POLICY COUNSEL
FEBRUARY 2023 POLICY COUNSEL SPEECHES
The Honorable Francis Suarez
Mayor
City of Miami
Welcome all of you to Miami. I want to first begin by acknowledging the President of the Council for National Policy Tom Fitton, and also Congressman Bob McEwen, who was a long time in Miami—went to the University of Miami—for organizing such an important conference. You are now sitting in the most important city in America.
Across the Nation, cities are facing tremendous challenges. A toxic mix of high taxes and high crime. But in Miami, we have designed a formula for success based on core conservative principles that have enabled us to become the capital of capital, and the most important city in America according to the Financial Times.
The formula is simple and it’s conservative. Increased funding not decreased funding for our police officers. Embrace innovation. Create high-paying jobs. And, of course, keep taxes low. In Miami, we support law enforcers, not law breakers, and we invest in having a safe city. Miami recorded one of its lowest levels of homicides this past year in 2022 with 47. To put that number in context, in 1980 we had 220. That’s an 84% decrease, and the lowest per capita homicide rate since 1964.
By the way, I can guarantee you that Miami looked a lot different in 1964 than it does today. I was a negative 13. I wasn’t even an idea actually in 1964.
In Miami, we slashed poverty in half over the past twenty years. We grew our ecosystem from our education to our land use and growing our city. We worked to attract new businesses and industries. We want all of our residents to keep what they earn, invest what they save, and own what they build. What a shocking concept. By the way, we’re fundamentally so American, because we are traumatized by our origin story. Many of us, including my parents who came to this country at twelve and seven, were kicked out of their country of birth because a leader told them “give us all your businesses, give us all your properties, and don’t worry, we’ll make everybody equal.” And they did, in fairness. They made everyone equally poor and equally miserable. And so, under my tenure, we’ve lowered taxes to the lowest level in Miami’s history, because we know a fundamental truth that people, and not government, deliver real growth and progress.
We ranked number one in tech job growth; number one in tech job migration; number one in pandemic recovery—you’re getting the hint here, right?—number one in direct foreign investment. We’ve attracted companies with over 2.5 trillion, with a “T,” of assets under managed companies coming here to Miami in just the last twenty-four months. That’s 81 new to market companies creating a billion dollars in wages for our economy. We have a 1.5% unemployment rate. Yes, let me repeat that. We have a 1.5% unemployment rate. And because we’ve lowered taxes to our lowest level, we grew by 12%. The second most in our history.
You see, we believe that true innovation and progress only comes from having a free market economy. One that allows creatives and innovators to explore their ideas and solve society’s biggest challenges. In Miami, we understand where our world is heading. We are transitioning from an economy based completely on industrial production to one that is increasingly driven by technology and innovation. That is why when builders seek to build in Miami, we say “how can I help?” Our role as policy makers should be to empower individuals so that they’re able to identify our biggest weaknesses and provide a feasible solution for them. While it may seem paradoxical for some, this approach towards our economy which includes lowering taxes to their lowest level, has enabled us to enjoy the largest budget surplus in our history. Yes, we balance our budget in Miami. We do it while lowering taxes and, in fact, we have the largest surplus we’ve ever had and the highest bond rating we’ve ever had as a government.
We’re setting the tone as the leading American city for disruption. Our world will be driven by applied artificial intelligence, biotechnology, Web-3, Quantum computing, urban air mobility, and machine learning. As Americans, we must embrace this innovation. We must be pioneers. And I knew this for the very first time when I saw my two year-old daughter taking a selfie with her pacifier. I knew technology was here to stay at that point.
We call this the Miami miracle, and this can be the American miracle. From small towns to big states. When you really think about it, America is one big city. A shining city on a hill. Eighty-five percent of the population of this country is in American cities and 91 percent of the GDP produced by this country is produced by people who live in American cities. So, we must build a strong foundation for our cities based on free-market, conservative principles so that everyone can thrive. Cities where miracles can still happen. And a city that is more than the future of America. Our city IS America, and the future is conservative. God bless you.
