CLAY: So, this a big story. Joe Rogan, we’ve talked a lot about the rise of cancel culture and the continued influence of it. Whoopi Goldberg gets suspended for two weeks for her stupidity on The View. What’s going on that I believe is the most significant aspect of everything relating to cancel culture is Big Tech is being directly commanded by the White House, by the federal government to do things that the federal government itself cannot do.
And let me explain what I mean by that. If Jen Psaki came out and said, “Joe Rogan’s podcast is banned because we don’t like what he says on it,” or if she came out and said, “Clay and Buck is banned to air on airwaves because we don’t like the topics and conversations that they are having,” that would be 100% a violation of the First Amendment because the government can’t censor speech from private actors it doesn’t like in that context.
And the government knows that. But what is occurring is more insidious, Buck, than that. What the government is doing is they’re going to Facebook — which, by the way, dropping 25% today in the stock market after missing earnings. That’s a big story in and of itself about the social media universe and maybe these companies are not as powerful and strong as we thought, which is maybe why they’re more susceptible to listen to the federal government than many people would have anticipated.
But we know, ’cause Jen Psaki has been lecturing us from the White House press briefing and saying, “Hey, we’ve been providing a list of accounts that we don’t like that are spreading what we’re calling misinformation, and we’re asking Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok or whoever else it might be to pull the influence and/or the posts that we don’t like.”
That is an attempt to get around the First Amendment, Buck, while using the power of government to regulate speech in a way that is directly constitutionally forbidden, and I think it should be — it should be — forbidden in general. Now, here’s Jen Psaki speaking specifically to Joe Rogan. Listen to what she said.
PSAKI: Well, last July, (sputters) you probably know, but the Surgeon General also took the unprecedented step to issue an advisory on the risk of misinformation in public health which is a very significant step. And admit that he talked about the role social media platforms have. So our hope is that all major tech platforms — and all major news sources, for that matter — be responsible and vigilant to ensure the American people have access to accurate information on something as significant as covid-19. That certainly includes Spotify. So this disclaimer is a positive step, but we want every platform to continue doing more to call out mis- and disinformation while also uplifting accurate misinformation.
BUCK: It is absolutely not the role of our government to be trying to combat “misinformation” among the American people. Like this notion they’re supposed to be tracking down and eliminating misinformation? Just start from that premise. That’s not their job. We don’t need them trying to tell us where the misinformation is or whatever. That’s not…
They’re allowed to present their point of view, of course, which what they do all the time. They present propaganda. They’re allowed to convince people or try to convince people of the rightness or wrongness of different policies and ideas. But, Clay, they really think they’re on a seek-and-destroy mission against misinformation, and the great irony of this of course is that the White House itself has been a tremendous purveyor of misinformation the entire time.
Joe Biden’s walking around calling this for months a pandemic of the unvaccinated. That is a lie, as anybody, including me — who got vaccinated and then got sick — can tell you, it is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated. But he kept saying it and saying it. The media apparatus — including social media — that the White House is calling on to take action here — and, by the way, this is just back-door censorship is all and really right now with Jen Psaki calling for it.
CLAY: Front-door censorship.
BUCK: Front door. This is like going right in, sitting down in the kitchen and demanding censorship. It’s exactly what they’re doing, and it just goes to show you how corrupt and venal our media really is that they won’t actually stand up and say, “Hold a second.” The lifeblood of what we do — whether you’re a social media company or a traditional news media company, Clay — is free speech and the freedom to share ideas.
If freedom of speech does not mean the right to say things that are unpopular, that the government does not like, that the government would say is misinformation — that the government would even say is dangerous — there’s no such thing as free speech. We don’t need free speech for, “Joe Biden’s amazing,” because we know they’re grown clap for that. We need free speech for the Fauciite apparatus of the federal government has been a catastrophic failure that has resulted — as we see from the Johns Hopkins study about lockdowns — in an enormous destruction of people’s lives with no benefit.
CLAY: That’s why the marketplace of ideas is so important, in all facets of life. And also, Buck, what you’re seeing is, the creep of censorship into artists. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything like this in America, and let me explain what I mean. It used to be that most artists supported the free expression of other artists. Now, you might be, let’s say, back in the day, remember 2 Live Crew and the questions of whether or not their rap lyrics were obscenity?
I don’t remember very many other artists… Let’s say you were a rock artist. Let’s say you were a… Let’s say you were a R&B artist or whatever you might be. I don’t remember any other artists in the creative endeavors saying, “We need to make sure that other people cannot hear this music.” What is happening now is, all of these aging rockers that are saying, “Hey, you have to pull Joe Rogan off of Spotify…”
BUCK: But “banned,” to be fair, it’s about curriculum, right? They’re not banned it. They’re not doing book burnings and saying, “You can’t have it,” just to be clear, right? If you’re trying to teach 12-year-olds critical race theory, Clay, and they say, “Hold on, this book is garbarge. Why is this being taught?” you’re not banning. You’re making editorial decisions.
CLAY: Yes. Right. And the easy analogy I think for people out there who are parents, I ban my kids from watching R-rated movies. That’s not me banning R-rated movies in general.
BUCK: Exactly.
