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Speaker 1: Yes, I am opposed to a digital currency. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to bitcoin, I'm not opposed to ethereum.

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Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to any of it, which I own

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Speaker 1: in different varying levels and have yet to become that

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Speaker 1: millionaire you keep hearing about. Because if I was, maybe

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Speaker 1: maybe i'd ud take a small vacation. Tony Katz, Tony

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Speaker 1: Katz today, good to be with you. What I oppose

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Speaker 1: is the idea of a digital currency utilized in the US.

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Speaker 1: I oppose a digital IDs. I oppose the idea that

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Speaker 1: somehow we could set up a situation by which the

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Speaker 1: government has decided that you have had enough. It's not

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Speaker 1: the role of government. Den Schneider joins me right now,

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Speaker 1: Vice President. Free speech over there at the MRC Media

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Speaker 1: Research Center, And sir, you were scheduled to actually speak

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Speaker 1: in front of the House of Financial Services Committee, but

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Speaker 1: because of the shutdown, that's not happening. But it was

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Speaker 1: on this subject AI digital IDs, central bank digital currencies.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with the basics. It's referred to as a

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Speaker 1: CBD central bank digital currency. How is it described, how

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Speaker 1: do those who are proponents of it sell it? And

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Speaker 1: how do you describe it.

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Speaker 2: Well, look, this is an Elizabeth Warren priority, you know,

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Speaker 2: having a controlled currency, getting rid of paper money, getting

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Speaker 2: rid of even credit cards as we know them, getting

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Speaker 2: rid of the way we bank in favor of a

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Speaker 2: system where the government controls what we know, what we do,

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Speaker 2: They know everything. And we already know how that plays

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Speaker 2: out because in the Biden administration we saw what Biden

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Speaker 2: had the Treasury Department do, monitoring purchases, you know, from

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Speaker 2: Gander Mountain and from Bible stores. You know, if you're

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Speaker 2: buying things from Gander Mountain or Cabella's or your local

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Speaker 2: Christian bookstore. Somehow Biden thought that you were a threat

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Speaker 2: to democracy, and he had our banks, required our banks

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Speaker 2: to eavesdrop on us and to monitor our bank accounts,

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Speaker 2: getting ready to cancel anybody's accounts that they thought was

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Speaker 2: a threat to democracy.

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Speaker 1: Now, before we go a step further, as we're talking,

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Speaker 1: it has just come out the night before that Jack Smith,

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Speaker 1: who was the special counsel going after President Trump, he

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Speaker 1: was spying on approximately a dozen Republican senators, the Senator

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Speaker 1: of Blackbird of Tennessee, Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Josh Holly, and

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Speaker 1: Missouri Senator LeMans of Wyoming. There was actual spying going

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Speaker 1: on in the Biden administration on the Senators. A little

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Speaker 1: off topic, but to your point about what it is,

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Speaker 1: the Biden administration was doing nothing to them in their view,

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Speaker 1: was out of the realm of well, this is for

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Speaker 1: the public good, right Tony.

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Speaker 2: Here at the Media Research Center, we identified fifty seven

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Speaker 2: separate massive censorship initiatives out of the Biden administration, crossing

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Speaker 2: ninety three federal agencies. There was command and control out

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Speaker 2: of the White House coordinating these federal agencies to silence

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Speaker 2: anybody who was opposed to Joe Biden. And some of

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Speaker 2: these things were out of the Treasury Department. Some of

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Speaker 2: it was out of the Securities and Exchange Commission. And

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Speaker 2: this is where you know the SEC's work to try

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Speaker 2: to kill cryptocurrency took place, or to control it allow

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Speaker 2: only bitcoin you oddly enough, Gary Gensler, chairman SEC, he

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Speaker 2: was he was he was content to allow one currency

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Speaker 2: to exist, one cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, but nothing else was going

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Speaker 2: to be permitted to exist.

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Speaker 1: Talking to Dan Schneider, I should get his title accurate.

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Speaker 1: Vice President of MRC Free Speech America at the Media

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Speaker 1: Research Center MRC. MRC Free speech America dot Org. Let's

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Speaker 1: continue this conversation about these digital currencies because as this

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Speaker 1: plays out, this plays out also in the concept of

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Speaker 1: digital IDs, digital currency, digital ideas. How else is it

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Speaker 1: seen other than you know, how a layman like myself

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Speaker 1: might describe this as my gosh, that is the federal

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Speaker 1: government watching a lot of what you do.

