Podcasts about freedom online

Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs shares his insights on election integrity and the FBI's handling of foreign interference allegations. He expresses his concerns about the lack of investigations into potential threats from China and discusses the implications of these findings on public trust in democratic institutions. Additionally, Congressman Biggs touches on the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict and the potential for U.S. involvement. Additional interviews with Foundation for Freedom Online's Executive Director Mike Benz on Chinese financial ties to the Biden administration, Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center provides insights on the effect deportations are having on the crime rate, and Arizona State Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp, who reveals shocking statistics about the lack of vetting for Medicaid applicants and the financial repercussions of this oversight, which could cost taxpayers billions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jesse Kelly pulls back the curtain on the deep-rooted corruption within America’s political elite, exposing the machinations of “The Swamp.” Joined by Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Jesse dives into the shadowy world of government overreach and the weaponization of federal agencies. Plus, an exclusive interview with ousted D.C. Attorney turned weaponization czar Ed Martin. I'm Right with Jesse Kelly on The First TV | 5-15-25 Choq: Visit https://choq.com/jessetv for a 17.76% discount on your CHOQ subscription for life Pure Talk: Go to https://www.puretalk.com/JESSETV to make the switch Beam: Visit https://shopbeam.com/JESSEKELLY and use code JESSEKELLY to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off.Follow The Jesse Kelly Show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheJesseKellyShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Dinesh discusses Tulsi Gabbard’s revelations about bio-labs in Ukraine and US complicity in gain-of-function research that might have contributed to the Covid pandemic. Former State Department official Mike Benz, director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, joins Dinesh to outline the contours of the “state within a state” that still remains to be rooted out during Trump’s second term.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris Ruddy, founder of Newsmax, discusses the media company's growth, including its IPO success and expansion into various platforms. Newsmax is now the fourth-ranked cable news channel in the U.S. and has a streaming channel, podcasts, and a mobile app. Ruddy criticizes the biased legacy media and highlighted Newsmax's factual reporting. He also discusses Trump's economic strategy, emphasizing tariffs, deregulation, and lower taxes as key elements. Ruddy predicts a significant economic boost if Trump's trade deals and tax cuts are implemented. Victoria Coates, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Trump, and current leader of foreign policy and security thinking at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the ongoing wildfires in Israel, describing them as a terror tactic by Palestinians. She expresses skepticism about Iran's negotiation sincerity, noting the regime's continued hostility and ongoing missile defense and uranium enrichment activities. Mike Benz, founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, talks recent wins against censorship. Benz highlights the global rise of censorship and the weaponization of political systems against conservatives and populists. Benz discusses recent U.S. victories, including the dismantling of the Global Engagement Center and the National Science Foundation's cuts to censorship grants. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rich talks about China ceasing its exports of rare earth minerals and reports of Honda moving plants out of Canada and Mexico with Will Hild, executive director of Consumers First. Next, Allum Bokhari, managing director at the Foundation for Freedom Online, has more on Mark Zuckerberg's testimony at Meta's anti-trust trial. Plus, ADHD in the news with Dr. Vince Callahan, founder of the Florida Institute for Neural Discovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of podcast, host Amanda Head is joined by Mike Benz — former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology at the State Department and speechwriter to President Donald Trump in his first term. Together, they break down the newly declassified JFK assassination files and their far-reaching implications.Benz unpacks the CIA's historical influence over the State Department, the creation of USAID as a cover for covert operations, and the agency's infiltration of diplomatic posts, NGOs, and even prostitution rings for intelligence gathering. As Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, he also explores what these revelations mean for U.S. foreign policy today — and what future declassifications might reveal about the JFK assassination and other classified operations covertly accomplished by our federal government.Follow Mike and his ongoing investigative work on X (formerly Twitter): @MikeBenzCyber.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why is USAID suddenly shredding classified documents in what looks like a last-minute deep state cover-up? Buck Sexton is joined by Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, to break down the shocking revelations about USAID’s hidden role in global power plays, funding terrorist groups, and manipulating foreign governments—all while evading oversight. Benz reveals how USAID has been used as a covert intelligence agency, funneling billions to questionable organizations, bypassing presidential approval, and even playing a role in global regime changes. He also exposes the agency’s deep connections to U.S. universities, the media, and unions, raising major questions about taxpayer-funded influence operations. Never miss a moment from Buck by subscribing to the Buck Sexton Show Podcast on IHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts! Connect with Buck Sexton:Facebook – / bucksexton X – @bucksexton Instagram – @bucksexton TikTok - @BuckSexton YouTube - @BuckSexton Website – https://www.bucksexton.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Congressman Andy Biggs outlines the key themes of President Trump's first speech before congress, including the revival of the American dream, foreign investment, and the future of government spending. Congressman Biggs shares his insights on Trump's foreign policy achievements and the expected impact on American governance. Later, Rebecca Grant, Vice President of the Lexington Institute and National Security Analyst, provides insights into the complex dynamics of international relations, analyzing the aftermath of Ukrainian President Zelensky's recent meeting with President Trump. Grant offers her perspective on the potential for a peace deal in Ukraine, the implications of NATO involvement, and the challenges posed by Russia and China. Finally, Mike Benz, the executive director and founder of a leading foundation for Freedom Online, dissects the current state of social media discussions surrounding Ukraine, the implications of President Trump's recent remarks, and the dynamics of NATO and EU relations. Mike provides insights into the complexities of foreign policy and the challenges facing the U.S. as it navigates its position in global affairs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Benz is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, a non-profit watchdog group dedicated to protecting digital liberties and restoring the free and open Internet. He previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology at the US State Department during the Trump administration, where he formulated US policy on Internet diplomacy issues and interfaced with private industry. Benz has been a vocal critic of technological government overreach, most recently in his critiques of USAID and his advocacy against online censorship. He actively brings attention to people and organizations involved in controlling speech on social media. Prior to his role at the State Department, Benz was a White House speechwriter for President Trump and advised on technology policy. Prior to his public sector work, he practiced business law as an attorney in New York, representing technology companies and financial firms. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://ROKA.com | Use Code SRS https://lumen.me/srs https://hexclad.com/srs http://babbel.com/srs https://www.bubsnaturals.com/ | Use Code SHAWN https://patriotmobile.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at http://betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Mike Benz Links: Website - https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@MikeBenzCyberClips Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mikebenzcyber/ X - https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rich talks with former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, the SEAL Team Six member who killed Osama bin Laden, about President Trump's ultimatum to Hamas. Elon Musk says he's not interested in buying TikTok. We look at the potential sale of the social media app with Allum Bokhari, managing director at the Foundation for Freedom Online. Later, Kevin Wade tells how he went from Hollywood screenwriter to show runner of TV's Blue Bloods to novelist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Townhall Review – February 8, 2025

John Solomon speaks with Congressman Abe Hamadeh, in his first interview since taking office, where he discusses critical issues like border policy, tariffs, and the legislative process under President Trump. Later, Mike Benz from the Foundation for Freedom Online, sheds light on the controversies surrounding USAID and government-backed censorship. Lastly, author Angela Stanton King shares her inspiring journey influenced by pivotal figures in American history and her advocacy for criminal justice reform.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Solomon, in partnership with AMAC, explore the significant political shifts occurring in America as we approach the end of January 2025. Join us for an insightful conversation with Congressman Jason Smith, who discusses the upcoming tax reforms and the potential for saving a quarter trillion dollars in spending. We also hear from Congressman Glenn Grothman, who has been at the forefront of combating DEI initiatives in government. Lastly, Mike Benz from the Foundation for Freedom Online shares his insights on the battle against censorship and the importance of free speech. Don't miss this engaging discussion on the Trump 2.0 agenda!To become a member of AMAC and save 47% off of a membership, go to www.amac.us/justnewsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the government has been weaponized against the people, there's been a microscope on the FBI and DOJ. But what about the CIA? In this special, Jesse Kelly sits down with Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online, where they uncover three important CIA scandals you may have never heard of.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's guest is an expert on online censorship and threats to freedom of speech around the world.  Mike Benz is the Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. He is a former State Department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. He is the author of the book, “Weapons Of Mass Deletion”. Change Agents is an IRONCLAD Original  SPONSORS: Firecracker Farm Use code IRONCLAD to get 15% off your first order at https://firecracker.farm/ Allegiance Gold Go to https://ProtectWithAndy.com to get exclusive lowest pricing on the market for select gold bars or call (844) 790-9191 to talk to an account representative. MTNTOUGH Go to ⁠https://mtntough.com⁠ and enter code HALFOFF Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thisisironclad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Tudor talks with Mike Benz, director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, to discuss the evolving relationship between major tech companies and politics, particularly in the context of Donald Trump's influence. They explore the historical use of media as a tool for propaganda, the implications of defamation lawsuits in the political arena, and the integrity of media organizations receiving government contracts. The conversation also touches on the role of oligarchs in shaping media narratives and the rise of grassroots movements challenging established power structures. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Liz Wheeler interviews Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, to discuss the Deep State's latest plot, the Swamp's efforts to stop President-elect Trump, and the news of the day. Plus, Liz reacts to Aaron Rodgers' PSA, Chris Cillizza's apology, and more. SPONSORS: Crowd Health: Go to https://JoinCrowdHealth.com and use code Liz First Liberty: Go to https://FirstLiberty.org/liz, to sign the petition and learn how you can help Pastor Chris and Dad's Place fight back against the City of Bryan. Blaze Merch: https://ShopBlazeMedia.com and use code Blaze10! SPONSORS: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New revelations from Mayorkas confirm China has hacked into U.S. communications, raising major security concerns. Plus, get the latest on the Supreme Court's TikTok case and a critical update on the mysterious drone sightings. Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, joins to expose the shocking collusion between Big Tech, Big Government, and legacy media. From surveillance to media manipulation, Benz pulls back the curtain on it all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NY Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to scrap the Electoral College — but is it a power grab? Pags explains why this move could upend America's balance of power. Plus, Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, exposes the shocking truth about an Obama-era repeal that allows the U.S. government to push propaganda on its own people. This hour pulls back the curtain on two major power plays you need to know about! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  0:00 - Trump and Biden exchange pleasantries in the Oval Office: Hitler was welcomed back   6:49 - New Senate Majority Leader John Thune promises quick confirmation of Trump Cabinet nominees   27:27 - Trump 47 Cabinet    46:47 - Dan Proft Parenting Tip: Mom jailed for letting son walk to town   01:05:28 - Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School, William Jacobson, reacts to Trump's pick for Attorney General. Professor Jacobson is also Founder of LegalInsurrection.com and president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation    01:21:03 - Editor at large for Tablet and host of the new podcast “Rootless”, Liel Leibovitz: Jewish voters' break with the Democrats will elevate our politics. Follow Liel on X @liel   01:34:27 - VP of National Production at the Bettag Group, St Charles IL, Larry Bettag, embraces Vince Lombardi as he calls out Martha Paschke and the “Fox Valley Activists” - For more on the Bettag Group visit bettaggroup.com 01:49:09 - Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online and former State Department cyber expert, Mike Benz, explains how governments weaponize free speech and then use censorship to retain power. For more on the Foundation for Freedom Online visit foundationforfreedomonline.com  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If President Donald Trump wins on Tuesday, will the deep state really just let him waltz back into the White House? According to Mike Benz, the executive director of Foundation for Freedom Online, the Democrats and their globalist allies already have a plot to stage a coup against Trump and block him from returning to the Oval Office. Benz, an expert on the deep state and the intelligence community, explains who is behind this, what role Big Tech will play, and why conservatives should have hope that the plot can be stopped. Will former President Barack Obama, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the rest of the ghouls in the government win? Or will Trump, Sen. JD Vance, and the millions of MAGA men and women prove victorious? Watch to find out! SPONSORS: CrowdHealth: Go to joincrowdhealth.com and use promo code LIZ. BlazeTV: Use code LIZ40 and get $40 off! Go to https://get.blazetv.com/wheeler/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Mike Benz, a free speech & censorship expert, the Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online, a nonprofit watchdog dedicated to protecting digital liberties and restoring the free and open Internet. Benz was in charge of the cyber portfolio for the US State Department during the Trump administration, where he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology. That role included formulating and negotiating US policy on Internet diplomacy issues as well as interfacing with private industry and civil society in the Big Tech space. Prior to that, Benz served as a White House speechwriter for President Trump and advised on technology policy.  In this conversation, we discuss censorship & free speech, U.S. foreign policy including Israel's role. We dive into the censorship industrial complex, the mechanics behind censorship tactics, and the implications for free speech in the digital age. We also touch on the intersection of technology and free speech, particularly in relation to Bitcoin & Nostr, and end on a message of hope for a future of freedom and digital liberties. ► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you! -- SPONSORS -- ►► Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you'll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn  ►► Donate to the Nostr Booth: ⁠https://geyser.fund/project/thenostrboothinitiative⁠ ►► Join me in any of these upcoming events:https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events  Oct. 2024 - Bitcoin Amsterdam (code EFRAT for 10% off) Oct. 2024 - Plan B Forum, Lugano (code EFRAT for 10% off) Nov. 2024 - Liberty in our lifetime, Prague (code Efrat76423 for 10% off) Nov. 2024 - Adopting Bitcoin, El Salvador (code EFRAT for 10% off) May 2025 - Bitcoin Vegas (prev. Nashville) (code EFRAT for 10% off) June 2025 - BTC Prague (code EFRAT for 10% off) -- LINKS -- Mike's Twitter: https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber   Mike's Foundation for Freedom Online: https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/  Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigson Efrat's channels: https://linktr.ee/efenigson Watch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoice Support Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson⁠ Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson -- CHAPTERS – 00:00 Coming Up... 01:16 Intro & Background on Mike 03:31 True Purpose of the Middle East War 08:14 Self-Custody with Trezor (Ad Break) 08:44 Current US Administration Pushing for an Israeli Regime Change? 13:23 The Censorship Industrial Complex: Controlling the Flow of Information 15:47 Netanyahu, Soros, Gas & Poland 19:29 Oct. 7th - Speculations 23:55 Speaking To American Interests 28:50 Prolonging The Middle East War 32:44 "Whole of Society" Defining Censorship & Free Speech 36:25 Sticks & Carrots: The Relationship Between Big Government & Big Corporations 42:28 Whole of Society in Action 50:00 The Redefinition of Democracy: Consensus of Institutions vs. Individuals 55:57 Unveiling Authoritarian Structures & Fight for Freedom 1:00:53 Centralized vs. Decentralized Tech & Freedom of Speech 1:04:51 Nostr & Freedom Tech 1:08:26 Stablecoins Impact on USD, US Global Dominance & Bitcoin 1:16:38 Pro-Freedom vs. Pro-Decentralization (& Nostr & Jack Dorsey) 1:19:25 Mike's Talk at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference 1:23:58 Closing Message: We're Winning

