Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews – 1/21/25 – The Inauguration and TikTok Kayfabe

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

We touch on Trump’s inauguration, Elon’s “Roman salute,” and Biden pardoning everyone named Biden, before diving into the clown car demolition derby that was the fake TikTok ban that led Americans to flee to the glorious land of the free: the Chinese Internet. Join us.Support the show

what's up everybody welcome back happy skews day to you as you're watching this it's skews day at five just like it always is but here in the past for me and mark recording this from it's uh monday january 20th 2025 nothing really of note happened today much what we're going to talk about pretty on uh you know lackluster day overall but it's 312 p.m on the left coast just so y'all know in context of where we're at when we pop up on your screen and you're watching this but it is still weekly skews i'm still trying that's still mark how you do mark yeah i mean at least we were spared the normal uh because the mac in the conservatives were all busy mega people

were busy we were spared the normal MLK day if martinler king was alive today he'd be maga stuff so at least we were yeah well trump did a little bit of that in his inauguration speech so he he slid it in there but yeah i hear you yeah so uh before we talk about the what actually happened today Trump moved his inauguration indoors for whatever reason people were saying

as a crowd size I personally think it's because he's afraid of getting shot because he's a couple of near misses but whatever I thought they like acknowledged that it was cold isn't that what they said

but like last week but it's always cold in January no I know I hear you but that made it funnier to me it didn't cross my mind that that was a bullshit excuse in my head I was just like that's hilarious

that's never been a problem before but that's how little of the fuck he gives But you're actually, it does make more sense that that would just be cover for some other thing, like being paranoid or something. But I didn't even think about that. I just thought it was funny. I've been on patio bar patios in the winter where they heat the outdoors. I'm not like, Trump's not going to freeze stuff. Whatever reason, I don't know.

But like, because they moved it inside a bunch of, bunch of Trump supporters had like paid a bunch of money to buy inauguration tickets off Craigslist, 500 bucks apiece and thousands of airfare and hotel and we're in D.C. Probably found out they wouldn't be able to go. And I'm not sure who they get. mad at, but, like, we're really going to test the limits on how much Trump can rob his own supporters. Right. Like, he launched a meme coin over the weekend that immediately made him billions and billions of dollars of fake paper money, but on paper made him richer than he, more money he ever has

an entire life as allegedly being a billionaire. But in a scammy way that even made Dave Portnoy mad. Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports. Yeah. Noted. Big Maca guy. Thought leader and rational thinker, Dave Porterloy. Yeah.

Like, I don't really understand crypto stuff because I don't care about it. But, like, the way they managed it was apparently like a transparent insider trading scam. They basically sold all the points to themselves first before the value inflated. You can follow this stuff on the blockchain. So a bunch of, like, hardcore Bitcoin guys, like, Trump's robbing us. Like, all these guys think that Trump, because Trump's pro crypto, they're going to get rich now instead of, like, he's just going to take their grift. from them yeah i mean you know that i'm very dumb about crypto stuff too but isn't that maybe it's how they all work but isn't that like kind of what the hawk toa thing what like they

bought it all themselves first and it skyrockets they dump it all and i mean it's there's a name it's the pump and dump thing right it's like a yeah it's like a known strategy for defrauding people with crypto and and he's a known grifter and they still but i guess they're all like it not me though but presumably at least some of these people had stock in trump media or whatever it called and some of these other that bought his NFTs and shit. So I don't know. I don't know what they're expecting at this point. No,

no, but they apparently, like, the Trump people got too high on their own supply because they immediately launched a Melania meme coin that like, as soon as they did that, the value of Trump's meme coin collapsed by 40% because they were like, had diversified into too many grifts. Anyway, so it's going to be a fun

four years of this shit on top of all. On top of all the the corruption stuff like is dangerous in the long term this is how you end up being like like when russia went to invade ukraine and they realized there were none of their like their version of humvees had tires on them because they'd all been sold this is how that process starts so like it's like not that this stuff doesn't suck but if they just spent their time doing this stuff i'd be like we'd all be better off for it but like at least in the medium term but yeah it's like uh yeah so let's

loot the place fuck it yep indeed all right well let's get into it before we continue on or remind you of a couple things as i always do uh first if you'd like to see me do stand up comedy live and in person go to tray crow crowder dot com check out my tickets from upcoming shows i'll be in santa barbara this weekend act that show is actually sold out i believe at a theater so thank you santa barbara if you all are got tickets and you're coming i appreciate it uh if you don't have tickets sorry they beat you to it maybe some of them will maybe there'll be some followouts you want to come stand outside you know like trump's fans of his inauguration but uh anyway then i'll be in Salt Lake City and a bunch of, a whole bunch of places coming up soon.

So go to Trey Crowder.com and come see me. Also, if you enjoy this here program and we'd like to show your support, you can do so by signing up on Patreon. You can go to weekly skews.com slash more. Or you can go on Patreon and search for my name. Either way it works, $5 a month, get you access to two full-length bonus episodes. We just, it's two more episodes of this show per month. If you like this show, that's what it is, two more of them.

Except sometimes we do skew and a's. We answer your questions. get a little interactive so that's fun too so yeah five dollars a month gets more skews in your life support the show in the process now as for the show tonight like said two two main things happened recently trump got inaugurated again if you guys hadn't heard about that it was a whole thing this morning and before that all the rage all the banter and all the hubbub was about tick to talk my and this was talked about on a scale uh akin to that of a falling empire uh the death of tick the death of tick talk so we're going to get into and it's already died

and then came back, and apparently Trump himself is the one who saved it to hear TikTok tell it, at least in their little messages that pop up with open the app. So we're going to talk about all that, see what really happened there a little later. But first we begin with the Daily Dumbass, Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., people who are just turning in who might assume Joe Biden is Donald Trump's butler. Cut it, Matt. Fuck this shit so much. I, like, welcome home, if you guys couldn't quite make that out, which is like sort of like parrots, the mega messaging of daddy's home, which they've been saying all over TV, which is so cringe, I can't believe congressmen are getting on TV and saying it.

