Ep 675 ｜ Want to Topple the Elites？ Mock Them ｜ Guest： Seth Dillon
Episode Stats
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Summary
Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, is here to discuss Libs of TikTok, and other journalists being punished for calling out children s hospitals for mutilating kids. And we re also talking about why Seth s appearance on Joe Rogan s podcast, as well as his appearance on the podcast. We ll get into all of this and more.
Transcript
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Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, is here to discuss libs of TikTok and other journalists
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being punished for calling out children's hospitals for mutilating kids.
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And we're also talking about why mocking really matters to a healthy society, as well as his
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As always, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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That's American meat delivered right to your front door.
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All right, before we get started in that conversation, I wanted to play you a little clip from Seth's
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interview with Joe Rogan when they were talking about abortion and Seth's pro-life position.
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I thought he did a really good job, and I wanted to make sure that you saw and heard
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You don't have the right to tell my 14-year-old daughter she has to carry her rapist baby.
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To look that woman in the eye who was the borson, do you understand that?
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If a 14-year-old child gets raped, you say that they have to carry that baby?
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I don't think murder is an answer to – I don't think murder fixes a rape.
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When we start talking about harmful misinformation and the types of things that are considered
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– like that I say or that we tweet or the jokes that we make that are considered harmful
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misinformation, I'm like, well, what about calling that baby a clump of cells?
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I think that's harmful misinformation because then you're encouraging people to kill it like
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I think abortion is health care the way that rape is lovemaking, if we want to use rape as
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I think it's – I think they're opposites and it's like a – these are euphemisms
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We're talking about a procedure that ends an innocent human life and we're calling it
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And this is why it's such a human issue because I see what you're saying.
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So our friend Seth held his own and he is here to discuss that.
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First, I want to hear about your experience on Joe Rogan.
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Were you – I mean, you didn't seem at all nervous or anything like that, but was it a
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I mean, I had all my friends leading up to the whole thing talking about how this is
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And so they were kind of drilling it into my head that it was something to be nervous
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But we did spend some time at his studio, probably about 40 minutes before we got going
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So we were talking and hanging out and he was giving us a tour and everything, which can – you
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know, that helps to relax you a little bit, just getting to know the person you're about
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But, I mean, it's a very casual conversation, just like this, you know, just sitting here
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And I feel like I know him because I've listened to him so much.
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So I was definitely nervous when I got in the chair.
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But, I mean, you're sipping on whiskey, so you calm down pretty quick.
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But, I mean, he will, like, he will really drill someone that he disagrees with, but he
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And that's what I noticed in his conversation with you about abortion.
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I'm sure a lot of people have seen that clip now, that he was really pushing you for a
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minute, especially when he made it personal, when he was talking about, so you're telling
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me, my 14-year-old daughter, but you really held strong.
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Like, how were you feeling during that exchange?
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I had a sense when that whole conversation started, and I don't know if you saw the
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whole thing, like, there were clips that were taken of it, but it went on for, like,
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And at one point, I finally said, you know, if you want to move on to something else, we
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You know, I was trying to give him an out so that we could change the subject and move
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Not because I don't want to talk about that subject anymore, but, you know, it was definitely
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a, it was probably, it was the most notable exchange in the interview.
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It's the one that got the most attention, and I think for good reason.
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There are a lot of people on the right who will defend life, but not in all circumstances.
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You know, they will be willing to make exceptions, and they are willing to try to compromise in
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some cases, except, especially these extreme cases where you're talking about, like, a teen
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You know, I think that if life is valuable in some circumstances, it's valuable in all.
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It's not just valuable if the mother wants the baby.
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It's valuable even if she doesn't want the baby.
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It's valuable even if the circumstances that brought the life into existence were tragic
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Um, so, you know, it was, it was definitely tough when he made it personal, because Joe
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So he was talking about how, you know, you have no right to tell my daughter.
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And, uh, and it's not, you know, I, I did, um, I was very conscious of the fact that there's
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going to be a lot of people watching that and listening to it.
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And I wanted to just stay calm and reasonable and not get sucked into kind of the emotional
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And, uh, because that's really the point of bringing up that case, that's an emotional
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It's, it's going for that outlier, the really crazy circumstance and trying to get a wedge
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in so that you can, you know, put the whole pro-choice argument through on the back of
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And, uh, and I tried not to get sucked into that and just stick to my guns and say, look,
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you know, if it's wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human life, it's wrong even in
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And that's not, it has nothing to do with my right to say that to your daughter.
