482: Why Do the Elites HATE Elon Musk So Much!? (with Hannah Cox & Brad Polumbo)

Brian Nichols  0:16  
Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Friday there, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. And thank you for joining us on of course, another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host. And today, your older host. Yes, it is my birthday. Thank you, everyone for the birthday wishes definitely appreciate it. And I'm joined by two of my dear friends here from the greater Twitter verse, but also the world of liberty politics, Brad Palumbo, and Hannah Cox. Welcome back to The Brian Nichols Show. Hey,

Brad Polumbo  0:56  
happy birthday.

Brian Nichols  0:57  
Thanks, guys. Welcome back to the program. I get to be joined by two of my dear friends here for my birthday. Why not? And we're gonna talk about the possible king of Twitter question mark, Elon Musk. And there's a lot of leaders out there who don't like what's happening right now in the world of Twitter. But before we get there, Brad Hanna, what's new? Well,

Hannah Cox  1:17  
we have had a great time watching all of the histrionics unfold over Twitter this week. I don't know about you, Brad. But yesterday was one of my very most favorite days online of all time, I had a blast. It was hilarious. That was so much fun content. And I really feel like we saw a lot of people show their hands yesterday. I mean, we knew we knew these people like really relied on squashing dissent and preventing people from hearing other ideas for their ideas prevail, but it just was loud and clear. So I had a great time.

Brad Polumbo  1:45  
The funniest thing for me was the the ranting and raving from mainstream media figures like they were MSNBC analysts and Washington Post columnist talking about how if Elon takes over Twitter, it'll be a threat to democracy, world wars. Last time. Yeah, the last time I checked, democracy usually involves free speech and open debate, not the suppression of the other side. Because if you think your ideas can't win in an open debate, then your problem is actually with democracy, not defending it.

Brian Nichols  2:16  
Yeah. Well, and one of the things it kind of struck me was it wasn't just the political actors who have been having a little hissy fit. But also it seems that there's some people in corporate America who are pretty pissy along the way too, I was listening to now there's a podcast I listened to called this old marketing. It's from Joe Pulizzi. And I forget the other gentleman's name, Robert, something. But they basically do this podcast and it's a it's a marketing podcast, and they started today's episode just just ranting and raving, not in a good sense about Elon taking over, I just want to share a little bit of this with you guys. Because it struck me, I think the way that they articulated their displeasure for Elon, exactly where you're where the disdain the disgust comes from. And I want to hear your perspectives here. So this is from this old Marketing Podcast, take a listen.

Unknown Speaker  3:05  
It is breaking news literally happened this morning. That Well, what I thought we were going to be talking about what I have in my show notes, is, of course, that Elon would not be joining the business of Twitter, because he all of a sudden saw the job description and went shit, no, I'm not going to do that. And now it seems like he's not getting taking his marbles and going home. He's, he's really going to, I mean, I, you know, who knows if this is a bluff? Or if this is I mean, because he's going to have to come up with a lot of cash to to do this. And there's this, you know, there's disagreement on how liquid he actually is to be able to be able to pull something like this off. But, you know, if you can come up with $40 billion, then the maybe he maybe he can do it.

Unknown Speaker  3:55  
I think the whole thing is ridiculous. I mean, did you see the poll that he put out that? I mean, he put many polls, oh, it was the one he said it was? Are you for or against Twitter's name and taking out the W?

Unknown Speaker  4:09  
Yes, I mean, manchild, like when he is a total manchild, that mean the childishness of this. I mean, he also, he also put in there, there was something else that was just as stupid, you know, you know, it was just over the about, he was gonna, it was be lit, right? Because he was making reference to basically everybody's smoking weed. And that whole thing, just, I mean, it's just,

Unknown Speaker  4:35  
but I know, but I can't, you know, make rockets that are gonna go to Mars or anything. So the guy Well, that's true. I mean,

