Point of View March 10, 2025 – Hour 1 : Crushing Dissent

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View, Kirby Anderson. Thank you for joining me. It is the Monday edition of Point of View. Hope you had a great weekend. We've got quite a lineup this week of great guests and interviews. Matter of fact, even today, we're going to talk a little bit about Doge and some of the back and forth on that.

[00:00:32] Then we'll get into the fact that the president established a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Then we're going to get into a very good series of articles that appeared in the March issue of World Magazine, The Censorship Machine. And an individual that has written that is Emma Ferrer. She's been on the program with us before. We'll get into that.

[00:00:52] And then next hour, for those of you that love science and intelligent design and creation, we'll be talking with Pastor Rob Pacienda, as well as Tom DeRosa on the case for creation. The fact that there is this Creation Studies Institute, which at one time used to be associated with Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and the Coral Ridge Ministries, now has come back again. So we'll get into what that might mean, both theologically and scientifically.

[00:01:19] And, of course, all through the program. If you have a comment or a question, we'll open up those phones a little bit later to give you a chance to join the conversation. Let's start off with Elon Musk. We're going to come back to that a little bit later. But certainly the first article I've posted by Jeffrey Blahar, Donald Trump pulls up hard on Elon Musk. OK, probably about time that it needed to take place. And Jeffrey Blahar puts it this way, after doing some introductory material, saying,

[00:01:48] After about a month and a half of chaos, much of it done with great online fanfare but seemingly little substantive gain, Donald Trump has officially clamped the reins on Elon Musk and Doge. That would be the Department of Government Efficiency. And he's pulling up hard. Politico, for example, has reported that what you see here is the fact that President Donald Trump convened his cabinet in Persia, on Thursday, to deliver a message, you're in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk.

[00:02:18] There are a lot of reports coming out now about some back and forth between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio and a variety of others. I won't get into all the names and all the people, but the point was made very clearly by President Trump that cabinet secretaries should make final decisions on personnel policy and even the pacing of the implementation.

[00:02:42] There have been some that say, we appreciate what Elon Musk and really what the government is trying to do and what the president is trying to do, what the cabinet is trying to do, but maybe it's going too fast. And so that is part of it. And again, I have to applaud Donald Trump by having Elon Musk there rather than say it when he's not there.

[00:03:04] And he joined the conversation, that is Elon Musk joined the conversation and said he was on board with the directive from President Trump. And according to at least one person in the meeting, Elon Musk acknowledged that Doge had made some missteps, a message he shared earlier in the week with members of Congress. So again, those are concerns that some people have raised, and that is the case. As Jeffrey Blahar goes on and takes on one other issue, he says,

[00:03:33] As far as Trump is concerned, Musk has gone too far, created too many unnecessary messes, and comported himself too clumsily in both public and private to be allowed the kind of unfettered power he has heretofore reveled in. Yesterday marked his official neutering, it says, in a meeting attended by every cabinet member, lest there be any doubt.

[00:03:53] And it goes on to say that the story isn't over, because we'll see whether or not Elon Musk has done any real long-term good once things finally shake out, and perhaps if he reforms his own worst impulses, because in this case, Jeffrey Blahar says, What I've seen for the most part has been minuscule, often fake savings to justify such confidence to date. I have said this before, but it's worth saying again, I brought it up on Friday,

[00:04:20] and I'll just give you an idea. When people complain, for example, write this down, cutting 400 people out of the FAA, that sounds like a lot, until you realize there's 45,000 employees at the FAA, so that represents 89 one-hundredths of a percent, or about eight or nine-tenths of a percent, however you want to look at it.

[00:04:48] And so it's not very significant in the light of all sorts of other individuals. You hear the same thing about Homeland Security. Let 405 people go, some of whom just simply decided to retire, but okay, whatever your number is, it's 405, however that came about, but Homeland Security has 260,000 individuals.

[00:05:12] That's 16 one-hundredths of a percent, or less than two-tenths of a percent, however you want to round it off. And the point I'm making is, first of all, there have been a lot of people on the side of Donald Trump that have made a big deal about the cuts, and so far, pretty small. But on the other side, again, it just causes me to shake my head that Democrats are going to the mat on some of this over cuts that are very insignificant so far.

