Trump announces a new policy for Afghanistan and why some on the right aren t happy about it. Plus, Steven Crowder destroys the Leftist Tears Tumblr, and we talk about why Trump s Afghanistan policy isn t popular with the right. Thanks to our sponsor ZipRecruiter for sponsoring the podcast. If you want to learn more about Zip Recruiter, go to ziprecruiter.co/OurAdvertisers and use promo code "UPLEVEL" to get 20% off your first month with discount code UPLEVEL at sign up.asp to receive $10 OFF your first purchase when you enter the discount code: PODCAST at checkout to get 10% off the entire month with promo code POWER10 at checkout. You can also get a free copy of Trump's new Afghanistan policy when you sign up for our newsletter HERE. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, visit gimlet.fm/sponsors and use the promo code: UPCOMING10 to get $10 off your purchase. We're working on a new ad-free version of the podcast, and it'll be live on Tuesday! Subscribe to our new podcast, Upfront. Subscribe, Like, Subscribe, Share, and Retweet! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Rate and review our new sponsor, Rate/subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave us a review on review by becoming a supporter! We'll be looking out for new sponsorships in the future episodes of Upfront! Thanks for listening and reviewing the podcast! Ben and Ben on Downhill Media? Thank you for listening to our latest episode of Downhill. Ben, Ben on the podcast Downhill Radio Ben Downhill and much more! - The Best of Ben and Downhill Road - Music by Ben Downey on SoundCloud by The Good Life Podcasts by . And much more. - Outtro by Ben and Brett on Outtro by Jeff Perlaver Outtrope outtropeps in the Good Morning Outtro Music by & much more is out! by Ben & Brett on this week's Best of Outtrozz (feat. by Mr. Tom Enjoyment? on the road?
00:00:41.000His is apparently hand-etched by blind nuns or something who just stared at the eclipse, but you can check this out, this Ladder with Crowder mug, over at CRTV.
00:02:36.000There's now a breakdown that's coming on the right.
00:02:39.000Some of the people who are sort of the quote-unquote nationalist populist types, the Steve Bannon's of the world, the Laura Ingram's of the world, the Tucker Carlson's.
00:02:46.000Those people are very upset with Trump's statement on Afghanistan, but I think that's because we've fallen into this trap when we discuss foreign policy of never looking at the choices that are actually on the table.
00:02:55.000Instead, we make up choices that are in our own heads.
00:02:57.000We make up choices that don't resemble reality very much.
00:03:00.000We don't go to war with the army we have, we go to war with the army we wish we had, in Donald Rumsfeld's famous phrase.
00:03:07.000We make up these situations in the sky where if we were just tough enough,
00:03:11.000Or strong enough, then everything would fall into place.
00:03:14.000Foreign policy is messy, it's muddy, it's murky, and there are no good choices in places like Afghanistan, which is a tribal place where there has never been a strong national government, there has never been a strong secular government in Afghanistan, it's been a warring hellhole
00:03:29.000For literally hundreds of years, the British were driven out of there in the 19th century.
00:03:33.000The Russians were driven out in the 1980s.
00:03:34.000The United States is not being driven out of Afghanistan, but there has been no strong centralized government in order to prevent the rise of the Taliban again.
00:03:50.000So to understand sort of where we are, you first have to understand where we've been.
00:03:54.000So we invaded Afghanistan after 2001, after 9-11, specifically because it was being used as a base by Al-Qaeda.
00:04:00.000And we offered the Taliban, you either give up Al-Qaeda, you either give up bin Laden, you stop protecting him, or we're going to come in invade your country and topple you.
00:04:07.000Mullah Omar was the leader of the Taliban.
00:04:10.000He said that it was more worthwhile for him to protect bin Laden than it was for him to turn over terrorists.
00:04:15.000And so we went in and we toppled the Taliban using the Northern Alliance.
00:04:19.000That quickly devolved into a corrupt central government that had to pay off all of these tribal leaders because the strongest leaders in Afghanistan were the tribal leaders from the beginning.
00:04:28.000And terror continued to be a serious problem in Afghanistan after we conquered the country.
00:04:33.000We struggled to build a working system there.
00:04:36.000This is a country that had no history of democracy or human rights, and went in there thinking we were going to be able to transplant democracy and human rights.
