Is It Time To Ban TikTok?

Hey everybody, a guy who is going to get in a fight with Charles Barkley. Should we ban TikTok and my reflections for my visit at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo? Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com. Subscribe to our podcast, open up your podcast application and type in charliekirkshow. Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com.

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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. All right everybody, we have a real fun story for you here. So Charles Barkley likes to run his mouth and Charles Barkley said recently that he wants to punch any black person wearing a Trump mugshot t-shirt. Well, I don't think Charles Barkley would be able to punch our next guest.

Wouldn't go very well for him, would not go very well for him. This is Zeke Arkham and his pronouns are bruh and brudda. Did I get that right? Zeke, welcome to the program.

Thanks, you got that right. Thank you so much for having me. So Zeke, tell us about this. This has gone really viral and I love anyone that puts Charles Barkley in his place. Well, it was brought to my attention. A lot of my followers tagged me on Twitter in his post and they said, you know, Zeke, I think he's calling you out.

I think he wants to punch you in the face. So I took a look at it and I knew I had a Trump mugshot shirt. So I got the shirt, I got the hat and I said, hey Charles, I heard you looking for me.

You know, I grew up in an era where if you hit me, I'm going to hit you back. You know, I was a big fan of Charles Barkley growing up. I used to watch him play basketball.

I enjoyed his time with the 76ers. So it was surprising for me to hear him say that, but you know, I never thought, you know, Charles and I would get into any kind of fisticuffs or anything. I just want to let him know, hey, listen, we're out here. We're not going to be intimidated and we're in your face. So if you're talking about punching people, you know, you can go ahead and start with me. And his comments the next day, he sort of backed off. He said, I'm not going to punch anyone. He referenced my shirt.

He said, tell me to get a bigger shirt. So it was nice just to have that interaction. So, Zeke, you know, you're an outspoken, I think it's fair to call you a conservative. You love the country. You're a pro-American and there seems to be more and more black voices that are supporting Trump and supporting conservative values.

Talk about your story in addition to this kind of fun saga that we've seen in the last couple of days. I sort of red-pilled myself. My story starts with me having conservative values, but not knowing I was conservative. I thought that I was pretty liberal just because, you know, I always believed in the mantra. I'll defend your right to say it, even if I don't agree with it, which used to be a fairly liberal mantra, I guess, until they went pretty far left.

Now their mantra seems to be either agree with me or, you know, you're a bigot or you're a racist, you're a sexist or you're any other sort of slur they want to call you. And I started doing my own research. You know, people told me, just do your own research and see what you come up with. I started doing my own research. I started seeing where this country was going and I didn't agree with it. You know, I tell people all the time, I voted for Obama twice just because I thought that this was the direction I wanted my country to go in. And pretty quickly I disagreed with everything he was saying and everything he was doing. And I guess conservative voices started preaching to me and I started agreeing with everything they were saying. You know, I'm for small government. I'm for family.

I'm for God. I'm for law and order and which seemed to be more and more right leaning views. So, you know, the more I started reading, the more I started doing my research, the more I started reading Thomas Sowell, who I'm a huge student of, I started allowing myself more conservative right wing values. I love I love the Thomas Sowell reference.

He's one of my intellectual heroes. Well, let me just pose a hypothetical. What if millions of young black students were exposed to Thomas Sowell instead of, let's just say the BLM mantra?

What would that mean? Do the ideas of Thomas Sowell, do they get a fair hearing in current black academic settings? They don't because he preaches that you have to take responsibility for yourself. You have to stand up, put your big boy or big girl pants on and take responsibility for your own actions, for your own decisions. And that seems to be a lot of what the left is teaching against. They teach the BLM mantra. They teach that you're a victim. Being a victim is the easiest thing in the world because nothing is your fault. Anything that goes wrong in your life, well, it's because of racism. It's because of white supremacy. You know, this white supremacy boogeyman is out there lurking around the corner.

