 27th, 2022, it's Wednesday, 11 o'clock. That can be an only one thing. Time for What Now America? I'm Tim Appichell, your host. And today's title is Citizens Kane's Newspaper is Musk's Twitter. You know, we have four major, someone's laughing, I hear them. We have four major social media companies. Alphabet owns Google and YouTube. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. ByteDance owns TikTok and Twitter, which has 330 million active users. Those are the four. So now we're going to have a proposed purchase. Oh, actually, it's not proposed, it's been approved by the board of directors for $44 billion that Elon Musk will be the sole proprietor of Twitter. Again, 330 million followers. That's more than the population of the United States. So to discuss that and the implications of his purchase, I have with me Jay Fidel and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning. Good morning, Tim. Good morning, Cynthia. Good morning, Jay. Big news in Tinseltown, or in this case, Wall Street. $44 billion, not chicken feed. He's going to have to get a loan and he's already mentioned that he's going to probably sell some shares of Tesla, which by the way, Tesla took a 12.8 loss yesterday out of fear that he's going to sell off his Tesla stock. So Jay, the question is to you, what's Elon Musk's agenda on this, on this $44 billion purchase of 25% of all social media? What do you think is behind it? By the way, it's a leveraged buyout. He doesn't have to pay it all at once over time. Yeah. He could negotiate a smart business guy. You realize that he only got wealthy within the last 20 years. It's really extraordinary how much wealth he's developed. His first great transaction was PayPal. But that was, I say only, that was only in the hundreds of millions. From there on, it got to be billions. And he's done a fabulous job with Tesla, biggest motor car companies in the world, all within what, 10 years, 15 years, max. So this is a smart guy. And spending $44 billion, it doesn't escape him. That's a lot of money. On the other hand, what is a company like Twitter really worth? It's not necessarily in the 320 million users. It's in the users that will be later. It's really popular. And you say 320 in a country of 330 or whatever we have. Well, actually it's 330 million followers. So that's one for everybody in the country, but it's not limited to the country. Right. It's the world. And so the influence that he is gaining by this purchase is global. It may be worth more than $44 billion when he finishes with it. So the big question is, what does he have in his mind that justifies this price, that justifies this complete change of direction for him? He hasn't been in media, now he's in media. And now he's in one of the biggest, most influential media in the world. So I guess I wanna put myself in his shoes, in his head. Why would he do this? Well, it's the influence, okay? It's global influence. Why would he do it? Because there's more to come with Twitter. And whatever Twitter is today, I guarantee you in six months or maybe three, it's gonna look entirely different. You asked me before the show, do we know what he is going to do with it? And no, and he doesn't know either. But you just take your phone and examine what he might do. You look into his head, in his technology. I mean, after all, Tesla's a tech company. And you try to figure out what you would do if you were smart like him, to build on what Twitter is today. Okay, so whatever Twitter is today, multiply that by a huge multiple. He's gonna take out the bots. That's gonna cost him a bit of money. He's gonna use artificial intelligence to do that. It's doable. He's gonna try to take out the bullying. Okay, we already have network analysis, you know, black bots. Well, wait a minute, I question that. How do you know he's gonna take out the bullying? I mean, his whole spiel on this is I want complete unrestricted free speech. Bullying would be part of his philosophy, I would suppose. We're at odds on that. He's not gonna do that because, you know, this is another point. I mean, he doesn't want to invoke governmental action. He doesn't want to have regulation. He wants to get through this deal as a, you're right. He's gonna own it by himself. He's going private with this company. Imagine a 44 billion, there's no other company like in the world, a 44 billion dollar company held essentially privately. He controls it all. He, no stockholders to worry about, right? Nobody can complain about it. And I mean, nobody in the company, no directors to complain. If you don't like what he's doing, he'll fire you. But, you know, we differ on the notion of bullies because I don't think, yes, he wants to do First Amendment. He said that a number of times. And the press has responded by saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. You know, you can't, you can't, First Amendment is complicated. You can't just say that everything and anything that comes down the pike, you're gonna put it on here. You've already said you're not gonna allow bots. And implicitly, he's not gonna allow bullying either. It's bad for business. So you're gonna respect certain Supreme Court decisions about limitations of free speech? Well, you know, I was telling you also before the show that I think this is a test of the First Amendment. We have never had a test like this test is gonna be. We are going to see how strong it is or how weak it is. We are going to see, and this is a prediction I would make, whether the government, that is the administration, will step in and do something about improper use of Twitter under, you know, Elon Musk's definition of First Amendment. I think the First