BREAKING: Twitter CEO Resigns Immediately

Breaking news, the Twitter CEO resigns, effective, immediately.

We'll talk about that more today on Sekulow. So if you heard, this is breaking news this morning, it's already having an effect on the stock market. Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey, who's been known as a liberal activist, very cause-oriented. Of course, Twitter famous for, or infamous for banning Donald Trump and seeing their stock price drop 12% that one day down, and then it ultimately finished down 6%. It's been down, I think, over 20% over the last couple of years. So the stock has not been doing great. The release this morning, just the fact that Jack Dorsey, the CEO and founder of Twitter, is gone.

I mean, it's effective immediately, has set the stock price up about 4% and they had to close trading because it was just too much volatility. So the issue here is, is this a direct reaction to corporate America realizing going totally woke excludes more than half the country, or at least half the country, and these moves by these founders of these companies that ultimately damage the brand. I will be honest with you right now, and I think a lot of you know this who are on Twitter, I used to be much more active on Twitter.

Not just corporately getting out ACLJ information, but also engaging in politics and things like that. It got too toxic, way too toxic, way too personal, and then with the banning of people, I felt like everything I wrote there, I had to be concerned because I got the blue check mark, so could they be coming after me? And so I'm very careful with it now, which is not what Twitter was supposed to be.

It wasn't supposed to be a place you have to watch what you say if you're a conservative because you might get banned, and then why am I putting resources into this? Yeah, I think it's very interesting that his statement said, I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. To me, that reads a few different ways, one of which is they want to corporatize this company, they want to maybe start monetizing Twitter, and maybe that includes, like you said, being maybe a little more open to opinions. They have tried on many occasions, actually, to figure out this toxicity issue that they have within Twitter. I know plenty of people, celebrities and just regular people, personal friends of mine, who have completely quit and have left the platform with millions of followers because of, like you said, how quickly it becomes a very easy to access point of negativity in their life, starts really hurting your life. So I think, to me, that says it's time for them to move on. They've started where now you can limit who can respond to you.

They've tried all these different things, and they've tried paid tweets to just have your fans who are part of it. They keep trying over and over to keep this going. I think you're right, a lot of it is deeply political. Jack is a political figure, but clearly a guy who created an interesting platform that has served maybe a changing purpose the last 20 years. Because, like you said, originally it was not the way it was, and you saw the rise of sort of the alternative outlets, and you saw the rise of something even like an Instagram or Snapchat, where it's not so highly politically divisive.

A lot of it is something to relax with and to enjoy instead of this caustic, toxic, violent kind of behavior. I mean, I've had death threats continually on Twitter, and then you tell them, hey, this person is giving me a death threat, and six months later they kick them off Twitter. So stuff like that really does happen, and I think this is a good move for social media. I don't know about this new—there's a new CEO already in place, and I don't know much of his background, but I think just that statement that we're moving on beyond the founders means we're maybe moving on, like you said, against the political ideology of this and becoming a corporation. And, Dan, just quickly, this is—it was becoming like a public forum, and, no, it's not—it's regulated in one where they don't have the same power. We're going to talk about that when we come back for the break. Yeah, and public forums were known for that the way you deal with controversial speech is more speech, and Twitter went the other way.

They said the way you deal with controversy is to shut one side of the debate down, and I think that was what's led to a lot of this. We'll talk more about that and the whole idea of public forums when we come back. Folks, share this broadcast with your friends and family. If you're watching the show on social media platforms, share it with your friends and family so more people see.

Get them in the conversation. Mike Pompeo is going to be joining us later in the show as well. And support our work at ACLJ. The November matching challenge continues at ACLJ.org. Double the impact of your donation.

We'll be right back. There's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, how it's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. So if you're just joining us, let me just let you know. So the CEO of Twitter is stepped out effective immediately.

His release is benign at best. I mean, he kind of says it's time for new leadership. Founders need to go. So there's nothing about it like if there's anything like that happened there, except for their stock in the last three months is down 20%. It was down 12% the day they banned Donald Trump.

It then climbed up to only being down 6%. But it's been losing engagement. And we just started off the broadcast all telling you our own experiences with engagement. Now we still utilize it as an organization. Now we utilize it as a way to get breaking news comments from members of Congress. But I will tell you, a platform on just politics for that is not going to survive as a mega-corporation.

It's got to bring in other people. It got toxic for celebrities and athletes. And so you end up, you say something on Twitter, you end up, you could lose your career. And that's not what a public – Or you said something 20 years ago on Twitter.

Yeah, things come back. A lot of these people were in high school. And this idea that because they're not – it's not a – same kind of like First Amendment issue. That's really because of the Section 230 protections we've talked about so much that keep these Internet companies from liability for content, but also allow them to decide.

They get to be the police. Instead of Dad, which is a traditional public forum, which we've fought for a lot at the ACLJ, which is a place where real free speech is allowed. And that's the difference between these companies and how they're regulated versus the actual public forum.