Dr. Jeff Myers
President
Summit Ministries
Good afternoon. You know, the theme this morning was about truth. The Greek word for truth is alethea. It means reality, and a lot of people today don’t even believe that reality exists. Now, in Colorado, some of us still do. Across the street from our Summit Ministries headquarters is Pike National Forest. It’s a million acres of great hiking ground. You can easily get lost there. If you’re hiking a long distance, you want to be sure to bring along well, of course, all your water and your food and supplies. But you want to bring along a topographical map – a map that shows the contours of the forest as it actually exists. And you want to bring a compass. With those two tools, you’ll always be able to find your way.
Well, I guess it depends on how you use the compass. If you use the compass to point you toward magnetic north, then you can orient the map and find your way. But what if you use the compass to point toward yourself? You can see how that would be a problem. See, I always know where I am because the red needle always points toward me. No, you don’t always know where you are. You never know where you are if that’s the way you’re doing it. But we now have a generation of young adults who believe precisely that about the nature of reality. Seventy-five percent of millennials said that, “What works for me and what is right for my life is the only truth I can know.” Now, think about that for a moment. That will affect everything in life. That will affect all your career choices, all of your relationship choices, it will affect all of your voting choices. And you know what we saw in the 2022 elections? That young adult voting behavior lined up exactly in correlation with their belief that there is no such thing as truth.
You say well, how did that happen? And if it did happen, what do we do about it? Well, how did it actually happen? It’s helpful when you’re trying to understand how to work with a young adult to understand why they see things the way they see them. If there’s no such thing as truth outside of you, you are your truth, then your own personal bodily autonomy is all you have. Do you think from their perspective, when a progressive says, “Don’t vote for a conservative because they will take away your personal bodily autonomy,” then what the young adult hears is: “If I vote for a conservative, I’m giving up the very last sense of self that I have.”
So, what do we do in a situation where young adults today don’t even believe there is such a thing as truth? I’d like to share in the time that I have what we’ve learned at Summit Ministries. Three points and you can write them down if you like, just remember this: VFW. Vision, Facts, and Words. Vision, Facts, and Words. We have discovered at Summit Ministries that if you focus on these three things, you can turn young adults around from believing there is no such thing as truth to believing and acting on the reality that truth actually exists. So, let me just share those with you briefly.
First of all is Vision. If you don’t believe there is such a thing as truth, it’s impossible to get a vision for your life. There’s nothing to see. There’s nothing out there for you. You are the center of reality. And the trauma this has caused for the rising generation is truly stunning. Seventy-five percent of young adults say they do not have a sense of purpose that gives them meaning in life. Fifty-three percent say they regularly struggle with anxiety and depression. You’ll find this startling, but once you understand what it means to say there is no truth, you’ll kind of see why people believe this. One-third of young people say they don’t know what gender they are. They’ve literally denied every aspect of reality.
So, what do we do? A lot of people say, “We medicate them. We pity them. We try to pretend that their fake reality is actually real.” That’s not how we do it. You don’t give a young person vision by pitying them, you give them a vision by helping them get a sense of purpose for their lives. So, what does that actually look like? Well, vision is hard to get if there’s no such thing as truth, then there’s no such thing as thought; if there’s no such thing as thought, then there’s no such thing as the ability to understand reality. If there’s no reality, then there’s no such thing as meaning. You have to actually go back and start with the basics.
So, we’ve talked some about science this morning. That there is a true way to do science and there’s a false way to do science. About a third of the students who come to study with us in one of our two-week long Summit Ministries programs, are going into the STEM fields. So, we’ll talk with them and say, “How many of the great scientists would you think are atheists, just based on what you’ve learned in school?” And they’ll say, “Well, all of them are atheists. I mean, you have to be an atheist to be a good scientist.” And we’ll say, “Did you know that of the 52 individuals whose discoveries and inventions formed the core of the development of modern science, only one of them was an atheist?” Fifty of them were believing Christians. In fact, two-thirds of those were so concerned about their Christian faith that they actually used it evangelistically. They taught Sunday school classes. They taught about apologetics. They wrote books about these kinds of things. These were the greatest scientists.” If you say, “That was an awful long time ago, that’s not true anymore.” Well, John Lennox, who was a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, said two-thirds of the people who have ever won the Nobel prize in science listed Christian as their affiliation. If you studied at a secular university, you might never have heard that.
