The Benny Show - RFK Jr. vs. The Deep State | The New Kennedy Assassination Exposed By Tech Visionary David Sacks

Episode Date: May 7, 2023

I sat down with the legendary David Sacks for a conversation about RFK Jr., The Deep State, The Twitter Files, the 2024 Election, and more. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Games on. Must be 19 plus and present in Ontario. Void or prohibited. Terms and conditions apply. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Yo, what's up guys? It's your boy, Benny. So right now we live inside of a world where

freedom of speech is something that is like the ground shifting underneath our feet. Every single time, it's like whack-a-molele every single time you think that we're winning you get Tucker Carlson and Dan Bongino fired at Fox News right like it's some of our most passionate and powerful free speech voices get completely canned but Tucker Carlson then goes over to Twitter and then releases a video that's 80 million views so like the world sort of balances out and what does it look like to have a world with actual free speech? They're trying to shut down debate. They're trying to shut down even the capacity for someone like RFK, who's getting 25% in the polls against Joe Biden.

RFK is nearly out polling Joe Biden in the Democrat party. Yet the DNC is saying they're going to refuse to allow debates. It's wild, man. The nexus of the future of media is going to be who can administer the most free and most open debate for people to properly access the information that they so desire. And in case you want to know if that's correct, go check the Fox ratings. As soon as you get rid of free speech advocates and people who question authority and people who question the establishment, see ya. Nobody wants any of that crap anymore.

People are adults and they want free speech. And somebody who's been an advocate for that his entire life has been David Sachs. David Sachs is an entrepreneur. He is a friend of Elon Musk. He is somebody who is a very wise man and somebody who cares a lot about this issue. And David Sachs joins us now. David Sachs, legendary. Welcome back to the program. The viewers loved our last interview and it went gangbusters and we deeply appreciate your time and obviously your fight for free speech as you are a unofficial advisor, a FOE, a friend of Elon as it pertains to

Twitter. And David was telling me before the show, like, I'm not officially at Twitter, but we know that you and Elon are friends and you are such an advocate for free speech and we're deeply appreciative for that. I wanted to kick off the show today by saying the people who are the most censorious and the most non-desirous of free speech, clearly the apparatus that controls the Democrat Party, and now they won't even allow RFK to debate Joe Biden. RFK is pulling down 20% in recent polling, and they're not going to allow the two to debate. What does that say about the Democrat Party's opinion on free speech and free elections? Well, the Democrats and the media in general

are just in a panic over this RFK Jr. candidacy. Not only the fact that they refuse to debate him, they're also warning him not to participate in New Hampshire. As you'll recall, Biden tried to change the order of the primaries for his own benefit. He wants you want to South Carolina to be first. New Hampshire said they wouldn't play ball with that. And so, you know, the DNC passed a bunch of rules to punish any candidates who might want to go to New Hampshire. All of this has now created a tremendous opportunity for RFK, because if Biden stays out, then he could either win New Hampshire or do very well.

So in any event, the Democratic Party elders are now warning RFK with unspecified punishments that he needs to stay out of New Hampshire. And then, of course, you see in the media, you had that ABC News interview where they presented the interview in heavily redacted form um declaring that rfk jr was guilty of misinformation by refusing to show what he actually said yeah and um so you know they're declaring yeah they're declaring himself at it they admitted it yeah exactly so you know it's done nothing to discredit his his claims that the media is is sort of in cahoots with the you know

the powers that be and that they're using censorship as a weapon against him and against anyone who um who disagrees with the sort of the orthodoxy of the ruling class. I mean, if anything, they're kind of proving what he's saying. So yeah, it's been really interesting to watch this candidacy. I think it's probably the most fascinating part of this early sort of 2024 election that we've seen so far. You have here, you know, the scion of a great democratic party family you know the maybe the greatest who is deviating from current democratic party orthodoxy in a bunch of really significant ways he's uh declared that the war in ukraine is a proxy war that we should

be uh seeking we should never should have gotten in, that effectively we caused through our provocative actions in terms of bringing NATO right up to Russia's border. It was an easily avoidable war. We should be seeking to de-escalate it. He, you know, like we just talked about, he's come out against censorship and in favor of free speech. He is denouncing corporate greed and says that many of our decisions on COVID were motivated by corporate greed, by serving the interests of big pharma companies, pushing this mRNA shot.

He's also denounced the insanity of complex, the way that the United States keeps getting into all these foreign wars, the forever wars, the Middle East that cost $8 trillion. We have nothing to show for it. And he's made the argument that not only were these horrible foreign policy mistakes, but they were also motivated by this corruption at the heart of our system, which is you've got this revolving door between our government and our sort of key agencies and these big companies, whether they're, you know, the giant weapons companies, you know, in the case of a foreign policy, the military industrial complex, or whether it's, you know, the pharma companies are dealing with the FDA, or whether it's you know the pharma companies or

dealing with the fda or whether it's the revolving door between you know um the the epa and monsanto he's really making a a larger claim about about regulatory capture he's basically saying that all that our government's been corrupted by regulatory capture and we're we now have this ruling class that's motivated by um that that's sort of infected with with corporate greed and it's a very different kind of critique than anything you've ever heard before um so he's got this larger frame on on what's gone wrong and he and he basically says this is that this um that this marriage of of state power and corporate greed has basically caused the destruction of the middle class in America.

