Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 332 | One Nation, Under Corporations? | Guest: Rachel Bovard

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute joins to talk about the problems that arise when corporations and big tech have too much power and how that affects the liberties protected by the Constitution. When companies start acting as the arbiters of morality, that should scare everyone. It's time for conservatives to be much more skeptical of these "woke corporations" and get serious about protecting the free market. Full article by Rachel Bovard: https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/20/corporate-power-and-the-gramophone-mind/ -- Today's Sponsor: Built Bar: Visit https://BuiltBar.com and use promo code 'RELATABLE' for 20% off your first order. -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Today, I am talking to Rachel Beauvard. We are going to talk about big tech, big corporations, and we are going to explore this question of, are we really free? If we live in a society where are the major channels of information and the corporations that control so much of our consumerism are cracking down on the things that we consume on the things that we can think. and say and do. And she's going to give us some solutions to what seems like an infringement upon our liberty by big tech and big business. But before we get into that conversation, I want to take a quick ad break. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me. Could you tell everyone

who might not be familiar who you are and what you do? So thanks for having me. My name is Rachel Beauvard. I'm the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is a nonprofit I started here in D.C. about three years ago with Senator Jim Dimit, former senator from South Carolina. And I teach a lot of Senate procedure, House procedure, but I also do a lot of writing and commentary on sort of where the right is going on issues like, you know, foreign wars, corporate power. And a lot has that has really kind of come to the fore during the Trump era. And so I've been writing and thinking a lot about those things. Yeah. And you started, at least in your political career and the kind of libertarian movement, correct?

I did. Yes. I was the legislative director for Senator Rand Paul for a number of years in the Senate, which has informed a lot of how I feel about foreign incursion specifically. Right. But interestingly, has informed how I feel about the big tech corporations as well. Okay. And how do you feel like your ideas have changed over time as you've seen the right shift? or have you always kind of had the same views on big tech and big corporations? So with big tech and big corporations specifically, you know, one of the reasons I found myself drawn to the libertarian movement was that it was skeptical of concentrations of power wherever they were in the government, you know,

massive corporate power. But I think the D.C. libertarian movement has lost that skepticism of corporate power that I actually think is pretty classically libertarian. And so I feel I've stayed true to the libertarian. movement in that regard and the movement in D.C. at least, has left me a little bit because you see a lot of libertarians who are defending big tech and saying, well, the government shouldn't get involved, ignoring the fact that the government is very involved already in these companies and they're benefiting from a lot of government subsidies, provisions in the law that have helped them grow.

Why is that? Why do you think there has been a shift not on your end, but on libertarians in conservatism in D.C.? Well, I think, you know, the establishment, Republican Party, which includes a lot of libertarians, has always had a really friendly relationship with business. We've looked at it as a way to support our views, the diversity in the free market, you know, free market innovation, and all those things are things we as conservative's prize and want to protect. But I think to a great extent, we've become uncritical about it. We've just assumed that, well, if it's private business, it must be good. And that is sort of become this, it's ossified into this sort of ideology, that you're not allowed to question business.

because that means you're questioning the free market. And I reject that because, again, conservatism is a full, an abundant philosophy that allows you know, you know, you to question and to assume, you know, that things should be questioned when circumstances change. And that's, I think, the position that we find ourselves in with big tech. You have these unprecedented companies with,

that have amassed so much power. We've never seen this before. They're the most powerful companies the world has ever seen. And I think they deserve a second look. from lawmakers because of the fact that they're not just private industry, their private industry that's changing the way in which we live together. And that is fundamentally a question for our self-government. You know, my stance, whenever we start talking about, okay, there's obviously a problem with big tech and they're lopsided censorship, censorship in general, but also lopsided censorship as well as

as well as some other constitutional issues. But my stance has been traditionally until I would say recently, well, I really don't want the government to get involved because I'm afraid of when the power shifts, when there is more Democrat, Democratic control in D.C., that the power that we give to the government to regulate or to interfere in Big Tech is going to be weaponized even further against conservatives. And so at the same time, I haven't known what the solution is. But now I read your article not about Big Tech and American greatness about corporations, corporate power, and the gramophone mind in how you talk about these different situations where people are getting discriminated against just for their conservative views. And it does kind of create some ire in me and I think

