From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - The Never-Ending Battle Of Big Tech & Free Speech

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

This week, Sean and Rachel sit down with the host of The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton on the FOX News Channel, Steve Hilton to discuss the forming of the Disinformation Governance Board. Steve shares that he thinks Homeland Security is pushing censorship, control of speech and group-think agenda, which leaves the country's right to free speech in danger. He later draws comparisons between this board and moments in his childhood growing up in Hungary during the Communist era, stating this is the Left's pipeline from speech control to political control. Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thank you, Sean. It's so great to be here on yet another episode or podcast from the kitchen table. And today we have a great guest. You know, I'm obsessed with the Daily Mail, Sean. You are. It's the first thing I go to. I'll get the other stuff later. And it was so great to see a fellow colleague have an incredibly awesome article in the Daily Mail. And I'm talking, of course, about Steve Hilton. He is the host of our network's show, The Next Revolution. By the way, one of my favorite shows, you know, I record a few shows. He's on my list of shows I record that you and I rewatch and make sure we hit. And he's also the host of his own podcast called Rebel Base. He's also an expert in politics and tech. So perfect guy for this for this topic, which is, as you know, it's Scary Poppins and the new disinformation board

being formed at Homeland Security. So with no further ado, I'm welcoming our friend and co and fellow co worker at Fox News, Steve Hilton. I'm very honored that you're I'm on your sort of taping list. But by the way, are you literally at the kitchen table now? I just want to kind of imagine you guys, even if you're not, I want to think I think of you in that way. We literally are at our kitchen table with our podcast stuff. So it's great. Pretty soon we're going to go.

We're going to go video. So you'll actually be able to see it. But yes, we're at our kitchen table together here. So thanks for joining us, Steve. Really appreciate it. So let's just get right into this, because what I really found fascinating about your article is that you're not just talking about this communist type board in theory. You kind of have an experience of it because some of your family lived in communist Hungary and you had this great little story that you talked about of when you visited Hungary as a child. Why don't you tell our viewers what happened? Yeah, but both my parents are Hungarian, my stepfather as well, actually, the entire family is from in the UK, but we would go back to visit at least, you know,

once a year, often twice a year. We'd spend months there in the summer. I kind of half grew up there, you know, hanging out with my cousins and so on. We were from a small town in the south of Hungary called Szeged. And it was pretty idyllic, you know, with kids, you don't really notice the politics and the ideology, just having fun with your cousins. But it was the communist era. And I do remember really clearly, it's amazing how these memories just stay with you. I must have been about seven, eight years old, something like that.

And the guy who was then the leader of Hungary, the communist ruler, was a guy called Janos Kadar. He'd been there for a long time. He was just the kind kind of whatever they call it the head of the communist the central committee anyway he was the kind of president what i don't know what his literal title was but he was the guy who ran hungary the communist leader i just remember for some some reason i don't even know why i was doing this as i said in the article maybe you know it gave this is an indication of where i would end up with my career i was just

walking around the town with my two cousins as as I say, we were all pretty young, and I started just yelling, but, you know, saying out loud, Kada is an idiot. In Hungarian, that's a huye. Huye is the word. It means basically he's an idiot. I just thought it was funny for some reason, just, you know, I myself was a bit of an idiot for doing it.

I don't really know what the reason was. I had no idea about this guy, whether he was good or bad. I mean, he's just the guy who I'd heard of, I heard his name, and thought nothing of it. But then later that evening, back at the family house, my cousin's house, I remember my aunt, who back then was a school teacher. She actually was the deputy head teacher of like the main high school in the town. She came up to me and took me to one side in the house, you know, and she's pretty kind of kind about it, but also very firm and clear. She was a teacher after all. And she just explained to me, you know, maybe in England, you can say stuff like that out on the street, you know, criticizing politicians, but

you can't do that here. And actually, if you do that here, we could get in trouble. Your cousins could get in trouble. I could lose my job. Went on like this. It was really chilling. And I didn't do it again. But I've really remembered that. You know, I was very young, but I remembered it. I thought, God, that's amazing that you can get in trouble for criticizing the government or criticizing the officials. And then here we are now. I'm now an American, an American citizen as of last year. And you think of America as the absolute opposite of all of that, the literal direct opposite of that, where you can say anything because it's protected.

It's in the Constitution. And here we are in a situation where we now have the government starting to apply these kinds of rules. I'm not saying it's exactly the same. Are you going to be sent to the gulag or what Biden? But there's no question it's that same mentality, which is to say this is the official position. This is the line. If you step out of line, we're going to stop you from saying it. We're going to restrict you. And there could be repercussions. And you've seen that just in terms,

for example, of the vaccine. It's not just about political speeches, anything that they are criticizing the government directly. It's any of these things. Look at how people have been victimized just for taking a different position, totally justified by the science, by the way, on things like the vaccine. It's a really frightening development. So all these words that we use to describe this disinformation board, people use the word Orwellian the whole time. That's literally appropriate here. That is what we're seeing here. And even more Orwellian is the fact that they, who are pushing this kind of censorship and control of our speech, literally say it's in the name of restoring trust in democracy and upholding

democracy. I mean, that is totally Orwellian. So I think this is something we should, we can laugh at scary pop-ins, and we should do with ridiculous videos. But actually, this is very, very serious, and we really need to call it out and fight back. You know, Steve, you said it's, you know, we're not going to be sent off to the gulag for, you know, saying speech that the left doesn't like. You're right today. That's true. But if you think of how fast this has moved over the course of the last, you know, six years, I mean, go back to 2016. The social media platforms were still pretty free. Donald Trump was able to be on Facebook

and Twitter and run ads and run his campaign and get data, access voters with direct messages. And since that time, you've seen a concerted effort from the left. And it started in the left partnering with big tech. But after the big tech censorship that's happened and lowering the volume of the voice of conservatives, amplifying liberals, banning some people. Now we've seen the government through this disinformation board get in the game. I think we're just at the start of what the left has envisioned for controlling speech, because to your point, the regimes use speech to control people. Right. That's what the communists did.