You know, it basically frittered away $8 billion on the forever wars in the Middle East. The COVID policies we had squandered another $16 trillion. Sorry, I should have said $8 trillion, $16 trillion. So you add these things up and you realize why we're in such a horrible economic situation that we're in um so it's just been you know really interesting to hear a democrat especially you know a democrat someone who's been a lifelong democrat who's the the son of you know uh you know robert f kennedy who's the nephew of president John F. Kennedy, to be making this critique against his own party,

it's really quite bracing. What it reminds me of is the liberal party that I grew up with. This was not too long ago, and we've touched on this before, but it was not too long ago, where fighting the corporate power and the deep state and the intelligence state and the suffocating regulations and big pharma that that was like the thing of the left those were the people in the streets demanding that big pharma uh not not push uh their particular injections upon us uh and that corporations release their stranglehold uh government. I mean, I remember Supreme Court rulings where the left was ensconced in the street talking about this, and now they are the simps for power. And what the hell happened? It's happened so quickly, my neck snapped.

Yeah, and that's basically the argument he's making is I don't recognize this party. This is not the party of my father and uncle. It has become a party full of neocons and war hawks and militarists and Wall Street and big corporations and the military industrial complex. These are all entities that my father and uncle were deeply suspicious of i thought that the democratic party was supposed to stand up against these forces these sort of oligarchic forces these special interests and in favor of the middle class and defending the the middle class against um you know against these forces that would otherwise loot the American government and the economy. I mean, that's basically the crux of the argument he's making. And I think it's going to find purchase in the electorate. It's not completely different from the types of

arguments that you hear Trump making or DeSantis making in a different way. I think on the Republican side, you hear a little bit less about corporate greed specifically. It's more about sort of ideology. But in both cases, both in, I think, the case of what you're hearing in the Republican side and what you're hearing from RFK, what they're saying is that the ruling class of the United States has become corrupt, and it no longer serves the interests of the people. That is fundamentally the critique. And you hear it now, again, on both sides. And it's really interesting. And Biden really represents, I think, he's sort of this avatar for this elite, this professional managerial class that runs all these institutions. He himself is

not, you know, that vigorous, or he doesn't seem very on top of it. But it's almost like he doesn't need to be because he's really just this figurehead for this larger collection of special interests that seem to run the country. And frankly, if Biden is not coherent or articulate or completely on the ball, I think these interests are just fine with that because it means that there's no one really at the top to oppose them. And they're going to continue running the country for their benefit. It does seem a bit like a existential crisis, however, to this ruling class that the best you can get is a Joe Biden, who is certainly a sunset candidate and a swan song for a ruling class that is getting quite old and decrepit. They can't find anyone better. And now you have real challengers from the right and the

left. RFK is sort of like Bernie Sanders on steroids. He's making a lot more sense. He's drawing a lot more people. And Bernie Sanders was himself an existential threat to Hillary and Biden. Yeah, I think so. So I think what's interesting about RFK is that he's willing to violate, let's call them taboos or seeming taboos on the Democratic side in a way that Bernie Sanders was not. I mean, Bernie Sanders, I guess you could say, tried to focus on working class blue collar issues. And in that sense, he was a departure from the rest of the democratic field who are obsessed with, let's call them professional class issues, boutique social issues that are mostly interesting to Oberlin College graduates, things like that he so he was a departure in that sense but he he wasn't really willing to denounce the Democratic Party establishment's militarism

about the fact that frankly all these Bush Cheney neocons that used to be in the Republican Party have migrated the Democratic Party you know this Kennedy is asking, wait, why? Like, why are they now the foreign policy establishment in our party? You know, Victoria Nuland used to be Dick Cheney's foreign policy advisor, and now she's setting Russia policy in the Biden administration and has been going back since when he was vice president. So he's breaking a taboo there. And, you know, he's breaking a taboo in other areas, too. I mean, so certainly with censorship and the weaponization of the Justice Department, I don't think he's used

the word weaponization, but he's basically said that we need to be distrustful of the FBI. You know, we need to jealously guard the civil liberties of Americans. And he's denounced the surveillance state that's been created. He basically has said that this war machine that's been created abroad has a flip side at home, which is this giant surveillance state an apparatus has been created and would would strip the american people of their civil liberties if we don't you know uh guard against that and so and and you know you don't hear anybody on the left uh uttering a word right now about the you know the the corruption of the the 51 former security state officials who denounced the Hunter Biden laptop, claimed it was Russian disinformation. We know it wasn't. We know that actually the contents of that

hard drive, Hunter Biden's hard drive, were real, that he was receiving multimillion dollar payments from foreign governments, including China and Ukraine, and that it was really a giant psyop that was perpetrated by these security officials against the American people is effectively a hoax to get the American people not to consider that Hunter Biden story in the weeks leading up to the election. So, you know, so I think, I don't know if I've heard him specifically critique the hunter biden story but um but he's warning against the the corruption of the security state and the surveillance state and how we need to be on guard against it so it's very compatible with i think you know what the critiques that a lot of republicans have been making um so he's just he's just willing to to

violate taboos to seemingly on a daily basis there was one just this morning he tweeted on immigration that we had chaos at the border that he was in favor of legal immigration of people who can add to our economy but the situation of the southern border had become intolerable that it was out of control that it was a humanitarian crisis that it was chaotic and that it needed to be, the border needs to be closed. And, you know, what other Democrat have you heard that from? I mean, not Bernie Sanders, not AOC. I mean, it's just common sense, right? And so I actually think that the fact that there's such an orthodoxy in the Democratic Party and in the sort of mainstream media, which serves the Democratic Party, there's such an orthodoxy in the Democratic Party and in the sort of mainstream media which serves the Democratic Party, there's such an orthodoxy about what you're allowed to say that I think it's created a tremendous opportunity here for RFK Jr. Because all he has to do is say, is make common sense observations, and he's going to find a large market for it. It's a real privilege to be able to travel and to see different places,

