources and the way that you resolve that
00:21:38
is through some sort of cathartic sacrifice
right meaning like there needs to be a grand crime a grand act and i think that we're at this
point to friedberg's sort of earlier statement
00:21:49
where you got a choice which is you either throw
democracy under the bus or you actually throw djt under the bus and you don't have a choice
and that and that and and sort of like it's not
00:21:59
just even the united states it's almost like sort
of democracy as an institution's hand was forced
00:22:04
um this past week and so it is probably important
to look at what's happened in the last few
00:22:12
days through that lens which is you know it's
it's almost like people first were shocked
00:22:19
and then now we're in the midst of that reflexive
reaction to what is a simple choice which is you
00:22:26
can basically forgive the guy or you can re-affirm
the institution which means to sacrifice the guy
00:22:35
and i think that's the thing that's happening in
real time and it's going to be i think over the next few weeks a super messy conversation because
you're going to have a bunch of dumb decisions
00:22:46
you're going to have a bunch of overreaching
you know you're going to have a bunch of um
00:22:52
dramatic sort of bellyaching on both sides
you know there was this thing today where devin nunes was like screaming about how he had
lost his 3 000 followers on par or three million
00:23:03
followers on parlor but he was saying it on fox
news which is distribution to millions of people
00:23:11
and so can i ask a question about this reality
now we're all facing do because the event that
00:23:17
occurred on wednesday we are all still trying
to process and new information is coming in
00:23:23
as we you know as people get the videos and and
as we let the dust settle the dust is settling i'm
00:23:31
curious sax do how do you look at what happened on
wednesday do you view it as a coup do you because
00:23:38
some of the information that's come out about they
were trying to get to pence and that they wanted to kidnap people and then you that dovetails
with the kidnapping schemes that were going on
00:23:48
uh and there were pipe bombs and a police officer
was beaten to death with a pipe and his skull
00:23:54
was crushed or something we don't have all the
details yet fire yeah a first thing where she was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher some
of the videos i've seen of police being dragged
00:24:03
um you know that counteract the selfie police
you know so many different things occurred on
00:24:09
wednesday i think we all have to just think about
what happened on wednesday how do we each feel
00:24:15
about what happened on wednesday i'll go to
you first sex and not because i'm framing you
00:24:20
as anything just because you haven't yeah no i
mean i already said i i already gave my thoughts in the last part that it was outrageous it was
a travesty um it was a rally that turned into
00:24:32
a riot that turned into you know some sort of
insurrection i guess you could call it it was it
00:24:37
was a rebellion against authority um i think coup
is potentially a strong word uh because it wasn't
00:24:46
nobody ever had their hands on the levers of
power i mean the fate of the republic was never
00:24:52
in question i know there were even you know
people tweeting about how the uh the these
00:24:59
marauders whatever you want to call them
almost got their hands on the elector's ballots i mean yeah but we all know how they're
voting even if they had gotten them
00:25:07
uh we would just have gotten new ones i
mean that was sort of a ceremonial thing but look it was it was an absolute outrage but i
do think that there is um a thing happening now
00:25:18
uh called threat inflation where you know using
language like you know going from riot to uh
00:25:28
insurrection to now coup it there is a a type of
inflation happening that is then used to justify
00:25:36
the reaction by the other side to it which is now
you know the basically the ending of freedom of
00:25:42
speech um which is really i think the big thing
that's happened since the last pod is really the reason why we are having this emergency pod i
think is because of what's happened there i think
00:25:51
the emergency power was just to make sure that the
pod wasn't ending because of you not getting in a big fight i think that was people's concern the
beatles were breaking up yeah well that's true
00:26:01
look uh just keeping the pot together you know
with with four big egos on it you're right it's hard it is like the beatles you know one day it's
gonna break up but but not but not yet not yet
00:26:10
uh but but i wanna i wanna tie in this issue with
you said what you said about the off-ramp okay
00:26:16
which is you know what is the off-ramp from this
look everybody understands i think regardless of
00:26:22
what side political spectrum you're on that we
are caught in a cycle of insane hyper-partisan
00:26:28
warfare and tit-for-tat retaliation and that is
the thing that we need to uh that is the ledge
00:26:35
we need to walk back from okay
but the problem that everybody has is that they can only see the other side doing it
you know they can't see themselves doing it this
00:26:46
is a two-way street both sides are doing it and
that's how de-escalation works is both of us have
00:26:51
to concede something yes and unless you can see
when your side is doing it we're never gonna break
00:26:57
the cycle now the thing that is happening right
now now what trump did was absolutely outrageous
00:27:03
and i think it it brought him to an ignominious
end in american politics he will pay for it in
00:27:09
the history books if not in a court of law
okay but now what has happened is the next
00:27:15
step in the tit-for-tat retaliation what the
the stormy of the capital has now been used
00:27:20
to implement a sweeping attack on free speech
you know the the twitter employees who sent
00:27:28
that letter to jack who've been demanding this for
years have finally gotten their way and there is
00:27:33
a widespread purge going on and not just of trump
not just a permanent ban on trump and then a whole
00:27:40
bunch of other people you know conservatives
there are now liberal accounts there's an account that i wasn't even aware of called red
scare they're basically you know pretty pretty
00:27:48
much on the left no one can say exactly what it
was that got them banned i guess they had steve
00:27:54
bannon on their podcast they are suddenly banned
from twitter nobody knows why oh i subscribe to
00:27:59
the red scare podcast it's actually uh it's called
the dirt bag left they're kind of like socialists
00:28:05
um intel trying to be public intellectuals and
it's it's oddly compelling i'll leave it at
00:28:10
that um but they are now banned from from twitter
they somehow got let's pause for a second on djt
00:28:18
getting banned from twitter this is close to 100
million followers it's a billion dollars in value
00:28:25
he just had the pga say they'll never you do a
trump golf course again so the ram the real world
00:28:31
ramifications for trump are he's his businesses
are going to be devastated his platform is gone
00:28:39
but and i was very pro trump staying on
twitter i thought it was insane to think that
00:28:46
the president of the united states would
have their twitter handle removed that seemed crazy to me however crazy it's
a crazy concept that being said trump
00:28:55
knows how to dance right up to the line on
the terms of service and i think here's the thing here's the thing i think there's imminent
danger and i think what we don't know is what
00:29:07
is concerning to me the fact that all of
these services have turned him off i believe
00:29:13
is indicative of wednesday was under hyped
and that they really did intend to kidnap uh
00:29:20
folks and blow off bombs and the proud boys
uh founder was arrested days before with
00:29:27
you know selling large magazine weapons i i
think that they wanted to kill and kidnap people
00:29:34
um and perhaps even like hang the vice president
honestly crazy but honestly honestly jason that's
00:29:39
what i think is going on with twitter i think they
told i think they showed them the receipts jason stop i honestly like let's not [ __ ] fear monger
like we're we're no better than anybody else
00:29:48
without [ __ ] we don't know any of that crap and
the reality is that if they were doing that they they are not stupid enough to do it on a platform
where you basically follow anybody you want
00:29:58
okay like i mean if that were the case then
[ __ ] uh isis would be using twitter they
00:30:03
don't use twitter they use telegram live streamed
storming of the capital these people are not smart
00:30:09
we've established that i i i anyways i look can
we just let's just like let's not do the left
00:30:15
version of q anon okay let's not have now the
last version of the crazy conspiracy theories
00:30:21
here's here's i think what is worth talking about
we really reflexively all of a sudden um started
00:30:29
to push back on free speech in a way that doesn't
make any sense meaning i really was surprised like
00:30:36
why are these silicon valley companies reacting
now like if you had a reason to do it uh it had
00:30:46
been building for years and years and years and in
many ways it was kind of like this random moment
00:30:53
and and i mean random because i just don't think
that you know everything up until that point was
00:30:59
not equally sort of violent disgusting under the
same lens that that moment was and so had you
00:31:04
had a reason to ban him you would have banned him
already but then doing it in the way you did and then having this cascading effect on folks on the