other conservatives to say, okay, this doesn't really seem like a problem that we can just let alone, whether it is Target taking a book from its distribution list or whether it is big tech deplatforming people based on their conservative views. And so where have you kind of landed on that? obviously not wanting too much government encroachment, but at the same time realizing this is a problem that we can't just let alone in the name of loving free markets. Yeah. And, you know, in the course of writing that essay, it really became clear to me how this is not just a big tech problem. This is a corporate problem. You raised the example of Target, you know, removing Abigail Schreier's book because one person complained on Twitter. But you also have banks now who are refusing to service certain customers who work with immigrant. for customs enforcement. They won't process transactions for anyone that works in the private prison industry. I mean, this is beyond, you know, just big tech. It is now woke corporations, which are a lot of them. And I take your point about not wanting to create a government bureaucracy

that has to meddle in these areas. And I'm very much aligned with that because I think that it is a real fear that as soon as the political winds change, that same, you know, bureaucracy will be weaponized against conservatives when we built it, you know, to sort of enforce our own views. We cannot go down that road. But what I think we can do is recognize as conservatives that our policy choices have benefited these corporations for years. And we prioritize them in our policymaking. Think about the last four years of the Republican-controlled Senate. The biggest accomplishment they did was a massive tax bill. Now, that was great for the middle class. That was good for working families, but it also contained tremendous amount of corporate tax cuts and that's something that

we prioritize. We're always happy to hand out those tax cuts to big business. We're always happy to bail out massive corporate banks who'd crater the economy and not, you know, give them any consequences. We are happy to give big tech companies and, you know, other big companies, every incentive to, you know, operate in America. I think that the conservative movement and the Republican party should be more skeptical, right? We are empowering these companies who hate us. And so I'm not saying to build a new bureaucracy to control them, but I am saying maybe we should be skeptical before we, you know, willy-nilly hand out all these carve-outs in, you know, the law and in the tax code to these companies who clearly are weaponizing them against conservatives. So tangibly, that's what you think

maybe going in the right direction looks like. It's not necessarily a specific policy or punitive policy against these companies, it's not always looking out for their interest sometimes at the expense of the working class. Am I articulating that correctly? You are. And I think it's a matter of emphasis, right? It's the fact that as a party, we've always said, well, you know, business first in many, you know, our party leadership has set up essentially. And we've neglected a lot of these social issues. We've neglected, you know, kitchen table economics for working families. So maybe instead of prioritizing big business constantly. We look to these other issues and say, look, you know, we tried it with the corporations and they took the, you know, gifts we gave them and essentially turned their back on us.

So you know what? I'm sorry that this tax credit expiring. We have pro-life policies we're focusing on right now. You know, we have, you know, family issues that we're working on. So it's a matter of policy emphasis, I think, going forward. And the reason why a lot of conservatives and even some libertarians have decided that they are going to legislate in a way that especially and disproportionately helps these corporations, is it because their pockets are getting lined? Or is it just because they don't even realize that the industry has changed and corporations have changed? And so this idea of business is important has, without them even realizing it, empowered

these tyrannical left-wing corporations that use their views to then bludgeon in the working class that the Republicans say that they are fighting for. Yeah, I think part of it is just a lack of skepticism and curiosity from the Republican lawmakers. We've just always assumed that the market is functioning and, you know, there's nothing bad that it can do as long as it's the free market, but we forget that a free market has to be protected. And I think part of that lack of skepticism from Republicans is our lack of antitrust enforcement. We've allowed these corporations to grow so large that in many cases the big tech companies are crushing small business. They're crushing innovation and what would other be a robust marketplace.

And so I do think it's incumbent upon conservatives and Republicans to say, look, a free market, we prize it and therefore we must protect it. And so I think being a little bit more curious and skeptical about these claims from corporations is important because we have to police the marketplace to make sure it's competitive, to make sure it's fair, and to make sure our policies aren't overly advantage. the big companies over the smaller ones. Yeah. You know, it's interesting how you phrase that in protecting the free market by being skeptical

of these companies. And I think the same thing is true of something like the First Amendment. There are people who say, okay, we don't want to interfere at all in BigTac and in corporate America because they are private companies that are free to do and say the things they want to do, if they want to censor, if they want to discriminate, you know, against certain political views, that's fine. But at a certain point, the First Amendment kind of becomes moot. If our only cultural megaphones are saying, you know, this is the only right way to think. This is the only right thing that we are going to allow you to say. These are the only books