I share this story in the book Truth Changes Everything, and I’ll share it with you because it’s really been valuable to our students. We tell them the story of a woman named Gladys West. She was a mathematician and a scientist back in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, when not very many women and not very many minority women were scientists. Gladys West developed the mathematical calculations that are behind the development of GPS. Now, think about that for a minute. None of us would even be here if it were not for Gladys West, and you’ve never even heard her name before. We would never have found our way. And she said, “I do not ever remember a time in my life when I did not believe that Jesus was the center of everything.” That’s a profound understanding. So, we’ll ask our students, “How many of you are majoring in something related to STEM?” And they’ll raise their hands. And we say, “We want you to understand that the science you do, you are doing as an act of worship to God.” That gives them a sense of vision.
Well, the second thing is Facts. It is shocking how many young adults today believe that there is no difference between facts and opinions. They’ll just say, “Well, that’s what you just said, that’s your opinion. That’s your truth. I have my truth.” So, at Summit Ministries, we bring in front of the students professors who love Jesus, who are smarter than their college professors, and more conversant about all of the key issues. Then we just start presenting them with the facts. Sometimes it starts with a really simple conversation. “You believe that everything is opinion. Well, do you believe there are scientific facts?” “Well, what do you mean?”
Okay, well, if I say that water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level, it would not be an appropriate thing to say well, that’s your opinion. I mean, you might say it depends on atmospheric conditions but you wouldn’t say that’s your opinion. If there are scientific facts, are there historical facts? If I say Martin Luther King was shot on April 4, 1968, it wouldn’t be appropriate for someone to say, well, maybe that’s true in your culture. No, it’s a historical fact. Are there moral facts? This is where it gets interesting. Students will say, “Okay, I see scientific facts, I see historical facts, no such thing as moral facts. Morality is up to each person.” And I’ll say, “Let me give you two statements and see if you can understand the difference. Statement A: It is good to care for abandoned puppies. Statement B: It is good to torture abandoned puppies. Can you see any difference between those two statements?” And, of course, they say, “Yes.” Then we say, “You know what? There are moral facts, aren’t there? There are things that we can know to be true about how we should live our lives.”
Let me tell you a cool story about Leanna. She came to Summit Ministries, and she designated herself—students like to designate themselves, put themselves in boxes, you know, I’m this gender, or that gender, or whatever. She said, “I’m coming here as a Christian socialist.” She had read The Communist Manifesto. She desperately wanted Karl Marx to be right. In about one hour, we did two things. First of all, we explored the horrors of communism factually. Second of all, we talked about the basis of the Marxist worldview which is materialism and says that only the material world exists. But it’s simply not true. We have information, we have ideas, we have inspiration. She told me later I felt like I was being ripped apart because in 45 minutes, you undid everything that I’ve spent the last two years trying to build up in my mind. Now Leanna’s studying politics, philosophy and economics from a free-market perspective, and she told me two weeks ago that she’s planning to go into a work to help rescue people from sex-trafficking. The profound impact that just explaining the facts can have is amazing.
The final thing is Words. So, Vision, Facts, and then Words. As Charlie and James and Rob were talking about a little earlier, clear communication and clear thinking go together. The Greeks had a word for the obviousness of reality; the kind of obviousness that you know. Like if you went up on top of the building and thought I just feel upness and you jump, you’re still going down, right? That’s the obviousness of reality. Well, the Greek’s word for the obviousness of reality was logos. In John I, John says, “In the beginning was the Logos…in the beginning was the Word.” The Logos of God. That the truth exists, and it doesn’t just exist as a logical proposition or a mathematical formula. The truth exists as a person. It’s Jesus. That’s the claim that John was making. Words have always been central to a Christian faith. In my doctoral work, I studied the communication development of children. We created play situations so that we could observe them communicating with one another. What we learned is little kids don’t, they don’t really play together, they sort of play individually side-by-side. And until they learn to use words to communicate with one another, all they have is parallel play.