These people have no dignity of your self-respect. I would have thought Joe Biden would have more than this, but after he took those, like, did that photo op with Trump after Trump won where they're both smiling and hugging each other. Like, I don't know how to square this with the fact that today Biden issued a bunch of last-minute pardons. Pardoned Lender Peltier, which is good. Even if you don't think his trial was iffy, he's been in prison for like 50 years, and he's a dying old man. You can let him go home and have a couple of home-cooked meals before he kicks the bucket. He also pardoned Anthony Fauci, Mark Millie, the J-6 committee, some Capitol police officers who testified in the J-6 hearings, and five members of his own family because he thinks they're in legal peril over nothing. while he's also saying welcome home and smiling to the guy he thinks might imprison his own brother.

Right. So a few things about all of that, the welcome home and smiling the pictures and all that. Do you think this is just like another example of how like the Democrats refused to admit that things are not the way that they were for so many years in American politics, meaning like for so, so long, they, you know, they were all part of the same club. They're all buddy, buddy with each other. And it was just, and, you know, they put on a show for the cameras. or whatever. But I had thought that in recent years with like the MAGA version of the right that

you know the fucking gloves were off at least a little bit more that had changed some but the Democrats especially the oldest fuck ones like Biden seemed to have a dogged resistance to accepting that or acknowledging you know what I mean? It's like no there's you can still reach across the aisle you can still work with these people

there's still like whatever personal you know decorum or warmth or whatever that's how this is supposed to work but it's like we're not living in the same world that we used to be, but they just refuse to acknowledge it? Or do you think it's just that it still is the way that it always was,

i.e., they still are all in the same club together that they always were, and it is kind of just bullshit. Like, you know. What, like, so Trump was asked about, like, Biden pardoning Anthony Fauci and flipped the fuck out and said, Fauci committed a ton of crimes,

which Fauci was CDC director under Donald Trump. And all he did, again, or whatever, I forget what exactly his job title was, but like National Institutes of Health, I think. I think so, yeah, NIH, I think. They issue non-binding recommendations. Right.

Dr. Fauci had no power to do any of the stuff that Trump actually did. So like the whole, like either either either either if what you're saying is true and things are just normal, there's, then it's just for the TV show. Why does Anthony Fauci need a fucking pardon? Why does Biden's family need a pardon? He seems to. No, that's a good point. Yeah.

He seems to. understand it in this one instance, but not when he's saying welcome home. Well, that's what I'm not saying that I think, oh, it's still all the same as it ever was throwing, but that's not what I think. I think it's the first thing. I think it's that they don't, they won't acknowledge that it's not the way that it used to be. Even if they do seem to acknowledge it with their actions like this, it's still when they get in person, it's like there's just a way things are done or something. But as far as all the pardons, and I don't know, this probably happens with all every pardon, presidential pardon like this that ever happens, maybe. But like the, you know, the riot, of course, today when these first came out this morning when they woke up.

up to him were like, you know, they were like, well, there's no, could not be any more clear evidence or more clear acknowledgement that there was in fact wrongdoing here. We all knew that there was wrongdoing this whole time. Well, now he's been pardoned. There's no reason to pardon someone who didn't do anything wrong, you know? And of course, like if Trump pardoned himself or anything like that happened, it would be a witch hunt that was politically motivated and all that. But with Fauci, they're like, this is how you know that we were right and that I don't even know what the crimes are supposed to be

but that we were right and crimes were being committed the whole time and this is proof because he pardoned him what Mark Millie did is in the day in the last days of the Trump administration he called his counterpart in China and said

to please don't worry no matter what's posted on Twitter don't worry we're not launching nuclear weapons that's what Mark Millie did that apparently is so what Trump wants to do is to call him back to active duty out of retirement and court marshal him okay so So either that's real or it's not.

So like I don't like, but I can't forget, forget the life of me. It's just an example like Democrats being like the institution of Democrats. Basically every Democrat over the age, over a certain age should if they don't, should take a, should be leading following and not leading basically because they don't understand anything about this moment.

The TikTok ban is part of that. Right. But like, but like I just, it's just incredibly frustrating to watch like this play out this way because with the public's, watching is Biden being friendly to him, even at the subtext of people, if you follow the news deeply, is Trump's very, very dangerous. But which one is it? Your rhetoric has to match your actions and so forth, because people don't see a ton of the news. So, but like, my thing is, like,

if this, if Trump is this dangerous, what makes you think they'll abide by the pardons? Right. Yeah. Or any of it, anything ever. Like, just make his own rules, you know? Right. So, like, like, like, like, like, Like, if you, like, forget, ignore, ignore the fact that they could probably just ignore the pardons and try them for something, something federally anyway. If they find a judge to throw the pardons out under some, like, made up constitutional bullshit, even though the pardon power is supposed to be absolute. There's still state charges. You can find a mag attorney general to, like, trump up charges against Anthony Fauci and have border patrol, like, you know, do extraordinary rendition on him to kidnap him from Connecticut and ship him to Texas or whatever. Like, there's nothing.

So the pardons are fake, too. yeah right well in that case i don't know i mean i do agree with you but at the same time it's like i don't know what else you're supposed to do if you're in biden's position i guess other than get the seals to kill people or something and test the limits of the of the presidential immunity but i'm like i'm like they act like there are still rules there's not rules it's been like he could do whatever he wants and he will but well i don't know what that leaves i don't know what that leaves what options that leaves joe biden with in turn even like acknowledging that what I mean what so what he just he just tells them like look they won't they won't abide by my

pardons anyway so good luck with that shit y'all yeah i i think i think it's useful for the rest of us to still believe the rules should matter because of course the judiciary is not going to surrender all the they they the judiciary set themselves up as god kings right they're not going to just hand their power to trump just because he says stuff so the rule like the laws are still going to matter somewhat to degree he does stuff they don't like he's uh there's still a bunch of judges who aren't fucking insane maniacs

they're still career employees the DOJ for now yeah like it's still like like the laws don't matter thing is partially like it's sort of true I'm not trying to be naive but we should still like we should still hope they do but um dude Biden uh posted

this on his way on Twitter on his way probably all socials he said scripture says I have been young and I'm old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken. After all these years serving you, the American people, I have not, I have not seen the righteous forsaken. So the first part's a Bible quote, obviously, but like they've never seen the righteous forsaken. Bro, do you watch the fucking news? The righteous are nothing but forsaken.

