Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:00]

Thank you for listening to this podcast, one production now available on Apple podcast, podcast, one Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

[00:00:08]

Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Company, Charlie Cook's run in the White House. But I want to thank Charlie is an incredible guy, his spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

[00:00:37]

That's why we are here.

[00:00:40]

Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, joined today by my friend, the editor in chief of one of my favorite websites on the planet, Breitbart Dotcom. I actually got my political start writing for Breitbart. Alex is one of the smartest people in the entire movement. He does a three hour satellite radio program every single morning from six to nine. Eastern, Alex, welcome back to The Charlie Kirk Show.

[00:01:04]

Charlie, so great to be here. Always appreciate an invite from you and your a powerful platform.

[00:01:09]

Thank you. So give us a little update from Breitbart. You guys are banned from human consumption.

[00:01:18]

It's coming. So we're where we're de facto banned from Google. And I'll get into all the details on that. And now we're partially banned from Twitter because we don't tend to roll over when people tell us we can't speak the mind and speak freely.

[00:01:31]

And Facebook is kind of decides whether would depending on whatever side of the bad Mark Zuckerberg wakes up on whether or not we're going to be banned on that day.

[00:01:39]

But the big news that we broke earlier this week is that we've been tracking our traffic from Google search and it is down almost to zero. And this has been a precipitous decline since the 2016 election and as of May the 6th of this year, it's basically just completely off. It's almost impossible to get a Breitbart story unless you type in the word Breitbart. And the more political your search term gets, like Biden and Joe Biden, you're not going to find a Breitbart article within.

[00:02:10]

You'll scroll back all day. You'll never find one. This is clear suppression, I believe. And I'm happy to share with you some of the data that we uncovered.

[00:02:18]

Yes. Share some of that.

[00:02:20]

OK, so what we looked at is it's all the story starts with a leaked video that we got of the TGIF meeting. This is their all hands on deck meeting that the Google CEO's vice president and everyone you can Skype in whatever they do at every Friday. It's since been banned because too much of it got leaked, I think. But right after the 2016 election, it was tearful. Everyone was mournful, sorrowful because Hillary Clinton had lost. And of course, it's well known that Silicon Valley's a one party town, a Democratic town.

[00:02:52]

So one of the things that was said during that meeting was by a guy named Kent Walker, who is the global affairs vice president of Google, and he said he intends to make populism and nationalism and by he meaning we Google a blip or a hiccup. So, Charlie, I know you're a student of the left. And when the left says that stuff, you got to take him seriously. You don't you don't take that as a joke. So we started looking at our traffic from Google and it started to decline a lot right after the 2016 election and steadily declining, steadily declining.

[00:03:23]

And then all of a sudden it just dropped off a cliff to the floor in May. And we started piecing back the specifics. Here's what we looked at. For example, Google looks at a metric called the visibility index. It's like their that's like their Nielsen score. That means it's not what you click on, is it? If I search for a term, will you see a Breitbart story will particularly on the front page? It's kind of sort of that way.

[00:03:47]

Breitbart visibility index and Google is down ninety nine point seven percent from Election Day in 2016. As I mentioned, if you search for a term Biden, you're not going to get a Breitbart link at all. And Breitbart traffic is down about two thirds from Google searches. And the only searches that are really yielding back traffic to Breitbart are searches with the word Breitbart in it. So and that's the only way to do it. If you search for Alex Marleau, if you search for Joel Pollak, if you search for Matt Boyle, our most prominent people, you're still not going to get Bryant Park links like the people who spend their whole day working on Breitbart.

[00:04:20]

They're not going to direct you to Breitbart.

[00:04:22]

So this seems like some it might be political. So naturally, we checked what we could get out of other Web sites. We looked at The Daily Caller on Fox News and we noticed that we looked about 50 odd top tier publishers and eight of the bottom 10 were all conservative. Breitbart being third to the bottom with Daily Caller, the daily wire somehow being even lower than Breitbart, which is tough to do because hard to be lower than zero. So yet somehow that's where they are.

[00:04:48]

And so we laugh. So we don't cry, Charlie, because my thesis here is this is election interference.

[00:04:54]

They promised us that they were going to make populism and nationalism a blip or a hiccup, and that's what they've got. So any undecided voter going to Google looking for information on Joe Biden, they're not going to get Breitbart content, they're probably not going to get any conservative content. They're going to get The New York Times, CNN, and that's it.