taking yourself out of comfortable positions and challenging yourself. No one builds a legacy by standing still. Start your journey at Remover.com. Yes. Yeah. And of course, you're find your tip your typical liberal who's going to say that they also don't trust the deep state where what the hell happened to these people again it is still bewildering to me how quickly they can turn on a dime now the republican party turned towards populism but the democrat party has literally done a full-on embrace of the security state and who would question this more than a kennedy now rfk has out and out said the cia killed my uncle this was based on a tucker carlson uh segment where tucker carlson was asking if the cia was involved and the cia agent told him

yes uh if you need further evidence as to why tucker carlson is no longer on the air well look right there but rfk nonetheless responded this should have made of course international news should have rocked the entire bedrock of our nation rfk yeah they killed my uncle the cia did he tweeted it and every you know like gotta ignore that guy right he's crazy and i think they don't want that conversation to come to come bursting out onto a debate stage let's say with the deep state's chosen emissary, Joe Biden. Perhaps I'm wrong. Yeah, I mean, so I guess on that issue, I don't know, you know, I guess I don't know exactly, you know, everything that went on in terms of the

Kennedy assassination. But what I do know is that the CIA still has not released all of the papers related to the investigation into the JFK assassination, even though they've been required by law for a number of years to do so. And I think something like the last three presidential administrations have not simply ordered all of those papers to be released. I don't understand. I think he's right to say what possible reason could there be for not releasing those papers 60 years after the event in which all the key participants are now dead. So, you know, I think it's no wonder that there are questions. And I think that it's, I think it's unforgivable for the government, for the CIA to be, again, in violation of the law, you know, thereby creating all these suspicions and doubts because they're not being completely transparent.

So I think that that is a legitimate issue. Yeah, it was very interesting. It is very interesting. Donald Trump in the year 2017 donald trump had the capacity to order the release of everything the president has to order it right so the the timeline was up with the cia's documents specifically the timeline was completely up and donald trump released a fascinating statement saying of all people right donald trump railed against the deep state ran against the deep state donald trump statement says state. Donald Trump's statement says, my hands are tied. I'm not allowed, I cannot release them. There's a state,

and it's bewildering. Who's tying Donald Trump's hands? Who are the people that are not allowing, of all individuals, Donald Trump, who's like the big F the deep state guy, to not release these documents? It's so utterly fascinating. And in my next interview with Trump, I will ask him about this, especially since RFK is potentially going to make it a big issue. You said that they were coordinating and colluding in order to present a hoax, a color revolution on the American people with the Hunter Biden laptop story. This seems like just perhaps a more elegant process uh than they had when it came to the jfk assassination jfk assassination was far more of a of a harsh uh uh uh tool to be used in

order to get the desire that they want the the result that they wanted and maybe this was just a far more elegant but nonetheless jfk was going out against the deep state. Is this the common thread, right? Is that JFK really didn't like the CIA, the FBI, and all these black box budgets? Yeah. So, I mean, the part of this, I think, is bulletproof, is that JFK did want to, he felt that the CIA had lied to him. So after the Bay of Pigs, he felt that the CIA had lied to him. He blamed the CIA for that. He fired Alan Dulles and some other key top people at the CIA, and he grew to distrust

them. And what RFK says in his announcement speech is that JFK realized at a certain point that the purpose of the CIA had become to generate a pipeline of new wars to endlessly feed the military industrial complex and keep America permanently at war. And he quotes JFK as saying that he wanted to take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. That's where JFK ended up on this. And so I can see why there are people who suspect that the CIA might have played a role somehow. Like I said, I don't know what the truth of that is, but I do think that the CIA should be obligated to release everything they have about this matter. We need to get to the bottom of it. Yeah. You say that the people that are involved are all dead now in that potential assassination,

no matter who was responsible, but the deep state is very much alive and very operational, as is evidenced by the Hunter Biden laptop and that story. They're still operating and you called it a hoax on the American people. I mean, how is this not essentially rigging an election when you know something is openly false and you're using the power of your nameplate and your position inside the government in order to refuse to let people report on it? Because that's what ultimately was the effect here. Jake Sherman at Politico had to apologize publicly for tweeting the link. It's, what happened there is really crazy.

I mean, you've got, first there's a call from the, from Blinken, who's then an operative on the Biden campaign to Mike Morrell, who's a former CIA director saying, yeah, what do you think about this Hunter Biden story? You know, we're, we're? We're kind of concerned about it. And Murrell says that he wasn't specifically ordered to create the letter, but somehow the Blinken call created that, it triggered that intent in him. Yeah, of course, he's a professional at this. He doesn't need to be explicitly told what to do. What's that old saying in Washington about never say what you can nod, never nod what you can wink, that type of idea. So in any event, Morel gets his call from Blinken,

and then he orchestrates this letter where he gets five former directors of the CIA and 50 other security state officials to sign it saying that this letter is Russian disinformation. Sorry, that the Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation. Sorry, that the Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation. And of course, they're careful to put, you know, the CYA language somewhere in there about how, well, we haven't seen the laptop, so we haven't seen any evidence,

but this just bears all the earmarks. So then they feed this to the media. And of course, the media knows what to do without being explicitly instructed. So what they do is they hype up the parts about Russian information and totally ignore the parts about, well, we haven't actually seen a laptop. We have no idea what we're talking about. And so everyone kind of knows what to do. There's like a system here, right? And the point is that they're all kind of in on it. You've kind of got the Biden campaign colluding with all these

security state operatives. And of course, they don't need to be told that their continued access, their security clearance, and their continued access depends on the good graces of the Biden administration, but they know that. And then, you know, you've got them, and then you've got the collusion of the Washington Post, New York Times, and they're all kind of in cahoots pumping this story that they all know is false. And of course, in a way, the FBI is in on it too, because the FBI never corrects the record. The FBI had the laptop in their possession for over a year at this point. Well, not quite.