left and the right just getting basically pushed
00:31:14
out the door to me was just completely reactive
and not rooted in anything it didn't to me it
00:31:20
didn't make any sense it it it's it's i don't know
i was i was very frustrated and and a little taken
00:31:25
aback well can i can i jump in you like jump in
on that because yeah and tweeting a lot about this
00:31:30
and then the last thing is like they let donald
trump hit a one-outer like he was painted in a
00:31:35
quarter to be a complete demagogue and instead now
it has been wrapped in a free speech issue where
00:31:43
now more people are talking about free speech than
what a scumbag he is how did we let that happen
00:31:51
big big big tech blundered into it again i
mean we had a unanimity across the political
00:31:56
spectrum that what happened at the capitol was
wrong and donald trump was responsible for it and chamath exactly like you said the topic
has now changed to censorship by big tech
00:32:06
which is a real issue i mean look our freedom
of speech is a shrine in the constitution
00:32:12
in the first amendment of the bill of rights it's
the first [ __ ] one okay it's the one the framers
00:32:18
the constitution cared about the most because free
speech is not just uh necessary and important for
00:32:25
democracy it's the reason why we have our freedom
is so that we can think and speak and worship
00:32:32
as we please and that is legitimately under threat
um you know what what big to end and by the way
00:32:39
it's not just the permanent ban on trump you had
simultaneous to that it was it wasn't just the
00:32:44
banning of all these accounts you also had the d
platforming of parlor which is sort of the twitter
00:32:50
alternative by google and apple at the same time
and in amazon and so you're talking about really
00:32:56
de-platforming not just trump but millions of
people and so the the amazing thing is that
00:33:03
we've had this sweeping appropriation of power by
you know half a dozen oligarchs who now have the
00:33:11
right to determine what we see and read and people
are cheering because they hate trump so much
00:33:20
they can't see that the biggest power grab in
history has happened has happened okay i want
00:33:26
to say something on this because i'm not sure
i really fully agree i i think that the point
00:33:32
that saks is making um about freedom of speech
applies to what you're legally allowed to say
00:33:40
saks we're talking about private services
that um you know a user chooses to use and the service provider chooses to make
available to that user in a market um space
00:33:53
and in that context it feels to me like everyone
has a choice of where to go and what services to
00:33:59
use and frankly if there aren't good services to
use so and there's a lot of people that want to use one the free market will resolve to create one
and we're already seeing that with signal being
00:34:06
the number one app on the app store today that
emerging new platforms will win in a marketplace
00:34:12
where old service providers are no longer catering
to the market demands for a service um i'll also
00:34:18
say that can i respond to that one yeah and
then i'll make one more point but go ahead yeah
00:34:23
so i understand the first amendment only applies
to to government okay it doesn't apply to private
00:34:29
companies but but here's here's the thing
is that when the framers of the constitution wrote that freedom of speech was something that
took place in the in the town square right you
00:34:38
would go to the courthouse steps and put down your
soap box you could speak to people gather or crowd that is why the right to assemble is part of
the first amendment is because assembling is
00:34:47
tantamount to free speech where do people assemble
today online on these monopoly network services
00:34:56
like a facebook like twitter and again it's not
and and to your point couldn't they go to some
00:35:01
other site well they did they went to parlor
guess what happened the operating systems just
00:35:07
banned parlor and so you know i hear this there's
an open there's an open web sax you know you don't
00:35:12
need to go to apple's app store or google's google
play you can put an app on android you just don't need to do it through google play and if you
don't want to use apple's you know os you can
00:35:21
use another phone and by the way and everyone
can access the internet the internet is free
00:35:26
and open and anyone can create a new network node
on the internet and anyone can put any information they want on that node provided it's within the
the the boundaries and constraints of the law
00:35:35
and they can make it available to anyone
else maybe for now but you can't use aws and google might not make you show up in search
results you could turn your imac you could turn
00:35:44
your imac at home into a into a web server and
you could make it available on the internet if google and amazon and apple have censored
you at the operating system level and removed
00:35:54
you from google search results how in the world
is anybody supposed to find you yeah people have been removed from search results let me just i
think it's important so so i do think that there's
00:36:04
still an open market and there's an open internet
that people can access information freely and use the internet freely without being dependent on a
handful of you're right highly scaled services and
00:36:15
highly scaled platforms but there's certainly a
marketplace and an opportunity for for innovation there i'll also say that the um the platforms
that made these decisions to ban these accounts
00:36:27
and kick people off um are not doing so uh uh
under the demand of law and i think that that
00:36:34
is a really and so i think to some extent uh you
know i'm probably on your side in this context
00:36:40
but um the standard is not a legal standard the
standard is a judgment it isn't it is a it is a
00:36:46
moral or some principled standard that is sitting
above and beyond the legal standard that they're required to comply with this is the point and
this is really scary right because at that point
00:36:56
it becomes a subjective decision about who you
kick off based on your interpretation of what they
00:37:02
said and what they intended when they said it and
that leads to the infinite slippery slope and it's
00:37:08
you nailed it one [ __ ] thousand percent that is
the exact issue it's not necessarily about free
00:37:14
speech it is that when you have accumulated power
and you effectively have a quasi-governmental
00:37:20
organization that gets to operate in the free
market when it wants to but then operate like a quasi-governmental monopoly when it wants to
all of a sudden the power becomes in the shadows
00:37:31
right there is a random vp someplace who actually
controls this decision and the problem is today if
00:37:38
a politician does something or a political body or
a government body does something you have redress
00:37:44
right you can sue that entity you know who it
is there's a pathway through the courts through the law through the constitution the problem with
this is all of a sudden it becomes murky and look
00:37:54
you flip a coin 50 of the time guys you're going
to get your way the other 50 of the time who the
00:38:00
[ __ ] knows what will happen and you may be
completely on the wrong side of it and this is i think the problem let me i just want to read
you guys something there was a there was this
00:38:08
manifesto or memo this woman who was a former
facebook data scientist sophie zhang she wrote
00:38:14
i'm just i'm just going to read this because
i think it's uh it's really interesting here the 6600 word memo written by former facebook data
scientist sophie zhang is filled with concrete
00:38:23
examples of heads of government and political
parties in azerbaijan and under honduras using
00:38:30
fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to
sway public opinion in countries including india
00:38:35
ukraine spain brazil bolivia and ecuador she found
evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes
00:38:41
to boost or hinder political candidates or
outcomes though she did not always conclude who was behind them she said in the three years
i've spent at facebook i found multiple blatant
00:38:51
attempts by foreign national governments to
abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry and cause international news
on multiple occasions now let me just stop there
00:39:01
replace your united states with all those
countries and we care but there are people in all of those countries where you know those
countries mean more to them than what's happening
00:39:10
in the united states that's right and that
represents the problem that's the social the
00:39:15
the social suasion that is influencing the
leaders of the tech companies are largely their
00:39:20
democrat employees that live in the bay area
and um that's a big part of why the decisions
00:39:26
are being made in the way that they're being
made and the priorities are being set is because as you pointed out i think it was saka put it
on twitter and jason you've talked about this
00:39:34
but talent is everything in silicon valley
and if your employees tell you they're going
00:39:40
to quit working for you or they're not going
to do their jobs you're going to take that to heart and there's not a lot of influence
or suasion that you know citizens of bolivia
00:39:49
and you know uruguay can have with executives at
facebook and twitter but people in the bay area
00:39:57
have a [ __ ] clue about the politics in
azerbaijan or bolivia does any one of us have a point of view and and i think that's that's
that's the point is like it's like as soon as you
00:40:06
