 You know, one of the things that are coming to the forefront, and there's a lot of discussion in the media about, is a bill going through Congress that basically would force the Chinese owner of TikTok, BitDance, to sell to an American company or have the social media company shut down. The US government is going to basically place conditions on a social media company, on ownership of social media company, and threaten to shut that social media company down. Now, I think this is a truly horrific development. I mean, it's been in the works since Donald Trump threatened to do it in 2019, something like that. But it really is horrific. There is no national security threat of TikTok that just straight up BS. Excuses for government intervention, excuses for central planning, excuses for the metal in the affairs of consumers and producers with no justification, really. But that is what Democrats and Republicans, it looks like it has a bipartisan support, both Democrats and Republicans support this. It looks like it'll pass both the Senate and the House, and Joe Biden has said he would sign this. Now, there are a lot of challenges here, right? There is a challenge. I'm sure there'll be a lot of bidders for TikTok. It's a valuable, it's certainly a valuable property. But it's not clear that Chinese will sell it. A vast majority of the profits for BitDance are going to be from China. And it's not clear that they're just willing to sell this, particularly given that it's being done for political reasons. China might just decide to poke America in the eye and refuse to sell. Now, of course, the United States is kind of sticking its fingers into the private parts of China. So, Poki and I is a reasonable response, but China might not just sell and let this shut down. And if it shuts down, you've got a lot of issues. First of all, there are tens of millions of Americans who use TikTok every day who are big fans of TikTok. Now they will switch to Instagram, to YouTube Shorts, or to some other application. But I don't think they're going to be happy. BitDance having trouble with these kids primarily because they are anti-Israel pro-Palestinian and he needs their votes. Does he really want to upset them around TikTok after upsetting them around his foreign policy? You know, really not clear. But the bigger issue, the bigger issue both from a free market philosophical perspective, but also from the perspective I think of the US Supreme Court, is the issue of free speech. The issue of free speech. Put aside whether you like China or not like China, the United States typically does not get into business of defining who will own any particular company. Particularly when the company is not and has no national security issues. It's not developing and designing and selling chips. It's not involved in building weapon systems. It's not involved in any kind of high-tech. TikTok is an entertainment platform. It does nothing to threaten the national security of the United States. And the idea that the government, and you could argue arbitrarily, is threatening TikTok. Threatening TikTok was shutting down. Is a direct intervention in the US economy, which is really unprecedented. Which is really unprecedented. It's really not happened before. The use of the federal government to stop, I mean, we've seen the stop of our ownership of potential defense contractors, of builders of sensitive content, of other things. But so far we haven't seen them stopping the Chinese from buying regular companies or even land. And nor should they stop these things. They didn't stop it when Japan was buying and they haven't stopped it when Russians own a lot of property in the United States. And that has not been stopped. Which is good. Just respect for private property. If you want to define and declare China an enemy of the United States, then you can do a lot of things. Then embargo it, take away all the Jewish property. You can do a ton of things once it is an enemy. But nobody wants to declare China an enemy of the United States. I mean, we don't need to declare Russia an enemy of the United States. While we're supporting Ukraine in battle against Russia and we keep claiming Russia wants to launch a war against NATO and Russia are the bad guys and Russia are awful. And yet we're too afraid to declare them an enemy. We still have an embassy in Russia. We still have diplomatic relations with Russia. Suddenly, there is zero reason to ban TikTok. Now if it turns out that supporting Bin Laden on TikTok is a national security threat, then ban promoting Bin Laden. And indeed, when TikTok, when a big deal was made out of the Bin Laden letter, all those videos we talked about on the show, all those videos praising the Bin Laden letter about 9-11, TikTok took it down, took all the videos down. So there is no threat, zero threat. I mean propaganda, sure. Every platform has propaganda. Propaganda is not a threat. Propaganda does not give the government the right to decide who can talk and who cannot talk, even if the talking is done or monitored by