ExclusiveSurging Populism, Hollywood Burns, and Squatters Getting Busted | NTD Primetime

All right, welcome to day number 10 of this glorious new year that we call 2025. Let's see what's happening. California has wildfires raging across most of the southern part of the state. Justin Trudeau has resigned, meaning that Canada might become the 51st state if everything goes to plan. We have grooming gangs, apparently all across the UK, acting with impunity. We've got squatters, apparently getting rounded up in Florida, leading the nation. We have Meta, meaning Facebook, apparently trending right wing, although we'll see about that. And it looks like China has a new virus. New year, new virus. Let's go talk about it with the gang. Over here, we've got Tiffany. I haven't slept a wink in the last year, Meijer. We've got Christopher Bob over here. We've got Joshua. If you have any good questions, don't text him because he'll never get back to you, Philip. We have Cindy, the secret Canadian trooper here. And of course, I'm your host, Roman Balmykov, and welcome to PRIMETIME. That's right. There's a lot of stuff happening across the country. I'm sure everyone at home is aware there are massive wildfires raging across the southern part of California. The devastation is significant. Okay, Cindy, what's going on with these wildfires? Well, I mean, it's obviously the big story going on right now. There's, what, five fires burning in southern California. Upwards of 200,000 people now evacuated. But I mean, the big story is just the total devastation, the loss of property, livelihood, life as people knew it. Yeah, I mean, the pictures are post-apocalyptic. It's pretty devastating. And of course, with the raging fires, and most of them aren't really contained at all, are raging blame games. And so, what's to blame? Is it just bad luck, bad winds, dry? They've had a drought down there. Is it bad water management, bad forest management? Is it the fact that the mayor wasn't in town and didn't come back for several days? I mean, there's a lot of blame that's being thrown around. And basically, what I've noticed is the left flank is generally blaming climate change, and the right flank is basically blaming bad management of different sorts. And whatever media or social media ecosystem you belong to, you'll probably just have your views reinforced. Yeah, well, I feel like the mayor being out of town probably for that period of time, I can't imagine that, is the defining factor. It's probably one of those systemic problems, right? Because I know forest management has been a topic of discussion for many years now. So you can't just say, oh, is this one person who happened to not be in town? I'm sure it's either one systemic problem or another, the left or the right, right? Well, sure, I mean, but it's the idea of bad management, right, so that side of the argument. But there's two things, right? What started the fire, and then what's prevented it from being contained effectively, right? So there's two different parts to it that people are looking at and finding people to blame for. Well, okay, let me ask you, Miss Tiffany. It seems like with what happened in North Carolina, it's like, yeah, you had some coverage. You had a little bit of coverage here and there. But this fire, that was not a fire. But with this fire, it's like wall-to-wall coverage. And then I'm on Twitter and Instagram, and many people I follow have their own houses burned. So it seems like maybe because of the type of neighborhood it is, it's getting a lot more coverage. What do you make of that? Well, that's part of it, because I grew up in California. You always have wildfires, but normally they're- In Southern California? Yeah, so normally they're in the mountains, whatever, the hills. It doesn't impact property. It's like maybe it's a lot of acres burned or burning. But for the most part, maybe some people who live in the hills have evacuation orders. It's not this close. And because it's five at the same time, and they are hitting populated areas, and you have all these evacuations, especially like big-name celebrities, the Hollywood sign is getting in danger of going up in flames as well. There's a lot more attention on that aspect. But also I think this year was just so special in terms of all the external conditions that led to this, right? So California has had drought conditions for many years, so that's not helping. And then they had their own issues in terms of erosion, when you have fires that come in and burn the trees that don't have the roots anymore. So then when it does rain, suddenly you have landslides, and then you don't have the buffer in terms of the natural buffer. And then right now you have all the winds that are really exacerbating it to the point that the firefighters, many of them, they can't even fly because of the condition. So then that's not helping them be able to go in and stop the fires. And then you also have other elements, if you wanna get into the blame games, right, where several reports, not just people on the right, you have like the AP and the LA Times all noting that the lack of water that's happening there, where they just don't have enough water to deal with it. So then the firefighters can't bring the water anywhere. They have to let it burn. And then what happens is it keeps burning. Well, that's where there's one of the debates. Is it not enough water? Is it a reservoir problem? Or is it just the overuse of