that we're going to distribute. And, you know, this is the only viewpoint that we will sell and that we will allow you to consume. And so there almost is a need for government. to interfere on behalf of the First Amendment, because like I said, the First Amendment, it doesn't really matter if you have a constitutional right to free speech if your free speech isn't protected by the corporations and the people that are controlling our means of information. Is that a correct concern? Yeah, it's funny when we think about, you know, this First Amendment discussion as it relates to Big Tech, it's always binary. People say, well, it's their First Amendment right. And so that's the end of the story. But it's not that at all because as you point out, our First Amendment rights

are also sort of have or interplaying in this space. And you think about, I call these the network effects of the big platforms, right? The content moderation practices they engage in, which is essentially, I'm going to amplify this content, suppress other content, doesn't exist in a vacuum. And because these companies are so dominant, it has, you know, trickle down effects that impact independent thought, you know, free minds, market access. There's a ton of. of other stuff that's going on downstream from these companies exercising, you know, what is their First Amendment right? But I also think it ignores the fact that the companies are exercising their First Amendment right in a privileged manner, right? Section 230, which is the provision of law

that grants all these big type of companies, you know, all kinds of immunities for content posted on their site, but also the ability to take down content without recourse. That is a privilege afforded to them by the law that other outlets don't have. Newspapers don't have that. Movie studios don't have that. Other First Amendment actors are not protected in that way. So it's not merely a question of these companies are just exercising their First Amendment. There's a whole lot of context that that statement has to be couched in to fully understand

both the practicality and the sort of magnitude of the issue that we're dealing with. Do you think there are some Republican lawmakers that are waking up to this? I mean, it seems like people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have at least attempted to go after these companies. And maybe it's because they're younger than some of the other lawmakers. They seem to understand what's going on a little bit more. Do you think those efforts will ultimately make any difference? I think that what Josh Holly and Ted Cruz have done is really helpful. And I think everybody's sorting out right now the best way to go about addressing.

what the type of problem that we've never seen before. We've never seen corporations have this much control over our thought, over our speech, you know, over, you know, what we can buy and what we can say and who can say it. And so I think they're all sort of a little bit struggling with how to address that without, to the point that you raised earlier, growing the government. But this is the legislative process. This is, it's iterative, right? People just don't wake up with a perfect solution. You sort of work toward it. And I think that's the effort that they're engaged in. But there's a very clear line between what Republicans want to do and what Democrats want to do. Because when you listen to Democrats talk about addressing these tech companies, you know, they want to censor all kinds

of speech. Any speech they disagree with they want removed. And Republicans, by and large, take the opposite approach that says, no, the answer to bad speech is not less. It's more speech. And so I think that they're trying to, you know, find the best way to address that question. And again, a lot of them focus on Section 230 reform. I think that they should also be focused. on antitrust enforcement because I think a lot of these speech concerns are downstream from the fact that there's only three major platforms in America that control kind of how our speech and what we can see and that's Facebook, Google, and Twitter. That's a problem. And I think we should be more curious as to why there's only three major platforms. Right, right. And it does seem like

you said, that there are some lawmakers now who are at least curious about that. I think that, you know, some lawmakers just don't understand, not to be condescending, but they don't really understand social media. It's hard for them maybe to think about how this really does have an effect on working class families. Like how does this really affect the populace? But as you've explained so well, it does. I want to go through some of the examples in this article that you wrote for American greatness that some of them I didn't know about. I had seen some murmurings about Mailchimp, but I didn't realize what it was about. They banned the

Northern Virginia Tea Party from its platform for trying to organize a recount rally in support of President Trump. Substack has been attacked by the Columbia Journalism Review. You said for perpetuating racism for platforming people

like Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald, a video game website, paper rock shotgun, fired one of its contributing writers, banned them. for saying that, hey, maybe we should have a debate about whether or not biological male should be competing against women in sports, not even saying whether or not it should, you know, whether or not it's good or bad, but just saying there should be a debate. He was banned. Abbeil Schreier, as we talked about earlier, her book was taken from distribution because of a random person with 1,200 followers complaining about it to target. And then the American Civil Liberties Union, you noted, said, yes, taking taking, taking, away books is actually a good a good thing for a democratic society. Amazon recently banned books contradicting the popular narrative about COVID and a documentary from Shelby Steel.

