On today's show, Mark Zuckerberg reveals Biden-Harris admin has pushed for censorship on Facebook and Instagram. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.
Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow. This is Logan Sekulow. Join me in studio executive producer, Will Haines, later on the broadcast. Mike Pompeo and Rick Grenell are going to be joining us.
Of course, we're talking about that big document that came out, that letter to the Honorable Jim Jordan, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. And this came from the head of META. You know him, Mark Zuckerberg. You know him from Facebook. You know him from Instagram.
All your favorite apps, a lot of them are, of course, run by META. And this is a pretty groundbreaking letter that came out stating, essentially, his regrets. His regrets for working directly on censoring the public during the COVID 2021. By the way, the Biden-Harris administration, including parody, comedy, all of those type of things, and his regret for how it could have been perceived as election issues.
This is really an interesting time in America where you have this. You have someone like Mark Zuckerberg who has also come out as a pretty strong Israel advocate. You've had him be someone who seems to be trying to either get ahead of something or is trying to win people over in sort of an Elon Musk kind of way. Yeah, in any way you look at this, whether it's trying to get ahead of a whistleblower or something of that nature or whether it's a genuine shift in his mindset of how he's leading the company.
It's a bold letter. It doesn't come across as trying to shift blame. He's owning mistakes and saying, we will not make them again. We'll get into more of the content of this letter in the next segment and kind of go through some of the highlights and really the strong language used by Mark Zuckerberg. Pretty surprising, a little shocking, the tone when you read this.
When I saw headlines about it, I thought it was going to be a lot softer because normally these mea culpas from these big tech companies are very much like, we did what we thought was right at the time. But this is really a repudiation of their own policies within Facebook and also talks about the future. That's something we'll get into in the next segment.
Yeah, absolutely. You want to give us a call about this 1-800-684-3110 and get your comments in. If you're watching on YouTube or Rumble right now, I encourage you to like this video, hit the thumbs up or subscribe if you haven't yet. Join us as a part of this community. Hundreds of thousands of you are part of this broadcast each and every day. We really do appreciate it, especially right now as we are headed towards the very end. It ends this weekend of our life and liberty drive. It's been a big few months for us and look, we could not need it more. This is happening right now. Your gifts are doubled as we know the conservatives have been targeted.
Look, we haven't even been admitted to today. You know what, sometimes hearts and minds can change. You know what I like somewhat about these platforms is there are someone that we can actually turn to. You can look at a Mark Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk and go, that's the guy running X. That's the guy running Facebook and Instagram.
A lot of the apps you have, we don't know. They're nameless, faceless people, often not even run out of this country. So you know what, we can actually hold them a bit accountable for what's going on in their moments like this where you could feel a seismic shift happening. And I really do read this letter and feel that way when you have this sort of regretful tone. Or you have a tone where it feels like the government was pressuring this company and they're being upfront and honest about it in a way that we're not used to.
It really does put up some weird walls because you can't believe what you're actually reading when it comes to this situation, how these social media platforms have turned over the last couple of years. Again, I encourage you to give us a call, but right now there's only four days left to give during our Life and Liberty drive. We're going to talk about that more coming up. We have seen now the Biden-Harris administration, their weaponization of the federal government to target Christians, to target conservatives, and it's out of control and we're expanding our legal efforts to fight back and your support couldn't become at a more critical time. We've submitted FOIA requests, preparing lawsuits over the targeting of Tulsi Gabbard, who you may have seen made some news over the last day. We'll talk about that as well.
She'll be joining us a little bit later in the week and anyone else, by the way, who's been targeted in that Quiet Skies program. This is exactly what our Life and Liberty drive is for. We also just fired a major lawsuit. You've heard about it, what we're doing in Massachusetts to support those pro-life pregnancy centers. We urgently need your support.
We've got less than four days left for this match. You need to do it right now. Go to ACLJ.org to have your gifts doubled and the election's coming up and we've got to be there for you as well. As we know, things are about to get crazy. A flood of new cases are going to come in and they're going to pack your liberty, pack your freedoms, and will require immense resources.
Go to ACLJ.org right now. Scan that QR code. Very short break. You can do it right now and be back. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Give us a call. I'd love your thoughts on this as Mark Zuckerberg responds with a letter to Jim Jordan.
Here's what he said. I'm going to read some of it to you. I appreciate the committee's interest in content moderation on online platforms. As you're aware, META has produced thousands of documents as part of your investigation and made a dozen employees available for transcribed interviews.
At that point, I'm thinking, okay, this is just going to be the normal form letter. We've done what we could. We have obeyed.
Leave us alone. Let's skip a couple paragraphs down. In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions.
