Donald Trump has released a video explaining his plan to "shatter the left-wing censorship regime" and it's "the most amazing thing" Glenn has heard "any president ever say." Trump promised to stop government officials from colluding with private companies to censor legal speech, clear the bureaucracy of people who had done so, push for a "digital bill of rights," reform Section 230, and do much more. Glenn and Stu discuss this long, detailed list and also review a few concerns they have, which Trump must address very carefully.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Stu, this is like constitutional porn. I just want to warn you. I just want to warn you, you might hear some sexy music, in your own head. You might be like, oh, yeah. Ding-dong, pizza delivery
You might hear that.
This is the most amazing thing I have heard any president ever say. This is Donald Trump.
STU: Wow. That's quite a standard.
GLENN: Just, I want you to make a list. Okay.
When he says, oh. And I'm going to do this.
Just make a list. Okay?
This is his plan to end the censorship cartel.
DONALD: We don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country. It's as simple as that. If this most if you then right is allowed to perish. Then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple, just like dominoes, one by one.
They will go down. That's why, today, I'm announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime. And to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans.
And reclaim is a very important word in this case, because they've taken it away.
In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of Deep State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people.
They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything from elections to public health.
Censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed.
And it must happen immediately.
And here's my plan.
GLENN: Here we go.
DONALD: First, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order, banning any federal department or agency, from colluding with any organization, business, or person, to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens.
I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis or disinformation. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship, directly or indirectly, with whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health, Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ. No matter who they are.
Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new unlined censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible. And to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified.
These include possible violations of federal civil rights law, campaign finance laws, federal election law, securities law, and anti-trust laws. The Hatch Act. And a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses.
To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans, to immediately send preservation letters. We have to do this, right now.
To the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and every Silicon Valley tech giant. Ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.
Third, upon my inauguration as president, I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk, rerising Section 230.
To get big online platforms out of censorship business. From now on, digital platform should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230.
If they mean high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and nondiscrimination.
We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content, such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech. Fourth, we should break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis and disinformation.
The federal government should immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs, that support this authoritarian project.
If any US university is discovered to have engaged in censorship activities, or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal of blacklisting. Those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more.
We should also enact new laws, laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats, who partner with private entities to do an end run with the Constitution.
And to deprive Americans of their First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights. In other words, deprive them of their vote!
And once you lose those elections, and once you lose your voters like we have, you no longer have a country.
Furthermore, to confront the problems of major platforms being infiltrated. By legions of former Deep Staters.
And intelligence officials.
There should be a seven-year calling off period, before any employee of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS, or DOD is allowed to take a job, at a company, possessing vast quantities of US data.
Fifth, the time has finally come for Congress to pass a digital Bill of Rights.
This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take town online content. Not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter.
Furthermore, when uses of big online platforms after the content or accounts removed. Throttled. Shadow banned or otherwise restricted.
No matter what name they used. They should have the right to be informed, that it's happening. The right to a specific explanation, of the reason why.
And the right to a timely appeal. In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt out of content moderation and curation entirely.
And receive an unmanipulated stream of information. If they so choose.
The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America and for the survival of Western civilization itself.
When I'm president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control, will be ripped out of the system at large. There won't be anything left. By restoring free speech, we will begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation.
Thank you, and God bless America.
GLENN: Wow!
STU: I mean, that is -- first thing that strikes me on that, is just how different it was than 2016. That is not a guy who is just walking in. I don't know. Who should we pick?
Like, that is somebody who has a plan.
GLENN: No. That's one of the exciting things is.
This is so detailed. Even what he just said -- you know there's much more than this behind each one of these. And so much thought behind all of this.
This is a guy who has sat there for at least the last two years. Probably the last four years. Going, all right.
I'll get a second chance.
What do we do? What do we do?
This is the most comprehensive thing I've ever heard a Republican president, ever lay out.
Now, the Democrats do it. But usually they do it in about a bill of 3,000 pages. And you just don't find out, until after the happy meal bill.
You know, and you're like, wait. Is this for Happy Meals?
STU: The Inflation Reduction Act?
GLENN: Yeah. Kind of like that.
I mean, look at the list.
STU: Yeah. There is a lot in there.
GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.
STU: Going after the federal employees colluding to censor speech.
GLENN: And put them jail.
STU: Taking the federal money. And away from people who are kind of walking that line, and drawing our guardrails on mis and disinformation.
GLENN: That's that -- that's that -- what was the name of that organization over in England, that we helped start? Over all the people -- all the people that were involved in that, buh-bye.
STU: And I think a lot of the people on the left and the media take it as, oh, he just wants to be able to say conspiracy theories and not fact-checked. And that's just not -- the truth is, the federal government should have no role in that.