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It has everything to do with the right of every human being to live.
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And you could tell that he realized that he kind of needed to back off a little bit, that
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you weren't going to back down and that you weren't going to kind of acquiesce or change
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your definitions or narrow your definition of life.
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And that's also what makes him really good is that he kind of like his podcast is kind of
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Like there's those really tense moments where you're like, oh, I'm not sure if those
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I can imagine that was like a little intimidating, but you didn't seem like you were off your
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I tell everybody, I'm just glad that I didn't like, uh, say something really stupid and
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I'm really glad that you didn't throw up or else that would have been like the viral
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moment and no one would have seen you defend life.
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It would have just been like Seth Dillon throws up all over Joe Rogan's podcast.
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Um, what's the reaction that I know you've gotten a ton of support from the right, but
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I've also seen some crazy messages and comments that you've gotten from other people who I
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It's, you know, I, I'm sure you get this all the time too.
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It's, it's, you got the two extremes, you know, the, the unbelievable support and praise
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and, uh, reinforcement and just the thank you, thank you, thank you for standing for
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I mean, some of the most beautiful messages that I've gotten were from, uh, people who,
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um, their mother was raped and that's how they were conceived.
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And they're like, look, thank you for standing for life.
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You know, I wouldn't be here if my mother had aborted me.
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And then there's also the, you know, obviously the vitriol, the hatred, the, uh, the cursing
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Um, one, one guy even actually threatening my family and saying that he would come after
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my kids, you know, that had to be reported to police.
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So, um, it's, it's a, it's one of those subjects, you know, this is, this is one of
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And it's, it's crazy because, and when I, when I posted that, I actually posted an image
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And I said, you know, all I said was we shouldn't kill babies.
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That's like my, my, my, my argument is not that women shouldn't have rights or, you know,
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that women are less than men, or, uh, I'm not saying something egregious and outrageous.
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So yeah, why is, why is that getting people so fired up?
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Well, it's just like any other idol, I guess, when you go after someone's idol, no matter
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how obvious your statement might be, that's going to make something really angry when you
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try to change or take away the thing that people worship, which I think an abortion is
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not really necessarily worshiping dead babies, but worshiping the God of self.
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And the God of self does demand, you know, killing and sacrificing good things on its altar.
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Like testing people's idols just makes them angry, which I guess is the same reason why
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When you say something like, Hey, I actually don't think that we should mutilate the genitalia
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of children, something that seems like it would be really obvious, but has gotten people
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And that's what I want to talk to you about next is that Libs of TikTok and everything.
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Obviously, you know about all this and have been talking about this.
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And that's why I want you to explain exactly what's happening.
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She has been kicked off Twitter this most recent time for not just saying that it's wrong to
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mutilate the genitals of children, but also showing that this is happening at hospitals,
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And now she's been suspended from Twitter for that.
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I mean, usually what happens, and you've had this experience yourself, I know, where
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you'll tweet something and they'll want you to delete it, right?
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And if you delete it, they'll let you back onto your account.
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And in this case, they didn't flag any specific tweets and say that this tweet was a violation
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Instead of doing that, there just seemed to be this mass reporting that was happening of
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the account in the wake of this report that we did about this children's hospital that
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was admitting to, by the way, on recording, performing hysterectomies on girls younger than
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Two different people at this hospital said that they do that.
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And of course, they immediately call it misinformation.
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If it's false, it's the hospital that provided us misinformation, not us providing the public
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But anyway, it's it's yeah, the whole thing with Twitter locking up the account, I think
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there was just a mass reporting of the account and somebody at Twitter looked at it and decided
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You know, they have a they have a process they go through.
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They'll give you this seven day suspension before they give you the permanent suspension.
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Sometimes they'll just perma ban you, but we expect the next will be a permanent ban.
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And you tweeted because apparently so kind of in this whole realm of children's hospitals,
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as you know, but maybe not everyone listening knows that there have been several journalists,
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including libs of tick tock that have just posted on Twitter, the publicly available
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information of several children's hospitals, Boston Children's Hospital, Seattle Children's
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I mean, a lot of children's hospitals admitting that, hey, yeah, we're performing double mastectomies.
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We are castrating young boys and girls who are confused about their gender.