add judgment to the equation um you know you're
going to be wrong with some people and you're
00:40:11
going to be right with some people versus using an
absolute standard and if the issue is that the law
00:40:16
if the law doesn't define the absolute
standard then you need to go and change the law i think there's going to be a couple of free
market solutions that come here because you even
00:40:25
as difficult as this decision can be you layer it
onto it somebody who is completely insincere and
00:40:32
manipulating the system um on purpose and to your
point david in the last podcast is sitting in
00:40:39
the present united states seat you know it
carries different weight and if you look at the words that trump used or rudy used you know
we want to have uh combat trial by combat you know
00:40:53
is that somebody's got to make a judgment call
is that an incitement to violence or do you just look at what occurred after they said the words
it's a very difficult thing to do there are free
00:41:01
market solutions that will emerge bitcoin is
something we've talked about it's an incredible run nobody's controlling that there is master
don and plenty of other peer-to-peer software
00:41:11
that will be deployed i predict and that will put
up uh competition now for these services and it
00:41:18
will be impossible to ban those peer-to-peer uh uh
platforms and so we'll have some products emerging
00:41:24
one universal truth this information wants to
be free so if there is an opinion if there is a voice if there is information so there'll be a
free market response to parlor being shut down
00:41:33
i i sincerely believe that a lot of these
decisions are being made not just at the behest
00:41:39
of the employees i do agree they have tremendous
power and i've said that obviously many times
00:41:45
i think what's going on here is people believe
that trump and we and you said it yourself david
00:41:50
there's gonna be a white knuckle 10 days
uh and i don't know if you still believe that there's a chance on the 17th or 19th
or whatever that there could be more unrest
00:41:58
i actually think a lot of people woke up and
said i don't know if i want to give this guy
00:42:03
the ability to say the next three or four
crazy things that make people show up um at a person's home or you know the
dog whistling and you know if if trump's
00:42:19
comments on wednesday at that rally and rudy
giuliani's and donald trump juniors the people who
00:42:25
really incited this uh and they're gonna face some
amount of civil and and criminal charges i believe
00:42:32
um if they did that on twitter or facebook or
youtube or periscope or whatever it happens to be
00:42:38
and then this happened would those platforms have
some liability especially after you know what's
00:42:45
happened i think that they're just in part of this
is covering their asses i think they should have just done a 30-day ban not a permanent ban so at
least they would have the cover of saying listen
00:42:55
this is too heated we're going to pause for
30 days and then we'll reassess it february
00:43:00
1st or february 15th right well so part of
the problem here is that there is no policy
00:43:07
right the policy is public outcry and if there's
enough public outcry and there's enough pressure
00:43:13
or letter writing from the employees or there's
enough saber-rattling by the people who are
00:43:18
going to run the senate judiciary committee
next year or the language was so clear it's
00:43:24
but there is so so three months ago i wrote a blog
post um about the so the policy that i thought the
00:43:31
social media companies should take i said for
moderation and what i said is there actually
00:43:36
is a moderation policy consistent with the first
amendment that could be implemented because the first amendment does not protect many categories
of basically dangerous speech uh there's like
00:43:47
nine major categories it includes incitement
of violence it includes you know trying to uh
00:43:53
you know uh uh trying to provoke a crime it uh it
includes fraud it includes defamation there are
00:44:01
many categories of speech that aren't protected
by the first amendment and social media companies could have said listen this is our policy is
we're going to try and be broadly consistent
00:44:10
with the first amendment but if somebody goes
outside of those lines then we'll remove it
00:44:15
so there was a way to to your point jason i think
there was a way to remove some of trump's treat uh
00:44:21
tweets for incitement consistent with the first
amendment but that's not what they did you know
00:44:27
that and maybe that would it said what they did
is a lifetime ban combined with rounding up you
00:44:33
know twice the usual number of suspects combined
with a de-platforming not at the account level but
00:44:40
at now at the application level by google apple
and amazon and none of this has been explained
00:44:46
there is no policy what it is is a no i mean
there's a hold on what it is is an appropriation
00:44:53
by oligarchs no no there is a policy
the problem is as we've just discussed it's an interpretation that must occur and the
interpretation of wednesday's comments on a tweet
00:45:04
might be okay yeah they're borderline
but not enough to shut us a countdown and and these folks know how to do it when when
rudy giuliani says i want a trial by combat or
00:45:13
you know if trump says you're not gonna have a
country unless you fight and you have to fight and we're never going to accept these results is that
inciting or not so well the policy that that that
00:45:25
i want is something broadly consistent with the
first amendment uh because but in those years and
00:45:31
those phrases i just told you is that are those
inciting or are those on the border line if you
00:45:36
were making the decision right so you know putting
my lawyer hat on for a second there's questions of law and questions of fact okay and we can debate
what you're describing are questions of fact
00:45:46
what i'm trying to say is well what what is the
law what is the policy that we're talking about would say those were not direct incitement no
there is no policy these social media companies
00:45:56
don't have any policy they're making it up
as they go along based on what would you do what would you do with trump's comments from
wednesday if they were in tweets yeah i'll tell
00:46:03
you so first of all i would have implemented
a a moderation policy broadly consistent with the first amendment and then certain tweets
that were inciting violence while there was
00:46:14
rioting on the capitol i would have been okay
taking those down i would have taken those down where i think and and i think even
doing something until the inauguration
00:46:23
if you think that trump poses a threat think i
think that's okay i think that's okay so you would
00:46:30
have been fine with the 30-day ban or something
well like a 10-day ban or whatever but a lifetime ban that like on what basis on what constitutional
grounds do you justify that and look i know it's
00:46:41
a private company but my point is this idea
our free speech rights got privatized okay
00:46:48
the town square got digitized and centralized
we used to have thousands we used to have
00:46:54
town squares where people could convene all over
this country we had a multiplicity of newspapers
00:46:59
all that got replaced by a handful of tech
monopolists our free speech rights got digitized
00:47:05
if they take away our ability to speak we don't
have free speech rights who do we appeal to
00:47:11
when we get cancelled by a google or apple what
court can we go to there is right you have to
00:47:16
create a computing process by the way i think this
is the best argument for having an internet court and um if you think about the standards that are
being applied they're being applied haphazardly
00:47:26
randomly um by by these companies in response to
to near-term market forces you know what what is
00:47:33
everyone saying they have to do um or what
are their employees rallying securities law
00:47:39
well there's there's a there's privacy laws that
say what you you know that companies the digital companies cannot take certain types of data
and you know why not have um laws there are
00:47:48
hate speech laws out there as well and why not
be more specific and then let an internet court adjudicate and make the decision about what to
take down and what not to take down they are as
00:47:56
they are very responsive to warrants when there
is a criminal act underway and so why not let an internet court be responsive to take down requests
or to where do you think chamoth good idea
00:48:08
no it's it's mandatory and again it centralizes it
centralizes the standards right so you don't have
00:48:14
to have ad hoc random decisions and let if what
sacs is saying is true it creates a standard that
00:48:19
everyone has to abide by and that every consumer
can trust them to abide by first first we need a
00:48:25
bill of rights right first we need to say that we
as citizens have rights that the court can defend
00:48:33
can defend that is the problem we don't have any
rights these companies are acting willy-nilly
00:48:41
canceling people depriving them of their
speech rights and don't tell me that you can still speak you know somewhere if you
get if you get cancelled here's the thought
00:48:50
exercise and i want everybody listening who's
on the left to think about this exact issue
00:48:57
your favorite social media company is trying
to get a really really big deal closed and they
00:49:05
you know are trying to curry favor with a
bunch of brands and a bunch of governments
00:49:12
and those governments and brands let's just say
it's in india right huge market 1.2 billion people
00:49:20