00:04:43.000That ended up being, in large part, a failure.
00:04:47.000President Obama came into office, and the first thing that he did is he said he wanted to get out of there, but first he had to surge troops.
00:04:52.000So we have to review what President Obama said.
00:04:54.000In order so that we know what Trump said last night, whether this was a major change or not.
00:04:58.000Remember, Obama wanted to get out of Afghanistan.
00:04:59.000More American troops ended up dying in Afghanistan under Obama's watch than under George W. Bush's watch, in large measure because President Obama surged troops, but he did so with a timeline.
00:05:10.000He said, I'm going to throw 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, but I'm going to take them out again right away.
00:05:38.000After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.
00:05:42.000Okay, the problem with this particular line, when he says that after 18 months our troops will begin to come home, is as soon as he says that, the Taliban knows all they have to do is just wait out the United States.
00:05:53.000Because if they just wait it out, then Obama's going to withdraw troops.
00:05:56.000And then, the idea was we were going to build up Afghanistan's security forces.
00:05:59.000Well, we built up some of their security forces, but then we didn't leave enough military advisors in place
00:06:04.000In order to really ensure that those security forces were capable of controlling any significant portion of the country.
00:06:10.000Helmand province particularly has turned back into the hell hole that it was before Obama, before Obama surged the troops in the first place.
00:06:17.000It's really become a disaster area and that's because of Obama's
00:06:22.000Myopic focus on getting out as soon as possible as opposed to achieving mission goals.
00:06:26.000He also talked about Pakistan in this particular speech.
00:06:29.000He suggested that we are going to forge a strong relationship with Pakistan.
00:06:32.000The problem is that Pakistan has no interest in forging a relationship with us that revolves around getting rid of the Taliban.
00:06:38.000The Taliban actually has substantial territorial holdings.
00:06:41.000In northern and western Pakistan, and has been a serious threat to the government of Pakistan for years and years and years.
00:06:49.000Obama made nice with the government of Pakistan, but then when push came to shove, he really didn't, right?
00:06:53.000When we killed bin Laden, he apparently didn't even clear that with the Pakistani government supposedly, because he knew that the Pakistani government might leak that to bin Laden himself.
00:07:01.000But his original vision was, we're going to be very nice to Pakistan.
00:07:07.000In the past, we too often defined our relationship with Pakistan narrowly.
00:07:14.000Moving forward, we are committed to a partnership with Pakistan that is built on a foundation of mutual interest, mutual respect, and mutual trust.
00:07:24.000Okay, and that obviously did not take place.
00:07:26.000And then finally, Obama's biggest mistake is he suggested that we ought to do nothing, we have to get rid of Gitmo, that it was U.S.
00:07:37.000This is always the apologetic foreign policy of President Obama, and it didn't end up helping us on the world stage in any real way.
00:07:44.000And finally, we must draw on the strength of our values.
00:07:48.000For the challenges that we face may have changed, but the things that we believe in must not.
00:07:56.000That's why we must promote our values by living them at home, which is why I have prohibited torture and will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
00:08:06.000And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights and tend to the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples.
00:08:23.000Okay, so this was also very George W. Bush-esque language.
00:08:25.000This talk about dignity of all peoples and freedom and justice and opportunity.
00:08:28.000The reality is that in Afghanistan, we basically have three choices, and we always had three choices.
00:08:34.000One was an overwhelming surge in order to pacify the country, and maintaining that surge as long as necessary in order to pacify the country.
00:08:41.000Number two was to get out completely, just pull out completely, right?
00:08:45.000This is sort of what Obama wanted to do and then reality overtook him.
00:08:49.000And that's why George W. Bush and Obama and now finally Donald Trump, a guy who campaigned on the idea that he was going to get out of Afghanistan ASAP.
00:08:55.000Somebody who in 2013 was saying Afghanistan was a foolish war we never should have gotten into.
00:08:59.000Now he is basically taking the same tack.
00:09:01.000All three of these presidents have decided the only thing that we can do is muddle through.
00:09:05.000We're not willing to expend the kind of resources necessary to actually occupy the country for 60 years, Japan-style or Germany-style.
00:09:11.000There is no government for us to overthrow in Afghanistan in order to ensure the pacification of the population, and so we're going to have to muddle through a long counterinsurgency.