[00:05:11]

I just did exactly what you asked. And I typed in Alex Marleau to Google. And I don't see any Breitbart links. I do see one where it's a PBS link. That's nice PBS studies.

[00:05:26]

Yeah, that's what people associate it with is government news. Right?

[00:05:29]

I was going to say that's perfect. It's just spot on. And so I go three or four pages on what you guys can do.

[00:05:36]

And this is what we're going to turn this into a story. But this will be a little exclusive for your audience, Charlie, that if you go to a Breitbart, pick out your favorite story of the day and search for the headline verbatim. The Breitbart article will come up. You can search for only one word headline verbatim. It will not show up in Google. What might show up in someone who's either aggregating or literally ripping us off and plagiarizing us?

[00:05:56]

You might get that, but you're not going to get by.

[00:05:58]

Well, let me ask you a question. Does Google admit that they're doing this and they give a reason? Well, they were asked about it, thankfully, a couple of times it was brought up by Jim Jordan and they were pressed Google CEOs under pressure. I was really pressed by maggots on it during the subcommittee on antitrust this week in the House Judiciary. But, of course, there's no real answer. They just announced that they love democracy and they really take voting rights seriously.

[00:06:25]

Well, they love democracy and voting rights. When Democrats win, they don't love it when Trump does well or conservatives do well or Republicans do well.

[00:06:34]

So they don't they try to skirt around it. So explain this to me. Breitbart is a is a phenomenal institution that defends our country and defends what is right in the world. But if you're not even able to be found on Google, are your are your First Amendment freedoms being violated? That's how you feel.

[00:06:57]

You have to start with the premise that the concept of the First Amendment is something that is a collective responsibility and not just a government responsibility. Now, if you can't buy into that with me, then this is probably not going to be your favorite episode of the Charlier podcast. So it's the but if you can go there with me and understand that other than Donald Trump, the most powerful people on planet Earth are Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey and the people who control virtually all speech and information in the United States by percentage aside from, you know, private conversations, you're having one on one.

[00:07:33]

Almost all speech is taking place is dependent on these social media platforms. And they can decide unilaterally if your business sinks or swims, if your news story gets prominent position or no position at all. And once you realize that we've outsourced our First Amendment to these businesses. And by the way, Charlie, most all of these people are anonymous. Maybe the top one or two people in each in each company are known, but that's about it. Almost everyone else can have this level of power and control without any accountability to the public.

[00:08:03]

We don't even know their names. And if those type of people can decide if your podcast episode or of your comment or of your link is going to get prominent placement or no placement, I mean, whoa, we got to reconsider where we're at in the United States.

[00:08:18]

And so build this out for me, because a lot of conservatives are reluctant to talk about this. I think some are funded directly by the tech companies, far too many and too many. And I have been I've been increasingly vocal about this in recent months. You and I actually talked about this the last time you were on the Charlie Kirk show. We went and it's only gotten worse. I mean, every every prediction we made actually was proven to be true.

[00:08:43]

And I believe you said the best of my memory. You said they're going to use this power to try to defeat Donald Trump. I mean, this is like interference.

[00:08:49]

And so but this is a this is a conundrum in some ways in conservative circles. It's actually very simple for me. But for people that are free market fundamentalists and I love free enterprise, I think it's the best system that we have. It is, yes. But I also ask myself, the question is, are you more loyal to free market fundamentalism or towards first principles and our country? And so when first principles in our country start to become become not even under attack, that's not the right way to phrase it.

[00:09:22]

They just basically start to disappear because of a super governmental power that says they're a private company. How should we react to that?

[00:09:30]

Yeah, I think you use an expression last time called super government or forgive me if that's not exactly what you used, but I really liked it. That sort of premise is what Silicon Valley does. I mean, the United States government, it is the most powerful, consolidated group of people on the planet. They were never elected. They were never chosen. And they're largely anonymous, as I as I say, repeatedly.

[00:09:50]

And for those people to choose winners and losers in a way that is completely opaque and they only add very vague guidelines with subjective terms that they determine whether or not your content fits those terms or is an exception to their rules that are vaguely put into place and seemed to change on a day to day basis and even a minute to minute basis. That, to me, is not the free market. The free market is letting people have a chance that the government get out of the way as best they can and still until people can survive.