Unknown Speaker  4:43  
of course. I mean, it is. He is, without a doubt, one of the most innovative and productive entrepreneurs of the 20th century in all there's, there's just you could say, Yeah, I mean, you can't disagree With that, but However, having said that, he's also, you know, he, I think he fashions himself after kind of a Howard Hughes sort of idea, this sort of weird iconic clastic strange, sort of, you know, I mean, but he's just he's coming off as a Superman villain. I mean, it's just it's just

Brian Nichols  5:21  
ridiculous right there. And that's that caught me right there. He's coming off as a Superman villain. And I think if you look at the Twitterverse right now, that is the reaction. Everybody is in hysterics. Now they go on to discuss about what it must be like to work right now inside corporate Twitter and how hard it must be to go to work and do your job. I know. It must be so tough. But Brad and Hannah. I think they're exemplifying right now this emotional reaction we've seen to Elon in first buying 9.2% of Twitter stock, but now I'm actually going to pull out by the company, the meltdowns real.

Brad Polumbo  5:58  
Yeah, it is. And I just I find it funny because, you know, for a long time when people on the right complained about Twitter, they were told it's a private company, they can do whatever they want by liberals and by the left. And to be clear, people like him, and I agreed with them, right. But now all of a sudden, they're very mad about what might happen with a private company. And so really, it's like libertarians are over here on an island actually holding this consistent belief. And now everyone's gonna flip flop real quick. The other half of it, though, is, is Elon kind of trollish and immature sometimes, yes, absolutely. But I actually think that's part of his appeal, because this guy is literally the richest person on earth. Yeah, he does not take himself seriously at all. He posts Teddy jokes to Twitter. And I think that's honestly his way of one. You know, these genius types tend to not have the most social skills, right. But then also, I think it's his way of like, bringing himself back down to the people and be like, I'm just a troll. Like, I'm just a person that likes to laugh, too. Like, I'm not some fancy schmuck. And that's actually part of what I like about him, even though yes, obviously, some of it can be silly, but it's also like not a serious objection. Like, oh, no, he can't run Twitter because he posts silly stuff. Sometimes, like, come on, this man is obviously qualified to do this. And that's just a little bit of lightheartedness here. And there.

Hannah Cox  7:21  
Well, and as you want himself has pointed out, like the people who are using Twitter right now, if you haven't noticed, are not the influencers. It's not the general public is not the grassroots. It's mostly people like us, who do take ourselves a little bit too seriously. It's academics and people in politics and people who have like very serious opinions they want to discuss. And his point is kind of been like, this isn't actually where the masses are. And if we actually want to take Twitter to the next level, you've got to attract those kinds of people back. So I like his humor. I think he's very funny. I like that he's relatable. Even though he's arguably one of the smartest, most successful people in history, you feel like you could have a beer with them and or white claw with him maybe based on what he was drinking on the Babylon V interview. And that's something people like, I feel like these guys are just the strawman like that they're reaching for here to be upset over this. It's pretty funny actually in to call him a villain, like a superhero villain. It's like, okay, you didn't say about Jeff Bezos, when he bought the Washington Post, it just comes down to the fact that they want the right billionaires to be in trouble or be in charge of their actual platforms. If Bill Gates were to buy it, they'd be fine. The problem they have with Elon Musk is that he's not pro censorship. He's not pro regulation. He actually does believe in the components that make up democracy and they truly don't. So that's that's all it is plain and simple.

Brian Nichols  8:34  
I mean, I think people also forget you brought it up, Hannah, Microsoft, you know, what if Microsoft bought Twitter, you know, Microsoft owns LinkedIn, like people don't realize that Microsoft owns LinkedIn. And that's not uncommon. To your point. You brought up a you have, yeah, Jeffrey Bezos, he owns the Washington Post. I was actually shocked at the list. There was a list of six or so billionaires who own large swathes I mean, there's people who own the Atlantic and who own like the Boston Globe, he's a large newspapers with just massive reach. And to your point, crickets, not a single person. Really, you cried foul. And I guess what is the outcome? Now we saw that Twitter and this is kind of coming out here as a recording, Twitter enacted this poison pill, where they're essentially what I read, they're diluting their stock more or less, they're making it so his 9.2% by its proportion is no longer as strong. So it's hurting his offer. But Elon was over at a I think he's like Ted talker of some sorts. And he said that well, he has a plan B in the back pocket. So what do you guys think is the actual next step here? It's gonna take place. Are we going to see Elon Musk running as a head of Twitter?