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People are being reported, as you said, for misinformation, even though, again, this is
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And the media's reaction has been not to, wow, I can't believe these barbaric atrocities
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But wow, I can't believe people are noticing and I can't believe people are talking about
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And then there was apparently a bomb threat to Boston Children's Hospital.
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Matt Walsh, Billboard Chris, all of these other people.
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Well, this is their tactic for suppressing and silencing anybody that criticizes what
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And by the way, it's not even necessarily criticizing.
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You can just simply take one of the flyers for their family-friendly drag shows and post
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And if it gets enough attention, they'll try to take you out, even if you didn't say anything
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You could just simply share this stuff and they'll treat it.
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It's the weirdest thing, the way that they respond to it.
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But yeah, I mean, with this Boston hospital, you have this bomb threat that was called in.
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And, you know, this has been this is this has been I'm suspicious of it for the reason that
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it falls right in line with, you know, their narrative so so neatly.
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You know, the left loves hoaxes that support their narrative.
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They have more demand for hate than is in supply.
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And I suspect that that's what's happened here, because the lives of Tick Tock and the
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supporters of lives of Tick Tock who are outraged by these practices are outraged for one reason.
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We're not going to incite people to threaten a hospital and our followers aren't going to
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show up in or call in bomb threats at a hospital in the name of protecting children.
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So I think that this was probably a deranged leftist who's trying to set the stage for saying
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that we incited violence here because that's their argument.
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Their argument is that any criticism of any of these things amounts to incitement to violence.
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And I'm really curious why that standard doesn't apply to them, because they engage in all kinds
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of target harassment against people that they don't like.
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You know, Media Matters wrote a hit piece about you recently, right?
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Um, does that not amount to incitement to violence against you?
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You know, they, they, they said things that aren't true, but apparently that's just, you
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We haven't lied about family friendly drag shows.
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And I, when I say family friendly, please note the scare.
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There's nothing family friendly about that garbage.
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We just report the facts and they say that it's incitement to violence.
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Um, and so this Boston thing is just the latest, uh, where they're trying to get us wrapped
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up in this and say that, you know, it's not just lives of tick tock, but you mentioned
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Matt Walsh and some others who had been really critical of this hospital and others.
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And, uh, and they'll say that, you know, we're trying to incite violence again.
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We don't, the argument that we hate people, we hate trans people, we hate gay people.
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We care about children and we don't want children to be castrated, mutilated, sterilized, drugged.
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And we want to draw attention to where this is happening.
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And everybody, every reasonable person should be outraged if it is in fact happening.
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If we, if we were wrong on that report, if these hospital staffers were admitted incorrect
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Speaking of like the double standards for violence and family friendly drag shows, did
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you see that story out of Roanoke, Texas that was having, they were having a family drag
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I mean, what a dystopian phrase, almost as dystopian as gender affirming hysterectomies, but they
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were having this drag show and kids were there.
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I mean, basically strippers men and, you know, they're scantily clad with fake boobs on dancing
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for tips in front of kids and Antifa self-proclaimed Antifa was standing in front and, you know,
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black block with their guns, with their long guns.
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They've got people up on the, up on the roofs looking for protesters protecting this drag
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And they have signs that say like, keep Roanoke gay, whatever.
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And yet we hear the president of the United States, people on MSNBC consistently say, oh,
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The right is threatening violence if they don't get their way.
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It's not even that that's just a little bit wrong.
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So what are we supposed, what are, what are we supposed to do?
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Like with this double standard of not just reporting, but of justice?
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Like, how do we push back against a system like that?
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Well, I mean, pointing it out repeatedly and on the biggest platforms possible is, is crucial
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I think reasonable people can see right through this nonsense that they are, in fact, doing
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I think the problem is that we're losing our ability to do that.
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You know, it'll, it'll, it's only a matter of time before Libs of TikTok won't be on the
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I mean, maybe the sub stack will last a little bit longer than the Twitter account.
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Who knows how long sub stack will last if someone goes after the payment processor behind
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You know, so this is where the, this is where the fight is right now.
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We are fighting for the right to object to this widespread, um, depravity targeted at children
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that this it's targeted at corrupting our children.
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And we're, we're barely hanging on to the right to even object to it, which is crazy.
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You mentioned a moment ago too, that, you know, it's so dystopian talking about these
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phrases like family friendly drag shows and gender affirming care, which is a terrible
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One of the more evil euphemisms I've ever heard for something that's really atrocious.
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Um, we, I feel like we've become almost numb to how crazy it is.