That's what those who want to retain power and contain opposition control your speech to shut you up and keep their power. That's exactly right. And I think we have to really think carefully and forensically about the mechanisms here. forensically about the mechanisms here, because exactly because if they just try to come out straight out with it and say in a very direct way, as they do in China, by the way, you can't. That's that's that's the real comparison here. We'll perhaps get to that a bit later in the conversation. You you cannot criticize the Biden administration. You can't. They're not going to do that. That's obviously going to be completely, you know, you can't do that constitution. There's no way they can actually literally in a direct way make a list of the things you're allowed to say or not as the government and then apply that throughout society.

But they do it in a much more insidious way where it's not so obvious. And as you said, they've started to do it for years now through big tech. And that's why that kind of mind meld between big tech, the leaders of big tech, who all, to a person, until now with Elon Musk, I live right in the heart of it. I live right in Silicon Valley. You know, as I sometimes show, some of these big tech leaders are my best friends. You know, I know them personally. And they are all to a person, Democrats, not just Democrats, but far left Democrats. If you look at the political donations of the individuals who work in these companies and these platforms, all of them on the left.

And so what you've seen is this alliance of bias, if you like, where they've not through a direct order, but it's all this groupthink that they all have the same worldview. And that, where they've not through a direct order, but it's all this groupthink, that they all have the same worldview. And that's what they've started to apply. And just the latest example of it, remember, Elon Musk agreed a deal that he hasn't actually taken over just, I think it was a few days ago. The latest example was Twitter banning ads from any organization that, in their opinion, questioned their particular view about climate change. You know, so it just keeps building the whole time. Now, what's really dangerous about this new board that they've set up is if you think about the whole process by which

the, how is something defined as disinformation? You know, we've all said, when we've been talking about this over the last few days, we make the point that disinformation now is the term that the left and the establishment use to describe any opinion that they don't agree with, or any fact that undermines their narrative. But how do we get, but let's look one layer beneath that. How do they get to the, how does something get branded as disinformation? Right now, the way that happens is this kind of groupthink that emerges, where you have journalists on Twitter and activist groups and so on. They kind of swarm around, and sometimes within a few days, an opinion coalesces, and then that's the groupthink.

And that is just picked up, almost like osmosis, by the people who work in the tech companies, the people in this kind the tech companies, the people in this kind of establishment group thing. They just pick it up and apply it. Now, with this disinformation governance board, that whole process of branding something as disinformation and then having the levers of oppression come in and kind of clamp down on it, that whole process has been centralized and it's been accelerated because now all you need is Nida Yankovic just saying, we think of issuing some report or sending out a press release, here's this piece of information, we call it disinformation,

and suddenly it will be picked up and that's the mechanism through which they'll do it. They don't need a law. They can just do it because they control through this groupthink the levers of communication. And that's why what Elon Musk is doing is so important and a real chance to fight back. But we've got to understand the mechanisms about how they do this. And that's why this board isn't just some silly thing that we can laugh about. It's very, very insidious. Yeah, it sort of, you know, makes more official what I think is already happening. I would say, do you see one of the things you talked about your your aunt saying, well, I could lose my job. There's a lot of people who intuitively know if they express certain opinions, they will lose their job.

I mean, you and I are in a very, John, we're in a very unique business where we're actually paid to give our opinion. John, we're in a very unique business where we're actually paid to give our opinion. But recent polling was really frightening. I saw some recent polling on how many people self-censor. And Steve, I saw this for years as a mom. I had a daughter in college, but even when she was in junior high, and she's about to graduate, by the way. So think back when she was in junior high and high school, she would come to me and say, Mom, I need you to help me edit this paper. Please don't get mad. I had to write all

this stuff because I knew I want a good grade. So from a very young age, our children are learning to self-censor. And I think the the real success stories in communism are when people just stop. They just they don't even say it. They don't even think it. You know, that's what I'm afraid of, Steve. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And you said that's why I mean, you know, that's why actually it's it's really important that we're waking up to this. And exactly as you say, you see it throughout the school system. And that's why this this concept of the group think is really important, because it's it it just emerges and it's applied throughout the whole thing.

You hear it in the way that, you know, the teachers are trained and the whole ideology that's imposed through the teacher unions. That's why, by the way, school choice is so important, not just to raise the quality of education, but to give parents options so they don't have to put up with this indoctrination that is being pushed. And it has been for many, many years. It started in the universities, this whole kind of worldview, the academic origins of wokeism is something that I've certainly talked about on my show. It's applied now. It started in the universities, applied through teaching institutions.

