Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Dr. Robert Epstein & Kevin Williamson ｜ 8⧸21⧸19
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Summary
On this episode of the podcast, we have a special guest, Dr. Robert Epstein. Dr. Epstein has been looking into Google and thinks we are in trouble. He says 2020 is going to be even worse than 2016. Also, we are going to talk about the mobocracy of red flag laws, and some fundraising efforts from a political party on gun control.
Transcript
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Hey, welcome to the podcast. I've got a great one for you today. Dr. Robert Epstein is going to be
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joining us. He is he's a guy that's been looking into Google. He has been warning we are in real
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trouble. We were in trouble in 2016 because Google is manipulating algorithms and search results
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and it can change a large number of voters. And he says 2020 is going to be even worse.
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Well, now he's under attack only because Donald Trump tweeted this guy is a Clinton supporter
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and Hillary Clinton has come out against him. And now he is quite concerned about what's going to
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happen to him. Another one caught in the the rat trap, if you will, of political correctness and
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the mobocracy of America. Also, we're going to talk about the mobocracy of red flag laws and
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and some some fundraising notices that are coming out from a political party on gun control. And
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you'll never guess which political party is behind it. Then you don't want to miss Kevin
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Williamson. Kevin Williamson, one of the best writers, author of the new book,
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The Smallest Minority Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics, joins us all on today's podcast.
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The numbers are beyond horrific. Every day in the United States, a hundred people are killed with
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guns and hundreds more are shot and injured. Is that true? Hundreds, hundreds of people are shot and
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injured by caught by guns every day in America. Is that true? Hundreds? Well, I mean, you have what,
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40,000 deaths per year from guns. Um, so I guess I guess it would have that, that, you know, of course,
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it just means, um, uh, that also includes suicides and all the disclaimers, but that's over a hundred
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of just, just deaths. So it's probably true. You know, we should probably separate these out from
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violent criminal kind of things. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. These, like these death numbers
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include like a guy, you know, uh, about to assault, you know, slit a woman's throat and a police
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officer shoots them. Like that's included in that number. Right. Like there, a lot of these are
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just, you know, can we separate those out? Let's just have a separate amount because I mean, you know,
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one of the main things here, well, let me just get back to this. One of the main things is the next
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line. Nearly two thirds of all yearly gun deaths in this country are suicides. Now, do you really
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think that taking away a gun, by the way, that's not an AR two thirds of all of the gun related deaths
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two thirds are, are suicides? Yeah. And if you, if you think that that is a gun problem, you're going
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to have to explain why countries like Japan with no guns have a much higher suicide rate than us or
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Russia who has a gun ownership rate of one 10th of the United States yet has a much higher murder
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rate and a much higher suicide rate. In Pennsylvania, gun violence claims over 1500 lives every year
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with gun suicides comprising 63% of all firearms deaths in Pennsylvania. 65% of veteran suicides in
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our state involve a gun. Oh, we should take our guns away from veterans. Every day told an argument
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to make. I mean, let's, yeah, let's argue to the people who've been defending our country that and
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who, who have trained with these weapons and done everything that they could to, to, to protect
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these liberties. Yeah. Let's take their guns away. Let's take veterans guns away. Wow. What a wonderful
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idea that is. The everyday toll of gun violence in America is utterly heartbreaking. And this violence
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routinely shocks the collective soul of our nation. We look for solutions to end America's
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epidemic of gun violence. One sure way to reduce firearms death is through the implementation of
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red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection order laws. To date, these laws have been enacted in
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17 states and the district of Columbia. Oh, well then that's a good idea. Back on February 14th,
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there was a one year anniversary of Parkland, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My proposal, Senate bill 90 would
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allow our judges to temporarily remove firearms from people in crisis who pose an imminent threat
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of harming themselves or others. Red flag laws. Now, which party sent this out? You're setting us up
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here. This is Senator Tom Killian, the ninth district, uh, in, uh, and a Republican in Pennsylvania
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sending to all of his supporters. Republicans. Is this who you are? I mean, there's a lot of support
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for red flag laws among Republicans. Yeah. Well, the second is good for you. It's good for you. You're
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not, you are no longer, you are no longer a, a constitutionalist. You cannot consider yourself
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a small government constitutionalist. If you believe in, in gun control and infringement, we're not
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talking about, look, I have no problem. If you are, um, deemed dangerous after you've had the chance
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to testify, you are innocent until proven guilty. We cannot cross this line. You are innocent until
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proven guilty. The red flag law says some accuser can go to court and say, you know what? They're very,
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very dangerous. They're very dangerous. I've been, look, I was married to them for a very long time
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and, uh, the threats. Oh, you would not believe the threats that they're making. You don't think
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vengeance, uh, just, just pettiness would get involved. You don't think that there's someone
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in your family, perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe you're lucky. My no in, I know in my extended family,
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I would not count it out that somebody in my extended family or relations would say,
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oh yeah, yeah, I was, I was at a family reunion. The guy's unstable. Oh, he's absolutely unstable.