[00:05:42] And, of course, the greater cuts are going to come from, what do you think, entitlement. That would be Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. It's going to come from Health and Human Services. It's going to come from the Defense Department. That accounts for a disproportionate amount of the federal spending. And so, again, on the one hand, some people are cheering it, and I'm not against it, but I just say it's still fairly small compared to what needs to be done

[00:06:09] if we really want to even come close to balancing a budget. But even more troubling, because, again, a lot of that hasn't even happened yet, is the fact that so many Democrats and Democratic leaders think that this is the hill to die on. When many of those individuals have voluntarily retired, yeah, there have been some glitches where one person was sent home and they were brought back again and sent home again. Okay, mistakes have been made. Everybody understands that. But it is amazing to me that this has generated so much.

[00:06:39] But let's go on and talk about a few other issues. Number one, you might remember one of the first targets of Doge and of Elon Musk was, of course, the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID. And I pointed out a couple weeks ago that the decision was made to put USAID under the State Department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Well, he has announced today,

[00:07:07] after a six-week review, we are officially canceling 83% of the programs at USAID. The 5,200 contracts that are now canceled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve and in some cases harmed the core national interests of the United States. But he goes on to say, in consultation with Congress, we intend to, for the remaining 18%, and I think it would be 17% if the other part was 18th race,

[00:07:37] but anyway, 18%, probably rounding off there, we are keeping approximately 1,000 of those programs and they will be administered more effectively under the State Department. So again, even though there was a shouting match between Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, he actually says thank you to Doge and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform. So, are some things happening? Yes. Are we balancing the budget with them? Not yet.

[00:08:06] Maybe never. But we'll give it a try. Are there some things that needed to be killed? Yes. It is amazing to me that when you have individuals going through USAID, they conclude that 83% of the programs either did not serve the core interests of the United States or in some cases actually were harming the interests of the United States. So, good news. Things are happening. Do we need to do more?

[00:08:35] I think you know the answer to that one as well. Let's take a break. We have a lot more to cover. We'll do that right after this. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Here's a phrase I sometimes use on radio.

[00:09:04] It's difficult to solve a problem when politicians won't even admit there's a problem. This is true about our national debt, but it's also true about America's health. We can't solve America's health problems if we won't admit that Americans are unhealthy. The confirmation Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may be changing our mindset, but we still need to understand the depth of the health care problem in America. We've heard that America is a first world country facing third world health issues. When you hear that, it sounds too extreme. Is that true?

[00:09:34] You can read an article in the Annual Review of Public Health that attempts to answer, why do Americans have shorter life expectancy and worse health than people in other high-income countries? It's even worse for poor Americans. One research paper on life expectancy in the United States says this, The poorest men in the U.S. have life expectancies comparable to men in Sudan and Pakistan. The richest men in the U.S. live longer than the average man in any country.

[00:10:01] A CDC research paper documents that 6 in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and 4 in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. And it's worth mentioning that chronic disease may account for as much as three-quarters of America's health care spending. Another study in the New England Journal of Medicine on the prevalence of adult obesity and severe obesity made this ominous prediction. The researchers estimated by 2030 nearly half of U.S. adults will be obese.

[00:10:28] These statistics and many others illustrate the need to address the health of Americans. There are solutions to the problem, but the first step is to admit that there's a problem and understand the depth of a health care problem. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. For a free copy of Kirby's booklet, A Biblical View on Socialism, go to viewpoints.info slash socialism. That's viewpoints.info slash socialism.

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, our first article today is called Decorum is Dead, and I bring it up, one, to remind us of the fact that last Tuesday there was a lack of decorum in Congress. But more importantly, I think the way Beckett Adams does a comparison reminds us that once again, we see that if indeed a Republican breaks decorum,

[00:11:26] the press, at least the mainstream press, covers it very different than if a Democrat does. And again, he goes on to think that, first of all, we're getting a little too used to heckling that is taking place. Again, he says, Democratic legislators behaved atrociously last week during President Trump's joint session of Congress, booing, heckling, and staging performative walkouts. Speaker Mike Johnson had to instruct the Sergeant of ours to remove Democratic Representative Al Green from the chamber

[00:11:55] when the Texas lawmaker refused to stop creating disruptions, waving his cane around and shouting inaudibly about Medicaid. The point that he makes, though, is that look at the way the Associated Press, New York Times, and The Guardian, as well as others, covered this. They talked about how this registered dissent, or it was a rowdy speech, or there was simply Democrat fight back.