Now it's infected corporate America, big tech, as we've discussed. You know, it's everywhere. And so you have to fight. We have to really understand it. It is really deep. And that's why, you know, when people just dismiss it, oh, the conservatives railing against council culture again. And, you know, I don't see them, you know, they can still sort of talk about council culture on Fox and Twitter and no one takes it. Well, yeah, but it's not just I mean, think about the way this permeates society. Exactly as you say, the self-censorship. I mean, that goes back to when you were talking about that, it reminded me of East Germany.

They had a particularly kind of vicious version of that with the Stasi and people reporting on each other, snitching on their names, you know. Yes, that movie, Other People's Lives, captured that. Did you see that movie? Oh, it's a frightening and brilliant movie exactly and i just wanted to sort of end and this point by just mentioning china as i touched on earlier i mean the place that has perfected this is china and what it's what you've got now in china today is as i wrote in the daily mail article this high-tech totalitarianism where

it's they can monitor your speech through every means of expression that you use, your cell phone, your social media platforms, whatever. They're all Chinese now. They don't let anything else in there. So they monitor everything. And then they have this social credit system, which we've, again, discussed, but people need to understand exactly what that is. It literally means, I mean, the extreme end of it is actually China is going to jail where they lock up dissidents and put

them in jail. But also you can lose your job, but it's more insidious even than that. Your social credit is a score that the government gives you. And if you offend against their rules about speech or criticizing the regime, whatever it may be, It's things like you literally are not able to buy train tickets or airlines. You can't travel. You can't move. You can't move. They control your actual life and they can do it in the lives of your kids. I met a Chinese kid who told me if I if I if I step out of line or my dad steps out of line, I won't get to go to university. I won't get, I mean, I was really shocked at some of the things he said, but I think you're right. We're seeing the beginnings of that here, Sean. Well, Stevie, on that point, I'm a huge fan of cryptocurrency. However, when you have

a government digitize their currency, like what the Chinese are doing with their wand, the social credit score is not then just, can I get a train ticket? If they control the money because it's on your wallet and you can't hold it in your hand, all of a sudden you can't go to the grocery store and buy groceries. You can't do all kinds of things we use dollar bills for, which again, I'm a huge fan of what is an amazing, I think, development in technology of a currency or a store of value, but it can be used for incredibly dangerous things in society, which is why I'm also opposed to the US having the US digital currency. But this is what I wanna ask you about Steve is Twitter.

And you mentioned that as well, because I think, I don't believe conservatives understood the advancement that has been made by the left in censoring our speech, the things we can and cannot say, until Elon Musk said, I'm going to buy Twitter and I'm going to make it a free speech platform again. And we saw how the left lost their mind. They're going crazy that we could have the ability to put our opinions on a platform that's not going to take that opinion off. And it goes to show you that they have made such success that they can't allow one platform that a conservative can say what they think, again, about masks, about vaccines, about where the where the China virus came from.

Russia collusion, Hunter Biden's laptop. I mean, we can now say those things, and they're so freaked out because they don't want us to have a voice on any platform to express any of our views, frankly, because I think their ideas are so weak they can't stand up to criticism from anybody. Yes, but this is why it's so important to understand exactly, as you've been saying, where this all comes from. Remember, if you go back to Orwell, so the three slogans of the regime in 1984, you know, freedom is slavery, ignorance is war, is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Now, what they've added here is a new one, which is clearly what is, you know, this is what they use to justify the censorship you talked about, which is speech is violence. They equate a word that you may use against someone as actual violence. That is totally Orwellian. And remember what Orwell was critiquing when he wrote 1984. I've actually been to the island just off the coast of Scotland where he wrote it in an island called Jura.

And he wrote that just after the Soviet Union was emerging. It is a critique of the Soviet Union and the left, the leftist system of thought control through speech control. That's what's going on here. And it's so you're so right to say that what Elon Musk is exposed by just taking this on a front. And the reaction to it shows how important the speech control is to their political control. And the reaction to it shows how important the speech control is to their political control. Because as you say, they are not confident that their ideas would stand up to scrutiny in a fair competition. We'll be back with much more after this. What do Ontario dairy farmers bring to the table?

A million little things. But most of all, the passion and care that goes into producing the local high quality milk we all love and enjoy every day. With 3,200 dairy farming families across Ontario sharing our love for milk, there's love in every glass. Dairy Farmers of Ontario, from our families to your table, everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. There also is such a lack of self-awareness so like the people who've been lying to us for the last especially about covid for the last couple years um the hunter biden laptop story that they said was russian disinformation we know now it's real so they decide that they're going to be the ones in charge of a board on disinformation. Now, Secretary Mayorkas was recently, you know, asked a lot of questions at a hearing. He seemed

very cagey and elusive. Give me your assessment of Mayorkas' performance in that hearing that he was asked about this board. I mean, it shows how casual they are about this, that they, I mean, basically he dribbled out the, thinking that this would just be another sort of bureaucratic move without actually realizing what a frightening prospect this is for all the people on the wrong side of it, because Democrats in power. So they haven't really had any challenge. So it's a little bit, to me, it reminds me of when they were kind of shocked at the outrage over the Department of Justice memo targeting parents who complained about Democrat and leftist ideology in schools as being treated like terrorists. It's the same. They couldn't believe that anyone could be upset about it. That's because they are just in this authoritarian mindset. And what's really interesting about