You skip forward a little bit more. I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that the benefit, the hindsight, new information we wouldn't make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction, and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again. That is pretty strong. Again, we are in the middle of the pandemic. You had a Biden administration coming and pushing. Look, when the government comes knocking, I'm sorry, it's easy to just go, okay, we'll do what you want.
That's what is pretty standard. Most people don't push back against their government. But you know what you have? Even if it's a couple years late, you have somebody writing this letter, not somebody, one of the richest people in the country, someone who controls a lot of what we see right now. You may be watching us on Facebook right now.
You may be watching us on Instagram right now. When you have people like this who are willing to make these statements, I actually feel like there's hope. I felt that way when Elon Musk purchased Twitter at the time, now X. I feel like he purchased it, and there was a moment where I almost had a sigh of relief going, okay, well, there's somebody on our side in the social media platform. I'm not saying Zuckerberg is on your side, but what I'm saying is company-wide, he is now making a statement saying we are no longer going to bow down to a government. And we're certainly, and really later on says, I'm not personally even getting involved in this election. I'm not making any donations. And trust me, they don't want to hear that.
I'm not making any donations and I'm not engaging. That's right. And like you said, when you first read the first paragraph, you're like, okay, this is going to be the, we did what we were told because the government came forward and they had a compelling case. But it's not. He pushes back on the government saying what they did was wrong. Their pressure was wrong and that they made the wrong decision because of that pressure.
And I do see a lot of comments saying we don't trust him per se. This is too little, too late. They're just trying to cover for themselves. I agree with many of those points, but I would also want to look at this with a different lens as well, is that one, they turned over documents to the government a year ago. It was thousands of pages. This comes at a time when you are seeing voices like RFK Jr. who was someone who was a victim of many of that censorship during it rise to a more prominent level. Maybe possibly very recently. This is what you have to be careful.
So you look at this and you think, okay, what is the angle here? Is there a whistleblower that's going to come forward? But also remember that the states sued the government over censorship on Facebook platforms and lost at the Supreme Court.
So it's not like really even, okay, there's a case coming that they got to get ahead of. If anything, this is a moment that there's a lot of questions around why he feels motivated to do this. And him saying he's not going to be engaging with money in politics, he wants to remain neutral in this, does give you hope that Facebook will not be utilized against conservatives in this upcoming election.
And one other point to add to that is that he doesn't just bring up the COVID misinformation censorship. The next paragraph is he says, in a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election. That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then Democrat Presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply. It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story. We've changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn't happen again. For instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the US while waiting for fact checkers. So once again, this is a mea culpa saying we did the wrong thing, and here's how we have changed our policies. As well, this isn't just an open letter to the public. This is going to the Judiciary Committee and Jim Jordan, knowing that they have an investigation.
So to some degree, there are teeth to these claims, if they aren't following through, that Congress could come back and continue to investigate and cause a lot more problems for META if they aren't following through on these promises. And look, we knew as we produced this broadcast each and every day, we put up content each and every day, we do it on Facebook. We've seen Facebook numbers drop, for being honest. We've seen YouTube numbers explode. We've seen Rumble numbers explode. People did start leaving the platform around that time because we knew we were being pushed down. We knew if we used certain words in a title, maybe words that were some of our top topics here, that if you're following our page, you would have wanted to know about. If you used those words, you were gone.
We weren't going to get anyone served. Now, those numbers have ticked up a little, but what we also saw was a lot of people left. And I think maybe this is also them doing a little damage control sync and they get some people back on board. Obviously, Facebook is gigantic. Instagram is gigantic. It's not like they're hurting companies, but they have seen, specifically in this space, other people take the lead. Whether that's YouTube or Rumble or X becomes sort of the platform for any sort of political content. And you've seen Facebook try to push themselves back against this.
Look, it may be too little too late for people. I totally get that. I just think it's refreshing to read a letter like this that's also not coming from a PR rep. Sure, I'm sure it's vetted. They wrote it and his legal team went through it a million times. But it is coming from Mark Zuckerberg himself. And he started to make a lot of these kind of statements in a lot of the podcast interviews he's been doing.
And look, there's part of me that goes, okay, I'm not going to give the guy necessarily a benefit of the doubt here, but I am going to give people moments to change and to grow. We've seen a massive movement happen. We saw it with Elon Musk. You saw it with Donald Trump. You saw it with a lot of people who probably disagreed with you 10, 15 years ago.
Five years ago. Look at RFK or Tulsi Gabbard. These are people that are joining this sort of bigger tent of what it means to be a free speech conservative. And I think for a lot of us who have been free speech advocates for decades, sure, you've got to go in with a bit of a guard. But if people are willing to see the truth here, it's an exciting time.
It really could shift. I know for a fact how much social media really does impact not only elections, but impact culture just in general. Whether that is Instagram, whether that is Facebook, whether that is TikTok, whether that is YouTube or rumble, you have to decide how you want to engage and what platforms you want to.