they say you know what we're um a little tepid on
abortion and so the deal is you need to dial down
00:49:29
any ad from planned parenthood you need to
prevent planned parenthood groups from amplifying
00:49:36
from being able to fundraise think about that
exact issue now and ask yourself is it okay
00:49:43
because there's a lot of people that are
you know pro-choice that listen to this and the and you i'm sure right now your
blood is [ __ ] boiling but there is no
00:49:52
distinction between that decision and what
happened over the last few days there's none it's arbitrary it's random it doesn't necessarily
make any sense there is no way to readdress it
00:50:04
then that's the biggest problem with all of
this thing it's just there's a concept that uh newspapers have an obsman and the new
york times had went up until i think 2017
00:50:13
and then they got rid of it because i think
it was causing too much headaches but it's a person who sits who works for the organization but
has complete independence and sits outside of it
00:50:21
to comment on these kind of situations and i think
that's what these companies no these jason they have these things but those are fig leaves and
those are just meant to basically no they don't
00:50:29
they don't have it it's a distraction politician
because it's not it's not uh jason they have a [ __ ] council facebook has a council which is
not transparent they don't say here's our decision
00:50:38
making and talk to the public directly about it i
think yet you can look to securities law there are some examples in securities law which i think are
really interesting which is that um a cfo and a
00:50:48
ceo has to certify quarterly results right meaning
for people who have issues with a company and with
00:50:56
the statement of their earnings which is the sort
of atomic unit of value creation and financial
00:51:01
reporting they have a mechanism to redress it
because you're certifying that something is true
00:51:06
right you're certifying a set of decisions have
been made an audit has been done you know the software works you know the blah blah blah what
is the version of that for all of this other stuff
00:51:15
which is that you know where where are the people
who are they actually that make the decisions you
00:51:20
can't point to jack and zuck and say those guys
are the decision makers i think in these examples what you have to point to is there was a petition
of potentially several hundred or a few thousand
00:51:30
engineers and depending on how important they
were they may have gotten their way that's crazy
00:51:36
guys well and trump served it up to him i mean if
you if you know and then the worst part is no but
00:51:42
the worst part is these people who are probably
very left of center completely [ __ ] the left
00:51:48
and then they basically let donald trump off the
hook because now we're gonna completely be talking about free speech whereas the odds that donald
trump would have gone to jail and been prosecuted
00:51:57
was basically in my opinion a [ __ ] stone cold
lock and then now after this happened there's a
00:52:03
bunch of those people who are going to basically
like him and ha and now they're not going to necessarily go along with it exactly 100 100
percent and and jason so good [ __ ] job guys
00:52:15
you got the exact opposite of what you wanted
exactly and here's the thing jason you're right
00:52:21
trump's outrage gave the censors the excuse to
impose this that's the way that censorship always
00:52:27
works if you are censoring somebody popular it
would never happen censorship always starts by
00:52:34
censoring some outrage that everybody agrees
should be censored and no one even notices
00:52:40
that what's happening is you're handing power to
a group of people that they can now use against
00:52:47
you in the future censorship always starts as
something you like and it ends as something
00:52:52
you don't like when it finally gets turned
against you what is the policy of the people
00:52:57
who are now canceling willy-nilly it's cancel
culture by the way it's not the first amendment well i think you got to not say willy-nilly after
trump incited riots if there's enough public it
00:53:08
might have been an overreaction but i think it's
the proper reaction you agree it's the problem
00:53:28
60 000 followers is like i mean like it doesn't like what's going on it makes no
sense jason i mean you used to be a member
00:53:36
of the press no one believed in the first
amendment more than you and you're listening
00:53:46
no cause you to pull your punches on these on
censorship no no i i'll be totally clear i think they should have an obudsman i think they should
lean towards allowing speech i was anti-kicking
00:53:56
trump off the platform when the entire left
was asking for it to be and you can look at the receipts i've been saying for four years
it's insane to take potus off i actually in my
00:54:04
heart of hearts believe that there is imminent
risk in keeping him able to communicate with
00:54:09
this group of people and there should have been
a 30-day timeout for him and i don't think it should have been indefinite it should have been a
30-day timeout and i think we should do what folks
00:54:19
said i don't know who said it on the last part
or i heard it somewhere else like actually if
00:54:24
we actually were to audit some of these
claims and create an independent council to audit the election that might be a way to
heal things and i think giving trump said that
00:54:33
who's that free brexit yeah so i think that's
like a power move as well um but i i'm still pro
00:54:38
freedom of speech i think there's imminent danger
and i don't think it's willy-nilly this is where i think sometimes you get you you miss and you
uh misrepresent yourself david um and we started
00:54:48
this off with me misrepresenting you but when you
say it's nilly it's not willy-nilly we just had
00:54:54
this act of you know treason and this violence uh
at the capitol it is not just willy-nilly jason
00:55:01
jason you have an over-reaction i agree but it's
not willy-nilly jason you have to admit though the
00:55:06
entire world had donald trump in a corner debt
to rights and he hated energy and he hit him
00:55:13
it's a bad strategy to de-platform to this
level i agree and then to include the reason
00:55:19
they're going after parlor by the way is
that this guy lynn wood threatened he said
00:55:24
that they should take vice president pence
out and shoot him and i think that actually
00:55:30
but they literally didn't take it down
without that that was incitement to violence and un under the first amendment you
can clearly prohibit that i would have
00:55:38
and parlor didn't take it
down they dragged their feet and he said it's a metaphor to go take pence out
and shoot him and this is donald trump's lawyer
00:55:47
or one of his lawyers previous lawyers that in
my view that doesn't just that doesn't justify what's happened what i mean by willy nilly is
why has red scare been taken down so left wing
00:55:56
i don't know why why is dan bongino been taken
down he's like a fox commentator i've heard him
00:56:02
i mean he's sort of you know i don't know he's
kind of a pretty middle-of-the-road fox type guy
00:56:08
i don't really know what he did we have no
transparency into why people are being taken down
00:56:14
i can't go evaluate for myself what they said
to see if it you know if it warranted censorship
00:56:21
and then cynic might say that this overreaction
was playing into the hands of the chase jason
00:56:27
what happened controlled senate congress jason
what happens if it's like a a big pharma company
00:56:33
who wants to do a big ad buy on facebook
says hey guys you got to really dial down
00:56:38
uh anti-vaxx content now i'm not an anti-vaxxer
but do i at some level believe in their right to
00:56:45
talk about being an anti-vaxxer absolutely i think
it's insane but should they have a right to do it
00:56:51
absolutely absolutely i'm a fan of the labeling i
thought the labeling was the right direction to go
00:56:56
in where if but but saks you did talk about how
for the last 60 days trump fermented this insane
00:57:04
conspiracy theory so i guess the question is do
you think that insane conspiracy theory or the question we have to ask all of ourselves i'm not
pinning it on you and you know i'm i'm sensitive
00:57:13
to you being pinned as a person for all of trump's
bad behavior but we you did say and you just say
00:57:19
this is a two-month process of indoctrinating
people into thinking this was all stolen and
00:57:24
then they put labels on it and then the capital
gets stormed so i think these companies are being
00:57:29
put in a very uncomfortable position which is
at what point do you stop this maniac uh if he's
00:57:35
lying constantly we we were talking about these
challenges on the pod for the last couple of months and we were laughing i mean we were
laughing at how ridiculous they were and how
00:57:43
ridiculous the the things that you know rudy was
doing and um you know it was crazy so look not to
00:57:51
his supporters well but here here's the thing
one of which is dead or four of which are dead
00:57:57
i understand and here's the thing democracy takes
work i mean we have to you know we have to spend
00:58:04
the time to actually dispel these views and you
know it would be nice to be able to wave a magic
00:58:09
wand and just censor the things that we don't like
but here's the thing none of us has a monopoly on
00:58:14
the truth and you know we knew what the truth
was in this particular instance but there are
00:58:20
other cases where we don't and and the question
is really who has the power to decide so you know
00:58:25
just i'll tell you just a real quick story you