He's hiding under your bed trying to get you. So I think if more children were exposed to Thomas Sowell at a younger level, I think they'd be more agreeing with what he would have to say. I have an eight-year-old daughter right now, and all I do is talk to her about self-responsibility and just being in control of your own fate, your own future.

And these are things that I read from Thomas Sowell. This is what I'm teaching her now. So she's starting to get on that path. And I have young nieces and nephews, I'm starting to talk to them about that as well.

And they're starting to get on that path. So we as conservatives, we have to get to them while they're young because they're being indoctrinated by the schools, they're being indoctrinated by the TVs, they're being indoctrinated by things as innocent as we used to think as things like Sesame Street. And we have to show that we're the prevailing voice, not their friends, not their teachers, not Sesame Street, not the media. We have to be their voice.

We have to teach them while they're young and so that they can go out there and have these core values instilled in themselves. Donald Trump, according to polling, is doing better and better with black Americans. Why is that the case and what can he do to win record amounts of black support coming into November? I think it's more because people aren't dumb. They know the economy under Biden hasn't been good. They know that $100 doesn't take them where it used to anymore at the supermarket. They're looking at the prices at the gas pumps. They're looking at crime and safety.

They're looking at the neighborhoods and how illegal immigrants are taking over, how they're being kicked out of schools, they're being kicked out of housing, and illegal immigrants are being put back in. And I think they're just taking a good look around and going, we didn't have this under Trump. And they're not falling for the left wing gas fight where the left is trying to say, oh, your life is so much better while we're in control. Your life is so much safer while we're in control. Look at all the money you're saving while we're in control. And I think more and more black folk are looking in their pockets and going, no, I don't have money anymore.

I can't play it from my house anymore like I was younger. It's costing me now more and more at the pumps. So I think more people are just taking a good looking around and going, maybe I should listen to what Trump has to say. He's speaking plainly. He's speaking to stuff I'm concerned about. He's speaking to my future. He's speaking to my financial benefit. Maybe we should listen in.

And hopefully, his numbers in 2024 will reflect that. So Zeke, plug your show. We have two minutes remaining. I want to make sure you get plenty of time to do that. How our audience can follow you, please. You can follow me on Twitter.

That's my main mouthpiece at Zeke Arkham, Z-E-E-K-A-R-K-H-A-M. I'm also on Instagram where I put video commentary up, same handle, Zeke Arkham. And I'm just a guy with a social media account trying to put my voice out there, offering a fresh perspective, hopefully. And I speak plainly. I speak to the common blue collar worker, the guy who wakes up every day, puts his shoes and pants on, and goes out there and gets to work. And thankfully, a lot of people agree with my message. My message is resonating with a lot of people. And I'm another patriot out there who just wants their country in the right direction.

Final question, Zeke. It seems as if black men are trending more in the direction of kind of conservative values than women. Why do you think that is? Because like I said, you know, we get up every day, boots the shoes on, we get to go to work and we're able to take a look at the world around us. You know, a lot of the BLM propaganda is geared towards black women saying that you don't need a man in the house, saying that you can get out there and survive by yourself, that you can do anything a man can do. And when you have that message geared towards the women, you're going to lose a lot of the men because the men are saying, I am valuable. I can contribute to the household. I do want to raise my children.

I want to be involved in my son's and daughter's lives. So all the BLM propaganda, all the left-wing propaganda saying you don't need a man, all the toxic feminism that's out there that falls into misandry, that's out there saying that men are nothing but predators, that men are no good, that all men are going to do is cheat on you or hurt you. That's going to lose a lot of men, no matter what color you are, no matter what your background is. So I think a lot of black men in particular are getting tired of these messages. They're getting tired of these constant, of the battering from the BLM and the leftists and how the Democrats every four years only remember black voters are out there every four years. So I think a lot of black men in particular are getting really tired of that message and they're starting to now agree with a lot of what conservatives are saying.

