Ep 367 ｜ China’s Real Threat & Dems’ Fake Impeachment ｜ Guest： Melissa Chen
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Summary
Melissa Chin of Spectator USA joins me to talk about why she thinks Joe Biden is soft on China, why we should be concerned, and what we can do about it. I also talk about the impeachment trial of Donald Trump and what it means for the impeachment process.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a great first half of your
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week. Today I have an awesome interview ahead with Melissa Chin of Spectator USA. She is an
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expert on China. She grew up in Singapore, so she is very familiar with this authoritarian regime,
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having grown up in proximity to it, and even under some authoritarian laws herself. And so she just
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has an amazing perspective on not just the threat of China, but specifically how she sees Biden being
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soft on China and what we can do about it, why we should be hopeful, why we should be concerned.
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So I'm excited for you to listen to that conversation. And then I'm going to tell you
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what is going on with this impeachment trial. I'm going to be honest, guys, didn't really know that
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was going on yesterday. I just slipped my mind. I am not on Twitter as much. Maybe that's why,
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but also this just seems so pointless, but I'll get all into that in just a little bit. So first,
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let me talk to Melissa Chin. Without further ado, here she is.
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Melissa, thank you so much for joining me. I want to talk to you about the Biden administration
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and their take on China. You write about this a lot for the spectator, and I just want to kind
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of get first your general take. What do you think the Biden administration approach is going to be
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to the threat of China. You know, I think so. Firstly, to kind of frame this, I think the Trump
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administration ushered in a very new bipartisan attitude towards China, which sees it not as a
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potential collaborator, a partner any longer, but more as a strategic threat or rival.
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And this position did push Biden quite sharply to the right, at least compared to where Biden was as
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vice president. And so you've seen even during the campaign trail, Biden was actually very hawkish
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on China. He called Xi Jinping a thug. He actually, I think in August, said that, yes,
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what's going on in Xinjiang is a genocide. So he has adopted a very hawkish stance on China,
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and that was very apparent since he started campaigning for the 2020 elections. And in
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terms of, you know, it's still early days in the Biden administration. And, you know, looking back
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in the first three weeks, people are hopeful that that has, you know, he's going to follow through
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on his rhetoric. But I'm a bit more skeptical, because he's presenting that he's very tough on
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China. And in part, it's not just that it's become bipartisan consensus, but also because that's where
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American public opinion is. So in a way, you know, it's it's he has to kind of meet the American
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public where they are. But in terms of actions, there have been some very questionable actions,
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or and in some cases, non actions by Biden in the first three weeks. So I could, you know,
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you know, parse it out in terms of where he was more hawkish, where he was more like appeasing.
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But a very good example of this sort of say, OK, let's let's talk about where he what he actually
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has been hawkish. Yeah. So recently, you know, they beefed up military presence in the South China
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Sea. But this was about two weeks after China sent about two dozen jets into Taiwanese airspace to
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provoke the Taiwanese. But there has that that's all that has happened. There hasn't been any verbal
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condemnation. He hasn't even met with Xi Jinping since he took office or even spoken to him. And,
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you know, that's probably one of the probably the only good sign from the Biden administration so
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far is this beefed up military presence there. But other than that, if you look at his actions in
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terms of executive order sign, it looks very much more like appeasement. So one of the EOs that he
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resigned it was pertaining to the Keystone Pipeline embedded in one of the clauses was was was a clause
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that blocked China from supplying electrical equipment to the US to the US power grid. And so
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he basically blocked this this clause. So now, you know, the possibility of China being involved in
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the US power grid is is is open. So just to clarify, so I understand he rescinded an executive order by
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Donald Trump on the Keystone Pipeline. And by rescinding that he also rescinded a clause which
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prevented China from having any control over our power grid. So now China does have the potential
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to have control over our power grid. Thanks. China and Russia. Perfect. So so that's what happened when
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Joe Biden decided to rescind this. It wasn't just the Keystone Pipeline. It also has to do with our power
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grid. Exactly. Which is a huge national security threat, I think. That's, you know, just that's
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just some one of the things that he has done in the last in the last two weeks. The other one was
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that he rejoined the WHO and the UN Human Rights Council. And, you know, for me personally, that
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that's like tacitly accepting Chinese corruption in these institutions, especially because he also
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rejoined the WHO before the investigation. There is a WHO investigation going on right now
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into the origins of the coronavirus epidemic. And they have a team for the first time on the ground
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in China, of course, overseen by the Chinese government, probably 24 hours a day. And and so,
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you know, he we're back now with the WHO and and almost like what has come out of this awareness now
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that the world has come to about Chinese influence in the WHO and how, you know, they have essentially
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co-opted some of these global institutions to to parrot their narrative to, you know, to kind of
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close one eye about about Chinese actions and how they were culpable in in in spreading COVID.