Yeah. Didn't realize the White House was a rock you could live under. But it is like a classic like career politician's thing to say or think or whatever. Because it's like, yeah, dude. I mean, I mean, Corey said this in our group chat, but it's true. It's like anyone whose eyes have been. open nose. It's like the righteous stay being forsaken in this, not just this country, just in the world, just in general. It happens all the fucking time all around the globe, but it especially happens in this country in the present day. Like, you know, in fact, it's, it, it, it almost is more like the opposite. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the,

it's the ones who orc be forsook that don't get forsaken very often. I don't know what the, what's the opposite. What's the opposite of righteous, the not fallen, but yeah, wicked, wicked, there you go, wicked. That's perfect, yes. The wicked get forsaken less than the righteous do, I feel like generally speaking. So I don't know what the fuck that's about. I don't know a particular Bible passage. That's from, I'm assuming it's going back to the whole, you know, the whole, largely the point of the Bible was addressing, you know, slaves, slaves of bel your bastards and trying to be like, well, you know, we know this life sucks. But because this life sucks, you'll be better off in the next one.

And maybe, maybe that's what Joe Biden's message to us. It's like, well, maybe the afterlife will hit. Right. Yeah. So you actually, you watched the speech. I didn't. I was watching basketball because I don't hate myself. So you go ahead.

Yeah. Diary. You know, I got an assignment. I got, it's my day job, Mark. I make pithy videos about things that happen. So sometimes I have to pay attention to shit. Yeah, I did watch it. So my basic takeaway, I say basic and then cut two eight minutes later.

I'm still rambling. So don't let me do that. But basically, I think the main thing that I thought while watching it is like, my God, he is absolutely smashing for his people. Like for the Aunt Tammy's and the Uncle Randy's and the papas and stuff, like he is really doing it with this one. Because it's like they, you know, even them, like we said in the campaign, like I saw on conservative subredits and stuff during the campaign and the election and all that, even conservatives being like, God damn, he really needs to chill with something. like he's making himself look like an idiot like some of the shit he was doing and the rambling and all that but like he was on point today with his maga bullshit and especially what i noticed was like so much of what he says is like or so much what he said today rather sounds

fucking great like if you're dumb and wrong about stuff or if you're like don't know how things work and what i mean is like for example at one point pretty early on he was like uh this country does not work for regular people it does not work for or protect and I'm paraphrasing me it was something very close to this does not work for or protect regular people instead it's just a favored few it benefits a favored few at the expense of everyone else right and you hear that and I'm like fucking A absolutely that's true I'm thinking of billionaire oligarchs or whatever he's talking about phantom immigrants pooping in CVS is or whatever like that's what he's talks about So, like, that type of thing kept happening throughout the whole speech, where it's like, he would say, he would be like, you know, our public health system has failed Americans. And I'm like, you goddamn right. It has. But, like, I'm pro-Louigi, and he's pro-privatizing the whole thing and given control of it all over. And so, like, the whole thing was just that over and over again.

Him saying stuff that it's like, if you don't know, and then I think about, well, these people don't know. They only have their one perspective on it. And it's like, he says all this shit that really does. kind of sound great if you don't know how full of shit it is or what he actually means by it you know but like I feel like I do so I'm disgusted by so much of it but I know at the same time like I said your aunt Tammy on Facebook she's like God damn this motherfucker is checking every box he's on fire today you know I guarantee that's how they felt about it you know because he closed with a whole thing about how hard America rules and but also how

hard he rules and how now that he's back, America's going to rule harder than has ever ruled before, right? And it was hilarious about that. Hold up. The best part about that was he ended with that. And then right after he closed with, I'm making America hit harder and it's ever hit before. And America's always crushed it. Right after that, they spent five minutes standing around in awkward silence because his staff

couldn't figure out how to play the backing music for Carrie Underwood's closing song. So they just like, we're all just sitting around looking like the song came up. on. Then it cut out. It came on. It cut out. It was like just this big grandiose testament to American exceptionalism followed by like a very objective display of incompetence on their part. It was very it was very an appropriate metaphor and for the whole thing to me. So yeah. Yeah. I saw talking about not knowing how anything works. I saw he announced that we're besides doubling down invading Panama. He says we're going to we're going to go to Mars during his next term,

which is like anybody that says you're going to Mars says you need a you need to state. based on the moon first. Right. So like, anyway, even when we set to Mars is a one-way trip just to die. So we look to whoever is going to be sent there to be dialect into the total recall. That's a good example, I think, because, you know, we've brought it up before, you know, I'm a space dork and I love aliens and space shit, and I'm a big NASA guy, love the Apollo. I love all that stuff. And I've often lamented us abandoning all that.

I think we should have been on Mars at this point, considering we got to the moon in 1969. so most everything about me when a president says like we're going to go to fucking Mars I'm like hell yet fucking finally it's about time but I can't help but think about how like is this just so we can make fucking Elon a trillionaire like SpaceX right I know I can't help but think about that shit and I'm like even the part even the things that should hit for me don't because I not you know I understand the reality of them or at least I think that I yeah so many people don't but when even But when even you were kind of getting rhetorically played by fantasies of American greatness, like we're in a bad place.

Right. So, Elon did a Nazi salute during a speech today. Yeah, I saw the, it's fine. I didn't know, did his speech after the thing? They're running, there's a bunch of different inaugural parts of stuff. I'm not sure right. I just had it on. I just watched Trump's big speech and everything before and right after it.

They had like four different types of prayers. I didn't realize they did that, but I guess it makes sense. All Christian, no other religions. but, you know, like all the different types of Christian in this country, they all got a chance to pray, so that's nice. But yeah, I didn't even see Elon go up there. But I saw the pictures afterwards of him apparently appearing to Sig Heil or whatever. Well, yeah, I mean, like, we're in year 12 of this, like, joke these guys have where the joke is they pretend to be a Nazi and the joke is everyone gets mad at them for being a Nazi and that's what's funny about it. And I'm just like, I don't fucking, I'm through, I'm just,

we're not it's whatever but like the excuses where i guess if you want to be charitable some people some of the news uh descriptions uh painted it as a quote roman salute which it is but i think it got pretty thoroughly rebranded in the 1930s um as i pointed a swastika and being like this is a traditional uh spiritual icon in parts of india obviously that's why this white uh fucking norwegian with you know a shaved head had it on his motorcycle boots It's because of Indian spiritual raisins. Yeah. And also people are like, well, you can't, but he's not a Nazi.