Shawn Ryan Show Key Takeaways  Populism in the new Communism; the same strategies that were used to fight and combat the spread of Communism during the Cold War are now used to fight populismGlobal censorship is not a “left vs right” issue; it is the Blob vs. populism The “Blob” as a term used to describe the entrenched foreign policy establishment in Washington, DCFollowing World War II, the Blob was created to influence events in foreign countries so that those events would suit the interests of the United StatesAfter 1948, the United States needed a new mechanism to maintain its empire – not by military means, but by political vassalage The US would intervene in countries that did not pose any national security threat but had resources or services that supported the interests of the US and its peopleStarting in 2016, the foreign-policy established institutions felt threatened that the entire rules-based international order might collapse due to nations pursuing their own nationalism; to combat this trend, the Blob created its online censorship apparatus around the year 2014 The Blob is used to prevent or handicap the rise of populist political candidates in a given region During the Cold War, the CIA and State Department viewed left-wing Communism as the ultimate threat; today, they view right-wing populism as the threat The US encourages nations to “strengthen its political process” by establishing robust counter-disinformation mechanisms so that it can be aligned with “democracy best practices” Government funding is being used to subsidize a censorship mercenary army; the complex would cease to exist if its funding was cut off “The American people are subsidizing their silence.” – Mike BenzIf the censorship-industrial complex reaches full maturity, then it will become as powerful as the military-industrial complex itself  Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgMike Benz is a former official with the U.S. Department of State, known for his work in international communications and digital freedom. He has played a significant role in advocating for internet freedom and the protection of online expression. Benz is the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, an organization dedicated to promoting free speech and digital rights around the world. His work focuses on countering authoritarian censorship and supporting the rights of individuals to access and share information freely. His background includes expertise in foreign affairs and digital policy, often emphasizing the importance of a free and open internet as a fundamental human right. Through his advocacy, Benz has sought to engage policymakers and the public on issues related to digital governance, censorship, and the implications of technology for democracy. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://preparewithshawn.com https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/the-old-man https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Mike Benz Links: FFO Foundation - https://foundationforfreedomonline.com X - https://x.com/mikebenzcyber IG - https://www.instagram.com/MikeBenzCyber Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mike Benz is a former official with the U.S. Department of State, known for his work in international communications and digital freedom. He has played a significant role in advocating for internet freedom and the protection of online expression. Benz is the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, an organization dedicated to promoting free speech and digital rights around the world. His work focuses on countering authoritarian censorship and supporting the rights of individuals to access and share information freely. His background includes expertise in foreign affairs and digital policy, often emphasizing the importance of a free and open internet as a fundamental human right. Through his advocacy, Benz has sought to engage policymakers and the public on issues related to digital governance, censorship, and the implications of technology for democracy. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://preparewithshawn.com https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/the-old-man https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Mike Benz Links: FFO Foundation - https://foundationforfreedomonline.com X - https://x.com/mikebenzcyber IG - https://www.instagram.com/MikeBenzCyber Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on “The Liz Wheeler Show,” Liz interviews Mike Benz, a former State Department official and the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, about the deep state's latest plot to defeat President Donald J. Trump and the populist movement he created. Who are the actors behind the deep state? Why did President Barack Obama's White House call the censorship industrial complex “the blob,” and how does it work? Will Vice President Kamala Harris win the 2024 election? Did D.C. ever really believe in free speech, or did it just use it to influence countries around the globe like Brazil, Ukraine, and other countries? Then, Liz interviews Andrea Picciotti-Bayer of the Conscience Project to discuss how blue states like Gov. Tim Walz's Minnesota are cracking down on the Christian faith and burdening the foster system in the process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Special Sunday podcast to look back at the rise of COVID-19, monkeypox, bird flu, and look at the efforts to influence the public through disease and fear mongering. Expert interviews with Chief Scientific Officer at ‘The Wellness Company' Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at ‘Yale School of Public Health' Dr. Harvey Risch, and ‘Stanford University' Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Founder of ‘Foundation for Freedom Online' Mike Benz.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The creator of Telegram, one of the world's most popular and uncensored communications platforms, just got arrested by France on a flimsy pretext. Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online joins to discuss the globalist elite's push for major censorship expansions, and whether Elon Musk himself might be at risk. Plus, Charlie talks about Gen X as the group that might save America, and talks to Batya Ungar-Sargon about how RFK increases Trump's appeal to dissident members of the American left.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The creator of Telegram, one of the world's most popular and uncensored communications platforms, just got arrested by France on a flimsy pretext. Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online joins to discuss the globalist elite's push for major censorship expansions, and whether Elon Musk himself might be at risk. Plus, Charlie talks about Gen X as the group that might save America, and talks to Batya Ungar-Sargon about how RFK increases Trump's appeal to dissident members of the American left.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charlie is joined by Trump campaign political director James Blair for an update on the race since the Democrat's new Kamala sugar high, and Allum Bokhari of the Foundation for Freedom Online explains a massive win for free speech by Elon Musk and X.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charlie is joined by Trump campaign political director James Blair for an update on the race since the Democrat's new Kamala sugar high, and Allum Bokhari of the Foundation for Freedom Online explains a massive win for free speech by Elon Musk and X.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Allum Bokhari, managing director at the Foundation for Freedom Online, joins James Poulos to discuss how social media platforms quickly turned to censor any mention of the attempted assassination on Donald Trump. Since the peak of censorship in 2020, platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and others have increasingly bowed to advertiser pressure. Bokhari discusses an upcoming report by the Foundation for Freedom Online that exposes this censorship and the power advertisers hold over free speech. The World Federation of Advertisers, a group that represents 90% of all advertising spent worldwide, has financially throttled media companies that don't comply with its “brand safety.” A cabal of six global advertising agencies are blacklisting conservative media groups and even X itself in order to avoid mass consumer boycotts. Elon Musk transformed Twitter into X and has challenged the establishment by allowing new elites to push back against the old financial elites. Mark Zuckerberg's recent support for Trump also shows the shifting sentiment in Silicon Valley toward Trump.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Newly-released communications from the early days of COVID-19 reveal efforts by National Institutes Of Health (NIH) officials to hide emails about the pandemic's origin. If they secretly had doubts, why did officials blatantly lie to the public about their confidence in a zoonotic origin? Former State Dept. cyber official Mike Benz discusses new info, and Dr. Meryl Nass returns with an update on the WHO Pandemic treaty. The NIH emails included references to a “secret back channel” to Dr. Fauci and steps to “make emails disappear” in case of a Freedom Of Information Act request, discovered in messages with Dr. David Morens and EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak. “We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn't put them in emails and if we found them we'd delete them,” was written in an email sent on June 16, 2020. “[I] learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after I am foia'd but before the search starts,” Dr. David Morens wrote in an email on Feb. 24, 2021. Mike Benz is the founder of Foundation for Freedom Online, a free speech watchdog dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open Internet. He is a former State Department cyber official in the Trump Administration, whose responsibilities included formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Follow Mike at https://x.com/mikebenzcyber and https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/ Dr. Meryl Nass is a board-certified physician with over 40 years of experience in all areas of internal medicine. She is a nationally recognized expert on epidemics who has consulted for government agencies around the world, especially focussing on anthrax, Zika, Ebola, and biological warfare investigations. Follow Dr. Nass at https://x.com/NassMeryl and learn more about Door To Freedom at https://doortofreedom.org 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • TRU NIAGEN - For almost a decade, Dr. Drew has been taking a healthy-aging supplement called Tru Niagen, which uses a patented form of Nicotinamide Riboside to boost NAD levels. Use code DREW for 20% off at https://drdrew.com/truniagen • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew • COZY EARTH - Susan and Drew love Cozy Earth's sheets & clothing made with super-soft viscose from bamboo! Use code DREW to save up to 30% at https://drdrew.com/cozy • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“At the top of the censorship industry food chain are the interlacing suites of CIA cut-outs & State Department-funded NGOs known as US government “soft power” projection capacities,” writes Mike Benz, as opponents to free expression attempt to control speech in Brazil, Pakistan, on Telegram, and at NPR. Mike Benz is the founder of Foundation for Freedom Online, a free speech watchdog dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open Internet. He is a former State Department cyber official in the Trump Administration, whose responsibilities included formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Follow Mike at https://x.com/mikebenzcyber and https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/ Anthony Howard Brown is the author of From Park Bench to Park Avenue: One Man's Journey Out of Homelessness. He is the founder and director of Coordinating & Assisting Recovery Environments (C.A.R.E.) located in Anaheim, California. Since 1999, Anthony's passion is providing specialized treatment for individuals who suffer with mental illness combined with a substance use disorder. With a B.S. in Nursing from California State University Fullerton, Anthony developed and directed a long-term residential treatment model, which has fueled his dream to open a home for those who have suffered from the disease of addiction and mental illness. Follow Anthony at https://x.com/brown_manor and learn more at https://anthonyhowardbrown.com 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • COZY EARTH - Susan and Drew love Cozy Earth's sheets & clothing made with super-soft viscose from bamboo! Use code DREW to save up to 40% at https://drdrew.com/cozy • TRU NIAGEN - For almost a decade, Dr. Drew has been taking a healthy-aging supplement called Tru Niagen, which uses a patented form of Nicotinamide Riboside to boost NAD levels. Use code DREW for 20% off at https://drdrew.com/truniagen • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 GEAR 」 • NANLITE - Dr. Drew upgraded his studio with Nanlite: the best lighting for film, TV, and live streaming podcasts. Bring your vision to life at https://drdrew.com/nanlite 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician with over 35 years of national radio, NYT bestselling books, and countless TV shows bearing his name. He's known for Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Teen Mom OG (MTV), The Masked Singer (FOX), multiple hit podcasts, and the iconic Loveline radio show. Dr. Drew Pinsky received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his M.D. from the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. Read more at https://drdrew.com/about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Some Future Day explores the nuanced and often covert operations of the U.S. government and global cyber diplomacy, censorship, and disinformation, primarily focusing on the role of soft power in shaping international politics. Featuring insights from former Deputy Assistant Secretary Mike Benz, the conversation delves into the strategic use of the internet, media, and technology by the U.S. to influence foreign governments and elections, highlighting the transition from military to soft power post-World War II. It also probes the complex issues of global censorship and disinformation, analyzing the involvement of US Government intelligence agencies. This episode explores the implications of cyber diplomacy and information control on global, political, economic, and cultural landscapes.Mike Benz is a former State Department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. He is the founder of Foundation for Freedom Online, founded as a civil society institution building on his experience in the role of championing digital freedom around the world in the public sector.Sign up for the Some Future Day Newsletter here: https://marcbeckman.substack.com/Episode Links:Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikebenzcyber?lang=enFoundation for Freedom Online: https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/To join the conversation follow Marc Beckman here:YoutubeLinkedInTwitterInstagram

Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz says once “Russiagate” began, the CIA used the predicate of Russian interference in American speech platforms to get its tentacles into American speech. The CIA has a history of overthrowing foreign countries in the name of Democracy. So once disinformation was a threat to Democracy, that gave our intelligence agencies a permanent platform to censor American speech. Benz says Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Liberty and Voice of America were all CIA radio stations and have now become politicized and weaponized. Voice of America was caught during the Trump Administration running ads for Joe Biden's campaign at taxpayer expense. The CIA's job is mind control and they're literally picking sides on a U.S. election. Benz says if we're being honest, it's the Marxist Dem's country. They control the courts, the tanks, the guns, they control elections by controlling whose voice is heard. And if you run against them, you'll end up facing 91 felony charges, 700 years in prison and being bankrupted by judges at their disposal. Benz says Mitre, the largest defense contractor on the Pentagon payroll, is at the helm of U.S. censorship. They developed technology that allowed them to scan and ban millions of pro-Trump tweets. They did the same thing with Covid dissent over vaccines, mandates and lockdowns. Mitre is essentially providing censorship weaponry against U.S. citizens. Bill Barr's job at CIA was to block Congress from getting information on Iran-Contra. He was the mop-up man for the CIA's misdeeds while they were under Congressional scrutiny. It is little surprise that he would play the same role in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal decades later. GUEST: MIKE BENZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FOUNDATION FOR FREEDOM ONLINESee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden) is being called the “most important Free Speech case in the history of America.” Mike Benz – executive director of Foundation For Freedom Online – discusses LIVE. The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments over alleged pressure from federal officials to censor opposing voices on social media platforms during the COVID pandemic, under the guise of “fighting misinformation.” But when the people being censored are experts like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff… who is really spreading misinformation? Mike Benz is the founder of Foundation for Freedom Online, a free speech watchdog dedicated to restoring the promise of a free and open Internet. He is a former State Department cyber official in the Trump Administration, whose responsibilities included formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Follow Mike at https://x.com/mikebenzcyber and https://foundationforfreedomonline.com 「 SPONSORED BY 」 Find out more about the companies that make this show possible and get special discounts on amazing products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • TRU NIAGEN - For almost a decade, Dr. Drew has been taking a healthy-aging supplement called Tru Niagen, which uses a patented form of Nicotinamide Riboside to boost NAD levels. Use code DREW for 20% off at https://drdrew.com/truniagen • PET CLUB 24/7 - Give your pet's body the natural support it deserves! No fillers. No GMOs. No preservatives. Made in the USA. Save 15% at https://drdrew.com/petclub247 • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew • PROVIA - Dreading premature hair thinning or hair loss? Provia uses a safe, natural ingredient (Procapil) to effectively target the three main causes of premature hair thinning and hair loss. Susan loves it! Get an extra discount at https://proviahair.com/drew • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician with over 35 years of national radio, NYT bestselling books, and countless TV shows bearing his name. He's known for Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Teen Mom OG (MTV), The Masked Singer (FOX), multiple hit podcasts, and the iconic Loveline radio show. Dr. Drew Pinsky received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his M.D. from the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. Read more at https://drdrew.com/about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One part of the scheming by the federal government to censor information it dislikes has been uncovered and revealed in a new report by Mike Benz, Allum Bokhari and Oscar Buynevich at the Foundation for Freedom Online. https://tinyurl.com/4sh8at7h #WNDNewsCenter #federalgovernment #censoringinformation #newreport #MikeBenz #AllumBokhari #OscarBuynevich #FoundationforFreedomOnline #USAID #DisinformationPrimer #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Scott is joined by Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online. They discuss Benz's background and how he came to become an expert in the federal government's efforts to censor and control the internet. They then go through some of the more pressing censorship threats from the establishment playing out right now. Discussed on the show: Foundation for Freedom Online Tucker Carlson Interviews Mike Benz Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine A Good American (IMDb) Mike Benz is the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online. He formerly worked for the State Department. Follow him on Twitter @MikeBenzCyber This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott's interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Download Episode. Scott is joined by Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online. They discuss Benz's background and how he came to become an expert in the federal government's efforts to censor and control the internet. They then go through some of the more pressing censorship threats from the establishment playing out right now. Discussed on the show: Foundation for Freedom Online Tucker Carlson Interviews Mike Benz Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine A Good American (IMDb) Mike Benz is the founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online. He formerly worked for the State Department. Follow him on Twitter @MikeBenzCyber This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott's interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY

Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, joins James Poulos to discuss protecting digital liberties and the growing government control over censorship and access to information. As conflicts like Russia and Ukraine unfold, censorship on social media platforms further complicates the discourse, hindering efforts toward constructive dialogue and peace. While the U.S. government limits online free speech domestically, it continues to hold a weakened global position compared to China (Huawei) and Taiwan (chip manufacturing), both of which have technological superiority.   Sponsors: Join the New Founding Talent Network. Find your next hire – https://newfounding.com/talent Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Censorship has evolved radically and, in recent years, a new industry of mercenary censorship armies has emerged, according to Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. These armies are available for hire and compete for multi-million-dollar government contracts. Can democracies survive the rise of this censorship industrial complex? How have governments deployed hybrid warfare tactics developed for overseas combat on their own citizens? Where is the West headed? ⭕️Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

This we look more deeply at the Interview of Mike Benz (from Foundation for Freedom Online) and what it tells us about the history and state of censorship in the United States.  We also consider what lessons the information holds for the freedom movement in the US (and around the globe).Robert Malone Substack with interview between Mike Benz and Tucker CarlsonHow to Order Your “What's Left?” Shirthttps://youtu.be/nItmqkrpWHU To see all our episodes go to:What's Left? Website: https://whatsleftpodcast.com/iTunes: Spotify: Bitchute: YouTube:  LBRY: Telegram :Odysee:  Googleplaymusic: Rumble  

Vince speaks with Mike Benz, Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online and Former State Department diplomat about the National Security State being the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States.       For more coverage on the issues that matter to you visit www.WMAL.com, download the WMAL app or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 3-6pm.   To join the conversation, check us out on social media: @WMAL @VinceCoglianese.      Executive Producer: Corey Inganamort @TheBirdWords See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2/20/24  Hour 3      Kevin O'Leary explains why New York is a “loser state” for criminalizing Donald Trump's completely legal loan. Laura Coates is extremely insecure. Vince speaks with Mike Benz, Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online and Former State Department diplomat about the National Security State being the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States.       For more coverage on the issues that matter to you visit www.WMAL.com, download the WMAL app or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 3-6pm.   To join the conversation, check us out on social media: @WMAL @VinceCoglianese.      Executive Producer: Corey Inganamort @TheBirdWords See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the Patrick Henningsen Show on TNT Radio which aired on February 7, 2024, Patrick talks with Mike Benz director of the Foundation for Foundation for Freedom Online, to discuss the next level of U.S. government and Big Tech's censorship industrial complex which uses new A.I. tools to scan users' speech across platforms and throttle discourse and access to the digital public town square. Leading the way are Meta (Facebook & Instagram) and Google/YouTube. This and other U.S. intelligence cut-out organisations like the Stanford Internet Observatory and Newsguard, are set to play a role in overall in Orwellian-style speech control efforts in this 2024 Election cycle, and beyond. All this and more. More from Mike: X/Twitter Foundation For Freedom Online  TUNE-IN LIVE to TNT RADIO for the Patrick Henningsen Show every MON-FRI at 11AM-1PM (NEW YORK) | 4PM-6PM (LONDON) | 2AM-4AM (BRISBANE): https://tntradio.liv