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Yeah. A lot of people don't know that Dr. Tedros, who is the head of the WHO, actually has a very
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he's he's also a communist himself. He comes from the the Communist Party. He has a very long history,
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not just of personal corruption when he was the health director of his country and covering up a
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cholera outbreak in Ethiopia, but also being in bed with China. He has had a long relationship,
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not just with the Chinese Communist Party, but with other communist leaders like Robert Mugabe,
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who he tapped as his goodwill ambassador before there was a ton of backlash about that because of
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how unfortunately tyrannical Robert Mugabe was in his leadership of Zimbabwe. And so the head of the
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WHO is very corrupt himself. He's a corrupt communist who has been in bed with other corrupt communists in
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the Chinese Communist Party. And so for us to for Trump to get out of the WHO, I thought was a really
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good move. And for Biden to get in, like you said, it just seems like a tacit approval of the Chinese
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influence and Chinese corruption in the WHO. And I think a lot of people just don't they don't know
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that World Health Organization. The name sounds really good. I don't know. I guess it's just a lot
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of ignorance. But surely the Biden administration isn't ignorant of all of that. Right, right. And and
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then the other the other thing that the Biden administration has done is to roll back this
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transparency rule on this Confucius Institutes, which are yeah, which are almost like outposts see the
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Confucius Institutes as outposts of the Chinese Communist Party's information exchange kind of
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operations. So they're basically like, they're billed as language learning programs that are usually
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affiliated with either a K to 12 school, or a college. If you enroll, you'll get to learn Mandarin, you'll get
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to learn about Chinese culture. And it's, it's that's what it's billed as. And a lot of people have taken, you
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know, lessons there to learn the language. But, but one of the one of the more subversive kind of
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purposes of this, this kind of organization is to spread communist, communist propaganda, and also
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affect or use or pressure universities to, for example, not discuss Taiwan, not discuss Tibet. And so
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they're, they're using that as leverage to, to control what can be discussed in universities and,
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and professors there, there've been faculty groups, national faculty groups that have sounded the
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alarm on this problem saying that, you know, university is supposed to stand for freedom of
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speech, but, but, you know, the Confucius Institute at my institution is, is, is actually controlling
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speech and determining or trying to mold what I can and cannot say in class. And so, you know,
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the, the Trump administration actually required these schools to actually start reporting and be
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more transparent and disclose details in the contracts, who is funding these institutes and,
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you know, little details like that. And the Biden administration just yesterday kind of quietly
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Is it, is it just an anti-Trump stance? Is he's just trying to rescind all the measures
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that were put forward while Trump was president? Or is there some kind of like ideological agreement
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between the Biden administration and the values of the CCP?
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Now, I think, so I think it's two things. The first one you mentioned, I think is, is,
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is, you know, pretty spot on. He did come in saying that he wanted to reverse, I mean, a lot of,
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you know, Trump's executive orders. And in part, that's what he campaigned on, right? I'm not Trump.
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The second thing is, I suspect also that there's this notion that any, anything that promotes cultural
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exchange is good. Anything that suppresses it is racist and bad. And I think, I think that's where
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that comes from. There is a push to kind of recognize such, you know, that, that Trump sort of being
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conservative on immigration, for example, for, for, uh, taking down spaces where different cultures can
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actually integrate and exchange ideas, um, is, is racist basically. And, and this goes also along
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with, uh, you know, Tom Cotton's suggestion that we should be scrutinizing, um, the visas that we give
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to Chinese students, especially at the post-grad level when it comes to, um, like, like STEM fields.