CLAY: It’s just my belief is that based on their age, it’s age inappropriate. That’s the entire purpose of the Motion Picture Rating System in general, from G to R or X or whatever it might be, that’s a function of the age range that is appropriate to be able to consume a particular content. But, Buck, what is scary to me is the creative industry itself coming out against Joe Rogan in his own creativity.
And we’ve seen this with comics, right? There are comics that will turn on other comics. We saw it happen with Dave Chappelle. We haven’t seen it that much with authors saying, “Hey, I agree this book shouldn’t be widely distributed; people shouldn’t read this.”
But when you’ve got creative people turning against other creative people and saying their content should not be able to be consumed, that combined with the environment that the United States government is trying to create, frankly, Buck, in my life, I don’t ever remember a situation such as this.
BUCK: So I will give a point of view here that I haven’t really seen anywhere else but I’ll say this. People will say things to me. My first ever job in media technically was when I was an 18-year-old intern at CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. And I saw at 18 years old ’cause I was a, you know, National Review-reading, Rush-listening, Drudge Report on my home page — although Drudge has changed in recent years. He used to be a great guy.
I was like, “Okay. So this is a propaganda network. At 18, I could kind of tell,” and people would say to me, “Oh, but back in the Cronkite days…” No, it was lib then too. It just there just wasn’t anyone to point it out. There was no alternative. Now, it was less lib ’cause the Democrat Party hadn’t moved as far left, but it had always been pushing for one side. It had always been one perspective on America.
I think that there might be a little bit of a rethink, if you will, about a lot of these “rebels.” What was it? Who were the old guys that do the guitar? Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They’ve come out now too these are people that you associate with the sixties and the anti-war movement and all the rest of it. Yeah, they’re kind of just people of the left who wanted to overthrow the existing power structure and replace it with one that they like.
They’re actually not real rebels when you look at how this as evolved over time. When I say “they,” I’m talking about the ones that are coming out now and speaking about these issues. Bruce Springsteen, huge lib, Born in the USA, not particularly patriotic song. You go down the list, you see all these guys, I think that there should be…
You look back at what we believe, which are these artists who are big free speech people… We’ve seen the change in Howard Stern. So was he about free speech or was free speech something he believed in when he was breaking down doors with it for his even career? ‘Cause he doesn’t seem to believe in it anymore when it comes to the vaccine.
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: Her podcast, which if Spotify isn’t gonna… Oh, wait. The Mary Trump was amazing ’cause I think… I wish we could see those numbers. I bet that you could count on two hands the number of people that listen to the Mary Trump podcast, probably, but then there was —
CLAY: Mary Trump lost in a big way when her was it her uncle or whatever — when Trump — lost the election in 2020, her entire — ’cause I think she sold a million copies of whatever book she wrote. She made a ton of money. And if he were still in my office, she would be the Trump family member who’s telling the truth and there’d be Resistance people who cared. When he lost the 2020 election, her ability to make an earning — to make anything… I agree with you. It would be phenomenal to see how many people are actually downloading her podcast.
BUCK: It’s probably as popular as the Clinton Global Initiative after Hillary lost the election. “I thought it was all about charity,” said the idiots. But I would also put this out there. The fact that the Harry and Meghan Markle are (laughing) like, “We’re gonna pull our podcast too!”
CLAY: How about the fact that Harry and Meghan Markle can’t even manage to get a podcast started? It’s not as if sometimes it takes a long time to get a movie or a television show.
BUCK: These aren’t hardworking, folks.
CLAY: That’s what I’m saying. All you need is about a couple of thousand dollars in gear and plug it in. I’m sure they have a staff that would make all that possible, and you sit down and talk for like an hour. This is not the equivalent of splitting the atom here and they paid ’em $100 million or something, didn’t they? And they can’t even produce a podcast.
BUCK: I’ll say this. The one thing about radio, the one thing about podcasting: You can’t have it ghost voiced. You have to actually do it. You can’t just pay someone else to pretend that you did it. That’s a whole other thing which I also disagree with —
CLAY: I bet they done… Do you think they’ve done versions of the podcast and it’s just a total disaster and theism it hasn’t been distributed?
BUCK: Oh, yeah, probably.
CLAY: Do you think Prince Harry would be great a conducting an interview? What has ever occurred that made you think, “You know who would really be a great person to have a conversation with? Prince Harry. That seems like a guy who’s got a lot of interesting things to say!”
BUCK: There should be a help line for anyone to call in when they realize that they even thought for a second that they should listen to the Harry and Meghan Markle podcast.
BUCK: Like, that’s a cry for help. What’s going on there?
CLAY: I remember a great story Dan Patrick who did sports talk radio still does for a long time. He said, “Everybody thinks radio’s easy,” and he said every now and then they would give away the ability for somebody to come in and, like, sit, costar for a show for charity purposes. And he said seeing them sweating bullets. They tell every story they’ve ever had. They tell every opinion they’ve ever had.
At the end of a three-hour show, they’re drenched in sweat; they’re overcome with the intensity and emotion of it, and then you say, “Okay, gotta come back for three more hours every day for the next 20 years,” and all of a sudden they realize what is entailed in the job. And I think that’s probably what happened to Harry and Meghan. They’re like, “Oh, this will be easy to do.” Of course, it’s not even live which makes it that much easier. But they can’t even accomplish it.
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