know when i went to law school all those years ago
00:58:31
the very first class that you know that that
i had in law school was this very arcane class
00:58:36
called civil procedure which is about
what court you take a case to okay and you know i was kind of wondering why
is this like the first thing we learn in law school and i'll tell you the reason why
is because the first question in the law is who
00:58:53
decides is jurisdiction who has the power to
decide an issue and here's the thing i would love
00:59:01
for lynnwood to be canceled and to not be able to
spout these insane theories but who are we going
00:59:07
to give the power to to make those decisions
and what we've done this week by we had this
00:59:14
feel-good moment i you know at least in in the
tech community of being able to say donald trump banned for life and all these other people we hate
but we have now handed this enormous power to this
00:59:26
big tech cartel and it's not going to end here
this is not the end it's the beginning look i i
00:59:33
i don't think that the um the leadership at big
tech want to be in this position um you know i
00:59:40
i think it's easy to blame the individuals zak
uh jack susan um sundar whomever um you know i i
00:59:50
worked at google when it was a small when it was a
private company um you know chemoth knows uh work
00:59:56
with zuck i think we've all had experience with
these individuals and i think one thing having
01:00:01
spent time with all of them i can tell you is that
um i believe that all of them want information
01:00:07
to be freely available and accessible um
and that's a really core principle and the
01:00:13
challenge that they're facing is that there is um
you know as we talked about this social pressure
01:00:20
uh to move away from that core principle because
there is always an argument to be made and there
01:00:25
is no universal or unifying kind of court of
law that says this is the way things should um should be done by law and as a result the the
pressure is what changes the behavior and that
01:00:36
pressure will change the tides will will shift and
um and it's uh it's a it's a very kind of um ugly
01:00:43
circumstance but you know i think characterizing
the individuals is being in charge of this sex or
01:00:48
you know trying to um to handcuff to to make them
feel like they should be handcuffed in some way
01:00:54
um is uh you know is is a bit of a
mischaracterization and we saw that even um in the congressional hearings last july
uh just what an absolute joke it was to
01:01:03
see congress try and question these folks
because the answers they have i think were reasonable and rational as we all know as
technologists like congress doesn't understand
01:01:11
this stuff the biggest observation to me is that
the law hasn't kept up with the internet and um
01:01:17
you know if you look at how the the dmca was
written the digital millennium copyright act
01:01:22
shortly after it was written youtube
uh with all this user generated content saw a lot of copyright content show up and
they would get a takedown notice which is
01:01:30
the legal process by which you remove copyright
content and then as soon as they took it down someone else would post the same content and
then someone else will post the same content
01:01:37
and then suddenly you know viacom sued google
because they were like look our copyrighted content is being continuously displayed on your
site on your platform and that's because the
01:01:46
mechanism defined in the dmca did not keep up
with the law the biggest issue i think is is a
01:01:51
legal one which is you know how do we create laws
and how do we create a uh private industry meets
01:01:57
government court uh body uh governing principles
that you know allows these arbitrations to operate
01:02:07
just one sentence i mean apply first
amendment obligations to these um monopolists
01:02:13
that's what my blog post was about i'll i'll tell
you where this could go in a bad direction is if you look at if you think about what social
media has become i would put it on the top
01:02:24
of the list that includes other critical national
resources that any country has so for example if
01:02:31
you look at in bolivia you know as it turns out
bolivia has incredible access to lithium right
01:02:39
and lithium is like an engine we all knew
that we want to medicate trump with lithium is that what you're saying no lithium the
the the input into into lithium-ion batteries
01:02:51
um but it also turns out that at every step
along the way bolivia's basically nationalized
01:02:56
every single private investment of a lithium
mine um in countries all around the world there's
01:03:03
you know numerous examples of this privatization
turning into nationalization when something
01:03:09
becomes important enough and norway part of
i think what we're struggling with here is
01:03:15
you know there's going to be this
crazy push pull in in social media what do you think happens if you know uh india
actually says hey you know what you're going to
01:03:24
have to nationalize the rails of whatsapp or the
rails of facebook if you want to be in my country
01:03:31
why is that so inconceivable i think you're
right that that's that that is a second order
01:03:37
that that is a second order consequence of
censorship that nobody even thinks about you have the leaders of many countries across the
world using twitter as a as a channel do you think
01:03:49
they are now going to want to rely on that given
that twitter can censor them at any time they're
01:03:54
going to hand that lever of national power to jack
dorsey no way they're going to look at this i mean
01:03:59
not even jack dorsey david somebody in like the
bowels of the user you know user user access group
01:04:05
some some rando vp someplace is going to stop the
president or the prime minister of a country and
01:04:10
communicating to their people exactly exactly
and this is exactly the kind of second order
01:04:15
consequence that the people who who i think engage
in this feel-good moment of censoring trump didn't
01:04:21
even think through didn't even think through this
is exactly why the best solution would have been
01:04:26
a temporary pause on these accounts to let
the dust settle but any of these completely
01:04:32
fundamental decisions that you can't go
back from what is the technical difference
01:04:38
between saying it's banned forever and it's banned
for ten days today technically it's not a decision
01:04:45
yeah but exactly what david said you feed into
this emotion just like the people that stormed
01:04:50
the capital fed into their emotion and then you
wake up the next day with this hangover and you realize to yourself what the [ __ ] did i just do
and i think that's that's what we're gonna have
01:05:00
to sort out now is you cannot unscramble this [ __
] egg because irrespective of whatever happens in
01:05:06
the united states there are two to three billion
monthly active users daily active users on these
01:05:13
products they all report to different people and
none of those people that they report to are jack
01:05:18
dorsey and mark zuckerberg they are the presidents
and prime ministers duly elected individuals of these countries and so you're not going to allow
these two private citizens to disrupt power
01:05:28
we we have so much information we don't know
about what occurred this past week i think it's it's all going to get investigated it's going
to be like a 911 commission all over again or
01:05:37
ukraine etc um and and i think that's why
applause would be really good to find out exactly
01:05:45
you know trump's been telling people to come to
this rally it's going to be a hell of a show and it's going to be incredible and you've got to be
there on the 6th it's going to be out of control
01:05:52
you know how how how much did they know right
like that's what i really wanted how much did
01:05:59
they know about what was going to go down and
why are these people carrying zip ties and pipe bombs you know like this could have been a lot
worse i think that's why people are responding
01:06:08
uh this way and i saw something today that i
thought was i'll let you pick it up from me
01:06:13
freeburg but i saw something today that i thought
was uh particularly interesting and in dovetails
01:06:18
with reconciliation which is what the country's
got to do in 2021 and 22 we gotta reconcile this
01:06:23
[ __ ] because it's bigger fish to fry like you
know china and the pandemic and global warming
01:06:30
uh one of these people at the airport
who was coming home from the rally is now on the do do not fly list they're taking
this group of domestic terrorists uh is how
01:06:41
they're putting these american citizens
who got whipped up into a frenzy by trump and giuliani they're calling them domestic
terrorists now uh some of them maybe maybe some
01:06:51
of them are just you know got caught up in the
wrong mob they're on the do not fly list this guy couldn't get home and he's freaking out and then
i don't know if you saw lindsey graham with 20 of
01:07:01
uh the people who were going home from the rallies
chanting at him that this is never going to end
01:07:06
and and that seemed like a very volatile
situation and so the escalation continues
01:07:11
go ahead freeberg i'll tell you like it
feels to me like this past week has been um
01:07:17
nothing but fuel for for both sides because there
isn't a black and white um circumstance here
01:07:23
and there isn't a black and white um objective
truth about uh you know what took place and what motivations were and and what the connections
were when i was 16 years old i went to a rave
01:07:33
in downtown l.a and for new year's eve you
did and right before how old were you 16.
