The Chaser Report - Murdoch-Tok

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Donald Trump has announced a brand new buyer of TikTok, which has Charles and Dom uber excited. Meanwhile, thanks to changes in VISAs and the freedom of speech, will Wankernomics be able to tour in the "Land of the Free"? Charles isn't sure. ---The Chaser Report: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/chaserreport Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser with Dom and Charles. Charles, just don't say anything without thinking first. Don't speak. You've been doing this for many years. In fact, since you started the Chaser, the internal sensor that needs to filter through. Yes.

It needs a few more extra layers just before you speak. I don't want you to just say what's in your mind. And I want to give your opinion about, well, anything really. But particularly if it's anything that might impact on, if it might reflect on Donald Trump. But Dom, isn't the whole point of sort of comedic comment to just say what you want to say? Like the whole point is like if you get a laugh, you've got license to comment. No. That's the whole point.

No. No, this is a misconception you've been laboring under for a very long time. and it's time to set the record straight about who can say what, when, particularly in the United States, but also people like you who might want to go to the United States. But I do have good news amidst the bad, Charles. And is the good news that I no longer want to go to the United States? No, the good news is that there is a way.

There's a very easy way. Oh, yeah. Because a lot of this comes down to Wankanomics, right? I've been worried that because of your tendency to speak your mind or share your opinions, you might not be able to tour your very lucrative Wankanomics show. in the US, which is, of course, the motherload of management theory. I mean, you need to be able to go and do it at Harvard. I need to go to air in the Chicago School of Economy.

All that sort of stuff. Yeah, you need to be to go and go and do it in McKinsey World Headquarters. Tell the wankers how to wank. That's right. They're going to want to know. But you can't do that, Charles, because of all the speech. You can't say what you think because you've been saying what you think. So what do I do, Dom?

I've got the solutions after this. So the first thing is the internal sensor. Now, you need to understand that all these people are in favour of free speech. In fact, Donald Trump was elected on a platform of stopping the government telling you what you can and can't say. Well, in the leader, Elon Musk even said he was a free speech absolutist. Absoluteist. And so that's a total open slather within common sense restrictions. Like, they're so common sense that it didn't need to be specified for the election.

Right. Things like you can't criticise the president in any way. So the sort of thing we've been doing in Australia, this sort of subversive thing where we actually went up to, you know, Prime Ministers of Australia with big props. Well, actually, they mightn't mind that because they don't seem to like Prime Ministers of Australia very much at the moment over in the US.

But if you did the equivalent in the EU... You certainly couldn't do that. I mean, the Times when the Chaser has gone up to the actual White House with silly props and stunts and so that's an absolute no. I mean, you went up to a presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton, yeah? Actually, see, the speakers are already surveilling us. They wouldn't actually, you know what, Donald Trump would have been

happy with you going up to Hillary Clinton. Yeah, I offered her a cigar and to intern for her. Yeah, it was very classy. I gave her my portfolio of scantily clad photos. He would have liked that. So it's just hard. You just got to think through what would the president think. Because as the, as the Brandon Carr, the chair of the FCC said, I mean, community standards need to apply.

You can have all the free speech you want as long as it conformed with community standards. So you've just got to be completely conformist in your idea of free speech. Yes. It's completely free as long as it isn't the sort of thing that shouldn't be allowed. Does that make sense? This is very complicated. So, right. So I'm assuming what you're saying is no longer allowed to be homophobic, transphobic, sexist, misogamous, racist, all those sorts of things.

No, that stuff's fine now. Oh, that's fine. Those words, don't say those words. Okay, it's really, I know it's complicated. Oh, okay. So you can't talk about critical race theory. You can't talk about slavery. So critical race theory being the idea that blacks had a hard time under slavery.

No, you definitely can't have that. No, no, no. So those ideas you can't have, particularly if you're the Smithsonian, you can't have exhibits on any of that stuff. That's done. None of that. But you can have the same ideas that we're in that society. Like you can have your points of view on race. You can tell what if you want about race, apparently.

But you accept that racism is a thing that is a problem. So uncritical race theory. Yes, that's right. Uncritical race theory. Uh, that's all fine. Great. But Charles, I wanted to give you, so, so, yeah. As a white man.