He's just autistic, which I'm like, I don't know what to do with that. But I have no idea to what degree he's going to stick with this or lean into it. But I will say to everyone out there who owns one, good luck getting fair value, reselling your Tesla. We're not like, he talked about a bunch of executive orders. I haven't seen the text of him mainly just being mean to trans people and like do an unconstitutional shit about immigration. But anyway, that's all I have to. We'll talk about stuff Trump does. Like, I don't, like, he wants us to be very afraid, and I don't fucking feel like doing it.

Yeah, it is also, it is just kind of folly to pay too much attention to what Trump says at any point in time. Like, you say, we'll wait and see what he does, and then we'll respond to that. And I think that's fair, because he says all kinds of, but that's something, he's so many different, he said so many different versions of, like, this is about to be the greatest and most prosperous era in American history. and then he doesn't expand on that or say why or no he just says like we're going to fucking be so awesome and that's what I'm saying people hear that and like fuck yeah you know they don't care but they don't need the you know the rationale they just need to hear that we're fucking awesome but yeah so has anybody has any of a president went up to your inauguration said well America's going to suck from here if it's forward yeah right yeah yeah uh point so as we move on to the ticti

band I just want to point out that Biden used his farewell speech to warm of an oligarchy taking shape of a tech industrial complex. And he also just signed an executive order to lease federal lands to tech companies to build more data centers for artificial intelligence. So thanks for that, Joe. And then he spent the last few days of his administration playing a chicken with TikTok and swerving at the last minute into a comely large pile of horse shit. Yeah, didn't he, I know he did a lot of things in the waning moments of his administration

that annoyed a lot of people like that. And didn't he also, didn't he used his last moments to call for like a constitutional amendment to make sure that like presidents are not above the law or something like that while also warning against this this emerging tech oligarchy and all this stuff and all the comments that I saw on those stories like on the internet in relation to that was all like references to I think you should leave and the fucking you know the dude and the or no yeah but yeah the hot dog suit or whatever it's like we're but it's also just like oh man really wish somebody had been in a position to do something of about any of that for the last four years or particularly it's like i don't know how anybody does anything about anything but uh they've gotten this themselves in a situation with tech where all they do is kiss tech's ass just not as openly as trump and the mega people do and for that they get treated like they're being the gestapo to tech like david sacks trump's a uh like a i Crypto Tsar said the the oppression of era of crypto is over.

And I'm like, who was oppressing? You guys are everywhere. You own everything. What is what bad stuff? Anyway, let's talk about TikTok. I want to get into it with this fun story as a reaction to the TikTok ban, which in no way was overboard. Matt, if you got this video.

Overnight of the office of a Wisconsin congressman, Fondelak police arresting a 19-year-old after they say he started the fire in response to the TikTok ban. The flames sparked around 1 o'clock this morning at Representative Glenn Rothman's Fondelac office located in a strip mall on Peters Avenue. Oh, you could have that. The number of things out there that should make a person want to set a congressman's office on fire

or whatever, like the many, many options you had. You know what I mean? Like, Lee's you doing what he did. It's like, everybody can understand that. But like, TikTok going offline, it's like the fact that that motivates people to this level of, a righteous indignation and action is, is hilarious.

For like 12 hours. For like 12 hours overnight. Good Glenn Groffman's a Republican, kind of a lunatic. He was, 360 House members voted for this. 360 out of 435. More Republicans voted for the Democrats. Somehow the Democrats left holding the bag for this. And Groffman told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the suspect was arrested at the scene,

quote because he was just sitting there watching it burn. All right. And we talk about this ban. I need everybody to know something about Glenn Groffman. One of his signature pet issues is wanting to ban Kwanza. So when you find yourself on the line of the same side of an issue with him, you should think twice. Okay. What is the point of banning Kwanza?

No offense. Any of our Kwanza celebrators out there or whatever. But it's like I just don't see how you can even try with a straight face to frame that is anything that isn't just like, you know, I don't like black Africa shit. You know what I mean? Because it's like they talk about liberals

in the war on Christmas and all the stuff we've done. But even in that, Kwanza don't come up. Because they know, you fucking go to Starbucks for whatever. Ain't nobody talking about Kwanza.

Like, it, it's just, it's just, that black people have a thing, I guess. I think it was a fake. It doesn't matter.

But, so, so as far as my person of using the TikTok band, I've basically have come around from me, softly opposed to banning it to firmly being opposed to banning it. But the way people have reacted, including this guy committing arson

to TikTok going away for just a minute, makes my impulsive lizard papal brain think it should have been smashed with hammers about five fucking years ago. Yeah. Well, can you, I mean, can you elaborate on that a little bit? I mean, I get the last part of what you said. I totally understand why that you respond. I mean, we've talked about before when it first came

up, and I remember I was saying, we don't, we had Eric Swalwell on here. He said we shouldn't do it. We said, right? We shouldn't do it. But what, you said, you've come around from being like, yeah, yeah, we shouldn't do it, but whatever, to you're firmly opposed to it. I mean, what, like, what changed? What made you, why do you?

I read a bunch of, like, free speech experts and online censorship experts talk about it. And the Supreme Court case, for example, and the law was framed as a data privacy thing. Like, I'm all for data privacy, but you can't do it just to one company because it doesn't do anything. So that's basically what I've come around to you. You're censoring people's speech, censoring people's speech for a made-up reason that you're only applying. to one company right if you're going to it should apply to twitter you know facebook yeah amazon every website you use is stealing your cookies uh every every every app you download to your phone that they also steals your contacts for whatever reason you can't get an app without i taking your

contacts i think so like yeah so go ahead yeah no you're right so it's like yeah if you if you them framing it like it's a data thing it's like you clearly don't give a fuck about people's data or data private because every single thing anyone ever does on a goddamn phone or the internet harvest and exploits their data and so they need like laws about overarching laws about that not just this one app should not be allowed because of this because china has a 1% ownership stake and one seat on the board the kind of government of China so this story basically has everything about a lot of stuff it has a ton of stuff wrong with america involving you got censorship. You got the government bailing out or co-opting a private corporation in

service of oligarchy. You got everyone flatly ignoring admittedly stupid law, but it is in fact a law that they wrote and they're still mad they wrote it and signed it. And you got Democrats being so bad at politics. They basically do politics like Steve O stapling his balls to his leg. Okay. And so I wanted to talk today about how the hell we ended up here if you got this screen grab from from TikTok, Matt. Welcome back. This is an announcement of all the users got. Thank you for your patience and support.