And then Citibank will not process some gun sales by their own customers. Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, U.S. Bank will no longer provide services to the private prison industry. And the list goes on and on. Laura Lumer, who, you know, neither of us politically align with. but her store, I mean, what's happened to her is crazy, how she's been de-platformed from Twitter, Periscope, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, GoFundMe, Venmo, MGM Resorts, PayPal, Lyft, Uber. I mean, that is, that is crazy. And you make this point, what do you think is a great point, that yes, we can say that, well, she really is bad. Like, we really don't agree with her, so it's fine. But the window moves over and over more and more to where saying, hey, you know what,

I think biology matters. And, you know, I'm a Christian, so I have a biblical view of marriage. Well, that is going to be one day seen as extreme and worthy of basically exiling from polite society. So I just wanted to list those examples that you gave for anyone who's listening and thinking, okay, you know, that's not really happening. That's just in the imagination of conservatives that they're being discriminated against. do you fear that we are going to see this more and more and that that line will keep moving towards the center? Well, I think that's the lesson of the last five or six years is that that line is moving and it's moving incredibly fast. And going back to sort of my libertarian roots, this should scare anyone who cares about liberty. Because this isn't the government enforcing its views on you.

this is the collusion of woke corporate power that has the ability to cut you off from all mechanisms of society. You know, again, I don't raise the Laura Lumer example because I endorse her views. I raise it because it's instructive. She used to be an outlier. She's not anymore. She's almost a warning for how easily all of these corporations can cut you off from doing business, you know, with society.

And I think it's it's not just a matter of, well, just build your own, right? That's what we've heard for the last decade, right? if you don't like Google, build your own Google. If you don't like your bank, switch to another. But increasingly, all of these corporations are on the same page about, you know, their sort of progressive agenda and will shut you down from having a, not even an opposing view, but even suggesting that there are opposing views. Right. This, I think, is one of the biggest threats to conservatives in the culture that we're not talking about and we need to be. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And I think the, and this, you know, would have been.

my traditional response too that, hey, the market corrects itself. And at the end of the day, these companies care about green. And so they're not going to ostracize, you know, half of their customer base. But what we see continually is that they very much will, who they're cowtowing to in these social justice statements and supporting even BLM and organizations like that is a very small percentage of the country. I believe that in general, we're still a center right country, even with Joe Biden winning. I think that actually shows that we are still center, right of center, most of the populace. Why don't companies care about ostracizing what is presumably the largest portion of their customer base, Target, Amazon, probably most of

the people that use those services aren't in line with a lot of the radical left views and organizations that they are endorsing? I mean, if these are really capital, it's, you know, companies who just care about money. Why are they okay with, you know, sacrificing or offending so many of their customers who don't align with them? Well, I think there are two reasons for this.

The first is that when it comes to the really big corporations like Amazon, even Target, Google, they know that their customers don't have anywhere else to go. I mean, Amazon is one of its kind, right? We can start ordering online just from the retailers themselves, but it's such a convenient fact of life for so many people that they're not. I mean, Republicans are notoriously bad at boycotts. Yeah.

We talk about it. Right. We just keep shopping. So they know they're not going to lose us because we're a captured audience. But I think the second fact is that, again, Republicans will not, Republicans in Washington will not use political power against these companies. And again, I'm not speaking about constructing new bureaucracies to punish specific corporations.

I'm talking about the fact that these companies know Republicans will always line up to cut their corporate tax rate. They will line up to give them every advantage possible because, you know, we believe they in the free market. And so they will never face a penalty politically or at, you know, in their wallets. And so they keep doing what they want. Now, Democrats, on the other hand, will punish them politically. And that's why I think you see a lot of these corporations cozying up to Democrats. You're seeing big tech now, you know, get hired by Joe Biden with all these advisors that formerly worked for Facebook. They're not, they're more scared of Democrats than they are of Republicans because Democrats are the party that will use political power. And Republicans

will just keep cutting corporate tax rates. No questions asked. So for individuals, just your average person who was frustrated by this, but feels exactly what you just explained that, okay, I want to take my business elsewhere. My husband and I, for example, have said, okay, we got to stop shopping at Amazon, especially during this, you know, during this lockdown period where so much capital has been shifted to these big businesses away from small businesses. We want to do our part to support small businesses. And it's sad to say, I mean, it's shameful to say that convenience so often wins us over that our account is already set up. Our credit card information is already in there. Our address is already in there. And we know that we're going to be able to find whatever we need.