it is the way that they, again, it's another Orwell book, actually, that it comes to mind, which is Animal Farm, where the people who are kind of behind the revolution, you know, they do the revolution, and then once they're in power, they behave exactly like the people that they replaced. And in the same way, you have the Democrats with this kind of self-image. They started out, you know, this free speech movement. I remember in Berkeley, California, not far from where I am, you know, it's on the left. And they started out as the people that would be, you know, the left think of themselves,

their self-images of, you know, they stand up for the little guy against, you know, the big establishment. It's exactly the opposite. They're now in power. They are enforcing the power of the ruling class. And they can't really imagine the challenge. That's what's so frightening about it. I thought his performance was a sham, but he gets old. No one has anything to worry about. We're not going to censor speech. Why would anyone be reassured by any denial he makes about what this board is going to do when you think about, A, how it actually works, as we were discussing earlier, kind

of by osmosis? Now you have the board issuing some kind of edict about whether or not some particular fact is disinformation, and then suddenly that will be picked up. They don't have to actually do anything. They don't have to sort of literally enforce it themselves. It will be enforced by all their allies in the media and big tech and elsewhere. So they don't realize how far. And then the other insurers, oh, we're not going to be monitoring people's communications. He said that in the hearings. And then on the Sunday shows when he was challenged on all this.

What confidence can anyone have about that, considering how they've behaved in the past, collecting data on citizens, you know, going right back to the Russiagate thing and Carter. But, you know, there's so many examples of them completely contradicting these assurances they give us. And so I don't I that's why I think people should just basically not believe a word that Mallorca says about this. You know, Steve, it's that we even have this conversation in America is shocking that we're actually going through this and making arguments for free speech. It's like, it's insanity. But I do believe that our founders were brilliant in the sense that if people could talk,

if people could debate, if people could argue and put their ideas forward and then vote, that was a peaceful way to resolve conflict. If you don't allow people to have this debate, this engagement, and then, you know, you know, put it to the test of a vote, they turn to violence. You get violence if you don't have speech. And that's what I'm so afraid of now is that I look at the left has become so violent. We see that in the streets with, you know, the George Floyd riots, even you

see it in L.A. after this decision, you know, the leak decision from the Supreme Court came out. You have people, you know, rioting and throwing rocks at police. And my concern is that when when the left uses violence and not speech, I think the right is going to be forced to use violence and not speech. And we we cascade into chaos as a country. That frightens me. And that's why I think conservatives are so willing to, we don't want to use violence, we want to pull this back, you know, to a higher level of debate and conversation

and argument and then votes. So talk to me about that, but also talk to me about what we, because I love your show in the sense that you talk about, again, it's such a smart show, but also you give people a way out. I mean, what do we do to make things better? You're always a hopeful guy.

When you give us bad news, you give me hope on the other side. Well, I think that going back to what I completely agree, that the violence is just so obvious. And a reasonable person would agree, you know, that's not the way to solve anything and it's totally unjustified wherever it comes from. And I think that the, but you're right about the pressures. And I think that the, I think the answer lies in another genius part

of the founders and the constitution and the way they thought about things, which is this idea of the decentralization of power, which is in many ways, you know, the central idea of the constitution, which is that nobody should the decentralization of power, which is in many ways the central idea of the Constitution, which is that nobody should have too much power. No one should be overmighty, not the president, not the Congress, not the federal government, the bureaucracy. We should disperse power.

It should be distributed as far and wide as we can. That's why you have the Tenth Amendment. That's why we have all these restrictions on monopoly and so on. I just think that is a really important idea at the heart of this, that we can all, in a practical way, fight for, which is that if you have too much centralized power, then you have the possibility that it's controlled. But if you actually have the decentralization of power, then it matters much less, because if you have competition, and that's why the Elon Musk thing is so important, now we're going to have competition.

We're going to have one of the platforms that's run differently, and that's a great thing. And I think we need to apply that idea throughout the governance structure. I think far too much is centralized in terms of political power in Washington. So I think a very practical thing that everyone who's elected to Congress and the voters who put them there should look for is like, if we send you to Washington, are you just going to take more and more power and centralize it now to the federal government? Or are you actually going to return it to the states and to individual communities and people and so on? I think that is a real thing that you can argue for. You can make reforms along those lines. School choice, of course, is a great specific example of that. And I think we need to apply that in the economy. We don't want these big corporations to have too much power and control.

We need competition and we need to decentralize power. I think that is something that actually even unites left and right. You even have people like Elizabeth Warren actually talking very intelligently and in ways that I completely agree with about concentration of power in the economy. The problem is they never take it, they never do it, they do it in an incomplete manner. So they're fine with making the case that the economy is too centralized and big business has gotten too big. But then what about big government? They never take it that far. They don't apply it consistently.

Actually, big government, big business, big tech, big media, it's all too big, and it's all too centralized, and we need to break it all up. I think that's something that a lot of people could get behind. Yeah, I can add to that list, big pharma. I was going to tell you, this is part of the America First agenda, though. Donald Trump, contrary to what the left says about him, was sending power back to the states. He wasn't trying to centralize under COVID power under the federal government. He was saying, listen, each state should make decisions for themselves based on the number of COVID cases they have, the number of hospitalizations, the number of deaths. You guys decide for yourselves. And he did this in all kinds of realms as the president. He,

I think, in his gut understood that the decentralization of government was the best for the American people. And it was putting America first if all that power wasn't in Washington. Yeah, if Joe Biden had been in charge, I just think about we would never have known about the Florida and South Dakota experiments in terms of how they handled COVID. And I think that's what they wanted, by the way. They wanted this federal response. I think they were angry at Donald Trump for not, you know, for not, you know, making a big federal mandate. And he instead gave it to the states. And that exposed the fallacy of so many of these policies. So, Steve, I'm going to ask you one last question. I want it. I wanted to end, hopefully, because you had such a great, hopeful note.

