OA662: The Nothingburger Twitter Files

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 662. I'm Thomas. That's Andrew Torres. How are doing, Andrew?

0:01:24 Andrew: Am fantastic times. How are you?

0:01:26 Thomas: Well, I'm doing great for a number of reasons. Quick one, We do have the Q&A that we got to remind people about. As you're hearing this, that's in like a day or two, I can't remember. That's Friday, the 16th, 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern on YouTube. We'll send out all the links on everything and you'll see it. So be there, be square. Patrons of course can ask the questions on the Patreon thread, make sure to do that. Also, Andrew, you and I are going to be on Vulgarity for Charity very soon, so look for us over on Scathing, I think that's on, uh, on that show. So a couple announcements to get out of the way, and now another quick announcement, Liz, how you doing? Liz is on the show. Oh,

0:01:28 Andrew: Uh-huh, indeed.

0:02:03 Liz: Hey, guys. How are you?

0:02:05 Thomas: Just fantastic, just just as good as could be, how about you?

0:02:08 Liz: Just groovy.

0:02:09 Thomas: Well, uh, what are we going to talk about today?

0:02:11 Liz: We'll talk about Twitter. I mean, while it's still there. Big surprise, Twitter continues to be a raging dumpster fire this week with its new owner, Elon Musk, hurling gas on the flames. This week, he let a bunch of conservative opinion journalists led by Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss paw through Twitter's internal email and Slack systems with a mandate to prove that the company has a history of being mean to conservatives, basically validating every wingnut fever dream for the past seven years. And lo and behold, they found supposedly smoking gun evidence of same.

0:02:43 Liz: Surprise, I know, right? Okay, so let's say at the outset that none of these people, least of all Elon Musk, gives a rat's ass about free speech and building a sustainable online discourse. Like, for pity's sake, Bari Weiss got to be BariWeiss by leading a charge to censor pro-Palestinian academics when she was an undergrad at Columbia University in the mid-2000s. This woman is the OG snowflake who parlayed her claims of being intimidated by anti-Zionist professors into a column at the New York Times. Like she's an opinion journalist and that is fine. So am I. But I'd like to think that I have some integrity and Weiss's whole breathless Twitter thread was about conservatives like Charlie Kirk being supposedly shadow banned, in support of which she just presents a screenshot demonstrating that it happened at some point and for some indeterminate period of time. But the reality is that Kirk's account was suspended this March for repeatedly misgendering Dr. Rachel Levine, the assistant health secretary who's trans.

Like that was a violation of Twitter's policies and it wasn't a secret. So big smoking gun there. Like you pointed out last week, Andrew, when Taibbi posted to supposedly censored tweets without admitting that they were pictures of Hunter Biden's wiener, like this is not real journalism, nor is it a secret, you cannot post revenge porn. That is a violation of the terms of service.

0:02:43 Thomas: Yeah, No, Yeah, Yeah,

0:03:56 Liz: You cannot post non-consensual nudes without, getting your account taken down. That's not a surprise. So Taibbis just a shit stir. And I also think you made a really good point the other day, Thomas, when you were saying that abusive men like Taibbi have to make new friends when their grody, misogynistic behavior comes out and they can't sit at the blue team table anymore. You Like guys said that on the other the other day.

0:04:17 Thomas: Add Elon Musk to that list, by the way, Way

0:04:19 Liz: What are you talking about? The trading a horse for a sensual massage offer that he made to his flight attendant?

0:04:19 Thomas: Oh, I I'm Talking about A number of Things, there's, I just read an article about employee complaints that, you know, they, people have gone to great lengths to bury and to pay off, like there's plenty of stuff, there's all kinds of candidates for what I could be talking about, yeah.

0:04:26 Liz: Right.

0:04:39 Liz: So it's not super surprising that Musk and Taibb are like BFFs now. And now, as for Musk, the supposed free speech warrior, is now tweeting out threats to his employees that he'll stick Johnny Law on them if they don't abide by their non-disclosure agreements and keep their mouths shut about the chaos inside the company. And Musk is explicitly promising himself to shadow ban what he terms as offensive content. He's tweeted that negative slash hate tweets will be maxed, de-boosted and demonetized. So no ads or other revenue to Twitter, you won't find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out. Well, that's a promise to shadow ban, which is just what Bari Weiss is supposedly like gotcha-ing them for doing. And the Daily Beast reported on Sunday that the account which tracks Musk's private plane just got shadow banned while and the video of him getting viciously booed at the Dave Chappelle show this weekend in San Francisco keeps getting disappeared from the platform. So yeah, someone is horny on main for censorship, but it's not the liberals. Thomas, talk talk about whatever.

0:05:14 Thomas: Wait, Never tell Me to start talking about something because you're gonna get more than than you want, but well, look, There's, I've so many thoughts. First off, everything you're saying about the Twitter files is obviously true. And then times like a thousand more, like we all don't have enough time in the day to talk about how backwards that whole situation is. It's not just that they're like not finding evidence of the thing they're claiming. They're actually finding evidence of the opposite of the things they're saying. They don't know it as though it's evidence of thing they claim. They are posting evidence of shadow banning in which screenshots in which you can clearly see that it says, "Hey, nobody banned this conservative bullshit account" without talking to so-and-so first because they've, they've done the opposite of what they're alleged to have done. Twitter, we all know this, they have done nothing but preference right-wing talk, they have been nothing but do favors for racists and Nazis and right-wingers because they, the, the, that side has worked the refs and so they, they all got too concerned that they're censoring conservatives too much.