Yeah. So the way it worked in the 1980s and 90s, and even going back to the 60s, was that the public forum was defined as the highways and the byways, the streets, the sidewalks, the college campuses. These were areas that would be open for free speech. They were called – some were called traditional public forums.

Others were called open public forums. And the one thing you could not do on a public forum the government could not do is pick one side of the debate. That was called viewpoint discrimination. And in a series of cases that I argued in the 1990s, the – what happened in those cases, where the Supreme Court said unanimously, by the way, that viewpoint discrimination is unconstitutional per se.

You can't have, you know, a pro-abortion message and then shut off the pro-life speech. Well, the new highways and byways became the social media platforms like Twitter. And, of course, they're not controlled by the government, so you didn't have the same First Amendment protections.

But then they did not become just the neutral arbitrators. You said they became toxic because they were picking one side of the debate and really shutting out speech they disagreed with. To the point, like you said, it's very difficult to even engage on that platform. Yes. Well, that to me, Logan, is – for our audience, I feel like – I bet a lot of them were on it in these last five, six years because President Trump really – I think he actually remade Twitter by utilizing it so often and not just using it in the corporate way.

Yes. Let me define what I say corporate way. Corporate way is a meme from, you know, with me linking to an ACLJ news story. It's good to utilize that way. So if you utilize the platform, people can share it. I can share a clip from Mike Pompeo being on today. Things like that. That's the corporate way.

The personal way is what President Trump did. He was giving you reaction, live reaction, without having to go into a TV studio. And look, a lot of people have moved to different platforms, and we've seen other people. We obviously have a lot of thousands of people who watch on Facebook and on YouTube. We were broadcasting on Twitter.

We actually have moved away from that. We actually post our clips from Rumble right now is what we do on our Twitter account. I'm curious, for those of you who are watching, how do you consume social media? Where are you going? What platforms are you now going to? Give us a call. I would love to hear that 1-800-684-3110.

Obviously, we know some of you are watching on all these different platforms. You can comment as well. But give us a call. What do you think about this move from Jack leaving Twitter? Could that potentially bring you back to their platform? Or are you done for good and where are you going? Could there be other moves, maybe certain people being unbanned that would bring you back to the platform? That's what I'm curious about. And we've seen a lot of people move away from it.

But maybe there is a way to right the wrong here that's been happening on their platform. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you.

1-800-684-3110. We know there's a lot of alternatives right now. We're always trying to find. We have a great social media team who obviously is always trying to investigate and look at new platforms and new ways to engage.

We'd love to hear from you about it. Yeah. It's very unique because, again, the Section 230, which has been talked about a lot as whether or not this needs to go, really protects them from the normal rules of the road for actually a lot of other companies too. Because we were trying to allow the internet to blossom and grow and innovate and maybe it made sense for a time period. But when they became the content police, we're not talking about taking down content that wouldn't be allowed in a public forum either, dad.

Whether it was pornographic, whether it was terrorists promoting or promoting illegal activity, that's one thing. But the idea that they just take it... We know. We can see our numbers. We use the word abortion in a number.

It doesn't get served to as many people. Yeah, that's true. Across pretty much all social media platforms, let's say the major social media platforms, the mainstream ones, that's just true that we see that in notifications.

We see that in constantly adjusting the algorithm in a way, the way that works. When it comes to Twitter, as we've seen, there are people who've been banned and then there's people who haven't been banned who are running, as you said, terrorist regimes worldwide. Some of Twitter's always response seems to be, well, we're trying to make sure that even ... Not that they get their message out, but we have their version. Of course, we know that's not the case. Look, I've been a part of specifically getting people thrown off Twitter.

I will say that. I have reported plenty of people, but why? Usually because they threaten me and my family by name in very specific events. Look, I'm not saying everyone should be allowed on. There should be this blanket, free speech.

It doesn't matter what you say. Like you said, there are limits to that. We're not saying that you can't have a limit on what you allow to be posted on your platform, but we obviously saw that limit be, like you said, not only just put out there where people get banned, but also where you get shadow banned or where you just really get stifled in terms of reach. The question, Dad, is this a move that ultimately could reopen the idea of Twitter as a kind of public forum where people feel more comfortable utilizing again, or do they continue the woke culture move and really make it a place for only one side and a group who agrees with each other? Because the breaking news and things like that, that's not enough to keep that platform as a multi-billion dollar company. No, and look, this is a choice Twitter's going to have to make because the way it used to work, as I said, was you had these free speech areas, and these free speech areas were open for free exchange of ideas, and you had multiple voices, and the way you dealt with speech that you disagreed with was more speech that you agreed with, and that was up to the individual. Here, you've got a company that takes the role of a manager, if you will, content manager, and the content manager here, specifically in this situation, and I think we've got to be clear here, is taking, like you said, you get shadow banned, but if you pick one side of the debate that they don't like or even use the word. So what happens here is the question becomes, does this next round of leadership say, you know, we wanted this free and robust marketplace, and like Logan said, it doesn't mean you can yell fire in a movie theater, it doesn't mean you can cause all these problems, but it does mean, and I think this is where it comes in, that when it comes to at least leveling the playing field, level the playing field, but a lot of people have left these social media platforms for others for precisely that reason. Now, the truth is, there are more people watching us right now on Facebook and I'm sure on YouTube and then on the other platforms that are out there.