I think they got it in December of 2019. And this sort of op was undertaken, I think, in, was it like October, November timeframe of 2020. So the FBI knew that the laptop was real. And what's interesting is that none of these people were worried that somebody at the FBI would just leak, oh, that's not true. That letter is just totally... What a great point. Yeah. And you would think, well, wait a second. If they're going out on a limb, they've never seen the evidence, but they're just going to say this is Russian disinformation. Well, how do they know that someone in the FBI is not going to just torpedo that? Well, because I'm sure they're in contact with their friends who are

still there so this really was a psyop um and a like you said a hoax against the american people to get that hunter biden story discredited um for you know until after the election and of course you saw something similar happening in social media where social media suppressed the story. Now that we've seen the Twitter files, it was done at the behest of former FBI operatives who are working inside of Twitter. James Baker. The Hot Honey McCrispy is so back at McDonald's. With juicy 100% Canadian-raised seasoned chicken, shredded lettuce, crispy jalapenos, and that completely craveable hot honey sauce. It's a sweet heat repeat you don't want to miss. Get your hot honey McCrispy today.

Available for a limited time only at McDonald's. I must. So it's really it's I mean, it's almost beyond belief. You know, if you were to describe this. You know, it does sound like some sort of elaborate conspiracy theory that the government could be involved in meddling in an election this way uh on behalf of their preferred candidate but this really was an op and um and you just you can't even get the media the mainstream media to cover this today um they'll just dismiss it i guess as a conspiracy theory although they can't really do that anymore you don't hear You don't hear a conspiracy theory being applied to this that way anymore.

They just don't want to talk about it. Sounds like a script for Thank You for Smoking, Too. But I think this is what's created the market opportunity. But this is what's created the market opportunity for for rfk jr you know and um because he's willing to to say things that are either manifestly true or at least plausible that the media just refuses to even cover and i i wonder if you know he's doing a lot of podcasts and i expect him to come on our own podcast soon what i wonder is whether podcasts could play a role in this election the way that social media did in 2016, where all of a sudden it was like this feeling of there was like a breakthrough

and social media played a large role in allowing Trump to basically get his views out to his supporters and audiences and help get people to attend rallies. And you had the sense that, uh, that social media played an important role in 2016. I wonder if podcasts could play a similar role here and helping JFK Jr. Get his message out to his audience,

because obviously the mainstream media doesn't want to cover him without heavy redaction. So as a de facto advisor on Twitter, a friend of Elon, can you game theory for me what would have happened if the hunter biden laptop story broke and elon was in control of twitter no we just wouldn't have known any of this stuff oh you're saying that if elon had been in control of twitter yeah so what would happen so so let's say so rewind the clock i i you know i i i know it's metaphorical and playing with the reality itself but given elon's rules for twitter what would have been the result of this bombshell story october surprise uh happening on twitter

you know what what would have happened what's the what's the sequence of events that would have happened under under elon's twitter we that would have happened under Elon's Twitter? We know what they did under Twitter 1.0. Obvious. Right. Well, I think this one's pretty obvious. There would not have been any censorship of that story. So what Twitter 1.0 did is they censored any links to that story. They locked the New York post out of its account and then when other

you know like trump campaign officials tried to retweet the story or just post the link they stopped they locked i think kaylee mcinerney out of her account other people out of their accounts i mean they went on a full blackout of that of distribution to that story so i mean that's what they did i don't think elon would have done any of that stuff um you know it's just very simple now you still would have had the problem of the 51 security state officials writing their bogus letter to discredit the story and so all the coverage in the mainstream media would have basically cited that as some sort of refutation of the New York Post story. But at least there would not have been, again, the suppression of distribution to the story itself. Who would have been the one to get the community note? Well, that's interesting. That's an interesting question. So the way community notes work is that

people on both sides of the political spectrum, as an algorithm determines it based on their revealed preferences on Twitter, people on both sides have to agree to a note in order for it to be attached to a story that way. And so my guess is that at that point in time, you wouldn't, I don't know if you would have gotten any sort of agreement. We didn't have the story that we now have. There's been a New York Post and Washington Post stories and other mainstream media stories

admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic, that it's been authenticated, it's been validated. So we now have agreement on that point. And we didn't have it back then. So I don't, you know, I don't know what the community note would have been. Like in my, in my bizarro world reality, where Elon was in charge, there would have been a community note at the bottom of the 51, that Natasha Bertrand 51 Intel experts, it would have been like these guys haven't even seen the laptop right so what the hell are they talking about like you should just you should disregard this because they clearly they don't even know what they're talking

about right like that that would have been the community note along right you know yeah i mean like yeah i mean you're right but the letter sort sort of acknowledges that. But and so it's all about how you want to spin the letter. But the point that the point of the letter, I think, was to give the Biden campaign and the New York Times, the Washington Post, the sort of the advocates of the Biden campaign within the mainstream media was to give them enough give them enough ammo against the New York Post story to get them through the election. I mean, that was the point of it. Yeah. You just had to survive two weeks. Right. They dropped it so late. You just have to survive two weeks.