As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the United States. You can continue to create, share, and discover all the things you love on TikTok. This TikTok is 170 million users in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, that's the second, I know you know this, but that's the, that's the return message. When TikTok first, when it went down, so when all these people addicted to it got on there and saw that they couldn't get on it, the first message said, because of a bull, I'm paraphrasing,

because of a bullshit law, you can't have TikTok right now. Not to worry, President Trump has assured us that he's going to work with us to find a solution. So they already set it up to be like, President Trump is going to save the day.

And then they brought it back like 12 hours later, like you said. And when they brought it back, you're like, thank you, President Trump. And all this happened before he ever got inaugurated. It happened, you know, yesterday, over the weekend, basically. It happened in the middle of the night

when no one was going to use it anyway. Right. And also, like, one thing I need everyone to understand here, is that nothing changed between Saturday and Sunday. Right. Nothing changed. Like, everything to happen with TikTok this weekend is a show and it's happening outside the law and legal system.

So, like, so is the way I'm looking at, all right? TikTok shut down to send a message to use the Trump wanted to fix it. Then TikTok came back up before the inauguration because Trump wanted it up for his inauguration. Nothing changed in any sort of legal or material condition that impacted TikTok status. It's an okey-doke. And the mildest version of it, you'll see you for the indefinite future. It's like it's professional. wrestling right right like i don't know we're going to get to it but it's like i was talking to katie

about this at while it was banned or whatever and i was like yeah but you see on there they're talking about how trump is going to fix it and it's like the whole thing just feels set up to make trump look good and and katy was like i thought trump was the person who started the whole thing about banning ticot he did right right yes right so what you know i'm sure you're going to get us there but that's a that's a hell of a story arc mark you know he they started I'll start with him doing it, and now he's a savior. And, you know, what happened in between? So back in 2020, here's a thing that happened.

It's a data point for everybody. He had a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that they sold a million tickets for. So they get a bigger arena and created an outside standing room capacity. Then when Trump got there, almost no one was there. And it turned out what had happened was a bunch of teens and K-pop fans on TikTok, had gotten online and organized to reserve a bunch of fake tickets and then not show up to embarrass him. And then he decided he wanted to ban TikTok.

This is the rally that led to the death of Herman Kane. Yep, right. And Trump's takeaway from it was these teenagers embarrassed me on this app. We should make it illegal. Okay. Then Biden, for some reason, picked up this executive order idea. Trump's executive order flamed out. Biden tried to an executive order in 20.

23, then kind of forgot about it. Trump tried to take credit for Biden's executive order if you want to throw it up. Well, you just said for some reason, Mark, it wasn't like the online conspiracy theory or whatever that the reason Biden picked up the ball with it when he did in the past 18 months or whatever it was was for like Israel and Gaza reasons. It's like a lot of, you know, a lot of stuff was spreading on TikTok about free Palestine and all that shit and that the Biden administration, they didn't like that. So some, I'm choosing not to be too conspiratorial about this because, yes, there was a, but there was a bunch of footage of what a lot of people will call Israeli war crimes floating around, yeah, floating around TikTok, right, and going viral. And a couple of senators and congresspeople openly said that's one of the reasons they wanted to get rid of it, including Mitt Romney's, Mitt Romney said. that on stage that kids are being radicalized against Israel on TikTok, and it's one of the reasons he wanted to ban it.

But there are a bunch of other concerns, too. There's also, there's also like just a general moral panic about social media, which I sort of feel, too, even though I've read the studies, and there's no reason to really be that concerned about it. There's just like, there's also, there is data privacy concerns, and I understand, like, not wanting, I don't know if you follow, like, all the Chinese hacking stuff that's going on right now, but like, they hacked like a million Americans phone. loans, including some people, they got into, they had some workstations, I think, at the Treasury

Department. I have no idea if TikTok was their way into that stuff. Like, like, it's like, so it's not that there aren't concerns here is the way these are being addressed in the stupidest, most ham-fisted way possible. And also the way that's politically self-destructive and clumsy as fuck, okay? Right. So after Trump took credit for the idea for Biden to try to fuck with TikTok, Trump flip-flopped before Biden passed this ban, okay? That's because Jeff Yass, who's a Pennsylvania a billionaire. God and Trump's ear about it. He owns 15% of bite dance, which owns TikTok. He owns 15

times as much of bite dance as the Chinese Communist Party does. I remember I was talking about that at the time. Yes, Trump had this meeting with this guy who, yeah, owns a huge state, and then immediately flip-flopped after that, and people were just like, well, you know, people's minds can change. I did not, I don't remember knowing

at the time, though, that Jeff Yass that he owned that, I didn't, I didn't, I don't remember knowing that he owned even more than China does or whatever. That's interesting. I don't know if I knew it that either, but that's how you end up going from this first Charlie Kirk tweet from a couple years ago that reads Charlie Kirk being a big Trump supporter.

President Donald Trump just announced an Air Force One and he'll be banning the evil CCP compromised app TikTok. And then a couple years later, Trump is saving TikTok. Pay attention, Gen Z. Like, okay. Oh, God. That's up there with Snoop dogs flip-flop. You follow the Snoop.