But and so maybe you can find the hope in this. And so maybe you can find the hope in this. One of the things that concerns me the most is, you know, you, Sean and I, we're all about the same age. And so I think we have a real contrast in what we are understanding of what freedom looks like in America. And so we looked at the last two years and we're like, what the hell is going on? Like they're taking away our freedoms. This has never happened. And I keep telling to my kids and when I speak at universities, I'm always saying this isn't normal. The government is never, ever in my lifetime or in our history, shut down governments, shut down schools, shut down churches. I keep saying this isn't normal, but or masked people or, you know, all these these crazy

things that happened over the last two years. But I'm so scared that this has all been really normalized. And when my daughter, you know, tells me about professors at her university, the professors are not afraid of administration taking them down. They're afraid of these little, you know, enforcer students who turn them in. And this sort of surveillance niche culture that has sort of been normalized among young people. How do we how do we feel optimistic about the future when so many of these young people who in polling say they're perfectly willing to censor and see no and see see speech as hate and are concerned about you know that sort of thing how how do we feel good about the future when so many of these kids are having these kinds of thoughts normalized through the education system big tech and the culture i think that the real

answer to that is actually found in history, which is typically you get this, particularly in America, which is still the home of freedom, and it's possible for this to happen, is typically you have these things go in cycles and waves, and you have a revolution, and you have a counter-revolution, and that's typically how it goes. And I think that actually you are seeing signs that the kind of wokeism that's driven this sort of revolution that we've seen, you know, in that sort of, you know, like certainly millennials and a bit younger. That's actually there's a lot of counter counterrevolution going on in the culture. I was just reading. The fever is breaking.

Is that what you're saying? I think so. Even the younger, you know, like in places, I was just reading, for example, a fascinating piece about what they call the vibe shift in Coachella and also down, and it picked up on a piece that was written about the culture in certain parts of New York. And they've got the coolest bits of New York in downtown Manhattan, so on in Brooklyn. There's suddenly the ideas that actually in many ways are the kind of intellectual kind of foundations of some of the, as you're saying, the America First agenda, certainly the kind of challenge to the corporate big government establishment. That's actually cool now. And in certain parts of, you know, what you would think of as the absolute bastions of the kind of wokeism and the group thing.

So I think that there's always hope because you can't be too dominant. That's the sort of central idea of America. You can't be too dominant for too long. That never happens. There's always a counter-revolution, and I think that happens in politics. And there are signs that it's happening in the culture with younger people as well. And so I think we have to obviously encourage that and look for signs of it. And I think they are there.

So I would always be hopeful, but I would always, more broadly, always be hopeful for anything on any issue because it's America. And in the end, we always get it right. And I think that, you know, although there's, you know, kind of things that get in the way and they're very frustrating, you know, like you're never going to be able to sort of keep this country down. That's why I so love being here. I'm so proud now to be an American. We love that you're an American and you're right. It is countercultural to be for free speech, to be for America first and so many of these ideas. So hopefully, as your show says, this is the next revolution. This is the next revolution. You're right. America always does regenerate and and renew herself. And again, I think there's a real

role for parents as well to counter so many of the messages they are hearing. But I do believe, Steve, and I will be hopeful because of this. I do believe that our hearts were made for freedom and that that's people's natural inclination and that they will seek it. And when they when they feel oppressed to the point to the point that so many, I think, Americans are feeling right now that they are going to revolt in a positive way towards freedom. I can't thank you enough for taking time to be with us today. We're big fans of yours. So it was a real treat to have you on the show. A real pleasure. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you, guys.

Always so smart, Steve. Thank you so much. And thanks for the insight. I have this great podcast and great conversation. Maybe we'll have a real cup of coffee, not a virtual one with you one of these days. Maybe when you're in New York and you don't make us go out to San Francisco. You hear the coffee's good, but the politics are bad. Coffee's good, politics bad. All right. Thanks so much for joining us, Steve.

Appreciate it. We'll be right back with much more after this. You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces, a message from the government of Canada. All right. That was a great conversation with Steve. He's smart. He gets it. I think his show is fantastic because I think he's always got his pulse i think it's interesting you know his his connect i feel a kindred spirit i also you know grew up i didn't

grow up in in going to hungary in the summers but i grew up going um to spain with my cousins in the summer and even though it wasn't communist hungary there was a level of, I would say, lack of upward mobility that I could even as a child sense when I was in Spain. It's just a different system. It's a lot more classist. It's a lot more entrenched in its ways. And they were really excited to have an American cousin. And I grew up with this real appreciation for America because I lived abroad and was able to see it in a different way. And I think that's, you know, people who have that connection. My mother had a connection with, with experiencing communism. So anytime you have those kinds of, of memories and experiences, you really appreciate America.