[00:10:23]

But when the businesses themselves are using predatory practices and I believe outright discriminatory, ideologically discriminatory tactics to choose winners and losers, that is not freedom to me. That is oppression. And just because the oppression is not coming from the government, because it's coming from one industry, one sector of the economy, that to me is not freedom. That to me is the exact opposite.

[00:10:45]

So the fundamentalists will say or the dogmatic people, I think it's more dogmatic than fundamentalists. They'll say, well, then go use a different search engine. So that's that's a nice response.

[00:10:57]

I think it's wildly unrealistic. I also think that it doesn't have any understanding of how these tech. Companies operate because they purchase all their competitors at a multiplex right at a very infant stage, so anyone that might ever become a suitable competitor, they get purchased, they get offers that are 20 times revenue, not even earnings is 20 times revenue, because Google will see how we might be able to incorporate some of their stuff. But better yet, the long term, the long term return is actually them not being around that.

[00:11:32]

That's correct. They figure out ways to which using cronie tactics to try to make sure they don't have any competition and there's lots of different tricks they use. The Wall Street Journal had a big story on how Amazon was meeting with startups, with the suggestion that they might invest in them and then they end up launching competitive products if they basically and picking their brain and then going into direct competition with them, assuming the story's true. Facebook has admitted to this has been many years.

[00:12:00]

But I think back in I think was 2012, Zuckerberg basically admitted that he's not going to let competitors use his platform to get a leg up, that that's not what he's going to do. So if his potential competitors were advertising or promoting themselves on Facebook to a certain degree or using Facebook to test out product and get information that he was going to get in the way of that. So they're already on record saying such things. And once you listen to their own words, this is one where you don't have to take my word for it.

[00:12:29]

They've said this stuff openly enough times, can't walk or say we're going to make nationalism and populism a blip, a blip or a hiccup is admitting they are going to interfere in elections. They are admitting it openly. So you don't you don't it's not a conspiracy. It's out there. There's tape of it. Is it time to break them up? I think so, A.J. I'm lighter on these solutions than I am on the reporting. I love the idea of breaking them up.

[00:12:56]

But again, this is where Washington has to come in and operate a news website. And I've got a pretty, pretty great radio show, I think, which you helped me with some time from time to time, Charlie. I appreciate that, but I like breaking them up. I'm all ears for anything, but it can't be. And by the way, I am totally into you. Anyone who wants to launch their own start up and try to compete, that's great, too.

[00:13:17]

It's not just government. Is the solution not just going to come from government, but I do think that's probably where it begins is if we have a clear monopoly in a certain area, you have to do something to break them up. Google, I think it's multiple monopoly search is the most obvious, but our advertising market is just those same two or three companies, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and you can go right on down the list. Cloud computing is a concern.

[00:13:42]

There are so many areas where it's an oligopoly or an outright monopoly, and that is not free market.

[00:13:48]

What's really stunning to see, Alex, is the left is very strategic, incredibly Machiavellian in this. Now, the radical left I have they're consistent sometimes, but even someone on the link between that kind of jumps in between the two camps of radical left and mainstream left, whatever that means.

[00:14:06]

They they see they see these tech companies as an opportunity. You see they see them as a blunt force object to be able to destroy conservatives all across the world and across the country. And for them there, they know they're going to be protected. They know they're going to be preferred. And so they will not do much of anything.

[00:14:24]

They also get an extraordinary amount of political campaign contributions from these companies. Whereas if if these companies were in any sort of other sector or industry, whether it be oil and gas or whether it be in just basic telecommunications or in retail like Wal-Mart, they would be broken up instantaneously if they did not hold these kind of ridiculous left wing dogmatic views. And so people like Adam Schiff and people like Maxine Waters, they look at the social media titans as almost the fifth branch of government.

[00:14:57]

They really do what they do. And and the fourth branch being the bureaucracies, the fifth branch being the tech companies. I think that's the way we have to we have to recognize that. And so I've done a lot of thinking about this and I've pleasantly debated some libertarians on this. And I just I have a lot of respect for them. And because they're really they tend to be really smart people usually, but they cannot answer this question, which is where is the line where you would break them up?

[00:15:23]

And some of them say that doesn't exist. So that's a really silly answer because.

[00:15:28]

Right, exactly. Let's commit to a moment. Let's commit to when is their market cap? When is their their their revenue, when do we hit that level? Because you have to admit, I mean, we've hit it in the past. Is there one out there or can they just accumulate one hundred percent of the market share in all their core businesses and and then we can do nothing. When can we do something?