water? So that's when the CEO of the LA Department of Water and Power came out, and she's saying, the issue is that all the water is being used at once, so they couldn't replenish it quickly enough, get it up the towers to replenish it quickly enough. And that's why there are the reports, especially in the hills, of the fire hydrants that were running empty. So it's not that, oh, there's enough water in the reservoir, we just have to replenish it fast enough, and we can't because the systems weren't built for kind of a catastrophic situation. They were built for more of a normal use case scenario. Of course, she wasn't around when they were built. But which is true? I don't know, because there's a lot of discussion about these reservoirs that were supposed to be built, and they weren't, and water being diverted into the ocean instead of for farmers or other use. So again, whichever ecosystem you're gonna listen to, you'll find your views confirmed. I mean, on this point, too, the other side of the argument is, basically, there's a lot of, again, on the Democrat side, they're saying global warming. On the Republican side, they're saying this was caused by DEI policies, firefighters getting fired because they refused to take the vaccines. And also, budget cuts, and then also, just bad forestry management. And so a video that Trump did with Joe Rogan when he was on the campaign trail, it's gonna go viral again right now, because Trump was talking about this, and he was saying, look, in order to save this little three-inch fish that's endangered, they made it so they can only pull a certain amount of water out of one of the main water sources. And I read into kind of how this whole thing works. Apparently, this little fish gets sucked into the suction areas, and if they reverse the course of the water, it endangers the life of the fish. And so they made it so they can only take so much water out of it. What fish is it, what fish? It's the delta smelt. And it's this little 3.5-inch fish. Delicious? Maybe, you may never know, because it's highly endangered. So highly endangered that they end up dumping a ton of the water just directly into the ocean and make it so that one of the main sources of drinking water for California cannot be used for drinking water or for things like this or for watering your lawns or anything like that. And the other big argument is that California, because of environmental regulations, has made it so they don't properly clear a lot of the brush, a lot of the back burning is not done, and so things that would prevent massive fires, controlled burns, you know, in New Jersey they do it, actually. I've seen them do controlled burns. They just don't do it, or they do a little bit of it, not nearly as much as they should. On the DEI front, diversity, equity, and inclusion, they're getting a lot of pressure because 2022, the fire department in that area in Los Angeles, they created this whole DEI agency division. This entire movement for DEI. And you had, for example, different publications, NPR doing stories on how they were saying there was too many white males who were firefighters and they wanted to get rid of them. But is it true that like, you know, because you can say, well, out of like 1,000 things a department is doing, a DEI program is like a small part of it. Well, what the argument is is like a systemic issue, that they put politics ahead of the actual function of the fire department. And also, for example, Gavin Newsom, they had a statement come out of the governor's office. He was saying, you know, they've been doing a lot on this. They've been really trying to change the way things are done. One thing he mentions, for example, is changing the hours for firefighters, making it so they have to work less, so it's not as high pressure. The actual fire chief in LA criticized this, in fact, just last month in an open letter. And the fire chief, you know, she came out and said that what the lower hours actually reflect as is they cut the budget. And especially when it comes to overtime hours. And so that affects training, that affects readiness, that affects all kinds of things. And so that's kind of the argument. You could argue on one side, it's a pretty serious fire, let's be honest, right? But on the other side of it, there were a lot of policies and changes that were made that would have at least contributed to the scale of the problem they're currently facing. Yeah, it's funny. It's not funny, but it's like, okay, we are here in New York having this discussion. So finally, I guess this discussion will be had, you know, because so many people's houses have literally been burned to the ground with all their possessions in it. So that's like, you know, I guess if there's any silver lining. But in terms of like other silver lining, what about the insurance policies? I've like, I've seen people's insurance claims, rather their insurance policies getting cut like months before the fire broke out. Is that true? Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, all state, state farm, farmers, they canceled thousands of policies this past year in 2024. You know, right now in California, there's many people that don't have fire protection because it's so expensive. I mean, they were spending thousands of dollars on these plans because, you know, they have a wildfire problem. And back in 1988, in California, they had a proposition that was narrowly approved, 51% called 103. And they required all insurers to essentially, they have to have permission from an elected official in order to raise the rates for their customers. And these insurance companies are arguing that these rates are not at market rate. They can't cover with what they're taking in. People's damages. So they've chose not to renew thousands of policies. And they've also chosen not to write new ones on the books. So a lot of people in California, they have to go into this FAERS plan, which is like a state mandated fire protection plan. And it's usually double the price of what they were paying. So I was online and I was seeing all these, like, you know, kind of calls to arms, like what's his name? Luigi S calls to arms against these insurance companies. But you're saying that the reason that they were dropping all these people was because the politicians, several decades ago, made a law saying if you're gonna, you can't increase people's rates. Without political permission from the person who was elected, who's gonna oversee insurers. Yeah, yeah. So that's what it is. And you could look, the FAER plan, which is their state mandated plan, their exposure is now at almost $500 billion. And there was a JP Morgan estimate yesterday, on Tuesday, well, Wednesday, it was that this fire was gonna cost around $10 billion for insurers. I saw a 50 billion. Now, they've just updated it, 20 billion, potentially, $50 billion. And fires are still raging. And it's not really contained. And it's spreading. And that 500 billion is a 61% increase from the previous year. So, I mean, tons of people are losing. What that means, what that figure means, a 61% increase, means that tons of people are losing their insurance. So they have to go on the FAER plan. And that is probably doubling what they were paying before. All right, well, you know what? This is happening in LA, but there was a very exemplative example that happened over in Canada. Also fires raging across the Canadian woodsland, that you had the smoke coming over here to the US. We're gonna go through exactly what we can learn from Canada after the break, which will tie in perfectly to the fact that Canada's prime minister has just stepped down, opening the doorway, Canada becoming the 51st state. Tune in, well, rather, tune back in about two minutes. For that. And then we'll ask Josh. All right, welcome back to Prime Time. During the break, we had a short mini discussion, and I learned that apparently, the US dollar is the strongest it's ever been compared to the Canadian dollar. It's true? It's pretty strong. How strong is it? Last I checked, it's 70 cents, I think, on the dollar. Something like that. So one US, so 70 US cents will get you one Canadian dollar. Correct. Growing up, I lived in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 10 miles south of Canada. I have never once had any inclination to visit Canada. In all the time I've lived there, I've never crossed the border once, nor have I ever thought to cross the border. But if you're watching this, that's a great deal. I'm sure you can have a phenomenal vacation that's 70 cents on the dollar. You're missing out. On what? Canada. In the way. That was a long-winded way to say that Justin Trudeau is out. He is no longer the Prime Minister of Canada. Apparently, he still is. Yeah, not quite, not quite. Apparently, he's going to be the Prime Minister for a long time. Regardless, let's roll the clip of him resigning. I intend to resign as party leader, as Prime Minister, after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process. Last night, I asked the President of the Liberal Party to begin that process. This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I'm having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election. Cindy, I don't know about you, but that was powerful. That was powerful stuff. First, let's just get your emotional take. You're a Canadian. How do you feel watching your guy resign? It was expected. It's been expected for a long time. I mean, he's just plummeted in the polls. He's extremely unpopular right now. Why, why is he plummeting in the polls? Well, you know what probably tipped it over the scale? Trump's tariffs. So, Trump came in, you know, he's making all this bluster about tariffs and taking over Canada and this and that, and the thing that actually caused him to resign is that his finance minister was supposed to deliver kind of like a budget, the economic situation, and she was, he wanted to spend more money. She wanted to, you know, get a handle on what to do with the tariffs, and she resigned before she was supposed to go out and make this speech. So, he quickly appointed, you know, basically promoted someone else into the job, and then he resigned, and basically his entire cabinet lost confidence. They, behind closed doors, told him he probably needs to step aside. So, who's this Pierre Polo? Polyov. Who's he? He is the popular of the Conservative Party and just crushing it in the polls right now. He's the leader of the Conservative Party. He's the next Prime Minister of Canada. That's what everyone's already calling him. I mean, he's just crushing it in the polls, and everyone's saying, who would even want to become the leader of the Liberal Party, because you're just going to get decimated. I mean, it could be historical levels of decimation if the current polls hold for the Liberal Party. So, it's like a 2024 US election scenario playing out in Canada. Something