0:05:39 Liz: Do you have thoughts about the Chappelle thing?

0:05:42 Andrew: Yep,

0:06:35 Thomas: So they go out of their way to not block them. It's outrageous. And then Elon Musk, Dave Chappelle, gosh, sucks how many people that we used to think were cool or funny where you just have to be like, "Oh, you just are a giant piece of shit now." I don't even get to enjoy anything anymore that you had because I can't stop thinking about how big a piece of shit you are. He invites Elon Musk on stage, I watched the whole video, and he's like, "Hey, welcome the richest man on earth." And, by the way, he's not anymore, right? Didn't we, didn't we not anymore?

0:07:04 Liz: Not anymore. It's LVMH guy.

0:07:05 Andrew: Yep.

0:07:06 Thomas: And here's, what's amazing to me. So he comes out on stage. If haven't seen the video, Elon Musk comes out, there's a chorus of boos and there's cheers because let's be honest. Like everything else in today's political situation, you know, he's got his fan boys confusingly. Uh, and people think he's since he's triggering the libs he's owning the libs and naturally there's a whole, you constituency of people and plus Dave Chappelle has done so much anti-trans stuff recently that I'm sure a lot of his fans are just that trigger the lib kind of anti-woke people

0:07:29 Liz: Yeah. Right. Right? You're not Not showing up for Chappelle for unless you unless you have garbage ideas about trans people.

0:07:35 Thomas: Yeah or if you just haven't paid attention to him since like 2007, you're like, oh, Dave Chappelle's back oh

0:07:43 Andrew: Haven't paid attention to him since 2007, seven so I I totally forgot about the gross yeah

0:07:46 Thomas: He used to be so funny yeah And so he has him out on stage, here's the funny anything, he has Elon Musk out on stage, you hear the booze, you hear the cheers, and there's Dave Chapelle, after booing, they're just standing there, Elon Must says nothing, he just says hi and he's just standing, they're, they're just dealing with the crowd reaction and Dade Chapeelle says first off he makes a joke like, oh, the people you laid off must be in the crowd, which, haha, people lose their jobs, like, whatever, and then, like, also he starts poking fun fun of the fact, he says, the people booing, they're in the cheap seats, essentially, is the joke he makes, which is like, it's so wild to me making fun of the people who bought tickets to your show, but not the expensive ones. Like somebody, somebody has to buy those ones. It's not like they can all buy, like it may be that those people are huge fans, but that's the only seat they could even get despite wanting to spend.

0:08:36 Thomas: Like, it was amazing to me that that's what you would do as a comedian to your own fans. And then what's, what's amazing is they just awkwardly stand there for minutes until he just leaves. And I'm left wondering, what was the plan? Did he have a bit? Was he going to interview him? Was it like, it's not, was there a written stand-up? He just invited a guy whose whole thing is owning the libs to stand there and get a reaction and then awkwardly leave. What does it say about the wing, the shallowness of anti-woke art and comedy that all it is, hey, you hate this guy, right, you hate, that's the extent of their, their talent, their comedic talent now, no

0:09:14 Liz: Are you asking if a guy who just set $44 billion on fire had a plan?

0:09:20 Thomas: I'm asking if Dave Chappelle had a plan because Dave Chapelle used to have talent, what was his plan, his, like, honestly, I, Elon Musk is a gigantic piece of shit and I hate him so much, I, he's, Trump basically, it's amazing how similar he is to Trump in retrospect, but Chapelle, like, he, I used to be a person, right, like, what, what is this, well, how could you be so out of touch that your act now is just bringing out a guy who triggers the libs and just having him stand there, like, what is that, yeah

0:09:23 Liz: Yeah, isn't that the same argument that you made last week about having to find new friends? Like if you're an asshole, and you can't sit with, you know, liberals anymore, more, then you have to sit with conservatives. So he's trying to sit with conservatives, like if that's if there's plan, that's the plan. Like, well, I hate trans people. This guy hates trans people, let's hang out. Maybe it'll be funny, like, well, it wasn't, but you'll find a different plan. It won't be funny, though.

0:09:53 Thomas: Yeah so those are my thoughts, Liz, if you're asking

0:10:13 Liz: Cool. I'm really glad. So back to the Twitter files, which they insist upon calling them, they're like, gonna totally make this fetch thing happen one of these days. They're not gonna make it happen. Like Tybee, every Every other quote is like, in the Twitter files. It's not going to happen. Anyway, this is a fundamentally unserious exercise meant to obscure the reality that conservatives' main mode of discourse is to spew lies and misinformation, both online and off. So they have to treat any good faith effort to fact check or moderate content to ensure civil discourse as like Marxism or censorship, or even they refer to it as literal violence. No kidding, Republicans get banned more than Democrats. We're not the ones telling people to treat COVID with hydroxychloroquine paste and horse dewormer. But again. That hasn't stopped Musk's mouth-breathing followers from promising to prosecute Twitter executives for so-called First Amendment violations, even though pretty much every idiot knows that only the government can violate your right to free speech.