But what does the individual do who doesn't want to support? these big businesses are the corporations that truly resent us and resent our way of life and resent our views. What power do we have? Well, I don't underestimate, you know, walking the walk. I was a dedicated Amazon purchaser until I actually started looking into Amazon. And it is not easy. But I think, you know, we as consumers have to take that next step. But I think the difference is, I don't see that as completely solving the problem. I think in a digital, to doing those steps, we also have to push our lawmakers to stop politically advantaging these companies at every possible opportunity. They have done it, they have

advantaged these companies so much that it actually limits our consumer choice. For instance, I also think Google is an infamously bad company. I don't support the practices it engages in. I don't want to use Google. But because of the policy choices our lawmakers have made, I cannot opt out of Google. Google's on every app I use on my phone. You know, it tracks me across the web through its digital advertising, I'm using Google whether I want to or not. And so I think we have to push on our lawmakers to say, no, you've advantaged these corporations above my consumer choice in many ways above small businesses. And you've done so thoughtlessly, without sort of critical thinking that I think would be necessary. So whether it's, you know,

transfer, politicians transferring their focus away from big corporations and onto small business or on to, God forbid, pro-life issues or, you know, family economic issues. or things like that. Or it's, you know, not reflexively supporting business every time it comes with its handout. I think that could go a long way. One thing that I was happy to see is that overwhelmingly, at least in the house, the, gosh, I forgot the title of the bill, but it was basically saying, look, we're not going to, we're not going to be taking products that are created by by the Uyghur Muslims that are in these Chinese concentration camps, which I thought was a great thing. And the people who voted against it were libertarians.

And I understand the argument that, okay, we're not going to tell businesses what they can and can't do. But do you think that that kind of form of libertarianism, do you think that that is dying? I personally, when I look at something like that, I think it needs to. Some things have to be restricted. Some things have to be done in order to protect liberties. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I do. And I think it's a sort of free market fundamentalism that exists within some libertarians who, you know, prized the market above.

It's a reductive way of looking at the market, right, which is to say the transaction of goods is all that matters when in reality we know it doesn't. And conservatives have been saying this for generations, which is the market is a part of our social order. And it is incumbent on our self-government. So we, the people acting through our representatives to say this is acceptable and this is not. And that is oftentimes not a question of economics. It's a question of what we as a people cherish, you know, what principles we prize in our society. And that vote on Uighur, Muslim, slave labor was exactly that. It was us as a country saying, there's some things that are bigger than the market. There's some things that are bigger than corporate profits and the stock market. And that is, you know, human dignity. And that is something that we as a country want to stand for. And I wonder if that vote, which was so largely bipartisan. And if you look at the people, who sponsored the bill. You've got Ilhan Omar and AOC and you've also got Republicans who are sponsoring the bill. And I was really happy to see that. I wonder in a time where it truly feels like we are living in two different realities sometimes on the right and the left. I wonder if this feeling

that, hey, the elites and these people who are giving into corporations, they're not for the working class. They're not for the common good of America. Let's fight against that. I wonder if that is an that can bring together the right and the left. We're not going to come together, obviously, on a lot. But you do wonder if there is this bipartisan populism that seems to be bubbling up and would be able to bring the two sides together, at least when it comes to this, because the left also says that they hate these big corporations. It doesn't even matter what their social views are and that they vouch for Black Lives Matter. They also say that they don't like them. And then the right, there are now people on the right saying, hey, hey, these corporations are. hate my way of life. They hate my views. It feels like they hate me and I don't feel free living under this corporatist oligarchy. Is there a way for us to come together and to fight against that? Do you foresee that happening? So that was a really interesting development in the Trump era is that you did start to see that sort of populist left and a populist right coalesce on certain issues. I am actually hopeful that it can on certain issues. We're never going to agree on sort of

broad sort of cultural issues, I think. But on case by case basis, when it comes to addressing corporate power, I think there are actually broad areas of agreement that are starting to generate. It's a question of whether our leaders, I think, politically will allow us to agree. Because I think a lot of this partisanship is driven from our top-down leadership who doesn't want to give an inch, you know, doesn't want to be seen as agreeing with the other side on anything. Right. And it's going to be difficult because even if both the right and the left, agree that some regulation and some whipping into shape is in order when it comes to big tech, which I think there is some agreement there. There is such a disparate view of what that should

look like. I mean, I think the left would very much like to say, yeah, look, you can't have conservative views on these platforms because that's harmful and that, you know, causes violence or whatever it is. Well, that's not how the right views reigning in the power of big tech. And so both sides want to rein in these big companies, but in very different ways. So I think you're right. I think it would be, it's going to be interesting to see if the right and the left can come together on this issue, how they hash out those differences of what it actually, what it actually looks like. Can you give any just to end on a kind of optimistic picture of people who are feeling like, you know, I'm powerless here. And I really feel like my free.