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I know you and I both think that it's really crazy, but we get so used to talking about these
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You go back just a few years and these things would have been absolutely unfathomable by
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And we're, we're, we're now like kind of numb to it that it's just, it's happening every
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It wasn't that long ago that people were denying that there was such a thing as a family friendly
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Like you go back merely weeks and people were saying, no, that's not even happening.
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And it's so common that we don't even find it as objectionable as we should.
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That's what's scary to me is we need to maintain this sense of outrage that this is really,
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And we have to continue to stand up and fight against it with every breath that we have
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and for as long as we can until they shut us all up.
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They simultaneously say it's not happening and it's good that it is just like so-called
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And if it is, but it's awesome that it's happening and you're a bigot for even, uh, for even bringing
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Which continues to make y'all's job at the Babylon Bee kind of difficult.
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Um, so you talked about like, who knows how long Substack is going to be there?
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Who knows how long any of our accounts are going to be on Twitter?
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I'm just like waiting for the day that I get permanently banned like James Lindsay, which
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And I saw that Truth Social, according to Axios, um, they were kicked off Google Play, the Google
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I don't know if you are, um, but they are, Google Play is saying, Google is saying that,
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Obviously I'm having a hard time believing that a similar thing kind of happened to Parler,
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And so it's like, where do we even go if the plot, if we can't even build platforms anymore?
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I mean, yeah, that's the, it's the content moderation that they're getting knocked for.
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You know, they don't have enough, they don't have appropriate procedures in place, according
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to Google for dealing with, um, content moderation and taking down content that Google doesn't want
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You know, you, you've got Parler and, uh, and, and True Social and some of these other
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apps that, that want to be able to be distributed widely through these app stores, but they're
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really beholden to the app stores and the, and the terms that the app stores put in place
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for what they moderate and what they don't moderate.
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And obviously these are big tech companies that have all the, you know, all these insane
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progressive ideas, all this ideology that that's being shoved down everyone's throats.
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They are affirming it and they're building it into their terms that you have to affirm
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And so even if you want to have a free speech platform, you can't because you still have to
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abide by their rules and you still have to do content moderation based on what they say
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It means that there is no public square where free speech exists anymore.
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And, uh, and so something needs to be done to deal with that.
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I'm optimistic, honestly, that something will be done to deal with that.
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I just don't know when it's actually going to happen.
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Look, you know, Elon Musk's promise to, to turn Twitter back into the de facto town square.
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I don't know if you necessarily have any inside knowledge, but is that off the table
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Is there any hope that Elon Musk is going to take over Twitter?
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Um, if I did, I couldn't reveal it, but I, I don't know.
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I still, I can't make up my mind on whether or not Musk is, uh, is really legitimately
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trying to get out of the deal or if he's just trying to work out a better deal.
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Um, you could make an argument, I think, uh, you could make an interesting argument for
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I think that it would be good if it was in his hands.
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Like Bill Maher said, Twitter does need a new sheriff.
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Get it out of their hands and put it, put it into somebody else as somebody who actually
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And I know that, you know, Musk is by no means a, uh, uh, a conservative.
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Um, but if he values free speech, then, then that's a good thing.
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Um, but ultimately, you know, we can't, we can't depend on super wealthy, uh, uh, benevolent,
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um, saviors to, to come in on a, on a horse and save us.
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Um, there needs to be something that's done either through Congress or through the Supreme
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There needs to be some kind of, uh, through the, you know, the appropriate channels where
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we actually preserve the first amendment, where, where speech, where people are actually
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I know we, as Republicans typically say, we don't want to rely on the government.
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We don't want to rely on politicians, which I agree.
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I would love to be in a position where we don't have to rely on people in power to advocate
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But I mean, Roe v. Wade was overturned because of the political will, not just of the people,
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uh, in the state, but also the, the lawmakers in the state who made a law that then made
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We have to elect representatives who have the political and moral will to not just do something
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about censorship and ensure that free speech is actually preserved, but also a lot of the
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moral atrocities that we're talking about, which is why I like Ron DeSantis.
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I mean, he's willing to do everything that is constitutionally allowed, all the tools that
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are constitutionally available to him to use his power to push back against things that
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I just think that that's the new era that we're in, that we have to kind of be comfortable
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with politicians exercising power on behalf of good things.
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And it's not the power of force where you're compelling somebody to believe something that
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they don't want to believe or do something that they don't want to do.