We’ve got an entire culture that is locked in toddlerhood. Parallel play without the ability to really connect with one another. So we teach students how to use words well; to ask good questions; to engage in conversation and dialogue. The impact of this has been huge for us. George Barna helped us study this. We found that whereas only 4% of young adults in the United States of America today have a biblical worldview, which is a really disturbing fact in and of itself, 4% have a biblical worldview. By the time they leave two weeks at Summit Ministries, 85% have a biblical worldview.
Let me just give you one quick example, then I will close. Abortion is an issue that’s close to the hearts of many people that are here. Here’s what will happen if a student comes to Summit Ministries. First of all, they get a vision, because they won’t really care about the facts unless they see how they are personally involved. We tell them, “Don’t be an exploiter of other people. Be a warrior. Be a defender. Be a protector of the vulnerable. And not just vulnerable babies, but vulnerable women. Did you know that 75% of women who get an abortion in this country say that they felt pressured to do so by someone else? That’s not freedom of choice, that’s exploitation.” So, we help our students learn to get a vision for being protectors.
Then we help them understand the facts. We just lay out a logical proposition. You can use this in media interviews. I’ve done this in probably 20 media interviews. I’ve never had a reporter intelligently respond to it. We tell them, “Here’s the logical syllogism. It is always wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. And then we defend that proposition.
Then finally, we give the students words. We teach them a very simple acronym that allows them to, in even just 30 or 60 seconds, bring a pro-life position to bear in a conversation with someone who favors abortion, even if they’ve never talked about it publicly before. All of a sudden, you see pro-life leaders emerging. I see Seth Gruber in the back of the room here, a Summit Ministries graduate who is a pro-life advocate having an impact all over the United States of America, Lila Rose and so many others.
Well, let me close with this, the book that Brent mentioned, it’s called Truth Changes Everything. I wrote that book during a battle with cancer that I had about a year and a half ago, that many of you remember. I will just tell you that as of this month, I’m now 14 months in remission from cancer. I don’t take for granted anything anymore. Every day is a gift. And every day I feel like I’m understanding in a new way what Jesus said in John 8:32: “If you follow my teachings, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” In history, and that’s what I show in the book, just stories, facts and examples and practical applications of how Jesus’ followers in history changed everything. In the past, truth changed everything, and it still can today. I would love to sign a copy for you if you want to be here at 3:30 this afternoon out in the lobby. Thank you so much.
The Honorable Devin Nunes
CEO
Trump Media & Technology Group
Thank you all very much. I thought what I would do tonight is walk you through how I got from the point where we noticed that the DOJ was totally corrupt to what led me to leave Congress. I’ll talk about social media and what’s happening and why it’s so important and why I decided to leave the Congress in order to go and take on this new role.
I’ll tell you, one of the funniest things that I hear all of the time—you know, I served nearly twenty years in Congress, I was elected six years to a local seat, a community college board, I served one year in the Bush Administration and all I heard my whole career was “term limits, term limits, term limits.” And now everywhere I go—even today, I flew from California, and I must have had seven people ask me, “How come you quit?” I’m like, well, “Don’t you believe in term limits? Twenty years is way over what everybody wants for term limits.”
But, seriously, let me just walk you back. I think you’ll find it interesting how I went from somebody who really respected the rule of law, respected the decorum of the House, respected the Institutions, and worked a lot with the Military and Intelligence, and how I realized that it has all become totally corrupt.
It started during the Obama Administration. A lot of people asked how I knew the Russia hoax was, in fact, a hoax? It started because I had been one of the ones critical of the Obama-Biden Administration and how they were handling Putin, how they were handling Ukraine. We were—we Republicans—were willing to give the Ukrainians training, weapons, all sorts of things at the time. A missile defense for Romania, Poland, all these things you may remember. Well, Obama was consistently stopping that from being implemented.