00:09:20.000And Obama eventually ended up coming to that conclusion, and now President Trump has come to that conclusion as well.
00:09:27.000Is he is militating some of that policy.
00:09:29.000So he's changing some of the mistakes that Obama made.
00:09:33.000And he's getting a lot of flack on the right for this.
00:09:34.000He's getting a lot of flack, as I said, from Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson and the folks over at Breitbart.
00:09:38.000There was even a piece over at Breitbart today by a columnist named Brian Darling suggested that if he had known that Trump was going to do what he said last night, he might not have voted for him in the first place.
00:09:49.000I think that this is neglecting the fact that Afghanistan was the source of Al Qaeda that attacked us on 9-11.
00:09:55.000That if we were to leave these people to their own devices, they would quickly rebuild the terrorist bases that would be used to strike at the heart of the United States.
00:10:03.000And the rip on President Trump from the right is unrealistic.
00:10:07.000I think it's the isolationist right and the isolationist left.
00:10:12.000We tried it during Bill Clinton's era.
00:10:14.000This hands-off, leave them alone, they're not bothering us.
00:10:17.000And the result was the USS Cole and the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and 9-11, of course.
00:10:23.000The fact is that while it is unpopular to say this, the war on terror has been largely successful in terms of reducing major terrorist attacks in the West.
00:10:32.000We haven't seen anything remotely approaching a 9-11 since 9-11.
00:10:35.000We've seen small-scale terror attacks from people who have been recruited through the internet by ISIS, but that is not of the same size and scope as the fully planned
00:10:46.000Cell-based terror attacks that al-qaeda was pursuing in the lead-up to 9-11 and then including 9-11 itself so trump looks at this and he gets into office and His generals tell him look mr. President you can talk all you want about pulling out of Afghanistan But the fact of the matter is that you are going to have to be responsible for
00:12:01.000We held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David with my cabinet and generals to complete our strategy.
00:12:11.000This is the first time I've ever seen President Trump actually go back on something and acknowledge that new evidence had changed his mind.
00:12:18.000I'd like to see more of this from President Trump in different areas of his governance where he says, listen, I used to say a lot of things and some of those things were right and some of those things were wrong.
00:12:29.000When I see new evidence, I have to change my opinion.
00:12:30.000So good for President Trump for doing that.
00:12:32.000We'll talk about what his policy is and how it differs from President Obama's, because there are some significant similarities to President Obama's speeches and talks and policies in Afghanistan, but there are some pretty significant differences as well, I think mostly in the right direction.
00:12:47.000Before I do that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at MyPatriotSupply.
00:12:50.000So if you're looking at the world right now, and it seems like a chaotic place, if you're looking at the nuclear buildup in North Korea, if you're looking at Iran developing a nuclear weapon, if you're looking at Russia looking to make moves in the world markets and pushing into areas like Ukraine, if you're looking at China, which is getting more and more involved in antagonistic
00:14:10.000Make sure that your family is safe and taken care of and you don't have to worry about disaster striking because you're the only one on your block who's prepared.
00:14:22.000Number one, Trump says that he's actually thought this thing through.
00:14:24.000This, again, is a major difference from a lot of his other policies where it seems like he's just going off the cuff.
00:14:29.000Then, Trump says that he calls for victory.
00:14:31.000The problem that I have with Trump calling for a quote-unquote victory is that whenever, you know, Trump made a big deal during his campaign about saying, we never win anymore, we just, people, we never win, ever, no winning, ever, we haven't won.
00:14:45.000And we're not going to get victory in Afghanistan the same way that we got victory in Germany or Japan.
00:14:50.000Because again, there is no government to surrender to us.
00:14:52.000The Taliban are not going to surrender to us.
00:14:54.000They'll just continue to break down into smaller and smaller terrorist groups.
00:14:58.000So when you say victory, the American people expect the ticker tape parade down the middle of Fifth Avenue.
00:15:04.000The American people demand a surrender document signed on the deck of a boat.
00:15:09.000Okay, none of that's ever going to happen.
00:15:11.000When he says we're going to achieve victory, then he needs to define what victory is.
00:15:15.000Here is Trump talking about what victory looks like to him.
00:15:18.000First, our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives.
00:15:34.000The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory.
00:15:40.000They deserve the tools they need and the trust they have earned to fight and to win.
