Elon goes nuclear
Twitter just told the Biden administration where to go
For long time readers of the #hottakeoftheday, you know that I’ve been fascinated and triggered by free speech, social media censorship and the horrific job that mainstream media has done holding folks accountable. As you know, I’ve been banned not once but three times on two different accounts from LinkedIn for questioning the COVID narrative. It made no sense then and it makes less sense now. And LinkedIn won’t even write me back. So the freeing of the Bluebird has been of great interest to me.
Before I get to the topic of today (Elon’s nuclear button) I thought I’d share a clip from one of my favorite Joe Rogan guests, Douglas Murray, who recently participated in a debate on whether the mainstream media should be believed. His counterpart in the debate was Matt Taibbi as they faced off against Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times.
From Matt’s substack.
Wednesday night I had the privilege of taking part in the prestigious Munk debates in Toronto, Ontario. Along with The War on the West author and reporter Douglas Murray, we took on New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, arguing: “Be it resolved: Don’t trust mainstream media.”
A pre-event vote of attendees and listeners showed 48% support for our “side,” versus 52% for theirs. 82% of thousands of audience members claimed to be willing to change their minds. They were telling the truth, as it turned out. In a bitter slugfest that featured tense confrontations, impassioned oratory (especially from Douglas), and several almost unbelievably petty exchanges, Douglas and I swung the vote 39% in our favor, ending with a 67%-33% win, the most decisive rout in the history of the event.
Here’s the 2 minute clip. It’s pretty powerful stuff.
And so today on the heels of that, Elon has clearly went nuclear with the White House and mainstream media in his sights as he pulls out the nuclear button, having leaked the internal documents from his own company who censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. And who better to leak it to? A journalist who calls substack and twitter his home, far from the reaches of mainstream media. Remember this article?
So sure, Biden said the FTC was going to investigate Elon for violations, the Europeans said they might ban Twitter, and Apple might pull the app from its App Store (remember Parler…) but he beat them to the punch.
Good luck CNN, MSNBC, CBC and every other outlet ignoring this story. As published on Twitter. Have fun… it’s going to total carnage.
(By far my favorite Elon tweet of all time….)
Personally. I remain long Elon at Twitter. And the advertisers will come when he proves that Twitter is the way everyone in MSM promotes their stuff. He just needs to extract a few like Apple has with the App Store. Advertising isn’t going away. It’s essential. But engagement is real. The Matt Taibbi report was engaging.
Mainstream media doesn't get paid for telling the truth - they get paid for selling ads. And supposedly so did Twitter. Let's see whether Elon can round up enough Blue Check Bot subscribers to pay the people he has left.