0:11:07 Liz: So these brain geniuses have an answer for that one. They just point to the bog standard practice of Twitter's trust and safety team meeting with the DHS and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And they insist that this is evidence that Twitter is censoring content at the behest of the federal government. Essentially that Twitter has become a state actor because it talked to the Trump administration.

Never mind that the Trump administration told Twitter to expect a leak of hacked or fake documents courtesy of a foreign government a la WikiLeaks stealing the DNC emails in 2016 and dribbling them out to damage Hillary Clinton and convince Bernie Sanders supporters to stay home or vote for Trump. That's why Twitter censored the New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop for a big whopping 24 hours. They thought it was hacked material. Also, the chain of custody on this supposed laptop from hell is a hot mess that involves Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. So those guys are totally untrustworthy and no one can tell whether half the stuff on that laptop is real. That's why every other Rupert Murdoch outlet passed on the story and the original author took his name off of it. It just, it seemed hinky as hell.

But at bottom, the First Amendment arguments are like ridiculous anyway, because A, the government never asked Twitter to censor the New York Post, sorry. And B, even if it had, that wouldn't amount to suppression of free speech. And you know what? A whole bunch of people have made this argument before. It should sound familiar to your listeners because Donald J. Trump already sued sued Twitter to get his account back on the theory that legislators telling social media platforms to do a better job about misinformation and hate speech amounted to coercing the companies to act, transforming Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube into government actors, which they never ever were.

0:11:52 Thomas: Yeah

0:12:47 Liz: So essentially, Trump has argued that Twitter canceled his account because Adam Schiff threatened to reform Section 230, to which the court said basically, LOL, no. Which is, you know, pretty funny since the big reveals this weekend from Bari Weiss and this weird dude Schellenberger were about the decision to permanently ban Trump after he incited a violent coup. So there was a standing policy not to deplatform political figures and and some celebrities, even if they did violate the site's terms of services, which Trump did a lot. But after Trump sent a mob to overthrow the government, Twitter made an exception to its exception. And that's the big gotcha that Bari Weiss is trumpeting today.

0:13:25 Thomas: It's unbelievable, they, he should have been removed a thousand times before, them, they didn't even remove him for COVID misinformation, all these things, and then finally it's like, well, should we let him do a coup on our platform, no, I guess we shouldn't let him do a clue, and then they're crying about this as though this was some big conspiracy, like they literally post these conversations that is just a group of people who work at Twitter being like, I guess we should probably kick him off. Like a lot of people want to kick him off, as though it's some conspiracy. It's like, no, you're just posting it with a tone that you've uncovered a conspiracy. It's not actually a conspiracy, it's just people trying to make a decision about when to boot Trump off of their platform.

0:13:30 Andrew: Yeah

0:13:33 Liz: Right.

0:14:05 Liz: Right, so even if Trump's own staffers had said, please cut his account off, we're all terrified of going to jail, which would have been a rational thing for them to do, that wouldn't have amounted to coercive conduct that turned Twitter into a state actor. Like this whole thing is ridiculous and it's been litigated multiple times. So perhaps sensing the weakness of this First Amendment argument, conservatives are now trying to rerun Pizzagate. You remember Pizzagate was that conspiracy theory from 2016. Oh, it's funny, but it's also like really not because that was a theory that Hillary Clinton and a load of prominent Democrats were part of a pedophile ring that met in the basement of a DC pizza parlor to engage in satanic abuse rituals. It

0:14:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:41 Andrew: Does not have a basement one might add yeah

0:14:43 Liz: Yep. It does not have a basement, which did not stop a crazed gunman from showing up and demanding to see the basement in direct response to incitement online from some of the same people like Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich that Elon Musk is now playing footsie with online all day long. He's become like Cernovich's reply guy. It's crazy. So conservatives are now trying to regain the high ground in this culture war by targeting LGBTQ plus people, particularly trans kids and drag queens. And one really insidious peddler of this filth is an account that goes by Libs of TikTok run by a woman named Chaya Raichik. So Raichik makes these horrendous videos and social media posts accusing LGBTQ teachers of being pedophiles and so-called groomers. She was one one the ones that popularized that term. And she falsely claims that health care providers mutilate children, by which she means they provide gender-affirming care to trans youth in accordance with widely accepted medical standards. Her account targeted multiple hospitals, which wound up getting death threats as a direct result in cities such as Omaha, Pittsburgh, Boston, and D.C.

0:14:44 Andrew: Right yep Yep.

0:15:50 Liz: And when she does that, when that happens, it's not just trans kids whose healthcare gets disrupted, because that would be vile and cruel enough. When they lock those facilities down, kids with cancer can't get chemo. Like this woman is a disgusting bully. And while I don't like to throw around the phrase stochastic terrorism, I think it's appropriate here. She knows that what she's doing is endangering healthcare providers. And that's exactly what she intends to happen, right? Maybe after the first time she had plausible deniability, But after the fourth time, she knows. So, guys, guess which account was the Bari Weiss poster child for evil Twitter shadow banning conservatives this week? No, it was actually, surprise, WasLibsOfTikTok.

0:16:31 Thomas: Hitler himself, libs of TikTok.