[00:12:22] And he says, compare that to 2009 when President Barack Obama was in Congress speaking about health care reform and talking about the reforms that were in the Affordable Care Act, and went on to then say that those reforms would not apply to those who are here illegally. Well, at that point, South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson couldn't contain himself and just shouted out, you lie. That's all he said.

[00:12:52] It was, at the time, condemned by us on the program, by Republican leaders, and, of course, by the press, because this is what the Associated Press said. Recognize this is the Associated Press that referred to the outburst last Tuesday as dissent. But the Associated Press, back in 2009, referred to the statement by Wilson, all two words,

[00:13:19] as an extraordinary breach of congressional decorum. As a matter of fact, you had all sorts of other news items. Of course, you have the Guardian here talking about trying to bring in the racist idea because Obama can escape the sound and fury over the color of your skin. Even Jimmy Carter, who, of course, we just laid duress, said the truth lies in years of Southern prejudice and a simmering resentment among some Americans that a black man could become president.

[00:13:47] And, you know, at the time, it was quite a bit of a hubbub. Some of you might not remember that. I do. And to give him credit, President Obama said, look, at the time, I'm a big believer that we all make mistakes. He, that would be Joe Wilson, apologized quickly without equivocation. I'm appreciative of that. But for those of you that are keeping score at home, it turns out Joe Wilson was right. And that is, you can go to the Department of Health and Human Services Award.

[00:14:17] Actually, just two years later, 2011, awarded $28.8 million grant to community health centers. Earmarking established a good portion of that, $8.5 million of it, for migrant and seasonal workers. So the statement being made by the time was incorrect. It was probably even at the time known to not be accurate. But the person that got torched, of course, was Joe Wilson for saying, you lie.

[00:14:47] And I think at the time that was inappropriate. But how much more a person standing in the well of the House of Representatives, waving his cane, boos and catcalls and heckling. Basically, decorum is dead. And I think that's a really sad commentary on what has happened in America. And illustrated the fact that we've got this loss of civility that has taken place. And if you don't think so, just get in your car and drive down the freeway a little bit.

[00:15:16] And you'll see some other examples of it. Or stand in line in a checkout area. And you will see all sorts of incivility unfolding before our very eyes. But let me just bring on two other stories here that I think are of significance. And that is, first of all, the Heritage Foundation has what is called the Oversight Project. And they have been looking at the executive orders signed by President Joe Biden.

[00:15:45] And they have now concluded that every signed document that they had examined wasn't signed by President Joe Biden. But instead was signed by an auto pen. Are you ready for this? Now, let's again give President Trump credit for having the cameras rolling while he's signing the executive order. And the only exception that they could find was the actual announcement, which he did sign,

[00:16:14] which said he was dropping out of the presidential race. But all these other executive orders were signed by an auto pen. And, of course, this caused other people to say who has been making the decisions behind the scenes, when it's pretty obvious, as we've told some of the stories on this program, coming from people like a Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, that President Biden oftentimes did not know what he was supposedly signing. And, of course, he didn't actually sign them.

[00:16:42] The auto pen signed it. And so that's just one more example of that. Lest we need any more Doge examples, I thought I'd just put one more on the table. We've got quite a few, but this one comes from the Department of Old Man Security, in which the department has announced that it will end collective bargaining on all Transportation Security Administration employees. And the reason is too many TSA employees were gaming the system.

[00:17:10] Now, I do know people that work for TSA, and I think they're very outstanding individuals, so I'm not painting with a broad brush. But the Department of Homeland Security noted that over 60% of TSA workers with poor performance records were allowed to stay employed, and they basically blamed the union for hindering the TSA from getting rid of those bad employees.

[00:17:34] And at the same time, they were also taking advantage of various benefit programs while they were working. So we do have, again, all sorts of reasons for why Doge should be there, or maybe reasons why Congress should have done it in the first place. But here we are. One last thing I thought I'd mention just real quickly, and we have posted this. President Trump has created a Bitcoin strategic reserve,

[00:18:03] and interestingly enough, also in that executive order, establishes another one, which would be a reserve that just simply holds other cryptocurrency. And the bottom line on some of this is simply that individuals don't make a distinction between Bitcoin, which, you know, all sorts of organizations, but the SEC refers to as a commodity. The others are, I think, illegal securities.