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So like say nuclear physics, a PhD in nuclear physics, maybe we should be, you know, be, uh,
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be a bit more, uh, scrutinize the incoming students that are Chinese to have Chinese passports.
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And of course, such a thing when Trump, when, uh, Cotton suggested it, uh, I think last year
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really erupted, um, the press erupted with like accusations of, of racism. So you can see that,
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you know, this is the kind of, uh, approach they're taking, I think, even with the Confucius
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Institutes because that's the kind of place where people get to meet and learn about a different
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culture. And so, um, anything that that's trying to, you know, take that away is, it's just a racist
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You can really see how, and you hear how, um, uh, the Chinese Communist Party has kind of like
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used the charge of racism against the United States, which is so popular, especially right
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now to say that America is just terribly systemically racist, that racism is our biggest
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problem. The Chinese Communist Party loves that. And they use that to their benefit to one, make
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people here kind of look away from their sins. They can, for example, get the support of the NBA,
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um, and, you know, kind of turn the NBA social justice passion towards the racist problems in
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America. And I think the same goes for academia, the same goes for some Democrats and some progressives.
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If they can kind of turn their attention towards how racist America is, they can kind of be shielded.
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Um, they can be shielded by that kind of social justice cause in a way to say that any criticism of
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China is actually just, you know, America's very racist roots manifesting themselves.
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Actually, I don't know if you notice a similarity between, you know, the criticism of Islamophobia,
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because criticizing, say, the theocracy of Iran, and say, their very poor record of human rights,
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for example, can be considered Islamophobic, which is racist, right, by proxy. It's become a synonym for
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racism. And by doing that, you are shielding, um, Iranian theocracy from criticism, which is exactly
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the same race card that the Chinese Communist Party wants to play because it shields them from
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any sort of criticism and, and they, they know what they're doing. Right. So, right. The other,
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the other thing, sorry. No, go ahead. Well, the other thing that the Biden administration has,
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has done is in the first week actually was to issue a memorandum effectively banning the phrases
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China virus or Wuhan flu, um, in the federal government, um, that, that seemed to be his
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priority, which, which is strange, right? Because it happened in the week that Taiwan was basically
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menacing Chinese airspace jets. And, you know, again, this for me was, was a very classic case of
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moral posturing because, you know, in the first place, um, this naming convention of, of tying a
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virus to its geo geographical location, where it was either detected or where it came from has been
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pretty much consensus, scientific consensus for the last hundred years. So nobody was up in arms about
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the Zika virus or the Middle East respiratory syndrome, um, or even Lyme disease, which, which is
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a place in, in Connecticut. Um, this has been just how, you know, epidemiology and, and, and virology,
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like this has been a common practice, but all of a sudden when it came to Chinese virus, there was
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this huge uproar about, about, uh, this kind of being a xenophobic statement that, um, is causing,
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um, violence against Asians in America. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think one of, again, this,
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this is very much in line with what the Chinese Communist Party wants to portray. They want to
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de-link China from the virus. I mean, you know, just their actions in terms of trying to steer the,
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the theory of how, of how this virus originated, um, very much in line. Like they've actually,
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state media has actually parroted the claim that, that COVID was actually created by the CIA or
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released by the U S military. Um, so, you know, so this only helps the Chinese government now,
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whether or not the rhetoric actually directly causes any violence or harassment, yeah, that's
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up in the air. As far as I can see, you know, I don't think there's been any proof that of, of
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correlation of causation. You do see correlation, right? It seems that, um, in the last year that,
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that hate crimes against Asian Americans who are on the rise that said crime in general has been on
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the rise in 2020. I mean, I think murder rates and, you know, robberies have all gone up in almost
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every major city. So how much of that is ambient racism and how much of that is directly caused
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because of COVID, um, is very difficult to establish, but of course there are going to be
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people who are, you know, just regular run of the mill assholes who are going to take it out
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and attack Asians for this. Um, but it's just never been proven to me that rhetoric is directly
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causing this because everybody knows where this is from. Everybody does like, you know, just because
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you shifted words and, and called it something else doesn't, doesn't really change the knowledge
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that this came from China. So I don't know what, you know, I mean, and also like how effective is
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this memorandum given that Trump is no longer in office. He's also been removed from every social
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media platform. So I don't understand why this was a priority for the, for the Biden administration.