Where you want to put your data, I understand that as well. But it's really interesting to see this start happening. I have hope. I always look at things as is there hope?
And when I read an article like this and I see someone like a Mark Zuckerberg making these statements, I at least have a little hope. I'd love to take your calls on this. 1-800-684-3110.
1-800-684-3110. Let's actually go ahead and take some phone calls. I want to go to Ronald who is on topic for today. Ronald, you're on the air.
Yes, thank you for taking my call. Yes, I just want to just state and make comment that the 2020 elections would have had a far different outcome, but because of what was done by the liberal media and Zuckerberg and everybody else and withholding important facts and things of that nature that would have helped people to make more better decisions when they went to the polling places. Ronald, I think the impact social media has on people's voting habits is more immense than your brain probably will even let you believe.
Somewhat the algorithm knows you better than you do. And you are right. Could that have affected the election? Absolutely.
I think you can't downplay it. When I look at when we had our biggest times on social media, by the way, look at what it was right at the heat of the 2020 election. What's happening right now? We're having another big moment.
Why? Because this is around when people start tuning in. People start paying attention. Sure, we have our core.
They're always there. Trust me, you guys are the most important. But there are hundreds of thousands of other people that really don't get engaged to politics until about September of the election year. So we're still about a week out and when something like this happens and you have one of the leaders of the biggest social media platform on earth, it's sort of the original, saying, yes, we essentially colluded with the Biden-Harris administration and we regret it. It's a big moment.
It can't be understated. I really don't want you guys to take that and go, well, whatever, he says fine. He is admitting on record that they did this and he at least is saying we're not going to do it again.
And I really regret it because I've seen the negative impact probably on his business and on his life. That's right. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also responded to this news and said, he tweeted, looks like Mark Zuckerberg has joined the ranks of the crazed conspiracy theorist who claimed that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor dissent during COVID. Exactly. So there it is.
That's from RFK Jr. Those are the kind of responses we should be looking at. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg is the next person to walk out on that stage. What would that be like? I don't think that's going to happen.
He said he's not going to get involved in politics. Have you already got Elon? At least you have Zuckerberg. I think a lot of these guys are big tech people, but they are free speech guys.
And they really don't like the fact that their platforms have been put in a position to monitor people's speech or the responsibility. You can take it or leave it for that, whether they have the responsibility to do that or not. Give us a call right now. 1-800-684-3110.
As I said, we are in the middle of our life in Liberty Drive, not in the middle. We're going to last three or four days. You've got to do it right now. Make your donation. We're going to tell you exactly why coming up here in the next few segments. Mike Pompeo joining us next. Mike Pompeo is next up.
We'll hear his thoughts on the Zuckerberg situation and so much more. Welcome back to Secula. We are joined by Mike Pompeo.
Thanks for joining us. First question, we're going to jump right into it. Our whole discussion this morning has been about this information. I think it's one of the top stories right now where Metta and Mark Zuckerberg essentially, very honestly, if you want to believe in this letter, admitted, yeah.
The Biden administration pressured us to censor information, and we did. And we regret that decision. I was curious what your reaction was to this story when you read this letter going to Jim Jordan and saying, yes, we did it, and we are ashamed of ourselves for doing it. Well, this is truly by one level, remarkable. And at another level, I don't think any of us are terribly surprised. We knew it. We'd seen it.
Some of us experienced it online where we were canceled, demoted, shadow banned, call it whatever you will. So this was something that I think we all knew. But to have the senior leader at, you know, Facebook, at Metta say, yep, I did it confirms it in a way that I think is really important. Whether he regrets it or not, I'll take him at his word, I suppose. But in any event, what we also know from this is this ain't the only one.
So stand by for other shoes to drop. I hope every senior leader that was operating in the media space, whether it's on a social media or mainline public publications like The Times and like, I hope they will acknowledge, too, the pressure they faced to shape, to hide, to bury stories, news, to shape the angles of stories in a way that harmed President Trump and his campaign. I hope they'll all come clean as well and admit what we know. We've had a White House that has been deeply interfering, applying pressure to the media in ways that are inconsistent with America's most fundamental ideas of fairness, free speech, all the things we know. It is shameful what the Biden administration did. Mr. Secretary, you wrote a new article up at ACLJ.org. It's called price controls, abortion, open borders and outright socialism define Kamala Harris's policies. You make the point in this that if Harris were to get elected, it's dangerous for all Americans, not just for conservative Americans.
Could you elaborate on that a little bit more for us? No, goodness. It doesn't matter if you're an independent, a libertarian, Democrat, doesn't matter, frankly, if you're a socialist, the policies that we know she believes, whatever she may say tomorrow or a week from now, we have a history. She is not. She's not new. She's not tabula rasa.