Right. You just have to muddy the water enough, cloud it up enough. Hillary Clinton had the email scandal for her entire candidacy, right? She was asked about that every step of the way. This was just two weeks. They could survive that. they've been in a basement for a year right do you i mean do you you're a republican is that right you're conservative basically i mean um i mean you know i i don't love the the labels because i feel like as soon as you identify first and foremost as being associated with a party then i i feel like somehow it implies that the way you reason to get to political positions is

you find out like what your party thinks about something and then you try to figure out how to you know defend that um you know you sort of get the talking points and that's not my interest at all. So I don't, I don't feel strongly about a party label. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, look, I guess you could say I'm, I mean, I sort of feel like I'm, I'm centrist, um, in the, in the way that Elon says he's centrist and the whole country kind of moved to the left. But, um, you know, I identify with a lot of things that, that Robert F. Kennedy's junior is saying. And, and, um, you know, I identify with a lot of things that that Robert F. Kennedy's junior is saying. And, you know, I was a big fan of of of John F. Kennedy's presidency and and his father, Bobby Kennedy. So. So, yeah, I don't see myself first and foremost as a partisan person. There are two kinds of people in the world, backward thinkers and forward thinkers. Forward thinkers have plans 15 minutes from now and 15 years from now.

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I think we would have had a very different country if Kennedy had stirred out eight years. I think you would have, I mean, we would have never gotten into Vietnam. We would have never had the national security state that we have, and we wouldn't have had an entitlement system that we had all of it brought about by Lyndon Baines Johnson. But I think we would have a different country if Elon wasn't in charge of twitter during that post story and do you agree with that contention yeah i think that the uh i think we would have very little knowledge of what was actually happening inside these social media companies if twitter if elon hadn't opened up the twitter files. I mean, let's just think about everything we learned. So it was like peeling an onion or like Russian dolls where we thought we learned something really important

and then it turns out it just led to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. So the first thing we learned was that Twitter, despite its protestations, was engaged in shadow banning. In fact, they had created very elaborate tools to allow them to shadow ban. There's like checkboxes, do not trend, do not allow in search. And so they could really throttle the traffic to any particular user or tweet that they wanted, and they were doing it. and they had huge numbers of people inside of um twitter who were doing this and basically distorting the conversation and our discourse not only in the united states but across the world so that was sort of the the and they were

doing so many in many cases in violation of their own stated policies on these things so you know there was the the one of the twitter files did a case study on Trump's banning, and they basically admitted that he hadn't violated their terms of use, but they were going to ban him anyway. They decided to look outside the context, to the larger context, beyond just any particular tweet. So, they were fitting their censorship decisions to their ideology, you know, rather than just whatever the rules were. So, you had this large-scale censorship operation. So, that than just whatever the rules were. So you had this large scale censorship operation. So that was the first thing we learned. And then we find out that this wasn't just a case of corporate bias, where, you know, you've got all these biased Twitter

executives, their actions were actually being guided by the deep state, you had 80 former FBI agents, who were flagging to be taken down on social media and then we find out that it wasn't just the fbi the fbi was acting as a conduit for all of these deep state agencies the fb not just the fbi you had the department of home security you had this um global engagement center at the Department, which was originally created to create propaganda, to propagandize other countries, but it had been set loose on us, on, you know, on the American people. You even had, you know, you had even representatives of the CIA were participating in some of these

meetings, although they were going by, you know, various euphemisms. And, you know, and we know that Yoel Roth, who is the head of trust and safety, which was the censorship division at Twitter, he was having weekly meetings with these representatives of the security state. Bragging about it. Writing about it, yeah. Proud of himself, yeah. Yeah, exactly. so shame like they're

incapable of shame and they were you know and they were also making surveillance requests as well without going through the due process of getting a search warrant or anything like that they were requesting information en masse about users on social media who they want to investigate for some reason which i think is a violation of our civil liberties, both the free speech part and the surveillance part. But then, you know, you peel the onion even deeper. And what we found out is that the pretext they were giving us for their involvement, for the FBI's involvement in the first place was all about malign foreign influence. It was that we have these foreign foreign governments you know involved in uh twitter

running propaganda campaigns trying to influence our elections this was the um this was the the stated reason this was for their authority for them trying to have this giant fbi operation that that again like what the fbi field chief said was the belly button, again, the central conduit for the whole security state. And what we found was that that whole rationale for their authority was a fabricated pretext. So you learn from the Hamilton 68 dashboard where they were supposedly tracking 500 accounts that they said were Russian operatives on Twitter who were seeking to, you know, influence our public discourse or our elections. It turns out that those were just ordinary Americans. They were just ordinary accounts.

It was a total fabrication. And, you know, Hamilton 68 had been set up by a former FBI agent named Clint Watts, who was now backed by they produced thousands of press articles claiming that all sorts of issues were, you know, were Russian disinformation. So, anyway, my point is just that even the rationale that they gave for their involvement, for the FBI's involvement in the first place, turned out to be a fabrication. And Twitter knew it. I mean, UL Roth inside of Twitter was basically saying that we've looked at the accounts they're tracking through the API and they're just ordinary accounts.