You want to have a media organization -- that's not going to stop ABC News from doing misinformation reporting, as dumb as it might be. It will just stop federal money going to that process, which is totally appropriate for a country which has a 14th amendment. Prosecuting crimes that happened. I'm sure, this is punishing enemies.
But in a reality, if you commit a crime, it's supposed to be --
GLENN: Yes, and this is a constitutional crime. Government getting involved in freedom of speech. That's a constitutional crime.
STU: And sending preservation letters, so that these suites can go forward. So they're not clearing out and deleting all these files now, before he gets into office.
That's tough, and by the way, not something he can do personally. That's going to be something Sanders --
GLENN: No. That's why he said, they have to send that right away.
STU: Look, all of this is I think good.
Is there any part in there, that makes you at all nervous?
There's a couple of points in there that I could see going the wrong way, if we're not careful. Which is rewriting Section 230.
GLENN: Yes. That could be dicey.
STU: That could be -- there's nothing wrong with rewriting Section 230. But you just have to -- you have to be careful with it.
GLENN: What he said is --
STU: I think what he said --
GLENN: -- as long as you have quality --
STU: High standards of neutrality.
GLENN: Yeah. High standards of neutrality. You have to qualify for that. And you should -- you should ban things that are illegal. You know, child porn, terrorism. Things like that.
STU: Of course. And that is theoretically already there. But we have really loose standards on these companies for enforcing it.
It's basically like, if you get multiple requests to take some material down, and you don't, you could be in trouble.
Generally speaking, they are -- they don't have to take action to go get the stuff. They have to just wait for it to be reported to them, and then they have to do it after that process. But the process of course is really weak.
You have millions and millions and millions of posts going up. They would argue, that it's impossible to get to all of it. Oh, well.
Oh, well. Oh, no. Maybe you don't get to be as large a company. Maybe -- you know, look, my fantasy, of course, here is, maybe this doesn't work within the law.
And the social media companies just go away. That would be tragic. That would be terrible.
GLENN: It would be.
STU: Now, of course, Zoren. Max Zoren. Zoren Industries, if you go back to A View to A Kill, the documentary from 1985 --
GLENN: Right. I believe that was a James Bond movie.
STU: Actually, he advocated for explosives under the earth that would cause an earthquake that would flood all of Silicon Valley.
He must get to that. Unfortunately. I was waiting for it, one of the action steps.
Didn't quite get there.
Maybe that's step seven.
We'll get there eventually.
GLENN: The digital Bill of Rights is so important.
STU: Yeah. That's interesting.
GLENN: What's interesting about that, you have a right to go without an algorithm. Love that.
STU: And it's interesting because the -- Europe has a digital Bill of Rights.
GLENN: Uh-huh.
STU: I would assume it won't look much like the Trump one.
GLENN: No. I don't think so.
STU: First of all, there's some similarities there. You own your own data.
That's the concept between the European one. Some of those concepts, you could say are good. And I'm sure will be brought over.
Also, just the idea, that you don't have to be manipulated by this.
GLENN: Right.
STU: Now. It's tough.
Because you should be able to run a website, that you own. Right?
TheBlaze should not need to go neutral. And give all sorts of information from the left. Right?
We should be able to do what we want to do with our own website.
Now, there's that distinction between publisher, and sort of cure rater.
Social network, that I think will probably be the line there. Again, the details matter on this stuff.
As we've seen over and over and over again.
If you don't get that exactly right. It could be a problem. But, you know, that's what the process will be for.
GLENN: First of all, you're in public square now.
STU: I --
GLENN: I know.
STU: I hate the public square argument.
GLENN: I know, but it's digital now.
STU: I know.
GLENN: Nobody gets on their soapbox and we're walking in our town square. And you see somebody stand and up say, I want to give a speech.
STU: Well, if you want a town square, then it's like, then make a town square. These are companies that have spent their own money on this stuff. I just feel like they should be -- look, there's a lot here, that I understand. And I think is a good thing. Making essentially, just turning giant private companies into utilities -- I mean, should Elon Musk have to deal with all that?
If he -- he bought the company. When is the next -- the next government -- the next time the Democrats get in control, and they take this public square and make their own rules with it. It makes me really nervous. I get what he's saying.
I think the -- I think we'll be able to walk this line. But let's be honest that we have to walk a line here and just be careful here.
GLENN: I agree with that. But you have things like an algorithm. You have a right to unmask. I don't have a right to necessarily know their algorithm.
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: But I do have a right to say, you know what, I don't want you filtering stuff.
Why don't you have a right to do that.
STU: This is the sort of thing that they should have just done.
It wouldn't have been an issue, if they just did it.
It would have been easy. They should have just had an off button. But they couldn't bring themselves to do that. Because they wanted, A, money and, B, to control the public opinion.
GLENN: Correct. How many people will have their eyes be opened if you have that, and say, just unmask it. Just unmask it for a week. See what you see. It would be pretty amazing.