That's just called market dominance. But the way you handled speech in the old days, when I was litigating these cases, was you would allow for robust free speech. That appears to, it's robust all right, but now it's nasty, and nasty and threatening and generally not a conversation. So you can't have conversations with people, it's just, I don't even look hardly anymore. I mean, to be honest, I mean, why do you want to see this stuff? Yeah, well I mean, that is the point, is that if you're, again, if you're looking there for, maybe you see it's sports, or you're looking there for news commentary, but if you're looking there for actual dialogue back and forth, it's just become nasty. I want to go to the phones. Cassandra in North Carolina on Line 1, welcome to Secular, you're on the air.

Thank you, thank you for all that you do as well. Facebook had been a necessary evil as far as business for my artwork and my books, and it's become more challenging. I've actually found that I've had tremendous success in switching over to doing more on Telegram in the conservative world. Yeah, and Telegram is interesting, it's more of a messaging platform, but there is a way to kind of group message out, and a lot of people do use it. I believe I've used it before.

Donald Trump Jr. is using it a lot. There is, you know, you never know, also, you have to do some due diligence on where these companies come from. You know, a good part is that China has banned Telegram, and I think there's maybe somewhere you go, well, that's maybe a good thing. They are a Russian-owned company, so you do have to do nothing wrong. I don't think they're very anti-censorship, so no problem with that. I don't know much about them, but you do have to do some due diligence, also, when these other platforms come up. When you have something like a very clear-cut Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, you know who are running these two major companies, Meta and running Twitter, and all of their subsidiaries, Facebook, Instagram, there is a bit more, not transparency, but at least you kind of know where the buck stops. I am always hesitant with some of these new ones without knowing. Look, Rumble is a good one.

We're on Rumble. It's like a YouTube alternative. I've talked to the CEO myself when we went on there, so I know that they are real people, human beings that are running this.

So there are some things, too. I'd love to hear more from you, though. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110, about kind of where you're going in social media. How do you ingest social media? Do you take it for what it's worth? Do you use, like I said, the necessary evils of Facebook and Twitter, as they say?

I don't necessarily say that, but it's just sort of the truth about it. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. President Biden is addressing the country right now on the new COVID variant. We're watching that to see if there's any news that you haven't already seen about some of the travel restrictions.

Is there anything else that comes in this? We've got our team monitoring it. Our former Secretary of State and our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, Mike Pompeo, joining us next. We're going to be talking to Iran. That team is over there from the Biden team trying to negotiate in Vienna a new nuclear deal, if you want to call it that, with Iran.

We'll be right back. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists. The ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later.

Play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry. And what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. We're defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.

Welcome back to Secular. We're joined now by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Secretary Pompeo, thanks for joining us right after the holiday.

You were on right before the holiday. Let me ask you, because we're shifting topics for people here, because the IAEA has new evidence of Iranian nuclear activity. They've obstructed investigators. You tweeted out on Friday that international inspectors confirmed Iran lied and continues to lie about its nukes. They never fully complied with the Obama nuke deal.

Why would Biden let his weak negotiators go to Vienna to cut a deal with the Ayatollah and his butcher, the newly elected President Raisi? What did the IAEA find, and what does it tell you about the seriousness of these Iranian nukes, because they're ongoing right now? Jordan, what the inspectors found, a fellow named Grossi who runs the IAEA, was a continuation of what we already knew, but probably worse in some ways. We've known for a long time that when John Kerry signed the nuke deal, the JCPOA, that the Iranians had lied about the history of their weapons program, their nuclear program.

Now, that was a given. It was a wink and a nod from the Kerry administration. What had happened under our watch is that we put enough pressure on the Iranians that we forced them to begin to comply with what the IAEA needed to do. As they could see the new administration coming in now, they've essentially blocked the inspectors. What Grossi reported was that they've now found fissile material, nuclear isotopes of places that could not be consistent with what the previous deal they signed with. I do not understand how you consent your negotiating team into Vienna to negotiate a deal with the same people who lied to you about their nuclear program before. What will that piece of paper actually be worth, Jordan?

I would argue not very much. I want to follow that up because the thing I don't understand here is that we all know that the Biden administration wants to be back in this deal with Iran, but they said they want verifiable facts. They want to make sure there's compliance. We know there's not compliance. There's never been compliance. I made this statement before that when the United States pulled out, the Europeans were still in, but the Iranians never complied with this.