She's not. We know exactly who Vice President Harris is and what she stands for and what she believes in her core, what her gut instincts are. She will drive this economy into the ground with these price controls.
Setting prices is nutso at the federal level. She will do the same kinds of foreign policy, national security policy that have led to now two major wars and potentially a third one if we are not careful. And then we know, too, we know what she did leading the Biden administration's effort on the border. She flooded America with illegal immigrants. That's not a none of those are remotely political.
They don't attach to a ideology or a political party. Those are fundamentally things that are bad for everyday Americans who are simply trying to raise their families, practice their faith and go to work. You mentioned her record on the border, and now we're seeing what seems to be sort of the playbook for the Harris campaign of hear a policy from President Trump and plagiarize that as your own. Axios is reporting this morning that she plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on border wall policy, something that she herself called inhumane when she was running against President Trump and has derided it many times since then.
What's your take on the strategy here from the Harris campaign to plagiarize specific topics when it comes to trying to get elected? Well, first, it's not going to work. You, Vice President Harris, you're not going to fool any American into believing that you have the intention of building out a border wall after all you and your party have done to prevent President Trump and his team from doing just exactly that. No, you're going to do what you've done for the last three and a half years. You're going to flood the United States. You're going to open our borders. You're going to allow asylum seekers to wander free. You're going to let kids go all across.
You're going to have fentanyl all across this country. We need only look at the budgets that Vice President Harris has hailed as just brilliant. They had no money for the border. She was part of a Senate group of Democrats who oppose President Trump's funding, funding for President Trump's efforts to build the border. This is hypocrisy and gaslighting of the most extraordinary proportions, and I have confidence the American people are smarter. It's going to fail, but it's quite humorous to watch her try and tack towards the policies that she know actually work and that President Trump has adopted in a way that somehow she thinks she can scrape off a few votes. It's the worst of politics. Secretary Pompeo, I did want to give you a moment to talk about this as well. We obviously have the First Amendment under attack. We see it now not only suspected, we know that it happened.
It's now confirmed, even like a Mark Zuckerberg comes out and says, yeah, we did this. We regret it. When those moments happen, I'm very thankful there's even organizations like our own here at the ACLJ. We are only four days away from the end of one of our big sort of fundraising drives, our life and liberty drive. I want to give you a minute to say you worked firsthand in these governments. You know what it's like to have organizations like the ACLJ and why it's important. So I just wanted to give you a moment to talk about that as well, because we appreciate your commentary on here each week as you come on.
We couldn't do that, obviously, without our supporters. We couldn't bring you on as one of our team members here, but also from the legal level or from the governmental level, it's very important. I'm happy to talk about it because it mattered so much to me. It impacted me and importantly, when I was a congressman and my constituents and when I was in the Trump administration, the work that we were working on every day to try and help America be more successful, have a better place.
When you're in those offices, you depend on good, smart analysis, legal analysis, moral grounding, historical knowledge. Places like the ACLJ has so uniquely the good work that they did on their own, but alongside of us to help inform not only me, but my teams was absolutely vital to any good thing that we got done. I so appreciated the work that the ACLJ did on behalf of its members and on behalf of the United States of America.
It was grounded and decent and vital to anybody who wants to be effective in government. Thank you so much, Secretary Pompeo, for joining us always. And of course, as we do head to wrapping up this life and liberty drive, we couldn't have people, incredible team members like Secretary Pompeo.
And by the way, not just people like Secretary Pompeo who are incredible, but everyone I'm looking at right now. All the guys running video, all the people doing radio, all the people running sound will hear our entire team that is in not just this office, our media office, but also all of our legal offices and satellite offices, annexes that have to exist around the country. None of that gets done without your support. We're not funded by big sponsors. We're not funded by the major donations, though we obviously would appreciate them. We are funded primarily for people who have decided I'm going to give to the ACLJ or I'm going to give to the ACLJ on a monthly basis, even if it's a small amount. Join us right now during this life and liberty drive because all donations are doubled because there's another ACLJ supporter out there ready for their dollar to be unlocked, dollar for dollar.
It's exactly what this life and liberty drive was built for in moments like this. We are a little down. I'm not going to lie to you.
And look, I could prove it to you if I needed to. We are a little down. We are in a moment of, I understand the economy is tough and you also are being hit up everywhere. People asking you specifically for political donations will rise above politics a little bit, rise above politics, be a part of a bigger movement that will outlast any presidency, that will outlast any administration. We will always be there for you.
Go to ACLJ.org right now. Be a part of this life and liberty drive. You're watching online the thousands of you that are watching live and the millions that we'll watch later on.
Scan the QR code. It'll take you straight to that link. If you are brand new to this broadcast also, and you're listening on the radio, we do a full extra half hour. We do a full hour.