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And by the way, if this was racist, if China virus is racist, we really have to revamp everything.
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Like we shouldn't be calling it the UK variant or the South African variant because apparently
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linking a geographic location to a virus is racist. So we, we just, we're just going to have to change
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everything if we're going to be consistent. Yeah. But it's, um, you know, it's, it's that worldview
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of intersectionality and critical race theory that the only people that are allowed to have any kind
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of negative connotation, um, associated with them, according to many progressives is, oh, the Western
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world, white people, and any kind of criticism of non-white, non-Western people is automatically
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seen as racist and wrong. And nevermind the fact that the CCP is the most racist regime and actually
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was ousting, um, African people during, you know, the height of COVID trying to say that they were
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actually the vectors for the virus, kicking them out of the apartments, kicking, kicking them out of
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restaurants, of course, colonizing South America and colonizing Africa. Um, but this, it's a very
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limiting worldview, this kind of racialized worldview, white, bad, non-white, good. It kind of causes you
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to not see evil and right and wrong correctly. Correct. And it only empowers tyrants, you know,
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everyone from Xi Jinping to Erdogan to, you know, other world leaders that basically have almost
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carte blanche to, to be a tyrant and not be criticized simply because they're, the amount of
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melanin and their skin color is a shield. This is why, you know, this ideology is so, is so dangerous
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because it, it prohibits us from, from viewing this issue with moral clarity.
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Absolutely right. And moral clarity is what we need, but we also need it from the Biden
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administration. And I, I hope, I'm, I mean, I can't say that I'm optimistic, but I hope and I pray that
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their actions on China actually show that kind of hawkishness and, um, that kind of toughness. And I will be
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glad and ready to praise any tough moves against China, even by the administration that,
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you know, I didn't vote for and whose policies I don't really support.
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Yeah. I hope the Biden administration is successful. I would say two things to look out
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for in terms of the difference also is that, um, Biden definitely has, you know, paid a lot of lip
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service to multilateralism. He's going to work with a lot of allies. He wants to plug us back into the
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international rules-based order and, and work with, um, you know, global institutions. And the other
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thing is actually Biden, you know, is, is probably going to rely a lot more on diplomacy to, to try
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to engage. Um, I'm very skeptical because, um, returning to that era of foreign policy seemed to
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have is what brought us to this point anyway, but I really, really hope that he's successful in
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challenging China because this is really existential for the United States and actually really for freedom
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around the world. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you for the work that you do and
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bringing awareness to these issues. Can you tell everyone for talking about it? Of course. Of
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course. Can you tell everyone where they can find you, how they can support you? Um, you can read my
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articles, um, at, um, just find my page, Melissa Chen on, uh, Spectator USA. It's a, it's a website,
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Spectator.us, or you can, um, just find me on Twitter, which is at, at sign, Ms. M-S. Mel Chen, M-E-L-C-H-E-N.
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Wonderful. Thank you so much, Melissa. Ellie, thank you so much for having me on.
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Okay. So President Trump getting impeached once again, exciting. The media just couldn't,
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they just, they missed, they missed Trump so much. Their rating certainly missed Trump so much
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that they were like, how, how can we get the ratings back up? How can we talk about our
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favorite subject, our favorite person we'd love to hate? Oh, we can impeach it. And so that's
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exactly what's happening right now. It is, um, just a show. It's, I feel like it is very
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unconsequential. It's very unsubstantial. The Senate has voted 56 to 44 that the impeachment trial
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is constitutional and that it should proceed. Obviously there's a lot of disagreement on that.