You know, I, I, he mentioned George Orwell and he went to the island in which george orwell wrote 1984 and everyone should reread that book right yeah i have to reread it it's been 30 years about a year ago in the middle of covet i read it and it was eerie which which was really wild was that a lot of democrats under donald trump read it as if this was donald trump 1984 it's like you guys they have no introspection. But he was talking, as Steve pointed out, about Russia, right, as the communism was burgeoning there. And, you know, the Democrats, we used to call them liberals. And liberalism is really in the embodiment of free speech and expression. And, you know, think of the 1960, you know, Birkenstock wearing hippies. Right. But it's interesting how the communists, the communist movement has taken over the Democrat Party and they've embodied not liberalism, but they've embraced these communist theories that name of power, in the consolidation of power. And whether it's in government or with their partners in big tech, that's what's happening

here. And the only way that I think we're able to combat it is, again, if you get, you know, guys like Elon Musk, who, again, is our age as well, who goes, listen, this is this isn't right. We weren't raised in this current environment where they're suppressing. This feels foreign. It feels Twilight Zone, right? We weren't raised at a time when we were yelling at speakers on college campuses. And it's also about us when someone is canceled, right? When someone's being attacked by the left to actually stand up and defend them, to help push back. There's so many more of us that believe in these basic common freedoms than those who don't. When we stand up and push back against the mob, we actually understand the mob is actually

really small. There's way more of us, but they've somehow got into our heads that we can't, the majority can't stand up and push back. But that's when you talk about them turning up liberal voices on social media platforms and turning down conservatives, that's also a perception game, right? To make you feel like you're alone. Like all the conservative comments supporting what you said are erased. I've had that happen on my Twitter account. And all the liberal comments are left. It's interesting to me.

Yesterday, Joe Biden was on. It's interesting to me. Yesterday, Joe Biden was on. He was talking about his relationship with Xi Jinping and how Xi Jinping in China, the communist leader said, you know, it's just too messy what you guys do. We're more efficient because I'm in control and blah, blah, blah. And Joe Biden was relaying this conversation. But if you talk to these titans of big tech and even people like Bill Gates and some of his interviews, they have a really deep admiration for the communist Chinese system. They like it because they think they're really smart and they have really great ideas. And if only us stupid plebs would listen to them and we didn't have to go through this messy democratic process, they could actually make these things happen and make our lives so much better and efficient. And and we'd all be eating fake meat and having man boobs like, you know, Bill Gates. I mean, I don't understand who these people think they are, but they think they're gods and they would love the power of the CCP and they want it for themselves. And Steve Hilton

did such a great job of bringing it back to the CCP because it's so easy to go back to the Soviet unions and those sort of dark gray gulag stuff. It's not that the CCP is about using capitalism and corporations in the service of of the Communist Party. And in so many ways, that is the model that we see. Big tech and even liberals and the Democrat Party. This is what they want. They want the centralized power. They hate the messiness and the unpredictability of democracy. Over the course of the last couple of hundred years has been evolution of forms of communication, right? We had the pamphlets that people would send out over, you know, during the revolution and, you know, the development of

the printing press and then the radio and TV. Well, it was expensive to have a TV station. It's expensive to have a radio station. It's expensive to have a printing press. Cheap to do a podcast. I hear. This is the first time that we've decentralized the form in which we can communicate. And so that, that social media has taken some, if not all, the power away from the elites who used to control the narrative on everything because we didn't have a newspaper. I didn't own the New York Times. I can't get something in the New York Times or the Washington Post or NBC News. But now with Twitter, I actually can put out whatever I think and I can attack Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren from my kitchen or from my office or from my bed in my bedroom and send tweets out saying what I think about them for others to read.

and information flows, they hate that because you have as much power as they have. And they want that power back. And they were getting it back when big tech was willing to censor our voices on those platforms and amplify the voices that were supporting the thoughts of the regime media. Well, and they've done it successfully. But now coming back to Elon Musk and Twitter, by allowing our voices to be heard and the debate to be had, again, going back to this decentralized theme that with a computer or a phone, I'm in the conversation. That's my printing press. That's my TV station. That's my radio station. I'm in the conversation just like Joe Biden is, just like Donald Trump was.

It's so different. And, again, I think that is so amazing at this time and this amazing technology that we have to share our thoughts again like I said with cryptocurrency I love it and it's a beautiful technology but just like nuclear power it can be used for you know cheap efficient non-carbon producing energy or it can be used for bombs, right? There's one side or the other. Crypto is the same thing, but also social media is the same in that we can use it for good or we can use it for bad. And right now we're seeing the left is trying to use it for bad to censor and control our speech. Yeah. Unfortunately, I think we're in the hands of Elon Musk right now. I don't know

what's happened to our country, but that's where we're at. We're in the hands of Elon Musk and we're waiting for the cavalry to arrive in the midterms, right? Well, the cavalry is arriving in the midterms. And again, it's going to be strong. Can I just make one other point on the midterms? Sure. So everyone, I don't know if you guys watch

or listen to the generic balloting that happens. They don't put a name on the ballot, but do you want a Republican or Democrat? In a poll. And they poll people and ask them. When I won in 2010, Republicans were down by two points in the generic polling. And we had a historic win of the Tea Party movement. Like 90 people.