Brad Polumbo  9:42  
Honestly, I would say probably not, I'd love to see it, but I just seems like something somewhere it's gonna get in the way. At the same time. He says he's got a plan B and I would not bet against him. But I think I have to be honest and tell you that I don't know. And nobody really Lee does know, and a lot of the people boldly proclaiming they know exactly how this is going to play out. No, they don't. We really don't, it will come down to a bunch of legal issues and super arcane finance things and with corporate law, and I guess just grab the popcorn, that's all.

Hannah Cox  10:18  
I mean, I will say, to his credit, he has a history of actually successfully kind of doing this hostile takeover, if you will, of companies like this kind of help. Tesla went down, and, and he's done a great job at it. So I don't count him out. That's for sure. But it does seem like there are a lot of barriers in his way. And certainly a lot of people are working together right now to try to block and prevent this. So we'll have to see I do think that is interesting element to it is you know, the board has a fiduciary duty to their stakeholders to make money and to do the profitable thing. And it's very, very obvious that Elon offer would be the profitable smart thing to do. And so the reality is that they could end up getting sued by stakeholders, Elon could end up sharing his stock, they could cause Twitter stock to plummet. There's a lot of like factors on the line here that I just think make this a very compelling story. And like Brad said, get out the popcorn, nobody can predict it. And some of this is when it gets into corporate law and law around the stock exchanges is a bit over my head. But I can't wait to see how that unfolds. And I think the the real component that needs to what we should pay attention to here is what comes next. Because they keep telling us build your own platform, build your own platforms. And yes, that's fine. That's one thing we could be doing. But you also can buy platforms at some point, thanks to creative destruction in the marketplace, they're not going to be able to keep the stranglehold on social media that they've had. And I think it's really interesting to watch the various elements that are lining up to push back against some of these people within big tech that are so focused on content moderation, that goes far beyond what I think we could all agree is reasonable and really gets into actually trying to shut down to send trying to limit people's opinions. And at some point, the markets going to have a solution for this because the vast majority of people want open discourse, realize that it's valuable in an open society. And so we are going to get solutions one way or another.

Brad Polumbo  11:57  
Yeah. And I think people eat straw man, Elon Musk a lot. And they say, Oh, he just wants Twitter to be an open sewer, like the wild west of the internet. But I actually I listened to that interview he gave with Ted. And he talked about the fact that like, obviously, some content has to be moderated. He mentioned for example, like illegal content. So for example, in the US, it is not considered free speech to directly call for violence. Now, that's very narrow, right? Not anything I don't like is violence. But like, you can't tweet and say, somebody needs to go assassinate this person. And he still believes that should be taken down. He also talked about getting rid of bots and spam. And the other thing, what what he said is no ideological censorship. And then what he said is in the gray areas, err on the side of leaving the tweets up, right, err on the side of more speech, always. Then the other thing that he said is transparency. He said, Open Source the algorithm, so that everyone can see what's going on. And if tweets are being promoted, or demoted, or accounts are being promoted or throttled, I was just on Caitlyn Jenner's account, whatever you think of her, right? She's got like millions of followers, and her tweets are getting as many likes as mine. Ever since a few weeks ago, when she joined Fox News, her engagement has plummeted 1/50 to what it was, that's us. That's probably not a coincidence. We all know, Twitter does some weird stuff algorithmically. He's saying, maybe we still have to do some stuff. But make it all transparent. Open up the bucks. Anyone can see what we're doing. And that way people will have trust in this platform. And to me, it's like, Oh, if you're so strongly opposed to that, what are you doing that you don't want people to find out and see.