Amendment is going to be redefined because you mentioned all these tech companies have so much influence through their media subsidiaries that it's really, it begs for governmental action. It begs for governmental control. On the other hand, you can't do what Putin does. You know, you've gotta allow people to speak their minds in a free society, in a democracy, but you can't have this kind of negative thing. You know, it tells either way, you can have people who come and, you know, bully, come and, you know, do QAnon conspiracy theories. This is very bad, nasty. So we don't want that, and we don't want to have that. And I don't think he wants to have that either. Right, well, you know, if you think about it, Jay, the last point, the last point is you don't wanna go off the other side and limit, you know, civil rights, civil liberties, the notion of, you know, speaking truth to power. So he's gotta find a place in the middle. Okay, thanks. Cynthia, one of the quotes from Elon Musk was the following. He was a Twitter quote, digital town square, where it matters is vital to the future of humanity and where it's debated. This is a lot of the town square is a very powerful tool to have. And as Jay's mentioned, we don't have a whole lot of oversight. Government doesn't have a whole lot of oversight on it right now. I think there was a test on the First Amendment rights when Donald Trump was prohibited and some of his cronies have been kicked off of Twitter and Facebook for, you know, either inciting violence or out and out lies about COVID-19. So we have had some testing of that, but it was held by the CEOs or the Facebook boards that said this was out of play. Does the government get involved if Elon Musk goes too far with his quote unquote, no restrictions on free speech? Okay, well, I think that this all started and I don't understand why I don't hear anybody talking about this. It all started when the SEC sued Musk in 2018, right? Because he put out a post on Twitter that was a false statement that increased his stock prices by I think it was 20 something million or maybe even more than that. I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact number, but he made a huge profit on this fault statement that he put on Twitter. So the SEC sued him and it cost him 20 million in civil fines and he had to let Tesla lawyers vet all of his Twitter posts. So here he is, he can't say what he wants to say. He can't manipulate people through Twitter. So he goes, well, I don't know how to get around this. I'll just buy Twitter. And I would, that's where it's starting. And the title of the show is about Citizen Kane and it was really, Citizen Kane was one of the most popular movies ever in 1941, but it was really about Randolph Hearst and how he used the newspapers business to kind of settle scores with current or former enemies and actually bend political will through the use of his newspapers. Is this a grudge? Is this a grudge that Elon Musk has taken on because he was penalized and he's been criticized for how he's been union busting Tesla factory workers? Is this a grudge? Is this the motivation in your opinion? I think so. He's already going after some of the Twitter CEO, not CEOs, but some of the administrative people on Twitter, he's already publicly going out kind of calling them out and disparaging their characters. Which is a breach of the agreement already that there was an agreement not to do these things. He's already broken his agreements. So is all of this just, as Jay is saying, some sort of test for the First Amendment, some sort of free speech test, is he trying to set up a situation where he doesn't actually end up owning Twitter, right? Doesn't go $44 billion in debt, but he changes the dialogue in such a way that he gets out of his SEC fines. Well, I think he's already had to pay those, but he can get out of this, whatever, it's this oversight that he has. He can't put anything on Twitter unless it gets vetted first. Well, he's already gone against that. So there's already a case now against him from the government because he violated the terms that he agreed to when in 2018. So there's a bunch of stuff going on under the scenes that involve way more than is Trump and his cronies gonna get back on Twitter. I mean, yes, that's an important factor, but there's so much more when I started to really look into all of this and I thought, when the world, it's so complicated and confusing and it almost looks like he's setting it up so it won't happen, at least to me. Okay. Oh, I think he's gonna close on that. Yeah. And I think he's going to do things that nobody can imagine, but let's try to imagine one aspect of it. Let's say that he really goes in an open channel on this, everything goes, except the bots, everything goes. You can say whatever you want to say. I hope he doesn't do Trump on it because that would assure Trump of winning in 2024. It would assure, he must love the possibility of going back on Twitter. Oh, Trump said he would never do it. What's the lie? He says he won't do it. He's gonna stick with his, whatever that one is. This is directly competitive with Trump's Twitter. Right. And Trump's Twitter will fail. It's already failing. So he would be, it's already over. So he would want to come on this Twitter for sure. But let's assume for a moment, he can't. Let's assume that all the Q and A's and the bullies and the conspiracy theories and all the crazy GOP people, of which there are many wanna come on, all the people who spread disinformation and misinformation, I mean, they're all over the place. And I've always been happy that Twitter locked some of them out, but if Elon Musk does not lock them