[00:18:30] The other day, Rachel Maddow just lumped all cryptos together and said they operate on the same idea of hoping someday people will think they're worth a lot of money and compared Bitcoin, of all things, to beanie babies. How you could say that with a straight face? Bitcoin has a market cap of $1.7 trillion. BlackRock, Fidelity, I mean, you can go through a very long list.

[00:18:59] The Secretary of Treasurer, the Secretary of Commerce, these are not people that you would say are gamblers or people that are speculating on beanie babies, but anybody's allowed to have their own opinion. They're just not allowed to have their own facts. But nevertheless, the commentary I have coming out next week, we'll get into that in some detail because, indeed, that gives the opportunity for the Department of Treasury

[00:19:25] to then capitalize on the Bitcoin that is owned by the federal government. How did they get that? Well, that comes from criminal asset forfeitures, civil asset forfeiture proceedings, and so the idea is that that will be kept and will not be sold off, and as a result could be a way to begin to provide an increasing asset to offset the increasing deficit or national debt that we have right now.

[00:19:54] And so, again, this is just another one of those particular promises that a candidate Donald Trump made of wanting to make U.S. the crypto capital of the world, and so that is the case. And so we'll see where that goes. There are proponents of it. Well, that's quite a bit of the people in the cabinet. Are there some opponents? Well, yeah, there are some that don't believe it will work, but even of the opponents, there are some people that believe that it will work,

[00:20:23] and they're not real thrilled about it because if indeed that does and is as successful as some suggest it might be, it might in a sense offset our national debt and that that would be, unfortunately from their perspective, rewarding bad behavior that comes from decades and decades of members of Congress spending more than they take in in a Federal Reserve that had to go print the money to try to balance the budget.

[00:20:51] So, anyway, just wanted to announce that particular decision that has come down, and there are a lot of executive orders. And the good news is we have actually seen President Trump signing them and oftentimes having somebody explain them even before he signs them. But unfortunately, it looks like the auto pen was signing a lot of those executive orders for President Biden. Let's take a break, though.

[00:21:16] We're going to get into this issue of censorship, the cover story of World Magazine, The Censorship Machine. We're going to talk about that right after these important messages. Have you ever met a child you knew would do great things? They displayed remarkable imagination, understanding, and a zest for learning. Now imagine someone takes that child, and instead of fostering their potential with a real education,

[00:21:45] they feed them nothing but lies. You know, that scenario isn't so far from reality. From a young age, Americans are fed a consistent stream of distorted facts, from the secular indoctrination they receive in many public schools, to the biases presented as fact in many colleges and universities, to the barrage of misinformation from the mainstream media and the lack of moral grounding in our society. It's not that Americans aren't capable of understanding the truth.

[00:22:14] It's that they aren't exposed to it enough. You can expose more Americans to the truth when you give to Point of View, where listeners receive facts, perspective, and biblical truth they don't get from society. As long as we have truth, we have hope. Give today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151. Pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151.

[00:22:47] Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. One of the topics we address so often here on Point of View is the issue of censorship.

[00:23:17] Here's our booklet that came out just a couple of months ago on censorship. And, of course, you might remember that we've done some interviews. A while back, we had Ken Buck on. I'm holding up his book called Crushed. And then we also have, of course, the one by Josh Hawley on the tyranny of big tech. So this is an issue that we certainly have been covering for some time. But the March issue of World Magazine, the cover issue, is entitled, The Censorship Machine, Media, Government, and Big Tech Teamed Up to Suppress Truth.

[00:23:47] Can Trump Dismantle Their Regime? One of the articles by Emma Frere is entitled, Crushing Dissent. We do have a digital version of that on the website you can read. Also, there is another one that she has written as well on the issue of Elon Musk's Unexpected Retreat. And then one by Elizabeth Russell on free speech fundraising. So quite a bit of material that we'll try to cover, but mostly focus on the article we've posted.

[00:24:14] And if you're not subscribing to World Magazine, my organization does receive that. This is my copy right now. But, again, you can also receive it digitally. And I think you're going to certainly benefit from that. And Emma Frere has been with us. She is a senior writer at World Magazine Lives in Maryland and is an individual that has written two of these articles. So welcome back to Point of View. Thanks for having me back. You start with the story about the election in which during the 2024 election there was a map,

[00:24:44] which, interestingly enough, was created by Real Clear Politics. And I quote from them quite often here on Point of View. And the map just gave a pretty good estimate on what would happen in terms of the election. Turned out to be exactly right. It showed Trump winning 312 electoral college votes. Kamala Harris winning 226. But just trying to put out factual information led to censorship. Tell us the rest of the story, if you might.