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Speaker 2: Okay, So if you think of cryptocurrency, you got to

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Speaker 2: consider it in two halves. One is, you know, the

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Speaker 2: representation of value, and the other is a tracking mechanism.

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Speaker 2: You know. You know, with cryptocurrency, every time you use

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Speaker 2: some little bit of that value, there's a code attached

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Speaker 2: to it, so you can track to purchase where that

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Speaker 2: value is being used over time. That's why lefty governments

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Speaker 2: love it so much, because they can control and track

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Speaker 2: every single aspect of a person's life literally their physical location, uh,

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Speaker 2: you know, their their moods, their purchasing decisions. Every aspect

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Speaker 2: of a person's life is known and controlled. And this

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Speaker 2: is so anathema to the entire founding of our nation's

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Speaker 2: government or our system where individuals have individual rights and

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Speaker 2: liberties and privacy. The left wants to control the right

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Speaker 2: once liberty, yeah, and the digital currency, This government controlled

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Speaker 2: digital currency is the ideal way for them to control us.

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Speaker 1: And there's a way that this we can see how

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Speaker 1: this is being applied. We go to the UK where

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Speaker 1: here Starmer, the Prime Minister, who has been shameful in

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Speaker 1: my view, went on this rant. He's on a television

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Speaker 1: program discussing the idea that we must have digital ID

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Speaker 1: so we know who is working. And the journalist whose

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Speaker 1: interviewing says, well, that's depending on whether or not the

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Speaker 1: business actually checks for anything. It's not like if they

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Speaker 1: don't check, you're not going to know and kure Starmer

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Speaker 1: is adamant we must have digital IDs, but isn't the reporter.

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Speaker 1: They're making the point that the digital ID only is

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Speaker 1: is a value of people who utilize it, or another

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Speaker 1: way of saying it is the only people who are

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Speaker 1: going to be having any level of detrimental effort are

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Speaker 1: those who utilize it, because they're the ones being tracked.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I remember for years I refused to

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Speaker 2: get a Google account because I didn't want Google hoovering.

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Speaker 1: Up my data.

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Speaker 2: A friend of mine, who is a very senior person

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Speaker 2: at Google, then told me, Dan, if you've ever emailed

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Speaker 2: somebody on their Gmail account. Google has all of your

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Speaker 2: information already. You don't actually have to have a Gmail account,

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Speaker 2: or in this case, you don't have to use cryptocurrency.

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Speaker 2: If you've interacted with anybody else who's done it, they've

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Speaker 2: got it all. You know, there's no way to avoid

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Speaker 2: this unless you move to the middle of Alaska and

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Speaker 2: build a hut and completely get untethered. You know, this

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Speaker 2: is this is the world we're in now, those who

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Speaker 2: want to use all technology to control us versus those

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Speaker 2: who want to use technology to liberate us. And frankly,

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Speaker 2: this is the big difference between the Biden approach to

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Speaker 2: artificial intelligence and the Trump approach to artificial US intelligence.

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Speaker 2: If you bother to read Joe Biden's Executive Order on

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Speaker 2: Artificial Intelligence, which I did, it was all about how

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Speaker 2: the government is going to use AI to make sure

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Speaker 2: that we don't make any bad decisions. So, you know,

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Speaker 2: the Treasury Department was going to use AI to make

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Speaker 2: sure that banks were towing the line and the customers

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Speaker 2: couldn't get out aligned. Hudd was going to use AI

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Speaker 2: to make sure that there were no bad behavior when

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Speaker 2: it comes to renting apartments, and it was all about

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Speaker 2: control and also a stop to Google. Donald Trump came

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Speaker 2: in and he said, what we need to do is

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Speaker 2: allow the private sector to grow and flourish, because ultimately

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Speaker 2: this is a battle between China and the US. We

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Speaker 2: need to promote artificial intelligence as a service that the

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Speaker 2: US can provide, not as a manipulative tool for government

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Speaker 2: to control us.

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Speaker 1: Talking to you, Dan Schneider of the Media Research Center,

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Speaker 1: this control story is of course the story. But we

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Speaker 1: think of control as how you can move or what

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Speaker 1: you can say. My concern is, as you're bringing up

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Speaker 1: the conversation about watching how many Bibles you're buying, Well,

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Speaker 1: if you buy a firearm and then the next month

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Speaker 1: you want to buy a firearm. If it's all digital currency,

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Speaker 1: all this digital world, the government can decide you've had

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Speaker 1: enough of those, you shouldn't have any more of those.