And I just wish the conservatives would really take advantage of this and get out there and start really recruiting so that even beyond 2024, we can take our country back. Zeke, God bless you, man. You're welcome back anytime.

And I could see why Charles Barkley backed off. Zeke, thanks so much. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for having me on.

Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here. As you know, Mike Lindell has a passion to help you get the best sleep of your life. After he invented the world's best pillow, he created the famous Giza Dream Sheets. They are the best sheets you'll ever sleep on.

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Got a great response. By the way, we move up on the podcast charts almost always when Andrew fills in. So we should have Andrew fill in more often.

Andrew is going to say, no, he does a great job. So I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and there was all this chatter about the protests and there were protests there. And we'll talk about that in a second. But what was kind of blew me away was the attendance. So the way this works is I'll show up on a college campus and I'll set up a card table and we have conversations and we film it and everyone's welcome to film it.

They can film me and we film them and we post kind of some of the interaction sometimes online. And it's good for our turning point chapter. It's good for independent students.

It's good for students that might feel isolated or might feel as if there is very little ideological community for what they for where their worldview is. And let's just one twenty two. Let's put one twenty two up on screen. Typically, our Change My Minds will have twenty, thirty, forty, fifty people. I mean, that's easily five to six hundred people that attended right on campus. And the amount of enthusiasm and response that we received for Turning Point USA, for our message, let's play B-roll cut one twenty one so people could get kind of a little bit of a picture there. This is on a college campus once. Is that one twenty one?

Yeah. And you're trying to tell me that there's no conservatives on these campuses. And this goes to show me that the macro polling that we are seeing, New York Times, Ciena, Washington Post, that young people in particular, young men are becoming more right wing is correct. I mean, this is at one of the most liberal schools in the country.

I it's hard to articulate. San Luis Obispo is a very liberal town. It's like Seattle in California. By the way, it's objectively gorgeous. I've never been there before.

It's incredibly beautiful. It's surrounded by rural, more conservatives. But it's a it's like Portland near the coast.

It's about 15 miles from the coast. And the campus has all the as you would expect, gay flags and transgender stuff. And yeah, there are a couple of protesters. We can just look at Cut 120 here. They're marching all six of them in their all black.

Pretty weak and pathetic. You can just play 120 as they're marching through TP USA fascists off campus. Queers bash back. And if you then put up another one of these pictures, they were outnumbered like five hundred to six and they all of a sudden started to retreat and they started to get a little bit scared because they've never been outnumbered before.

In fact, they're used and I call them trans tifa trans tifa. I have never seen a response like this on campuses. I have no idea what that means politically.

I've no I'm not going to speculate. I'm just telling you factually I've never seen energy turnout response. And it's not just here. On the same day, we hosted the largest ever turning point USA high school event in Georgia. One thousand two hundred high schoolers attended. A basically maximum capacity filling out all the bleachers of a high school auditorium in northern Georgia the day before Candace Owens filled up an auditorium at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, UNC Chapel Hill. And we had to turn away another thousand people that could have filled that that room.

The day before that, we sent Candace Owens to University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where again packed room. Here were the protesters. Look how outnumbered they are on campus.

One twenty three. You'll see here. And what are they chanting? We are not here for debate. All six of them. Of course not. They are not in the ideological majority on these campuses.

Five or six years ago, we'd be lucky if, you know, 10 or 12 kids would stumble on by. Now, what do I attribute that to? Number one, the young men are waking up the hyper feminization, the transing of the country. They are waking up. Number two, they do not want to live a future as Russian serfs.

They want to own property. When I start talking about homeownership and inflation, even the radicals get a little quiet because they know that they are being robbed on a daily basis. And then I have to give Turning Point USA credit and Turning Point Action credit.

Every day we go to work and we do the tough stuff. We silence out all the critics. You know, Rana, she attacked us almost every single day, sent her little emissaries.