Is this a deal to just get a deal? Is that what the administration's looking for here? What does that do to the region?

Israel's already very concerned. Yeah, I think you've got it right. I think they want in so desperately that in spite of their statements that said we're going to get a longer, stronger deal, we're going to get a shorter, weaker deal, one that begins to expire literally within a handful of months.

It's explainable to me. They didn't comply with the full requirements the first time the Kerry team signed up. The same guys, right? Malley, Ben Rhodes, the whole gang didn't comply the first time with what they had promised. There's no reason to think they will this time. And what you'll see is you'll see the other countries in the region, the Arab states, the Emiratis, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Egyptians, all of these countries watching closely. And as Iran begins to develop its capability, a full on weapons program, not just a weapon, but a weapons program, they too will feel the need to proliferate, to have the capacity to protect themselves from this theocratic, horrible regime. To me, is there any deliverable here, Secretary Pompeo? I mean, kind of follow up, but they go into these meetings, they put all this time, all this staff attention on it, but what's the deliverable for the US? We see all these Iranian demands and all we know from the past is this puts them on a path towards a nuclear weapon, which they've been on now since they initially had the JCPOA.

Not only is there not a clear deliverable, there's no clear alternative. They haven't told the Iranians, well, this is what we'll do in the event that you don't sign it. At first they came out and said, look, sanctions don't work, so we're not going to put sanctions in place.

We're going to let them proliferate. We're going to allow them to build out their missile program and their terror capability around the world. And then they said, well, if this doesn't work, we might put some sanctions in place. If you're the Iranians, you know that the sanctions are already essentially gone.

They're not being enforced. The Chinese are already purchasing Iranian crude oil. By the way, ironically, the same crude oil that President Biden is asking them to release from their Strategic Petroleum Reserve to save American gas prices, Iranian oil to China, now being released into the market to help America.

No one could make this stuff up. I don't know what their ultimate goal is. I think they just want to get a deal to preserve the legacy of President Obama's second term in the previous deal to say, Trump bad, Obama good, we got a deal. And any problems that happen will happen after President Biden has gone in a year and a half or two. You've got a new piece.

Go ahead, Dad. Which raises this point. So I'm just going to read the quote here. So, Israeli Prime Minister Bennett has urged the world not to, quote, give in to Iran's nuclear blackmail.

That's exactly the words that he's using. That message would have carried weight under your administration. Does it mean a thing to these negotiators and to President Biden, what Israel is saying? In fact, the facts suggest that what our administration is doing is putting pressure on the Israelis to come out and support this crappy deal.

They're telling former Israeli leaders, hey, send out op-eds, send out statements, put pressure on Bennett, the Prime Minister, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel, put pressure on Prime Minister Bennett not to make a big deal out of this. In fact, just the opposite of what we would do. We would have acknowledged Israel's right to defend itself, indeed its duty.

We would have supported them. Instead, this administration is telling them, be quiet, be in your own place, don't bother. We've got bigger, grander, Middle East strategic objectives that we're trying to achieve and essentially pressuring Israeli leadership to at least not squawk when this really, really weak deal gets struck.

You know, I want to switch gears just for a moment here to China because you've got a new piece up that went out over on last week after the holiday at ACLJ.org so people could see it right on the homepage from Secretary Pompeo. It says, once again, Biden fails to stand up to China. The weakness, again, that we saw, just to remind people, that summit that occurred between President Biden and President Xi was virtual, but it was their first, I guess, face-to-face since President Biden took office. Again, it was another one of those things that you kind of walk away from with your hands up saying, what was that for? Jordan, they didn't articulate what they wanted to accomplish other than to say, we want to talk for the sake of talking.

There were no objectives that I could discern or that they disclosed in their statements following the summit either. The administration wants to talk about, well, we welcome competition with China. I must say Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, welcomes President Biden saying that he welcomes competition.

I promise you that. He sees a statement that says America competes with China as a chance for the Chinese continue to walk all over us to steal our intellectual property, to infiltrate our local systems politically here at home, to deny us the ability to understand what's going on with this virus. According to the administration, still running rampant around the world. This is a China that has chosen confrontation. The United States needs to do what the Trump administration did to wake up to this confrontation and to push back on China in every one of these, whether it's cyber or military or commercial, to stand up and defend and secure American freedom from the Chinese Communist Party onslaught. Secretary Pompeo, thanks for joining us.

Stay on the broadcast. Our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs at the ACLJ. That new piece again is up right on the homepage of ACLJ.org.