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The six Republicans that voted with Democrats were Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, Sass, Romney,
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and Toomey. Not too surprising there for Trump to actually be convicted. There would have to be 67
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plus votes in his favor, uh, which is unlikely. Uh, the Washington examiner is summarizing the
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impeachment trial like this. The vote to proceed with the trial means it will continue
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for at least a week. Um, so that's what, uh, the vote that said that the trial is constitutional
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did. The trial is going to continue to go on. Democratic impeachment managers will present
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evidence that Trump provoked the January 6th attack on the Capitol. You guys know, we've talked about
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this many times. I have been very clear about, uh, my stance on the Capitol and how it was wrong and
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how it was bad and how I believed that Trump could have been more responsible in his rhetoric and that
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everything that he has pushed or everything that he did push in the months after the election,
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in some cases just wasn't helpful. At the same time, uh, that can be a very slippery slope of
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saying someone incited violence, incited an insurrection, um, without them actually explicitly
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saying the words and actually visit or actually, uh, explicitly encouraging people to use violence and,
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uh, to storm the Capitol. Uh, it is a very slippery slope trying to accuse
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that person of inciting violence. Like you can see the consequences of that, right? Of basically
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saying all kinds of rhetoric or talking about election fraud in general, that that is all an
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incitement of violence and incitement of terrorism. Please, if you are on the left, just put, uh, put
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the shoes on, on your feet and think about what it would be like if you had an unpopular opinion
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or you were stating what everyone thought was a conspiracy theory, but what you believed is true.
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Like for example, um, the, the Russian collusion conspiracy theory, uh, think about if you were
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held liable for any violence, um, or any quote insurrection that was supposedly motivated because
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of something you believed in. I mean, we can look at that. We can look at a lot of the rhetoric
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of democratic lawmakers and Democrats in the media who carry false narratives about racialized police
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brutality. Um, in particular, in some cases that, uh, they jumped the gun and they say that a person
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was unarmed, for example, when he wasn't unarmed that then incite the kind of chaos and violence
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that we've seen in cities across the country. How would you like it if you say reposted, um,
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some kind of false narrative surrounding a police shooting, or you have pushed these false narratives
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that are propagated by groups like BLM and you were held liable for any violence that was seen
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as a consequence of that speech? Like that would be a problem, right? You see that how we really need
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to take a step back and think about, uh, the repercussions of saying someone incited violence
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if they did not explicitly incite violence. Like we have to have a very firm definition of what that
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actually means. You can say what you, what president Trump said was wrong. Uh, you can say
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that you didn't like what he said, or you don't like president Trump, or you don't like certain
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speech, or you hated what happened at the Capitol. I hated what happened at the Capitol too. I'm right
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there with you, but we have to be objective when we lay down these standards of what speech is actually
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condemnable, like, uh, through a conviction like this of a president and, uh, what is not,
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what should just be chastised. Uh, there's a big difference and there should be a big difference.
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Chief Justice Roberts presided over Trump's 2020 impeachment trial, but this time Senator Patrick
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Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont is presiding. He will also serve as a juror too. And he's already
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said he believes the president is guilty of inciting an insurrection. Uh, house impeachment
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managers showed a gripping video carefully edited to show Trump provoked the violent attack on the
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Capitol. Trump's defense team showed a video montage of house Democrats repeatedly calling
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for Trump's impeachment beginning soon after he took office in 2017, which of course, I mean,
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that's a good point. They have been calling for his impeachment for a very long time. The whole
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Ukrainian quid pro quo story also wasn't impeachable, but they have been wanting to impeach him and they
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have been calling him an illegitimate president, uh, since 2016. And it's just interesting that today the
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Democrats are saying how dangerous and how violence inciting it is to question the credibility of the
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2020 election. And I say that as someone who doesn't think that there was enough fraud to have changed
00:26:17.160
the results of the election in favor of Donald Trump. But the people who are saying that it is so wrong,
00:26:22.760
that it's so violence inducing and inciting to question the credibility of the 2020 election
00:26:27.780
also didn't accept the result of the 2016 election for months. They called him a Russian agent. And we spent
00:26:33.860
millions of taxpayer dollars on an investigation into what ended up being and what we knew all
00:26:40.700
along was a conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign only won because he was a Russian agent
00:26:47.380
and he was working with Russia in order to rig the election to win. I mean, that was a conspiracy
00:26:53.300
theory that again, we spent hundreds of thousands, millions of taxpayer dollars on investigating for
00:27:01.440
years, uh, in order to try to get Trump out of office that was led by the Democrats. And so for
00:27:07.620
them to say, Oh, it is just so dangerous. It is just so wrong. It is just so ignorant and imbecilic of
00:27:14.400
all of you to question at all the results of the election after they questioned the results of the
00:27:19.300
election for years and spent our money investigating into their pet conspiracy theory. Are you kidding?