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You could have people sitting at this desk with you that would make claims like that to the courts.
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I mean, if you've ever been through a horrible divorce. Oh my God. Go back to, uh,
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you don't even have to go. You could go to one of the brothers or sisters or uncles or aunts or
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anybody else that just was angry. Why was Barack Obama our president? Why? Well, he won a Senate
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race in Illinois. Why did he win the Senate race in Illinois? Well, he was in a very tight race against
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Jack, Jack, I want to say Jack Ryan, but that's the character, right? Yeah. Who was the guy? I can't
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remember his name. Uh, Ryan was his last name who went through a very nasty, uh, divorce with an
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actress, uh, who in the divorce, uh, proceedings, uh, accused him of all sorts of crazy stuff that
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somehow Barack Obama's people got unsealed. And then eventually his opponent, Obama's opponent
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had to drop out of the race. Uh, it is Jack Ryan. Thank you. Does it end up to be true?
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I, you know, after, I don't think so. Uh, you know, obviously wasn't there. Um, uh, and afterwards,
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you know, after the divorce happened, they, there was a, a cooling off period and, oh, well,
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he's not that person and blah, blah, blah. You're going through a divorce. This happens all the time.
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Your husband loves guns, loves guns. And you want to bilk him for everything, every penny he's got.
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Okay. That's not an unheard of, uh, uh, scenario because you're, you're being pushed by the
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attorneys. You're angry, whatever it is. You're telling me that America, you can't see a husband
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or a wife doesn't matter. Yeah. Say, you know what? You're going to give this to me or I'm going to
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talk about your guns. It's objectively worse the other way, right? Let's say a woman is maybe having
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an affair and the guy's very angry about it. And she has a gun to protect herself against an angry
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man. And the man goes and says, you know what? She's nuts. She's been threatening people. I think
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my children are in danger. Go take her guns. They go do that. Then she's vulnerable from him.
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Right. I mean, it is, it's, it's a terrible thing. And we've tried this red flag law thing out
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recently, uh, on another issue. It's called me too accusations. Uh, we've, where we've just been like,
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you know what? Yeah. Yeah. Just take all their power away, take their jobs away, throw them out
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of society. And then we'll figure out whether they actually did it or not. But then this,
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what makes this worse is that's not involving the government or the court system. Right. That's
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just public opinion. This is public opinion. That's bad enough. This one is saying, no,
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we deem you guilty before you even have a chance to answer the charge. Yeah. And it's, it's,
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and your reputation being of high quality is not a constitutional right. People can say all,
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they have all sorts of terrible opinions about you. I don't know if you've noticed that some
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people have terrible opinions about you even Glenn. It's true. Um, but you know, constitutional
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right is your right to have bare arms. So we're taking away a constitutionally guaranteed thing
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with no, I mean, cause like red flag laws already exist. Red flag laws are when you go and you say,
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hey, you know, we need to get this person is really erratic and he's acting and we need to
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have him committed, right? Involuntary commitment. Um, these things already exist. The only thing
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that the new brand of red flag laws does is it makes it so they take the guns before they figure
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it out. Yeah. Right. Like this is like, I don't know if he's crazy. Let's just take the guns and
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then we'll figure it out and see if it's true. That is craziness upside down. That is craziness.