You saw the first kind of game they played was with ISIS. When I say a game, the game they played with Intelligence. A lot of people have forgotten this, but they hid the comeback of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq. Because remember, Obama just wanted to get out. Everybody forgets this—Al-Qaeda damn near took over Bagdad—if it wouldn’t have been for us having to go back in there and clean it all out.
Well, they had doctored and lied about those numbers. I knew about it; I was on the Intelligence Committee. We had numerous sources from all over the world. I would spend a lot of time out on the road, because you can’t learn anything in Washington, DC. So, I would get out into the hinter lands, you know, go to where our military was, sometimes our allies, sometimes our adversaries. But you would learn a lot by being out in the field. And that’s how I discovered that they were lying about these so-called radical Islamists in Iraq.
When I became Chairman, we opened up an investigation. I appointed Mike Pompeo to lead that investigation, a couple other Republicans, and a couple Democrats, although they didn’t participate. We went down, we interviewed, and we discovered that they had lied and doctored the Intelligence. Of course, it was buried. Oh, it’s classified, you can only talk about so much. Now, a lot of people forget, who was the Commanding General at the time that made that all happen? Anybody know? Lloyd Austin. Anybody know him? Yeah. All these guys graduate up. If you’re willing to lie, and you’re willing to manipulate, they graduate up.
By early 2016, I was so frustrated with how they were dealing with Putin, because I could tell that Putin was getting more and more daring. And look, we’re spending a trillion dollars a year on our military and intelligence apparatus, and the guy just walks into Syria, walks into Libya. Green men come into Crimea. How the hell is this happening? The reason was they were turning a blind eye to it. So, I don’t know if they were scared of Putin or what the deal was, but all they wanted to do was be friends with Putin. To be fair, that was the position dating back to Clinton, all through the Bush years, and everybody thought that if we can just talk to the guy, we can get along. It was a failed strategy. At the end of the day, Putin only understands one thing, and that is brute force. He’s an absolute killer, and nobody every treated him that way.
That’s why—this is a little off topic of where I want to go—I believe that Putin is going a little bit crazy. I did not think he was going to invade Ukraine. At a minimum, he had to know that he would lose tens of thousands of guys. And that was if he took Kiev the first week. He thought he was going to be there three days. Even if that happened, he was going to lose tens of thousands of people. And, you know, for what? To what avail? So, I didn’t think he was going to do it. I thought he was bluffing.
But come back to early 2016, I went out publicly and said, “The biggest intelligence failure since 9/11 is our inability to understand Putin’s plans and intentions.” I actually went on CNN and said that, and it was purposely to get their attention as to what the hell were they doing? How could we possibly be continuing down this path of letting Putin create chaos around the globe and pretend like it doesn’t happen. Now, little did I know at the time, they were accusing Trump and Republicans of colluding with Russians while they were letting the Russians do whatever the hell they wanted. So, you fast forward to after the election, Trump does the impossible. He wins. And then a few weeks after that, we get a briefing from the FBI. McCabe, Strzok, all those guys. Nothing unusual had happened. Nothing. And other than, you know, Putin did his usual games. The Russians are always messing in every election. They’re never really effective. You’d have to go back to the Cold War days where they were taking out African Governments and things like that. But they’re very seldom effective, and they sure as hell weren’t effective in the 2016 election.
Well, I go home for Thanksgiving, and a few days before I’m going to head back to Washington, DC, a leak comes out from the Senate that the FBI and intelligence agencies believe that Putin had done something nefarious in our elections. Basically, it was to help Trump. Obama says he’s going to do an intelligence community assessment. Now, think about this, I leave right before Thanksgiving. Between that time and ten days later, suddenly there’s a new intelligence assessment. I guess all of the intelligence agencies decided to scrap Thanksgiving plans, and they spent the whole time looking through all of this new intelligence that they must have found, and they came out with a new assessment.