I think, yeah, Snoop Dog, if you all that don't know, he performed at the inauguration party, like the night before, and in 206. Yeah, Nelly and Kid Rock, who of course was honored to be there and the village people who, them and Nellie, I mean, Nellie ain't maybe on that level, but both the village people and Nellie, I'm like, well, they probably didn't have a lot else going on, you know, like, but, uh, but like Snoop Dogg, people dug up videos for 2016 where this same thing came up for Trump's first inaugurates. There's literally Snoop Dog talking to his own phone and posting on his own social media in 2016 being like, which one of you fucking, you know, hey, he was like, yes, I'll sing for you, Massa, I'll do whatever. He's like, which one of you've been over for this fucking motherfucker talking about Trump? He's like, you disgust me. Like, he really spelled out, you know, all the reasons why present day Snoop Dog doesn't hit because all these years later he took the offer and did it himself. so yeah yeah i mean got to promote the voice i guess uh so then uh so then this 2024 law it was a it was a a bunch of republicans and i get in some national security democrats

agitated to attach it to a must pass national defense authorization bill and uh so even though like i said more republicans guy were supported than democrats because biden signed it and the Biden administration pushed for it for whatever well we'll get the whatever reason in a second they got left holding the bag but the real force behind this effort to ban or force the investment of TikTok, however you want to phrase it, was the intelligence community, okay? There was a high pressure lobbying campaign behind the scenes

by the FBI and the CIA. Let me read here from Ken Klippenstein's reporting. In one classified briefing after another, intelligence officials succeeded of scaring the shit out of our elected leaders about China and using the app to collect Americans' data or covertly influence them. It's important when they talk about China's influencing people.

they're talking they're speaking purely hypothetically so far right they have no evidence that china's ever done anything using ticot right to assault the minds of america's children and i remember us talking about at the time i think the fact that like you can just if you just have the money to do it you can just buy people's data from these like you know data harvesting firms so it means like china wouldn't even need to do anything that's like uh complicated and nefarious or whatever like they could just they could just go buy it if they want it from all the places you allow to harvest our data with no issues at all. So, like, you know, what are we doing here?

Why is this really any different? It'd be much cheaper to buy, and probably more effective, you get better data if you just bought Facebook's much bigger data set for cheaper than building an app. So basically, at the hands of the, this call, let's use Trump's language, at the request of the deep state, Democrats handed Trump this TikTok win in a platter by picking up right-wing arguments about national security and censorship. and running with them. It feels to me like a silly version

of the lead-up to the Iraq war where like this stuff is going to be on their record forever. Like when they go to run for higher office, they're going to be the people that voted to ban TikTok. And like they're doing this, they're doing this with immigration right now as well

with like 10 Democrats, John Federman, the two yokels from fucking Arizona or whatever, voted for the Lake and Rally Act, which gives insane powers to state officials to stop immigration. And like basically like state, A. Gs, we'll probably get into it in depth of later when I do better research, but basically,

my understanding is state attorney generals can, like, sue to keep all the nationals from one particular country out or whatever. And, like, the fact that's named the Lake and Rally Act, is a general rule of thumb. If you're any sort of legislator, you should not vote for any law named after a dead white girl. It's probably a bunch of bad shit in it. Yeah, that's how they get you. Right. So, anyway, did, I don't know. not sure what the long-term plan here, because Trump is, like, does he know he's surrounded by actual committed China Hawks?

Here's Tom Cotton, posting on Twitter. Any company that hosts distribute services or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok and face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just in Department of Justice, but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state attorneys general. Think about it. He's fucking right. The law is still on the books.

This law financially penalizes app stores like Google and Apple who continue to host TikTok in the app store. It also penalized people to host TikTok servers, which is Oracle. And Trump, no matter what promises he made to those companies to not enforce the ban, he cannot stop shareholder lawsuits. He can't stop state attorneys general. He can't stop any of that shit. So, like, he can't stop the next presidential administration from coming back and saying, no, that law was in the books. You guys owe us five years of fucking penalties. So at the very least, you would have to like, you're like going out on a limb by trusting the Trump administration that nothing will come of it if you're one of these, if you're in one of these positions.

Right. Because it's like they could say that and they might abide by it the whole time. But if you piss them off and they go back on it or like you said, the next administration comes in and they come after you, then you're still fucked because there is a law on the book. So. Yes. Right. As much as all these congressmen who wrote the law are now saying it shouldn't be enforced, as much as Biden tried to sign the. law instead it shouldn't be enforced. As much as Trump pushed for executive order and then

the law, and says it shouldn't be enforced, the law exists currently. If they don't write another law that gets rid of it, retroactively. It's like, this is all made up bullshit. And it's, well, I want to know and maybe you're like planning to get to it either way, but like

what do you think like actually explicitly happen behind the scenes with, like the whole like, the way that their TikTok is very publicly jerking off Trump and being I'm like, thank you, Daddy Trump, for doing this. Do you think it's like someone in the administration or somebody representing Trump was like, listen, we'll fix this, okay, if you, you know, pay, if you kiss the ring, because that's what Trump needs and loves from everybody. You've got to kiss the ring.

And so they just did it because of some handshake agreement. They were like, we'll take care of you guys. But you have to openly jerk us off to everybody or, I mean, or what? I mean, what else could it even be, really? I don't think you have to. think, I think, uh, uh, TikTok sees how, like, how Musk and Zuckerberg got front row seats the inauguration. The, they, did TikTok CEO also was said with. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, right. Yes. They're just, yeah, okay. Yeah, you also could, because anybody who does kiss the ring,

Trump will, anybody that kisses the ring and has billions of dollars, Trump is going to, you know, be there for. And you're going to, you're going to, you're going to hit for him. So maybe they preemptively did it because they knew that it would be effective as opposed to like, arrangement being worked out or whatever. But either way, it's them currying favor with Trump because they know that that'll work. Because it's like you said, they framed it like he swept

in and single-handedly saved TikTok. But like you said, nothing actually changed the whole time. They just had taken it off and then they put it back on. But they gave Trump credit for it. Yeah. Yeah. It's all like all this stuff.

Like I can't figure out which part of this is showing, which isn't. Like just trying to hit for Trump or not right now. Because he invited President Xi to his inauguration. usually just an ambassador would go, but China did send its vice president, right? But also in the inaugural speech, he said we need to invade Panama to fend off Chinese influence. He did, yes. But also he's announcing that he wants to make official state visit to China. Like I think in his back, in the back, sorry, go ahead.