like that, except the polls are showing that the Conservatives is by far the front runner, and it doesn't even matter who's going to lead. This is a global shift right now. That's just really interesting. I mean, you have the same thing happening right now in Germany, and, I mean, Elon Musk is, of course, talking about the AFD, which they really don't want. That's the alt-right party, people call it. In France, you have the same thing taking place. In the UK, we'll get into it, I guess, the grooming gangs. Even before that, they were already facing, basically, like a government collapse. And so, it's interesting, actually. In fact, they're even saying Venezuela may be the next country to have a leadership collapse. Biden even met recently with the opposition leader, and they're saying there's going to be a large-scale protest in Venezuela. So, we're actually seeing a very interesting shift right now politically in the world that Trump kind of won the election, and now you have just massive political destabilization happening with all these internal conflicts, you know, budget conflicts, and political conflicts in all these countries. And, I mean, with Canada, too. Why is it one after the, what's going on? What's the surprise of populism? It's hard to say. I feel like in the UK, in Germany, in France, this has been something bubbling up for a long time. By the way, immigration is an issue in Canada, US, and all the ones you just mentioned. That's a big part of it. And some people would argue that Trump making immigration such a major issue, the same message he was making resonated in all these countries. And that's typically like a censored topic. It's not something some of those countries will let you talk about. The other side of it, though, is economics. Like, you know, Cindy mentioned, Trump talked about tariffs. Canada came out and said, look, if you put 35% tariffs on us, we will not survive as a country. And then Trump brought out the point, well, look, we traded a $100 billion deficit with you. We should just make you a state because we basically fund you anyways, you know what I mean? And then if he's talking on top of it about American manufacturing, we're actually trying to get foreign investment into the US. He's talking about domestic oil production. Main exports from Canada are like, you know, timber and energy. What's gonna be really interesting, though, is if Polyev, the conservative leader, wins, who obviously is more aligned with Trump, but they have, there could still, it's unclear how that will go, right? They may be kind of politically aligned, but are their interests aligned? Well, of course, they're two separate countries. They can't be aligned. Okay, you mentioned grooming gangs as an aspect of the populism. Tiffany, what are these grooming gangs all about? Well, it's been an ongoing issue, but it's come back into the light because Elon Musk, for the past four weeks, has been going off on X or Twitter, as he basically bought it and took it over. And he's been going after the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, because back in the day when the grooming gang scandal was a thing, Keir Starmer was basically the lead prosecutor, and he's being accused of not doing that much or downplaying what happened. So, before we get into it, let's play a clip to explain kind of the outrage around it, and then we'll get into exactly what it is. So, let's play that clip. In a Sharia law, a rapist is basically in, is the victim of this story because he was tempted to sin against a young girl. Child marriage is allowed under Sharia law. What is happening to the UK when a white British girl is raped and killed, and then they call that an honor killing? What is happening to the UK? All right, so that was the Iranian human rights campaigner, Lily Moo, on the Martin Delbrie show. And she's been, basically, she goes on to lay out that she's Iranian, what happened to her and her teenage brother growing up, being bullied in schools, and then not feeling safe and needing to be, basically, escorted places so that she would be safe. She had her picture given around to the guys there, basically like a porn object. And so what happens is the critics are laying out that back in the 1960s, there were large numbers of Pakistani people and men, especially, that came into the UK, and people are noting they have different cultural rules and norms. So, like she was just mentioning, under some types of Sharia law, child marriage is okay, and then she was just laying out that the sin there is if you were tempted to sin, and as the rapist, you're the victim because you were tempted. So there's these differences in the cultural aspects, and then what's happening that they're finding out, there's certain reports and cases coming out where, because if you wanna argue those cultural differences, what they found out was a lot of foster homes that have young white girls, they have these Pakistani men come in and, basically, turn them into child brides, where they're like 11, and then they tell their friends, who are also young white girls, mainly, if you say anything, the same thing is gonna happen to you. So this has been going on for over a decade, and at the time, Keir Starmer was on top, basically, in the prosecutorial round, and a lot of people were like, why didn't you do more about it? How could this be happening in the UK? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. What? Hold on. That really is just too much to grasp. Pakistani men would do what in orphanages or in apartment complexes? So there's this trend, if you will, where they found out, and especially foster homes, and things were happening where they would have a higher number of kids per family, if you will, but they- And also the really vulnerable. Yeah, so they- And vulnerable in the population. Under their law, child marriage is fine, or almost pedophilia and stuff like that. So you have cases of that, but it involves, there's the racism angle, if you will, where it's the Pakistani groups versus white young girls that are mostly the victims. And so what the critics are saying is that the law enforcement and officials, they're being accused of inaction because they didn't wanna be accused of racial profiling and stuff. So the officials and law enforcement weren't speaking out. But they knew about it. Yes. That's crazy. That's horrible. So that's what's going on. And so Elon Musk has been blasting everything. So Keir Stalmer, he's now prime minister, obviously. So he's defending himself, saying that- But hold on, I'm sorry. He's prime minister now, but before he was the chief of police. He was the UK's director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. But he would have been the guy to actually bring these guys to justice. That's what critics are saying, that if you were in that position, you could have done something. But he's pushing back. So Keir Stalmer is saying that, no, no, he did everything possible to combat these crimes. And so obviously now there's a lot of calls for further inquiries into it. Everything possible and he did what? Well, he's just saying he did everything that he could at the time. That's his argument. And then- Tiffany, correct me if I'm wrong, but Keir Stalmer and the labor government, they won almost by a fluke. I mean, the conservatives really went down because a lot of people switched to reform or a Nigel Farage party, right? So do you think of something like what's happening in Canada, like a vote of no confidence, something like that could be happening and Keir Stalmer might be ousted because of this? Could this be the domino? Perhaps, that's what some are hinting at. Because you have reports like Bloomberg News coming out, being like, why is Musk suddenly interested in what's happening in the UK, right? Why is he amplifying this so much on X? So some are thinking that this could be part of, because Trump has gone after the UK and certain things happening in the UK for years. So some are saying that, this is part of a broader picture that Trump wants to reform the UK or Europe more broadly, if you will, going back to the earlier topics of immigration, the economy and also energy, right? There's a lot of focus on green or clean energies over there, unreliable energy sources where you now have countries like Germany needing to go back to coal to power things. So there's talks about perhaps that element, that Musk is doing this as part of a broader Trump campaign. So will we see that vote of no confidence? Who knows? Nigel Farage is back in the news as well. So a lot to watch out for there. Okay, Tiffany, that was the most horrendous segment ever. Let's move on to something positive after the break. There are some actual positive developments. You can say populous developments here in the US. I won't even give you a hint as to what they are, but come back after the break, about two minutes, and our resident squatting slob will tell us all about it. That's Chris. All right, welcome back. We've got our resident squatting slob over there. Now, what's the topic gonna be about? Let me guess. Squatters, wow. Squatters in the US. Now, squatters has two meaning. One is, of course, someone who's physically squatting down. Where's the camera? But the other meaning is, of course, someone who you show up to your house thinking that it's empty. You're about to go hang out, watch some TV on the weekend. You open the door and boom, there's somebody living in your house. What's that all about? What are squatter laws? How come they even exist? Sure, what you're talking about with squatter laws, and this is, squatting in this sense is a lot more uncomfortable. I'll tell you that. But squatter laws, it's called adverse possession. And what it essentially means is, if you stay in a home for a certain period of time, and it is, there's actually legal definitions here. It has to be open. You have to go into a place that is abandoned. You have to be notorious, meaning people have to know, they're taking note that you're going into a house and you're coming out of it. And you have to be exclusive. It can't be a group of people. It has to be you. It just can't be some communal house that everyone's hanging out in. And then continuous. You have to be doing this for a long period of time, making improvements to the property. And after a certain period of time, depending on your jurisdiction, you actually have the right to claim adverse possession or ownership over that piece of property. This started actually, it goes back to like, I think the first record of it was in 12-something. They talked about this. It's kind of medieval. You would think about like a big lord over the land, and you have these different peasants. And maybe one peasant didn't farm this certain piece of land, and another peasant went in that boarded his, and he started farming it and making improvements to it. And over a period of time- Or a bunch of people died of the plague and there were all these empty houses. You could claim, imagine pulling up your deed in 12-10. I mean, if you're farming the land, if you're making use of the land, the land belongs to you. Like eminent domain. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, it's something like that. Okay, but hold on, that's a long time ago. So like, okay, you fast forward now, what's the positive reason for these laws in the books? Well, if we fast forward now, I'd like to bring us to a migrant legal expert who's going to explain a lot about squatting. Let me go to that, please. Mi gente, he pensado invadir una casa en Yunee State. Ya que me enteré que existe una ley que dice que si una casa no está habitada, podemos expropiarla. Capiche, muchachos? So, did you get enough? Did you get what you wanted? I, he might be a fine person, but I viscerally hate what he represents. Do you think he's a fine person? He's actually been ordered to be deported. So he's out of here. Well, you know, maybe. Okay, well, goodbye. No sad feeling. So he's a Venezuelan migrant. He went viral because he was telling people from Latin America, hey, come in. If you find a property that's vacant, you can make improvements to it. We can invade, he says. And we'll take over all these places and we'll have a place of our own. And actually, going back to California, they actually have some of the most lenient squatting laws or adverse possession laws. And I think it's only five years. If you stay on a piece of property for five years, you're making improvements to it, you're notorious, it's continuous and exclusive. That's yours. Wait, five years? I thought it was like months though. No, well, you're getting into something here. So in New York, it's 10 statewide if you're getting a house. But in New York City, this is where it gets crazy. If I was to go into an apartment for 30 days and you set up shop there and come in and out and act like it was mine, after that 30-day period, I have tenant rights. So I cannot be a victim. And these squatters who are like them. Tenants pay rent. As long as you're paying taxes, they can't get rid of you. And if they wanna get rid of you, Cindy, it'll take a couple years for them to go through the legal process. The same goes for the houses in other states. Like if you're in California, somebody shows up to your property that you're renting, maybe you have a bunch of them, you're using it as a retirement business, they come in, it's gonna take a long, long months, even years to get these people out. But hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I still don't understand, because in my naivete, I still think that every law in the book should be somewhat just. Like there must be a just argument for every law that exists. What is the just argument for this? The just argument is going back to that medieval principle. Forget the medieval principle. I know, but that's one side. And there are a lot of people who agree with you, Roman, and they say that this is crazy, especially in New York City, where landlords are having these tenants pop up, and then if they choose to take off the power or the electricity, I found this on the New York City website, the landlord will be fined $250 to $500 a day if they've turned off services that those squatters are using. And after that, it goes up to $500 or $1,000 a day for those violations. So there's a lot of people upset with this. And there are people, there's a whole movement in this country against adverse possession, against squatting. And actually, Ron DeSantis, last year in July, put through some pretty groundbreaking legislation where they've gotten a lot more tough on squatting. I think we have a clip from Florida to see what happened after this law came into effect. Let's see what the squatter hit. Anybody else in there? Come out, come out, come out. Step out. Hands in the air. Walk this way. Is anybody else in there? Step out, step out. Come on. Everything will be explained later. Stop, stop. Don't move, okay? Who's got an extra set of cuffs? So this law, which came into effect 2024, July 1st, they give you a immediate arrest if you're unlawfully occupying a vacant house or even a house with someone inside. It's a felony if you trespass and then you destroy property. And also, there's a misdemeanor for falsifying a lease claim to occupancy. And if you list a house, because some people are listing other people's houses, that's a felony, first-degree felony. Well, the biggest thing with this is people exploiting loopholes. A lot of these squatters are not there for five years or 10 years. It's somebody, for example, like someone leaves town for a week to go visit a family member, or you have an Airbnb and someone decides to rent out your Airbnb for a month and then declares that they own the place. How about same day? There was a woman in Georgia just before Christmas named Laritha Hale, and she had a rental agreement with someone. They moved out. She went to go and paint the place and fix it up, as landlords do. And immediately, as she was going about doing that, somebody came inside and immediately declared that this is her place and she can't be there. And the police showed up and they actually arrested the landlord and they sided with the squatter. And actually, the arresting officer, this is what she claimed, what I obtained from the New York Post, he said this to her. Just think of it from this perspective. Everybody