What You Need to Know about is my new coinage: ‘the one-term presidency of the modern era.' There is no chance we are going to have another two-term President back-to-back. The incentive for the narrative machine is to promote constant crisis, drama, and negative energy, which quickly shifts the political winds throughout the four years. Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online posted on X this week on how the narrative beats facts, but vibes can beat the narrative. Vibes, the energy of how you do things, can sway an election. Trump had the vibe in 2016, but in 2020 his vibe was on the defensive. The vibe/energy has swung once again, and now Biden is losing grip on the political vibe of the nation. Steve Goreham, Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of four books on energy, climate change, and sustainable development, joins Ed to discuss his most recent book, Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. Steve destroys the fantasy of net-zero emissions and dismantles the hope of widespread electric vehicles. Learn more at stevegoreham.com. Dr. Louis Perron, author of Beat the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections, joins Ed to discuss the important lessons that can be gained from election losses. Ed and Dr. Perron also discuss the way that messaging through technology has impacted the way elections work, as well as the populist moment occurring in the United States and Europe. Wrap Up: The man who leaked Trump's tax returns received the maximum sentence for his crime: 5 years. Some may say that this is a sign that the system is working, and they are right! Our justice system is working here, and it should be celebrated! But it doesn't mean that the entire justice system is working. There is still work to be done.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Online censorship in America.  If you don't think it's happening, you'll want to hear from Mike Benz, Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Online censorship in America.  If you don't think it's happening, you'll want to hear from Mike Benz, Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marty sits down with Mike Benz, the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online to discuss digital censorship, corporate control, prosecution of uncooperative politicians, and more. Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber FFO website: https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/ 0:00 - Intro6:17 - Censorship Industrial Complex13:06 - Turning point in 201615:08 - Twitter files and wrongspeak terminology22:44 - NGO participation26:07 - Corporate control32:30 - Russian gas37:15 - Biden laptop43:09 - Justice Department can kill you48:40 - Destabilization ops53:07 - End goal of control57:33 - Methods of resistance1:01:11 - Monetary censorship and Bitcoin1:04:11 - We're gonna win Shoutout to our sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠River⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠CrowdHealth⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Talent Co⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TFTC Merch is Available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shop Now⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the TFTC Movement: Main ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clips ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YT Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Marty Bent: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠

Show notes and Transcript... Dr Sebastian Gorka joins Hearts of Oak to discuss the latest bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Dr Gorka is a unique figure in the US media and political scene as he is originally a Londoner with Hungarian background which gives him a deep understanding of European culture and politics.  And as someone who served in the Trump White House he has seen many attacks from the left and from The GOP on DJT.  The most recent indictment (No 3) is just the latest attack from the establishment who fear President Trump more than anyone else. There is no end to their hate and fear of MAGA.  Dr Gorka also discusses election integrity and the lack of action to protect this process before moving onto the latest sorry saga in the Hunter soap opera (an appointed special counsel) and we finish up by looking at Dr Gorka's 2016 book "Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War" and why this topic is no longer part of the conversation. Dr. Sebastian Gorka was named as the newest Talk Show Host on the Salem Radio Network Platform, and began his show AMERICA FIRST on New Years Day, 2019. His ascent to this role could not have been more unusual, or more of a true “American Story.” To find out how it began, you have to go back to the 1950s, to Communist controlled Hungary. Hoping for freedom after the utter devastation of the Second War, the proud nation of Hungary was instead taken over by a Stalinist dictatorship subordinate to Moscow. One young man, who had suffered under the Nazis, decided to resist and so Paul Gorka created a secret Christian student organization to subvert the Communist stranglehold of his homeland. Paul was eventually betrayed by the British double-agent Kim Philby, arrested by the Secret Police, tortured and then given a life sentence for fighting for democracy and liberty. After two years in solitary confinement, two years down a prison coal mine, and two years in the central political prison in Budapest, Paul was eventually liberated by the brave freedom fighters of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. With the 17-year old daughter of a fellow political prisoner, Paul escaped across the minefields along the border of Western Hungary to a life of liberty in the UK, where Paul and Susan would be married and their son, Sebastian, was born. With parents who had lived as children under fascism and then escaped Communist Hungary, Sebastian was raised to love freedom. And his love of talk-radio developed early. As a child he would listen late into the night to the shows of the London Broadcasting Company with a small transistor radio under his pillow. It was with this special family background, and growing up under the influence of the Conservative warrior Margaret Thatcher, that Sebastian learned how to fight totalitarian ideologies, be they Fascism, Communism, or Global Jihadism. He would end up serving in the British Army reserve in a Military Intelligence unit, then after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the first freely-elected Conservative administration in Hungary. The after the 9/11 attacks he became a professor on a Pentagon-funded counter-terrorism program run out of Germany. In 2008 he moved to America with his family where he continued to work for the Defense Department and become a proud American citizen in 2012. He obtained his doctorate in Political Science from Corvinus University in Budapest and was a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In Washington, he served as Associate Dean for Congressional Affairs and Relations to the Special Operations Community at National Defense University and has also taught on the Masters program at Georgetown University. In 2020, President Donald Trump named Gorka to the National Security Education Board. This board provides strategic consultation and was established by congressional act in 1991. Dr. Gorka has briefed the CIA, the DIA, the US Navy Seals, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, served as an expert for the DoJ during the Boston Bombing trial, and testified before Congress on the threat of Global Jihadism. He remains a guest instructor at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, at Fort Bragg, the home of the Green Berets. Connect with Dr Gorka.... X:  https://twitter.com/SebGorka?s=20 GETTR:  https://gettr.com/user/sebgorka TRUTH:  https://truthsocial.com/@SebGorka SUBSTACK:  https://substack.com/@sebastiangorka WEBSITE:  https://www.sebgorka.com/ Interview recorded 16.8.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share!   Subscribe now Transcript (Hearts of Oak) Hello, Hearts of Oak, and welcome to another interview coming up in a moment with Dr. Sebastian Gorka. You will, of course, know him from his media time, but also his time in the White House. But we start this conversation looking at his background. He was born in the UK, grew up in London, also lived in Budapest for 16 years. Hungarian is his first language, and he brings a unique perspective, I think, to the US, understanding UK and US culture and politics more than most others. But then we of course get on to President Trump and his latest indictment. Number three, he will need a trophy cabinet to collect these. We discuss what exactly is happening. We discuss election integrity. We discuss David Wise being the special counsel, on the Hunter Biden case. And then we end up with something completely different, looking at Islam or Islamism or Jihad. The first book I read of Sebastian was Defeating Jihad, The Winnable War. A lot to pack in, in 45 minutes.  Dr. Sebastian Gorka, it is wonderful to have you with us today. Thank you for your time.  (Dr Sebastian Gorka) Thank you for inviting me today.  Not all. And obviously, @SebGorka on Twitter, GETTR, Substack is there, Sebastian Gorka, America first, what, every day, Monday to Friday, 3 p.m. Eastern Time. There's a lot. And of course your latest book, The War for America's Soul, is out and available. Lots to discuss, but if I can mention your website on your merchandise. I loved it. sebastiangorkastore.com. First of all, your FBI, Fascist Bureau of Intimidation, but then your LGBTQ, which I thought was lovely. You looked well in LGBTQ, let's get Biden to quit. I loved it. Yeah, it's sad. The FBI t-shirt, Fascist Bureau of Intimidation is now our second hottest selling item on the website, SebGorkaStore.com. And even before that, I designed a mug. With a photograph of the Gestapo and an FBI agent in his raid jacket with the big letters FBI. And this was six months ago, or maybe it was after the raid on President Trump's home. And I said, you know, 80 years from Germany to the United States, the FBI, Biden's Gestapo. And my producer, who's a pretty forward-leaning guy, pretty hardcore conservative, he said, that's a little bit too much, Seb. Yeah, that's a little bit. That is like the number one item, because sadly, and this kind of, I don't wanna go into too much detail here, but before I joined the White House, I did a lot of work with the FBI. I trained them. I trained literally thousands of agents and intelligence analysts on the ideology of Jihad. That was my job with my wife. We had the only external contract providing that kind of training to the Bureau. And I was proud to do that. Now, after what the FBI has become, raiding the homes of pro-life ministers, raiding President Trump's home on a trumped up garbage documents charge. If the FBI knocked on my door right now, Peter, I'd tell them, go talk to my lawyers, sod off. I mean, this is what has happened to America under the radical leftist neo-Marxist cabal that is today's Democrat Party. Its bonkers and I want to end with that touch on the Islam on the jihad because Defeating Jihad was at the first time I came across a book by you and I remember, it is this book here Defeating Jihad, fantastic book but we'll we will end off on that but if I can maybe start with, I mean you don't you don't need an introduction even for a UK audience, it's your, but you're not the typical, U.S. media or political personality. Your military, national security and political background is British and European. Do you want to touch on that because that sets you apart from many others? Yeah, I appreciate it. So yeah, I've had a pretty crazy whirlwind of a career. My parents escaped communist Hungary during the revolution in 56. My father created a secret Catholic student's organization in college to undermine the communist takeover. He was betrayed by Kim Philby, one of the Cambridge Apostles, one of the worst traitors of the Cold War. He was arrested at the age of 20, tortured and given a life sentence in a political prison. After six years, he was liberated literally by the revolutionaries who captured a Soviet tank in 56. And with the 17-year-old daughter of a fellow prisoner, he escaped to the West over a minefield, They made it to the UK. A few years later, they were married and those are my parents. I grew up in the UK, speaking Hungarian. My first language was Hungarian. I learned English in preschool and kindergarten. Hungarian is a difficult language. It is, yeah. According to the State Department, it is the hardest non-pictographic language. So if you leave out Chinese and Korean, it's the hardest non-pictographic because it's not related to anything. You can learn the Romance languages, the Indo-European languages. It's irrelevant. it is this kind of Martian language in the middle of Europe. I think it wires your brain differently. It's good for cognitive capacity if you can speak that language and other ones. Then in college, so I went to London University. In college, a buddy of ours used to disappear every two weeks and wouldn't come out drinking with us. One Friday, I said to him, dude, you're coming out with us this weekend. He said, no, I can't. Where are you going? And he refused to tell me. And I said, well, I'm not going to let you go unless you tell me where you're going. And he said, I can't tell you, but why don't you come with me? And I was this long-haired philosophy and theology student. I had hair down to my chin and kind of like on a bet, on a dare, I said, oh, okay. So I followed my buddy to this unmarked building in downtown London, this red brick building. And it turned out to be the headquarters of the Military Intelligence Reserve. So the intelligence cause TA element in London, and it was selection weekend. And I was given a pair of overalls with about 30 other people. And I'd driven in a lorry to the middle of nowhere. And I did selection for this weird iconoclastic bunch of eccentrics in the intelligence core. And I loved it. I mean, linguists, interrogators, photographic interpreters. So I joined the territorial army intelligence core in college, loved it. Then the whole communist system collapses. And because I spoke Hungarian, French, German, and English and had served in a British military unit. That parlayed itself into a job working for the first conservative, freely elected government in Hungary. So I ended up working as an assistant to the deputy minister of defense, helping the former Warsaw Pact Hungary get into NATO. So, that was milestone number two. And then just to cut it short, 9-11 hits, I had a bit of background in counterterrorism. And I'm invited to teach on a Pentagon-funded counterterrorism training course out of Germany. There's this beautiful base the Americans never gave back to the Germans after World War II. It's called Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Marshall Center. And for four years, I would commute between Budapest and Bavaria. And I teach counterterrorism to a group of international officers. And eventually that translated to me and my American wife and our kids moving to America. I became a U.S. citizen, a professor of irregular warfare at National Defense University, at the Marine Corps University. And the last kind of milestone is the book you held up. The book, Defeating Jihad, got onto people's radar screens and helped me to get a job in the White House working for President Trump. I was deputy assistant to the president for strategy based upon all the work I'd done in counter-terrorism. And now I have a national radio show, And God's been very good to me, Peter. Funny, from Ealing to Budapest to D.C, it's quite a journey.  Can I, because in the US, I think probably from my point of view, there's only maybe Steve Hilton and Raheem Kassam who have an understanding of what happens over in Europe, both in being heavily involved in politics in the UK. So you're kind of a fish out of water there, and see things quite differently. I mean, the whole election integrity stuff, I know watching the votes coming in in London many times, it is a paper ballot. We would never consider an electronic voting machine. So you see things quite differently that way. Well, I do. And I'm kind of galled by the fact that, look, there's only one flag on the moon, and it's America's flag. And there's six of them. So we managed, out of all the nations on God's green earth, to send men to the moon half a dozen times. And we can't have modern elections run in ways that are fitting for a superpower. I mean, think about it. We don't have voter ID. In many states of the union, you don't have to prove who you are when you go and vote. You say who you are. They look up your name and your address. And if you can confirm the address in the big record in front of the poll worker, you're given a ballot and you vote, which is asinine. Democrats say showing an ID at the polling station is voter suppression of minorities, which of course is the most bigoted thing you can say because you're saying black people and brown people are too stupid to get a driver's license is really what the Democrats are saying. And not only that, thanks to COVID and many other things, we don't have an election day. Here in Virginia, I live just outside Washington, D.C. in Virginia, which is now run by a conservative governor, but even he has failed to change the fact that in the Commonwealth of Virginia, this probably shock your listeners, and if you don't believe anything I say, please do look it up. We have 45 days of voting. We vote for a month and a half before the election, which is just asinine. I mean, Mexico, which is in the midst of a drug-fueled insurgency, has voter ID. India, with a billion people, has voter ID. And the fact that we can't count our votes on election day and it's one day, and we don't have voter ID, it tells you why things like 2020 can happen. Okay, let's talk about President Trump. We've just seen another indictment. I'm kind of thinking he's gonna have to have a trophy cabinet of all these indictments because they're building up. What on earth is going on? Well, yeah, he posted on his social media site, Truth Social, last week after the third indictment here in Washington, DC. He, you know, tongue-in-cheek, he said, well, one more indictment and I've got this election sewn up. It's insane, I mean, utterly insane. And he's right. I mean, every time, you know, they drop another, you know, facetious, false indictment, his popularity actually increases. What's going on? I'll tell you what's going on. President Trump is a force of nature. In 2016, he got 64 million votes. Four years later, after being called a racist, a misogynist, an Islamophobe, a Nazi, and a white supremacist for four years by the mainstream media, he got 10 million more votes, which is unheard of. He got 74 million votes, the most of any incumbent president in history, despite the fact that the Democrats mailed out 81 million ballots to be not voted on on election day, but to be filled in by somebody somewhere and then posted back or dropped into collective ballot harvesting boxes. So despite all of the shenanigans, he gets more votes than any incumbent president. Now they don't have COVID, to have that cover of mailing out ballots, and they're very worried. The Uni-party, and look, I said this when I was in the White House. I said it when I left the White House, Donald Trump won despite the Republican Party and not thanks to the Republican Party. He is a deadly threat to the vested interests of the Uni-party, as Steve Bannon calls it. Why? Because he's not owned by any of their special interests. He's not owned by the Chamber of Commerce that owns the GOP. He's not owned by Big Oil or Big Pharma. He's not owned by the unions like the Democrats are. He is a clear and present danger to the quote-unquote political elite that just wants to control the lives of 330 million people, irrespective of what those people want. So, you know, the Democrats have to put him in prison. He's now, depending on which poll you look at, Peter, he's 20 to 40 points ahead of his nearest rival, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. I mean, he is the de facto Republican nominee, and in the latest polling, he's beating Biden as well. So they're just desperate. They are throwing everything at him. This latest indictment, I know your listeners probably won't watch it or read it. This latest indictment is so Kafka-esque. It's so KGB tactics. They have indicted Mayor Giuliani, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, who put five Mafia dons in prison when he was a prosecutor in New York prior to becoming the mayor of New York. They have indicted him for conspiracy because he retweeted a tweet saying, please call your state representatives and senators to request a special session so we can verify the results of the election. That tweet is deemed to be a felony by this woman, this prosecutor in Fulton County, who by the way, a little bit of a delicious tidbit, is the daughter of a former Black Panther extremist. I mean, you cannot make this stuff up. They have to stop him because he's not controlled by them.  And I mean what happened to Rudy was intriguing living through 9-11 watching America's mayor as he became and absolutely loved and yet because of his support for Trump the establishment just turns on him. I mean apart from Trump that he is the biggest example of the lunacy of the establishment. Yeah I mean look at you know go back and just Google 9-11 and Rudy Giuliani, and you'll see the cover of Newsweek, the cover of Time. He's standing there at ground zero on the pile of rubble. He's getting the New Yorkers back on their feet after 3,000 Americans and others were murdered by jihadi terrorists. And now he's some kind of traitor who should be given 200 years in prison. But look, it's not about Rudy. I mean, it happens to everybody. It happens to me or anybody else who works for the president or supports the president. But look at what happened to him. Remember Donald Trump five years ago. No, no, let's go six years ago. Let's go 10 years ago. Donald Trump was loved by everybody. I mean, rap singers rapped about being the Donald. You know, he would have lauded cameo appearances in, you know, Home Alone 2, the movie. He had, for 14 years, the most popular reality TV show in America. The Apprentice was the most popular reality TV show in America. He was loved. Everybody wanted to be the Donald. Everybody. The second he comes down the escalator, The second, he says, I'm a conservative and I want to be your president, he's the devil incarnate. This tells you what you're dealing with. This is who the left have become. This isn't your grandfather or even your father's Democrat party. Strong national security, pro-life, Catholics. The likes of JFK or Scoop Jackson, they would not be allowed into today's Democrat party. Today's left is open borders, if you're white, you're an oppressor, America is bad. This is what we're dealing with. So I've long said on my radio show, forget political labels, forget little r or little d, it's not conservative or liberal, it's not Republican or Democrat. The dividing line today in America and for much of our civilization is whether you love the country or not. If you love America, then you're in one tribe. If you hate America, then you're going to vote Democrat. Think about Obama, and it all starts with Obama. Obama said what during the election campaign? He said, I am going to fundamentally change this nation. Now, I don't know if you're married, Peter, but imagine if you said to your wife, I'm going to fundamentally change you, right? I don't think your wife would be too happy. You don't fundamentally change anything you love. You fundamentally change things you don't like or you hate. This is the perverse situation our civilization is in. We are being lorded over by people who hate the countries they come from and the civilizations they live in. I mean, translate it into another sector. Imagine you're a businessman and you utterly detest Coca-Cola. Why would you want to become the CEO of Coca-Cola, right? I mean, I don't know how these – it's perverse. Why would you wish to be in charge of that which you detest, unless, of course, you want to destroy it? Well, we're seeing that self-hatred across Europe, all on the left, where the left has abandoned its working class roots and become part of this woke agenda. But then the whole MAGA is a pushback on that and it's something different. It's not just the normal Republicans wanting states to be read. It's actually winning back the country and as someone in the UK it's fascinating watching the rise of the MAGA movement that puts your own country first which should be the norm. Yeah, I mean, think about it. You are lambasted. People are literally cancelled if they're public figures and they put on a red hat with the, letters M A G A. And what does that hat say? Is it a swastika? Is it the hammer and sickle, which would be fine, of course, for the left? No, it means make America great again. So you must be excoriated. You must be completely isolated and shunned from polite society if you want to make your country great again. I mean, it's truly beggar's belief, and again, it's not politics. I don't read autobiographies. I don't have the patience for autobiographies, but there's two. If you want to understand what's happened to America, there's two that I can't recommend more, and they're really life-changing, especially Andrew Breitbart's Righteous Indignation. His book on how as a drunk, mindless student at Tulane University, he suddenly became a conservative because he saw what they were doing to a black judge because he dared to be a nominee to the Supreme Court, and a conservative. This is the Clarence Thomas hearings. And chapter six of his book, Righteous Indignation, if you want to understand what the left has become, he paints it all from Antonio Gramsci in an Italian prison cell all the way through the Frankfurt School to Alinsky to Clinton to Obama. It is a masterpiece. So his book, Read Righteous Indignation. If you want to know what happened to conservative politics and to America, I was in the White House and it was Thanksgiving weekend and my boss Steve Bannon said, hey, you've got to read this book by J.D. Vance called Hillbilly Elegy. And I'm like, not interested. My wife had a copy of it. And it was Thanksgiving weekend. Went away for the long weekend. And I read the whole book that weekend. And the interesting about J.D. is, he's from a hillbilly family. He's from a real country, working class family. And he was no Trump supporter. When he wrote this, he was not a fan of Trump. Now he's a very Trumpian senator in DC. He's one of only two senators out of a hundred that I'll let on my show because he's a citizen politician, not a career politician. And in his book, which you can read in two days, three days. He just chronicles what happened to the working class in America through the eyes of his family. So how the people who literally built America, who travelled from Tennessee, from Kentucky to Ohio, became the factory workers, facilitated this incredible blossoming of prosperity and freedom after World War II, how basically the Republican Party took a massive dump on them 50 years ago and said, we can make stuff cheaper in China, we can make stuff cheaper in Mexico, we don't need factories in America, and consciously destroyed these families and said, yeah, fentanyl, who cares about fentanyl? Who cares about working class overdoses? We need to get the next shareholder meeting to demonstrate double digit growth for our companies. So this is why MAGA, this is why Brexit, this is why Maloney, this is why Modi. Because it's not party politics, it's people saying, you know what, my nation matters, and the people who built that nation matter, and we don't want to have career politicians who don't give a crap about the will of the people who say, I will represent you, become elected, and then do the polar opposite of what they were elected to do. So it's not about President Trump. It's about a global phenomenon, of the recrudescence of national sovereignty. And it's so fascinating that, you know, the word populism is a dirty word, which is, you have to stop for a second. Populism? You mean policies that are popular with the majority of the people, that's bad. If that's bad, you're either a communist or a fascist. And by the way, let's be clear, fascism is a left-wing policy. If you look at who Mussolini was, who invented fascism, it wasn't Hitler. The fasces is an ancient Roman symbol. If you look at the fact that he was an ardent communist before he invented fascism in the 1920s, you have to understand what these people are, whether they're AOC, whether they're Bernie Sanders, or whether they're Obama, whether they're you know, Klaus Schwab. These are fascists. No completely. We're seeing, actually it's exciting, the rise in populism, with many populist parties doing extremely well in Europe, until the poll, until the election, often in Spain, once we're going to have a majority with the party on the right, and suddenly they don't get that. Now the AFD, they're discussing banning the AFD because they're polling second in Germany. It's kind of the same tactics that we're seeing in America, more brazen, but we're seeing those same tactics to silence populism in Europe as well. Yeah, there's, this isn't well understood, so how we got here and what happened in 15 and 16, I strongly recommend to your viewers, there's a genius level guy who's been on my show several times, he was the head of cyber for the State Department in the Trump administration, His name is Mike Benz, B-E-N-Z, and you should get him on your show. I'm happy to connect you. And Mike Benz kind of, he made the light bulb go off for me because he explains, and he has a website called the Foundation for Freedom Online, where he has all the receipts, all the documents, all the inside video conferences from, you know, the global elitists admitting what they're doing. And Mike Benz, his huge contribution is the following. The foreign policy elite, which is totally Uniparty, right? I mean, let's be clear. The Republicans, the Democrats, when it comes to being a global police and blah, blah, blah, there's been a unanimity on that since the 1990s. And the foreign policy elite, quote unquote, built a complete superstructure to target and undermine populism abroad, whether it's Orbán in Hungary, whether it's Brexit with Obama coming and telling the British, you better not vote for independence because you'll be at the back of the queue, giggle, giggle, right? So for 30 years, they've created a system to undermine populist movements in other countries saying, oh, that's not good for us. So let's have a system where we're funding these NGOs, undermining conservatives because they're scary and fascist. And then what happened after 30 years of building this infrastructure to target the likes of Orbán or Brexiteers, when Trump comes along, what do they do? It's like the gun turrets of the ship turn from facing outwards to facing inwards. And the quote-unquote disinformation tools, the censorship tools, were targeted against populists at home. Again, do not take my word for it. Go and look at the unclassified documentation of how the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were meeting with Twitter executives in Palo Alto on a weekly basis to have individual accounts deleted. How the story of Hunter Biden's laptop, which is, you know, all of the crimes of the Biden family, was suppressed by Palo Alto. And when that story broke, when the Hunter Biden laptop story broke four weeks before the election in 2020, you know, I tried to retweet it on my account. You couldn't, if you cut and paste the link onto your Twitter and you try to press post, it would refuse to post. Now that, you know, that's okay, I guess, I guess if you're trying to undermine an election in Cuba, but if you're doing it at home in front of your own citizens, that's when the light bulb goes off and you realize, yeah, these are fascists using fascist tools to control information to what end? Not to protect us from some boogeyman, but to maintain their grasp on power. Well, let me ask you on that issue, because I think a few days ago, program was sweetheart deal, David Wise is now special counsel. And I was trying to scratch my head trying to understand this because it seemed to be good, but then why is this happening now? For what reason? What is Biden playing at in putting this in play now? And then it was really David Wise was good, then not. So what is happening on that? But we've had Miranda Devine, Garrett Ziegler. We've discussed the stuff on Hunter, but suddenly this appears out of nowhere. Well, it's very easy to explain why, because they have to protect the Biden's for the next 15 months. I mean, remember, David Weiss is the Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. attorney who investigated Hunter Biden for four years, waited until last month to give him a sweetheart deal with universal immunity that he didn't disclose to the judge, and the judge exploded in Wilmington, Delaware, to give him a universal immunity deal on the felonious handgun purchase, the non-payment of taxes. He waited for all the other crimes to expire past their five-year statute of limitations. So he's the guy who's protected the Biden's for five years. And now, because of the pressure on the Biden's, his boss at the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, makes him, quote-unquote, special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden even further. Why? Well, very simply, if he's still under investigation, you can't ask questions about him in Congress. That's the buried lead. If an individual is under quote-unquote active investigation, when the attorney general is next testifying in front of Congress, and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee says, We want to talk about the $20 million that was sent to Hunter Biden from China and then split up amongst the family, including Joe. The attorney general says, excuse me, Mr. Chairman, this is an ongoing case I cannot comment. So it's just blatant political top cover from an existing biased individual. And by the way, it's also fascinating, if you read the statute, the statute in black and white says a special counsel is appointed when there is conflict of interest. The reigning regime, because of their implied connections, cannot fairly investigate a case. You hire somebody from outside of government. You find a lawyer, an attorney, a judge who's not part of the federal government to be the ombudsman, to be the fair investigator. You can't hire your flunky deputy from Wilmington. So the whole thing is in contravention of statute itself. But why? Because they have to protect Biden for the next 15 months. On to, at CPAC, I heard many of the candidates speak, except DeSantis, and I heard him speak in Florida a month before at CNP. And as much as I love what DeSantis has done in Florida, but my thinking is if Trump is in the ring, you don't get in the ring. You can't win. And like some of the other candidates, they're maybe looking for a position in the White House. DeSantis thinks he can beat Trump or, I mean, explain that because Trump has an unassailable lead. Why would you be crazy enough to step into the ring and try and beat him? Well, look, ego. I mean, why are people like that fat embarrassment, Chris Christie, or losers like Asha Hutchinson that nobody's heard of? Why are they running? Or Mike Pence. Mike Pence's political career after January 6th is dead. I mean, it is forever dead. The guy who said 48 hours, I played the video on my show multiple times last week, the guy who says two days before January 6th. Yes, there were serious problems with the election, and we're going to find out, and I'm going to do my duty as president of the Senate. And then he caves, the yellow belly completely collapses. That guy, nobody's, anybody who supported President Trump, or 74 million of them, none of them are going to vote for him, who ran and hid. So why the heck is he running? So there's a saying in Hungary that these are the people who if they jumped off their ego onto their IQ, they'd be committing suicide. So a lot of these people, it's just totally out of touch ego. For Vivek, who's been very deferential to President Trump, but has said, look, there are people who will vote for me who won't vote for Trump, which is fine. You can say that. But he's the guy who went to Miami the day of the president's arraignment, said, if I'm elected, I'm going to pardon President Trump. And he's sitting there with a truth social hat on, President Trump's media app. This guy is playing it very smart. I had him on my show multiple times and said, Vivek, you're not going to win, But I'd love to see you as the Jared Kushner of a second Trump term. You're an incredibly successful private business entrepreneur. You should be the innovation guy in the next Trump cabinet. So he's playing a very canny game. When it comes to DeSantis, I said on my radio show maybe two years ago, or at least a year and a half ago, if he's smart. He comes in as the vice president. He supports President Trump, he runs with him, and then in 2028, he just slides into the top slot. If he knows what he's doing, that's what he does. And he has just, it's like, you know, during the Vietnam War, it's like there's peace protesters that poured gasoline on themselves, poured petrol on themselves, and then, you know, self-immolated. This campaign has self-immolated for a couple of very clear reasons. Number one, and even off the record, his fans will tell you this, he's a charismatic black hole. I mean, he has no charisma. I think he's on the scale. I think he's a little bit on the scale and he doesn't have, he has a little bit of that autistic incapacity to socialize. That's why his wife is essential. His wife is this beautiful, charming, erudite woman. She kind of makes up for his complete lack of charm. So number one, you gotta charm voters. Number two, his, I call it his honour deficit. I mean, what he said on the Monday after the brag, the New York indictments were leaked against President Trump was appalling. I mean, just utterly appalling. He made two quips about, I don't know about hush money for porn stars, giggle, giggle, right, as the governor of Florida. And then he says, I'm not gonna get involved because I've got business in Florida. Hey, dickhead, President Trump lives in Florida. Look at the map. Mar-a-Lago is in Florida. He is a citizen of the state over which you preside, and you're not gonna get involved. And lastly, if you know his backstory, the most galling of all, he's a former JAG. He's a former member of the Judge Advocate Corps, which means what? He's a former military prosecutor. Of all people, the probity of the judiciary should be of importance to him. And he says, I'm not gonna get involved. When a prosecutor in Manhattan deletes the statute of limitations. Expunges it so he can charge President Trump with something that happened years ago that didn't happen, and you don't have an opinion? I mean, utter, utter honesty and integrity deficit. And you know, the dumbest thing of all? All he needed to say, just one sentence, this is an outrage and it should outrage all conservatives and I will not stand for it as governor of the Florida, of the state in which President Trump lives. One sentence and he would have looked like a leader. And then one additional thing, I'm not sure percentage wise, but for a lot of people who care about foreign policy, his utter U-turn on Ukraine was a disaster. When he says on, I think it was Tucker's show, So, we don't care about this, it's not relevant, he gets a lot of crap, and then 72 hours later he says, oh yes, Ukraine is important, dude. This is the only thing you had to prove something on, okay? You've been running Florida, you've got a little bit of domestic credentials, the one thing you have to convince people of is your foreign affairs national security credentials. When you do a 180 on war in Europe, not a good look, not a good look. What are your thoughts on how we've seen three indictments, as I said, the more they do, the more Trump's support goes up. And I guess every MAGA wants that mugshot of Trump because what they're trying is not working. His support going up and they thought they could I guess embarrass conservative voters to make them think he was too toxic. It's not working and yet they keep trying. Do they keep on that tactic? Do they try something else? Because at the moment it's not working.  Well look you're trying you're trying to get me to, channel lunatics. What they're doing isn't rational. What they're doing is. When you believe, I mean, let's just say one example. This individual has been labelled by the left, by Democrats, and by the mainstream media, the mainstream media, as a Nazi and a white supremacist, as an anti-Semite. This is the man who, after 23 years of broken promises from Clinton to Bush to Obama, 23 years of presidents saying, yeah, yeah, we're going to move the embassy, broken promises for 23 years, President Trump comes in and says, yeah, we're going to move the embassy and we're going to recognize Jerusalem. That guy whose daughter converted to Judaism, whose grandchildren are Jewish, he's the anti-Semite? I mean, it is a cult. I mean, TDS used to be a joke. Trump derangement syndrome, we threw that around as a joke. It's not a joke. It's a clinical condition. When you accuse a man of being a dictator. Who did nothing dictatorial, in fact, had the most open administration ever, was giving impromptu press conferences for 40 minutes as he's getting on Marine One, the helicopter, That guy's a dictator?, but the people you voted for are literally sending teams of armed FBI agents to bust down the door of a pro-life preacher in Philadelphia in front of his seven screaming kids. But that administration, they're the good guys. So I can't, look, my job, my whole life has been strategy. That's the thing I do. That was my title in the White House. That's based upon reality, empirical evidence, on logic. I can't tell you what their strategy is because it's based upon rank hatred, recuperation, and just irrationality. I mean think about this every indictment, every indictment has made him more popular and raised him more money. I had Lord Black on my show yesterday, Lord Conrad Black, and he said, he made this point that kind of like, boom, you know, kind of obvious, but yeah. Nothing they've done, nothing they've done has hurt him. Zero. So why are they doing it? Because they're insane, and because they think that if they can actually put him in prison, they can get Biden re-elected. And the joy of it all, and this is what I say with some, you know, frequency on my show, is the other side, they're evil bastards. I mean, really, if you are okay with having a 14-year-old girl, healthy girls, breasts removed in the name of transgenderism or chemically castrating a 12-year-old boy because he thinks he's a girl. If you're okay with that, you're actually demonic. I mean, you are pure evil in league with the dark one. So no doubt, evil, cunning evil bastards. But they're also stupid. This is the nice thing about... It's also dangerous because stupid people can be dangerous, but they're really dumb. They don't have a Newt Gingrich. They don't have a Victor Davis Hanson on their side. Thank the good Lord, all right? I mean, they're really dumb because they haven't even read the Constitution, Peter. The Constitution of the United States is pretty clear about who can be president. You have to be in your 30s. You have to be 35 or older. You have to be a natural born citizen, born to Americans. You don't have to be born in America. That's not correct. You have to be born to American citizens and you have to be a permanent resident in America for at least the last 14 years before the election. That's it. You can be a felon. You can have been charged and convicted of crimes that would lead to 400 years in prison. It doesn't matter. You can still be the president. That's how stupid they are. I just want to finish off on the book I mentioned, obviously your latest book, The War for America's Soul, I think that was 2019, and that is available. But I said at the beginning, defeating jihad, the winnable war. Just to finish, just on a completely different subject, the issue of, and for years I've studied Islam, for 10, 12, 13 years, and it's that cultural clash between the freedoms that Islam has and the freedoms the West have and then jihad, Islamism coming out of that. And it's not a topic that seems to be on the table for discussion a lot. And I was intrigued going to CPAC and it wasn't even mentioned and yet that is a threat just as China is a threat, just like many other issues are a threat. And I wanted just to finish on kind of your thoughts on that and why it is not part of the mainstream discussion. Well, it's not part of the mainstream discussion here in America, and for a very good reason. I mean, think about it. ISIS was on the front pages for years and years and years. I mean, American citizens being beheaded on video, the Yazidi Christian hostage-taking, Jordanian fighter pilots being burnt alive in cages. People forget ISIS was a thing. This was the biggest jihadi insurgency in history. I mean, they controlled multiple countries in the Middle East. And when we came in, we said no. President Trump said, unleash Special Operations Command, unleash Fort Bragg, unleash Delta, and get the stinking lawyers out of the way. I mean, like Shakespeare said, kill the lawyers first. We got the lawyers out of the way, and what happened? We have been told by Obama that ISIS is a generational issue. You're just going to have to suck it up and live with it. He actually said a generational issue. President Trump said, no, kill them all. Within five months of us coming into the administration, the caliphate, the caliphate of ISIS had ceased to be. People forget that. I mean, who talks about ISIS now? Nobody because we let our boys give them all a dirt nap. That's why it's not on the radar screen. Does it mean it's over? No, absolutely not. Does it mean that there won't be jihadi attacks in America because this administration is letting 6,000 illegal immigrants across the border every single day? You think you got it bad with a couple of rubber dinghies in the channel? Try 6,000 a day. We've had at least 40 people on the terrorist watch list come across the border that we know of, that we know of. So I'm not saying it won't come back. Why it's not on the radar screen? Because of the bloody good job our guys did back in 2016 and 2017 and 2018. But no, if you want to understand the threat of jihad, you have to understand that... The biggest lie since 9-11 is that they're not Muslims, right? That Al-Qaeda and ISIS are not Muslims.  Well, no, that's actually a lie. Read the Quran. Read chapter 9, verse 29. Hunt down the infidel after the holy month and kill them all unless they surrender. That's not Seb Gorka speaking. That's not Bin Laden. that's actually the word of God as quote-unquote dictated to the illiterate merchant Muhammad you know in Medina in Mecca 1400 years ago. The idea that these are perversions of Islam. Yeah you're an apologist for those who are living a very pure form of Islam because who was Muhammad? He wasn't quote-unquote the last prophet. Muhammad was, if he existed at all, he was what? He was a warrior. He is a man who went to Medina and literally wiped out a whole Jewish tribe, literally wiped out whole Arab polytheistic tribes. To the last man jackal, he killed them. That's who Muhammad was. The idea that it's the religion of peace. Well, then learn Arabic. Islam doesn't mean peace. It means submission. Submission to what? To the will of Allah. And what kind of God is that? It's a very different God from the Jewish God. It's a very, very different God from the Christian God. It is a God of zero relationship to the believer and a man, not a man, a deity who can be utterly capricious. If Allah says murder is good tomorrow, it's good. And he can change his mind the day after and say it's bad. He's not truth. God for Christians is the good. There's no such conceptualization of the good. You're not allowed to describe God, right? You're not allowed to talk about his essence. That is blasphemy. To say that you know God, or you are in relationship with God is totally haram. It is total blasphemy in the Islamic faith. But these are the ground truths that you're not allowed to talk about. But people need to read the Quran, read the Quran, read the reliance of the traveller, read the actual Muslim texts about Muhammad, and then understand why... Here's the last example. Why? There's no such thing as an Arab motorcar. Not only is there no such thing as an Arab motorcar, Peter, there isn't an Arab bicycle. Think about that. That tells you about what this deformed theology has done, to knowledge, truth, and science. The best book on all of this, and it's a short read, it's about 250 pages, is my friend Robert Riley's The Closing of the Muslim Mind. His discussion on the deformed theology that explains why Al-Qaeda, why no Muslim bicycles, Why 9-11? It is mandatory. It was one of the texts I made mandatory for the officers that I trained when I was still a professor.  Dr. Sebastian Gorka, I appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. God bless all of you, all of your viewers. Thank you, Peter. Keep doing what you do.