00:27:25.040
Like, I just, I'm sorry. I just can't take their, uh, their integrity seriously. I just can't. I think
00:27:31.840
there's every reason for people to kind of roll their eyes at what's going on now. Um, like I said,
00:27:38.800
you can condemn Trump in a thousand different ways. You can criticize him in a thousand different ways.
00:27:43.220
I think that's fine, but you do have to ask yourself what kind of precedent this sets. Like,
00:27:48.520
are we just going to keep on exchanging power and using the power and the capital that we have
00:27:55.000
to ruin political opponents based on very little, uh, very little reasoning, very little grounding
00:28:02.840
that just doesn't seem very sustainable to me. That doesn't seem like a country that we really want
00:28:08.680
to live in. It doesn't seem like that is creating any sort of, of progress. And so, um,
00:28:14.840
it's a national embarrassment that we are, um, that we're even having this conversation about a
00:28:23.780
retroactive impeachment that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Um, it just, it, it, it doesn't
00:28:32.120
make to me any constitutional sense. It doesn't make to me any sort of legal sense. And again, you can
00:28:39.260
be as against Trump as you want to. I'm totally fine with that. I'm fine with criticism of Trump.
00:28:44.840
Um, but to say that this is justified, but it doesn't, the standards don't apply to your side
00:28:52.220
when you could be saying that, uh, plenty, plenty of Democrats rhetoric did in some ways
00:28:59.400
encourage violence or perpetuate false narratives and conspiracy theories that have encouraged the
00:29:04.460
violence that we've seen completely ruin cities over the past few months. I don't know. It's just,
00:29:09.280
it's, it's hard for me. It's hard for me to see that. It's hard for me to see the consistency
00:29:13.460
and the logic and the logic there. Um, like I said, I think that this is just a way for
00:29:20.060
Democrats to bring back their punching bag to try to distract people from the far left
00:29:25.960
progressivism that the Biden administration has been pushing. It's a way for media to get
00:29:29.940
their ratings back up. I mean, the democratic party and the media, yes, they hate Trump, but they love
00:29:35.980
Trump because Trump gives them, um, a way to be virtuous without having to be virtuous. I was
00:29:42.540
talking about, um, the other day on Twitter about how hating Trump became a personality trait for a lot
00:29:49.560
of people. It became like their most interesting fact that they would tell when they were introduced
00:29:54.240
to a group. And it also became kind of an arrow in their quiver, like a virtue arrow in their quiver.
00:30:01.320
Um, and that they would kind of use their hatred of Trump as a signal of their virtue. They could be
00:30:08.580
a terrible person in every other way, but if they hated Trump enough, that means that you're really
00:30:14.740
tolerant, that you're really compassionate, that you're really a loving person. I mean, we've seen
00:30:19.580
that over and over again. People get all the points in the world for hating Donald Trump. Um, even if the
00:30:25.240
rest of their life is in shambles and they're actually a very selfish, grotesque person. We saw that.