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Um, it's the power that's used to safeguard what's good and true and, uh, and preserve,
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And so, you know, it's obviously it's twisted and, and, and distorted when they criticize DeSantis,
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you know, they, they criticize him as being a tyrant who wants to take away your rights.
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Um, but everything that I see that he's done has been a fight for the preservation of freedom,
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I mean, we do need, we do need leadership with a backbone.
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We need leaders who see these problems for what they are, who aren't, who aren't numb to
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them, who aren't willing to give an inch and are, and are willing to fight and say, look,
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we have to use the power at our disposal, uh, to preserve the good, the true and our freedoms.
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Um, and if we're not willing to do that, I mean, if, if anyone's not willing to do that,
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then we got to vote them out and replace them with someone who is.
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You recently tweeted, which you've said this in a variety of ways.
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Some people think we're improving morally by making fun of fewer things.
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We're more depraved than ever because we're accepting and affirming what should be ridiculed
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Some people would say, maybe people who identify as maybe the tone police, they would say, no,
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we're not going to get anywhere by ridiculing people, by rejecting people, by making fun
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We just need to, you know, engage with these people and engage with these issues.
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Why do you think ridiculing these ideas is important for morality?
00:27:03.720
Well, yeah, I mean, that goes, I think you can make a moral case for mockery and I've
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tried to make it, uh, over the last couple of years.
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Um, I put it another way, the way that I said it on, on Rogan show was the, the absurd has
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only become sacred because it hasn't been sufficiently mocked.
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You know, we're talking about these insane ideas, these things that are so unbelievable,
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but you know, we've become kind of numb to them because they're so commonplace now.
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Um, they're not just commonplace, they're sacred, they're untouchable.
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Well, because we took them seriously and it's not, this is not about, this is not about attacking
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people personally and making them feel bad about themselves and bullying them into believing
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This is about, uh, examining bad ideas that are harmful, that can hurt people, that will
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impact our kids and holding them up to scrutiny, uh, criticizing them even harshly, brutally
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If it's an absurd, insane idea that would be harmful if it played out in our society, then
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we should be mocking it to the sidelines so that it's never adopted, so that it never becomes
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popular, so that, so that kids, young people see it for what it is and laugh it off instead
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Imagine if we had done that more effectively over the last several years.
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I think that comedians, and I, you know, I was making this point with Rogan and he pushed
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But yeah, I think comedians bear some of that responsibility, especially satirists, because
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I put, um, like I was telling him, I put satirists in a different category than comedians.
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You know, comedians, comedians tend to just make jokes for the sake of making jokes.
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And oftentimes they're just really silly punchlines.
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Um, they don't necessarily have any kind of moral concern behind them.
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The satirist usually has a moral concern behind his jokes, though not always.
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Some, some of our jokes are just pretty stupid and silly too.
00:28:59.520
Um, but when you're doing religious satire, especially, there is definitely moral concern.
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Satire, religious satire is the marriage of wit and moral concern together and using humor
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Um, and so, you know, when people, when people object to the tone, you get the tone police
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or you get the people saying, oh, Jesus wouldn't make fun of others and he wouldn't mock and
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It's not about attacking people and making them feel bad.
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We're not running around with a knife, trying to stab someone and hurt them.
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We're more like, this is the analogy I use with Rogan.
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We're more like the surgeon who's using a scalpel, trying to excise something bad before it kills
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You know, it's like, it's like trying to cut out these social cancers.
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Well, in part, because we didn't do enough to push back on them, to ridicule them.
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So, um, I, I honestly, I think, I think, you know, who knows, maybe I'll write a book on
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that subject because I think it's an important topic.
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I think that we need to do more to defend, not just the rightness of, of ridicule in certain
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Um, but the effectiveness of it and why we're suffering so much from, from being susceptible to,
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especially in the, with the minds of young people, these really insane, harmful ideas
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that are, that are, that are taking a huge toll.
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If you just look at the stats on like teens right now, like how, how depressed teenagers
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are, um, you've got so many things feeding into this.
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Obviously there's the social media, all the, all of those trends, but we're, we are as a
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society, we are purposefully and successfully confusing countless kids so that they don't even
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know what and who they are and then the solutions that we provide to them irreversibly damage
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And that is something that we're not going to subject to ridicule.
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Is there anything more deserving of ridicule than that?