[00:15:50]

Yeah. And so I the the strict libertarians, they say, well, Teddy Roosevelt never sort of broke up in the companies. You know, they just kind of I don't actually agree with that. I don't I've read their books and I think that it's, let's just say, a misinterpretation of history. I think it's interesting. It's thought provoking where they say, oh, no, John D. Rockefeller should have been able to continue. I just think that's kind of nuts.

[00:16:12]

But what I what I find really fascinating, though, Alex and I want to dive into this, is that as I've I did this, I'm Google, and you kind of can go find the pro Google literature written by conservative think tanks as like the first search result. Interestingly enough, they boosted those search results. And I look at these conservative think tanks that are funded by Google and they write very pro tech company type literature. And quite honestly, it's garbage.

[00:16:39]

You read it and they're like, oh, we should do nothing. Look at all this wonderful innovation. And then I think to myself, so they take money from these tech companies to go argue for pure free market dogma. And I think one of the great ironies of this, do you actually think Google believes in free market dogma or. Right. Or do you think that they're using a specific love of the free market to protect their incumbency temporarily before they're able to create a new government?

[00:17:03]

That's that's exactly where you have to start thinking about. That's why I always talk about the context of the left in terms of understanding their priorities and their priorities are going to be pushing that political agenda first, because it's part of the nature of being on the left. It's politics is always above all else. On the right, we have things like faith and family, maybe our business, maybe our first principles. But it's not going to be politics. Politics will come in four or five or six on our list.

[00:17:30]

Even people like you and me, Charlie, who live and breathe it every day, I'm sure what animates you about in your life is not just purely being a political animal. It's great ideas. That's what I know you well enough that you're really interested in your engine, great ideas, how they are formed and how they are implemented. And I'm very similar. I'm very good in defeating the left, but there's other things that get me out of bed in the morning beyond that and not the left, when you're in the left and you can see it, just look at the front page of Report.com where we demonstrate this with example after example.

[00:17:57]

Every day, everything in their core is about politics. Look at the way they've tarnished Herman Cain. They had made Herman Cain a cudgel to beat President Trump, with Pseudo-Science acting as though they can prove that he got the coronavirus from the Trump rally because he specifically didn't wear a mask. None of these people know if this is true or not. And they have reduced a man who was a rocket scientist, who saved a pizza business, who was a happy warrior, who overcame segregation.

[00:18:26]

He's one of the great American stories possible. And the media is distilling him down simply to the guy who didn't wear a mask at a Trump rally. It's unbelievably offensive. And I just remind you, they know it's indecent to treat a man like that, yet they do it anyway. Why? Because of politics. And I bring this back to Benetech, because if you see them through the lens that I did, which is Silicon Valley is a single party, leftist town, they're under obligation to make sure Democrats win when they get up in the morning.

[00:18:54]

They have to ensure that's the case. And if not, then they're their platforms are being used for ill. They're being used for evil. That's the way they view you and me our values and not to mention your audience. Most importantly, if you agree with the stuff Charlie and I were saying, they think of you as evil. They might not admit it to your face. They might give you some happy talk to your face. But behind your back, that's how they're talking about you.

[00:19:15]

And you know how I know you got the tape of them talking about us the exact same way. So people understand that. I think that there's help that we can get to some understanding, but we've given them way too much power and they're only going to take more than big principle. I want to talk about for a second here, Charlie, is you should accept the concept that they're either getting more or less power at a given moment. Their power is never even.

[00:19:39]

So it's never is never a flat line. It's always going up or down. So if you don't want it to go down, if you don't think Google should have less power, you think Google should have more power. And that, to me, is a pretty much a no brainer.

[00:19:53]

You know, it's interesting when when jazz was created, people said, well, we have another new sovereign country. I was like, well, you forget we have we have sovereign governments. This is called Google and Facebook. We have to understand that they have they have almost a totalitarian capacity to be able to control minds, control human behavior, control all sorts of different ways of processing information. I mean, and, you know, Google, they have the saying where they say do do no evil or don't cross the creepy line.

[00:20:22]

Right. And they actually changed that, which is really interesting. Now they change it to do good or something. You would know better than I would.

[00:20:27]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It used to be. It used to be Don't Be Evil was their slogan. And they dropped it. They dropped. Oh yeah.

[00:20:35]

Now it's let's go do good. I mean that that's just Mao would be smiling at that. Oh my God. That's exactly right.