01:07:41
and um and the rave got shut down half an hour
before midnight because there was some illegal drug being widely circulated for free so you guys
can watch videos of this on youtube it's called
01:07:50
circa 1996. and we and everyone the cops came in
and they shut down the rave it was outdoors in
01:07:56
downtown l.a and we rioted and so everyone left
the rave and like i i i participated i think i'm
01:08:03
past the uh the period where they can prosecute oh
my god seven thousand yeah i participated in the
01:08:12
no don't say that don't say that on the show you
you were you witnessed i witnessed um participated
01:08:17
in the sense that i was there and um and i saw all
this all this activity but when you're standing next to these people there was absolutely no
thought around what to do and when and what
01:08:27
the next step was and i think if you watch the
videos yeah if you watch the videos of the capitol
01:08:32
there's a lot of videos on youtube that
you can watch now and you can watch the interviews of people coming out of the capitol
building it's like what were you doing in there
01:08:38
we were fighting for you know it's a revolution
right i mean we're taking back the country and then some people were saying well we're
trying to stop the certification of joe biden
01:08:46
and other people were saying we're taking
over the capital there was no uniform sense of what the objective of the mission was
and there was many interpretations if
01:08:54
you look at all the parlor messages that
have been copied and published now online there were many interpretations about
trump's words and rudy giuliani's
01:09:01
yeah parlor and so everyone has a different point
of view and i think that's the biggest challenge we're going to have is we're all going to try and
you know get to the truth and everyone's going to
01:09:09
cast this as a different point they're going to
take what happened they're going to take some set of events that happened and they're going to
highlight that this is what the connections were
01:09:16
and this is the reason why it happened and
this just creates fuel it doesn't create um
01:09:22
you know there is not going to be some objective
outcome here we're all going to feel better no one's going to feel better at the end of the
day um and and we've basically just thrown a whole
01:09:30
bunch of gas on a fire that was already what do
you think um that was my point was just like it's all it's all great no my behavior yeah i mean yeah
it's crazy um burn or whatever photos you took um
01:09:41
uh sax what do you think of this vp you know pence
and trump and their relationship vis-a-vis pardons
01:09:49
in this end game here because it does seem
like pence was upset uh obviously at what
01:09:55
occurred and that trump didn't even call to
check on him and what was going on and then a number of these people because there
are q anon people there there are
01:10:03
you know i'm sure antifa people there but it
was mainly trump folks um they wanted to capture
01:10:10
the vp that was for some of them the explicit
purpose of this was to get the vice president
01:10:15
and to hold him accountable and you know so there
are some speculation to do bodily harm to him
01:10:21
what are your thoughts on that i think one of the
most insane aspects of what trump did was the way
01:10:27
that he denounced uh pence who's been the model
of a loyal vp i mean certainly the other side
01:10:34
has uh criticized him for that uh for being sort
of almost a toady uh no one could have been more
01:10:40
loyal than pence to trump the last four years and
penn simply told him look i don't have the power to cancel this vote of the electors you know and
for that fact you know just for speaking truth
01:10:51
about that trump denounced him in front of this
this mob and and made him a target and that is
01:10:56
one of the more insane aspects of what trump did
and uh you know i uh truck no sympathy for that
01:11:04
um again this was an act of of demagoguery and uh
this is an intimate esn for for trump's presidency
01:11:13
uh but even in terms of like you know i want
to go back to what freeberg just said about
01:11:18
how he got kind of caught up in this in in
that mob i think that that was true i think for
01:11:26
90 something percent of the people who are
there is they went to this trump rally and
01:11:31
protest and it turned into a riot and they got
caught up in it um and then in addition to that
01:11:38
there were i think hidden in that crowd some
serious agitators who were there to carry out
01:11:44
violence in mayhem and had crazy plans you
know hanging my pens shooting pelosi i mean
01:11:50
there really were you know a small number of
those people i don't know what the percentage is probably one or two percent what does he think
it's about the majority sacks what are you doing
01:11:59
what do you think will happen if they actually
did shoot pelosi or they did hang pens it is a possibility but no but see that's threat inflation
what you're doing right there jason is exactly
01:12:09
what you're what no i think it actually could have
happened what if one of the people who died was
01:12:14
the senator yes it could have happened but here's
the problem people are acting as if everything
01:12:20
that could have happened but didn't actually
happened or may still happen at a later date that
01:12:26
that is what i call threat inflation and it's the
biggest tool the sensors have for seizing power
01:12:32
because it it convinces you yourself said these
people had those plans so we we do have to think about it i mean the first time we were trying to
blow up the world trade center it didn't come down
01:12:41
david but the second time it did come down i i
understand but by constantly beating the drum we
01:12:47
needed to inflate that threat didn't we but but
by constantly beating the drama of these threats
01:12:53
no no wait a minute stop no we we did not need
to do anything there was a national security
01:13:00
apparatus who needed to do it their job isn't
to inflate threats their job is to investigate
01:13:05
a politically get to the bottom of [ __ ] and
fix it they [ __ ] failed on 9 11. okay yes
01:13:11
we know that conclusively so talking about it
and amping people up jason doesn't do anything
01:13:21
a better a better example of threat inflation
would be the iraq war remember that we got to go absolutely that was threat inflation threat that
whipping people up you know and making them worse
01:13:34
i'm just talking to three of my besties and asking
you what you think about what would have happened if a senator died i think it's a valid it didn't
close to happening but it came close this this is
01:13:46
the thing that is is convincing people helping
convince people to give up liberties that they
01:13:52
should want to hold on to i'm just asking you i'm
not i'm not saying everybody and i'm not saying
01:13:57
we need to be on edge that this is going to
happen every day of our lives we can't live
01:14:03
in fear like that but that's almost what happened
there are people who went there with that intent
01:14:08
actually we don't we don't we don't we don't
know any of this now we're now we're no better than anybody else you had you had a maniac
who was a vessel he basically spilled over
01:14:23
there was a small fraction of the people that
probably came to that thing with ill intent and then there was a large number of people that
got pulled into the undertow all of their lives
01:14:33
will be ruined because of one individual okay and
at the end of the day there was in my opinion one
01:14:41
singular person to blame donald trump and then
a handful of people who were his accomplices
01:14:47
uh josh hawley ted cruz rudy giuliani we know who
all of these characters are in this terrible play
01:14:54
and then there were all these people that were
caught in the undertow and i would rather just deal with it that way because it actually allows
us to have some sympathy i i felt sympathy
01:15:06
yeah so all i'm saying is let's just get back
to the core issue at hand something bad happened
01:15:13
and then something really really stupid that is
actually even worse also happened and by that you
01:15:19
mean the banning of trump on all platforms for all
time no that that there is a there it there was uh
01:15:25
an arbitrariness to the decision making around
free speech and i'm telling you guys i know that
01:15:33
you may think banning him from twitter is so
much lower than this attack on the capital and
01:15:40
i'm telling you it's not because the slippery
slope of event event number one is so obvious
01:15:46
the prosecution of that is so obvious the law
is so completely clear but we've shifted now
01:15:53
into this realm where things are arbitrary where
things are gray and it's a worldwide problem there
01:15:58
are 180 some odd countries in the world right that
these sites operate in with 180 different leaders
01:16:06
multiplied by you know two or three
political parties each like there are now hundreds and hundreds of people who are
trying to figure out some chess games
01:16:14
it's so i just think that we've made i just
think we've made the problem so much worse
01:16:20
yeah i i agree and and um you know earlier today
uh our heated conversation extended to one of our
01:16:28
friends in our chat group who was telling us that
you know there's a group of sas companies that are
01:16:33
talking about the platforming parlor as well
from just using ordinary software as a service and other sites like it and you know and and
again it's a little bit like it's just like the
01:16:44
censorship thing it's like a red scare it's like
a red scare it's like a really scary podcast the
01:16:50
actual red scare that are yeah like joe mccarthy
exactly we're literally going to go after anybody who writes a screenplay who works for a communist
socialist meeting but let me ask you guys how much
01:16:58
do you guys so i think that there's severely
um there there's a severe amount of pressure
01:17:05
on the leaders of these companies to do well by
their employees and that employees are all bay area based and bay area base is a very heavy uh
democrat um area 90 plus and so so so this is the
01:17:17
argument a lot of um uh you know conservatives
make which is that tech companies in general
01:17:23
uh as a result act in the best interests of of of
um uh you know of the um the liberal uh movements