This is all, I think Roth used the word, this is BS. He's like, should we reveal that this whole thing is a fraud and a hoax? And, you know, the mainstream media is relying on this. And he was told internally, no, we can't do that because we don't want to offend these powerful actors, you know, in the deep state. So, again, you have this like, you know, Russian doll level where we just kept finding out more and more and i think the only conclusion you can come away with from the twitter files is that we have these the you know these security agencies that have been weaponized against american people they're propagandizing the american people they're surveilling the American people. They are censoring the American people. It's

completely out of hand and unacceptable and a violation of our constitutional rights. And we wouldn't know any of this if it wasn't for the Twitter files being opened up. Yes. But how much can be undone? History is what it is. My personal contention is that you would have had a second Donald Trump term and that Donald Trump would have been reelected if Elon Musk had been in charge of Twitter. That there would not have been the capacity to censor these stories or to de-boost these actors and you, it had a very, very different media landscape. It's hard to say. I mean, we can't know for sure what the impact was of, of censoring that story. Um, I mean, clearly it's, it's, it's foul play in an election.

Um, so I, I don't know. I don't know if it would have been enough. I mean, I, I guess, you know, at the time the story came out, I didn't, I honestly didn't think that much of it. I thought it was because of the timing. I thought it was sort of an October surprise. It's the whole thing felt very weird that somehow like this laptop, um, had that Hunter Biden's laptop had ended up at this repair shop. And then somehow in the hands of Rudy Giuliani, it was just so weird and bizarre that, that I really didn't think that much of the story at the time it came out but but now i

know that there's a lot to it and the main reason i know that is because of the herculean efforts that the biden campaign and the deep state went to suppress that story both on social media and through using their influence with these officials to discredit it i, why would they go to all that trouble? I mean, if there was nothing there. So I tend to think that you don't go to that much trouble unless you think it's a really big problem for you. And specifically, what the contents of the hard drive show is that Hunter Biden was receiving multimillion-dollar payments from foreign governments,

and was basically running an influence peddling operation. And now I guess we're up to what 12 Bidens who've received payments from foreign governments. So I tend to think that the lengths they went to suppress that story indicate to me that maybe there is something there that I kind of overlooked at the time the story came out. suppress that story indicate to me that, that maybe there is something there that, um, that I, you know, I, I kind of overlooked at the time the story came out. So you've always been picky about your produce,

but now you find yourself checking every label to make sure it's Canadian. So be it. At Sobeys, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first. Restrictions apply. See in store or online for details. Those links directly targeted, obviously, other social media sites, but they really went after Twitter. I mean, they really had their tentacles in on Twitter because they know that that's where the news cycle starts and ends.

And now Twitter is more than ever. I mean, my team is obsessed with it. Twitter is more than ever becoming the media that is where actual citizen journalism lives and the tentacles have now been ripped very painfully off of that site and you're able to see rfk for instance rfk would have been banned by now right like rfk would have been instantly like you did instant ban right as soon as they announced they would have come up with some reason he's a threat to joe biden he's a threat they would have come up with some you know get him out of there uh yeah absolutely now in 2024 like i think that podcast maybe but but but the return of twitter yes like will also be the thing that the return of actual citizen journalism will also be the thing uh that will determine the

election do you disagree yes no i i totally agree with that. I don't know if it will determine the election. I don't – I guess the way I'd put it is that the access to information that Twitter provides will play a meaningful role. And it's all sort of connected with podcasts, right? Because what I see is that the podcasts now get chopped up into more bite-sized pieces, like a few minutes at a time. And then that gets distribution through Twitter. And then the people will spend, you know, the hour or whatever going through a podcast, if they like the, you know, the clips that they see on Twitter. So yeah, I think the combination of Twitter

as the distribution system, connecting people to a vast amount of information that's available through the podcasting world and being able to hear directly from a candidate that you might not be able to hear from, you know, again, in an unredacted, unedited way. I think that that's really powerful. So unredacted and unedited. I think that the firing of Tucker Carlson has obviously atomized. And we're seeing that, of course, in the ratings that are now a week in. Atomized Fox News's viewership there in prime time.

We'll see what they do. But that audience is going somewhere. Tucker's audience was young. Tucker Carlson's audience was the highest Democrat-rated show. This is something that I don't think a lot of people are. Young Democrats watch Tucker Carlson's show show number one in all cable news yes power of that man uh to really draw an audience do you think it should be drawn to twitter would you be in favor of tucker carlson doing a twitter show sure i mean yeah well look i think tucker should go wherever

to whatever platform is good for tucker you know he should figure out where he's gonna get maximum distribution but yeah i think um i don't you know twitter though like wouldn't maximum distribution that tweet he sent was thermonuclear 80 million views 80 million yeah so yeah yeah i i don't you know i don't know the plan there so i guess the only question i have is whether twitter plans to get in the business of original content like paying people for original content that way i i don't know i don't know where elon's thinking is on that right now so um i i don't know if if twitter is willing to make you know a content deal that way the way that um i don't know like rumble or newsmax or whatever would probably be willing to pay uh tucker 20 million a year or whatever, 30 million, whatever it is, right?

There's another, Tucker got another offer on Twitter from, was it David Ben Patrick or whatever? He offered 100 million for five years. So I can't, I just don't know where Elon's head is at on whether it makes sense to do content deals directly. But regardless of that question, I think what is definitely true is that Tucker's monologues and shows will be chopped up almost instantly and distributed on Twitter

and we'll get distribution through Twitter. And in fact, one of the things Elon just did is he did increase the length of videos that you're now allowed to put on twitter so like for our pod the all-in pod we've we've and we don't only put it on twitter but we've now put the whole thing on twitter so you can watch you know we also distribute on youtube and all the rest but um but you can actually watch now on twitter as well people are like starving they're ravenous for true conversations. And Tucker sort of hit on this in his one video that he's released. They're starving for it.

