Speaker 1: Let's start today with the Twitter files. There's a growing story being told by those
on the right in the mag crowd and elsewhere that the left, whoever that is supposed to mean, is,
quote, ignoring the Twitter files, which some are calling Orwellian and one of the greatest stories
about censorship and injustice towards right wing perspectives in decades or something. And I want
to go through this and really break it down into its component parts. The first question is whether
the left and let's pretend we know exactly what they mean by that. The left is ignoring it. That
is absolutely untrue. And in fact, you can I can I can really only speak for myself and others that
I'm sort of aware of. But we've all been talking about it. And you can find numerous stories about
the Twitter files on my YouTube channel and our podcast archives, etc.. Now, invariably,
the people who first say, David, you've been ignoring it will see the things I've said. They
said, Well, you're ignoring the main point, which is that Twitter and Biden and big tech censor the
right and then also try to help the left by preventing negative stories. Well, so it's not
that I'm ignoring it. It's that you don't like the conclusion I've come to. So let's talk about the
reality of the Twitter files. If you are media literate and Internet literate and you look at
this story and you look at the facts, you realize there is practically nothing there. Now, I won't
say nothing there. I say practically nothing there. And we'll get to what there is there.
But this Twitter file story is fundamentally a grievance story, the type of grievance story
that the right loves to say. The left is obsessed with the right, left to say the left is all about
grievance culture. I've been wrong because of my race and I've been wrong because of my gender.
And I've been wrong because, you know, whatever. Fill in the blanks. This is the story that the
right loves to tell. And they say the left's got to move on from grievances and get something done.
This is a grievance story. That's what this is. And it's a grievance story comprised of
out of context anecdotes to point to a heavily biased conclusion supported by incomplete data
at best. And that's like the most charitable analysis that I can give. The narrative that
has been presented doesn't actually align with the content of the Twitter files. And there's a
disconnect here that has left a lot of people wondering why aren't the Twitter files being
treated as a bigger deal? There is a mainstream media blackout on the Twitter files and left wing
media. You won't talk about it. Initially, the story about the Twitter files was supposed to
be government is censoring big tech companies and big tech companies are censoring the right
and helping the left. Eventually, it was revealed Twitter was making its own decisions about content
on its platform, which the right has previously defended their right to do as a private company,
and the government by which they actually mean the Biden campaign, which wasn't even the government
at the time, was calling to the attention of Twitter content they believed violate Twitter's
violated Twitter's terms of service, which it did, of nude images of Hunter Biden. Now,
another aspect to the story was the Biden. Again, they called it the Biden administration,
but it was it was 2020. There was no Biden administration. The Biden administration was
forcing the removal of content related to Hunter Biden. We later discovered that the Biden team
was initially just using the normal methods to report content and later had email contacts that
they could use it Twitter to say, Hey, we believe this violates your terms of service. Importantly,
the Trump camp, the Trump administration also had access to the very same people at Twitter via
email. So it was not unique to the Biden campaign. And at the end of the day, what the Biden team
was asking to have removed was content that was illegal in most states and violated Twitter's own
terms of service. It's sometimes called a revenge porn. I understand that that term is problematic
to some because porn makes it sound like it's consensual. These were explicit, an obscene I
don't know what explicit images that were released without the consent of Hunter Biden. Right. That's
what we're talking about. That's what this was fundamentally about. It deflated the entire story.
The story was also supposed to be about the Trump White House trying to demand that content
be removed. And that is largely being ignored. The people on the right that are saying the story is
about Hunter Biden exclusively ignore that the Trump White House government and administration
also had the same access that the Biden campaign had and they would ask for content to remove,
and they're not talking about that. They want to ignore that part of it because it
doesn't fit the narrative that they want you to believe. And then lastly, we were told,
well, the FBI is telling Twitter what to censor. Turns out that wasn't true. Turns out the FBI
shared information with Twitter about potential sources of disinformation and ultimately Twitter
made its own determinations. Now, you would say, well, when the FBI comes to you and says, hey,
here's here's information, the FBI wants you to do something. But as the Twitter files have come out,
it doesn't actually appear that that was the case. It appears that Twitter was able to decide on its
own, genuinely decide on its own what to remove and what not to remove. So that the unfortunate
part for the right is that the Twitter files didn't live up to the hype. The Twitter files
don't actually confirm the initial narrative that was presented to them. Instead, they have become
sort of a cudgel for the right. And Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi and the other people, Barry Weiss,
to spin a story and drive a narrative. But the efforts have largely failed. They want to say.
We presented the bombshell and it is a bombshell. And the left and mainstream
media won't talk about it because of their bias. The reality is they failed to actually
present the bombshell they claimed this to be. So people are sort of looking at it and saying, oh,
there's not really a very big story here. And what you will often find is that those who claim it's
a very big story when you actually say to them, which part is the bombshell, they go, well, the
Biden administration was it was 2020. There was no Biden administration. Well, they were censoring
the hunter. But well, we're talking about explicit images released without his consent. They're
illegal in most states and violate Twitter's terms of. Okay. Well, so. And then there's nothing left.
There's just nothing left. So the question really becomes, how much do you expect? Quote, the left.
To talk about a story that isn't anywhere near what it was supposed to be. You've got people
cherry picking details and spinning them to fit a narrative that has largely fallen apart and
downplaying the parts that are inconvenient, like the fact that the actual Trump administration had
the very same access to Twitter terms of service and content. Moderation, people. Last thing. The
Twitter files are part of a larger puzzle. It's a piece of a larger puzzle. And we shouldn't ascribe
more significance to the Twitter files in the broader context of the story. When we talk about
the state of media and politics and speech and censorship and all of these different things,
there is a big story there, and it's about the unmitigated spread of disinformation on Facebook,
particularly among older folks, the use of Twitter by white nationalists. There's tons
of story. There really is a story there. But what the Twitter files is, is a little tiny piece of it
that is out of context and also being inaccurately reported. And so for the people that are insisting
that the Twitter files are one of the greatest and most Orwellian stories of manipulation of the
public, it's hyperbole. It's sensationalism. It's not a fair and balanced approach to the
facts. We should talk about and be aware about media bias. We should be aware of propaganda,
manipulation and censorship, but we've got to be critical and objective. And if you're
critical and objective and you actually look at the claims that were initially made and
what was actually revealed by the Twitter files, you realize that there's very little
there what you could say and this is what we get back to. Is there a legitimate story
you could argue you could argue that neither the Trump administration nor the Biden campaign
should have been able to email anyone at Twitter to say, we believe this violates your terms of
service. You could make the case they should have to just use the report feature like everybody
else. That's the one thing you could argue. But if you want to argue that, you have to apply it not
only to the Biden campaign but also to the Trump White House. And I'm not seeing anybody do that. I