00:15:47.000From now on, victory will have a clear definition.
00:16:51.000You know, expectations of the big ticker tape parade are not realistic.
00:16:54.000And I think that because Trump had sort of pushed that expectation of victory in Afghanistan for so long, it's difficult now for him to back off that language, even though there's not going to be the iconic victory moment that people are looking forward to.
00:17:07.000There is a difference in some of his rhetoric from President Obama.
00:17:12.000So he is refusing, obviously, to pull out, unlike Obama, who said, we're going to pull out after a certain period of time.
00:17:18.000Getting out is the most important thing.
00:17:20.000He got a lot of criticism for this, Obama, and I think rightly so.
00:17:23.000Because the mission has to be defined by what our goals are, not by your political goals in getting out as fast as possible.
00:17:30.000What Trump did yesterday actually took a fair bit of political courage.
00:17:33.000He said, listen, we're going to stay there because we need to be there.
00:17:37.000Here he is saying that we cannot just pull out.
00:17:40.000A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and Al Qaeda, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11th.
00:17:55.000Okay, and he is right about that, of course.
00:17:57.000He then goes on to talk about Pakistan.
00:17:58.000So remember, President Obama talked about how Pakistan was going to be our new friend.
00:18:02.000They were going to help us in the war on terror.
00:18:05.000He said, listen, Pakistan is not being very helpful, and that's why we're going to build up democratic allies like India.
00:18:10.000I think this is a very important thing, what Trump did here.
00:18:13.000India is a democratic bulwark and an anti-Islamist bulwark against countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan.
00:18:20.000Building them up in opposition to the Pakistani government is something the United States should have been doing long ago.
00:18:24.000What can India do against Pakistan in terms of tamping down terror?
00:18:29.000Not much, but we can at least create allies in the region who are interested in working with us to tamp down terror, particularly along the India-Pakistan border.
00:18:39.000That if they don't do what we want, there'd be serious consequences, and those consequences may not come directly from us, but may come from our allies.
00:18:45.000Here's Trump directly calling out Pakistan.
00:18:47.000We can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.
00:18:59.000Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan.
00:19:06.000It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.
00:19:12.000Now the most important thing Trump did last night is he talked about timelines.
00:19:15.000You remember, I just showed you the clip of Obama saying we're gonna throw 30,000 troops in and 18 months they'll be out.
00:20:41.000McMaster wrote a very good book called Dereliction of Duty about American military policy in Vietnam.
00:20:46.000And one of his great critiques was this idea of graduated escalation.
00:20:50.000Which was pushed by Robert McNamara, who was the Secretary of Defense under JFK and then later under LBJ, this idea that we are going to gradually, slowly increase the number of troops and announce every time how many troops we were adding to the battlefield, telling the Viet Cong exactly what sort of opposition they were going to face.
00:21:23.000This is something that Obama pursued, but W didn't.
00:21:25.000This idea that the Taliban will come to the table.
00:21:27.000In fact, Obama actually set up an office in Qatar so that he could talk with the Taliban.
00:21:31.000That did not do anything except make the Taliban more determined
00:21:35.000Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
00:21:40.000But nobody knows if or when that will ever happen.
00:21:59.000Okay, well, you know, still, you shouldn't be leaving that on the table.
00:22:02.000If you don't want to negotiate with them, don't talk about negotiating with them.
00:22:05.000A couple more points, and I think these are good on Trump, in one second.
00:22:09.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at RealtyShare.
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00:24:21.000We will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands or try to rebuild other countries in our own image.
00:24:34.000Instead, we will work with allies and partners to protect our shared interests.
00:24:39.000We are not asking others to change their way of life,
00:24:42.000But to pursue common goals that allow our children to live better and safer lives.
00:24:48.000This principled realism will guide our decisions moving forward.
00:24:53.000Okay, the reality of the situation, however, is that when he says we're not going to nation-build, we are going to continue building up Afghanistan's security forces.
00:25:00.000It doesn't mean we have to build schools for them, but it does mean that we have to build up their security forces so that they can kill terrorists.
00:25:05.000And then they can use their resources to build schools.
00:25:07.000So this idea that we're not nation-building, it's a little bit of a false divide.
00:25:11.000When you go and you build up a nation's security forces to ensure their government is stable enough to take care of terrorism, that is in fact nation-building.