[00:25:14] Right. So the Real Clear Politics poll average is a poll average that they've been making for 20 years now, every election cycle. It's proven to be remarkably accurate. They don't actually take their own poll. They just produce an average of other polls. They've looked at which polls have been accurate, and those are the ones that they include in their average.

[00:25:36] It sounds straightforward enough, but to the chagrin of some parties, their polling average was predicting a Trump victory. It was actually a smaller victory than the one that Trump eventually had. But simply suggesting that Trump might win wasn't only inaccurate. It seemed to be dangerous to some people.

[00:25:59] So on October 31st, the New York Times published an article suggesting it was part of an effort to, quote, deflate enthusiasm among Democrats. And it was possible Harris was going to have a huge win, and then Trump might use the RCP poll average as a basis for disputing the results. So the New York Times wrote this nasty hit piece.

[00:26:22] And then Wikipedia, which normally has a page with a number of different polls and poll aggregators, they actually removed the RCP average from their chart showing poll averages. And one of their editors accused RCP of having a, quote, strong Republican bias. Which is not true. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, so it was just simply suggesting Trump might win was censored.

[00:26:49] One of the things that I thought was very interesting in your article is you also talk about Catherine Mayer, who later became CEO of NPR. But even when that Wikipedia talked about the fact that really Wikipedia sort of gave up on its free and open mantra. And so for individuals, especially I warn young people that want to do research for a term paper, Wikipedia may not be as open and objective as you might think. And there's a good illustration of it, isn't there?

[00:27:20] Yes. Well, we've seen that in many fronts. That was Wikipedia. But that video really crystallized what a lot of people were suspecting that it's deeply biased. She basically, you know, Wikipedia's original mantra was to be, quote, free and open. But she got rid of that when she was in charge because she said it led to too much emphasis on this white male westernized construct around who matters. So she basically said that being, you know, free and open led to results that were not free and open. It was absurd.

[00:27:49] But unfortunately, it's, you know, it's not just one isolated case of bias. It's just part of a much deeper, more entrenched system. Let's see, we can talk about the title. And, of course, I know you may not have necessarily picked the title for the cover of World Magazine's Accenture Ship Machine. But I think it is appropriate because we also, in your article, have how Congress created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

[00:28:16] And there have been attempts to actually weaponize this. And when I use the word machined, Michael Schellenbarger talks about the industrial machine, you know, this whole idea that really there is an attempt on the part of the government working through maybe social media. Since the government cannot censor speech, but they can encourage individuals that have social media platforms to censor speech.

[00:28:43] And so this idea of an industrial complex censorship machine seems to have some validity, don't you think? Yes, absolutely. What he discovered when he had access to Twitter files was just this web of censorship that was so vast it almost defies comprehension. And there's so many different groups involved. There's nonprofits, there's the government, there's groups receiving public funding, and they're all working in tandem to censor disfavored opinions.

[00:29:14] Just incredible. One other one that I wanted to get to as well, and that is PragerU. We've had Dennis Prager in studio. We've had him by phone. We've more than once mentioned and encouraged people to watch PragerU videos. And as you point out, there is probably one of the best examples of the attempt to try to censor PragerU, which has led to various hearings in front of Congress and all the rest.

[00:29:42] So, again, what did you find out in that regard? Because it does seem to me, looking at not only PragerU, but some of the people working with Alliance Defending Freedom, and we have the vice president of ADF oftentimes on this program as well, they are actually able to, again, document some of the censorship that's been taking place. Yes. So censorship seems to be almost a daily headache for them.

[00:30:08] Their staff members who I talked to told me that it's gotten a lot worse since 2016, which lines up with the timeline that I learned about. Censorship of American people really kicked off after Trump's election victory and after Brexit. There was this reaction against populism by the global elite. And so, PragerU really experienced that, specifically in election years, it seems to increase. So there was one particularly blatant example that I mentioned in my story, June 2024.

[00:30:38] They published one of their many documentaries, Dear Infoes, A Warning to America. They interviewed a Palestinian man who talked about growing up in Gaza and how a teacher came in and told him some horrible things about Jews and that this was being taught in the schools there. And surprisingly, Google labeled the documentary hate speech, but not towards Jews, towards Muslims.