Well, I was going to say, and also, when he was talking about why we should invade Panama, it seemed like he was making the argument we should do it in honor of the memory of President William McKinley in addition to like fend off Chinese actors or whatever what I'm saying is like that whole part was weird period like he did talk about it's like China thinks they owner or whatever

but he started he talked about Mount McKinley had been renamed for woke reasons and he was going to fix that and he's like McKinley great president did the and then he used that to like transition into Panama he's like we're we've insulted his memory by letting them just take this over and fuck us

the way they have I don't know it was wild dude but it's yeah anyway so i saw he also said that we lost 38,000 people building the canal and it's like the 38000 people that died were largely afro-caribbean let's be generous and call them workers and indentured servants yeah uh so so i wanted to figure out because like like i think as far as like he wanted to make an official once to make an official state visit to china i think it has had to you remember us how nixon was held as a hero for going to china only nixon could go to china because he was a hardcore anti-communist he only he could make piece with the with the ravenous chakoms right i think he's trying to build china up into a bigger

threat so he can go over there and make nice and look like a big he's he's doing it's pro wrestling again is this is all yeah i think i think i didn't remember trump's in the w w w wbdbdbh hall of fame i need everyone like everything everything makes more sense when you know that yeah i mean that feels like it's out of his playbook too like he did that with north korea and you know what i mean and i mean russia too like he trying and he's you know he bends over for putin but he tries to frame it like i'm the only guy that can work with these dudes is the way he like tries to put it and I'm sure he would love to add China to that list you know yeah so because Trump's got promised everything to so many people like like I was

wondering where the Phelan Gong was out and all this because they're of course like like right wing anti-communist Chinese Chinese religion that runs the epoch times that the the free newspaper you find left all over every major city I also get emails from those motherfuckers now so I don't know how that started either but it's always fun yeah the epoch time they're wild because it's like yeah anyway go ahead yeah so i went found this story that apparently is paywall for matt he's showing me because i had yeah so i'm not sure why i'm behind the paywall for the epoch times that bugs me a little bit yeah that implies that mark is paying for the epoch time that matt can't get to it yeah apparently can apparently i'm subscribed

to the pha long gong's company newsletter uh so uh the way they're framing this is this the house Speaker Johnson says he plans to uphold ban on TikTok over Reddit poses. And the sub headline is, of course, because it's the Falun Gong, is the Chinese Communist Party via TikTok has promoted terrible messages to American children is a very dangerous thing. All right.

Mark, what some people may not know, by the way, they're just watching, correct me if I'm wrong here. But Falun Gong, this hard right, very anti-communist, anti-CCP group from China that now is based in America, they also are the ones that run, have y'all ever seen the Chinese Cirque du Soleil billboards in your town, they're called

Shin Yun or something like that all around the country. Like, you never thought, you're like, oh, that's like Cirque du Soleil, but it's Chinese and it comes through town. That's these same people. These same people around the epoch times that's them. They also got acrobatts, and that's how they raise money and shit, is they tour that all around

the country. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm fascinated with their whole thing. They've also got caught up in some legal shenanigans recently in a couple different ways, I think, including the dance group. I didn't follow the details. I don't talk out my ass, but yeah, there's some sort of investigation in them. So, anyway, what Speaker Johnson said, according to the E-Tock Times, is quote, and when President Trump issued the truth post and said save TikTok, the way we read that is he's going to try and force along a true divestiture changing of hands, the ownership.

So what Johnson's saying is, no, no, no, we're still going to force the sale of TikTok as the original law intended. Trump is just angling to find the right buyer, okay? And then maybe he's right, because Trump posted this on true social. we talked about what his solution is, is to have the U.S. government own a 50% ownership position in the joint venture that owns TikTok.

Okay? So we're going from, we have to ban this because it's state-owned propaganda to know we should make it different state-owned propaganda. Our state-owned propaganda. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, that is pretty good. If you got to deal with a state-owned propaganda, it would be better for it to be your own state-owned propaganda.

think if you're part of the state you know uh if you're part of the state yeah so i think what what i so if you follow on this the events here i think what happened is joe biden may have accidentally given birth to pro-trump north korean state media full of dancing teenagers yeah yeah i know that's that you already point you started this by pointing out that a 19 year old in uh Wisconsin right was for yeah Wisconsin i think fond of lack whatever that 19 year old Wisconsin set fire to a congressman's office because of this and it's like we all know the teenagers be dumb we all know how much they love TikTok how wrapped up they are and how much they care now put that together with the direct messaging that TikTok itself has given straight to these kids

about Donald Trump about how like this thing you care about so much he's the only thing standing in the way of it not of it going away forever he's the one who saved it for you and it's like it's gonna I mean the thing is hopefully ideally he's never is up for any of other election again let's see if he fucking makes himself dictator or something he shouldn't run for things well hopefully it doesn't even really matter all that much electorally but like it's gonna make a bunch of these teenage kids be like dude trump rules i mean it's going to it's definitely maybe maybe but also one thing you gotta factor in is that americans have attention spans of 20 seconds because of absolutely like ticker well especially the ones who love

tic-tock that much yeah right so like they're also they're about to see a bunch of videos from users going viral about immigration raids, protest, women, you know, bleeding out in parking lots because of new abortion restrictions. Like, like, and they're all going to see that on Trump arena state of TikTok unless something changes about the way information is delivered. Well, what if that, what if it does, I mean, this is just me just speculating straight out of my butt here, but like people think that like meta, Facebook and Instagram, they're taking like a rightward turn, right, because they see which way the wind is blowing, like with what Elon did

with X and that type of shit. And it's like, if TikTok has gotten on board with Trump for their own personal reasons, you know, what if they start doing, like, what happens on Twitter, basically? Meaning, like, instead of sending that shit around like you're saying, it becomes kind of a right-wing echo chamber. Instead, like, it seems like they all have been doing recently. That would be bad. But, like, yeah, it would be. But also it becomes a less fun user experience because no one wants to be served up, nothing but political content. They want to watch their cooking videos and music songs and jokes and sketches.

Some people love political content, Mark. Some people that lead a perfectly rational life and have good taste, love stuff. It's about politics. Somebody came to our show. They're seeking it out. What they don't want to do is be trying to find a cooking video and they'd be served up a pro-Trump at. You know what I'm saying? It's not a fun experience.

And then you leave the app. You go to a different app. Yeah. I also make cooking videos. So it checks out that, you know, but don't have for none of you. For you at all. I'm just kidding. Look, you're right.

But, yeah, I don't know. It's still just. seems like it's a trend in tech period. Right, but going away. Donald, like, all the stuff they're doing, Donald Trump's popularity is still underwater.