[00:20:43]

Let me throw a couple other piece of data your way. So Dr. Robert Epstein, who is a expert in this, one of the top experts, and he is actually going to vote for Biden. He does not like the president, but he wants there to be democracy.

[00:20:58]

He's kind of old school liberal, actually. Birgersson voting.

[00:21:01]

Yeah, I yeah. Right, exactly. So even though he's not with us on politics, he is with us on these first principles and he thinks Google is going to manipulate the election to the tune of ten percent. Literally they have the capacity to move ten percent vote. That means probably all the hard work you've done over the last few years, all the work we're doing, our Breitbart, all of this will be completely erased simply by Google manipulation.

[00:21:26]

That's his view. You know, I don't think I can confirm it, but this is a guy who's dedicated his life to this topic and wants to see Biden win. Still sees that is the threat. Is that high? Is that high now? So if you think of it like that and you look at the fact that Breitbart is getting maybe a third to a fifth of the traffic through Google as some of our top competitors, maybe even less relative to our overall traffic, and you start seeing how undecided voters are having their minds controlled by Google who will not allow for them to see our content.

[00:21:56]

They're blocking our content. And that, to me, is blocking our democracy. That's my viewpoint on it.

[00:22:01]

I completely agree. And so part of the reason why the founding fathers put in the First Amendment is they had this very bold and proven to be correct idea that dialogue is really good and that dissenting ideas should be protected and that disagreement is healthy for a republic. And in fact, we've defended that. What's been so amazing is to see how the left has has transformed in recent years. I actually kind of missed the left of the ACLU where they took on tough fight for our freedom of speech.

[00:22:30]

Right. And they the ACLU is now if you go to the website, it's just it's like no different than MoveOn. Dagnino it basically and we must sue Trump for this. We must do that. And no, no mention at all whatsoever of the persecution of freedom of speech or any of that. And so we don't talk enough about why there's freedom of speech matter and you say it best, which is if you actually do not have freedom of speech and freedom of consciousness and dialogue and discourse, well, then you basically surrender and sacrifice the entire zygotes the decision making process to a group of people.

[00:23:03]

And then therefore, by definition, they're going to probably make a bad decision. And since that such a centralized power structure, that bad decision could harm everybody. And so go ahead. You we're going to come in.

[00:23:14]

Yeah. And there's no accountability for the bad is exactly so imprecise. Look at.

[00:23:18]

And if you look at just what they can do and you brought this up at the top and how Breitbart is currently in Twitter, time out. We're currently Twitter time out because we live streamed. We simply streamed videos of doctors who do not have the Orthodox view as sanctioned by our salvation media in Silicon Valley, in the World Health Organization, in terms of the coronavirus and treatments, et cetera. And Lockdown's and these doctors, many of them are from some of the best institutions in the country and a lot of our board certified or even double board certified.

[00:23:52]

These are not these are not fringe people. Most of them are very mainstream people. These are mainstream thought for the most part. So what the media did is even though we live streamed, we did not endorse, we did not fact checker confirm. We merely live streamed actual doctors in white coats, giving a press conference on Capitol Hill. And they would cherry pick one or two comments made by one of the doctors and used that to define the entire multiple day event.

[00:24:20]

And not only that, anyone who dared to carry that event was their memory hold from the Internet. Don Junior was blocked out. Breitbart reach on Facebook was shut down for a couple of days. And this is exactly the point I'm trying to make. These are anonymous non doctors telling doctors what they can and can't say on the Internet. Wow. Yeah, and I mean, they just according to our team here, Dr. Samon Gold was just fired.

[00:24:45]

So that that's the price that you and I, we had that conversation with her privately. I said they're going to come after you and they will try to destroy your life completely. And so here I want to I want to end the conversation on this, Alex, which is the outrage that I have for the people on the right that take money from these tech companies that are funded by them, that play nice with them and they hide behind their free market fundamentalism.

[00:25:09]

And I think we have to get a lot. A lot tougher is a is not the correct word, I think we have to employ what's the right word? We have to we have to treat them as if they were taking money from our most brutal enemy. And can you comment on that about how actually the people within our own ranks are accepting money from these tyrants that hate our guts, that actually want to topple Western society using technology? You're exactly right.