00:25:19.000The best thing I think that Trump did in his speech is he said we're changing the rules of engagement.
00:25:22.000President Obama was very strong on the idea that he was going to, in top-down fashion,
00:25:26.000Control the rules of engagement in Afghanistan.
00:25:29.000He was going to prevent our troops from being able to open fire on people if they didn't, if they'd hidden their guns.
00:25:35.000So there'd be situations where there'd be a terrorist and he would know that there were soldiers watching him.
00:25:40.000He'd drop his gun behind a car and run across the street and our soldiers were told, okay, don't shoot at that guy because he doesn't have a gun, even though they'd seen him with the gun one second beforehand.
00:25:49.000Trump says, I'm going to relieve a lot of these rules of engagement and free our troops to do what they need to do.
00:25:52.000Military commanders are now in charge.
00:25:56.000Finally, my administration will ensure that you, the brave defenders of the American people,
00:26:03.000We'll have the necessary tools and rules of engagement to make this strategy work, and work effectively, and work quickly.
00:26:12.000I have already lifted restrictions the previous administration placed on our warfighters that prevented the Secretary of Defense and our commanders in the field from fully and swiftly waging battle against the enemy.
00:26:28.000Micromanagement from Washington, D.C., does not win battles.
00:26:46.000So, I want to talk about the blowback from the right that you're seeing from people like Tucker Carlson, why I think it's misguided, why I think that they're wrong, and why Trump, I think, is right.
00:26:54.0004,000 troops may not be enough, but at least his reorientation towards the idea that he's going to push
00:27:01.000For a longer counter-terrorism strategy in Afghanistan rather than just a unilateral pullout.
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00:28:40.000So I've had my criticisms of President Trump.
00:28:42.000If you've been following the show for more than two minutes, you know that I've been very critical of President Trump when I felt that President Trump deserved the criticism.
00:28:49.000I think that his speech last night in Afghanistan was quite good.
00:28:51.000I don't think that it fulfills all of the promises.
00:28:54.000I don't think that we're going to get some sort of clear-cut victory.
00:28:56.000I don't, you know, he's been saying that he is not going to release to the American public how many troops are going in.
00:29:00.000That sort of prevents us from getting a metric on how things are going in Afghanistan, but
00:29:05.000The idea that he was going to pull out, putting that aside, I think is a good move by President Trump.
00:29:10.000And I think that while 4,000 troops may not be enough to ensure the goals he wants, at least he is aiming at right goals and he's correcting some of the worst mistakes of the Obama administration in Afghanistan.
00:29:21.000He's getting flack from the populist Steve Bannon, Laura Ingraham, right?
00:29:41.000Again, the war on terror has been a success.
00:29:44.000While everyone likes to talk about how it has not been a success, the fact is that when Obama started to withdraw us from the war on terror, that is when you saw a dramatic escalation of terror attacks in the West, specifically from the areas where Obama withdrew.
00:30:18.000She's not the only one who's making these critiques.
00:30:20.000A lot of the people warm with Trump were warm to him because they're sort of Pat Buchanan isolationists.
00:30:24.000Tucker Carlson, who used to be much more interventionist, has flipped because I think Tucker likes the popularity of being isolationist on foreign policy.
00:31:22.000He says that he wants to rely on not importing all these people into the United States.
00:31:26.000But the fact is that there are going to be people who come into the United States regardless... Listen, I'm in favor of President Trump's travel ban.
00:31:32.000But I think that the idea that it's going to prevent terrorists from crossing the border in a myriad variety of ways... His travel ban only applies to seven particular countries.
00:31:41.000It does not apply to people who are coming through Europe.
00:32:27.000If the goal is simply to keep Islamic extremism from our shores, why is a war in Afghanistan more effective than, say, a vigorously enforced travel ban?
00:32:35.000Okay, and again, the answer is because this vigorously enforced travel ban, it mitigates the risk, it does not eliminate the risk.
00:32:42.000Everything that we can do to mitigate the risk of massive terrorism seems worthwhile to me.
00:32:46.000Over at Breitbart, they're ripping Trump, too.
00:32:48.000I think a lot of this now at Breitbart is being driven by the idea that they're trying to prove that Steve Bannon, the chairman over at Breitbart, made a big difference to Trump.
00:32:55.000Like, if Bannon were still in the administration, things would have changed.