out, if he reverses that, try you guys, Tim and Cynthia, try to imagine that world. We will have the inmates running the asylum. Okay, to my question. So if anything goes, does the government say, well, you know, cable news isn't controlled directly by the FTC, but there are FTC guidelines on the damage to the public. And whether or not, pardon? Are you asking me that? Yeah, I'm winding up to ask you this question. And that is, does the government get involved if things get out of hand? And how long does that take? Well, that's three questions. Yeah, I like three questions. The first question is, should the government get involved? And the answer regrettably, although we all study, you know, the black and white aspect of the First Amendment in law school, and we've lived with it, you know, it's part of our national culture. But the answer is yes, the government should get involved because at that point, we will be at, we as a nation and a world for that matter will be a great risk of having the inmates running the asylum, having people spread disinformation and cultism, if you will. Okay, the second question is, will the government get involved? And that sort of depends on whether you have functioning government. Remember that whatever would happen in a completely open channel on this will affect the government. It will enhance the Republican. And I never know what they're gonna do, except I always assume it's the wrong thing, the wrong way carding. You know, they're moving now in favor of Putin. You notice that it's happening? Incredible. Are they going to be on the right side of this issue? If they win in this fall, they're gonna control Congress, like goodness gracious. So even if they should, and we all agree, it's the right public policy to do something, to limit what must, would organize, they may not do that. They may be either locked up or going the other way saying, now all of a sudden, we believe in the First Amendment and we wanna speak, we wanna do our disinformation. So don't stop us. You know, so they may not take any action. And the third question you asked was when? Well, you know, it reminds me of that cartoon in The New Yorker, where this guy's talking to somebody on the phone about a lunch date and he leans back in his chair and he says, how about never? It's never good for you. How about never? How about never? How about never? All right. Once again, you've thrown me off my task. Thank you, Jay. You know, Cynthia, Twitter gets about 98% of its revenue from ads. Elon Musk has, as one of his principles of buying Twitter is to have it ad-free. Is this a business model that will sustain itself or will this become a lost leader for Elon Musk and he'll be funneling money into this thing until he owns it, until he doesn't own it anymore? Well, I think he will be stuck funneling money into it if he, and I think he's gonna lose millions of Twitter followers and millions of people that are on Twitter are gonna leave. Why? Well, just because they don't like the idea of it, this whole, you can say whatever you want, you can bully people, you can, you know, give out false information. It doesn't matter. People are sick of that. Nobody really complained that much, except for the hardcore Trumpers. Nobody really complained when Trump was thrown off of Twitter. Most people were, I mean, the majority of people were celebrating the fact that he was off. And so I think he's gonna run into that problem. Okay. Can I answer that? Can I answer that? Sure. You know, it's like the Mel Brooks thing where he says it's great to be king. It's also great to be great. Look at what happened with Facebook. They were, you know, mighty criticized about so many things. It hasn't really affected them that much. And some would say that Facebook has lost some steam in the marketplace, but I'm not so sure because people use them anyway. They're dependent on them in some funny way. In Twitter, it's even more like that. I mean, people get wedded to it. They need it. They're standing on the street corner waiting for a bus. They gotta have their Twitter. They gotta have their fix. It's not only in Hawaii, but everywhere in the country. And it's everywhere in the world. It's connectivity. It's being part of the community. How can you not? You must. And so I would say, even though there are threats right now and for sure there are, the people are gonna leave. They're anticipating what Elon Musk will do. They don't like it. When at the bottom line, they're gonna stick to Twitter and his numbers will grow. That's my prediction. And I'll bet you a pizza. No more pizza bets. I'm done with those. Wait, wait, I bet you a pizza J on this one. And that is that somebody else is gonna start another one. And that's how it's gonna totally undercut Twitter. Twitter will fall. I think it will fall. And I say the reason why is because somebody else is gonna invent another one that's gonna come out, that's gonna take over where people don't have to worry about being on Twitter. It could be on this other thing. So you're supporting the better mousetrap theory. Okay. Before I ask any more questions, I have to correct a number here. I said 98% of Twitter's revenue was derived from ads. It's actually 90%. So correction there. Jay, Twitter is worldwide and Europe has just imposed a whole plethora of restrictions on social media. To what degree do they abide with Elon's musk wish list of free and unrestricted speech? Really? Do they allow Twitter? Does Europe, the EU allow Twitter to even function under that guideline? He's gonna have to make peace with them. He wants to do his open channel. He's gonna have to make a deal, settle, pay them, find terms that are