0:16:38 Liz: Weiss first says that Raichik was doxxed and Twitter did nothing about it, although she does not show proof of that. But then she fingers Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter's trust and safety. So she shows these context-less Slack messages where he talks about the company over-relying on technical violations of the terms of service, like bans on spam, when they really need to beef up their safety protocols. So that message was from October of 2022, after four hospitals and countless doctors had been targeted for harassment by Reitschick's account. This was the problem that Roth and the very serious people who ran Twitter's trust and safety team were deeply committed to fixing before Musk came in and broke the whole platform. So for a long time, people who care about tech, like Kara Swisher, said basically, well, Yoel Roth is still there, so at least there's one grown up in the room.

0:16:31 Andrew: Wow. The

0:17:25 Liz: This is a guy who spent his entire career studying and thinking about how to make our digital world work. And pre-Musk, Twitter really did think hard about ethical rules of in cyberspace. The road As you guys might remember, Twitter was the one that fought back against subpoenas for all of those like cow avatars when Devin Nunes tried to unmask them and even Bill Barr tried to unmask them. Twitter took privacy and safety on the platform really seriously under Yoel Roth's leadership. But a month ago, Roth quit and he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he was mildly critical of Musk. So now it's open season on Roth and the howler monkeys like Bari Weiss have been smear him in the media. And so Weiss is only delighted to unleash this openly homophobic mob on Roth, who is an out gay man.

0:18:14 Liz: So now Roth is getting an absolute avalanche of death threats, as Weiss knew perfectly well that he would when she connected this Libs of TikTok account to him, when she said he was responsible for harassing the Libs of TikTok. And Musk, as we discussed, has no problem trafficking in homophobic and transphobic hate speech. And so he's gleefully egging it on, pointing to the parts of Roth's PhD thesis, which is on the gay hookup site Grindr, and suggesting that Roth supports monetizing sex between adults and children. Like, it's just gross. He's also, he, Musk, is also retweeting and replying to people who basically accused Roth of pedophilia, people who call him a groomer, and other gross stereotypes as a means of discrediting all of the very serious work of content moderation that Roth did at Twitter.

0:19:06 Liz: And you this is a little personal, but it's extra gross because Bari Weiss happens to be a lesbian, i.e. someone Chaya Raishik treats as an existential threat to children. So Weiss siccing a homophobic mob on Roth is pretty next-level evil. And not for nothing, but Weiss and Raichik are both Jewish, like me, and they know damn well that the QAnon loons are just wildly anti-Semitic, not to mention heavily armed. So when they imply that a gay Jewish man supports pedophilia, they know they're putting his life in danger and they don't care because they are filthy fucking degenerates who will endanger his life for clicks and for clout. So I'm pretty disgusted. Sorry, this is a little bit of a downer, but it's gross.

0:19:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's outrageous. I don't know how to deal with the level of nihilism that they seem to have. That's what I don't understand. You get it with the trolls and you get it WITH Trump. I understand it, at least what's happening there. But with Musk and Weiss and Taibbi, I know that they know they're full of shit. There's no way they don't know they're full of shit. Like, right?

0:20:12 Liz: Yeah.

0:20:13 Thomas: I mean, am I crazy? Way they talk about free speech, they have to know that all they're talking about is speech that they favor. They have to know. There's no way they're so thick that they don't see the contradictions in everything they're saying. Like literally Musk is, you say, advertising new policies of, hey, here's what, we're not going to shadow ban people. What we're going to do is we're gonna, in the shadows, we're going to sort of ban them, that's what we're gonna do, that's different than the shot, like it's the exact same thing. They have to know there's no way they don't see the contradictions in what they're doing, and as you said, this is some dark stuff in terms of stochastic terrorism. I don't think that that's at all hyperbolic. Like, this is stochastic terrorism, and I am just in disbelief that those three people, that Elon Musk, that Taibi, that Bari Weiss, like, that they want to live in a world with this, that's what blows my mind.

0:21:05 Liz: Right.

0:21:05 Thomas: How do they want to live in a country or a World that's going to be this thrown out of sync, you like into war almost with these lies. I don't understand it.

0:21:08 Liz: Only because she complained about anti-Semitism in public life. And she's right. There is anti-Semitism in public Life. She is right that there have been increased anti-semitic attacks on Jews, although she refuses to connect it to Musk kind of encouraging, letting all the Nazis back on the...

0:21:31 Andrew: People she's curling up

0:21:33 Thomas: The people actually responsible for it, yeah, well,

0:21:33 Andrew: With. Yeah, right.

0:21:33 Liz: Right, right. Right, Right. But but she knows what she's doing and she does not care. She knows that Yoel Roth, as an openly gay Jewish person, is going to be targeted for vicious harassment, that he will not be safe. And she does Not Care.

0:21:51 Thomas: I, for one, don't like it. I don't know. I got no idea. I don't know how we end that. Wait.

0:21:56 Andrew: You know, we had to listen to an episode of her podcast once.

0:21:59 Thomas: We did.

0:21:59 Liz: You did.

0:22:00 Andrew: She was the one who had on that who's the apologist show for originalism and that representative. All

0:22:06 Thomas: Oh, no. That's, um, that, no, you're thinking of someone else. That's, uh, Julia Galef. You're thinking of Julia Galef.