Once again, Biden fails to stand up to China. And let me just let you all know as we go into this break, we're going to continue the discussion too on Twitter and what's happened there with their CEO stepping down. We'll talk to some of these Iran issues as well, brought out with some more folks from our team in the studio. But let me just encourage you, the reason why Mike Pompeo is on the team at the ACLJ as a Senior Counsel for Global Affairs is because of your support for the ACLJ. We've been able to expand even in a time of uncertainty when there has been the pandemic and the issues like we've been able to grow as an organization to expand the work that we do because of your financial support of the ACLJ. This month is a great time because you can double the impact of your donation to the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Again, so like a $25 donation. That is like $50 for us because a group of donors will match that if you make the initial contribution.

That's at ACLJ.org. We'll be right back, second half hour coming up with Secular. We'll be right back. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Secular. And now your host, Jordan Secular.

A couple of things I want to mention right off the bat. First, obviously on Wednesday, December 1st, Supreme Court is going to hear the Dobbs case. This is the first time the court has heard a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, really since Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed much of Roe. We will have more, because the way the Supreme Court is operating right now, Dad, we'll have audio from it. Even if the case goes longer as they have been going longer, we'll be able to do live analysis that day and, of course, the following up as well.

That's exactly right. So this is going to be a very historic day. This is the case that involves the constitutionality of and continued precedent of Roe v. Wade. I mean, it's clearly before the court. There is no question it is before the court.

The issue is joined. We're going to find out real soon what the justices that were just appointed feel about the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade, which has been on a constitutional basis. I'm not even putting the policy aside, but on a constitutional basis has been suspect since it began. It was Justice Blackmun who wrote that this right to privacy, which is where he found the right to abortion, was part of the penumbras of the constitution of the Bill of Rights. I mean, this was judicial fiat. This was made up, and it's been the law, though, now for 50 years. So the question is going to be, are they going to stick to stare decisis, which is the governing law still controls, or are they going to do what they've done in other cases of magnitude and say, you know what, Supreme Court's not infallible.

They got it wrong here. We're going to return this to the state. It does not mean that abortion is illegal in every state. It simply returns the issue of abortion to the states. So that really will be the issue that the Supreme Court's going to decide, and I think by June we're going to have an idea of where that comes out.

It looks like if that were to happen, and we'll get into this more, but if that were to happen, it'd be about, I think about half the country that would have a lot of restrictions or maybe completely ban elective abortion, so non-medically necessary abortion, and then about half the country would probably have pretty extreme rules. It would be a whole different issue and fight, but you have to get to that point. And honestly, you had to get this case ultimately there.

The court was not hearing these cases for decades. So this is a unique opportunity. We're going to be following up. Of course, we filed three different briefs in this case through ACLJ, another one of our entities, and the European Center for Law and Justice as well, weighing in. So we have been actively engaged in this case, and I just want to remind you that is this week.

So if you come back from the holidays, that is happening on Wednesday, and we will be of course live there and giving you the updates even if it's not finished yet because of the way the court's been putting this on. Now, we've been talking about Twitter. The CEO of Twitter steps down effective immediately today, resigning immediately with pretty benign statements saying it's my time to go for the founder to go, and will it become more corporate? The stock price was down pretty considerably. It's been dropping, and a lot of that started when Twitter began not just banning bad actors, terrorists, traffickers, drug dealers.

By the way, they don't ban Ayatollah, but they banned President Trump, and when that happened, the stock prices have just continued to drop. For a company that's always had a tough time figuring out how do you monetize it anyways, that's one of the cool things about Twitter is it isn't full of ads, but I want to go to the phones. Tim in California on Line 1. Hey, Tim, welcome to Sekulow. You're on the air.

Thank you for taking my call. What took so long for Jack Dorsey to do the right thing, and what is the future of Twitter? There's a lot of conversations happening about that, what the future is of Twitter. I mean, obviously, he's one of the founders, and he was sort of the main face of Twitter. I think he, in general, says he doesn't really believe there should be this corporate face of Twitter, so I think for the future of the platform, I think you're going to see, much like Facebook shifted, much like Instagram has shifted, I'm sure you're going to see someone come in with more corporate values who understands maybe how to try to monetize this. As Jordan said, always been a struggle with Twitter.

You can run ads, but it's very limited, very limited ad space. Sometimes the good of Twitter was you're just getting fed the information that you wanted or so you thought, but that is going to be, I think, a major change when it comes to Twitter in general. As they try to hold on, I think, look, they're a massive organization. They aren't going anywhere, but we've said that on other social media platforms before and often life finds a way, if you will, and there is no more of those shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. We'll see.

Lots of alternatives popping up, but it's just going to be interesting. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support. For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes 100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

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I want to bring in some of our team as well. First on the economic side of this, Harry, I mean, you look at a company like this, they've been making controversial decisions. They tried to placate what they thought, I guess, was their base audience, which was younger people and liberals and this new kind of woke corporate culture that we're seeing throughout. But the stock prices kept going down and kept, in serious ways, I mean, down 20% the last three months. And now you see the founders, these are big moments when a founder like Jack Dorsey, who's outspoken on these liberal issues, resigns on a Monday effective immediately.