01:17:31
sac and chamoth i mean and jason do you guys think
that it is an employee-driven um kind of uh set of
01:17:38
actions that we're seeing and that the motivation
is is in part to kind of appease the employees of these companies in fact i think that more than 70
or 80 of the impetus for these last-ditch efforts
01:17:50
was internally driven and this is where i think
it's a complete crisis of leadership because if
01:17:56
you had just gotten up in front of your employees
and said guys if we do this we will shift focus
01:18:01
away from what actually is the problem so
i think the right solution is temporary ban
01:18:07
while we evaluate while we strengthen policy
like some [ __ ] [ __ ] statement and allow
01:18:12
the legal court system to do their
job instead they acted like vigilantes in a way that basically appeased nobody and all
of a sudden shifted the focus away from the person
01:18:25
that all these hundreds of employees wanted to
basically have you know been found guilty and
01:18:31
pointed to one individual they all wanted one
individual to be held culpable and now he's not going to 100 and and and the proof of that is
the fact that these employees have been calling
01:18:42
for this policy for years and now they finally
got the excuse to do it and so i agree i mean
01:18:48
jack is leading twitter from behind the mob runs
twitter now and they have for some time and to
01:18:56
freebrook's point it's like padme um padme i guess
the great the great american star wars settings
01:19:06
this is how democracy diced with thunderous
applause yes that's exactly right everybody's clapping over this censorship i mean the prequels
are underrated i have to say i mean if you watch
01:19:16
revenge of the sith it's definitely i don't know
the last three were the best but um the last three were the worst but anyway but hold on a second i
just want to get saxophone i'm just going to add
01:19:26
so so such math is 100 right there's one thing i
would add to that though which is if uh just a few
01:19:31
months ago we had this senate hearing on section
230 yes and both jack and zuck were berated by the
01:19:37
senators most notably senator blumenthal who was
basically arguing for censorship he was telling
01:19:42
him you got to crack down and so i also think
there's not this pressure from below there's
01:19:47
pressure from above these guys know who's coming
into power in january and i think especially zuck
01:19:54
who has to be terrified of being broken up right
now he yes exactly so he is thinking about how
01:20:02
do i modify and appease these politicians who now
have the power and can break me up and i gotta use
01:20:08
for him it's too little too late they're trying
to break you up anyway you're gonna get paid
01:20:14
up anyway and by the way i now agree with it i
gotta say you know on previous pods i've defended
01:20:21
these tech companies but i've come around
they are too powerful and they are using their powerful their power in too indiscriminate away
without power and can i say it more bluntly the
01:20:32
better but can i say that let me just let me just
point something out you didn't say that before it
01:20:37
affected the conservative movement's ability to
have a voice right hey don't calacanas sacks yeah
01:20:42
no well i mean no but i want to point out like i
mean like and and a lot of people are having this reaction which is once it affects and i just want
to point this out once it affects you personally
01:20:52
that's when you take issue with the way that
the system is operating right now you know a lot of people make make fun of this but a few
months ago or weeks ago there's a porn website
01:21:00
called pornhub and visa mastercard and discover
stopped processing payments for them because the
01:21:06
new york times put out an opinion article about
hold on david david how do you spell that p-o-o-r
01:21:26
the electronic frontier foundation was the only
organization that really made a stink about this this behavior from these monopoly
payment processing networks stepping in
01:21:34
and blocking their ability to
run as a business not on any legal grounds and not on any grounds
based on some court making a decision
01:21:42
and it was an opinion piece and suddenly
everyone's waking up because now trump is being silenced and this is and this is why
no no no no no no unregulated exactly like
01:21:50
bitcoin you're going to yeah jason let
me respond to that so um so first of all porn has always been in a separate category the
supreme court has said that you can regulate it
01:21:58
according to community standards and so i support
the ability of facebook or twitter or whatever to regulate it according to their standards that's
perfectly consistent with the first amendment
01:22:06
i personally am not that upset about trump
per se being censored i'm upset about this new
01:22:13
vast policy of censorship including de-platforming
not just trump but parlor i mean you're talking
01:22:19
about millions of people and the fact that
they're conservative is not the reason if this was happening to a liberal app i promise you i'd
be acting the exact same way for me free speech
01:22:28
is the most cherished value that we have it's the
first amendment of the constitution it's the first right in the bill of rights that's the thing that
has me upset this is not a partisan thing uh and
01:22:38
so to your point freeburg you asked us what do
we think is going on here uh at these companies i think there's three things and we just heard two
of them and and saks stole my thunder because i
01:22:48
was gonna say i think that zuck who i believe
i'm very cynical about i think he is thinking
01:22:54
how do i p's the left now after having appeased
trump for all these years now trump's out of
01:23:00
office now how do i appease the left okay i
have to ban him for life and remember trump was
01:23:05
uh zuck was the first to give the lifetime ban
not jack so zuck who's previously been in trump's
01:23:11
corner is now not um the third factor so the first
factor is obviously the employees second factor is
01:23:19
uh getting broken up and appeasing all
these senators i think the third one is uh i think that there could be information
that we are not privy to that they are privy to
01:23:31
that me that is leading them to overreact here no
i'm going to disagree yeah i'm going to disagree
01:23:39
too yeah it would it would not have come out in
that way it would have said we are you know uh
01:23:45
pausing the account we're suspending the account
it wouldn't have been this next step of saying
01:23:50
your d platform forever i think in jack's it
would have been necessary if it was a real security issue no it was not the other thing
i'll say can i just say one thing which is that
01:24:00
i've been in the bowels of these companies
i helped build one um my team was probably the most instrumental in getting one
of these things to real mega scale
01:24:10
i think that these companies are complicated
enough that everybody needs to realize that it is beyond the capability of any one person to
manage in a reasonable way and these businesses
01:24:20
are they're too broad-based they exist in too
many countries with too many different standards
01:24:27
that ultimately all comes back to one unified
code base if facebook was actually 182 different
01:24:33
products on a country by country basis and twitter
was the same there was actually be a path here right and each one had a country level ceo that
actually had power maybe this could be different
01:24:42
but the problem is that if all roads go back to
menlo park in san francisco and you're putting the power in the hands of 15 or 20 000 people over
a multi-million line code base it's an impossible
01:24:54
task for even the smartest of the smart people
these companies need to get broken up uh i think
01:25:00
we're all going to agree on that i do think you
guys are missing a piece of them for another point you guys are missing a piece of information
i'm just going to read to you what uh from the
01:25:08
washington post twitter specifically raised
the possibility that trump's recent tweets could mobilize his supporters to commit acts
of violence around president-elect joe biden's
01:25:16
inauguration and analysis that experts saw as
a major expansion in the company's approach um and so they specifically cited that they
said they were and the tweet that they were
01:25:26
concerned about was this one uh that got taken
down very quickly american patriots will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way
shape or form and then he announced right after
01:25:35
that that he's not going to the inauguration
so what twitter believes is that that was some sort of a dog whistle to go do violence at the
inauguration and that's what they said in their
01:25:44
lifetime ban is they felt trump was uh doing that
so just to point out you you could interpret it
01:25:50
that way and you could also interpret it the other
way and that exactly which is the problem of trump yeah he knows the problem of it's the problem of
using judgment right and not yet can i ask you a
01:25:58
question would you be supportive of um platform
level open architecture so for example that
01:26:05
you know the messaging infrastructure
that supports facebook and twitter um have to be unified in a way um so that there
is that was originally called like there was rss
01:26:15
i mean there's a lot of open communication
protocols that exist out there i mean signal has made an attempt at doing this as well with
with their approach and open sourcing everything
01:26:24
um i'm just thinking i'm just asking what is
the technical solution if not to break them up to make them more uh predictable portability of
your profile i think you could pass a law i mean
01:26:36
like we do have a government we can pass a law so
you can pass a law that says if you're going to operate a communication platform here are the
rules you have to abide by and here's how you
01:26:44
have to and now you're a regulated entity and you
could regulate them and you could even create a regulatory body to oversee them and make sure that
standards of free speech are applied universally
01:26:54
and and in an absolute way um you know and
you can give them a chance to correct right
01:26:59
here given that it may be so technically difficult
to break them up that may be one of the points of one of the paths of resolution and we're gonna