are being taken from me every direction that I look. I thought I could trust in the free market and now it's obvious that I can't. Do you have optimism for the future? And can things change for the better in the way of liberty? You know, one thing I found really positive about the 2020 election was that there was a big rejection, I felt, of this sort of woke identity politics narrative. The fact that, you know, Trump made gains with minority voters across the board after Democrats in a mainstream media for four years told them Trump was Hitler and hated them, I think speaks to a broad rejection in the country of these woke narratives that these corporations are embracing. Now, I think we need to act quickly, but I'm hopeful that there is something of a groundswell of

support, you know, for members of Congress to say, no, you know what, I'm not prioritizing corporations that, you know, so this kind of divisiveness and insanity, you know, in America. So I actually think that Americans do prize their liberty from corporations and from the government much more broadly than sometimes I think people in Washington give them credit for. And that does give me hope that this will be reflected in our policies in the next couple of years. I agree. I hope so anyway.

Can you tell everyone where they can find you? So you can find a conservative partnership online at conservative partnership.org, and I post all of my essays on Twitter at Rachel Bevard. Thank you so much, Rachel. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. My pleasure. Okay, guys, hope you enjoyed that conversation. There was one thing that I wanted to say that I didn't get to say. One part of corporate America that just bothers me so much, in addition to the censorship, in addition to the lopsided discrimination against people that hold views and purport views that they don't like, is that while they are doing that in the name of virtue, they're saying,

look, we're discriminating against these people because we're so virtuous and we're on the right side of history here in America. Most of them are making billions of dollars, not just from the Chinese Communist Party, which is arguably the most corrupt regime in the world, right up there with the terrorist regimes in the Middle East. but they are also depending on slave labor. Like, for example, Apple, a left-leaning company that I think in general sometimes does a pretty good job of not discriminating. But, you know, they're this woke corporation that says that they are virtuous by espousing these left-wing views. They actually lobbied against the bill that was passed in the house to say, hey, we are not going, we're not going to take these products. that are created by slave labor in these Uyghur concentration camps in China.

If you don't know, there are about a million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps that are being used as slave labor. Their organs are being harvested. They're being tortured. They're being maimed. They're being killed because of their religion, because of their faith. And there are companies here in the United States using the slave labor in those concentration camps to get cheap products so they can have a big profit margin.

And apparently, even though Apple denies this, they are, Apple is actually benefiting from that. And yet they want to come here and pretend like they are virtuous. There are so many companies like that. Same thing with the NBA here saying, we're fighting for racial justice. We're fighting for equality. We're fighting for all of these good things. Meanwhile, they are making billions of dollars from the regime that spies on its own citizens, that doesn't allow free speech, that doesn't allow religious liberty, that has engaged in

intellectual property theft, has enslaved their own people, has tortured their own people, has arbitrarily imprisoned their own people, has taken away the liberties of their own people, and yet companies here count out to them while pretending to be social justice advocates here. And it's because they know that they can get away with making money from terroristic evil regimes if they play it right in the United States because they know that the people who have cultural power in the United States or the left. So if they repeat the right talking points, say the right things, partner with Black Lives Matter, they can do all their evil, sketchy business with countries like China and the CCP. And they're still going to be fine here.

That, you know, we on the right, that we can say whatever we want. We can complain however we want to, that it's not really going to matter because they've got the virtue points here in the United States with the leftist cultural powers that be. And so it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what other behavior they have throughout the world. And so if those are the people that hate you and hate your views and are discriminating against you while it's terrible and while it's dangerous and while it's absolutely awful and it's scary in a lot of ways, I would say that that's okay. That's a good, that's a good, at least in God's eyes, that's a good enemy to have. Judgment is not going to be light for the people who allow these policies and this hypocrisy to go on. Okay, that's all I

wanted to say. I will be back here on Wednesday.