Some radio stations carry it, some don't. Full hour coming up. So we got 30 more minutes of broadcast. Make sure you're joining us. Go to ACLJ.org or all your favorite platforms, even Facebook, YouTube, Rumble X. We are there right now to be a part of that great community. I want to thank everyone who's part of that community as well.
If you're brand new though, hit that subscribe button. Thumbs up. Second half hour coming up. You know what?
For the heck of it, sit in those clowns. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to the second half hour of Sekulow. We will be taking your phone calls.
And guess what? I got six lines open right now. So if you ever wanted to be on the air, this is a great time to do it. 1-800-684-3110.
1-800-684-3110. Rick Grinnell is going to be joining us later in the broadcast. Of course, we are focused really well on the admission of guilt, if you will, from Mark Zuckerberg. In the whole situation where he essentially said to Jim Jordan, yeah, we did what you thought we did. We worked with the Biden administration and they pressured us and they pushed us even for satire to push it down. But we've decided that we regret this. And from moving on, we're not going to do it again.
You know what? We got to make sure they stick to that. But let's give them a moment. Take a win a little bit here, guys. Take a win.
It took a couple of years. But the fact that you have someone as high level as Mark Zuckerberg saying, not only am I not going to censor anyone anymore due to their political leanings one way or the other. We're going to go a step further. We're not going to get involved financially. And I'm personally not going to get involved financially.
This is a guy that could donate millions and millions of dollars without even blinking. Saying, you know what? American politics, you've run me out of it. I'm out of it. That's where we are right now in society.
That is pretty wild. All at the same time, we are trying to push right now the end of our life in Liberty Drive. I want you to be a part of it. And we are going to discuss a little bit more. Will, there are some other pieces in the news.
That's right. Yeah. We're going to talk about, as we alluded to with Secretary Pompeo there, the flip flop on the border wall from Kamala Harris, as well as Israel securing a hostage, rescuing a hostage that was actually in a tunnel. We're going to get into all these issues with Rick Grenell in the next segment.
Yeah. We're going to talk with Rick because I don't understand how we're still, the fact that this is happening. A lot of people, I believe a lot of people here release the hostages and you're not picturing that there are still living, breathing people currently being captured by Hamas, Hamas leaders, by civilians who are involved in this. It's hard to picture almost a year later, 10 months later, that this is all still happening, but then you have a moment today where it should just wake you up, snap you back into this and go, yes, we need to still be out there. Because there are people who are still alive that are hostages that we can get freed with our support of Israel. The tide will turn.
People will say nasty stuff. There's people even on the conservative side who have really turned their back on Israel and it breaks my heart and it really has been a gut punch to watch over the last year. You know, there was a couple of weeks there where everyone felt like they were all together and unified, but there are still people currently right now as we speak, men, women, children, likely alive under horrible situation, under horrible circumstances being captured by Hamas. And so when these peace talks come up and the ceasefire talks and they go, well, you got to release the hostages. I saw one of them said, release some of the hostages and then we'll start talking about it. No, we got to release all the hostages that are still there. And there's still, in fact, there's one alive.
I think it was probably shocking to a lot of people. And that's why we have ACLJ Jerusalem. That is why it's still there. We're out there fighting for these families. Still, we are engaged in this situation. That's why there's other amazing organizations that are not giving up on Israel. I know that's not necessarily why you tuned in.
I know you probably tuned in because you wanted to hear about what was going on with Trump and this current situation with Mark Zuckerberg. We're going to get back to that. But don't lose sight that there is still hostages being held by Hamas and Hamas sympathizers in Gaza that can be freed. And that happened this morning. Glimmers of hope. But honestly, glimmers of hope and glimmers of sadness.
These are people that have been locked away for 10 plus months at this point. And it's still happening. I'm going to encourage you right now. Stand up for Israel, just like we do here. Support our work at the ACLJ Jerusalem.
All of it goes together. Join us in this life and liberty drive right now. We got 30 seconds left.
I'm just going to encourage you. We have 36 left just in this segment. We got a whole half hour coming up. Take a moment. Scan the QR code.
Go to ACLJ.org. We are down. We need your support. Four days left. And for the most part, look, we're starting to wrap up the week. I know it feels like we're only on a Tuesday. We are on a Tuesday.
But with the holiday coming up, this is quickly going to be forgotten. Be a part of it right now while you still can and while you're still thinking about it. Go to ACLJ.org right now. Coming up next, Rick Rinnell is going to be joining us. We're going to discuss that. We're going to discuss, of course, the meta situation and so much more.
ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. Rick Rinnell is joining us. Rick, obviously the big topic that a lot of people are talking about this morning is Mark Zuckerberg put out a letter to Jim Jordan saying, you know what? You're right. For years, we have been pressured by this administration, by the Biden administration, to even suppress satire, to suppress facts that were coming out, to get involved in things we didn't feel comfortable, but unfortunately we didn't. And now we regret those decisions and we're not going to do it moving forward. I couldn't think of a better person to get the response from.