isn't as fortunate as you to have a bed. All these little things, a bed in their house, food in the kitchen. I mean, imagine that. You're being evicted from your own house right before Christmas. You're sitting in the back of a cop car and then the police officer is telling you, you know, there are less fortunate out there. Okay, look, so it's stories like this that really answer the question of why populism is on the rise. You know, you got this. You got these kids getting groomed in the frickin' UK. You got these fires burning up people's houses because of political, I don't know what, deadlock, what do you call it? But because of all these different factors, you have a change coming, including Meta, Facebook's pairing company, seemingly turning right wing, although it perhaps was so far left that it's going back towards the center. Come back after the break and Josh will break down for us if everything is what it seems with this change. Awkwardly sitting around. All right, welcome back. Now, if you've been on the internet, specifically on Facebook over the last, what, five, six years, basically, actually no, more than that, right? Pretty much since the 2016 election, roughly, you have likely been banned, shadow banned, or one of your friends has been banned or shadow banned. It's almost impossible for that to have not happened one way or the other. But it looks like it's coming to an end and potentially apologies are coming down the pipe. Josh, what's the deal? So Mark Zuckerberg released this video on the new policies for Meta. So this is gonna be Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Threads, it's still a thing, yeah. And they're trying to basically revive these platforms under a free speech standard, actually following what Elon Musk is doing. So let me show you this. So one of the things he brought up was the problems of the fact checkers that they brought on these different organizations to fact check and he's now acknowledging the fact checkers often got information wrong. Let me show you this. First, we're gonna get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US. Wow, before you dissect what he said, you know what's funny? I remember when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he fired a bunch of people. The media were like up in arms about it, saying it would never work, blah, blah, blah. But almost like the next week, all these other companies also fired a bunch of people in his footsteps, probably because their shareholders were seeing what he was doing, right? And then he launched community notes and people were, the media class was again up in arms, oh, this is like, it's not as good as fact checking. It can like, now we're being fact checked, that's not good. You fast forward a year and now he's doing the same thing, community notes, wow. Well, you know, it's interesting actually, the community notes movement started before Musk took over Twitter. That was actually gonna be a Twitter policy. But the way Musk did it was made it more in the hands of the populace, right? This whole populace, popular kind of movement, right? But what Zuckerberg came out and said basically was that they tried allowing this centralized system to decide what is true and what's false. And the problems come about from that is they find a lot of these organizations that run these fact checking networks, they have problems. They are politically biased, they've unfairly targeted people who they don't agree with, and they get their facts wrong too. And so who's to determine what's right and what's wrong? He's saying he's basically not even gonna remove content now unless it's illegal, and that's gonna bring up some issues globally. But let me show you a couple more clips. He also brought up the issue of content moderation. And he's bringing up the issue that, I mean, kind of what a lot of people experienced, right? Is that they might try to protect one group by eliminating criticism of that group or criticism of that political topic. But if you want to do that, you need to ironically discriminate against the other people and their viewpoints. And he's saying they're not gonna do that anymore. Let me show you this. We're gonna simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas. And it's gone too far. All right, Josh, let me ask you. Rewind the clock two months, Kamala Harris wins the election. Is this happening? I don't think so. Because it's basically the criticism. Not a chance. The being out of touch, right? With the mainstream of the country. That's almost an exact effect of the election in my opinion. But actually, in his defense, Zuckerberg actually for the 2024 election did begin backing off even prior to the victory, which was a big shift from 2020 when of course he was very much in line with things. There was the Zuck Bucks controversy, they called it. He said he wasn't gonna do it this time and he actually backed off. But a lot of Silicon Valley took the same position actually. Interesting. You know, I'll mention something in passing. These notes here were given to me by my producer who said in the last episode my questions weren't interesting enough. So she put the topics that she wanted me to ask about. She generated the questions that she thought would be most interesting. Okay, I'll read this one. Will fact-checking elimination lead to big problems of democracy, Josh? So here's the thing. It's gonna be the opposite. And this is where it gets really