Hannah Cox  13:48  
Yeah, the authenticity, people to hear, right? Like here's you on if you honestly don't want to hear the people to hear the competing version to your ideas or to your policies. That's what it actually comes down to. Because we can all agree, I think there should be more content moderation around things like human trafficking, threats of violence against people Meghan McCain was talking about this week, how she gets death threats regularly, every day on the platform. It's so bad that Jack Dorsey reached out to her. Those are the kinds of things that I think would make sense for a website to clamp down on and if they put their resources into that kind of content moderation instead of going after ideas or quote unquote, fake news that I think most people would be pretty happy. And that seems to be what he's proposing.

Brad Polumbo  14:24  
I just can't wait to see if Trump gets his account back.

Hannah Cox  14:28  
That's the real question.

Brian Nichols  14:29  
Well, people want authenticity, and they look that is one of the key factors for building trust. And when you have everything hidden behind the scenes, it builds the conspiracy and that helps create not only an environment where you can't build trust, it actually creates distrust, and that's where I think he I think yawns really hit the nail on the head. That's that cannot be the way we have a functioning democracy and functioning society. There has to be the ability to have real conversations real communication without not feeling that Your communication is being actually treated as equal to somebody else is on the playing field. And then that's something that I think we're gonna see a big change. And we saw this with web three. I've had many guests over the past few weeks in the show, talking about the new advents in technology. And just the way it's changing healthcare research changing the way you can buy different programs, like there's one group, there are Dow trying to buy the Denver Broncos. So there's so many things that you can do now with Blockchain, crypto, and the future NF T's that's going to really make a lot of the situations that we're right now in almost irrelevant, and I'm excited to see that's going to be but before we get there, I mean, we're gonna have to get to the next like, what, two, three years and we might not get there if the inflation keeps going up. So let's do a hard pivot. How about that for a segue? Because inflation has been running rampant. And, Brad, I know you've been doing some work over at fi talking about inflation. Are we going to see this? What was it trend? What was the Jen Psaki used to say? It was a transitory Yeah, is this transitory still, or is it a little bit worse?

Brad Polumbo  15:58  
Yeah, I think once something has been happening for almost a full year, it started in May of 2021 can no longer be considered transitory. So they're their team officially loses that silly debate. Now they're blaming Putin, you're saying it's Putin's price hike. And of course, completely neglecting the fact this has been going on for many, many months, that gas prices were increasing a full year before the invasion started. And that even when you factor out fuel prices, because yeah, obviously Putin's invasion has disrupted markets and increased gas prices over the last two months. But even when you factor out gas prices, inflation is still 6.5%, which is very high. So it's just a bunch of talking points and political spin and nonsense to deflect from the real causes of the ongoing inflation that's robbing all of us, which are pretty simple. It's a Fed Federal Reserve's money printed on Berber and the federal government running up massive, multi trillion dollar deficits.

Brian Nichols  16:55  
Well, it's fun. I'm done. I'm teasing. No, it's it is so frustrating, Brad, because and I'm sure you have some thoughts on this as well, because we both see and we all see across the board prices have gotten more expensive, you know, go to the grocery store, that what was costing $1 is now $1.25 $1.50, you go to the gas station, the pump, the price of the pump is still it, even though it's gone down a little bit over the past few weeks, it's still, you know, significantly higher where it was got even a few short months ago, and you go back a year ago, and it's like a different world you go back two years ago, and it's like, is this still the same planet we're on. And I'm concerned, because we're seeing a lot of people start to change away from the, you know, pot of boiling water, you know, frogs slowly being having the water turned up. But now I think people will, it's getting turned up too fast. And people don't know what to do. So we're seeing the impact on prices across the board, and especially in housing, Hana, and there's been calls for Well, if we have to get some of these prices under control, why not try price controls, rent control, is that gonna help things?