Mike Benz is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online and former State Department diplomat.In this thought-provoking episode, we delve into the world of AI censorship and its impact on the internet and society. From the rise of tech giants to the spread of misinformation and disinformation, we explore critical moments that shaped the digital landscape, including the 2016 election. Join us as we analyze the role of AI in politics, elections, and potential conflicts, and raise essential questions about the future of information control in an AI-driven world.Michael A. Benz, is Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Benz founded FFO as a civil society institution building on his experience in the role of championing digital freedom around the world in the public sector. He previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology at the US State Department from Fall 2020 through January 2021. Prior to this, Mike served as a White House speechwriter for President Trump and advised on tech matters. Before that, he served as speechwriter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Dr. Ben Carson and was a policy adviser on economic development. Before his roles in the public sector, he practiced business law for seven years as an attorney in New York, primarily representing technology companies and financial firms.Learn more about Mike Benz's work: foundationforfreedomonline.comHighlights00:00 Into01:58 Mike's Trajectory04:40 Tech Companies & Censorship07:30 Difference between Misinformation & Disinformation09:52 2016 - The Year Everything Changed on the Internet15:50 Did Trump Win The Election Because of Russian Internet Bots?27:02 How to Identify Bot Accounts.31:07 The Threat of Censorship Using Artificial Intelligence.40:00 What Information Is Fed to The AI Programs?46:40 Has AI reached perfection?50:50 Will AI become the new nuclear weapon?54:10 Will AI Ignite a War Between Elon Musk and The US Government?1:03:40 The Implications of AI Censorship during the 2024 Presidential Election.Thank you for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a loved one.If you are listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, rate the show and write a review with your thoughts -- I do read what you write and it helps more than you think!// LINKS //Website: https://throughconversations.comNewsletter: https://throughconversations.ck.page/0c18d1ab61// SOCIAL //Twitter: https://twitter.com/thruconvpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thruconvpodcast/?hl=enYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl67XqJVdVtBqiCWahS776g

Democrat prosecutors are locking away Trump electors, meme-makers, and even President Trump himself. Meanwhile, Republican attorneys general are doing...what, exactly? Charlie talks to Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online about the need for AGs to be bringing criminal cases against the left's leaders, and not just civil ones. Plus, Kane of Citizen Free Press joins to assess the timeline of the Trump trials. For Exclusive Charlie Kirk content, head to members.charliekirk.com TODAY to sign up!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the Patrick Henningsen Show on TNT Radio which aired on July 18, 2023, Patrick talks with former US State Dept. official and executive director of Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz, about the rise of the public-private mass-censorship industry based in Washington DC and Silicon Valley, but whose tentacles now span internationally. Federal agencies like the DHS (and its censorship arm CISA), the FBI and others - have built a command and control communications pipeline directly into Big Tech, and deploy weaponized A.I. tools - where they can enact speech control operations and manipulate political outcomes, and even elections. We discuss its emergence following Crimea's breakaway from Ukraine in 2014, and its proliferation in the aftermath of the 2016 election of Trump. All this and more. More from Mike: https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber ▶️ TUNE-IN LIVE to TNT RADIO for the Patrick Henningsen Show every MON-FRI at 12PM-2PM (NEW YORK) | 5PM-7PM (LONDON) | 2AM-4AM (BRISBANE):
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HUGE win for free speech and French Police say its a Civil War in FranceGod bless Judge Terry A. Doughty. On Independence Day, 2023, federal Judge Terry A. Doughty signed an order enjoining a long list of corrupt federal bureaucrats and their corrupt agencies from acting in concert with their corrupt partners in social media to suppress, censor or limit the speech of Americans. What an incredible time it is in America where this had to go before a judge. Were D.C. not so corrupt and spiritually captured, the people who create joint-actor status with social media companies to censor Americans would have been fired immediately and had their pensions canceled. It might be coincidental but, a few days before this decision, Elon Musk took an action at Twitter which would make it much harder for the Silicon Valley and Government Censorship Program to continue operating what Mark Benz, Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online calls The Censorship Death Star. We will need all the free speech God allows us to make sure our neighbors are aware of what's going on in France, as the Mockingbird Media continues ignoring what the French Police Union now calls a Civil War. Given what we know about the government and social media companies being one entity, why should we believe the Mockingbirds are any different? What does God's Word say? No matter how hard they try, the Silicon Valley and Government Censorship Program cannot cancel The Truth. John 14:6 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.Episode 941 Links:BREAKING! Judge issues order on Missouri v. Biden on the 4th of July!Report: ‘Erica Marsh' Twitter Account Is a ‘Liberal Dystopian Bot,' Has Been Suspended; “This person does not exist. I repeat. Does NOT exist. This is election interference starting early. I will not even link to their page because it is dangerous to continue to follow and engage. This is an account bot linked to Belgium.”Wow. Musk has no idea the DARPA rattlesnake he just stepped on by this doing this… My take on @elonmusk's new rate limit policy, from the lens of the censorship industry:Gab.com Refuses To Comply With Irish “Hate Speech” and “Anti-Prayer Zone” LawsJen Psaki Claims GOP 'Recruiting' Muslims to 'Go After' Trans PeopleParis Resembles War Zone as France Endures Sixth Night of Migrant-Driven Rioting ; Le Figaro newspaper: “Police and gendarmes are paying a heavy price, with 700 injured” overnight.French police union declares a “civil war” in France: it's us or the violent minorities…US State Department-Trained French Activist/Arsonist Pouring Fuel on the Fire; Rokhaya Diallo is just doing what she was trained to doVideo Games And TikTok Are To Blame For French Riots, Says Prez; The country has seen several days of unrest after police fatally shot a 17-year-old delivery driver in ParisReport: Army's so-called “transgender” members are exempt from physical fitness standards…Charges Dropped Against Jordan Williams, NYC Man Accused in Stabbing Death of Homeless Man on Subway; “Under New York law, a person is justified in using deadly physical force when they reasonably believe it is necessary to use such force to defend themselves or others from imminent use of deadly or unlawful physical force” 4Patriots https://4patriots.com Protect your family with Food kits, solar generators and more at 4Patriots. Use code TODD for 10% off your first purchase. Alan's Soaps https://alanssoaps.com/TODD Use coupon code ‘TODD' to save an additional 10% off the bundle price. BiOptimizers https://magbreakthrough.com/todd Use promo code TODD for 10% off your order. Bonefrog https://bonefrog.us Enter promo code TODD at checkout to receive 10% off your subscription. Bulwark Capital http://KnowYourRiskRadio.com Find out how Bulwark Capital Actively Manages risk. Call 866-779-RISK or visit KnowYourRiskRadio.com Patriot Mobile https://patriotmobile.com/herman Get free activation today with offer code HERMAN. Visit or call 878-PATRIOT. RuffGreens https://ruffgreens.com/todd Get your FREE Jumpstart Trial Bag of Ruff Greens, simply cover shipping. Visit or call 877-MYDOG-64. SOTA Weight Loss https://sotaweightloss.com SOTA Weight Loss is, say it with me now, STATE OF THE ART! Sound of Freedom https://angel.com/freedom Join the two million and see Sound of Freedom in theaters July 4th. GreenHaven Interactive https://greenhaveninteractive.com Digital Marketing including search engine optimization and website design.

Episode 190 - Blockzeit 797340 - von und mit Kemal und El Bitcoin Ambassador Mike Benz von der Foundation for Freedom Online  https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1675254646942896128?s=20  https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/  Bitcoin Beach Wallet heißt jetzt Blink https://blink.sv  Bitcoin Island in Boracay https://twitter.com/BtcRetreat  MotivNGO in Peru https://twitter.com/motivngoglobal  Bitcoin Sommerfest in der Heide Anmeldetool https://nuudel.digitalcourage.de/2sR9Rw2HLfWePCWI https://hotel.bitcoinblock.study  Lightning Addresse vom Bitcoin Block: bitcoinblock@getalby.com Bitcoin für Anfänger auf Türkisch selambitcoin.com  Yirmibir Website: yirmibir.org Nakamoto Enstitüsü https://www.nakamotoenstitusu.com/ Bitcoin Zahlungen in der Türkei https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0fmdJBGuKg bitcoin++ in Berlin https://btcplusplus.dev/berlin23  Adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador https://adoptingbitcoin.org  Sponsoren und Freunde BitBox02 Bitcoin-only Edition - 5% Rabatt für die Einundzwanzig Community mit Code “einundzwanzig” — 10% für 10 BitBoxes mit Code “einundzwanzig10”. Stack Deine Sats mit Pocket Bitcoin. Einundzwanzig Merch bei Copiaro. Bei ShopinBit kannst du über 800.000 Produkte mit Bitcoin kaufen. Weitere Links Besuche unsere Website und diskutiere mit, in unserer Telegram-Community. Verfolge die neusten Schlagzeilen im Newsfeed. Die Community-Tutorials auf YouTube. Lass uns einen Shoutout da.

In this interview, Mike Benz, executive director for the Foundation for Freedom Online, discusses how the censorship industry works and how we can stop it.   

STARTS AT 9PM ET: Join me for an important discussion with Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, and a former State Department official. To learn more about investing in gold visit - http://goldwithseth.com, or call 720-605-3900 For high quality storable foods and seeds, visit http://heavensharvest.com and use promo code SETH to save 15% on your order. Save up to 66% at https://MyPillow.com using Promo Code - MAN LISTEN VIA PODCAST: Apple: https://apple.co/3bEdO1S Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3u9k8Vd Podbean: https://bit.ly/3A4Jasy iHeart: https://bit.ly/3npOBea FOLLOW AND WATCH: Website: https://maninamerica.com/ Telegram: https://t.me/maninamerica Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@maninamerica Banned.Video: https://banned.video/channel/man-in-america Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/ManInAmerica YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/maninamerica Gab: https://gab.com/ManInAmerica Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ManInAmerica Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/maninamerica Twitter: https://twitter.com/ManInAmericaUS Parler: https://parler.com/user/ManInAmerica SafeChat: https://safechat.com/channel/2776713240786468864 Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maninamerica2 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maninamericaus

It's just not hyperbole. Last week FBI whistleblowers gave Congressional accounts on illegal censorship & lawfare targeting for conventional press. Foundation for Freedom Online provides the .ppt proving DHS is targeting their primary political opponents. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

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Mike Benz, former Dep Asst Secretary at the US State Department, and founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online joins us LIVE in-studio to talk about internet censorship, the Twitter files, when this stuff started (and how bad it is going to get). __________________________________________________________________________ Today's podcast supported by https://CatholicVote.Org If you are interested in supporting the going litigation against the FBI over religious liberties, you can visit CatholicVote.Org. Our product sponsor is PatriotCoolers.com: Use Promo code "KYLE" for 10% off and free shipping over $50. A big thanks to both of these great organizations.