90, right? Is that right? We won 86. 86. There were 86 new members. And we won 63 seats, 64 seats in that year. And we were down in the generic polling by two points. And the reason is just, but the turnout models,

you know, Republicans turn out at a higher level than Democrats. And so though we use the same numbering, it's not really reflective of who's going to win and who isn't. Right. So you, so let me simplify this. So you can be down. Interpret what I'm saying.

Okay. I'm going to interpret this for a non-politician. So you can be down in the generic poll as a Republican and still win broad based, broad based. Yeah. But but the opposite is not true. So now when Republicans are up by five points. Oh, my gosh. Seven points in some of the polling. This means it is going to be a blood bath blowout for even bigger than even bigger than 2010. When you were when when this huge revolution happened, that's a really good question. So we Republicans have more seats right now than Republicans had in 2010. So there's less seats to win back. OK, so the number might not be as high. back. OK, so the number might not be as high. Now, there was a conversation if you talk to that could be higher if you're taking seats that were considered safe for Democrats.

Right. Maybe some Texas seats that have been Democrat for a long time have been now coming Republican because of the border crisis. Right. Like like in the southern part of Texas, we're all we're the star county. All these Democrat counties, Republicans are winning the sheriff races and the mayor races. So, yeah. So I think so. I think the Republican Party will say we could win 30 seats. That's an amazing night. I'm actually going to say if this trend holds, Republicans will win anywhere from 40 to 45 seats. It is going to be a massive year. And the power that that gives Republicans is they can't pass their agenda if they got the House and the Senate, because Joe Biden is never going to sign it. Right. But it puts a break on the agenda. But it also gives Republicans gavels. They control what happens

in committee hearings, which means they can do oversight. They can expose what the administration is doing. They can call them to Capitol Hill. They can question them. They can ask them hard questions and drive into the truth of what the administration is doing. And again, I would love to see that on what's happened on the border. I'd love to see Mayorkas pressured more about how he could tell us that the border is secure. That's a good thing. I'd like to see why the FBI isn't doing forensic, you know, what kind of forensic audits, financial audits are they doing on Joe Biden to see if he's, you know, what are the financial connections? Last question for you, Sean, you say, if everything holds, you see a bloodbath, you see a blowout in the midterms, you see this something bigger than what we saw essentially in the 2010 takeover of Congress by the Republicans. Do you think that the situation

of Roe versus Wade, if Roe versus Wade is overturned and this issue goes back to the states, is that going to rile up the base of the Democrat Party enough to stop what you see as this, you know, massive win for Republicans in the midterm. You know, I hopefully want to talk about this in our next podcast. We are going to talk about it. We're going to talk about that whole issue in a much greater form. But just talk to me about the politics, the politics on the midterms. This is this gets complicated. Right. But what I think is you're going to have a small wing of the Democrat Party that is really motivated because of this abortion ruling coming out of the Supreme Court, right? They're going to vote. They're going to give their money. They're going to be there. going to be old news. This is going to be six-month old news by the time they go to the polls in November. And every single day, they're going to go to the grocery store and see prices rising. They're going to fill up their cars and see what's happening, how much they're paying at the pump.

They're going to see the Southern border and the disaster that that is. They're still going to see crime raging throughout America. All those issues that actually impact their everyday lives, America, all those issues that actually impact their everyday lives, they're going to see it. And so I believe that this is going to have a limited impact. And I would ask you- So then is that a bad strategy then, Sean? Because the idea was, let's talk about just the leak. We're going to leak this to stir up trouble trouble because nobody believes that you could actually get these. These I don't believe that leaking it. I think leaking it would strengthen the spine of these justices to not look like they they cave to it. But wouldn't they have been better just waiting till this decision came out in July, maybe

even August? And that's closer. So this would have come out in by the end of June. No, they said it could have come out into July. So I'm going to say postponing the decision. No, that'd be better for Democrats because this was a strategy. This was not about winning in November. This was about trying to change the vote. You do think it was. That's why that that's why it was. Of course. But just think with us, Hispanic voters who are already only have an approval rating for Joe Biden of 26 percent.

I mean, it is the lowest demographic. It's incredible. This is the biggest story that no one's talking about. And I would argue, and you'd probably agree, many of them are Catholics. Many of them are Christians. Or evangelical Christians are actually the fastest growing denomination. They don't support abortion. It's another reminder that Democrats don't support their values, right?

One other point, and I was on yesterday on Outnumbered, and I kind of botched what I was saying on this point, but I'm going to make it again here. Chuck Schumer is going to bring a bill up in the Senate. He promised that. And because of the push of of Emily's List, a pro-abortion group, because of a push of Planned Parenthood, it is going to be a bill that guarantees abortion until birth. Right. And Democrats who are in hard seats like in Georgia, in Arizona, Nevada, hard races. This issue doesn't bode well if you're voting for a bill that guarantees abortion until birth. This is really bad politics. Now, there are some

Republicans that may want to vote for an abortion bill. They support abortion. You and I do not. I do know I'm life at conception now. Right. But they might want to vote for that. And but they would do want to vote for abortion up to birth. Right. So it's easy for the Republicans to say, I'm not going to I do a Republican senator who's a Republican senator can say, I'm I'm for a woman's right, but not all the way to the ninth month. So I couldn't vote for that bill. Exactly. So Democrats are put in a box by this bill. Republicans get an escape valve. The more moderate, moderate ones get an escape valve. And so this this plays really well, I think, for Republicans.