Yes, I think your analysis is very, very sound. Twitter stock has fallen 20% over the past couple of years, perhaps over the last few months. And I think that is a very good thing.

But we should contrast that relatively sharply with the fact that the stock market itself has, generally speaking, been rising. And Jack Dorsey has made himself the focal point of disappointment with Twitter because he has become a hot and heavy social justice warrior. And so consistent with that claim, Jack Dorsey has been a strong supporter of Ibram X. Kendi. And Ibram X. Kendi, perhaps America's leading woke theorist today, states that the most threatening racist movement in the United States is not the alt-right, and they're unlikely to drive for a white ethnostate, but the regular American's drive for a race neutral one.

Kendi's absurd views are then echoed by Robin DiAngelo. And it's important to keep in mind that Jack Dorsey has given Ibram X. Kendi over $10 million, I believe, as part of a grant. And this has also propelled Twitter to give up on being a public forum for public debates. So, Twitter has instead become a hateful medium that has been toxic to conservatives and to conservative opinion.

As a consequence, its market share has fallen. And again, I would say that is a good thing because the market is reacting to the negative behavior of Jack Dorsey. Now that he's leaving, perhaps Twitter will turn the page and once again resume its original function. You know, Dan, one of the things I go to with this is that when Twitter first launched, we thought it was really cool.

We actually sent emails out using our own ACLJ list, encouraging people to sign up because we thought it was a cool, unique way to engage. It wasn't as personal as like Facebook. It wasn't like a bunch of photos or your family photos. It was just dialogue, but it was a way for people to directly engage. And then it became, again, not out of control in the sense of robust dialogue, but out of control in the sense that I don't feel comfortable just writing a tweet and sending it out because I don't know what the consequences may be. And I'm talking about pretty much stuff that I'm saying on the radio broadcast. Nothing more than that. But it's like if we use this word, if we say this word, am I going to be banned?

So the money that we've invested to grow the following base, is that all gone? I mean, we have to think about that with all these platforms now. But this was the kind of offender number one.

Offender number two is Facebook. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, we've seen that on days when, you know, you have a topic that we know our radio audiences are fully engaged in.

Logan will use the example. The phone lines will jam up. And there's, you know, I'm making a joke here. And there's nine people watching on Facebook when it used to be 6,000.

So what's going on there? All right. So you understand that these social media platforms have become the new in the 2020s is the new public forum. The question is, is anyone going to require that they police this in a way that is neutral? And the answer to that is probably not. So what happens is you then don't have a you know, the pure debate of what you used to see on the sidewalks, the highways and the byways, as we used to say in the Supreme Court cases all the way back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

Now you have one side of the debate. And as Logan and you have said perfectly. And it gets very toxic, very quick to the point where sometimes you all will tell me don't even look at Twitter or you'll tell that to your mother. Don't even look at Twitter because it gets so toxic so quick. And it's usually it's usually not, you know, a lot of people, but it's enough to create a stir. And what it does, it creates its own news and its own danger. Still, we have a lot of people that are on our Twitter feeds and get our information. But look, there's no question that this has become a the Wild West with no regulation. I think putting the question mark conservative. That's the issue.

It feels like the Wild West. You can find horrendous things on Twitter right now, but you can't see Donald Trump. You can't see Donald Trump tweet. I mean, that that's to me was was kind of it for Jack Dorsey. Probably might have been from Zuckerberg, too. I mean, he's he's kind of saying he's stepping.

Yeah, he's moving different roles. All these guys are at this point. Like I said, one of the main things with Twitter is obviously anonymity is fine on the Internet, understands needed. But with Twitter, it was to the point where these are a lot of times you said these aren't there's only a few few people. A lot of times these are not people. These are companies, organizations. These are PR teams, PR teams, bot farms that are creating accounts to stifled create bad news for you to do things.

I've had stuff. There's no way it's not just being just hammered on by specifically people who are have buzzwords set to target those who use those specific words or not people. A lot of times these are not human beings.

They also have no unless you're Donald Trump. If you get kicked off Twitter, there's no way for you to not just restart back up. Trust me. I've got a couple of you out there who are watching right now who they do that to me. So they're doing it to me. They're doing it to a lot of people and it is sad.

It's ridiculous. You do see someone like Jack Dorsey stepping aside. I hope this is a positive move. I think for him, it's probably a positive move. Like you said, same with Zuckerberg.

They're probably like, you know what? This has gone out of control. We were one of the people who very early on in Twitter, you know, the first few years of Twitter becoming mainstream, we were very innovative in the campaigns we ran. Imagine a time is we did a tweet for pastor Yusef campaign. Imagine a time where you would give an organization because this is how social media was presented 10 years ago. You gave an organization like ours access to tweet on your behalf because like, as you said, this was a different time in social media. We were able to go and when we would tweet something, we had full control to tweet whatever we want.