Rick, go ahead. I mean, look, let's be really clear about one thing we told Zuckerberg, we told Facebook, we told the social media companies that they were doing this. I was the acting DNI when we were telling them to stop. We've seen the lists that were made by the government of conservative influencers that should be silenced because what the government was saying inside the deep state, individuals were saying these people were pushing misinformation, disinformation. They came up with a whole new term for having opinions. And we told Facebook, they said that they weren't doing it. They said that they were just moderating hate content.
And we pushed back on that and even said, you can't do that. Free speech means that you allow speech that you don't like. It's not all approved speech. And we don't want the government and we don't want tech companies making a determination of what's bad speech. By the way, if in the very beginnings of this, they would have moderated on both sides, we wouldn't be in this situation.
I certainly would still be calling for free speech, but they completely overplayed their hand by going after only one side, the conservative side. So let me make one thing clear to Mark Zuckerberg. This admission is not good enough.
It's way late. You're now admitting that you violated the law. And in order to have a society where when you violate the law, no one is above the law.
I think that's the phrase that we keep hearing. I think Facebook executives who did this should be prosecuted. I think we need to send the message that we absolutely will not allow this secrecy to happen. It's not good enough to come clean two months before an election when clearly the Republicans are about to take over the Senate, which means Republicans will have the House and the Senate. I'm confident of that.
And Donald Trump looks like he's going to be President. And so now what we have is tech executives scrambling to say, oh, uncle, uncle, I want to tap out, have mercy on me. And I'm all for mercy, but I'm also for having the ability to prosecute people. No one is above the law. We absolutely have to have justice.
And Rick, I just want to call back to something that you just said. And when you juxtapose that with this letter, which it comes across as a strong mea culpa from a tech executive, something you're not used to seeing where they're not just saying the government told us to do so. So we acquiesced, you know, who else would do something different if the strong arm of the government's coming? But you mentioned that as the way it's laid out in his letter saying that they would come to them and pressure them to censor certain content. But you're drawing a distinction that earlier than the Biden-Harris administration, as it's talking here, members of the deep state were colluding, for lack of a better term, with meta, with lists of people that they should be censoring.
Am I hearing that correct? Absolutely correct. I've seen the list. They know that the list exists. This was a list created by the deep state to undermine Donald Trump, to talk about propaganda from Russia as some sort of interference in the elections. And let me be clear.
I've said this over and over. Russia pushes propaganda. So do the Chinese.
So do a whole bunch of other countries. But what was happening within the deep state and with the far left is they created this whole term to distract and say that Russia was interfering in our elections. That's not true. Russia was interfering in the discussions about our elections. There is no evidence. There never was any evidence that Russia was changing votes or manipulating machines. They were doing what they always do, which is push propaganda. You know, in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, Americans knew because we used the word propaganda from the Russians. Well, the far left decided to change the word and call it misinformation or disinformation. It's the same old propaganda that the Russians always do. They try to get us to fight. They create bots and they try to inflame the discussion. But the far left immediately started messaging that they were interfering in our elections. They were interfering in our election discussions of issues and topics like they always do.
It's called propaganda. Rick, the fact that this letter is released today or last night after really the investigation started a year ago, thousands of pages of documents have been given to the Judiciary Committee. And then out of the blue, a year later, Mark Zuckerberg decides to release this as he's headed up to the election. Do you think that this is concern about a whistleblower? Do you think it's trying to maybe salvage some of the audience he has left on Facebook?
What do you think the intentions or rationale behind this letter at this time is? Make no mistake, Facebook, which is now called Meta, which owns Instagram, has the best lobbyists, spin artists and lawyers in the world. They're a massive company with massive support.
I am going to get targeted by so many of these big players. They're going to sling mud at me for calling this out, but I don't care. The reality is, is that this is their spin, their lawyers and their lobbyists with trying to get in front of a story because they know that the conservatives are about to take over. And we need to deal with this.
No one is above the law. This is not good enough. This is too late.
This started in 2016. I would ask just simply of the lobbyists, why didn't you do this in 2017, 2018, when you knew when we were saying you were silencing and going after conservatives? Why didn't you say it then?
Because you were too afraid and you believed in this initiative. You wanted to silence conservatives because the majority of the board and the majority of the executives at Meta, at Facebook, at Instagram are all far lefties. We know this from whistleblowers. We know this from Marc Andreessen, who has come forward to say the board is a mess over there.
And so this isn't good enough. People need to be prosecuted. And I look forward to being the voice in the Trump administration, pushing for prosecution of all of these people who manipulated us for so many years, gaslit us and now suddenly want to tap out here at the end when they're losing. Rick, I did want to take a minute.