Hannah Cox  17:58  
Definitely not price control gun and written control on anything of that nature has only ever done one thing and one thing alone, and that's create shortages, right, and actually, like really hurt people who live on the margins the most. And this is what has made me consistently the most angry throughout this entire experience is that, you know, as a libertarian conservative, I'm constantly told, like, I don't care about people, right, that I am privileged. And that's why I get to support capitalism, because it doesn't impact me these kinds of things. And it makes me enraged, because you don't get to say that you care about people when you're economically illiterate, you just don't, because if you choose to be economically illiterate, and not understand the various factors that actually hurt the people who do live on the margins, and you claim to care about us not caring about them that's being really ignorant and accidentally hurting people through your own ignorance. And that's the one thing that I think we have to come away from this entire experience is that the progressive policies that are being pushed only ever serve to hurt the poorest among us, I did recently cover it base politics, a recent new study out of St. Paul, where they actually enacted some really bad rent control recently, and had already seen some pretty dire impacts from that. And now we have a new study showing what we already kind of knew to be true on its face. But that that rent control not only hurt the city, not only is already created more shortages and housing, it actually hurt people who report the most and actually even hurt people of color more than it did white people. And so every time you really dig into these progressive policies, you find that they typically not only hurt everyone, but they tend to hurt the people, they claim to stand for the very most. And at some point, people have to start pushing back and say to them, like no, you don't get to claim to have the moral high ground here, you absolutely don't get to have that talking point. You hurt people all the time. And maybe you're well intentioned, but you don't get to actually really be well intentioned without taking time to understand what truly helps people

Brian Nichols  19:40  
If only someone will pass a bill right? Just make the problem go away and put more money towards it that always solves the problem.

Hannah Cox  19:49  
Just keep throwing money at it. Just keep printing money and, and spending money and one day we'll spend our ways out. You know, like you said earlier, we're getting to the point where it's like, how do you turn back from this and that's the other frustrating thing is that libertarians and some conservatives have been warning about this very scenario for decades and decades and decades, we've been saying you can't just keep spinning, keep spending, like, and people would push back on that and say, No, we need to spend and you can always put more money we need to help people and, and it really will get to a point where there is no return. Right? And I think even further back then us people like Ron Paul had been warning people for decades. And I think because it didn't happen, right, then there was this lack of urgency or the sense that he was just a, you know, quack, and it would never come to pass. And it's going to come to pass. And I think that we're really kind of in a precarious situation right now, where we have this false sense of security. To me, it feels like the bottom could fall out at any moment.

Brian Nichols  20:38  
Yeah, it's almost like the it says, you know, how we have an instant gratification society where people just expect to have the instant results? Well, in that case, they almost were expecting that to happen at the drop of a hat, but it's not that way. And then you do see, you know, that that long term consequence, and it's just like, you know, an alcoholic, I mean, they might not pass away from liver disease after, you know, a couple of, you know, very, very bad weekends, binge drinking, drinking, but you compound that over years. And yeah, that's gonna lead to a lot of health problems. And we're seeing that across the board. And it's not sectioned off to one particular facet of life. It's, it's hitting everywhere, everybody's feeling it in some way, shape, or form.

Brad Polumbo  21:18  
Yeah, I mean, just even just inflation is going to cost the average family $5,200 more next year to pay the same bills, the same standard of living, I was talking about these latest numbers in a radio interview. And I was explaining that unless you got a 9% Raise, which I didn't know anyone that did over the last year, you literally got poor you, your money doesn't go as far as it once was, and what matters is not the number on your paycheck, but what it can buy you. So Americans are actively, I think, experiencing this and seeing this, and it just actually reminds me, it's really interesting. I've heard a lot of chatter and kind of the media class about how Americans don't learn about inflation from the media, they learn about it from the gas pump and the supermarket. And that's the reason why inflation is the number one issue or in the top three for tons of voters. And I think we'll if things keep up this way, which I suspect they will, because policies haven't shifted very much. I think it will be one of the defining issues of this midterm election. And I think Democrats, rightly or wrongly, are going to get blamed for it and punished terribly, even though a lot of this stuff did start under Republicans, as Hannah and I have both talked about, you know, they started the money printer. The Federal Reserve did all of this while Trump was still president. And at the beginning, and he's not, no one really has control over them. They're like rogue, right? They they're not accountable. They're not elected. They're appointed, but then they're over in their own little island. And of course, Trump and Republicans pass some early stimulus in air quotes, bills, of course, Democrats came in and said, Hold my beer and doubled up doubled down on all of it even once this stuff was happening. But I think that it's going to be a shellacking in this election. And I think inflation is just going to get worse from here and going to be top of voters minds for some time. So people are waking up. And I'm glad you know, it's unfortunate that in our politics, it's always the case, like, the crisis has to happen before we will address the issue. Same thing is true with the national debt, it's going to become a big issue in the next few years, when interest rates go up, and all of a sudden, crap, we've got to pay trillions more in taxes every year just to service the debt, then you're gonna start seeing a national conversation about budget reform and spending cuts and everything. But it's like they'll never do it from the warnings. It always has to happen. Maybe this is just human nature. Maybe Americans are just stubborn. But we're witnessing now once once it hits the fan. Now we have to have these conversations.