And they'll move off of the cable news box. They'll join subscribe. The economy has proven this. They'll pay for this. They'll pay for that truth. What do you think the media landscape looks like going forward? BuzzFeed's out out of business vice is out of business cnn sold for parts layoffs at cbs washington post uh the new york times disney they just cut 538 that that was joe biden's pollster the innate silver is in a bread line right now like you know this is a I think that people don't understand like what a huge shift this is. As somebody who got his start at BuzzFeed, like what a massive shift it is. BuzzFeed and Vice were it 10 years ago. And now they're, now they're non-existent, now they don't exist anymore.

Right. Well, I think it's because, what reason do they have to exist? I mean, they are completely distrusted now by huge numbers of people. Their agenda has become so obvious that they're completely distrusted. They just serve, they appear to serve the interests of these ruling elites that we're talking about, these institutions. And I think COVID was really the watershed, just when you saw the way that they covered COVID where, you know, you know, again, everything from you know, the idea that that the virus might've come from the Wuhan lab that was dubbed a

conspiracy theory and, and the newer times on down, try to discredit any any intellectual inquiry into that, any investigation of that. Then the idea that the NIH under Fauci might have funded gain-of-function research, including to the Wuhan lab. That was deemed a conspiracy theory, even though it was true. Then the idea that, you know, that there was zero benefit to making our toddlers wear masks in school or that cloth masks were just completely and utterly useless. That was dubbed a conspiracy theory and they sought to discredit it. Then, you know,

of course, you've got the vaccines where they claimed that they would totally prevent the spread of COVID. It would end the pandemic. And of course, it didn't. So then they claim, well, it mitigates the severity of the illness if you get it. But they really said that without any evidence. And I don't think the data on this is completely clear. But one of the points that RFK juniors make that seems compelling to me is he points to the excess mortality in the United States compared to other countries. And we didn't do any better than anywhere else.

So our, you know, zeal to get everybody vaccinated doesn't appear to have improved our mortality statistics. And then meanwhile, they refuse to actually ask any tough questions about any of these things. Like, why do we get it so wrong? You know, why did Fauci lift Obama's moratorium on gain-of-function research? You know, when did Pfizer know that these vaccines didn't prevent, didn't stop the spread? When did they know that they were very short acting and didn't really work against new variants? I remember at Davos, you had those guerrilla journalists from Rebel News. Burla was the CEO of Pfizer, was walking down the street. And so they came up to him, did this gorilla video, just asking him these tough questions. Like, when did you know that the vaccines, your vaccine would not stop people from getting COVID? When exactly did you

know that? And why didn't you admit that? And how many billions of dollars did you make from selling these vaccines after that fact? I mean, these are simple questions that relate to corporate responsibility and product liability. And of course, I didn't expect Borla to give them any answers. But the mere fact that you had these guerrilla journalists asking that question, again, it was just so bracing to see because you'd never see any of the mainstream media asking those questions and really it was an embarrassment not just to burla but to the new york times and all these other journalists who just refused to ask any questions yeah so you really do get the feeling that the mainstream media is, you know, just is endlessly carrying water for these large corporations, for these government bureaucrats, you know, the deep state, totally unwilling

to acknowledge their mistakes, totally unwilling to now to even investigate them. You had, for example, around the Twitter files, you know i read all the the um the mainstream press coverage of what we just talked about with um the hunter biden story and the only revelation that was uh covered at any length about the you know the weaponization hearings that the republicans did to investigate uh the twitter files the only story story was about some Twitter spat between Donald Trump and Chrissy Teigen. This is like the big news, according to the mainstream media that came out of those hearings, not the involvement of the FBI in suppressing the story, but rather the fact that Trump once got in a Twitter feud with Chrissy Teigen. I mean, it's like, it's unbelievable. So no wonder the mainstream media

has zero credibility left. They don't ask any important questions. They don't ask any interesting questions. They don't admit their mistakes. They don't adequately post corrections. And they wear their agenda on their sleeve. And their agenda seems to be defending, again, what Bobby Kennedy Jr. calls this marriage of corporate and state power. I think they're virtually all going to go out of business. I don't think that they are actually the media anymore. If you turn on the light, they disappear.

They're ghosts. They're ghosts of a bygone era. I don't think that they have any actual power. They don't have any. You can see guys who work at CNN. You can see Jake Tapper. It's one of my favorite Jake Tapper tweets. He did a book signing at a Barnes & Noble

in Northern Virginia, and nobody showed up. And he's tweeting like, please show up to my book signing. Meanwhile, we're able to fill auditoriums. Influencers and creators are able to fill auditoriums like influencers and creators are able to fill auditoriums across the country sometimes stadiums across the country depending on what kind of a venue it is uh without them and it's it really is remarkable the proof is in the pudding i guess i would put this as a you know as a final question to you which is what does the

future look like then inside of this slow motion collapse of the media ecosystem, where do people go? Well, it's a good question. I mean, I guess the media probably just stays hopelessly fragmented. And I mean, the good news is that at least there is now alternatives. There are alternatives to go to for people who want to get answers and, you know, want to get at the truth and don't want to be propagandized. However, the fact that the,

you know, the biggest media brands, you know, from the New York times, the Washington post and so on, the fact that they are seem to be in service to this agenda. I don't think it's a good thing because it does because you get to the point where we can't even agree on any facts in our, you know, in our in

our country, you know, it's, you know, you normally have two different or at least two different media echo chambers, you've got you've almost now gotten to the point where there's um alternate realities right and people are just living in this alternate reality and how do you ever even get people to um to to come together in a country where they just have fundamentally different views about like what actually happened you know like we can't even agree on just recent history so um i i tend to think like that that part is is pretty problematic um but um but i think that um you know this this is this part of what interests me in in um you know in in robert kennedy's uh campaign here is just that it's an insurgent campaign,

not just against Democratic Party orthodoxy, but against also this media orthodoxy. And he seems intent on breaking their monopoly in terms of reaching Democratic Party voters. So it's really interesting if he can break through that and start to reach Democratic Party voters. I think that this is where I think it could be really momentous. I mean, it's already the fact that Republican voters, the base, the people who are interested in Trump and DeSantis, they're already going to alternate media, you know, or maybe Fox. Well, Fox before they fired Tucker. So they were already tuning into the alternatives.