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That is against everything we stand for. This is the, you remember you're taking away a person's
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right to be innocent before guilty. You, what you're doing is you're starting down this slippery
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slope that look, things happen. So we've got it. We're going to look at you as guilty and everybody
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will know you're guilty and we're going to take your guns and good luck getting them back. By the way,
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we're going to take your guns. But if you prove yourself to be responsible, excuse me,
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this is, this is personally, I think that is civil war. I think these red flag laws are very popular
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though. I mean, they, they, they poll very well. Then maybe not. I don't think people understand
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exactly what they are. I don't think so either. You know, and it's like, you know, you have a,
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a situation where the research on the red flag laws where they've been implemented shows no effect
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on homicide rate. It shows a very slight effect on suicide rate. And we've seen, you know, some of
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these states we're talking about a third of cases are later found out to be frivolous. A third?
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You're taking away the constitutional right from a third of the people you're accusing? You can't do
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that. That is not an American principle whatsoever. I know we really, like we all have these people
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around us that are like, oh man, I, that guy seems dangerous. This is why most of those people don't go
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out and shoot people. This is why I am not for the death penalty. It's not because of life, innocent
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life. I'm opposed to taking innocent life. And that is why I'm, I'm torn on the death penalty,
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but it finally come down on the death penalty. I'm against it because we can make mistakes and I
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don't want to be responsible for taking innocent life. So put them in jail, stop all this nonsense of,
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you know, racking everything up. If you're going to do it, then do it, but you better make sure you're
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right. You want to execute somebody. Look how many people just from DNA tests. Now we may get to a
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point to where you got it because everything's on camera. Everything's, but then you've got deep
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fakes. Are you, are you sure you don't want to put an innocent man to death? You don't want an
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innocent man in jail. You're going to destroy people just on what one person or one side of an opinion.
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There's two sides and we must have the, the, uh, presumption of innocence for American citizens,
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not the presumption of guilt. That is what leads to Stalin, Nazis, Mussolini, Mao, whoever you want,
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when they can scoop you up or take your stuff or you lose your job through a court system
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that says, yeah, well, we're going to, we will get back to you. We'll, we'll, we'll fix your life
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if we were wrong. Really? Where do you go? Where do you go after the, after the sheriff or the FBI
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are at the front of your house, taking out your stuff because you've been deemed unstable? Where do
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you go to get that reputation back? Where do you go in this time where there is no forgetting because
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of the internet? Where do you go when you, when you go in for a job interview and they Google your
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name? Oh, and they see the pictures of the guns leaving your house because you might be unstable.
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Where do you go to get that erased? Where? So, uh, the Washington Post has just written an article,
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Anthony Scarmucci and the nine biggest one eighties on Trump ranked. Uh, number 10 is Scarmucci,
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I think. Uh, number nine is Ann Coulter. Now this is, yeah, cause she's a, she's the roof,
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the, I was for him. Now I'm against him. Yeah, no, no, no. She wrote a book in Trump we trust. Okay.
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And you know what? I think he's been pretty decent on the border. He hadn't been great and he hasn't,
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you know, done the border wall, but he's, I think he's tried. She reportedly at least co-wrote his
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initial border proposal. So she's very tied into the details of that. Uh, and so she's maybe not
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excited that the, the wall has not been able to get that across the finish line. Well, she says he
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deserves to lose reelection. Okay. Uh, Mike Pompeo is, uh, is the next one. Jason Chaffetz is number
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seven coming in at number six, Mick Mulvaney. Number five, Andrew Napolitano. I didn't know that
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cause he was very anti-Trump, wasn't he? He's a libertarian, right? So he's not going to like the,
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the executive sort of actions. I, but I have not heard him flip on that. I mean, he's not,
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has he changed that? Oh, actually no, he's gotten worse. Oh, I think he's gotten worse. Uh,
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once purveyor deep sea, Sarah Greger, he recently accused Trump of unleashing a torrent of hatred
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in a Fox news.com op-ed. Trump claims this is because he declined to nominate, uh, Napolitano for
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Supreme court. That's, uh, then Anthony Scarmucci numbers coming in at number three, Glenn Beck.