Brian Nichols  23:57  
Yeah. And the people that are going to get hurt the most right now and are getting hurt the most are those on fixed incomes, which traditionally tend to be left leaning Democrat voters. And I don't think that the Democrat voter is necessarily a left leaning voter. So much as it was, you know, that was the narrative for a while that you know, your Democrats are leftist, but I think you're seeing a lot of those blue, the really blue dog Democrats, they're starting to say nope, I'm not doing this anymore. And they're moving either more towards a moderate center, or they're going towards the alternative or going towards the GOP. So yeah, we're gonna see, it's gonna be very interesting in terms of what's going to happen here in November. But while we're getting there, I guess people can tune into either a The Brian Nichols Show or b based politics with Brad Palumbo and Hannah Cox. So folks, please do me a favor, make sure you go ahead and subscribe there, but we're gonna go ahead and find it Brad Hanna.

Hannah Cox  24:47  
Well, they can find our website which is based dash politics.com. We've got all of our content that lives there articles, videos, podcasts, lots of ways to plug in, and they can find our show under the base politics network which is available now. Apple Spotify, just about every podcast platform you can think of. And we're also on YouTube under our own respective channels. So look us up. We'd love to connect. We love The Brian Nichols Show and love your audience. So we have to keep talking to folks over at Bass politics there to

Brian Nichols  25:15  
rock and roll. All right, and how about this for social media? Obviously, we'll include all the links in the show notes, but uh, Brad Hannah, where can folks go ahead and follow you to continue the conversation?

Brad Polumbo  25:23  
Yeah, just Brad Palumbo pol you MBO on pretty much any social media at this point. I'm even on Tik Tok. Now. A bunch of over there so anywhere.

Hannah Cox  25:32  
I'm so jealous Brad has such an unusual name because his handle can just be Brad Palumbo everywhere. My name is like one of the most common in the US so you can find me at Hannah de Cox on Twitter. You can find me at Hannah Danielle Cox seven on Facebook Canna Danielle Cox six on Instagram, just search Hannah D. Cox or Hannah Daniel Cox. I'm gonna pop up on one of them. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  25:53  
perfect. Well, how about this? We'll also include all those links in the show notes, because why not? And they'll make it easy for folks. And by the way, I'll bring you the Brian Nichols show.com where you can find all Yes, over 500 Total episodes we were I think we're at 483. Now for the total episodes, actually, of The Brian Nichols Show. That's not counting all the bonus episodes, all my appearances over on other podcasts, including Yes, over on your respective program there, Brad. I've been on your show. Oh, my goodness, how many times now? Like three times two times you've been on here like seven or eight times?

Brad Polumbo  26:19  
Right? We've done a bunch. Yeah, it

Brian Nichols  26:21  
feels like forever. And Hannah. I'm so I'm so excited to see you. You're on. I mean, you're both on Fox Business all the time with Kennedy. So yeah, we're seeing people making moves in the liberty movement. Thank you for bringing our flag there and planting it firmly in the minds of the viewers who are definitely looking for a different way of doing things. So with that being said, Folks, if you enjoyed the episode, as always, please do me a favor, go ahead and give it a share. When you do go ahead and give yours truly a tag at being Nichols liberty. But with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off here on The Brian Nichols Show. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at the Brian Nichols show.com

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