Well, she's gone now. The RNC, the establishment, the moderates, they hate us. But the results speak for themselves. There's something profound happening on these campuses. For years, I've been talking about how our nation's public schools have been captured by progressive ideologues, especially true if you're a Christian family. For those of you worried about the best educational path for your kids and grandkids, I want to tell you about how Turning Point Academy is working with the Herzog Foundation, how you at home can also benefit from it. They have an online publication called The Lion and also Making the Leap. The Herzog Foundation offers a wide range of advice and information for Christian parents to make the best education decisions for your kids. Go to HerzogFoundation.com, that is HerzogFoundation.com. So check it out right now, HerzogFoundation.com.

Portions of The Charlie Kirk Show are brought to you in part by the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation, that is HerzogFoundation.com. Joining us now is Joel Thayer from the Digital Progress Institute. There is a TikTok ban that seems to be pending.

I want to dive deep into the topic of TikTok. This is going to be an illuminating conversation. Joel, welcome to the program. Thank you, Charlie. Big fan. Thank you. Happy to talk about the topic.

Yeah, great. So the ban on TikTok seems to have been resurrected. It was gaining some steam for a while and now it's coming back.

Let's just start with what is TikTok? How big of a threat is it to our youth? Let's put the national security stuff aside. How about just what it does to a young person's brain, their behavioral patterns, depression, anxiety?

Joel, please. Well, I thought we witnessed a clear example of what it can do. Just in the past day, I mean, you had kids with the mere threat of potentially having this ban or having this app off the market.

You had kids calling in threatening things ranging from suicide or that they were going to be overly depressed, or I think there was even some who said they were going to assassinate sitting members of Congress. So I think the effects of it are pretty clear. And I think it's hard to discount the fact that this is a very, very addictive substance.

I mean, this is well documented throughout all of medicine. I think what yesterday demonstrated was that, yes, this is clearly something that is akin to digital fentanyl for kids. Do you believe that there's an intentionality on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party via ByteDance to get this into the hands of America's youth? Just given the connection between ByteDance and China, I can't see how you can separate the two.

So even if it's. I can't I can't even I was trying to think of a way around like, is there is there a reasonable argument to say that the Chinese government doesn't have an interest in just the way the corporate, the way ByteDance operates and the way it operates with TikTok. It's hard to imagine that they don't want this to happen. And look, case in point, yesterday they literally put out a push notification on their app to call every representative and tell them that and tell them to stop this ban. When in all reality, that's why they got something way more than they bargained for. They basically got a bunch of kids to admit that without them, they're going to commit suicide.

This is this is insane. What has it done to, let's just say, people's self image, depression, anxiety, has it has it further accelerated these negative mental health trends? The stats are getting harder to just prove the opposite. So in reality, I think that we are seeing just the interests of social media in general. And we just had a hearing on this a couple of weeks ago or maybe not a few weeks ago. So these are playing together. And these hearings are playing together where you have a bunch of parent groups coming to the table here and coming to Congress saying our kids are more depressed.

We're seeing higher and they're seeing higher depressions in teenage women of all of all the different population. And we're also seeing them engage in behaviors that aren't normal for kids. Like, I mean, it's kind of weird when you walk down the street and see a one kid doing a weird dance that they did.

And then you walk down the street and see a kid that may be completely independent of that kid doing that same exact dance. It's just it just seems to me that there is a it actually seems to me that I think there's it's well documented that there are individual folks. There are individual institutions pointing out that there is a connection between the addiction that these kids feel on the addiction these kids have on these apps and their behaviors.

It's just undeniable. What? So it's this is currently bubbling up in the House of Representatives. And the big question is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary and Controlled Applications Act. Walk us through the proposed legislation that just cleared the Commerce Committee. Yeah, I think the first thing to notate on March 7th, we saw something historic happen. And again, it had nothing to do with the State of the Union.