Thank you for your commentary on that. I did want to take a minute because we are just a few days away from the end of our big ACLJ life and liberty drive, which is at the end of this month. And look, as you talked about what your work could be in an administration moving forward, what your work could be, the ACLJ is here.
Good times, bad times. We are always here to make sure those voices are being heard. And I wanted to give you a minute because I know you've dealt with us firsthand now for many years as being part of the team and before being part of the team. You saw firsthand what the ACLJ could do.
And I wanted to give you a minute to just encourage our listeners, encourage our viewers, those that are watching, maybe you're brand new on YouTube or rumble. You're just joining us right now to get involved with the ACLJ and become an ACLJ member or champion. Look, when I served in the administration and even before that, I saw groups that were actually doing something, not just talking, not just going out in front of the media and saying something, but actually taking action, hiring people, hiring lawyers, filing briefs. This is a legal fight in so many ways that we're faced with on all fronts. And the reason I joined ACLJ and why I've been committed every single week to being here talking about these issues is because I have seen firsthand that ACLJ doesn't just talk.
They actually do. And I'm so sick and tired of organizations that simply just talk about things. The team, the lawyers at ACLJ are amazing. I just wish that people would help us out through prayers, through talking about our work on social media, amplifying it, asking your friends to donate, you donating if you can. But I can tell you that there's no better organization to actually do what they're talking about, not just issue press releases and show outrage on social media.
Thank you, Rick, so much. We obviously agree, but also thank you for your ongoing weekly engagement support here of the ACLJ. It's been an honor to have you as part of our team here, as well as everyone, like I said, not just you or else not even the crew here that's able to do this. We can't do any of this without this incredible team. And if you could, like I always say, if you could turn the camera around, you could see the dozens of people working on this broadcast each and every day. All the incredible content that's put out and, of course, all the legal fights that we're in and we're engaged in each and every day. There are no weekends.
There are no off time. We can't do that without you. So as we head into this final segment of the day, I'm going to encourage you. Number one, we've got two phone lines open. 1-800-684-3110.
I like to take the calls. If you're an ACLJ champion, or hey, if you're pledging to me, you're going to become an ACLJ champion today, make sure you tell our phone screener. You get priority treatments. One of the little perks of being an ACLJ champion. But I encourage you right now, at any level, all donations are right now doubled.
They're matched. That means if you give $10, another ACLJ member is ready to unlock that $10. And while you're at it, make that donation monthly.
Become what we call an ACLJ champion, which is someone who is dedicated to giving each and every month on a recurring basis. Do it right now, and then the most important voice of yours coming up. Alright, it's time for your calls and comments. I want to appreciate everyone who during that break supported the work of the ACLJ. We're able to track that and see all the numbers go up and know that we really appreciate it. If you haven't done it yet, again, we've only got a few days left, but let's just say today is a virtual deadline. We're going to still remote until the end of the month.
But right now, while it's on your mind, just go ahead and do it. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. If you like this broadcast, again, you may even hear, if you're in the local market, you may even hear ads. Understand, that ad revenue isn't going really back to us. Okay, that's supporting your local station.
The ACLJ is not self-sufficient. It's supported exclusively by donors, by individual donors. If you can give big, great. But if you can give $10, still great. All donations here are just incredible. We really appreciate it. Let's go ahead and take some phone calls. Let's go to Joetta, who is calling on Line 1.
You're on the air. Thank you. I got on just before you had written Grinnell on with the point that Facebook started doing shadow banning and all of that prior to 2020.
Anybody who was for life and liberty and Christian value. Yeah, absolutely. Joetta, I do think that that's true. I do think there was certainly a spike, though, as it became more and more intense, specifically in that sort of 2020, 2021, where it seemed to get a little bit more and more. We can even see it ourselves. We had some of our biggest numbers on Facebook.
Our biggest supporters were on Facebook. A lot of times that was in that sort of 2016 kind of time period, 2018, during the first Trump administration. So, yes, it was happening, but maybe happening a little different.
Then you get around to really what became the firestorm, which was, you know, the early 2020s. Well, and also the big question is, is when did the government start colluding with the big tech company there? Because the content moderation, we knew that they had their finger on the scales of pushing down conservative content, probably before even the government started getting involved. And they kind of said that.
We did our own moderation. But what they're saying in this isn't, by the way, that the Trump administration ever really did, which they may have, but as far as we know, they did not. Well, deep state actors within the Trump administration.
We know the FBI, which never had a positive view of the sitting President, even though as the head of the executive branch, the FBI would fall under his. But he's calling out exact, really he's calling out the Biden-Harris administration as the people who were overly pressuring them to do this work. Let's continue on.
Take some more phone calls. Will, I think you have a comment on this one. Let's go to Jared on line two. Yes. Jared, you're up.