somewhere in the middle that are acceptable on both sides. My reaction to it is good for the Europeans. They understand things and do things that for some reason we can't do here. In many ways, they have the moral high ground. This is the right thing to do. It's the sort of thing. Yes. And actually they're a good model for us to follow had we had, if we had a government that could actually act. Yeah. And the big thing that Europe has imposed as a restriction, there is no derogatory hits on race, origin, national origin, color creed, all that stuff, sex. I mean, basically our Equal Rights Opportunity Act of the United States, they've imposed it for social media. And it seems to be, I think it'll work. So the question was rare. The question is whether it'll ever get adopted here. That's correct. That is correct. It depends on who's in charge in Congress, right? As to whether or not it goes forward, I think it's sort of up in the air because we don't know if the Republicans are in charge. If the Democrats- Well, there was a lot of synergy in both the house, excuse me, a house Senate and across both sides of the aisle that social media would be regulated in some fashion and form. Now, I don't know where those proposed legislations are. We haven't heard much about them, but allegedly they're still kicking around. So do you think that actually, because of this pending sale, do you think that legislation actually gets going a little bit faster since there's bipartisanship agreement on some of these reforms, Cynthia? I think so. I hope so. Definitely hope so. And I don't see why not. And if they don't do it now, there's so many things that are needing to be done now before the election in 2022 here, coming up in November. It's a lot of things that need to get done before then. So who knows if it will actually happen, but hopefully it will. All right. When I say how about never, I'm saying it's way beyond the election. If ever. We'll buy that. You know, speaking of social media, Kevin McCarthy is the switch to switch here. Kevin McCarthy is basically all over the news right now on many of his Twitter feed accounts. And one of them was, keep other members of the GOP off Twitter. Can we restrict them like we did Donald Trump? Jay, this, this, a plethora of new leaks and audio leaks about Kevin McCarthy is pretty revealing. What's your impression of what's come out on the last day or so? Well, they've been spelling his name right. That's true, man. Yeah. No, I mean, it's the old story. I mean, here the guy really got caught in the jam here his hand is a cookie jar, making all these inconsistent statements lying to the press. I mean, L-I-E lying to the press. And yet somehow he stands up to it. He's like a junior, a mini-me Trump. He's a mini-me Trump. I mean, now he's been lying to the press, but he's been lying to Donald Trump. You know, I never, I never was going to ask him to resign. Oh, I wasn't, I wouldn't even think of that. Well, guess what? They caught him on that one. And now they're catching him on all of the other stuff about Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and the whole gaggle of them. But the bottom line is that he's still strong in the GOP. He had some kind of standing ovation. Yes, the standing ovation yesterday from the GOP. I mean, the more bad you are, the more they love you. This is part of the ethic. So he's just trying to be bad, bad, bad in the thought that they will love him. I don't think he's coming down. He can see all kinds of commentary about it in the newspapers, but just as much as they criticize him, there are those who say, well, it's raw power. And he's managing to do that. And even Trump respects raw power. Right. Cynthia, I know you had some strong feelings about this topic. So the question is to you is A, does Donald Trump accept these audio tapes as no big deal? Or is he gonna come out against Kevin McCarthy, come time for when they decide who's gonna be the new Speaker of the House if the Democrats lose the House for the midterms? I want that to be a big if, I really do. But well, I don't know. And we already know that Trump has come out actually since the tapes were released. And he says, well, he's come around. I admire anybody that can see the error of their ways and come back to me. Those aren't his exact words, but that's basically what he said. Well, he's done that many times with Rudy Giuliani and the like. Exactly, that's sort of his MO. It shows how powerful he is that he can turn someone from the other side to come back in or what I mean. It makes him feel powerful that he's got that much more. Yeah, you forgot the word grovel. Yeah, it's true. Well, Nassi, I think when McCarthy went down to Mar-a-Lago, it wasn't to kiss the ring. It was to get their stories straight. So many GOP were in on this together. So after the fact, they got to figure out how to keep themselves clean from all of it. And I believe that's what that was all about. Everybody says, oh, we went down there to kiss the ring to pay homage to the king. I don't think so. I think all they did was try to get stories straight and not over Twitter or the phone or anything else where they could be recorded, they had to do it in person. And that's the only reason he went down there. And I think the reason that the GOP is staying so in step, lockstep is because most of them were complicit. They were involved and they know that if they're involved, they can't keep their seat. So they have to support Trump. Otherwise they have to show their own guilt. And I think that's part of it. And Chuck Grassley showed his behind so bad in this one new thing that's been released where he says that he's going to be