Total free speech. Yes. As long as you don't, well, sort of the free speech to be an utter asshole. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And if you don't, if you want to get stuck into Jimmy Kimmel, for instance, if you dislike Jimmy Kimmel, if you think he's, what's wrong with Jimmy Kimmel. If you think he's, what's wrong with him, subversive, should be, should be sacked.

Along with his other late night, Seth Myers, Stephen Colbert. I mean, Charles, we're going to have a world. where the only late-night host is Jimmy Fallon. I mean, imagine that. Imagine that world. That's a dystopia. But, look, I did say there was a solution for you, and I want to tell you how you, Charles.

How we can get wankanomics in there under the new truth system. Under the new truth system. Yeah. Because there is a loophole where you can come in. You can't just, it's not just that you can do a show. You can move there, Charles. You can live there. They'll open the doors for you.

And as you now are so successful. with economic. You can probably afford it. Because only a couple of days ago, Donald Trump announced the Trump gold card. I don't know if you've seen this. It's a very tasteful image. It's a card, like a credit card. It's like the green card, but it's gold. Yeah. It's got his face literally on it and his signature. Yeah. Because he is the US government now, as we've said before. Yes. And what he says is it's for $1 million for individuals or for two million for corporations. As long as you can pay that, you're completely allowed in. And the money's going to be used for reducing taxes, pro-growth projects and paying down. Debt says Trump.

So when you, like a million dollar fee? Yes. Yeah. So if you want to migrate to the United States, it's fine. You can. There's also a platinum card, which I think is five million, which is even better. But you can, you just need the regular one million dollar version. Oh, and if you wanted to be a sponsored migrant on one of those H-1 visas, that's now 150 grand per year. Right, so this is the thing, Dom, which is we were actually sort of actually getting rid of the...

We had been offered a gig in the United States. Really? That's so exciting. And there was just one little fly in the ointment, which was that the visa was going to cost $8,000, right, to get. Was it one of the H-1s? It was an H-1 visa. Yeah, not anymore.

And yes, and then overnight, it was like, oh, by the way, they're now $150,000 Australian dollars. Yeah, so apparently flight the flights to India, the day that was announced, were empty because everyone, everyone who was on a migrant visa was going to visit their family, got off the plane because they would have had to pay 150 grand potentially to get back in. Oh, my God. So, yeah, so it's very challenging. But if you buy a gold card...

I don't mind about, you know, Indian tech workers. But Charles... What I mind about is Australian satir. You just need a million dollars and just think of the kind of quality people they'll get with those Trump cards I mean, just about everyone in the Saudi government will get one immediately, you'd think, wouldn't they?

Yeah, yeah, you'd just, if you were a rich asshole, the first thing you do is by... Any plutocrat you like, you know, regardless of what messy matters you might have had back home. Maybe this is not... Like, I know that you're sort of being a little bit like scornful and thinking that it's bad news for civilization. I think it's good news for you.

But maybe it's sort of like we're concentrating all the rich assholes in the one society. Well, they'll probably all go to Florida specifically to that. Because I mean, already many plutocrats, they've got houses near Mar-a-Lago, which means that they'll probably all be finished off by climate change in the next few years, which they don't believe in. Yes. Until it comes in the form of the ocean sweeping across their new house at Palm Beach. But, you know, like you just sort of concentrate all the rich assholes in America, even more so.

You think that that will mean the rest of us don't have to encounter them. And then we just, yeah, exactly. Then we can have the rest of the world to ourselves. But aren't you wanting to join them? Isn't that what this whole thing is about? Well, can I be honest and say, our appetite, I mean, our appetite was not great anyway. But then just over the course of the last year, it just sort of, it's sort of like, the question in our mind is, is this 1935 Germany or is this 1938 Germany?

And either way, you go, you probably shouldn't have gone and tried to entertain the troops. You know what I mean? Also, you don't necessarily want to find out. Yes, exactly. You can find out abstractly. You don't want to get there and go, oh no, this is 1994, Jimmy. Well, I mean, this is the thing that's so hard to work out because Donald Trump does love podcasters. I mean, podcasters help to win the election.