a company in a foreign state, even if that company is suspected, reasonably so. To be involved with that foreign government. If you want to declare them an enemy, declare them an enemy. Short of that, you have no right to shut down a company that is not involved in a national security issue. No right, zero. And indeed, I have a feeling that if this goes to court and if it reaches the Supreme Court, I think the Supreme Court will agree with me. That is, there is a clear violation of the First Amendment here. There is nothing in the First Amendment that says that if you promote videos of people we hate, you could be shut down. There is nothing in the First Amendment that says that a foreign newspaper can't come to the United States, a foreign media company can't come to the United States and promote its agenda, sell its media. We had for years in the United States, Russia today, all over the place. We have, you know, all kinds of stations and media companies in the United States that are not owned by Americans. And once you do that, you're giving immense arbitrary power to the federal government. I mean, it strikes me as nuts as usual, right? It strikes me as nuts as people who claim they promote limited government, who want to support capitalism, who claim to be capitalists, want to give the federal government more power, more arbitrary power, more power to decide what media companies we can use and what media companies we cannot, based on nothing, nothing. It's some kind of populist, arbitrary, I don't know. I'm not even sure who they're trying to appeal here. Now on top of that, Trump is kind of being funny on this. I think the best way to categorize this is funny. So Trump came out and said he opposes the bill to ban TikTok. He started this whole thing and he opposes it. Now it's not clear why he opposes it, because he also called TikTok a threat, but he also said that some kids will go crazy without him. He doesn't want kids to go crazy. Some people are speculating that he has donors with a big financial interest in TikTok and maybe that's why he has changed his mind and flip-flops on this. He also said that he doesn't want TikTok to be sold, well, TikTok to be closed, because that would strengthen one of his arch enemies, which is Facebook, which if you remember Facebook banned him after the January 6th insurgency, insurrection, not insurgency, insurrection. But he basically said he thinks the bill should not pass. Now this will be interesting. This will be interesting. Will congressional leaders, Republicans, MAGA members of Congress, will they listen to Trump or will they go ahead and pass this anyway? This seems pretty anti-TikTok, but Trump seems pretty pro-TikTok for whatever reason. So the House of Representatives said to vote tomorrow under fast-track rules that require two-thirds of the member to vote yes for the measure to win passage. There's a good chance I get two-thirds, depending on again on how influential Trump's voice on this is going to be. Anyway, this is the issue that people are concerned about. This, we'll talk about other issues in a minute, but we're worried about TikTok. Trump said, I'm not looking to make Facebook double the size, and if you ban TikTok, then Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be big beneficiary, and I think Facebook has been very dishonest. Anyway, we will see. We will see if this goes through. I think it's horrible. We will see if I'm sure TikTok will sue. It'll be interesting if the courts take this up, and it'll be interesting if this ultimately comes to the Supreme Court. But I think this is a clear-cut First Amendment issue. This is a free speech issue. And the courts, the conservative courts, are being pretty good on free speech. And here's an example, if Trump is on the right side of this issue, as usual, almost certainly for all the wrong reasons. So yes, I condemn Trump no matter, even when he's on the right side of issues, because he's a moron. So his rambling on this issue are stupid, and I'm going to call him when he does. The fear of Facebook, it's not, he's not here defending free speech, God forbid. That would be something to really get my attention, the day that Trump comes out for free speech and as an advocate for free speech and standing up for free speech, then I don't know what I'll do myself, I'll be completely, completely crazy. But so Trump is right for the wrong reasons. Trump is right, but he's rambling. If you listen to his discussion on TikTok and one of the interviews he did, he can't put a sentence together. He can't put a coherent sentence. I mean, people talk about Biden losing it, they're both way too old to be president. They both, phew, mind is just not there. Neither one of them has a mind that's completely there. All right, so yeah, we'll watch TikTok and particularly I'm interested in what happens when it goes to court. I'm particularly interested if the First Amendment issue is raised and whether the Supreme Court will stick by its usual pretty good defense of the First Amendment. We'll see.