0:22:12 Liz: No, Bari Weiss is the one who has is founding this fake university so no, Bari Weiss, like, stormed out of the New York Times. Colleagues didn't like her. And she founded this website, basically like Quillette level, complaining about COVID policies and how conservatives are super oppressed on college campuses because no one wants to sleep with them, which, like, I don't want to sleep with him either. So, you know,

0:22:13 Thomas: Yeah. Julia.

0:22:16 Andrew: Yeah.

0:22:36 Thomas: Don't sleep with a conservative, are you kidding me? Everybody out there, highly recommend, don't ever do that. The only way we're gonna put an end to this. Yeah.

0:22:43 Liz: Anyway, one of my kids kind of dates a Conservative, but it's fine. He can still come home for the holidays. It's fine.

0:22:50 Andrew: And Arlo.

0:22:52 Liz: Aren't your kids like zero, one and three? Like my kids can vote. I don't have that much say.

0:22:47 Thomas: I feel Yeah. My kids are five. Five and three and zero and not born yet. So yeah, I, it's, tell them don't date conservatives at your daycare. Don't. This is a bit of a downer, but it's because this is really distressing. Like, I don't, I don't know. It could be nothing. I want to know, Andrew, I feel like you're more optimistic. I'm curious, Liz, your, your opinion. I feel like this could be be pretty harmful. I get that people on our side seem to be saying like, oh, this is some tired nonsense that isn't going to impact electoral politics much because it's more crying about the elections that were lost and the stuff like that. Cause ultimately that's all this is about, too. We didn't even mention that. It's about making the claim that this free speech violation, which you've shown is nothing like that. But the reason it's so bad is because it didn't allow voters to know about Hunter Biden's laptop, and therefore it stole the election for Biden.

0:23:45 Liz: Yeah. 24 hours of shadow banning, 24 hours of suppressing a post, which Streisand-effected into everybody's consciousness, change the election. Come on. That's, I mean, it's, yeah.

0:23:46 Thomas: Right. And the odds that somebody who was going to be receptive to that message didn't already hear about Hunter Bidens laptop from, I don't know, every single conservative media source is a little far fetched to me. And so I think the optimistic take is like, ah, this is just old grievances. It's not blah, blah, bla. I am really worried about the mid or longer term effects of some of the worst conspiracy minded Trumpers or QAnon type people having their biases confirmed by the second wealthiest person in the world on what used to be a pretty social media platform, at least a social media media platform that all of them and their families have heard of, and now it's this nonsense is being doled out on fit like that's the official channel for it. I am really worried that this is going to have an impact all

0:24:05 Liz: I'm Going to give you a positive take here. And not just that we're all going to get so many hours of the day back when Twitter crashes and burns, which will be an absolute game changer for me personally. I'm gonna give you the positive take. And the positive takeaway is that if, if the conservative thesis is that, um, they're getting siloed and every, and their speech is being suppressed and whatever. If they get to have Twitter, and it breaks, and it becomes just as janky and useless as Getter and Truth Social and whatever Parlor and the rest of these crappy platforms, then they will have kind of disproved their own point. If their thesis is we're just mean to them, them, well, they are going to get to hang out by themselves and find out that it isn't any more fun on Twitter than it was anywhere else. And then the rest of us can go and find the next thing. And maybe it'll be a better thing. Maybe, you know, post social or Mastodon or whatever replaces Twitter will be less of a garbage fire. Could be that.

0:25:42 Andrew: I I, love that optimism. I, to me, this feels like, you after election cycle and election cycle of watching my friends and allies with me on the left think that, like, the status of opinion on Twitter reflects the status of opinion in the electorate, to discover, like, oh, look, like, no, I guess we're not going to defeat Mitch McConnell after all in the general election. Like, it's kind of nice to watch Republicans overreacting to, you Twitter drama at this point. So, me, I can't see how this moves the needle for anyone. I'm a notorious optimist, so there you go.

0:26:21 Thomas: Right, well, I will leave that super naive positive take as the well, here's

0:26:26 Andrew: Hey, Look, I think it's important, and seriously, we've now done, you know, the story twice because, you know, I feel like it's so important to fact-check in the same way that it was important for us to do the the story on Hillary Clinton's emails. The

0:26:27 Liz: Cool.

0:26:39 Thomas: The one we didn't even talk about, not to drag us back in, but the tweet today or yesterday, I don't know, he, Elon, he's, Musk is really Trump-esque, and then he's trying to throw controversy after controversy at us, so we can't keep track of it, yeah the Fauci thing, my, it's pronouns, are you know, prosecute Fauci, and everybody's seizing on the, the anti-trans part of that, which as well they should, but like I actually haven't seen enough people commenting on him endorsing the like lab outbreak theory in the follow-up tweet to that, because someone, asked him like, what, hey, the hell man, and he's like, not only a transphobic crap, and like, then b, there's a second part to this tweet which is like, yeah, Fauci, uh, lied, and it's the lab leak bullshit or whatever it is like, oh, Fauci yeah gain of function research, which is

0:26:49 Andrew: Fauci thing. Well,

0:27:17 Liz: It's the gain of function stuff, right? Right.