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Speaker 1: This is why people have been opposed to things like

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Speaker 1: digitized health records, that there's too much access and not

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Speaker 1: enough protections. In your view and your conversation you would

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Speaker 1: have with the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee that

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Speaker 1: hearing that's been put on hold because of the shutdown,

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Speaker 1: how do you think one should balance these two things?

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Speaker 2: Well, look, there's really when you talk about balance, those

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Speaker 2: such things balance when you're talking to the left. The

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Speaker 2: Chinese have a social credit system, and it's basically the

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Speaker 2: government in China deciding how good you are. You know,

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Speaker 2: you get if you behave a certain way, you get

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Speaker 2: Browning points. If you don't behave a certain way, your

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Speaker 2: corners of your license get knocked off, and you get

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Speaker 2: an ultimate score, a value attached to you as a

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Speaker 2: human being. And that value then determines all kinds of

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Speaker 2: things like weather, you can even put gasoline in a car,

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Speaker 2: whether you can buy a ticket to drive, to get

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Speaker 2: on a train and go out of town. They control

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Speaker 2: your movement, you know, in the US. And this has

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Speaker 2: not been widely reported, Tony, but it started in the

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Speaker 2: Obama administration out of the Transportation Department, working with Uber

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Speaker 2: and Lyft. And those two companies are now completely populated

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Speaker 2: by Obama cronies, including like Kamala. Harris's brother in law

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Speaker 2: is a general counsel at Lyst and Obama's Transportation secretary

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Speaker 2: is a senior officer at Uber. They launched this campaign,

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Speaker 2: this effort, this agenda, this initiative to replace initially public

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Speaker 2: transportation with Uber and Lyft in different parts of the country,

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Speaker 2: including my portions of Dallas, portions of San Francisco. But

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Speaker 2: ultimately the idea was to expand this nationwide to private

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Speaker 2: vehicles as well, where we would owning a private vehicle

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Speaker 2: would be highly discouraged and instead we would be bound

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Speaker 2: to Uber and Lift type right sharing arrangements controlled by

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Speaker 2: the government. Thus, we would be completely beholden when we

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Speaker 2: wanted to go to the grocery store social credit system

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Speaker 2: attached to us. And look, I'm a straight white man,

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Speaker 2: so geez, you know I'm going to automatically start off

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Speaker 2: very low. It might take me four hours before a

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Speaker 2: car finally shows up to pick me up to go

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Speaker 2: grocery store, or somebody else with the opposite characteristics, you

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Speaker 2: know that Uber would show up instantly because that person

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Speaker 2: automatically starts off with a much higher social credit score

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Speaker 2: simply because of their you know, the boxes they check off.

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Speaker 1: And some people are gonna say, Okay, now you're just hyperventilating.

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Speaker 1: Now you're just inventing. But when we talk about China,

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Speaker 1: if you're not smiling enough, your credit score goes down.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and tell me I wish I were creating and

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Speaker 2: inventing these things. We actually have the documents, the internal

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Speaker 2: communications between the Dallas Transportation Authority and the Obama and

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Speaker 2: then later Biden transportation departments. We've got the grants, We've

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Speaker 2: got the documents showing what they were really doing. It's shocking.

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Speaker 2: It is shocking. It sounds it sounds like some crazy

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Speaker 2: Hollywood movie of you know, dystopian nature with control. It's

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Speaker 2: really it's been rolled out in portions of Dallas, portions

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Speaker 2: of Chicago, portions of San Francisco. It's already creeping into

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Speaker 2: our existence. The reason Google and Facebook started to get

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Speaker 2: into the carb business specifically because they wanted to remove

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Speaker 2: the steering wheel from the vehicle so that we would,

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Speaker 2: you know, even in the commute, we would be attached

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Speaker 2: to our phones, and they could make money off of us.

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Speaker 2: It's all about manipulating and controlling us for their benefit.

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Speaker 1: Dan Schneider, Vice President's Media Research Center, Vice president MRC

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Speaker 1: Free Speech America. I appreciate you taking the time to

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Speaker 1: be with us. More is coming up on Tony Katz.

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Speaker 1: This is Tony Kats Today,