[00:25:37]

And big tech, which, of course, and this was hammered during the hearing this week, is, of course, much more open to doing business with places like China than they are with the United States government, which is not surprising, I think, for people paying attention. But it's still disturbing. What they're doing in Washington is they're among the biggest lobbyists now in Washington is the big tech industry. They have huge operations here. Facebook Open just opened up a huge operation here.

[00:26:05]

Google is one of the biggest lobbyists. And what are they doing? Lobbying is really code for bribery. And they're going around and they've got their pocketbooks open and they are trying to buy off as many people as they can in Washington. And this is part of the reason why you hear crickets from the right. Even many of those who understand this is a problem, they still need to take that money. And I come here with a positive, though I have a positive message on this.

[00:26:31]

I believe this is such a 360 degree win. Politically, I think that people see big tech as a villain. They want it taken on. And if you do that, I think the public will reward you. I think this is left, right and center. This is not a partisan thing. I think people who take on big tech, I think they will see some of that cash flow replaced by other good actors in the country who simply want our freedom back from these Silicon Valley giants.

[00:26:59]

This is why I think it's such a big thing. It's such a big thing. And we're trying to document who's taking money, who's taking the most and who's merely talking a good game and not acting because they're taking money. A Congressman, Greg Steube, came on my radio show this week and said he's now refusing to take additional money from Silicon Valley. That's a big step, but that's one congressperson out of 538. I want to see 537 more of than say I'm not going to take this money.

[00:27:24]

Well, the Republicans shouldn't either. And the Republicans shouldn't have their convention funded by Google, which happens every four years. And look, it is very tempting. They come and they offer money and it's. Oh, yeah, whatever. We love the free market. Yeah. Technology. That's great. Like, OK, well, you might as well take money from the Soviet Union, but the only difference is that the only difference is that Stalin was able to create artificial intelligence and control 92 percent of the planet's search results.

[00:27:50]

Big difference. And so I agree with you in one sense, and I think you're more positive than I am on one of it, which is I think it just gets to a structural root, causes you and you and I talked about this back on the last time. I think one of the biggest problems we have in American politics is how we fund our elections. And I am not a proponent of publicly funding elections. I'm not saying that I don't go that far, but I do think that what you just said articulates it perfectly.

[00:28:13]

It's legalized bribery, a lot of different ways where a lot of our elected officials, especially on the Republican side, like, yeah, I really agree with you, but I'm not going to do anything about this. Well, that's not that's not a republic that's functioning. It's not. And especially when you have foreign interests that can do that. Or I mean, for all intents and purposes, the tech companies are foreign interest because they don't share our ethos.

[00:28:33]

I don't care if it's Silicon Valley or they're in Wuhan. I mean, for all intents and purposes, there are foreign ideology.

[00:28:39]

Does it matter if they're domiciled in an increasingly much of their businesses overseas and they know it and they know that's where it's going? It's going to be a majority international business over time if it's not there already.

[00:28:51]

And one of the most popular presidents in American history was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. And we're not supposed to talk about him. Right? We're supposed to just kind of say, oh, yeah, he was the worst thing ever. And, you know, I grew up in a certain conservative circles where I read literature saying he was an awful overreaching power grabber. And I've revisited some of that literature. And I think there's some there's some truth to some of that.

[00:29:12]

I think some of his quotes were probably a little aggressive at times where he said, you know, I'm not going to let the Constitution get in the way of a good idea. I'm like, OK, a little bit exact. But I don't know if we've ever experienced a politician recently, Alex, that says things a little aggressive. We'll have to revisit that. But the point is this is that he was incredibly popular and a lot of ways actually helped create American capitalism as we know it in the 20th century.

[00:29:35]

What do you make of that?

[00:29:37]

Yeah, I think that I like Teddy Roosevelt's populism. Again, I'm with you. I don't think you have to accept every single idea the guy ever had. Charlie, who on earth came up with that standard that you have to endorse every idea, any person I love that I say who came up with that?

[00:29:53]

I find this to be a constant battle in my life. That is now just because we cover something at Breitbart, I endorse everything that human beings ever done in their entire life. It is an absurd thing that is just show and by the way, someone who kind of gets on his his values from the Bible. It's so anti. So anti. Day of Christian, because we all kind of come into the world with the premise that we're all sinners and we're all flawed, and then now I'm supposed to if I if I endorse one idea, have endorsed the entire person.