0:27:20 Thomas: Just the most idiotic anti-scientific conspiracy theory. I, I think it has an impact that the world's richest, second richest man, who had had this persona of like a genius that, by the way, we're in a little bit of a echo chamber. A lot of the world still thinks he's some sort of Tony Stark genius, for him to come out and say, yeah, Fauci lied and got millions of people killed. I have, I worry about what that's going to do to to our country. I don't know that it turns into votes or not, but it's not good.

0:27:21 Liz: I

0:27:50 Andrew: Let me back up from my position and say the position of it's not good to radicalize another mega billionaire to the far right, yeah, terrible for our country to have Elon Musk have the politics of of the Koch brothers that he didn't have a year ago. So that's not great.

0:28:10 Liz: Think it's great. I mean, I don't think it is great, but I, yeah, no, I, I think, I think demolishing the myth of these like tech boy wonders, like, um, Facebook's like Mark Zuckerberg and, Sergey Brin and, and Peter Thiel and, Elon and Musk. No, I Think demolishing, the myth, of these, like super genius libertarian tech bros leading us into some perfect utopian future. I actually think that's great. Like, do I think it's great that Elon Musk still has this huge platform? No, but I do think watching him light $44 billion on fire and bring Tesla stock down with him, because not a bad thing.

I actually Think that's pretty good. Like, can we go back to rational thinking as opposed to magical thinking that these super geniuses are going to save humanity? Which, by the way, Musk did tweet, that's what he's doing, that the future of humanity depends on what he... He literally thinks that. He thinks the survival of humanity... I mean, he tweeted that yesterday, that The Survival of Humanity depends on this project that he's doing with Twitter. So if that goes away, the people's belief in this infallible, you boy wonder goes away. I'm good with it.

0:28:47 Andrew: Well,

0:29:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:20 Andrew: Just piggybacking off of what Liz just said, as of right now, when we record this on Monday, Tesla stock down to 167.78. That is its 52-week low. And you've said lit 44 billion dollars on fire. But uh but as you've listened to the show all in all done, this probably means that that acquisition has now cost Elon Musk 150 billion dollars in his net worth.

0:29:37 Liz: Right. I'm

0:29:49 Thomas: A business genius though, like he's but he's a genius. Yeah.

0:29:53 Liz: Good With It. It is a moral affront to have billionaires in this country. It's just, you know, there shouldn't be any billionaires. Light it all on fire. I'm good with it.

0:30:01 Thomas: That Part's great.

0:30:02 Liz: Take it.

0:30:02 Thomas: What Yeah.

0:30:03 Liz: No, take it down. Right. Cool.

0:30:05 Thomas: All unite in that being the positive, that that Elon Musk is a lot less rich now.

0:30:10 Liz: Bring back the estate tax. 90 percent. I'm Good With It.

0:30:12 Andrew: I Oh Oh

0:30:14 Thomas: Love it. All right, well, on that note, thanks so much, Liz, as always, for coming on, we really Appreciate You And uh, of course, it's at five, oh wait, should I throw out your Twitter or should we all throw out Twitter, I don't know which one or the other, but five dollar feminist

0:30:19 Liz: See you guys.

0:30:29 Liz: Cool. See ya.

0:30:31 Andrew: Liz and

0:30:33 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

0:30:39 Thomas: Now it's time for T3BE, Thomas Takes the Bar Exam, where each week I ace a question, boy, boy, I say that I am really nervous about this, new format allows me to fret about my choice for longer. So that's cool. So I'm really worried. I shot myself on the foot here, but let's let's hear it. All right, how would I do on this, this week's Thomas Takes the Bar Exam? Oh,

0:31:00 Andrew: So this question was, Training Co. Conveyed premium shopping center space to a man by quitclaim deed and received $210,000. Four years later, another business, Diet Foods Co., filed an action to quiet title to the property as an adverse possessor. Can Diet Foods Co. Introduce evidence that it always kept the property clean? Okay, so, we'll get into the answers in a minute, couple of things, if you are a lawyer, would-be lawyer, taking the bar exam, Sam. First, this question tells you it's an adverse possession question, so right, that's what should kick in in your head. Adverse possession, as we've talked about, is the scenario that should instantly come to your mind is that sitcom where all of a sudden, you know, both sides run to discover the deed and, like, you know.

0:31:53 Andrew: One foot of your yard is is actually a maryard, and your tree branch hangs over, and essentially, well, it can be squatters.

0:31:59 Thomas: So it's not squatters, though. It is squatters

0:32:02 Andrew: There Yeah. If I am actively squatting and I know it's your property and you don't take pains to exclude me from your property within the statutory period, which by the way runs from as little as seven years to 20 to 30 years depending, pending by the jurisdiction, then it's kind of on you.

0:32:02 Thomas: Rights. Oh, oh, So this was actually all going through my head. And I remembered the seven years like I remembered that it was that long. So in my mind, I was like, this can't be that because this is like years. Four It feels like that wouldn't have worked. So anyway, there's a lot swirling through. I didn't arbitrarily make my choice, but it was, there was so much going on that I may have confused myself out of the answer. We'll see.