And it's a this is a hard slug for slog for Democrats to make this work politically. And so all in all, I think it's it's probably not going to have much impact on the election. It's not going to move it one way or the other. It's going to be like we've seen in the polls. It's going to be inflation. It's going to be crime. It's going to be the border. It's going to be those issues that education is huge. I've been interviewing moms on on Fox and Friends every week. We have a panel of moms every weekend. And it's amazing how education people thought that those town halls are over. The Democrats thought, oh, the town halls are over the domestic terrorists and all the

stuff that it's not over. These moms have not forgotten. They are still mad and they are still determined to fight. So that will be another issue. Great analysis. I do. One last point. So in the states that might say we're going to we're going to ban abortion might be South Dakota, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana. I mean, these are Republican states. The Democrats are going to win anyway. Right. Right. So the Democrats might be angry about it in those states, but they can't they're not going to win. They're not going to win elections on that. But you could see what about a state like Wisconsin?

But I'm going to come out. I'll come to Wisconsin because that's a good question. But on the flip side, if you live in California or in New York already, you already solidified your rights to abortion. If the court goes through with this case, they're not banning abortion. They're just sending it back to the states to let the states decide, the voters decide what works. So in Wisconsin, Republicans, there's a Republican legislature, a House, an Assembly, and a Senate. And there's a Democrat governor. Democrat governor. Very liberal.

So the Assembly and the Senate will pass a bill that will ban abortion, I believe, and the governor won't sign it. So there'll be an impasse, right? So the debate in Wisconsin will rage on. Now, is it going to be an issue for the governor's race? You know, because now if there's a Republican governor that'll sign that Republican bill from the legislature, well, you can ban abortion in Wisconsin. Because governors running for office in Wisconsin or any state, they love to be able to say, well, this is not an issue for me to deal with. They could pass the buck because it was a constitutional right. And now suddenly it's not. It will become a state issue and people will get to vote on that, which is great. I think for pro-lifers, you and I have been in the in the trenches with pro-life movement for for decades.

This is where the rubber meets the road. I mean, a lot of us have donated time. A lot of people have donated money to this cause. And this is the time to make the moral case, not just against abortion for innocent babies, but really make the case for women and what kind of damage abortion does to women who choose it. And there's a lot of you didn't say birthing people. I did not say. And listen, that's so interesting. This is what we're talking about next week. We'll give you just a little preview, too, because so many you know, there was a state center actually in Wisconsin who put out a tweet yesterday who said, you know, talked about abortion rights for birthing people. Well, look, if you can't say women, you you don't you cannot be claimed to have the mantle of women's rights. women, you you don't you cannot be claimed to have the mantle of women's rights. You you the the liberals, the Democrats, the radical left, they no longer represent women. Everything that they have done, I believe, Sean, in disempowering and really. Not elevating and celebrating the fertility of women and what women this unique role that women have

saying that we're just the same as any other gender. Now, it looks like it's the only people defending women in sports are Republicans. The only women who care about post-abortive women and tell the truth about what happens are conservative pro-lifers. The only ones who tell the truth about what happens in abortion are conservative pro-lifers. And so I believe that the entire women's movement is irrelevant in this debate. If you say birthing people, what the heck? Well, it's interesting because a lot of Democrats now are like, oh, no, no, this is a women's issue. Why do you hate women? They've stepped back from birthing people because that obviously now includes- Some of them didn't get the memo though but i'm like oh no this is this is a women's issue

well i thought they were just spending the last couple years telling me that this is a personal person's issue right yeah they begin they can't get the the the memo right and i just i think it's important to look at why is this happening right now? And there's only one reason. It is the most unlikely individual whoever came into politics, obviously in my lifetime, but I think in recent memory, is a guy who has not led a life

probably fighting for the pro-life movement. But he did the right thing. And that's Donald Trump. We're here because of Donald Trump. Put on three pro-life justices. He committed, I'm going to put on three pro-life justices. Yeah. He didn't mess around. He didn't say, remember people used to criticize Republicans,

say you shouldn't have a litmus test. And then Republicans go, I'm not putting a litmus test. And Donald Trump was like, I have a litmus test. Are you pro-life? Are you a constitutionalist? Okay, great. You're in. By the way, if you hear the dogs,

it's because this is real life. The kids are pulling up. So the dog is going off. It's probably a good time for us to wrap up. I think that's probably a good idea. So anyway, that's good. Yeah, this is just a little preview because as you can tell, we really like this issue of abortion because it's actually the most important issue we have, I believe, facing America because it's an issue of life and death. And we'll talk about that a little further next week. Right now, we got to get back to the kids. All right.

Listen, everyone, thanks for joining us. Enjoyable conversation. Steve Hilton, so smart, so insightful. And I love that he dug us a little bit deeper into the issue of the censorship. If you haven't seen his show, The Next Revolution, it's on Sunday nights on Fox News. And it is a fantastic show.

Always very good every week. A must-see. And of course, you can catch Sean and I on the Fox News Network. I'll be hosting Friday of this week on Fox and Friends. I'll be filling in for Ainsley and I'll be on all weekend long. Four hours. Four hours each day. I know.

Everyone's very sick of me. All right. Thanks. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Jason and the House, the Jason Chaffetz podcast. Dive deeper than the headlines and the party lines as I take on American life, politics, and entertainment. Subscribe now on foxnewspodcast.com

or wherever you download podcasts.