[00:30:22]

But I like Teddy Roosevelt's populism. I think his instincts there is there is a level where the free market, the size and scope of businesses does overwhelm what is best for the people on an individual level. It's very tricky when that comes in. Unlike you, I'm steeped in the same traditional conservative literature. I'm very reluctant to call on the government to do anything. But we do need change the laws here. We got a billion laws. We need to change some of the laws to protect the citizens from these anonymous, at least in one part of the country.

[00:30:50]

Well, the Sherman Antitrust Act passed in 1890, was about consumer exploitation. And you can make an argument. Actually, Amazon and Apple are probably in that Google has been a lot more careful because they saw this coming. Doug? Oh, well, we don't charge anything. Well, first of all, do you think the product is free? You are the product. Just you understand they're selling you.

[00:31:08]

Yes. Like that was a that that that drove me crazy in this hearing.

[00:31:12]

Sundar Pichai talking about how proud he is that Google's free is yet because you're harvesting our data and you're selling it to people.

[00:31:19]

It's that my ability to lie like that is really unbelievable, that it's Orwellian.

[00:31:26]

It's it's worse than that. It's I'm going to do the opposite of the truth and project it on you. And and so so in closing here, Alex, I think that the money and politics issue, you and I can talk on a separate podcast. I actually think that's why we have ridiculous policies on immigration. And everything is the corporate class just drives everything because they fund the elections. And I actually think a lot of these politicians, if they were given a decision that they would make independent of corporate lobbyist pressure, they would actually generally side with the way that you and I see the world.

[00:31:58]

And so I just get I continually see good ideas get interrupted, killed, disrupted and thwarted by the lobbyist class because of how we fund our elections. So that's a different topic. But with that being a side, with putting that aside, specifically, what should be the message for conservatives in the next couple of months for big tech and the next couple of years build this out for us? Where is this going if we don't do anything? Because this is the beginning, not the middle or the end.

[00:32:24]

This is like the very beginning of their tyrannical march to destroy Western society. And also, what can we do about it? Yeah.

[00:32:33]

Yeah. What can we do about a part? Again, is this is one that's much tougher. I would start small. I start with the raise awareness. We have to share this with people. We have to tell people and we have to. I think at this point it's time to investigate Google and their practices and their algorithm to see whether or not it does discriminate against people based off of legitimate mainstream viewpoints, which I don't know what the laws would be on that, but it seems illegal.

[00:32:56]

I like looking at the antitrust. I know the attorney generals are cooking something up on Google on that front. I'm very curious to see where that goes. I think developing alternatives, funding alternatives is a big deal. Accepting money from these big tech giants is totally unacceptable in every Republican who accepts money should get primaried. I'm not saying I want to throw all the mouse on. Some of them are some of them are going to be decent. And I'm just going to disagree with them on this issue.

[00:33:20]

And I'll agree with him on nine out of ten other issues. I'm a realist in this regard, Charlie, but you have to put pressure on these people. You should primary them and say that if you're taking money from the people who want to destroy your own voters livelihoods online, the country is not something we can tolerate. Yeah.

[00:33:35]

And so I think we should give a grace period of fifteen days to return all the Google money you've ever taken. And then we're going to judge you on that fifteen days. Send it back. Fine. Maybe you were unaware, maybe some consultant did that. Whatever. OK, now you have an opportunity to do right there and now you can make independent decisions. OK, and I completely agree with that. And you also brought up you brought up a point that really was was thought provoking here in one sense, which is that the more we talk about it, the better, because that's what tech hates.

[00:34:04]

Tech hates the fact that they're subpoenaed and that there's a light on them. And actually, it's so funny. We had somebody in the I can't remember who you're talking to where all the sudden there was one thing and it got reversed as soon as they started talking about it. And this guy kind of goes to show the power there. And and also, I think there are some really interesting policy ideas. Dr. Robert Epstein, who you mentioned, he thinks that this can all be solved by making the Google algorithm public.

[00:34:28]

I don't know if you've heard about this idea. Yeah, I know. I've talked to him about it. And maybe you might know it even better than I do. I mean, I want to hear your thoughts.

[00:34:35]

I think it's I think it's very interesting. I think that there's there's different buckets. And I think we we're going to get better at talking about it as we move on. Yeah. And I think that's just what happens in conservative circles is, you know, we kind of get a little bit surprised and you and I are really well versed in this. But we have to kind of bring along some of these lawmakers on this show. I think you have to look at this in different buckets.