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And I do feel like it's the younger generation that sometimes, especially like the liberal
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younger generation that is, uh, the most averse to that kind of mockery and that kind of derision
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because of one thing that you just mentioned, like the pressure that comes not just with social
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media, but also being in school to go along, to get along and to put your pronouns in your
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profile and to say, yeah, trans women are women.
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You're not, your brain isn't even allowed to question it because you are so scared of being
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bullied or being excluded or being called a bigot.
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I mean, that's been true since the beginning of time that teenagers don't want to be excluded.
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It's an awkward time, but especially with not just peer pressure, but with pressure from
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the media, pressure from politicians, pressure from the culture at large to all be thinking
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I think a lot of them are probably afraid to laugh at the things that maybe they know
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And that's how, I mean, that's how the thought police works.
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That's how like this dystopian language that we're talking about works.
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It works to limit even your range of thought, not just your range of language, but your range
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of what your mind is even allowing itself to imagine.
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And that is why I think mockery, that is why I think satire is so important because it gives
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your mind permission in like a funny way and maybe a seemingly more permissible way to think
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about the things that you have been told are forbidden.
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That's one reason why I think it's so important.
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I also think that if you, you know, if somebody is, if somebody is telling you with a straight
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face that two and two make five, and, and this is literally a person who's just abandoned
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rationality on purpose, like they, they're not crazy.
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They're just, they've bought into the importance of insisting that two and two makes five, even
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You can't appeal to that person's reason because they've abandoned their reason.
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If you don't have reason, you can at least ridicule it, make them look silly.
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And, uh, and, and expose how ridiculous their, their way of thinking is to other people on
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And I know, you know, this because you're, you know, you're out there in the public sphere
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and debating people on Twitter and debating people on your show.
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You're not always going to change the mind of the person that you're talking to.
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In fact, you'll rarely change the mind of the person that you're directly talking to,
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but you're definitely going to be influencing the people on the sidelines who are listening in.
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Because a lot of them haven't made up their minds and they're just waiting to see who
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And if you can make something either, if you can either refute it or ridicule it and make
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it look silly, then you can influence those people.
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I mean, it's, it's, it's not like a, it's not like you're resorting to ad hominem to avoid
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And it's not even, it's, I would say it's not even ad hominem when it is, when it's
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satire or when it's, I mean, sometimes humor, of course, can be a personal attack, but satire
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I mean, you're making an ironic point about something that happens to be true.
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Like I had people, some people, Christian women typically say that like my Elizabeth Warren
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video where I pretended to go to the pregnancy center and say, this is so, you know, dangerous
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and awful saying, you know, we're told to respect our leaders and this is disrespectful.
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I'm like, well, it really had nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren herself.
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It had to do with this very destructive and dangerous and damaging idea that the very centers
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that are providing all of the resources that the left says that women need in order to choose
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life, that Elizabeth Warren is demonizing them.
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And of course it also like it, uh, doubled in the role of showing people like what a pregnancy
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So I think that there is an absolutely necessary wasn't to make Elizabeth Warren feel bad about
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You know, it wasn't, you weren't attacking her personally to, to go after her.
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There's a, there's a, there's another point that you're trying to make.
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And that's usually where they, that's usually where they get it wrong is they try to go after
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your, misunderstand your motives and try to act like the most important thing in the world
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If some feelings get hurt in the process of, of us, uh, protecting kids from being castrated,
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I mean, your feelings, uh, feelings don't matter nearly as so much as children's, uh, bodies
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and rights, um, uh, preserving and protecting them.
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So, you know, and by the way, and this is an important point to the outrage, the feelings
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They're pretending to be offended so that they can get you to apologize so that they can basically,
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And I tell people all the time, you know, never censor yourself and never apologize to
00:36:05.320
these people who you, who you don't actually know, apologize to someone that you know and
00:36:09.000
love who you actually genuinely offend when you do offend them, but don't apologize to
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random people on the internet who are using fake outrage as a tool to bludgeon you into
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And I'm talking about in this context, never apologize for that, which you're not sorry
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If you say something that, uh, you know, someone calls you, who knows racist, transphobic
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And the only reason you're saying sorry is because people misunderstood you or took you
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Give a sincere apology to someone that you care about and who actually will take your
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I remember there was this, um, this happens, uh, gosh, like liberal woman.
00:37:03.860
But there is this woman who, she owns this like baby wrap company, baby carrier company.