So then, lo and behold, I’m wondering where’s the intelligence? We don’t have anything. Where are the reports? We’re looking at all the reports. Fast forward, then it’s Christmas time. And of course, now there’s this great report that was done between Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year’s. We come back right after New Year’s, and we get this briefing. I mean it’s the fastest intelligence assessment ever done in the history of intelligence. After years and years and years of them not knowing what the hell Putin was doing, suddenly they know a lot about what Putin was doing.
We get briefed on this assessment and there’s nothing. There’s nothing. We’re getting briefed – Gang of Eight – which were the most painful meetings, by the way. So, we get to the end, and there’s nothing. Then they say well, we have this appendix. Appendix. Well, it says crazy stuff about Trump and prostitutes and this and that. We’re like, “Where the hell did this come from?” “Oh, a former spy who was in Moscow, blah. blah. blah.” They wouldn’t even say the name Christopher Steele. And we’re like, “Who? What is this?” I’m looking through this, I’m reading this document. I’m saying this is not an intelligence report. This is propaganda. This is nonsense. And so, of course, that leaks out.
The only people that didn’t know about the Steele dossier and that operation were Republicans and probably everybody in this room. Everybody else in the country, all the media, all the Democrats, all knew that the Clinton campaign was feeding this. The media was in on it, the FBI was in on it, the National Security was in on it, the DOJ was in on it, and the only idiots were all of us. No offense to you guys, but we just didn’t know what was going on.
Then the Steele dossier leaks out in its entirety. Then it looks totally ridiculous, because it’s clearly not an intelligence report at all. Anybody out in the field with two or three people doing a quick analysis, they would know that the whole thing was bogus. You know, for example, Russian Consulates and cities that don’t exist. I mean that would be just one tip off to something not being correct.
Trump is sworn in. We have what I still think is one of the largest intelligence leaks in the history of the United States. It’s not from one source but nine sources who knew about General Flynn talking to the Russian Ambassador during the transition time. And I’m going, “Look, we only know one crime here; that’s a crime. If, in fact, those transcripts are correct (which we all knew they were, because they had very detailed information in the Washington Post). Then why isn’t every FBI agent in DC going everywhere looking for how the hell did this Flynn leak get out? Crickets. Nothing. They wouldn’t do a thing about it.
Then fast forward. I’m at dinner with the Australian Ambassador, and during the dinner, he’s furious. He says, “You guys just leaked out the transcript between my Prime Minister and President Trump.” I said, “You guys? Don’t look at me.” He’s like, “It had to come from the Trump Administration.” I said, “No, no. Why would Trump put this out? It can’t be true.” Of course, that breaks. And now you have another major leak that came from our side of the President of the United States talking to the Prime Minister of Australia. Then, of course, another leak with the Mexican President.
Now, here we are, we’re chasing ghosts in the closet on the Russia thing where they have zero intelligence reports and a phony intelligence report—the Steele dossier. We’ve now had three major leaks. I announce that I’m opening an investigation, because clearly what’s going on here is that somehow these intercepts are leaking out, and there’s got to be some process.
You guys may remember the term unmasking. That was a term at the time. So, I said, “Look, fine. We’ll do this Russia thing, but until you guys give me one ounce of evidence, we’re having a real investigation into how these leaks are happening.” We got no help from Comey, no help from McCabe, no help from DOJ, nothing. I don’t even think there was ever an investigation opened up to be honest with you.
So, I became persona non grata when it only took a few months to figure out, at least partially, how they were doing this. That was the time when I went to the White House to brief President Trump. At that point, I was down to only three places I could have dinner in Washington, DC, and I had to stay in the Capitol at night because I couldn’t go anywhere. I had fake news 100% of the time attacking me, making up lies about me. They’re hanging out outside my home in California, they’re at my wife’s school, they’re at my high school, they’re going to where I go to church. I mean, it was the craziest thing you’ve ever seen and for what? Because I had said that we’ve had three major criminal leaks here that nobody’s doing anything about. We’re investigating it. Oh, and by the way, I think we’ve figured out how they’re doing it. And yet I’m the one who then comes under all of the investigation.