[00:34:57]

I think you have to do the first bucket is platform access, freedom of speech and capacity to be able to use the platform. Another bucket is, are you going to use the broader power of your platform to manipulate human behavior and human choices, which are actually a different. Thing, because that's like search engine manipulation and all sorts of stuff where the other one is like, why can't I get a YouTube channel? That's kind of a major. Why are you taking down this video in particular?

[00:35:21]

In my content, then the other bucket is, are you potentially thwarting potential other competition and other other entrepreneurs in the market that might want to compete against you? And so I think these are all just different buckets. I don't want to conflate them. And some some of these companies are far worse actors in different areas than others, right? Absolutely. And we can't let Apple off the hook here. I mean, I, I get I have an iPhone, the Apple news push notifications.

[00:35:46]

I get I mean, I might as well I might as well be in Havana, Cuba. I mean, I've never seen a positive thing about my country. Push notified me an Apple news and it it actually makes me sick to my stomach because I can only imagine the 15, 16, 17 year olds that get these push notifications and Apple news the world that they think they live in. Right. I mean, and again, I just did it as a test.

[00:36:06]

I didn't go through the Apple news interview. I just said, just send me general news and I get nothing but Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, NPR about how America is an awful place.

[00:36:14]

So so tell me, how many iPhones do you think there are in the United States at the moment?

[00:36:19]

If I were to guess, I mean, 330 million people, I'm going to guess 105 million.

[00:36:25]

Yeah, that's pretty good. I know it's nine figures. So, so. So we get that number. So so we're over 100 million and every one of them has a default search browser. What's that browser going to be?

[00:36:35]

Well, the default search browser is Safari. So far as default browser, the default search engine is in. Apple is going to be going to be Google. So so you're getting there, feeding 100 million people straight to Google to get you can reset it. Now, at this point, I think you can if you go into the settings, you can put duct or something like that. But it's a there are people who I get to I haven't changed it.

[00:36:58]

So I know what I'm logging into my iPhone that I'm getting said, having to post content and CNN and New York Times. And I'm not going to get Breitbart content. And this is all sadly nefarious. And this is exactly what keeps ideas like the ones you and I worked so hard to hone and craft and to make reasonable and accessible. And no one even gets a chance to debate with us on this, because unless you're already a fan or you someone who personally turns you and turns you on to it, it's so hard to discover conservative thought at this point.

[00:37:27]

And they're they're hiding it. They are hiding Breitbart. They're going to hide you if they're not already. Jarle, we know they're hiding people like Don Junior High may be hiding. Yes, exactly. So and that's exactly what's going to go. And if they don't hide you, they'll come up with some excuse to cancel you out. Right. Like they've done with so many others. This is the moment. It's a what Breitbart exposed was proof, hard proof that it has been connecting the dots from that meeting in 2016 to the dip in traffic to the erasure of traffic on Joe Biden.

[00:37:56]

They are trying to rig the election. It is happening. And if the right does not take it seriously right now, this could be it. If we don't see some progress right now, then I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not saying you're going to solve the whole thing. I'm not saying you're going to successfully break everyone up in the next 90 days. But I am saying people need to know about it and talk about it. And there needs to be unrelenting pressure on these companies to start behaving aboveboard and transparently.

[00:38:20]

I completely agree. Everyone should make Breitbart Dotcom their homepage page to really screw them up. And especially you're using Google Chrome. That's how they know they're losing. Stop using Google Chrome as I'm using Google Chrome in front of me. It kind of goes to show.

[00:38:33]

I mean, but look, I would be very proud. You'd be very proud. Yeah. The products that they create at times are highly addictive. They're built that way. They're supposed to be seen.

[00:38:41]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's hard to turn off.

[00:38:44]

Yeah. And then they're staffed by Bolsheviks. Alex, thank you, everyone. Check out Breitbart Dotcom and you got to write a book on this. I think it would be phenomenal.

[00:38:51]

I think it would be a bestseller and that may or may not be happening. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. So you come back and promote it endlessly. If it happens, we'll see one day soon. Maybe the the and if you guys want to throw me a follow online, I'm just starting to do social media. Add Alex Marleau on Twitter and then you can see links to my Facebook, Instagram and stuff like that.

[00:39:11]

Well, we're going to keep talking till they put us in prison. Alex. Awesome. Thanks so much, Charlie. Charlie, next time we'll do this from Agalloch. Yeah, exactly. All right. Decent bye. Yeah.