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Hey, listen, you did well on the list or did I, there's no, this is no way to win on either,
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in either direction. No, you don't win in either direction. However, if you remember, right,
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it was just, I was only saying things cause I was failing. Yeah. It's weird how that's happened.
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Yeah. Now, now you're now, uh, Glenn Beck staked out. This is from the Washington post.
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Glenn Beck staked out principal ground against someone. I love this. Really? Now retroactive
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admiration. Where, where, where was the principal ground support of Glenn Beck in 2016 for these
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people? None. Uh, as someone who said, quote, he could be one of the most dangerous presidents to
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ever come in the Oval Office. End quote. Yeah. He could have been, he hasn't been, he, he could be
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in the future, but he hasn't been, uh, you know, when, when we had no evidence of what he would do
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in office, uh, yeah, he could have been, I was very nervous based on his past performance.
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He hasn't been, uh, after Trump's election, he pulled out Hitler comparisons saying he saw the
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seeds of what happened in Germany in 1933. Still see them, see them in the Republican party,
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see him in the democratic party, see them everywhere. If you're not seeing fascism,
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communism on the horizon, uh, well, you're blind. You're blind. You can go any way, any direction
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with any of these people. They call every Republican a Hitler every day. I know that's a problem.
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Today, even as Trump has stoked racial divisions and split the country in a way Beck once decried.
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No, I still decry that. I still think racial division is really bad. I still think the,
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the way the president, you know, says things I'm like, Oh, please don't, don't say, please don't say
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that. But look at the media. Trump is the one doing it. I know when you, when you're calling
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literally every one of his supporters, if they support him a racist, yeah, who's stoking racist
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divides. I mean, that's incredible. Uh, Beck now says if Trump loses in 2020, I think we're officially
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at the end of the country as we know it. Yes. Yeah. Have you looked at the other side?
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Have you looked at who the Democrats are running? Yeah. I think when they say, yeah,
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we're going to get rid of the free market system, you know, and I'll just do executive
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orders on the constitution. Sounds like the end of the Republic to me.
00:17:52.920
Hey, it's Glenn. And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray
00:18:08.300
unleashed. His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.
00:18:13.440
We have Robert. We have Robert Epstein. He is an author, editor, a longtime psychology researcher
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and professor, distinguished scientist who is passionate about educating the public about
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advances in mental health and behavioral sciences, former editor in chief of psychology today.
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He is now the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for behavioral research
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and technology and contributing editor for scientific American mind. Yeah. He sounds like a dope
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and turning the crazy level up to 10. Dr. Robert Epstein. How are you, sir?
00:18:50.880
Well, it's been a rough couple of days, to be honest with you. Yeah.
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So, I mean, here's a I mean, here's a group of people that you probably politically would agree
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with more than not getting trashed by the person you voted for on Twitter.
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Sure. Well, I think Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of herself. I mean, you know, I really
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just gotten caught in the crossfire here between Trump and and Hillary. And, you know, the president
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sometimes, as you know, his his tweets are not exactly entirely accurate.
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And he did get a couple of things slightly wrong when I tweeted about my testimony before Congress,
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which was in July. And so, yeah, I can tell you, you know, get what he did is slightly wrong.
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But what Hillary did is reprehensible, especially since I've been a strong supporter of the Clintons
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for 20 years. I mean, I have a signed letter from from Bill up above my desk here.
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Wow. And what she did is is it's shameful. It's shameful.
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Well, she was replying to to the president. President said that, according to some guy,
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you know, some researcher, Google shifted between two point six and 16 million votes to
00:20:21.860
me in 2016. Well, I'm the researcher. Yes, I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee
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in, you know, in July. And yes, I gave estimates of between two point six and ten point four million,
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not 16 million. And also Trump said that that that I said that Google manipulated the election.