00:30:29.760
We've seen that a lot. Unfortunately, with some of the leaders of the Lincoln Project, they are
00:30:34.780
bowed down to by a ton of people on the left. Not everyone. There are a lot of true progressives that
00:30:39.680
still don't like the Lincoln Project and see them as the grifters that they are. But there are a lot
00:30:43.720
of people who bow down to the Lincoln Project for being so virtuous and for being so great and for being
00:30:48.400
true Republicans, um, because they hated Donald Trump and they hated all the Republicans that the
00:30:54.580
left hates. Well, as it turns out, one of the co-founders of the Lincoln Project has, has been, um,
00:31:03.300
trying to, has been harassing, sexually harassing, uh, young men for years and has, uh, offered
00:31:12.160
professional favors. This is according to the New York Times in exchange for sex. And so just realize
00:31:18.620
that hating Donald Trump is not a signal of virtue. Like it doesn't make you more moral than other
00:31:23.780
people. You can still be a really terrible person and hate Donald Trump. You can be a really terrible
00:31:28.940
person and love Donald Trump as well. Um, but I think for whatever reason, the standards of morality
00:31:35.400
and virtue in this country have become so politicized that people unfortunately see it as this virtue and
00:31:42.360
the signal of tolerance and love if you hate Donald Trump. Not so, not so. And I think that's probably
00:31:48.360
part of what this whole impeachment thing is about to show just how virtuous and, uh, peaceful and
00:31:54.980
wonderful Democrats in the media are and how bad Trump and his supporters are to let all of this
00:32:00.260
linger and to remind people of what they got rid of when, in the words of Bruce Springsteen,
00:32:06.580
we exercised the White House of its demonic force that is Donald Trump. So that's what's going on.
00:32:13.940
Some of you might disagree with me. Some of you might be all in favor of impeachment, but remember
00:32:18.860
impeachment is not reserved for just presidents that you don't like, or who said something that
00:32:23.340
you don't like. There needs to be a very exact, and I think a very narrow standard of what actually
00:32:30.400
incites violence and incites a quote insurrection. That's all my argument is not to justify anything
00:32:37.700
at all. Not to excuse or to condone or to encourage anything that was said, but just to say what
00:32:43.680
actually is impeachable and convictable when it comes to speech. I think that the bar needs to be
00:32:49.400
very, very, very, very, very high in a country with the First Amendment. All right, that's all I have to
00:32:54.920
say about that. I've got one more thing for you guys. I don't know if you guys saw the cat lawyer
00:33:00.640
that appeared in a viral video on Twitter. So this is according to The Guardian. The coronavirus has
00:33:08.480
been responsible for a series of video calls, stumbles and mishaps, and the phenomenon seemingly
00:33:12.840
reached its zenith this week with a Texas lawyer appearing before a judge as a cat after being unable
00:33:19.420
to change a video filter. If you guys are not watching on YouTube, you are missing out. The YouTube
00:33:28.480
version of this, if you're listening, comes out later in the evening. And so you have to watch this if
00:33:33.960
you haven't already. I'll go ahead and play it. I believe you have a filter turned on in the video
00:33:40.840
settings. You might want to. Can you hear me, Judge? I can hear you. I think it's a filter.
00:33:51.540
It is, and I don't know how to remove it. I've got my assistant here. She's trying to, but
00:33:57.300
I'm prepared to go forward with it. I'm here live. I'm not a cat.
00:34:10.060
Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. I think the panicked look of the kitten is really what made it because
00:34:18.460
I'm sure that this lawyer felt exactly the way that the kitten looked. And so apparently there
00:34:25.300
was like some filter that was on his Zoom camera or on his Zoom that he didn't realize was on there.
00:34:31.500
I don't know if it's because a child had been on there, but he didn't know it was on there. So he
00:34:36.200
gets on the Zoom call and his face is like a kitten's face. Like you can't see him at all if
00:34:40.600
you're just listening to this, but his voice is coming through. I felt bad for the guy. He didn't
00:34:46.460
know how to change it. And the other people on the call were trying to be respectful and serious,
00:34:51.340
but oh my goodness, that was hilarious. And I think a comedic break that all of us needed.
00:34:58.220
All right. That's all I got for today. We will be back here tomorrow. We are going to have
00:35:02.840
that Bible-focused episode that a lot of you have been asking about. It's going to be a
00:35:07.340
Valentine's-themed episode, but you guys are really going to like it. So I will see you back here then.