0:32:37 Andrew: Yep, I may have. So other information that it gives in there that color to the question, Training Co. Is conveying the shopping center space via quitclaim deed. Now, that's never, I don't want say never, but that is almost never a thing you do in a commercial transaction. Action. A quitclaim deed, if you sort of break up the root word, is a way of saying, I will sell you whatever the hell I happen to own in this property, Property right? Is a bundle of sticks. Quitclaim says, I'm not going to make any promises to you that my, I're not counting these sticks, it's too much stuff. Here you go, have all my sticks. Whatever they are, have All My Sticks.

0:33:16 Thomas: I'm not counting these sticks. Jeez.

0:33:24 Andrew: And so, as you might imagine, I'm right, actually preparing a quick claim deed for my family right now, because one of the things that often occurs is, you if you have a confusing situation post-probate of a will or, you know, other conveyances within the family where no one is entirely sure who owns what, right. You would say, look, I don't want to claim any interest in this property anymore. Right.

0:33:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Like for that reason, this isn't a commercial deal. This is something that likely that that wouldn't make sense. I see what you're saying.

0:33:56 Andrew: It it would I have never seen a commercial deal in which one person is like, oh, yeah. Give me whatever you happen to own in the shopping mall because of precisely this. So action to quiet title means that Diet Foods Co. Is coming in and going, oh, hey, look, actually own all the sticks here because we have adversely possessed the shopping center space, right? And how would then Diet Foods Go go about showing, that they've adversely obsessed that space? And so the question then is, can Diet Foods Co. Introduce evidence that it always kept the property clean? And your answers were all four yes answers, which is true, they will be able to introduce that evidence, but the question is why? So yes, it tends to show possession. B, yes, yes, it tends to show actual possession. C, yes, it tendsto show cleanliness. Or D, yes it tends to show the Tide Foods Co. Employs professional cleaners. You joked about the C, the cleanliness, that's an outrageous statement, the right? Elements of adverse possession is that you have to show that youhave actual possession over the property that is exclusive.

0:34:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:06 Andrew: That is that you keep people out. That is open and notorious. That is that it puts the person who has title to that property on notice that you're there. That it is hostile, right? And again, hostile just means that it conflicts with the rights of the true property owner. So in other words, you let people on that the true propertyowner might have kept off. You exclude people that propertyholder the true might have, let in.

And, and this is by far the most important part, that it is continuous, right? Go, if it's a 20-year adverse possession period and you go 19 and a half years and then you take a vacation and then it starts to run again, right, and a gap in the period means that you are no longer adversely possessing the property. So you went with A, I The A is too much of the answer, the right? Question is adversely possessing. And so this really directly applies to that first element of, is your possession, right? Are you on the premises? What's a good way to prove that you're on the promises? The fact that you paying a cleaning company to be in there cleaning the premises. If you weren't there why why would you care if they're clean or not. So best answer here is B, um, but adverse possession questions are notoriously difficult ones, uh, that

0:36:05 Thomas: No, I think this is pretty straightforward. I think I think that what I yeah, I got really thrown off by some stuff. The four years made me think, well, it can't be that, because you couldn't do that after four years because that's not enough time. So I was thinking like, well, it can be I I knew I was like at first does does sound like that, but then I just, because it's real property, it's, you very complicated, and I was just thinking maybe that's just trying to throw me off, and it's, you know, so and it successfully did, I guess, but I tried to get one step ahead of where it was throwing me off, and I instead needed to be on the just the plain step of where I tried. I tried to guess scissors because I thought it was Throwing Rock, but really it was just telling me paper, and and it threw paper, and I,

0:36:25 Andrew: Uh. It was Yeah, I

0:37:07 Thomas: Wait,

0:37:08 Andrew: That that, and and again, the barn will do that to you? That four years...

0:37:11 Thomas: I just said that wrong, the

0:37:12 Andrew: I wasn't going to draw attention to that, but I was going to say the bar exam will do that. This is an irrelevant detail, Four years later, right? Matters nothing to this question whatsoever. It could be a day later. It Could be a month. Who knows, right.

0:37:15 Thomas: Opposite, strike that, reverse it, yeah, right, because it's not four years from when the quick claim deed happened, it would would be, however long Diet Foods Co. Was there, right? Ah, that's what I, that'S what threw me off, okay, well, this one, yep, I tripped over my own pants on this one. That's, that was, I had it, I knew it the whole time, knew it was the right answer. And I went with the wrong one just because I thought I had it too good. So there you go. All right. Well, I suck. Who's this? My streak over. There you go, but it's real property. So that's how it goes. Who is this week's a big winner?

0:37:37 Andrew: Was there previously. That is correct. Yeah, that's what's...

0:38:02 Andrew: Stephen Bowden on what's left of Twitter, who writes, I asked ChatGPT and it immediately said that the answer was A, don't take legal advice from a chatbot? The actual answer is B. So, love it that ChatGPT story is going around. Steven got it right.

0:38:15 Thomas: Wow. I bet a chat Bot? Maybe I am. This, I'm asking all kinds of questions about myself now.

0:38:27 Andrew: I suppose it's possible.

0:38:28 Thomas: That's wow, it's like in any movie where the the clone finds out he's the clone, you know, maybe I've been a chat bot this whole time. Shoot. Oh. Well

0:38:34 Andrew: Right. But just tell me that you haven't in turn also designed a chat bot, because then we will have a nested loop and it'll be a mess. So everyone give us Stephen Bowden a follow, that is at Wenlockhouse, w-e-n-l-o-c-k-h-o-u-s-e on Twitter, Wenlockhouse, and congratulations Stephen on being this week's winner.