For this One on One, Sebastian talks to Mike Benz, founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online, about how the American foreign policy establishment is weaponizing the intelligence agencies and counter-terrorism techniques against American conservatives.Support the show: https://www.sebgorka.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join us on "How Ordinary People Are Building Financial Freedom Online" and learn from the best in the business about how you too can create a life of freedom and financial independence through the power of the internet. In this episode, we are going to dive into some student interviews and learn about their strategies and success stories. Join The Cashflow challenge hereWant to connect with us & learn more about passive income online then join our Private Facebook group - Passive Buddies Facebook GroupGet More Info At The Passive Buddies Website Click here

Mike Benz, Executive Director for Foundation for Freedom Online, explains how the Pentagon tasked and paid internet research company Graphika to censor information online regarding Covid's origin. Additional interviews with Louisianan Congressman Mike Johnson on the U.S. government not having the power to determine what free speech is true or acceptable, and how accountability is coming for those in government who violated the First Amendment, and Citizens United President Dave Bossie.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The First Amendment prohibits the U.S. government from censoring speech. In this episode, drawing from internal Twitter documents known as “the Twitter files” and Congressional testimony from tech executives, former Twitter employees, and journalists, we examine the shocking formal system of censorship in which government employees are using their influence over private companies to indirectly censor speech in a way that they are clearly prohibited from doing directly. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via PayPal Support Congressional Dish via Patreon (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North, Number 4576, Crestview, FL 32536. Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! View the shownotes on our website at https://congressionaldish.com/cd270-the-twitter-files Background Sources Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD224: Social Media Censorship CD141: Terrorist Gifts & The Ministry of Propaganda (2017 NDAA) CD113: CISA is Law The Twitter Files "Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary.” Matt Taibbi. Jan 4, 2023. Racket News. Matt Taibbi “The Democrats' Disastrous Miscalculation on Civil Liberties.” Matt Taibbi. Mar 12, 2023. Racket News. “#1940 - Matt Taibbi.” Feb 13, 2023. The Joe Rogan Experience. Hunter Biden Laptop Story “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.” “13. They did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. ‘The FBI basically came to us [and] was like, “Hey... you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There's about to be some kind of dump similar to that”'” [tweet]. Michael Shellenberger [@ShellenbergerMD]. Dec 19, 2022. Twitter. Influence, Propaganda, and Censorship “From the Twitter Files: Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb secretly pressed Twitter to hide posts challenging his company's massively profitable Covid jabs.” Alex Berenson. Jan 9, 2023. Unreported Truths. “Twitter Aided the Pentagon in Its Covert Online Propaganda Campaign.” Lee Fang. December 20, 2022. The Intercept. “Facebook, Twitter dismantle a U.S. influence campaign about Ukraine.” Aug 24, 2022. The Washington Post. Angus King Takedown Request Spreadsheet Audio Sources Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, the Twitter Files March 9, 2023 House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Witnesses: Matt Taibbi, Journalist Michael Shellenberger, Author, Co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition Clips 17:20 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): In the run up to the 2020 Presidential election, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, in his deposition in Missouri versus Biden, said that he repeatedly, repeatedly, informed Twitter and other social media platforms of the likelihood of a hack and leak operation in the run up to that Presidential election. He did it even though there was no evidence. In fact, he said in his deposition that we hadn't seen anything, no intrusions, no hack, yet he repeatedly told them something was common. Yoel Ross, Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, testified that he had had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and other folks regarding election security. During these weekly meetings, federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected a hack and leak operation. The expectations of a hack and leak operation were discussed throughout 2020. And he was told they would occur in a period shortly before the 2020 Presidential election, likely in October. And finally, he said "I also learned in these meetings, that there were rumors that a hack and leak operation would involve Hunter Biden." So what did the government tell him? A hack and leak operation was coming. How often did the government tell him this? Repeatedly for a year. When did the government say it was going to happen? October of 2020. And who did the government say it would involve? Hunter Biden. 19:35 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): How did they know? Maybe it's because they had the laptop and they had had it for a year. 21:50 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Finally, as if on cue, five days later on October 19, 51 former intel[ligence] officials signed a letter with a now famous sentence "the Biden laptop story has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." Something that was absolutely false. 25:25 Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): And the Republicans have brought in two of Elon Musk's public scribes to release cherry-picked, out-of-context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative, Elon Musk's chosen narrative, that is now being paroted by the Republicans, because the Republicans think that these witnesses will tell a story that's going to help them out politically. 25:50 Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): On Tuesday, the majority released an 18 page report claiming to show that the FTC is quote, "harassing" Twitter -- oh my poor Twitter -- including by seeking information about its interactions with individuals before us today. How did the report reach this conclusion? By showing two single paragraphs from a single demand letter, even though the report itself makes clear that there were numerous demand letters with numerous requests, none of which we've been able to see, that are more demand letters and more requests of Twitter. 28:05 Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): Mr. Chairman, Americans can see through this. Musk is helping you out politically and you're going out of your way to promote and protect him and to praise him for his work. 28:15 Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): This isn't just a matter of what data was given to these so-called journalists before us now. 31:35 Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): Mr. Chairman, I'm not exaggerating when I say that you have called before you two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them. 32:30 Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): We know this is because at the first hearing, the Chairman claimed that big government and big tech colluded to shape and mold the narrative and suppress information and censor Americans. This is a false narrative. We're engaging in false narratives here and we are going to tell the truth. 37:35 Michael Shellenberger: I recognize that the law allows Facebook, Twitter, and other private companies to moderate content on their platforms and I support the right of governments to communicate with the public, including to dispute inaccurate information, but government officials have been caught repeatedly pushing social media platforms to censor disfavored users and content. Often these acts of censorship threaten the legal protection social media companies need to exist, Section 230. If government officials are directing or facilitating such censorship, and as one law professor, it raises serious First Amendment questions. It is axiomatic that the government cannot do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly. 41:50 Matt Taibbi: My name is Matt Taibbi, I've been a reporter for 30 years and a staunch advocate of the First Amendment. Much of that time was spent at Rolling Stone magazine. Ranking Member Plaskett, I'm not a "so-called" journalist. I've won the National Magazine Award, the I.F Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written 10 books, including four New York Times bestsellers. 45:35 Matt Taibbi: Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter for deamplification or deplatforming, but to firm's like Pay Pal, digital advertisers like Xandr, and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to law abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant, faceless, unaccountable, algorithmic judge. 44:00 Matt Taibbi: Again, Ranking Member Plaskett, I would note that the evidence of Twitter-government relationship includes lists of tens of thousands of names on both the left and right. The people affected include Trump supporters, but also left leaning sites like Consortium and Truthout, the leftist South American channel TeleSUR, the Yellow Vest movement. That, in fact, is a key point of the Twitter files, that it's neither a left nor right issue. 44:40 Matt Taibbi: We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government from the FBI, the DHS, the HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at [the Department of] State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi private entities doing the same thing, including Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership, Newsguard, the Global Disinformation Index, and many others, many taxpayer funded. A focus of this fast growing network, as Mike noted, is making lists of people whose opinions beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation or malinformation. That last term is just a euphemism for true but inconvenient. Undeniably, the making of such lists is a form of digital McCarthyism. 1:01:00 Matt Taibbi: So, a great example of this is a report that the Global Engagement Center sent to Twitter and to members of the media and other platforms about what they called "the Pillars of Russian Disinformation." Now, part of this report is what you would call, I think you would call, traditional hardcore intelligence gathering where they made a reasoned, evidence baseed case that certain sites were linked to Russian influence or linked to the Russian government. In addition to that, however, they also said that sites that quote, "generate their own momentum," and have opinions that are in line with those accounts are part of a propaganda ecosystem. Now, this is just another word for guilt by association. And this is the problem with the whole idea of trying to identify which accounts are actually the Internet Research Agency and which ones are just people who follow those accounts or retweeted them. Twitter initially did not find more than a handful of IRA accounts. It wasn't until they got into an argument with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee that they came back with a different answer. 1:06:00 Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL): Before you became Elon Musk's handpicked journalists, and pardon the oxymoron, you stated this on Joe Rogan's podcast about being spoon fed information. And I quote, "I think that's true of any kind of journalism," and you'll see it behind me here. "I think that's true of any kind of journalism. Once you start getting handed things, then you've lost. They have you at that point and you got to get out of that habit. You just can't cross that line." Do you still believe what you told Mr. Rogan? Yes or no? Yes or no? Matt Taibbi: Yes. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL): Good. Now, you crossed that line with the Twitter files. Matt Taibbi: No. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL): Elon Musk -- It's my time, please do not interrupt me. Crowd: [laughter] Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL): Elon Musk spoon fed you his cherry-picked information, which you must have suspected promotes a slanted viewpoint, or at the very least generates another right wing conspiracy theory. 1:11:20 Matt Taibbi: That moment on the Joe Rogan show, I was actually recounting a section from Seymour Hersh's book, Reporter, where he described a scene where the CIA gave him a story and he was very uncomfortable. He said that "I, who had always gotten the secrets, was being handed the secrets." Again, I've done lots of whistleblower stories. There's always a balancing test that you make when you're given material, and you're always balancing newsworthiness versus the motives of your sources. In this case, the newsworthiness clearly outweighed any other considerations. I think everybody else who worked on the project agrees. 1:14:45 Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC): Richard Stengel, you know who that is? Matt Taibbi: Yes, he's the former, the first head of the Global Engagement Center. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC): I want the American people to hear from him for 30 seconds. Richard Stengel: Basically, every country creates their own narrative story. And, you know, my old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the "chief propagandist" job. We haven't talked about propaganda. Propaganda. I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. 1:24:20 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): December 13, the very first letter that the FTC sends to Twitter after the Twitter files, 11 days after the first Twitter file, there have been five of them come out, the FTC's first demand in that first letter after the Twitter files come out is identify all journalists. I'm quoting "identify all journalists and other members of the media" to whom Twitter worked with. You find that scary, Mr. Taibbi, that you got a federal government agency asking a private company who in the press are you talking with? Matt Taibbi: I do find it scary. I think it's none of the government's business which journalists a private company talks to and why. I think every journalist should be concerned about that. And the absence of interest in that issue by my fellow colleagues in the mainstream media is an indication of how low the business has sunk. There was once a real esprit de corps and camaraderie within Media. Whenever one of us was gone after, we all kind of rose to the challenge and supported -- Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): It used to be, used to be the case. Matt Taibbi: Yeah, that is gone now. 1:28:50 Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): How many emails did Mr. Musk give you access to? Michael Shellenberger: I mean, we went through thousands of emails. Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): Did he give you access to all of the emails for the time period in which? Michael Shellenberger: We never had a single, I never had a single request denied. And not only that, but the amount of files that we were given were so voluminous that there was no way that anybody could have gone through them beforehand. And we never found an instance where there was any evidence that anything had been taken out. Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): Okay. So you would believe that you have probably millions of emails and documents, right? That's correct, would you say? Michael Shellenberger: I don't know if -- I think the number is less than that. Matt Taibbi: Millions sounds too high. Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): Okay. 100,000? Matt Taibbi: That's probably closer. Michael Shellenberger: Probably, yeah. Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI): So 100,000 that both of you were seeing. 1:37:10 Matt Taibbi: There were a couple of very telling emails that wepublished. One was by a lawyer named [Sasha Cardiel???], where the company was being so overwhelmed by requests from the FBI and in fact they, they gave each other a sort of digital High Five after one batch, saying "that was a monumental undertaking to clear all of these," but she noted that she believed that the FBI was essentially doing word searches keyed to Twitter's Terms of Service, looking for violations of the Terms of Service, specifically so that they could make recommendations along those lines, which we found interesting. 1:48:15 Michael Shellenberger: And we haven't talked about Facebook, but we now know that we have the White House demanding that Facebook take down factual information and Facebook doing that. 1:48:25 Michael Shellenberger: And with Matt [Taibbi]'s thread this morning we saw the government contractors demanding the same thing of Twitter: accurate information, they said, that needed to be taken down in order to advance a narrative. 1:49:55 Matt Taibbi: You know, in conjunction with our own research, there's a foundation, the Foundation for Freedom Online, which, you know, there's a very telling video that they uncovered where the Director of Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) talks about how CISA, the DHS agency, didn't have the capability to do election monitoring, and so that they kind of stepped in to "fill the gaps" legally before that capability could be amped up. And what we see in the Twitter files is that Twitter executives did not distinguish between DHS or CISA and this group EIP, for instance, we would see a communication that said, from CISA, escalated by EIP. So they were essentially identical in the eyes of the company. EIP is, by its own data, and this is in reference to what you brought up, Mr. Congressman, according to their own data, they significantly targeted more what they call disinformation on the right than on the left, by a factor I think of about ten to one. And I say that as not a Republican at all, it's just the fact of what we're looking at. So yes, we have come to the realization that this bright line that we imagine that exists between, say the FBI or the DHS, or the GEC and these private companies is illusory and that what's more important is this constellation of kind of quasi private organizations that do this work. 1:52:10 Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): What was the first time that Mr. Musk approached you about writing the Twitter files? Matt Taibbi: Again, Congresswoman that would — Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): I just need a date, sir. Matt Taibbi: But I can't give it to you, unfortunately, because this this is a question of sourcing, and I don't give up... I'm a journalist, I don't reveal my sources. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): It's a question of chronology. Matt Taibbi: No, that's a question of sourcing — Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Earlier you said that someone had sent you, through the internet, some message about whether or not you would be interested in some information. Matt Taibbi: Yes. And I refer to that person as a source. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): So you're not going to tell us when Musk first approached you? Matt Taibbi: Again, Congresswoman, you're asking me, you're asking a journalist to reveal a source. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): You consider Mr. Musk to be the direct source of all this? Matt Taibbi: No, now you're trying to get me to say that he is the source. I just can't answer — Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Either he is or he isn't. If you're telling me you can't answer because it's your source, well, then the only logical conclusion is that he is in fact, your source. Matt Taibbi: Well, you're free to conclude that. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Well, sir, I just don't understand. You can't have it both ways. But let's move on because -- Unknown Representative 1: No, he can. He's a journalist. Unknown Representative 2: He can't, because either Musk is the source and he can't talk about it, or Musk is not the source. And if Musk is not the source, then he can discuss [unintelligible] Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): No one has yielded, the gentlelady is out of order, you don't get to speak — Multiple speakers: [Crosstalk] Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): The gentlelady is not recognized...[crosstalk]...he has not said that, what he has said is he's not going to reveal his source. And the fact that Democrats are pressuring him to do so is such a violation of the First Amendment. Multiple speakers: [Crosstalk] Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): I have not yielded time to anybody. I want to reclaim my time. And I would ask the chairman to give me back some of the time because of the interruption. Mr. Chairman, I am asking you, if you will give me the seconds that I lost. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): We will give you that 10 seconds. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Thank you. Now let's talk about another item. When you responded to the ranking member, you said that you had free license to look at everything but yet you yourself posted on your...I guess it's kind of like a web page...I don't quite understand what Substack is, but what I can say is that "in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions." What were those conditions? She asked you that question and you said you had none. But you yourself posted that you had conditions? Matt Taibbi: The conditions, as I've explained multiple times -- Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): No sir, you have not explained, you told her in response to her question that you had no conditions. In fact, you used the word licensed, that you were free to look at all of them. All 100,000 emails. Matt Taibbi: The question was posed, was I free to to write about — Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Sir, did you have any conditions? Matt Taibbi: The condition was that we publish — Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Sir, did you have any conditions? Yes or no? A simple question. Matt Taibbi: Yes. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): All right. Could you tell us what conditions those were? Matt Taibbi: The conditions were an attribution of sources at Twitter and that we break any news on Twitter. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): But you didn't break it on Twitter. Did you send the file that you released today to Twitter first? Matt Taibbi: Did I send the...actually I did, yes. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Did you send it to Twitter first? Matt Taibbi: The Twitter files thread? Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): That was one of the conditions? Yes or no, sir. Matt Taibbi: The Twitter files thread actually did come out first. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): But sir, you said earlier that you had to attribute all the sources to Twitter first. What you released today, did you send that to Twitter first? Matt Taibbi: No, no, no, I post I posted it on Twitter Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): First. First, sir, or did you give it to the Chairman of the Committee or the staff of the Committee first? Matt Taibbi: Well, that's not breaking the story, that's giving...I did give — Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): So you gave all the information that you did not give to the Democrats, you gave it to the Republicans first, then you put it on Twitter? Matt Taibbi: Actually, no, the chronology is a little bit confused. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Well then tell us what the chronology was. Matt Taibbi: I believe the thread came out first. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Where? Matt Taibbi: On Twitter Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): On Twitter. So then you afterwards gave it to the Republicans, and not the Democrats? Matt Taibbi: Yes, because I'm submitting it for the record as my statement. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Did you give it to him in advance? Matt Taibbi: I gave it to them today. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): You gave it to them today, but you still have not given anything to the Democrats. Well, I'll move on. 1:57:20 Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Now in your discussion, in your answer, you also said that you were invited by a friend, Bari Weiss? Michael Shellenberger: My friend, Bari Weiss. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): So this friend works for Twitter, or what is her....? Matt Taibbi: She's a journalist. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Sir, I didn't ask you a question. I'm now asking Mr. Shellenberger a question. Michael Shellenberger: Yes, ma'am, Bari Weiss is a journalist. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): I'm sorry, sir? Michael Shellenberger: She's a journalist. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): She's a journalist. So you work in concert with her? Michael Shellenberger: Yeah. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): Do you know when she first was contacted by Mr. Musk? Michael Shellenberger: I don't know. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): You don't know. So you're in this as a threesome? 2:00:10 Michael Shellenberger: Reading through the whole sweep of events, I do not know the extent to which the influence operation aimed at "pre-bunking" the Hunter Biden laptop was coordinated. I don't know who all was involved. But what we saw was, you saw Aspen and Stanford, many months before then, saying don't cover the material in the hack and leak without emphasizing the fact that it could be disinformation. Okay, so they're priming journalists to not cover a future hack and leak in a way that journalists have long been trained to in the tradition of the Pentagon Papers, made famous by the Steven Spielberg movie. They were saying [to] cover the fact that it probably came from the Russians. Then you have the former General Counsel to the FBI, Jim Baker, and the former Deputy Chief of Staff to the FBI, both arriving at Twitter in the summer of 2020, which I find, what an interesting coincidence. Then, when the New York Post publishes its first article on October 14, it's Jim Baker who makes the most strenuous argument within Twitter, multiple emails, multiple messages saying this doesn't look real. There's people, there's intelligence experts, saying that this could be Russian disinformation. He is the most strenuous person inside Twitter arguing that it's probably Russian disinformation. The internal evaluation by Yoel Roth, who testified in front of this committee, was that it was what it looked to be, which was that it was not a result of a hack and leak operation. And why did he think that? Because the New York Post had published the FBI subpoena taking the laptop in December of 2019. And they published the agreement that the computer store owner had with Hunter Biden that gave him permission, after he abandoned the laptop, to use it however he wanted. So there really wasn't much doubt about the provenance of that laptop. But you had Jim Baker making a strenuous argument. And then, of course, you get to a few days after the October 14 release, you have the president of the United States echoing what these former intelligence community officials were saying, which is that it looked like a Russian influence operation. So they were claiming that the laptop was made public by the conspiracy theory that somehow the Russians got it. And basically, they convinced Yoel Roth of this wild hack and leak story that somehow the Russians stole it, got the information, gave us the computer, it was bizarre. So you read that chain of events, and it appears as though there is an organized influence operation to pre-bunk.... Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Why do you think they could predict the time, the method, and the person? Why could the FBI predict it? Not only did they predict this, they predicted it, so did the Aspen Institute, seemed like everyone was in the know saying, here's what's gonna happen, we can read the future. Why do you think, how do you think they were able to do that? Michael Shellenberger: I think the most important fact to know is that the FBI had that laptop in December 2019. They were also spying on Rudy Giuliani when he got the laptop and when he gave it to the New York Post. Now, maybe the FBI agents who are going to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and Twitter executives and warning of a hack and leak, potentially involving Hunter Biden, maybe those guys didn't have anything to do with the guys that had the top. We don't know that. I have to say, as a newcomer to this, as somebody that thought it was Russian disinformation in 2020, everybody I knew thought it was Russian disinformation, I was shocked to see that series of events going on. It looks to me like a deliberate influence operation. I don't have the proof of it, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty disturbing. 2:14:30 Matt Taibbi: We found, just yesterday, a Tweet from the Virality Project at Stanford, which was partnered with a number of government agencies, and Twitter, where they talked explicitly about censoring stories of true vaccine side effects and other true stories that they felt encouraged hesitancy. Now the imp— Unknown Representative: So these were true. Matt Taibbi: Yes. So they use the word truth three times in this email, and what's notable about this is that it reflects the fundamental misunderstanding of this whole disinformation complex, anti-disinformation complex. They believe that ordinary people can't handle difficult truths. And so they think that they need minders to separate out things that are controversial or difficult for them, and that's again, that's totally contrary to what America is all about, I think. 2:17:30 Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY): Of course we all believe in the First Amendment, but the First Amendment applies to government prohibition of speech, not to private companies. 2:33:00 Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY): And even with, Twitter you cannot find actual evidence of any direct government censorship of any lawful speech. 2:33:20 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): I'd ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the following email from Clarke Humphrey, Executive Office of the Presidency, White House Office, January 23, 2021. That's the Biden Administration. 4:39am: "Hey folks," this goes to Twitter, "Hey folks, wanted..." they used the term Mr. Goldman just used, "wanted to flag the below Tweet, and I'm wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP." 2:35:40 Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA): He said the First Amendment applies to government censorship of speech and not private companies, but what we're talking about and what the Chairman just illustrated is that what we have here and what your Twitter files show is the Federal government has partnered with private companies to censor and silence the speech of American citizens. 2:29:20 Matt Taibbi: In the first Twitter files, we saw an exchange between Representative Ro Khanna and Vijaya Gadde, where he's trying to explain the basics of speech law in America and she's completely, she seems completely unaware of what, for instance, New York Times v. Sullivan is. There are other cases like Bartnicki v. Vopper, which legalized the publication of stolen material, that's very important for any journalists to know. I think most of these people are tech executives, and they don't know what the law is around speech and around reporting. And in this case, and in 2016, you are dealing with true material. There is no basis to restrict the publication of true material no matter who the sources and how you get it. And journalists have always understood that and this has never been an issue or a controversial issue until very recently. 2:44:40 Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL): Would you agree that there was a black list created in 2021? Michael Shellenberger: Sorry, yes, Jay Bhattacharya, the Stanford Professor, who I don't think anybody considers a fringe epidemiologist, was indeed -- I'm sorry, I couldn't, I didn't piece it together -- he was indeed visibility filtered. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL): Correct. And so this blacklist that was created, that really was used to de-platform, reduce visibility, create lists internally, where people couldn't even see their profiles, that was used against doctors and scientists who produced information that was contrary to what the CDC was putting out, despite the fact that we now know that what they were publishing had scientific basis and in fact was valid. Michael Shellenberger: Absolutely. And not only that, but these are secret blacklists, so Professor Bhattacharya had no idea he was on it. 43:05 Matt Taibbi: The original promise of the internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere. What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise and use machine learning and other tools to turn the Internet into an instrument of censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role. We saw the first hints and communications between Twitter executives before the 2020 election, when we read things like "flagged by DHS," or "please see attached report from FBI for potential misinformation." This would be attached to an Excel spreadsheet with a long list of names, whose accounts were often suspended shortly after. #1940 - Matt Taibbi February 13, 2023 The Joe Rogan Experience Clips Matt Taibbi: So this is another topic that is fascinating because it hasn't gotten a ton of press. But if you go back all the way to the early 70s, the CIA and the FBI got in a lot of trouble for various things, the CIA for assassination schemes involving people like Castro, the FBI for, you know, COINTELPRO and other programs, domestic surveillance, and they made changes after Congressional hearings, the Church Committee, that basically said the FBI, from now on, you have to have some kind of reason to be following somebody or investigating somebody, you have to have some kind of criminal predicate and we want you mainly to be investigating cases. But after 9/11 they peeled all this back. There was a series of Attorney General memos that essentially re-fashioned what the FBI does, and now they don't have to be doing crimefighting all the time. Now they can be doing basically 100% intelligence gathering all the time. They can be infiltrating groups for no reason at all, not to build cases, but just to get information. And so that's why they're there. They're in these groups, they're posted up outside of the homes of people they find suspicious, but they're not building cases and they're not investigating crimes. It's sort of like Minority Report there, right? It's pre-crime. Matt Taibbi: We see reports in these files of government agencies sending lists of accounts that are accusing the United States of vaccine corruption. Now, what they're really talking about is pressuring foreign countries to not use generic vaccines. Right. And, you know, that's a liberal issue, that's a progressive issue. The progressives want generic vaccines to be available to poor countries, okay? But, you know, you can use this tool to eliminate speech about that if you want too, right? I think that's what they don't get is that the significance is not who [it's used against], the significance is the tool. What is it capable of doing, right? How easily is it employed, and you know, how often is it used? And they don't focus on that. Joe Rogan: Has anything been surprising to you? Matt Taibbi: A little bit. I think going into it, I thought that the relationship between the security agencies like the FBI and the DHS and companies like Twitter and Facebook, I thought it was a little bit less formal. I thought maybe they had kind of an advisory role. And what we find is that it's not that, it's very formalized. They have a really intense structure that they've worked out over a period of years where they have regular meetings. They have a system where the DHS handles censorship requests that come up from the States and the FBI handles international ones, and they all float all these companies and it's a big bureaucracy. I don't think we expected to see that. Matt Taibbi: I was especially shocked by an email from a staffer for Adam Schiff, the Congressperson, the California Congressman. And they're just outright saying we would like you to suspend the accounts of this journalist and anybody who retweets information about this Committee. You know, I mean, this is a member of Congress. Joe Rogan: Yeah. Matt Taibbi: Right? Most of these people have legal backgrounds. They've got lawyers in the office for sure. And this is the House Intelligence Committee. Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter's Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story February 8, 2023 House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Witnesses: Vijaya Gadde, Former Chief Legal Officer, Twitter James Baker, Former Deputy General Counsel, Twitter Yoel Roth, Former Global Head of Trust & Safety, Twitter Annika Collier Navaroli, Former Policy Expert for Content Moderation, Twitter Clips 14:50 Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD): What's more, Twitter's editorial decision has been analyzed and debated ad nauseam. Some people think it was the right decision. Some people think it was the wrong decision. But the key point here is that it was Twitter's decision. Twitter is a private media company. In America, private media companies can decide what to publish or how to curate content however they want. If Twitter wants to have nothing but Tweets commenting on New York Post articles run all day, it can do that. If it makes such tweets mentioning New York Post never see the light of day they can do that too. That's what the First Amendment means. 16:05 Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD): Officially Twitter happens to think they got it wrong about that day or two period. In hindsight, Twitter's former CEO Jack Dorsey called it a mistake. This apology might be a statement of regret about the company being overly cautious about the risks of publishing contents and potentially hacked or stolen materials, or it may reflect craven surrender to a right wing pressure campaign. But however you interpreted the apology just makes the premise of this hearing all the more absurd. The professional conspiracy theorists who are heckling and haranguing this private company have already gotten exactly what they want: an apology. What more do they want? And why does the US Congress have to be involved in this nonsense when we have serious work to do for the American people? 26:20 James Baker: The law permits the government to have complex, multifaceted, and long term relationships with the private sector. Law enforcement agencies and companies can engage with each other regarding, for example, compulsory legal process served on companies, criminal activity that companies, the government, or the public identify, such as crimes against children, cybersecurity threats, and terrorism, and instances where companies themselves are victims of crime. When done properly, these interactions can be beneficial to both sides and in the interest of the public. As you Mr. Chairman, Mr. Jordan, and others have proposed, a potential workable way to legislate in this area may be to focus on the actions of federal government agencies and officials with respect to their engagement with the private sector. Congress may be able to limit the nature and scope of those interactions in certain ways, require enhanced transparency and reporting by the executive branch about its engagements, and require higher level approvals within the executive branch prior to such engagements on certain topics, so that you can hold Senate confirmed officials, for example, accountable for those decisions. In any event, if you want to legislate, my recommendation is to focus first on reasonable and effective limitations on government actors. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 31:05 Vijaya Gadde: On October 14, 2020, The New York Post tweeted articles about Hunter Biden's laptop with embedded images that looked like they may have been obtained through hacking. In 2018, we had developed a policy intended to prevent Twitter from becoming a dumping ground for hacked materials. We applied this policy to the New York Post tweets and blocked links to the articles embedding those sorts of materials. At no point to Twitter otherwise prevent tweeting, reporting, discussing or describing the contents of Mr. Biden's laptop. People could and did talk about the contents of the laptop on Twitter or anywhere else, including other much larger platforms, but they were prevented from sharing the primary documents on Twitter. Still, over the course of that day, it became clear that Twitter had not fully appreciated the impact of that policy on free press and others. As Mr. Dorsey testified before Congress on multiple occasions, Twitter changed its policy within 24 hours and admitted its initial action was wrong. This policy revision immediately allowed people to tweet the original articles with the embedded source materials, relying on its long standing practice not to retroactively apply new policies. Twitter informed the New York Post that it could immediately begin tweeting when it deleted the original tweets, which would have freed them to retweet the same content again. The New York Post chose not to delete its original tweets, so Twitter made an exception after two weeks to retroactively apply the new policy to the Post's tweets. In hindsight, Twitter should have reinstated the Post account immediately. 35:35 Yoel Roth: In 2020, Twitter noticed activity related to the laptop that at first glance bore a lot of similarities to the 2016 Russian hack and leak operation targeting the DNC, and we had to decide what to do. And in that moment with limited information, Twitter made a mistake. 36:20 Yoel Roth: It isn't obvious what the right response is to a suspected, but not confirmed, cyber attack by another government on a Presidential Election. I believe Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016. 38:41 Annika Collier Navaroli: I joined Twitter in 2019 and by 2020 I was the most senior expert on Twitter's U.S. Safety Policy Team. My team's mission was to protect free speech and public safety by writing and enforcing content moderation policies around the world. These policies include things like abuse, harassment, hate speech, violence and privacy. 41:20 Annika Collier Navaroli: With January 6 and many other decisions, content moderators like me did the very best that we could. But far too often there are far too few of us and we are being asked to do the impossible. For example, in January 2020 after the US assassinated an Iranian General and the US president decided to justify it on Twitter, management literally instructed me and my team to make sure that World War III did not start on the platform. 1:08:20 Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): Did the US government ever contact you or anyone at Twitter to censor or moderate certain Tweets, yes or no? Vijaya Gadde: We receive legal demands to remove content from the platform from the US government and governments all around the world. Those are published on a third party website. 1:12:00 Yoel Roth: The number one most influential part of the Russian active measures campaign in 2016 was the hack and leak targeting John Podesta. It would have been foolish not to consider the possibility that they would run that play again. 1:44:45 Yoel Roth: I think one of the key failures that we identified after 2016 was that there was very little information coming from the government and from intelligence services to the private sector. The private sector had the power to remove bots and to take down foreign disinformation campaigns, but we didn't always know where to look without leads supplied by the intelligence community. That was one of the failures highlighted in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report and in the Mueller investigation, and that was one of the things we set out to fix in 2017. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA): On September 8 2019, at 11:11pm, Donald Trump heckled two celebrities on Twitter -- John Legend and his wife Chrissy Teigen -- and referred to them as "the musician John Legend and his filthy mouth wife." Ms. Teigen responded to that email [Tweet] at 12:17am. And according to notes from a conversation with you, Ms. Navaroli's, counsel, your counsel, the White House almost immediately thereafter contacted Twitter to demand the tweet be taken down. Is that accurate? Annika Collier Navaroli: Thank you for the question. In my role, I was not responsible for receiving any sort of request from the government. However, what I was privy to was my supervisors letting us know that we had received something along those lines or something of a request. And in that particular instance, I do remember hearing that we had received a request from the White House to make sure that we evaluated this tweet, and that they wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement towards the President. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA): They wanted it to come down. They made that request. Annika Collier Navaroli: To my recollection, yes. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA): I thought that was an inappropriate action by a government official, let alone the White House. But it wasn't Joe Biden, about his son's laptop. It was Donald Trump because he didn't like what Chrissy Teigen had to say about him, is that correct? Annika Collier Navaroli: Yes, that is correct. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA): My, my, my. 1:45:15 Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH): Mr. Roth, were those communication channels useful to Twitter as they work to combat foreign influence operations? Yoel Roth: Absolutely, I would say they were one of the most essential pieces of how Twitter prepared for future elections. 2:42:35 Rep. Becca Balint (D-VA): Ms. Gadde, did anyone from the Biden campaign or the Democratic National Committee direct Twitter to remove or take action against the New York Post story? Vijaya Gadde: No. 4:15:45 Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): And now we forward to 2020. And earlier you had testified that you were having regular interactions with National Intelligence, Homeland Security and the FBI. Yoel Roth: Yes, I did. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): And primarily to deal with foreign interference? Yoel Roth: Primarily, but I would say -- Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): But you had said earlier your contact with Agent Chang was primarily with foreign interference? Yoel Roth: Yes, that's right. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): And these were emails....were there meetings? Yoel Roth: Yes, Twitter met quarterly with the FBI Foreign Interference Task Force and we had those meetings running for a number of years to share information about malign foreign interference. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): Agents from Homeland Security or Intelligence, or just primarily the FBI? Yoel Roth: Our primary contacts were with the FBI and in those quarterly meetings, they were, I believe, exclusively with FBI personnel. 4:18:05 Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): Earlier today you testified that you were following national security experts on Twitter as a reason to take down the New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop. Yoel Roth: Yes, sir, I did. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): So after 2016, you set up all these teams to deal with Russian interference, foreign interference, you're having regular meetings with the FBI, you have connections with all of these different government agencies, and you didn't reach out to them once? Yoel Roth: Is that question in reference to the day of the New York Post article? Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): Yeah. Yoel Roth: That's right. We generally did not reach out to the FBI to consult on content moderation decisions, especially where they related to domestic activity. It's not that we wouldn't have liked that information, we certainly would have. It's that I don't believe it would have been appropriate for us to consult with the FBI. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): In December of 2020, you did a declaration to the Federal Election Commission that the intelligence community expected a leak and a hack operation involving Hunter Biden. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the FBI warned Meta that there was a high effort of Russian propaganda including language specific enough to fit the Hunter Biden laptop security story. You're talking to these people for weeks and months, years prior to this leaking. They have specifically told you in October, that there's going to be a leak potentially involving Hunter Biden's laptop. They legitimately and literally prophesized what happened. And you didn't contact any of them? Yoel Roth: No, sir, I did not. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): Did they reach out to you? Yoel Roth: On and around that day, to the best of my recollection, no, they did not. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): After the story was taken down and you guys did it, and you personally disagreed with it Ms. Gadde, did you contact them and say is "Hey, is this what you were talking about?" Yoel Roth: If that question was directed to me. No, I did not. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): Ms. Gadde, did you talk to anybody from the FBI? Vijaya Gadde: Not to the best of my recollection. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND): So I guess my question is, what is the point of this program? You have constant communication, they're set up for foreign interference. They've legitimately warned you about this very specific thing. And then all of a sudden, everybody just walks away? 5:18:55 Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM): We are devoting an entire day to this conspiracy theory involving Twitter. Now, the mission of this committee is to root out waste, fraud and abuse and to conduct oversight on behalf of the American people. And if you need any evidence of waste, fraud and abuse, how about the use of this committee's precious time, space and resources to commit to this hearing? 5:58:25 Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): Back to Mr. Roth, is it true that Twitter whitelisted accounts for the Department of Defense to spread propaganda about its efforts in the Middle East? Did they give you a list of accounts that were fake accounts and asked you to whitelist those accounts? Yoel Roth: That request was made of Twitter. To be clear, when I found out about that activity, I was appalled by it. I undid the action and my team exposed activity originating from the Department of Defense's campaign publicly. We've shared that data with the world and research about it has been published. 6:07:20 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Mr. Roth, I want to go back to your statement in your declaration to the FEC "I learned that a hack and leak operation would involve Hunter Biden," who did you learn that from? Yoel Roth: My recollection is it was mentioned by another technology company in one of our joint meetings, but I don't recall specifically whom. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): You don't know the person's name? Yoel Roth: I don't even recall what company they worked at. No, this was a long time ago. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): And you're confident that it was from a tech company, not from someone from the government? Yoel Roth: To the best of my recollection, yes. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Did anyone from the government, in these periodic meetings you had, did they ever tell you that a hack and leak operation involving Hunter Biden was coming? Yoel Roth: No. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Did Hunter Biden's name come up at all these meetings? Yoel Roth: Yes, his name was raised in those meetings, but not by the government to the best of my recollection. 6:09:30 Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Mr. Roth, why were you reluctant, based on what I read in the Twitter files, why were you reluctant to work with the GEC? Yoel Roth: It was my understanding that the GEC, or the Global Engagement Center of the State Department, had previously engaged in at least what some would consider offensive influence operations. Not that they were offensive as in bad, but offensive as in they targeted entities outside of the United States. And on that basis, I felt that it would be inappropriate for Twitter to engage with a part of the State Department that was engaged in active statecraft. We were dedicated to rooting out malign foreign interference no matter who it came from. And if we found that the American government was engaged in malign foreign interference, we'd be addressing that as well. 6:13:50 Rep. James Comer (R-KY): Twitter is a private company, but they enjoy special liability protections, Section 230. They also, according to the Twitter files, receive millions of dollars from the FBI, which is tax dollars, I would assume. And that makes it a concern of the Oversight Committee. Does Section 230's Sweeping Immunity Enable Big Tech Bad Behavior? October 28, 2020 Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Witnesses: Jack Dorsey, [Former] CEO, Twitter Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet and Google Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook [Meta] Clips 2:20:40 Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA): The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down. The issue is that they're leaving too many dangerous posts up. In fact, they're amplifying harmful content so that it spreads like wildfire and torches our democracy. 3:15:40 Mark Zuckerberg: Senator, as I testified before, we relied heavily on the FBI, his intelligence and alert status both through their public testimony and private briefings. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Did the FBI contact you, sir, than your co star? It was false. Mark Zuckerberg: Senator not about that story specifically. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Why did you throttle it back? Mark Zuckerberg: They alerted us to be on heightened alert around a risk of hack and leak operations around a release and probe of information. Emerging Trends in Online Foreign Influence Operations: Social Media, COVID-19, and Election Security June 18, 2020 Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Watch on YouTube Witnesses: Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Security Policy at Facebook Nick Pickles, Director of Global Public Policy Strategy and Development at Twitter Richard Salgado, Director for Law Enforcement and Information Security at Google 1:40:10 Nathaniel Gleicher: Congressman, the collaboration within industry and with government is much, much better than it was in 2016. I think we have found the FBI, for example, to be forward leaning and ready to share information with us when they see it. We share information with them whenever we see indications of foreign interference targeting our election. The best case study for this was the 2018 midterms, where you saw industry, government and civil society all come together, sharing information to tackle these threats. We had a case on literally the eve of the vote, where the FBI gave us a tip about a network of accounts where they identified subtle links to Russian actors. Were able to investigate those and take action on them within a matter of hours. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)