Thank goodness. So in a time like a men's political division and an election year, both Republicans and Democrats came together to pass an act that would make it unlawful for an entity to distribute or maintain or update any app that is controlled by a foreign adversary in the United States. So what does that actually mean? Well, in common parlance, it's basically if the act would have the practical effect of preventing, let's say, a Chinese-based tech company with clear ties to the Chinese government, let's say, I don't know, ByteDance, to have any ownership interest in a social media app targeted at Americans. And let's just pull something out of the hat here, maybe like TikTok. Not only would the act proscribe that specific interaction, it would also mean that if TikTok doesn't divest out of ByteDance, it will not be allowed to operate in the U.S., nor could Apple or Google post it on their app stores, plain and simple. So would that potentially apply to like Telegram that has Russian owners as well? Or is this, why don't they just do a bill targeted at TikTok?

Why do they have to make this so abstract? Well, look, quite frankly, there have been a lot of pushback from more left of center groups and also more libertarian groups who have put First Amendment charges on this. And I think what you're seeing is that the bill is specifically targeted at a specific type of harm.

And so in general, the First Amendment does allow for any action that may have an implication of free speech to abridge whatever free speech rights are, which I don't think there really are here. But again, I think Congress is trying to be very careful about that. And they were trying to make sure that this was targeted to a specific harm and that specific harm is happening on social media in general. So I think that's why you're seeing them go for apps over just the wide array of communications. But to be clear, that we have done this before. There is precedent for that. We've done this in the telecom space. For instance, Huawei and ZTE, which were Chinese-based companies that had significant ties to the CCP, are not allowed to get licenses at the FCC.

They're not allowed to receive any federal funding that comes through what's called the Universal Service Fund programs that the FCC administers. So we have done these types of bans in other aspects, in other parts of the stack. I think this is just the next step in that larger scheme to shore up our national security. So one of the pillars for your organization, digitalprogress.tech, is privacy for every consumer. Talk about TikTok's questionable privacy protocols.

Yeah, well, thankfully for me, it's really it's an easy case to make. I mean, they've been like since even since its first iteration, which is called Musical.ly, they have been under the ire of both administrations on privacy violations. The Federal Trade Commission, for instance, has what's called consent decrees by Dance Now TikTok to prevent them from sharing kids' data to advertisers.

Then you have the other issue of, you know, state legislators or CAG's office rather, suing them on the or circumventing the wiretap. These guys are trying to get in every aspect of your every aspect of your life, whether that's through your phone, whether that's through whatever, whether you're tablets. At all times, TikTok wants your data and they simply want kid data. So this is so I get I think that the tracker speaks for itself, like you have consent decrees up the wazoo when it comes to TikTok. And so I frankly, I really don't even need to make the case.

People can just easily look at TikTok's track record and they'll see privacy violation after privacy violation and promise after promise broken time and time again. So the what do you think is the likelihood of this then passing? What are the political prospects, the legislative prospects here?

So there's some good news here. The good news is that we had a unanimous vote in the past. I mean, we had a unanimous vote. I think that's pretty historic that you have a in a time when it's an election year.

No one wants to give the other party or their side of political win. We saw a fifty zero vote to get it to get it moving to the next stage. It's moving at a rapid pace like this isn't this is pretty it's not common to have a bill move this fast. So we will also hear that the House speaker is wants to bring this to a floor vote. My expectation is that it's probably going to pass that to the issue. The tricky issue is going to be where it comes to the Senate, how the Senate is going to feel about it.

But again, it's one win at a time. And so right now, I think the focus for for congressional members is to get it through the House. But just given the clear endorsements that you're getting on both sides of the aisle on the House side, it's it's it's pretty hard for it not to go through all the way the legislative process to the president. My more cynical take on who might be pushing for this.

I mean, if I was Facebook, I would want tick tock to be potentially be banned. And so I want I want to talk about that. But just kind of to go a previous question, this very well could be applied to other applications as well.