0:38:41 Thomas: And

0:38:58 Clip: Thank you for being a friend, yeah, travel down the road with me, say we started from the bottom now we're here girl,

0:39:08 Thomas: Now it's time to thank our hall of famers, our all-time greats on patreon.com/law, enjoying the uh the Q&A thread, being able to ask questions, get on there, do it. Reminder coming up, a Law'd Awful Movies, as soon as I can get it edited. It's, it maybe would be out as you're hearing this, actually, yeah, it probably is out. I'm trying to get it out by probably Tuesday night, the one night we don't release a show, so that, so it's probably out. It was fantastic, it was really funny, uh, terrible 90s movie, you don't want to miss it, it's a Law'd Awful Movies.

Get on there. And we're on the second quartile of our hall of famers. Why? And I'll go first, Andrew. How about thank you to Xavier Branch, LT, how can a clam cram in a clean cream can? I once did stand-up comedy in a club full of ghosts, but was met with a chorus of booze. Chrono got railroaded in his princess kidnapping trial at Atomic Penguin, seven on Twitter, uh, Patreon name has been scrubbed due to scheduled Patreon donation as per USSS protocol, that's Senator Pennsylvania's Large Adult Son to you, Dr. Scoop Little Doug and Heather, Mr. and Mrs. Pusher, love the extra episodes. Oh, good,

0:39:30 Andrew: A

0:40:16 Thomas: Legal Eagles, legal beagle is not a beagle, hashtag Legal Eagle Beagle Gate, Sean McGovern, that thing in the attic, scarf season is coming, Kelly Wovett dot com, Katie Herman at the Erlich Law Office PLLC, visit www.erlichlawoffice.com for a fun fantasy story, read The King's Own by W.W. Marshal, now on Amazon, the Fat Jedi eating cake and drinking Emperor's Brewery beer in the Death Star canteen, liberals own guns to support root cause mitigation, not ineffective gun control, oh, a Chicago live show, you bring the law talking guys, and all drive on, LSD, what zag Bloom Hamburger Santa, tell Morgan Gattam's son Wall Street's run, run by algorithms. That's why Eli Lilly crashed. And Ray, your turn, Andrew.

0:41:05 Andrew: And a big thank you to Help I'm Trapped in a Podcast Factory, to Pizza School, the corgi knows Morgan is just four corgis in a trench coat, and you can't prove me wrong, that, that is plausible, Legal Eagle is so handsome, praise me on the Hamilton, crazy animal lady has given up on changing her Patreon name, just take my money, the Smiths, Colin Armstrong, Budget Bot missed on five Fiverr, yay, you're back. For five bucks, a real plant biologist will help with your plants. Budget Botanist on Fiver. Wow, can't even read this. The handwriting is so terrible, really wasted this month's shout out. Midterm update on my Fox News watching mom who voted for Biden. Straight ticket Democrat.

Wow. Thank you so much for using your shout out here to give us real good, encouraging, uplifting news. Listener Thomas F, stay safe, and remember many police and military people are hardcore right wingers who won't do the right thing, Sparkle Donkey has been waiting for a Seattle show longer than Brian Ziegenhagen waits for his name at the end of every episode, one smart cookie cutters wishing the Fat Jedi a safe trip with his precious at Emperor's Brewery, cargo, I, I love that these guys shout out each other in their own ears, but I think I like to think of it as working at the the same desk at, uh, you know, the opposite cubicles at work.

Anyway, Jennifer Tchaikovsky of GDT says everyone knows that the police cannot arrest you without, page two of two, your consent, maritime laws, freedom menu, not a Last Week Tonight producer, yeah, definitely not, Supreme Court justice should have 18 year term limits, and so should Conrad Michaels, seconding calls for a Rochester live show, you bring yourselves, I'll bring three heads and Warbock beer, edgy Veggie, veggie,

0:41:14 Thomas: Wow.

0:42:52 Andrew: Torsten, non-copus mentis woofies, peel. Let's go Dodgers. Yeah, Dodgers have had a quiet offseason so far. Elect.

0:43:00 Thomas: What they've just lost like all their players they're signing elsewhere

0:43:02 Andrew: Well, that's what I mean by quiet, right? Like they have not done positive things.

0:43:03 Thomas: Oh okay they've not done anything positive, sure.

0:43:08 Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Elect Thomas Smith President, American Honkytonk Bar Association. Thank you all so much for supporting the show.

0:43:09 Thomas: Yeah, and That's our show, thanks so much for listening, thanks so to Liz Dye for coming on and, uh, you a little, little more dire than than usual, but that's fine. The world's dire. So sometimes we have dire episodes, but maybe the optimists are correct and this won't be a big deal. I hope so. All right, we'll see you soon. Get on that Q&A. One more reminder, it'll be on Friday at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern on YouTube. Join us. We're going, you. Then.

0:43:39 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

0:44:13 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.

0:44:50 Thomas: Oh, Liz, are you recording on Audacity?

0:44:52 Liz: I feel like I am. Oh, there's blue fuzzy lines, so

0:44:56 Thomas: I love it. That's a yes.

0:44:56 Liz: Yeah.