Yes. So if they find out that we're podcasters, we might be very welcome. But aren't the podcasters pro-free speech? You'd think of all the people who are pro-free speech, it would be. be podcasts. You'd think so. I mean, one podcaster who's come out very much in favour of absolute free speech, including criticising Donald Trump for what he's just said, for his, you know, all the restrictions on Jimmy Kimmel and so on. Curiously enough is Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz on his own podcast said that it was outrageous that Jimmy Kimmel had been taken off the air and that it was

dangerous because when the Democrats come in, they'll do the same thing. Do you think maybe Jimmy Kimmel is the sort of cause celebrity? It's sort of like, he, he, he, He's the Rosa Parks. I mean, it's the most relevant he's been a very long time. But no, in all seriousness, it is, I love Stephen Colbert's response, which was, because he got obviously the Emmy after having been cancelled. Do you everyone, everyone voted for him? Yes.

He was like, Kim, well, you couldn't let me enjoy this for one week. That's great. Yeah, anyway. I mean, Charles, we were taken off the year long before this because of a joke that we made by the ABC. Yes, that's true. This is nothing new for the chase. So we're the pioneers of all.

Yes, of being taken off here. Right, let's take a quick break, and when we get back, we can look at how Donald Trump solved. Another problem, the problem of TikTok. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. Now, I hadn't seen this news, Charles, but you're, I know, passionately interested in TikTok. You're a keen to talker. Love TikTok. You've got just the attention span.

The thing about, yeah, well, some of them get a bit long. Some of them are now over a minute. Oh, that's not good. But, no, no, TikTok is, you know, the way, like, Months before the Australian government started calling Gaza a genocide, it was TikTok that, you know, gave the news that, you know, it was all over TikTok that actually something really bad was happening. Sorry, Charles.

Are you trying to get into the United States or not like that? You realize this transcript goes up online and then they'll search it at the border. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Oh, yeah, God. Okay. I mean, you know, like there are two sides to every genocide. So, okay.

The TikTok, clearly, as we know, the problem with TikTok for so many years, it's been, it's been owned by a repressive regime in China, you know, bite dance that wants to get all your data and surveil it and use it for nefarious purposes. Of course, that is, is chilling to any right-thinking, freedom-loving person in the West. Yes. So Donald Trump has unilaterally demanded that America be allowed to buy a product that it doesn't know. He just demanded that America just gets to own it. Yes, that's right.

in his freedom-loving, non-authoritarian, non-repressive, non-thought-crime policing regime that he runs right now. Yes, and it looks like there's going to be a deal to keep TikTok going in the United States. And that deal includes Lachlan Murdoch, right? So Lachlan Murdoch's name has come up. I'm not fully across all the sort of minor details of this, but essentially I think that we're looking down a future

where the sort of most interesting, most progressive, most free-wheeling social network is taken out by essentially the same owner as the people who do Fox News and the Australian. Can you imagine what... I love this quite. We'll see our Lachlan, can you put this in? But I think we need to put this in

because we have a producer called Lachlan. Trump said, I hate to tell you this, but a man named Lachlan is involved. You know who Lachlan is? That's a very unusual name. Luckland Murdoch. May you put in the radio? So it's Trump who made the answer.

Trump said that. So Trump was saying this on Fox News. And Rupert will be in the group. And he says he's an American patriot. Rupert loves this country. So can you imagine? So it's sort of like, well, as we sort of, I'm sure we've predicted this at the beginning of the Trump presidency, which is part of the strategy is going to be that you just take

out all the pesky media companies. Yeah, the Orban thing. You make them amalgamate. Putin and Orban. Like they all. And so it just starts getting. controlled by absolute fucking assholes and can you

imagine what TikTok would be like if the Australian ran TikTok like, the Australian newspaper? The Australian newspaper is famously cringially bad at social media. Yes, yes, exactly. So it'll be like, and that's what will happen. Like, we'll get all these sort of like,

I don't know, like, I'm just trying to struggle. Well, I mean, Sky News has just had this giant controversy putting someone on the air who was just blatantly Islamophobic you can put strips of bacon on his shoulders. Did you see this? And the presenter of their new show

had to come and apologize for having someone on him made some extremely untrue claims about Islam. So the funny thing is that, because I follow quite a lot of Muslim commentators on TikTok, and one of the funny things is the sort of racist anti-Muslim brigade seem to think that bacon is somehow like evil or is sort of dirty.

and disgusting to Muslims. And it's not. Like, halal just means are that sort of, like, I'm not going to eat it. It's unclean. It's like,

it's not, it's not like garlic and vampire. Yeah, it's not like garlic and vampires. Exactly. And so, this whole sort of, like,

draping yourself in bacon is not like, oh my God, that person is, like, now evil. Are you saying Islamic phobic people are ignorant?