[00:31:02] And not only the offending documentary, but PragerU's entire app was removed from Google Play, which is one of the world's largest app stores. So, fortunately, at PragerU, they're very experienced at dealing with this, and they have a very, very large following. So they just jumped right into action, got their followers to contact Google. They got media coverage, so they pushed back.

[00:31:22] And then Google reversed course a couple days later and told them it was a mistake, which PragerU doesn't believe because it just happens too often. And companies like Google just have policies that permit that. They're very opaque. And really, until those policies change, it's hard to believe these are mistakes.

[00:31:47] Well, and the other part of that is because PragerU has a very large following and a very significant budget, which is 10, 20 times the budget of this radio program, they can marshal money resources and sources. I know we've been on YouTube timeout at different times and all the rest.

[00:32:07] But I think the point that I would make, Emma, is that many individuals that are maybe social media influencers who don't have that kind of reach, don't have the ability to challenge Google or any other particular outreach or YouTube, they find themselves just deplatformed or they find their particular videos censored or something like that or demonetized.

[00:32:35] And so in some respects, what happened to PragerU? You can say, well, they eventually were able to rectify the problem. But think of all the individuals that don't have the resources to begin to challenge groups like YouTube and Google. Yes, absolutely. That's a huge problem.

[00:32:54] Craig Straseri, the chief marketing officer at PragerU, was telling me that conservative influencers who he's spoken to have just told him honestly that there are certain topics that they avoid because they know they'll get deplatformed and they rely on income from these platforms. So it promotes self-censorship as well. So that's very unfortunate that that's the outcome of some of these policies. Let's take a break.

[00:33:20] When we come back again, we're talking about the cover issue this month of March of the World Magazine, The Censorship Machine, Media, Government, and Big Tech. We'll come back and talk about Elon Musk. First of all, purchase Twitter, so I have the Twitter files. But then also, social media platform X went dark in Brazil. What happened there? We'll talk about that right after this.

[00:33:55] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Once again, as we are talking about this idea of censorship, looking at this first article, Crushing Dissent in the Censorship Machine. And, Emma, one of the things that we discovered after the 2020 election, and you refer to it as well, is our friends at the Media Research Center went back and asked individuals in seven swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

[00:34:24] We actually have radio programs in every one of those states. And they asked the voters about some of the key stories, one of which, of course, was Hunter Biden's laptop, which was actually censored. And they found that at least 17% of these Biden voters, individuals that voted for Joe Biden instead of voting for Donald Trump, said they would have abandoned the Democratic candidate if they had those facts.

[00:34:50] And if you actually run the numbers, that means that actually you would have reelected Donald Trump. So when people say, well, what's the harm of censorship? Sometimes some of this just doesn't need to get out. It could have affected the 2020 election. And even, as you mentioned a minute ago, even changing and deciding whether or not to run a map could have affected the 2024 election.

[00:35:15] But we now know a lot more than we knew back then because, as you point out, in 2022 Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now called X. And we now have the Twitter files. And I mentioned a minute ago Michael Schellenberger and others, and Barry Weiss, who actually went through that. And as they began to go through it, they recognized that there was a connection between the federal government and social media. In particular, this would be Twitter.

[00:35:43] And as a result, using social media to censor things, which you would not be allowed to do if you were the federal government. Yes, they're delegating, you know, essentially violating the First Amendment. And so when you do that, you are not going to be held accountable. We had a Supreme Court case that went there, but apparently these justices didn't think that was enough to deal with that issue.

[00:36:12] But what you have here are just all sorts of good examples of how that takes place. But you point out that censorship oftentimes takes different forms, remove, reduce, or inform. And sometimes all you have to do is just not lead with a story or so bury the story in terms of a file that you're looking for on Google or YouTube that essentially you don't even have to censor it. It's just never going to be seen by the average viewer or listener, is it?

[00:36:43] Right, right. That's the reduce part. So it's a fairly simple form of censorship. You don't actually remove it. That's too draconian or stop a fact check on it. You just make it so that almost nobody sees it. Right. You would probably just have to navigate to that person's page. Prager, you were telling me that they have, you know, almost a million followers. And then some of their posts on X before Elon Musk took it over would get like 50 views. You know, that's just impossible.