And this is what I think is so interesting about Bobby Kennedy is maybe he can reach a Democratic Party voter who is more, again, working class as opposed to professional class, who is primarily concerned about their economic future, who sees the hollowing out of the middle class, is wondering why weing out of the middle class, is wondering why we're running all over the world, getting involved in all these foreign countries when we have so many problems at home, who is wondering why we have chaos at the border, this border that's not been properly closed, wondering what happened to the democratic party's embrace of free speech and civil liberties. Um, so I, you know, I, I think it's really interesting. I mean, we already agree

on that, right. But if, if he can reach a meaningful portion of the democratic base with that message, I think it could be transformative for our politics. So that's why I'm, I, that's why I'm so fascinated by what's happening there. Um, you it's not that implausible. to think that things are going very poorly with the economy. I think that they're going very poorly with this Ukraine war. And if, you know, let's call it six months from now, we're in a situation in which the economy is in recession, and this war has become, I think it's already a debacle, but let's say it's become such a big fiasco that even the neocons and their allies in the media can't deny it you're going to have a president an unpopular president a president who's already

unpopular and perceived as old and out of an incoherent presiding over a recession and a new forever war in eastern europe that appears to be a risky, expensive disaster. I think that's a setup that, again, looks a lot like 1968 when RFK Jr.'s father, Bobby Kennedy, ran against LBJ. And LBJ was forced out of that race by the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. So I think that a lot of things could still happen here. It's very interesting to me. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. It could rhyme here. I think that if things in the economy in this war go poorly enough over the next six months, I think it's not inconceivable

that Biden could be driven from this race. But at a minimum, I think that this insurgent campaign that he's running could be like the one that his uncle Teddy waged against Jimmy Carter in 1980, which didn't succeed in overturning Carter as the Democratic candidate, but it grievously wounded him. And so I think at a minimum, this could be Teddy Kennedy in 1980, but I think it could also be Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. So it's very interesting to me. But the conditions for this candidacy have all been paved by the things we're talking about.

It's all the stuff we learned in the Twitter files. And that's created the fertile ground for this insurgent candidacy is that we have seen and and it's not just the twitter files everything we learned during covet and also everything we've learned about this ukraine war you know um just recently this new batch of pentagon papers that were leaked that showed the war is going much worse than people think the number of ukrain Ukrainian casualties is at least five times greater than what they're admitting. The Biden administration now even has doubts about whether the spring counter offenses are going to work. There's been a bunch of press stories about that. So you have, I think, fertile conditions now.

And of course, you've got this banking crisis that's metastasizing. So I think you've got, you know, fertile ground here for this type of insurgent campaign. I think you have fertile ground for a brand new thank you for smoking script. You're going to have to rewrite Katie Holmes's character. She's far too good of a journalist. There's no, you know, he does her job far too well exposing actual corporate corruption. That's not what the Washington probe does anymore. Well, it's interesting, you know, Chris Buckley, who wrote the book, Thank You for Smoking,

he once told me that the biggest challenge in his job as a satirist was keeping up with the front page of the newspaper, meaning that we keep learning about more and more things that sounded fantastical and implausible, things that we believe could never be true. We keep learning that they're true. And of course, his job as a satirist is to heighten reality in a way that's funny. And all the ways and all the things that he, all the takes that he would have

on how to satirize our current politics, they all ended up coming true. So it's hard, as a satirist, it's hard to stay ahead of the newspaper. I mean, who would have thought that all these things we learned in the Twitter files were true? So, yeah.

So I think that's the challenge that he described having. The most entertaining outcome is the correct one, right? The Elon's razor. David Sachs, we deeply appreciate having you in the program. This is always such a fascinating conversation we'll be following RFK much more closely now due to this invite him on next

to respond maybe to some of these ideas that you brought up David Sachs, thank you always an honor alright, thanks for having me thank you so much for watching ya boy and David Sachs going back and forth about RFK an hour on RFK. I didn't know we were going to do that, but it's an important topic and it leads to, of course,

a bigger question, which is the purpose of free speech in our modern society. And what vectors do we have? At what point do we become unable to speak freely about the most important things in our country? What did we talk about? We talked about the JFK assassination, the war in Ukraine. We talked about oligarchs censoring us, Hunter Biden's story. All of these things are valuable pieces of information, but the most interesting part of that conversation, what would have happened if Elon Musk had owned Twitter in the 2020 election? Would we have a different country right now? Would we have a different president right now?

What a fascinating question. I don't normally like hypotheticals, but that was a good one. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we're here for, bringing you the straight, hot, spicy dish with David Sachs. It's your boy, Benny. See ya. Nightly Scroll with Haley Carania.

I'm Hley Carania. I scroll with the homies here in the live chat, and I love my long scrolls on my phone at night. The show is literally called Nightly Scroll. My screen time has reached astronomical levels, but I do it to get all of the videos and all of the content that you won't find anywhere else. I don't want to be surrounded by an echo chamber,

so I hope you join me. Someone just said the show is great. Keep it up. Thank you. I will. Nightly Scroll with Haley Caranilla. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.