Obviously we said we are going to, we had our law rules. We are going to tweet this specific thing in support of an imprisoned pastor, but you would never do that now to an organization. You would never let someone take upon your account because the trust is no longer there in social media. And you've seen that with the fragmentation and what it's, I think it's one of these things where we need to have, there's got to be places online because the younger people, not even that young, I mean people, I'd say if you're, if you're under a 50, the idea of traditional protest or traditional and it's, it's not, it's, people used to be able to do it online and it's not a non, it doesn't have to be anonymous.

You can use, most of us use our names, but it can be bad for the soul pretty quick. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you could actually see that reflected in someone like Jack Dorsey. It doesn't seem like, like, like it just seems like it's been draining on them too because real public forums are really pretty nasty. Yeah. And, but America was founded on that idea and the idea that you're not gonna just police one guy that you don't like, and then I think, you know, and then all from there just has been, it seems like to me a ball just kind of, you know, it's, it's just, there is, there's either it's got to be a big change or it will just continue to lose influence. The followers may stay up there, but people might not be engaging. Yeah.

It was a very effective way to communicate, but not only that, it was a very popular way for people to communicate. And yet the last few years, Jack Dorsey, under his leadership, it has been surrounded in controversy has been perceived as biased. He has allowed his personal political opinions, I think, to cloud his judgment as the leader of this company. And you know, it's, it's unfortunate, it really is.

He misread, I think, where most of the American people were, but he also has misread where his investors are as well. It's time for a change and, and color me optimistic. I hope it will be a change for the better and it'll go back to being an open and neutral platform and social media like it was when it first started out.

You know, you know, I think to me, ultimately, and dad, just cut your thoughts. Real public forums means you will see things you don't like. I think the internet is, it's unique because it's different than just a protest or a counter protest, but it, that has got to be figured out. I mean, that's a long-term issue. So that the Russian bots don't dominate discussions and, and Twitter trolls don't dominate discussions and Facebook isn't saying, Oh, today ACLJ gets 50,000 viewers with their video and tomorrow gets 1000 because we don't like the word that was used. Yeah. So what it becomes is it become more like a utility.

So utilities are privately owned generally, the power companies, but they are regulated and the internet has not been, and certainly there's been immunity given under section 230 to companies like Twitter and others. So what you have to see is you open up the forum now and you allow robust speech and what's the government's role, if any, in that. But I, again, I think that the cat's out of the bag. I think this is very hard to, to, to scale back. I'm very concerned about the scope and nature of what's going on in these sites.

And I think we just have to be aware that, um, you know, it's a difficult situation and it's not a public forum. We do have another segment coming up. I'd love to hear from you.

What are your thoughts on the future of social media and how are you currently consuming social media? 1-800-684-3110. Or if you have another question or comment, feel free to give us a call too.

We'll take as many calls as we can in the next segment, 1-800-684-3110 and 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back with more on Secular. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected.

Is there any hope for that culture to survive? And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched, a $10 gift becomes $20, a $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Secular.

We are taking your phone calls, as Logan said, 1-800-684-3110. Here's some comments that came in through Facebook, Dana on Facebook, their censorship is not equally applied. That's the issue with all of these social media platforms right now who engage in censorship versus trying to police illegal content. There's a difference, like we were talking about, the idea that you can police, try to keep out the sex traffickers, the drug dealers, the ISIS terrorists, people promoting acts of violence, promoting illegal activity.

That's it right there. That's not protected free speech in the constitution. But that's not how it's worked.

Yes, they do some of that, but it seems like they're much more aggressive on the political front, Logan. Because you can find all the bad stuff on there, because like you said, you just go on and recreate an account and they put it right back and people know the words to use. But yet, when they make these political moves there, they can be lifetime bans.

Well, that's the thing. You had someone like President Trump who- They don't lifetime ban Ayatollah. They don't lifetime ban sex traffickers because they really can't. They had actually where if President Trump, someone tweeted on his behalf or posted just a clip, I'll be honest, I mean, while you watch it on YouTube right now, we're always kind of straddling the line of what we can use and not use because you see when he's had speeches or things like that, just clips of that technically is showing the speech and that becomes a whole nother story. We have to be obviously always very careful.

And the tiptoeing of that is ridiculous where you're right. For him, if he created an account or even just someone tweeted on his behalf or something like that, immediately shut down. However, if random whoever decides they're going to send something horrendous to you and your family and make threats, sure, they may get around to it in three or four weeks or maybe in six months, they may get around to saying, you know what? The account you reported, we decided you were right.

It should be suspended. I've had that happen multiple times where I've seen accounts that I've reported months later. I don't even remember the threat they made, but I know that they did because clearly I made a report. And then, uh, you know, as they do within a day, two days, all of a sudden that same person rises up and they have a brand new account.