What did they say at the time? You guys may remember—I got put under an ethics investigation. For doing what? Leaking classified information to the President of the United States. I mean you guys all know the President of the United States is the ultimate classification authority. So, there’s nothing that I could leak to him. At the time I was careful about the investigation, and I remember the media asking me, “Well, you could be talking to him about the Russia investigation.” “What is there, guys? I told you a hundred times there’s not any bit of evidence of anything that Putin or anybody else was doing. I told you that. I continue to say it.” And, of course, I had Schiff going out there saying every single day, “Oh, I can’t tell you what I’ve seen, but it’s really bad.” So, it was constant.
I just want to say this. At that time, because there was just an avalanche of fake news, it was pretty tough to find anybody who would stand with me. But there is one guy in this room that was definitely there the whole time, and that’s Tom Fitton.
I only tell you that story because it led to me deciding to leave the House. Here’s how it happened. I was dealing with the fake news, but at that time, I could use what I call the global PR wire—Twitter—and I could put stuff out. There would be 27 fake news stories, and I might have one real story that say John Solomon or Sara Carter or somebody like that would do. I would put it out on Twitter. At first I would get around 5,000 likes. By late 2017, nobody was seeing it. Then, we discovered in early 2018 that they were shadow banning me. I think that’s the first time everybody had heard the word—they were basically suppressing my posts along with a handful of others.
So, I had a real problem. I couldn’t use social media. I got on Instagram which I started to use because Twitter was hammering me. I shot up to 60,000 followers in the first two weeks. Well, today, I don’t know what it’s been—six or seven years later—I haven’t gone over 100,000 since then. So, I’ve been stuck at 100,000 on Instagram. Facebook was doing exactly the same thing to me. Then I wondered, how am I going to reach out? I had people from all over the country that were supporting me, so I started doing a weekly podcast. I would do the podcast and I would interview people. Tom’s been on there a few times. I would do it once a week. By 2020, I get on to a platform called Parler, and I was the first member of Congress to go onto Parler. All of a sudden, I just started growing and growing all through 2020. I get a call from Dan Bongino, and he says, “Hey man, did you know your podcast, when you put that thing out, it goes to the top 20 of news podcasts?” I said “No, I don’t even know where you find that, Dan.” But he says, “You’ve got to do video. You’ve got to get on YouTube.” And I said, “Well, it’s Google, but I can’t imagine that they would ban me there, too.” So, I start investing and doing the podcast on video.
The first one that I posted got 5,000 views. Then, over the course of the next six or seven weeks, I was down to, once again, almost zero. I had family members who had at least clicked the play button so I wouldn’t feel bad, but I was down to about 103 likes. I thought, “This is impossible. I can’t go from 5,000 to 100 while my audio podcast keeps going up. Even if people didn’t like to see me, there would still be more than a hundred likes.”
Then we started to detect things like the emails we would send out. When you click on it, it would go to YouTube but not my video. My podcast had a very creative name. I understand why search engines probably couldn’t find it, because it was called “Devin Nunes Podcast.” Okay? You would type in Devin Nunes Podcast, and nothing would show up. You couldn’t find it.
So, we find this company that had been around for a few years. They specialized in back-end video players. A company called Rumble—maybe you guys have now heard of it—they were based in Toronto. They were venturing out into trying to take on YouTube, and they were going to specialize in funny animal videos.
I go on to Rumble. It’s basically me and funny animal videos. That’s it. When I quit posting to YouTube, I had 10,000 followers. In three weeks, after my third episode on a platform nobody had ever heard of, I had 35,000 followers. Within four months, I had 350,000 followers on Rumble. In fact, Rumble thought, as they were watching all these followers come in, they thought I was working with U.S. Intelligence and running some op and it was fake. Well, what was happening is that I was being completely wiped off the face of the internet. That’s what was happening. And it was happening to millions of other Americans at the same time.
I wrote this little book about my experience and 95% of the news being fake. When you push it through these social media companies, it’s like a funnel. I call it the disinformation funnel. I like to use their own words against them. So, it’s a disinformation funnel where you start with 95% of everything being fake, and then they can actually send to your phone, your iPad, whatever it might be, exactly what they want to send to you. It’s propaganda and it’s destroying this country.