Hi, I just want to say thank you for all you guys do. And my question is, is how could Facebook letter play in the Supreme Court ruling in the Murphy versus Missouri case? Would that make a difference? Would that information be submitted to the court and someone therefore be in trouble? So in the case of Murphy versus Missouri, I don't think that the fact was ever disputed that the government was working and requesting the social media platforms to censor certain content. It was an unfortunate decision for those in favor of free speech.
It was a 6-3 decision. There was a dissent by Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. This was over an injunction which was set forth by lower courts.
And so by removing the injunction, the Supreme Court, it allowed federal government to continue to contact social media companies without restriction while the cases continue. So now there's not a final outcome of those cases. This was on the injunction stage.
It wasn't a positive sign for this. But as you get more information, as those other aspects of those cases move forward in the lower courts, this could come into play. The fact that Facebook is saying it was wrong, that they're acknowledging that this is wrong, this could potentially be brought into evidence in the cases as they move forward. The Murphy v. Missouri decision was specifically on the injunction that was placed on the federal government as those cases move forward. Hopefully the final decision in this case beyond the injunction, if it gets back to the Supreme Court, will fall more in line with this as Alito wrote in the dissent. Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government and therefore today's decision is highly disturbing.
I want to see that language in a majority opinion if something like this makes it back to the Supreme Court. Alright, thanks for your call. Shelly's calling next. Shelly, you're on the air. Well, good morning and thank you for all that you do.
I would like to just make a real quick statement and ask a question. So, according to Attorney General Andrew Bailey out of Missouri, he posted this morning, he regretted it because our lawsuit exposed it, caught red-handed. And my question is, I watched all of the hearings in Congress, can he be charged for lying under oath? We certainly could go back to those tapes and see what he said and how that actually contradicts or if anything contradicts what he said in 2021. And we see, you know, kind of like what he did at Rogan a few years ago, admitting sort of about the Hunter Biden laptop situation and they did suppress that and it became unavailable.
It wasn't censored but it wouldn't show up in your feed. He has started to kind of be a bit more transparent over the last little bit. Shelly, to your point, one, I think that he was very careful in those earlier testimonies where it wasn't as strong as we take responsibility for this and it was wrong. But as Logan pointed out, he went out, he did start this soft mea culpa early with Joe Rogan. He said similar things. But if there were a perjurious statement before Congress, you know who would have to currently charge him with that?
The United States Department of Justice, who are part and parcel to the collusion, don't think that they're going to go there at this point. But as Rick said, he may be trying to get ahead because he knows that a conservative administration could be coming and wants to avoid something like that. I certainly think he could be trying to get ahead of something.
I would be shocked if that's what it is. Am I also willing to give a little bit of room to bring someone in who may be more supportive with this kind of power and this kind of strength and this kind of support? Let's just see what happens. Let's play along.
Let's see a little bit what happened. Let's go to Robin who's calling on Line 6. Robin, I know what you're calling, but I appreciate you still making that statement. Yeah, I just wanted to thank Rick Grenell for speaking the truth and saying what I was thinking always. He's truly my hero and I just want to thank you all for the work you do.
Thank you Robin so much. That's going to do it for calls today. So Bob and Chad, I appreciate you waiting on hold for a few minutes. Unfortunately, we're just not going to be able to get to you today.
Look, I need to take this last minute and a half. When you hear a call like that, they want to thank Rick Grenell for being part of the ACLJ team for his thoughts and views. Look, sometimes we have people, whether that's Tulsi Gabbard, whether that's our members of our team, whether that's Mike Pompeo or Rick Grenell, they don't always agree.
We actually like to hear, kind of like what we're seeing now happen. We're early adopters of not just having one voice in the room, but actually having a bunch, taking a look at each side, but different points of view. But the ACLJ is one thing stood up always for, and that is your freedom of speech, and that is for protecting life.
Those are two things that are never going to change. We're never going to waver on. So right now, I encourage you, as we head up to the end of this broadcast, I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org to scan a QR code if you're watching on the screen, if that's easier for you. There are four days left in this life and liberty drive, and we have some big news coming later in this week, and I want you to make sure you stay tuned. But right now, we could use your support. It's a 24-7 job here at the ACLJ, whether you're a member of the media team or whether you're a member of the legal team. The phone never stops.
Nothing ever goes off. We have to be available at a moment's notice, and I want to have the best of the best to do that. And we can't do that without your support, so we urgently need your support.
We have left some four days left for this match. These matches only open up for a short period of time, so go to ACLJ.org and have your gifts doubled. If you can become an ACLJ champion, do that as well, so you can opt in. Your donation will be doubled this month, obviously matched. From then on, it's whatever you set that number is, and we really would appreciate it.
ACLJ.org. Talk to you tomorrow.