Yeah, they're just ignorant of how it all works. Like, to them, it's just like, that guy is an idiot for draining themselves.

I mean, you've got pig fat on your shoulders. You're not the winner in this scenario. Exactly. And you can smash it out of the TV lights too. It's just slowly grilling on the guy's shoulders. But Charles, it's not just Lachlan Murdoch. Tepid bacon. Yeah, exactly.

Is he any other kind? It's not, because it's not just him, who's in on the deal. It's also Michael Dell from Dell computers, which means that TikTok will stop working. It will run on Dell servers. Yeah. But also, hello, Larry Ellison. The guy behind Skydance, the very guy involved in getting rid of Stephen Colbert. Oh.

Of course. Oh, yes. Because it's Skydance. Skydance bought out CBS and Colbert's show got acts as part of that deal. As part of that deal? Oh my God. Yeah, so I think we need to set up a chaser social media network, Dom, where we sort of, that can't be bought by boring billionaires.

Because isn't the problem, it's not the... Like, I wouldn't have a problem if X was now incredibly exciting, but it's just dreary and horrible logging on and just seeing racists. It is. It's very unpleasant. You just, like, and the fact that any subscriber comment rises at the top of any thread, and the only people who pay are people who you don't want to read. Yeah. So it's just like literally canceling nice things. It's not, it's not actually, like, I don't, I don't have a problem. Like, I don't think that what's going to happen is now the youth of Australia and America are going to be converted into, Lachlan Murdoch-loving assholes.

It's just they're going to drift away from that space. It's like every time something good is created on the internet, the billionaires buy it and ruin. They do. It's in shudification. And that's actually the funny thing about Twitter. It's quite apart from the speech out there which is unpleasant. I mean, I'm not one for really banning most forms of speech, obviously.

But it's the fact that it gets shoved in your face. That's really interesting. On Twitter, you know, I spent so many years curating a follower list of people who I thought, witty and insightful. Yes. And now, I mean, most of them have left. Wait a minute. You didn't follow me. Yeah, about that.

No, but in all sincerity. So, you know, I spent all this time creating this list. A, a lot of them have gone. Yeah. And they're on blue sky, which is frankly, you know, not exactly. It wants to be old Twitter, but it's not. But then at the same time, yeah, some of the people you follow are still on there. But then in any conversation, like I think I read out the other day that Obama quote about

Charlie Kirk calling for Carmen. reason and the very top comment which is absolutely like all the top 10 comments underneath that call for calm and peace and kindness were just these appalling hateful borderline racist possibly bot comments because the algorithm

they're just going well they pay let's put them to the top of the tree and it's so funny it's like being required to have your horrible racist uncle in every conversation you have but not just in every conversation they're the only one you can hear everyone else is silence like

Well, oh hang on, he's got his hand up. We've always supposed to got to stop. A racist uncle's going to the top of the list. Anyway, so there you go. So TikTok is going to be substantially different. Yes. Well, fingers crossed, the whole deal falls through and TikTok just pulls the deal from the table

and just stops in the US. But that's what should be happening. We should just ignore the US. Like, who cares about the US? Well, just let it be its own little island. Yeah, you can just have all the billionaires who get the gold cards. It'll be like the entire country. is Jeffrey Epstein's island.

Is that what you're saying? Yes. Just for billionaires. Yes. Right. Okay. And you won't be touring. Well, unless I get, you know,

invited. Yeah. All right. It's good to see your ethics there, Charles. Well, if you're a billionaire, you can move there. Frankonomics goes really well. Yeah.

All right. So stay tuned for that one. We're part of the Iconiclass Network. We'll catch you tomorrow. See ya.