It doesn't matter because they have 12 followers. They're just getting to you because they want to scare you. And I think there's also people, again, a lot of times those people aren't even real. These are people who are, uh, or have a bigger means and bigger needs than just specifically going to you because they dislike you personally. It's because there is a much bigger machine happening behind the scenes. Twitter has, it has that anonymity that a lot of the other social media platforms do not allow. Uh, again, I think you can go either way on that.

There's some pluses and minuses to it, but when it comes to actual threats or issues like that, they are very slow to act unless it's somebody, uh, with national attention. Yeah. I mean, let me go to Beth in Kentucky online too. Hey Beth, welcome to secular. Thanks for holding on. You're on the air.

Thanks for taking my call. So gentlemen, I agree with everything you've had to say about Twitter, but I think you're missing one point. And that point is, is that these social media sites do not exist in a vacuum.

They are reflective as to what is going on in society at all the different levels, um, in higher education, in the press, um, in, in school board meetings, um, you name it. That is, there is no healthy place to have a discussion with different ideas and to do it respectfully. And so you can expect places like Twitter or Facebook, which used to be self monitoring. We would, you know, look around and say, that guy's a troll or whatever, and people would call the person out. It's no longer exists because it's not existing in society. Take a look at the election year that we had and how there was no room for any kind of debate about their ideas. So what do you, you know, this is what this is. You can't change the problem with Twitter and Facebook until you address the bigger issue of how do we talk about things respectfully and agree, agree that we're going to disagree on many things.

Yeah. I mean the demonization of the right by a lot of corporate America because they've accepted this push to go the other way. They felt like this was a good financial decision for them, Harry, and instead I think what they're seeing is that when you start alienating half the country, cause that's, that's about where the elections are, you know, half the country votes this way and half, and a lot of those people aren't, they don't care about politics so much every day, but this, this has kind of forced them to because it's in their face every moment. So that the whole group of, of kind of the disinterested voter, they vote in the big elections, they care about their country, but this is not what that dominates their life. It feels like now we had does because in every aspect, whether it's your social media, whether it's Twitter and when they, if they start banning voices like at Donald Trump, you got to feel like as a regular person, well I got no power here.

I think your analysis is spot on. So I would say first that social media platforms often harness social division. And there is in fact an empirical study out that shows that for instance, Facebook tends to increase the level of societal fragmentation. Number two, corporations seek to monetize social division. So if for instance, you look at American Airlines, American Airlines essentially placed one of its own employees on suspension or discipline.

Why? Because they spoke out at a school board meeting against critical race theory and so corporations many times have decided to take one side rather than attempting to serve all Americans impartially. And so I think the caller is onto something that social division is a huge, huge problem going forward.

This is how it feels to me, Wes. It's like, you know, if you come to work at the ACLJ, we have a mission and a goal. If you don't like that mission or goal, you probably shouldn't be working at the ACLJ.

And I think our supporters would agree with that too. But when you talk about an airline or a platform, you would assume those are places where, again, their mission is not like the ACLJ's, they're not an organization, but yet they become that. These companies are now some of the biggest activists. Like you talk about the money that they're giving out to the CEOs, but the CEOs are getting the money from the company and then they're able to then fund these causes. It feels like, you know, every time you see a commercial now there's a little activism in it.

Absolutely. You know, and most Americans are sort of center right. And if you polled Americans about how they feel about these kinds of issues, I think most Americans would agree, don't tell me what to think and don't criticize me for my thoughts. Freedom of speech is not the only thing foundational to America. Freedom of thought is also a foundation to our country. And what has happened under Jack Dorsey's leadership is that freedom of speech and freedom of thought has been targeted by Twitter. And I think people are tired of that.

You know, I want to ultimately, I mean, Logan, I have a final question for you. Do you think this has a real impact? I mean, it's a big show. I think it could have a really big impact if the new leadership kind of can get away from having, like I said, sort of this key person figurehead and can move to just being, you know, big corporate company entity. I think there is good that can happen in that in terms of the way, like I said, the censorship problem exists.

It's yet to be seen, but I do believe the reason that the stock bounced is not because people feel that, people do feel right now that there could be a positive. Right. I mean, and listen, there used to be a time, remember, corporate America would basically donate money to both sides of politics. And now a lot of these corporations have bans on donating to Republicans. And again, just they put in bans. And so the idea that they used to be kind of open for all, say, OK, we're going to do this because people change and the leadership changes.

And now it's all one sided. So like a regular company is starting to feel like an ACLJ, but that's not what it should be like. And and again, I hope that we can have these platforms. I think younger people want to be able to do this through their phone.

Not having to, you know, real rallies and things like that pose different issues as well. That's covered, of course, and we're going to follow it very closely. Go to ACLJ.org, support our work, double the impact your donation with our matching challenge this month of November. That's at ACLJ.org.

We'll talk to you tomorrow. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20. A $50 gift becomes $100. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org.