00:33:15.000Okay, or maybe you're just mistaken on policy and Trump is right and you're wrong.
00:33:18.000Okay, those are words that don't frequently leave my lips, so definitely take note of them when they do.
00:33:23.000You're seeing people like Lindsey Graham cheer.
00:33:25.000The problem is that Lindsey Graham is such an interventionist that whenever he says anything, people tend to go, oh boy, not Lindsey Graham.
00:33:30.000But Lindsey Graham is warm on this policy.
00:33:36.000I'm proud of the fact that President Trump made a national security decision, not a political decision.
00:33:42.000I'm proud of the fact that he listened to the generals and most proud of the fact that he shows the will to stand up to radical Islam.
00:33:48.000I'm relieved that he did not take the advice to withdraw, which would have been disastrous or create a mercenary army.
00:33:55.000So I'm very pleased, very thoughtful, very inspiring speech.
00:33:58.000And I can assure you a lot of people in Congress will be behind the president.
00:34:03.000Okay, so I think that that is correct, by the way.
00:34:05.000Now, in other news where Lindsey Graham is pleased, but this time you shouldn't be, this is according to McClatchy today.
00:34:18.000Despite the president's campaign vow to deport so-called dreamers.
00:34:22.000So now they're trying to push him, Trump's aides are trying to push him to enshrine DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, executive amnesty.
00:34:30.000Remember Trump promised he was going to get rid of it?
00:34:31.000Now they're saying to him, you should give citizenship to these kids and in exchange you should ask government to build the wall and to ensure that legal immigration levels are brought down.
00:34:42.000I see no reason why Trump should have to bargain with Congress on this particular point.
00:34:45.000As I've said for a long time, I'm not against the idea that certain children who arrived here in the United States and are beneficial to the country should be allowed to stay.
00:34:53.000I think that illegal immigrants should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
00:34:56.000They should have to go to the back of the line, but if they're good for the country, if they're useful for the country, if they served in the military, for example, or let's say they're going to college in engineering,
00:35:05.000And they're good for the economy, and they pay taxes, and they have families.
00:35:08.000I don't see why we would toss those people out of the country.
00:35:10.000I don't think they have the right to be here, however.
00:35:12.000And that means that you should deport the ones who don't belong here.
00:35:16.000Trying to judge everybody as a class, I think, is foolish.
00:35:18.000This attempt to now trade away one of Trump's key campaign promises in order to achieve another of Trump's key campaign promises.
00:35:24.000You want to piss off Breitbart, you want to piss off Carlson, you want to piss off Coulter.
00:36:10.000He's the only sighted person left in Britain, or one of the few.
00:36:13.000And so, it's actually, the beginning of this book is the inspiration for the beginning of 28 Days Later.
00:36:17.000You know, like the person who did 28 Days Later said, because the beginning of the book is the guy waking up in the hospital, and he's got bandages around his eyes, he takes off the bandages and the streets are empty, there are blind people wandering around, you know, that's the inspiration.
00:36:59.000Like, that's, like, we move between the moon and the sun pretty much every month, which is why the moon looks like the sun looked yesterday.
00:38:19.000And there's some people who think we should take this a little more seriously on the Twitter.
00:38:22.000Because for us, this is just a lot of fun.
00:38:24.000We've been watching the Path of Totality so you can catch a DC on screen if you run.
00:38:28.000Do you know that it goes vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
00:38:33.000Okay, so Shep Smith having too much fun with the eclipse.
00:38:36.000Yeah, I think that everyone went a little crazy.
00:38:37.000I went out on the streets of California, and it was in L.A., and it was the first time I'd ever seen anyone look at the sky in L.A.
00:38:43.000because the sky here is brown because of all this fog.
00:38:45.000This is the first time anyone had ever looked at the sky.
00:38:48.000President Trump, however, looked at the sky.
00:38:53.000Okay, so a lot of people I know glanced at the sun for a second because they didn't have the glass, and they're like, I want to see what's going on.
00:38:59.000Um, President Trump had the glasses, and because he's just a contrary guy, he just decides, you know what, I'm gonna look directly at the sun for no apparent reason.
00:39:06.000Like, people are literally shouting at him, don't look at the sun.
00:39:41.000It's going to be sad when in three days he's clinically blind and he can't read the teleprompter anymore and then things are really going to get wild.