find out the next two to three years because
01:27:08
i don't think that anyone on the left or
the right likes big tech as they call it uh and the way it's operating today but i think
technically having been in these organizations
01:27:16
it is impossible to break them up and i will say
something controversial i also think consumers benefit from the scale that they operate at and
i don't think that they should be broken up and i
01:27:26
think that there's economic value to having google
be the scale of ted and amazon being in the scale it's at facebook being skilled at and it doesn't
harm consumers i think it helps in aggregate in
01:27:34
terms of pricing and service availability um
but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be regulated in a way that everyone can kind of feel
like there's some absolute universal standard
01:27:43
applied um but i i know i'm in the minority
on that yeah i would say um my my view about
01:27:51
antitrust used to be that it was all about
consumer harm and i've actually come around to more of the the liberal point of view on this
which is it can't just be about consumer harm
01:27:59
it's also got to be about power and not
just market power but democratic power and the fact of the matter is these companies have
just gotten too large and too powerful and they have too much influence on our democracy and it's
incompatible with you know a country democracy so
01:28:14
what do you think what if they got regulated like
a utility sacks so like we have regulatory bodies for utilities for both telecommunications and for
power and energy what if we had a regulatory body
01:28:23
for internet services well yeah i mean first
and foremost i want a an online bill of rights
01:28:28
you know i want to know what my rights are online
that these techno this cartel of tech monopolies cannot take away from me because something is a
right if it only if it if it can't be taken away
01:28:39
and right now it can all be taken away you know
your online identity your right to participate in
01:28:45
the public conversation can be taken away with no
explanation by these companies we have no rights
01:28:51
and like what would you do if your online presence
is taken away like that is a huge part of the
01:28:57
modern world what is going on in trump's mind do
you think right now having lost his ability to
01:29:03
communicate with a billion people you know like he
had this ability to control the conversation and
01:29:09
now he's i mean i don't even know if people will
put him on air uh that's why i think something is brewing um with him you know he is not gonna
sit tight and and wind out the last 10 days here
01:29:21
um you know whether it's some ad hoc press
conference he calls tomorrow and just rants on tv
01:29:27
or he tries to declare some you know pass some law
without congress's approval or does something i
01:29:33
mean this guy has never proven himself to be able
to sit quietly and to not be in the spotlight or
01:29:40
to be told that he's wrong and all three of
those things are being imposed upon him right now so he is squirming like uh like a cat being
put in the bath also it seems like they're doing
01:29:49
some last-ditch stuff pompeo lifted restrictions
for u.s taiwan contracts i don't know if you saw
01:29:54
that that was a little bit of an interesting
thing that was slid in the last couple of days
01:30:01
a little little jab to the chinese on the
way out where do you think sax last 10 days
01:30:08
the zip tie guy apparently got arrested yeah
i want to know what's going on with him i mean these guys having zip ties with them is
just no but this is incredible that how
01:30:17
systematically they've been able to basically
get you know a lot of these folks i mean jason
01:30:24
i will tell you i will tell you the one
thing we got going for us is the deep state i mean thank god for you know folks who are loyal
to the constitution and to the rule of law in this
01:30:31
country and the fbi is incredible and are um you
know our the uh the the the the civil servants
01:30:38
who have been career civil servants in government
as much as we make fun of the bureaucracy and the [ __ ] that goes on it's great to be an american
and to know that there's um you know that there's
01:30:47
these uh these folks out there looking out for for
this is like being in the final stages of a stress test it's like the final well by the way as i
predicted on the last part i said there would
01:30:56
be major major arrests you know everyone was
saying that that that these protesters being
01:31:02
treated with kid gloves compared to blm and i
was like just wait there's going to be a rest and sure enough they're rounding up
these people quick a lot of charges
01:31:10
i think the most genius thing was i don't
know who who said it was a honey pot but the the parlor post yeah that said you know it was
incredible sex but like um sax pointed this out
01:31:20
so i'll give him full credit for this but there
was a parlor post where it was like the title of the person was like you know office of the uh the
president's pardon attorney and you know send me
01:31:30
your name and phone number and email if you want
to be pardoned for what happened in the capitol
01:31:36
and name the crime you committed so yes and then
i just set up the website riots amnesty.org please
01:31:45
go to capitol rise amnesty.org and tell us what
you did and uh if you outline each of the crimes
01:31:51
you outlined that you did you will get amnesty
for those crimes you have to outline in detail what you did and give us any photographic and
video proof you have of your crimes the reason i
01:32:00
suspected that was a honeypot is because um jimmy
carter pardoned uh you know after the vietnam war
01:32:06
he pardoned everyone who had dodged the draft
as part of the vietnam war he did that as a blanket pardon without naming any names so it
seemed very suspect to me that trump would need
01:32:15
individual names and and crimes to build a part
in them that was ceremonial right that was like
01:32:20
a healing a wound move by jimmy carter it wasn't
no one was going after that because we weren't prosecuting those sure sure sure and so but it
was never litigated so it became a precedent i
01:32:31
think i i do think that trump probably i mean
this would be a very interesting court case but
01:32:36
i do think he could issue a blanket pardon
everyone on the mall that day it's possible i'm not saying you should i think it's a
terrible thing and that would be torture
01:32:45
escalation as opposed to de-escalation sex being
our our lawyer and our historian you know what is
01:32:50
the the origin of the presidential pardon how
is that even legal and how did we end up in a
01:32:56
place in this country where any law could be
superseded by the president telling you it's okay for you to break this law and pardon
you after the fact or even before the fact
01:33:05
it's it's it's uh it exists because it's in the
constitution the framers of the constitution put it in there i i don't know what their thinking
was i've never really studied that it is a
01:33:15
almost a residue of or a vestigial monarchical
power that somehow was included in the comments
01:33:23
incredible right i mean like the intention of it
my understanding was to um correct injustices that
01:33:29
occurred so that it would be a backstop against
somebody who was by the judgment of the one guy
01:33:39
it relies on you know people buying into america
right and i think that's the trump stress test and
01:33:46
i can't wait till we don't talk about this guy
anymore i'd love to see an amendment getting rid
01:33:52
of the pardon powers i i don't know i never feel
good about it well they are thinking the court should be where you should adjudicate the you know
appeals and such but all right well listen we've
01:34:01
beaten this today can i can i end on something
um let's end on something uplifting i took um
01:34:07
uh a bunch of spax public uh at the end of last
year and on friday um one of the vehicles that
01:34:16
i'm the ceo of merged with sofi um and i want to
tell you something about the ceo of sophie anthony
01:34:24
noto um and i think he'll be okay because
he's shared this story a couple times but
01:34:29
uh his parents got divorced when he was
three years old he uh grew up on welfare
01:34:36
food stamps um sort of free lunch kids until
middle school um went to the um the west point um
01:34:47
was it a all-star stock analyst was the cfo of the
nfl was a cfo of twitter then the ceo of twitter
01:34:56
um and uh you guys know my story but you know
uh ended up in the united states after growing
01:35:02
up in canada after escaping a civil war i grew
up on welfare and i said to anthony uh what are
01:35:08
the odds that two kids who grew up that way could
have ended up in a moment where we were part of
01:35:15
doing something really amazing that you know
for each of us was a meaningful accomplishment and he said only in america and uh only in
america this is let's keep that single best
01:35:28
[ __ ] country in the goddamn world
100 um and it's worth fighting for and it's worth having these debates
and i think it's worth doing the pod
01:35:36
and so i'd like to see american constitution
keep the pod going stop jason the american
01:35:43
constitution is the most incredible [ __
] document because that is the foundation
01:35:49
all of these things are built it's just the most
amazing thing so i am really glad that we're all
01:35:54
having this conversation and i would just say guys
keep the faith let's put the light back on donald
01:36:01
trump uh i would have as much sympathy as possible
for as many of those folks in the capital maybe
01:36:08
not the folks that were intending to do harm maybe
not zip tie guy but there's a lot of other people
01:36:14
that are that just got caught in the undertow i
would try to have sympathy for them um and i would
01:36:19
really don't lose focus now people donald trump
josh hawley ted cruz stay [ __ ] vigilant i would
01:36:29
also love you guys think about doing something
for someone else this week yeah yeah that's all let's all do something nice exactly yeah i love
you guys all right love you besties love you saks
01:36:39
love you sex love you sexy poo come on sexy say
it god damn it this is the time you're good say it
01:36:58
and they've just gone crazy with it besties we need to get these