00:37:10.820
And she was, she made this post, oh, I'm patenting this baby wrap.
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And when it was just Instagram was worse than it usually is.
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And all of these activists came to her page and said, you know, how dare you a white woman
00:37:29.580
You know, African women have been using this type of like baby wrap for thousands of years,
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So she did this whole apology where she was crying and she was saying like, I've wanted
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And she decided that she wasn't going to patent the wrap anymore, which is absolutely
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And it just goes to show that the apology doesn't matter.
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If she would have just moved on and not said anything, those people would have gotten
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Well, and it's not just that they don't want really actually want your apology.
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Um, but you also, you also do more damage when you apologize, because what you're doing
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is you're feeding the mob and strengthening it and encouraging them that this kind of behavior
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And so what you, what you're doing is you're, you're setting other people up to be in the
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same position that you were just in by encouraging that mob to go after others and try to get that
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So, you know, I think we, I think we take the power away from them when we refuse to
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I wish there were more people who understood that because really, honestly, you can like
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Uh, even the ones that you would think and hope wouldn't apologize.
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Sometimes if they have a big enough platform and they're worried about losing sponsors or
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whatever, there's a lot of pressure on them and they cave, they cave and, and, uh, and they
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The average person can help with that because there was another story that happened right
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There is this like a baby sleep trainer who has a huge social media presence.
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And someone revealed that her family had given like $1,700 to Trump back in like 2018.
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And so they took all of her proprietary videos that were behind a paywall.
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They made them public so that she couldn't make money on them.
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She had friends with big accounts that unfollowed her talking bad about her.
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And at the time, all I did was post, Hey, um, you should message this woman to my followers
00:40:06.240
and just encourage her and just tell her that you support her and that you're thankful for
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And she ended up sending me this like really long, wonderful, and like very encouraging,
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but also it wasn't necessary because I didn't do anything, but letter just saying like, that
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All of the messages from people saying, thank you, stand strong.
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She was like, that is why I kept going and did not back down.
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She came back to social media a couple of days later and said, I'm here to keep serving
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So we can share the arrows, whether you're in the public eye or not, like you can share the
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arrows with the people who are feeling the heat.
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And instead of saying, hey, oh, I'm so glad that that's not me.
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I'm glad that I'm not the one getting bullied right now.
00:41:07.680
And if everyone did that, maybe we would all have the courage to not back down.
00:41:13.720
That's a really good point because you need something to counterbalance, to counteract the
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insanity, the pressure that's coming to silence yourself or to apologize or whatever.
00:41:36.120
You had Elon Musk on your show and you guys talked about a little bit about the Bible and
00:41:45.440
There is some pushback about like how you guys talked about Christianity and the gospel
00:41:51.960
Tell us a little bit about that, like what you kind of thought about the criticism and
00:41:56.600
how the conversation really went from your perspective.
00:42:04.100
I think any time you do something like this and it has this much visibility, you can't make
00:42:10.280
I think I think every time we publish a headline, somebody gets upset and offended by it.
00:42:14.980
Anytime we do an interview, somebody is upset and offended by something that we said or
00:42:19.700
In this particular case, though, you know, we you know, we did this we did kind of like
00:42:28.300
And and, you know, some people weren't happy with that.
00:42:31.140
They actually wanted us to just present the gospel really straightforward to Musk.
00:42:34.360
And and and and I think that I think that maybe some of the misunderstanding there is that
00:42:40.340
from our perspective, you know, we didn't have him on our show so that we could pull out
00:42:45.000
our Bible and try to get him to convert on the show.
00:42:47.980
We had him on our show so we could hear him out.
00:42:50.840
And, you know, we I think that we've done a good job so far of fostering and developing
00:42:55.220
a relationship with Musk and some good questions were raised in that discussion and there will
00:43:03.400
I mean, we've continued to stay in touch with him and in contact with him since then.
00:43:06.740
So I think I'm personally one of these people who believes when it's when you're approached
00:43:11.060
to evangelizing, sharing the gospel, apologetics.
00:43:15.880
There are a lot of intellectual objections that need to be cleared out of the way first.
00:43:19.860
There's a lot of relationship building that needs to happen.
00:43:22.280
I don't think that it's always advisable, necessary or right to just drive, dive straight
00:43:29.480
into a straightforward gospel presentation and try to get someone to pray the sinner's
00:43:35.280
In some cases, you can really turn somebody off and and and you could end up undermining the
00:43:41.520
relationship that's already there that would have given you a better opportunity down
00:43:46.100
So do I think that we handled everything perfectly in that interview?