fantastic. Not only will fact-checking not remove democracy, fact-checking and the removal of it, I should say, this is gonna be a global policy. Democracy has become this kind of totalitarian line now. They say, our democracy, our populace, whatever. But ironically, the people who say that, they don't support what the average person says. They don't support the average beliefs of the individual. One aspect of that is like you mentioned the AFD party leader having an interview with Elon Musk. Now, the German government is trying to sanction Elon Musk for hosting the leader of the AFD party for that interview on X. But the AFD party is one of the highest polling parties in Germany. Well, they need to defend democracy by preventing what people can see to cast their votes. Is that fair? I don't think it's fair. And I also think, let me, I don't want to opine too much, Roman, but thank you. Go ahead, I'm giving you the floor. I'll pine away. TikTok, okay? The ban Trump kind of backpedaled right before the election. And TikTok, a lot of people on the right and on the left saw it as a place where they can post their uncensored views. And now they see that that place might not be going away. So could these platforms also be becoming more like them? So here's where it gets really interesting. This is, I think, the biggest point of this. For a long time, the United States has been kind of held by international standards. And one of the issues a lot of the big tech companies have been raising, which I believe is why Silicon Valley actually went so far in changing their political stances ahead of the 2024 elections, is that a lot of them are getting fined and investigated and pressured by foreign governments. You have the United Kingdom basically regulating free speech in the United States in some regards, even threatening to arrest Americans when they had some of the anti-migrant protests in the UK recently. They were threatening to extradite and arrest Americans for things people were saying on the internet. And what Mark Zuckerberg is actually saying now, and I think this is the biggest point, he said he's going to work with the Trump administration to make free speech a global policy. And he even says, even in China. Let me show you this. We're gonna work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more. The US has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country. The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government. The Monroe Doctrine is returning. We will not deal with countries that do not support freedom. This is the new global standard. He's come a far away from jogging in the smog to impress Xi in China. Or trying to name his kid after Xi or trying to allow Xi to name his kid. You know what I thought was interesting? One of the other issues is the bots, right? Like falsely identifying things as a problem. And that bot, that same bot, just wrote your question. Maybe he's just trying to defend the world of AI. They didn't do a good job. Yeah, I don't know what to say. But you know, honestly, it goes both ways. I'll say that. I'll take the other position, which is that those countries with stricter laws around speech should not be policing American companies and American speech. But you know what? Honestly, if they want to have those restrictions on their speech, like in Australia as an example, American companies shouldn't be allowing our platforms to facilitate their speech. Why don't they develop their own platforms where they can have their own censored speech and our American companies can abide by the First Amendment right here in the good old U.S. of A., as well as Greenland and Canada. Chris, anything you want to add? Yeah, I have another question for Josh. So Josh, the emissary of Trump to Zuck is who? Dana White? That is right. Not a member of the cabinet or a member of anything, but a friend. The cultural diplomat. Yeah, a cultural diplomat. They went to some flights together, yeah. And they're both in entertainment. Right, yeah. There you go. So what's going on with that? Why is that pick important? A lot of people took this as a sign that Mark Zuckerberg is trying to get closer to Trump. And he said it himself. Yeah, and Dana White, of course, being the head of the MMA. Of the UFC, I'm not sorry. UFC, yeah. UFC, and I'm old school here. I feel it's like saying he's in charge of the baseball. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. And now he's on the board at Metta, right? That's why we're bringing this up. But also, Mark Zuckerberg replaced some of the key people with Republicans. He's also moving his content moderation teams from California to Texas. Texas, yeah. And so this seems to be something across the board right now. All right, well, on that very much less somber note than whatever it was that Tiffany gave us with those grooming gangs, thank you so much for tuning in. I believe this is an excellent second episode of Primetime. You're watching history unfold. You're watching NCD history unfold, you can say, with this program. We hope you're liking it. Let's say if you're not liking it, let's say, oh, I wish this one thing on Primetime was different. Go to the NCD website, ncd.com. If you click on something, they make you sign up. You have to give your email. Okay, give your email, no problem. Then find the email address that'll allow you to send in your comments and what, suggestions? 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