[00:37:12] So it was clear that the reach was being reduced. This also happened to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is now going to be likely to be head of the NIH. And again, I think that is a helpful illustration as well, because as we talked about with you in the previous interviews and in your articles in World Magazine, a lot of that has to do with the pandemic, the lockdown and the rest. But I thought we'd take one other article. We didn't post this one, but people can go to World Magazine and see it.

[00:37:41] And that is the unexpected retreat. We started today by talking about Elon Musk and Doge. And, of course, I just mentioned a minute ago about purchasing X or what at the time was called Twitter. But there was a standoff, if you will, between Elon Musk and the platform X and Brazil. And in this particular case, even though Elon Musk has been a free speech platform, I think it illustrates when you bring too much pressure,

[00:38:09] sometimes there is a tendency for free speech advocates to back down. Tell us more, if you might. Yes. Unfortunately, Brazil has been on a bad path in the past couple of years, in particular due to the outsized role played by a Supreme Court justice named Alessandra G. Morais. He and the fellow Supreme Court justices have given themselves an enormous amount of power to investigate what they call fake news.

[00:38:35] They actually gave themselves this power after a Brazilian magazine published an article linking the wife of the chief justice to a corruption scandal. And they've been investigating news outlets for so-called fake news, and that's had a huge chilling effect on the work of journalists and freedom of the press.

[00:38:53] And so Alessandra G. Morais started issuing secret orders to X and to other social media platforms, you know, demanding that some posts be removed, some accounts be banned. And X started pushing back against that. They were – it's appalling that basically all the other social media platforms just fully complied. But X tried to push back a little bit, and then the standoff grew more and more intense.

[00:39:22] And then at a certain point, Alessandra G. Morais took this very unprecedented step of actually shutting down access to X in Brazil. And if it's possible to still access X using what's called a virtual private network, which many Brazilians use, but Alessandra G. Morais said that if anyone was caught using that, they would face a fine of $9,000 a day. So this is very, very heavy-handed tactic.

[00:39:49] Brazilians would log in to X, and there would just not be a page there. And everyone was wondering what on earth was going to happen. But after about a month, it seemed like X and Elon Musk complied. They – you know, of course, Brazil is a large market, represents a lot of revenue, and so they agreed to meet Jim Morais' demands and to pay fines. So X is back now.

[00:40:17] So this was a confusing moment for a lot of Brazilians. I know I've heard different opinions from Brazilians. Some feel quite disappointed because, you know, some Brazilians were actually organizing rallies, you know, in support of free speech against Jim Morais. So they were trying to show their support, and then, you know, X decided to reverse course. But others, you know, are just sort of taking a wait-and-see approach.

[00:40:46] You know, X is still significantly more free than other social media platforms in Brazil. So they're still happy to have it back, and I think maybe the calculation from Elon Musk and the other leadership at X is just that they want to give the Brazilian people a platform that is, you know, that is still significantly freer than the others that they have access to. Very good. Let me just mention, just before we run out of time, that we do have a link to your website,

[00:41:15] emmafrere.wordpress.com. You don't have to remember all that because it is on our website, pointofview.net, has the articles we've talked with you about before, collateral damage patients that were injured by COVID-19, all the way up to, of course, these getting into a number of other issues. And I would also encourage people to go to World Magazine because that is a great way. You can click on the one there that has crushing dissent. You can read most of it there.

[00:41:40] Or you go to wng.org, worldmagazine.org, and you can find out a little bit more. It is worth your subscription. And, again, some great research that has been done, especially by you. And I wanted to let people know about the fact that the March issue, the censorship machine, media, government, and big tech teamed up to suppress truth. Can Trump dismantle their regime? Well, we'll find out in due course.

[00:42:07] Also, a very good article as well about if you ever wanted to do crowdfunding, there are better organizations than others that you might want to know about. And that information is on that particular article as well. So lots of material. And, Emma, thank you for joining us once again here on Point of View. Thank you for having me. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to change topics once again. And we're going to get into the whole issue of creation, evolution, intelligent design,

[00:42:36] arguments for the existence of God. We're going to be talking with a number of individuals. Dr. Robert Pacienja, who is the senior pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, also now is the CEO and president of Coral Ridge Ministries, founder of the Institute for Faith and Culture. We'll also be talking with Tom DeRosa, who is the director and founder of the Creation Studies Institute. I think you'll enjoy that conversation. And that's coming up right after this.

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