00:43:50.280
I would go back and change some of those things.
00:43:54.220
It's not like you guys had been preparing for that for three months.
00:44:01.600
So I think we did as good a job as we can can do with it.
00:44:05.720
I don't really have regrets that, you know, where I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry.
00:44:12.360
We did a great job of preserving the relationship.
00:44:17.100
And I hope we'll continue to have more conversations with him.
00:44:19.200
We did talk with him offline after the interview was over for almost an hour.
00:44:21.980
So there was more conversation that happened off camera than you saw on camera there with
00:44:27.500
So, you know, people love to be critics and and that's fine.
00:44:33.440
But, you know, there are plenty of conversations that I've had that I am sure people are like,
00:44:42.860
And I mean, it's it can be difficult in the moment.
00:44:47.620
I mean, I'm confident in the Lord's sovereignty and we don't have time to get into the debate
00:44:53.700
But I think we both agree that the Lord is sovereign and hopeful that he can use any seeds planted
00:44:59.860
in that conversation, water them and give them growth.
00:45:05.580
And he talks about how not every conversation or every discussion or debate is necessarily
00:45:10.640
about winning, but about doing everything you can in that particular conversation with
00:45:17.320
that interaction to plant good seeds, make them start asking questions and thinking for
00:45:23.520
You just don't know what the Lord can do with that.
00:45:25.620
So I do wish I do wish like in that conversation when he brought up that he thinks that Jesus
00:45:30.060
is a good moral teacher, for example, and he brought up some, you know, love your enemies,
00:45:34.780
you know, turn the other cheek, that kind of stuff and doing others as you would have
00:45:40.660
You know, he's citing some of these things and saying, you know, Jesus is a good moral teacher.
00:45:43.440
And I do wish in hindsight that I had pressed him on that to say, well, yeah, he also, he
00:45:49.680
I mean, is he, you know, and pull out the whole, you know, liar, lunatic Lord thing, the
00:45:54.160
Is he, if he, if he made these outrageous claims about himself and he was either lying or
00:46:00.320
insane, then he certainly wasn't a good moral teacher, you know, so, so you've got to, you've
00:46:06.020
got to figure out exactly who he was based on what he said.
00:46:08.740
Um, and I think that, you know, the best explanation, uh, from my perspective is that he was who
00:46:14.960
And that's why I can't, I can call him a good moral teacher is because he was an honest
00:46:18.480
person who was very sane and happens to be the son of God.
00:46:22.220
Um, Musk would have to wrestle with that and try to decide, you know, how do I, how do I
00:46:25.900
account for the fact that I consider him a good moral teacher while he's out there claiming
00:46:31.360
Uh, you know, that, that doesn't make any sense.
00:46:33.380
The guy's, the guy's a madman or a liar if he's, uh, if he's not actually God.
00:46:36.680
So, um, I would have pressed him on that, but you know, we didn't have time.
00:46:49.140
Um, you, one thing I want to ask, did you think when you decided to start running the
00:46:54.200
Babylon Bee that you would be as busy as you are like out front speaking at these conferences,
00:47:00.260
doing these interviews, like as much traction as you get on Twitter, like, did you think
00:47:06.120
that you would kind of become a spokesperson, not just for satire, but really for a lot
00:47:18.400
I thought I would be kind of behind the scenes running the business and, um, and that we would
00:47:24.560
But I think with, with all of the attacks on us, there needed to be a response.
00:47:28.400
Um, you know, we needed to have our wits about us and we have to, as much as we want to keep
00:47:32.380
things light and bring levity to the situation, there are things that we have to deal with
00:47:36.980
Um, and I think there's been a lot of opportunities for me to go out there.
00:47:40.020
The conversation with Rogan was a really good one, um, to, to give a, you know, a serious
00:47:46.060
take and perspective on these real issues that are impacting us.
00:47:57.320
And we found ourselves on the front lines, defending all of these things.
00:48:00.900
And so, no, I never, I never expected to find myself, uh, in the midst of a battle for the
00:48:05.660
preservation of freedom and the restoration of sanity.
00:48:07.620
That was not, uh, on my radar, but we're here and we're just, we're doing our best to, uh,
00:48:12.580
to speak the truth, to do it boldly, uh, to use humor as much as possible.