Rumble, Twitter and because Twitter, for example, has Saudi Arabian investors. So I think that the the the cornerstone of the law, as I understand it, is that there has to be an ownership interest. And so that's going to be.

Yeah. So like 17 percent is owned by Saudi Arabia. So again, I think that there are it also has to go through a different separate process than being in as part. I think as you go into it and see list as well, it's not just like, oh, you have ownership, therefore you're bad. There either has to actually be an investigation like we do with literally every other communication system. We do that at the FCC. They do have foreign ownership rules to make sure that the foreign ownership isn't, you know, above a certain percentage. And again, I don't see those thresholds here. I think it's more it's a more involved process than just saying you're owned by the Saudis. Therefore, you're you're already out of here or you have to divest.

The issue, as I see it, is that you have to be part of a known entity list before you get the remedial aspects of it. So, Joel, indulge my my cynicism here. If I was Google and Facebook and losing market share in the short video consumption market with which both are trying to compete with Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, I would want to try to use the legislative blunt force instrument to go after my competitor, TikTok. Are they behind this?

I really doubt that only. So I think there's a lot of concerns raised and obvious and there are obvious competition plays here. But I think in general, what this really builds off of is like almost half a decade long of a record from TikTok showing that it is under a little bit more more of the control of ByteDance, which is by extension in control of the CCP. I think that that's driving more of the conversation than the competition elements of this. But I think I completely agree with the idea that this market is highly concentrated and that the role of social media over over our information is abhorrent. And I think that at some point we are going to have to talk, have serious conversations about competition cues over this.

I mean, we're already starting to do that. I mean, with strong antitrust enforcement with Google and with Google search, you're seeing that you're seeing that there's more ire coming under under Apple. And I just I don't think that's the driver in terms of this as it relates to this conversation.

And it's a very odd push if that's how you want to go about it. So then the legislative kind of future in front of it, so then who'd become again, the old bill is the old bill. Is this then go to the Department of the Secretary of Commerce to enforce? Is that correct?

That's how the old one was written. Or is this an FTC thing? Who actually then ends up having the power to do this? But the way to read the bill, it looks like it's geared towards AGs.

But I do believe that there are multiple there are multiple angles in that. And it's my general guess, my general view is that I think it's I believe the Department of Commerce. I think that there might be other roles that other agencies have.

Again, this bill came out like in a couple of days ago. And so we're all just trying to piece together all the enforcement, all the enforcement pieces. But my understanding is, yes, basically going to work through a few different state AGs in particular. In closing, I want you to talk more about your great group, the Digital Progress Institute, and your kind of core pillars and what you're trying to aim and achieve. So in general, like the Digital Progress Institute is really just an organization that's trying to find agreement. Instead of looking at the district where we disagree, our general mission is that we are a bipartisan org that tries to push for incremental progress in the tech and telecom space.

And so we push for five basic categories of things, or five different categories where we think there is bipartisanship. One is certainly 5G and beyond, we want to make sure that we have healthy, competitive wireless markets. We definitely want to make sure that we have robust competition, particularly on the tech space. We have pushed very hard against big tech, we think that there's a significant issue in those digital markets. We certainly see, we certainly want privacy for all.

We talked about that a little bit with TikTok, but I think TikTok sends more into the cybersecurity bend of things on top of privacy. Broadband for all, so trying to figure out to make sure how everyone can be able to use broadband and access great shows like yours and be able to have, you know, as much interaction with the internet as possible. We also go for holistic internet regulations. So that also means section P30 reform is on the table. We certainly are looking at on carriage and public accommodations and we're trying to apply that more broadly onto the internet ecosystem. And so those are the general pillars of our org.

And so we, again, we are really focused on where we agree and we want to make sure that we push good, solid policy. Joel, thank you for the time. And the website here is digitalprogress.tech. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always, freedom dot com.