00:39:46.000But, you know, he's such a contrary guy that I think that what we ought to do at this point is suggest to President Trump that he definitely needs to cut, no matter what he does, he should not cut taxes.
00:39:57.000He should definitely not cut taxes and then he will just destroy the IRS immediately.
00:40:03.000Speaking of science that actually does amaze me, actually really cool science, this is very inspirational.
00:40:07.000There are a bunch of videos out now of people who are deaf and have been given cochlear implants or devices in their ears that allow them to hear for the first time.
00:41:00.000So the media is going nuts because Katrina Pearson was on Fox News, and they're suggesting that Katrina Pearson, the former Trump spokeswoman, who is not good at her job, she's not a super articulate person, they're suggesting that she was defending slavery.
00:41:11.000She's clearly not defending slavery in this clip, but the media have decided to make it seem as though she is anyway.
00:41:16.000Here is Katrina Pearson talking Confederate monuments and slavery with Wendy Osifo, professor at Johns Hopkins University.
00:41:23.000So this is not a symbol of patriotism.
00:41:25.000This is a symbol of hatred and division.
00:41:28.000And while it is a piece of American history, it's not necessarily the good part of American history.
00:42:00.000Okay, so Katrina Pearson is really bad at her job, but she's not actually defending slavery, okay?
00:42:05.000What she's suggesting is that it is good to know American history, and slavery and Confederacy were part of that history, not that those were good things.
00:42:16.000So, before people start saying that Katrina Pearson is defending slavery, maybe they ought to just recognize that never, never attribute to pro-slavery malice what you can attribute to incompetence, because that's actually what's happening here.
00:42:26.000So, time to deconstruct a little bit of culture.
00:42:28.000We haven't done a serious deconstruction of the culture in a while, so today we are going to do just that.
00:42:33.000So, we'll begin with the song Wild Thoughts.
00:42:39.000We didn't cut the video for Wild Thoughts because apparently it's nipplicious.
00:42:43.000This is according to Mathis, who said that it would have required a good amount of work and many lost man hours for people to blur out the assets of Rihanna in this particular music video.
00:42:56.000But here is what this garbage song sounds like.
00:43:00.000This song, again, is called... What the hell is this stupid song called?
00:44:33.000In any case, he also... So DJ Khaled leads off.
00:44:37.000Okay, we'll play some more of this garbage song.
00:44:39.000It's bad music, and apparently Rihanna is also... She gave up on singing a long time ago, and now she sort of just, like, breathes into a microphone, and sounds as though she swallowed a kazoo and now is attempting to sing through it.
00:45:56.000When I think hot, I think washing machine.
00:45:59.000And then I love that she can drop lines like, white girl wasted on that brown liquor.
00:46:03.000Things that you could never say with races reversed, right?
00:46:07.000Black girl wasted on that vodka, like, that would be racist.
00:46:10.000But white girl wasted on that brown liquor, totally fine.
00:46:13.000Does any of this actually promote, like, good image of women?
00:46:16.000And she's supposed to be—one of the things that I love about the
00:46:19.000Modern pop music scene is that feminism is basically like what a raunchy, randy dude would be thinking about at 2 o'clock in the morning after watching porn on his computer.
00:46:29.000That's basically what feminism is now.
00:46:42.000It sounds like Jon Snow strangled Littlefinger and now Littlefinger's trying to sing.
00:46:47.000I mean, it's just bad stuff all the way through.
00:46:50.000And again, you wonder why all these guys have a vision of women, that women are just sex objects who want nothing more than to get raunchy with them?
00:46:58.000Maybe it's because pop is designed to play on those male emotions, and so there are a lot of women who are taking advantage of that, and it's generating a bad image of women generally.
00:47:06.000I don't think that it's a good thing overall.
00:47:09.000Okay, so, there is my critique of a garbage song called Wild Thoughts.
00:47:13.000I was not inspired by DJ Khaled shrieking his own name.
00:47:16.000I've been informed that he's a good person.
00:47:18.000I was also told by Mathis that he's a good person because he loves his child.
00:47:21.000I like that, I do like that the standard for being a good person now, maybe he is a nice person, I don't know, but I like that the standard for being a good person in pop culture world is basically you don't kill puppies in your spare time.