In Today's episode of "Moment of Truth," Saurabh sits down with Mike Benz, a former State Department diplomat and current Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, to discuss the horrific collusion of state department resources and corporate censorship technology vis-a-vis Google, Facebook, Twitter, and more, the rise of AI super-censorship-weapons, and how we can preserve freedom online.#MikeBenz #Google #Facebook #Twitter #TwitterFiles #Censorship #FreeSpeech #AIMichael A. Benz, is a former State Department diplomat responsible for formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Mr. Benz founded FFO as a civil society institution building on his experience in the role of championing digital freedom around the world in the public sector.Learn more about Mike Benz's work:https://www.foundationforfreedomonline.com/https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyberhttps://twitter.com/ffo_freedom––––––Follow American Moment across Social Media:Twitter – https://twitter.com/AmMomentOrgFacebook – https://www.facebook.com/AmMomentOrgInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/ammomentorg/YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4qmB5DeiFxt53ZPZiW4TcgRumble – https://rumble.com/c/c-695775BitChute – https://www.bitchute.com/channel/Xr42d9swu7O9/Gab – https://gab.com/AmMomentOrgCheck out AmCanon:https://www.americanmoment.org/amcanon/Follow Us on Twitter:Saurabh Sharma – https://twitter.com/ssharmaUSNick Solheim – https://twitter.com/NickSSolheimAmerican Moment's "Moment of Truth" Podcast is recorded at the Conservative Partnership Center in Washington DC, produced by American Moment Studios, and edited by Jake Mercier and Jared Cummings.Subscribe to our Podcast, "Moment of Truth"Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/moment-of-truth/id1555257529Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/5ATl0x7nKDX0vVoGrGNhAj Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit public.substack.comWhen Michael testified before Congress two weeks ago with Matt Taibbi, many of his insights into the Censorship Industrial Complex were thanks to the exhaustive research of Mike Benz. Benz, a former State Department official, heads up the Foundation for Freedom Online. He's a bona fide expert on the global digital censorship regime that has emerged in r…

Previously, in part one of my interview with Mike Benz, he explained the existence of a “whole-of-society” censorship industry in the West. Benz has been tracking the rise of censorship for years as executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online and a former State Department diplomat.Now in part two, Benz explains how tools originally developed to promote regime change were deployed against Americans.“What you are doing in a regime-change operation is you are operationalizing huge masses of an indigenous or domestic population in order to create a ground-up overthrow of a sitting government. And in order to do that, you need to control the media infrastructure, you need to control the narratives that people believe. … What was new is that in 2016, this began coming home,” Benz says.Changes in America also corresponded with changes in the broader Western world, Benz says. “There became a whole new military doctrine—it's not a new concept, [but] I think it was given a new name—called hybrid warfare. NATO declared a new doctrine called ‘from tanks to tweets.'”And a whole new lexicon emerged to describe the new censorship regime, Benz says, from “digital resilience” to “media literacy” to “moderation” and “intervention.”“Whoever can control the Department of Dirty Tricks is able to use it to remove all opposition,” Benz says.

“Whoever can control the Department of Dirty Tricks is able to use it to remove all opposition,” says Mike Benz.He is the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online and a former State Department diplomat under the Trump administration.The Twitter Files were just the tip of the iceberg, says Benz, who has been tracking the rise of the West's censorship industry for years.“22 million tweets were categorized as misinformation for purposes of takedowns or throttling through [the Election Integrity Partnership],” Benz said.“It wasn't just government individual takedown requests. It was government pressure … to create whole new categories of things to censor and then arming them with the artificial intelligence to then automatically scan and ban the new thought violations.”In this comprehensive two-part interview, Benz breaks down the major players in today's censorship regime and how tactics once used abroad were deployed to target Americans and so-called election “delegitimization” or COVID “misinformation” online.“Graphika was immediately working with NATO's essentially psychological warfare branch—the Hybrid Center of Excellence—in January 2020 … They had this sophisticated typography of what right-wing media was saying, what left-wing media was saying, what was being shared, the nodes and links between nodes of all the different narrative discourses on social media.”“They will have a revolving door at the professional level. That is, people who are in government roles, for example, in Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation at DHS, will get their next jobs at the German Marshall Fund or the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab … It is a career path. It is a path to power,” Benz says.Follow American Thought Leaders on social media:Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeaderTruth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeaderGettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleaderFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeadersGab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeaderTelegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are demanding action from the Biden administration on Feb. 3, after a Chinese spy balloon was discovered over U.S. airspace. President Joe Biden chose not to shoot the balloon down due to potential risks to civilians on the ground. China claims that the balloon, which is the size of three buses, is a research airship blown off course. But the Pentagon rejected that claim, saying it is used for intelligence gathering. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed his trip to China amid rising tensions between the two countries. As a dangerously cold weather front hits the Northeast and New England, officials put emergency plans into place. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs in January. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4 percent, a level the country hasn't seen since 1969. Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online and a former State Department diplomat under the Trump administration, explains how online censorship started and says it is much worse than shown in the Twitter Files. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

This past Wednesday, Interfaith Alliance released the comprehensive new report Big Tech, Hate and Religious Freedom Online. As a part of that release, Interfaith Alliance hosted an expert panel discussion, moderated by State of Belief host Rev. Paul Raushenbush. On this week's show, you'll hear the warnings and strategies the panelists. Zaki Barzinji is the […] The post January 28, 2023 – Big Tech, Hate and Religious Freedom Online first appeared on State of Belief.

The First Amendment bars the federal government from censoring freedom of speech. So rather than let speech flourish, the government has simply found a way to outsource censorship to an army of "private" actors across America and around the world. Mike Benz of the Foundation for Freedom Online joins to describe the operations of this "Censorship Blackwater," and how it singled out Charlie in particular. Plus, the J6 Committee's secret interview with Ray Epps has finally been released. Darren Beattie joins to break down what the transcript reveals, and what might still be hidden.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#396 My 10 Top 2023 Hacks I Learnt From A Crazy 2022 2022 was a crazy year, maybe you can relate. I lived in 3 different countries, left 2 business partners, and got rid of 2 development companies. I love that this happened, as it led me here. In this episode, I share with you the top 10 lessons I gained so you can have an amazing 2023 and achieve all your goals. DIGITAL ENTREPRENEUR GROWING TO 7 FIGURESMind Hacks & MY NVC Performance Course FREE ($1000 Value) https://www.unfairadvantage.online  Make sure to subscribe, comment, share and review the podcast wherever you watch or listen  CLICK HERE FOR ALL LINKS & PRODUCTS https://linktr.ee/AndyMurphymind Social Media Instagram Facebook LISTEN to Mindset By Design Podcast Itunes https://goo.gl/3QfHqU Stitcher https://goo.gl/Xkdzi8 Spotify https://spoti.fi/2END4zI For Other Platforms https://andymurphy.online/podcast Read More Quick LinksGet Embed PlayerShare on SocialDownload Audio File  

The right to freedom of speech is Americans' most precious right. Yet disclosures from the “Twitter Files” show that the U.S. government is spending a fortune to build a ruthless censorship program under the guise of stopping online “disinformation.” The resources deployed to censor and spy on Americans are evidence that the new security regime is designed to replace our constitutional republic. In this shocking new episode of Over the Target Live, Lee Smith speaks with Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, about the ongoing struggle to preserve the first amendment. ⭕️ Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

#386 Quantum Theory For Life & Business Success (Lex fridman) This episode is definately a little heady! In this clip we explore the reality you are living in, the choices you are making and gaining the perspective to completely change your life and thefore money, happiness and freedom rapidly, all from the inside out. READY? DOUBLE YOUR CLOSING % IN 180 DAYS! https://www.unfairadvantage.online Make sure to subscribe, comment, share and review the podcast wherever you watch or listen

Today on the Richard Syrett Show: James Topp, the leader of Canada Marches discusses his meeting with the MPs over the “total corporate media blackout” regarding his march. Senator Leo Housakos on the censorship bill. Then In Defense of Women representative Mia Ashton talks about a new guideline saying trans kids' treatment can start at younger ages.David Freiheit, AKA VivaFrei elaborates on the censorship bill and the mandate suspension. Political analyst Drew Allen brings up an Ex-American Express employee who spoke out on ‘woke' corporate America. Then Spencer Fernando, campaign fellow from the National Citizens Coalition also touches on the mandate suspension and Freeland being grilled for the emergencies act.

Mike Benz is the founder of Foundation for Freedom Online to help protect Americans' digital civil liberties. He is also a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Policy Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. The debate over Big Tech censorship is the fiercest it's ever been, and billionaire Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter and take it private has profound implications for the future of free speech online. 

Every parent is forced to make tough choices about how much freedom to give their child online. How do you decide what the limits are? And what's the right level of risk? In this episode, hosts Taylor Owen and Nicole Edwards set out to find out just how worried we should be about teens' online safety. Two experts in children's digital rights weigh in. Sonia Livingstone, author and professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, makes the case for giving kids more freedom online. Valerie Steeves, professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa, argues that we should be more concerned about data collection than security. Find out more: Read more research and insight from the eQuality Project, which Valerie Steeves co-leads: https://www.equalityproject.ca/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this unique conversation, Melissa Speck and Christine Peterson, faculty leads for IvyOnline, and I sit down to discuss IvyOnline, statewide courses, and academic freedom. It was a fun and challenging conversation as we tackle concepts that are nuanced and subtle.  To view Ivy Tech's academic freedom statement, visit www.ivytech.edu/policies. The statement is at the top of the policy manual. Please continue to ask great questions about academic freedom to your statewide faculty leads and others. We'd love to reprise this episode again with more questions and more voices in the conversation. Get in Touch You can connect with Kara Monroe on Twitter @KNMTweets Reach out with show ideas, comments, or questions via Twitter or at our email address - ourcollegeyourvoices@ivytech.edu. Leave us a voice mail at 317-572-5049. Respond to the Call for Action, ask a question, give a shout-out to a colleague, or an episode suggestion. Check out show notes, listen to past episodes, and get instructions on how to access the podcast on our website at http://www.ivytech.edu/podcast.

Upgrade Your Money Reality 5 Day Free Experience  October 4-8th @ 4 pm pst: Join Now   Hello Miracle Worker! Today, we have a beautiful episode because I'm bringing in 3 women to share with you the way they are doing business. To me, these three women are queens of network marketing and they're doing it differently. So, listen in on these 3 conversations and allow yourself to be open to a new point of view to doing business online.  Blessings My Friends   Connect with Francis Cervantes: @yourconfidencebff Connect with Lauren Dorsey: @lauren_dorsey Connect with Melissa Treat: @mellygirltreat   Upgrade Your Money Reality 5 Day Free Experience  October 4-8th @ 4 pm pst: Join Now   Manifest Your $10,000 Month workbook: Get Your Copy    Manifest with Nichole:  Youtube  | Instagram | Tiktok

Upgrade Your Money Reality 5 Day Free Experience  October 4-8th @ 4 pm pst: Join Now   Hello Miracle Worker! Today, we have a beautiful episode because I'm bringing in 3 women to share with you the way they are doing business. To me, these three women are queens of network marketing and they're doing it differently. So, listen in on these 3 conversations and allow yourself to be open to a new point of view to doing business online.  Blessings My Friends   Connect with Francis Cervantes: @yourconfidencebff Connect with Lauren Dorsey: @lauren_dorsey Connect with Melissa Treat: @mellygirltreat   Upgrade Your Money Reality 5 Day Free Experience  October 4-8th @ 4 pm pst: Join Now   Manifest Your $10,000 Month workbook: Get Your Copy    Manifest with Nichole:  Youtube  | Instagram | Tiktok

Learn about why your biggest regret is the thing you didn't do; the tallest mountains on Earth; and the Deep Web. The stories in this episode originally aired May 29, 2018 “The Deep Web, Biggest Regrets, and a Mount Everest Misconception” https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/the-deep-web-biggest-regrets-and-a-mount-everest-misconception   Additional information about the Dark Web: The Tor Project | Privacy & Freedom Online. (2021). Torproject.org. https://www.torproject.org/download/  The Guardian SecureDrop. (2019). Theguardian.com. https://www.theguardian.com/securedrop  The brighter side of darknet drug dealing | Dr James Martin | TEDxMelbourne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv-E7naLBq8  Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dairy farmer and businessman talks openly about being an elder in his church, deciding if they should hold services, discusses how friendships are lost online over fights and Vance talks more about his "West Wing Hypothesis."This is the 48th interview in the ongoing series of Coronavirus perspectives. I believe that society will have the rules re-written when we come out of this global pandemic and it is important to hear how various individuals and industries are handling themselves amidst the crisis.  @dfaber84@VanceCroweThis series seeks to reveal many perspectives that will otherwise be ignored by both mainstream media and you might not see on your social media channels.  I believe that the Overton-Window will be wide open and new rules are going to be created about how we operate in a post Coronavirus world.