I wrote about this in July of 2020. This was before they suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was before they kicked President Trump and millions of others off every social media platform. And it was before, what I still think is one of the worst things to happen in this country. You had 30 companies ganged up to destroy another company—Parler. They were wiped off the face of the planet by companies that should not be able to do this.
Then I go around in 2021 saying, “Look guys,” I was telling all of my colleagues, “you guys do whatever you want, but I think we’ve got a problem here when I just spent four years of my life proving that the Russia hoax was a hoax. And over half of the people went to the polls on election day in 2020 and believed that Trump and Republicans had something nefarious to do with Russia.” How can that be? Well, it is because it’s the propaganda that’s being fed to everybody in this country and around the globe. That’s what’s happening.
I didn’t really know what to do. Parler wasn’t there, I was kind of in this desert walking around. I had my Rumble channel, but it’s tough to use Rumble. You know Rumble is great for a video player, but it’s tough if you don’t have a social media place to spread it out on. And, then I get this call from Donald Trump who says, “Hey, don’t you know something about this stuff? Why don’t you come and run this company?”
I was going to be Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee if we took over the Congress, but if I really believed that this is the most important issue at the highest level, this is going to be our best chance to do something about it. And that’s why I decided to leave Congress. This is the biggest challenge that we face. The control and dissemination of the Left’s propaganda.
We’ve had several challenges to get this company up and going, but the biggest one is we have to build everything ourselves. Thankfully, every conservative in America has figured out that if they’re not on Rumble 100%, they at least have a channel on Rumble. It’s an insurance policy. Rumble is building its architecture with cloud, video, and an ad system, and that’s essentially the rails we’re riding as a social media networking company. We have to have all of our own servers and databases. We have to build all our own code. I can’t call up some company for a quick fix to get something done. We have to have all of our internal people to do this. And so, despite all of that, we’re beholden to two entities: Apple and the Google play store. They have a total monopoly on the phones and how people get their apps. Apple has actually been good to work with, but we did not get on the Google play store until right before the election. So, we’ve only been really open for the whole United States of America on every device for four months now.
The other issue that we have is we’re going through a merger process. Trump had announced that he was going to merge with a SPAC – a finance company. And imagine that, but the SEC seems to not ever approve it, not respond. They just say that it’s under investigation. We’ve heard nothing in eight months. I know it’s not just about Donald Trump; it’s about the conservative movement. They can’t afford for us to have a billion dollars to go build this network, and that’s why they’re stopping us. So, we’re operating off of our seed capital and off of shear willpower of the former President of the United States. We are the third largest American social media company. You have Meta, Twitter, and us.
I’ll just close with this. Despite having a small development budget, we’re the fastest growing media company in history, and I always remind people of this. Donald Trump today has more followers on Truth Social than he had on Twitter when he came down the escalators before he ran for President. So, things are changing rapidly. The way that people are receiving their information is changing very rapidly. People are finding ways on the internet to get their information. If you look at Rumble now, you can go on there at night and find plenty of news to watch. And Rumble is just at the very beginning stages of what they’re doing to deliver content.
The key to all of it is we have to have a parallel internet. We cannot rely on any of these companies. If you leave with one thing tonight—that’s what we’re building. That’s what we’re building with Rumble. We’re building this so that if Tom Fitton gets cancelled by YouTube, he’s got a place to put his videos. If he gets kicked off of Twitter, he can come to Truth Social. If you need a place to get your cloud services, you can go to Rumble.
I think the biggest thing that we’re building is the ad network. Google controls 95% of digital ad space. 95%. And right now, we have an auction that we’re beta testing with Rumble. Of course, the fake news loves to attack us because we’re not getting the Home Depots and the GMs. But guess what?!? Every ad is full. We are getting advertisers and the auction is working and you know, nobody thought that that could be built. We’re in our nascent stage of building all of this infrastructure, and we’re only going to do it with folks like you in this room who will continue to spread the word and support this effort to build this parallel economy. Thank you.