You know what I'm saying? Like, everybody, everybody's over-indexing a lot of, like, the background of all this stuff, and, like, part of the reason, like, even those intelligence community, uh, intelligence community briefings, they gave Congress trying to scare the shit out of them.

They had to admit to Congress that foreign influence ops, so far have been pretty unsuccessful, okay? So, like, I'm not sure why people think turning TikTok into a pro-Trump thing would swing people pro-Trump as opposed to make them anti-Tick-Tock because it's boring and tedious, all right? Like, not everybody wants to see nothing but Forge Auto Blow songs, do I'm saying?

Yeah, no, yeah, I agree with you. It's like, when people got real mad about Zuckerberg for him, didn't he basically say, like, we're not going to, like, I mean, he framed it like, we're going to be okay with free speech now. We're not going to censor people. Wasn't it basically being like, we're not going to say people,

you know, can't do Nazi shit or say the N-word? Wasn't that like kind of what he was saying? Yeah, but Zuckerberg's, his point is that like, like, yeah,

we're not going to stop people from saying that being trans the mental illness anymore because say it's a mainstream in bounds argument in American political discourse. And I think as much as that sucks, he's not wrong because J.D. Vance is the vice president of the United States.

States. So the user response, the TIGA user response to this effort of government censorship was pretty funny because what everyone did was they got on Red Note, which is sort of like China's answer to Instagram. Yeah. 700,000 Americans signed up for Red Note in just two days. And led to a pretty funny series of events. The apps Chinese users were welcoming Americans with open arms asking for cat photos

and offering help with their English homework. that's a hell of a dunk on us Chinese people are helping American kids with their English homework yeah that's a shame also there was a few dunks from them because I also know that they uh they were like apparently they've they like got medical stories shared from American healthcare experiences and they were like aghast and and they were like what that's how it works in America that's awful and that was like getting spread around and like do you guys know that's this shitty over here So, yeah, it wasn't going to good for America. It is important to note, I'm not comparing her two health care systems.

I'm just saying that it's worth noting that China's Internet, including Red Note, is heavily censored, which we'll get to in a second. But in the real world, China's people spent 2023 protesting in the streets about cuts to health care spending. Okay. They've been doing austerity over there because it ran out of money during COVID. So it's not like they, even to them, if you listen to their people speak when they're not talking to Red Note, their health care isn't super great. I would love to know how the truth of the matter with them compares to our actual health care too, though. Do you know what I mean? Like they're protesting in the streets. And what if it's like still maybe arguably better?

That would be very dangerous. But my understanding is like when you go to an air quote doctor over there, only 20% of the people are actual medical doctors, which make the nurse practitioners good enough. So America's are so funny. We get mad at our government and that leads to us being fully trusting of another government. It's basically, we were told that China's authoritarian, but everyone on this Chinese. his app says only good things about the government. That's so funny. Dude,

sounds to me like China rocks. This app has been on that it censors any kind of, you know, dissent has led me to believe that China's fucking rad. Yeah. So Red Note is the English translation for the name they're using, but I can't pronounce the actual Chinese word, but the little translation is Little Red Book. So American government's like,

we've got to push Americans away from Chinese. propaganda and they stoke away from the computer for a moment look back and see that more than double the population of Pittsburgh are now the chairman Mao said to kill the landlords dot org app it's like I mentioned it's their Instagram like how awesome does America look at our Instagram that's what it was Drew's joke and it's a good joke it's like yeah if you look at American Instagram everybody is like always on vacation rich as fucking has abs so like what yeah that is a good point I feel like it also makes us look very fucking stupid though but yes we are we do have abs though we have abs and

nice cars while being very stupid that's what our instagram makes us look like so uh one interesting thing is like the chinese user coaching americans on how to navigate around red note censorship um say basically totally me quote here quote welcome but do not say anything about lbg tq plus thank you wrote a user in Beijing uh also some american users had their content removed or account suspended including one woman who was banned for wearing a loco at top and mentioning a quote unquote trans plight in the United States. China's not woke, y'all. They're not feminist, and they're not, they're not, they're not nice to gay people.

So, I know, they're, they're pat-balls. They're run by pap balls, just like we are. They're just, like, uh, commie adjacent pap-alls. And I know they're not really like, like for real communist anymore, but it's like, they're like ostensibly communist, right? Like paper communist. They still got the red shirts. Yeah.

So a couple years ago, China Digital Times, which is a California-based nonprofit that covers censorship in China, got a hold of a leaked trove of documents about content moderation at Red Note. And they found this is pretty funny. A list of 546 derogatory nicknames for Xi Jinping, as well as stuff you're not allowed to discuss on there, including labor strikes, geographic discrimination, student suicides, and criticism with the CCP.

The nicknames for, I mean, all around the world, 546 is a lot. And basically, because they're censored, they have more nicknames for she for she being an asshole than Eskimos have for Snow. That's hilarious. So there's a couple of his nicknames that did are banned. You can't use the term, a big deal with apparently that refuses to Xi Jinping. You can't call him, you can't say Mr. Shih Thole. You can't say Shihull Bing Fah, which I don't know what it means.

But the funniest one for me is they took Adolf Hitler and because it pronounced, it replaced the H with X, which when you think of the pronunciation, his nickname for a lot of Chinese people is Adolf Schittler. Yeah. I will say that one aspect of this I think is good is that it might be at a time when American leaders are agitating for war with Beijing, that Americans being interested in with the day-to-day lives of Chinese people are actually like and see them on there and making their own cooking videos and making their own mute songs and making their own

jokes, doing their own Donald Trump impressions, which they do a lot over there. Like, I think this could be that part of it's good. And also, we probably need. lessons of how to navigate a censored internet considering what's coming with Project 2025 and wanting to ban porn and certain books and shit so yeah yeah anytime just regular human beings on either side get to like get a little more culturally affiliated or not affiliated but interested in each other and all that is always a good thing I think because dehumanization is one of the like core tenants of you know going to war so anyway thank you

guys for watching we appreciate it I hope it went smoothly on the stream there we get out of here. Go to Tray Crowder.com. Check them up coming tour days. Come and see me. Go to weekly skews.com slash more and sign up for the Patreon. $5 a month. Two full-link bonus episodes per month. Make a hit. Either way, just keep watching. We'll keep doing it. We'll see you next time.

Love you by. Skew.