the one overseeing the counting and the certifying of the votes. And we, not I, don't expect to see Pence there. We don't expect him to be there. Then they're referring to Mike Pence. I think they even say, he even said we don't expect Vice President Mike Pence to be there. Well, there's a pushback on that. They said that was taken out of context and it was really just towards one of the chambers and that's what he was referring to and blah, blah, blah. I'm surprised they didn't say he was joking, which is their normal. That's true. Good point. Good point. All right. Thanks Cynthia. Hey Jay, is Merrick Garland from the DOJ? Is he listening to these audio tapes? Is this going to give him more opportunities to explore these things further? The first one is, I really don't know what he does. The second, I really nobody knows what he does because if by all indications, he doesn't do anything. The second one is the Judy V, yes. And Cootie, yes. I, you know, you hear all these stories about busts by the FBI around the country, but it's for the wrong issue. And you hear all these stories about investigation and interviewing witnesses on the Trump conspiracy. Let's see some meat. You know, where's the meat? Does this take some of the fireworks out of the proposed hearings that we're going to see in the next month or so? These audio tapes? No, I think it is fireworks and it's got to be part of the whole record. And you know, what do I get out of all of this? I mean, your comments and what I see and read is that we are now engaged, not in the great insurrection, which was a treasonous conspiracy among a lot of people, including those who held or who now hold public office. But that was phase two. Phase three is where we're now. And that is a treasonous conspiracy to cover it up, to not let it get out, to not admit anything, to not let any investigation go forward. It's really extraordinary because this is just as much a treasonous conspiracy as the insurrection itself was. And it is just as much, if not more threatening to our democracy to have all these Republican officials deny the truth and deny the process. It's really terrible. And we can never lose sight of that. And the worst thing about it is it's working. The base believes it or enough of them believe it, so they're getting away with it. And Congress doesn't have the clout to enforce its own subpoenas, thanks to Merrick Garland, and they're getting away with it. So this treasonous conspiracy is worse. Okay, Cynthia, I see a reaction, a subtle one at that, but a reaction, would you like to end this topic with your thoughts? Well, I agree with Jay, and I think it's absolutely sick that these people are getting away with all of this, and they are putting legislation in place in different states that will continue this same thing. We've got David Perdue outright saying that the 2020 election was stolen and fraudulent, and there's a lot of other Republican candidates right now that are saying the same thing. So if we don't hurry up, and like I was saying earlier, if we don't hurry up and do something, it's not gonna happen because we only have so much time. Granted, we might have a huge, hopefully title way of Democratic voters come out and keep this from happening. But if we don't, what are we gonna do? They'll stop the commission. I'm not the commission that the committee, the special committee, they'll stop investigations, they'll stop everything. And then there goes democracy. Alrighty. Terrifies me. Okay. Hey, we've run out of time. Jay, your last thoughts about this topic or the previous one? They're intertwined. Yeah. You know, these two topics are intertwined because just as Elon Musk's affair here is a challenge to the First Amendment, it's a challenge to the existing media. So, Query, is he gonna have as much influence as the print press, as the New York Times, as the Washington Post, or more? And what happens in the cacophony and the chaos of the Musk Twitter community? And that's, I think, that's probably what's gonna happen. It will be chaos and it will affect and infect the government, okay? And the processes we're talking about, the concerns we have about the election and all that will be affected by whatever happens on Twitter. And Twitter could just roll over everything we've talked about because people believe in it and they stand on the street corner and they're connected and wedded to it. And that's the most threatening thing of all because it changes the other threats and it could very easily make them worse. Okay, great points. Cynthia, your last words. Vote, everybody vote. Vote. If you're an independent vote, if you're a Democrat, vote. If you've never voted before in your life, register, vote. Find out what your times are. When your voting times are. Get ready now. I realize November seems like a far away time, but it's really not that far. It's just right around the corner. And this is, you know, 2020, we all said democracy's on the ballot. Well, guess what? It still is. And so everybody just needs to get out and vote, please. Good point. Good point. Particularly with many states with the new voter restrictions may require, you know, work in advance to get either ID or whatever the case may be, it's going to take a lot longer in many of these states. So great point, Cynthia. Great point. Okay, well, I'm going to wrap it up because we're out of time or over time. I like to thank Jay Fidale and Cynthia Lisa and Claire for joining us on What Now America? Won't you please join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock? And until then I'm Tim Epitle, your host and we'll see you then. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.