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I didn't have never said that. I said I found pro Clinton bias in their search results sufficient
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to impact undecided voters in a way that would shift that many votes. I've never said they manipulated
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the election. I found what I measured was the bias, which I mean, was indisputable.
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Hillary replied to him saying that study has been debunked, which is absolutely false.
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And then saying and the whole study was based on 21 voters. What I actually studied, what I actually
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captured and analyzed, which no one has ever done before, is I captured 13,207 election related searches
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on Google, Bing and Yahoo and the 98,000 web pages to which the search results linked. That's what allowed
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me to measure the bias that people were seeing in search results. And there was substantial bias in
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favor of Clinton, whom I supported in all 10 search positions on the first page of Google search results,
00:22:00.460
but not any bias in Bing or Yahoo. So, you know, I found the bias. And now, based on experiments that
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I've been doing for six and a half years, I was able to estimate with that level of bias how many votes
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could be shifted. I know that from, again, extensive experimental research, which now has involved
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tens of thousands of participants, five national elections in four countries. I know precisely
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how bias can shift opinions and votes. And that's where I got those numbers from. So, again, Trump got
00:22:39.820
things slightly wrong. But what Hillary did was outrageous. My research has never been debunked
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at all. And then this slew of stories that have turned up. I mean, they're literally, I'm not
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kidding you. There are hundreds of them all over the world. And a few unconservative sources basically
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just kind of report the facts. And then all the mainstream sources are basically saying,
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uh, I'm incompetent, which I've never been accused of being my whole career. Uh, that, uh, again,
00:23:16.300
this is my study was debunked, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's, it's terrifying that, that, that,
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you know, there could be so much bad information out there. This is, this is, it is, I think this is why
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we are, uh, things are slowing down, not towards socialism, uh, not even towards nationalism. Those,
00:23:37.500
I think are going to speed up still. Uh, but the, the mob mentality that you have to be all in on
00:23:44.300
somebody or you're a traitor, I think that is actually starting to swing back to a normal kind of,
00:23:50.860
uh, feeling because average people are feeling what people like I have felt and others like tea party,
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we have been feeling this for about 10 years and it is terrifying. Me too. It is a, it's a,
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a good goal. It's a terrifying, um, witch hunt. And, and you don't, where do you go to get your
00:24:14.020
reputation back? Bob, where do you go? I don't know. And, and, you know, you know, and what I,
00:24:19.760
what I really accomplished in 2016 was setting up the first ever monitoring system, uh, to see what
00:24:27.080
big tech companies were showing people. No one's ever done that before because text power, uh, to
00:24:33.480
shift opinions and votes and purchases and attitudes and beliefs around the world derives from, uh, what
00:24:39.960
they internally call ephemeral experiences like search results. They, they're generated on the fly.
00:24:46.860
They have an impact on your thinking. They disappear. They're gone. They're not stored anywhere.
00:24:51.080
That's called an ephemeral experience. That's what Google, Google people call it. And it's
00:24:56.240
extremely powerful in shifting votes and opinions. Uh, I've shown in multiple experiments and, you
00:25:03.000
know, published in peer reviewed journals, you can easily shift 20% or more of undecided voters up to
00:25:09.720
80% in some. So how are they, how, how would they do that if they are doing it? How would that happen?
00:25:17.100
Explain that to the, the average person who has not heard this before. Okay. First of all,
00:25:23.700
it can happen just because they're not paying attention to their algorithm and the, and their
00:25:28.720
algorithm of course, always puts one dog food ahead of the other and, you know, one vacation spot ahead
00:25:34.840
of the other and one candidate ahead of the other. It has no equal time rule built into it. And once it,
00:25:41.880
it puts one candidate ahead of the other, then that starts to have a dramatic impact on undecided voters.
00:25:49.540
And as more undecided voters shift, the bias in search results gets stronger, that shifts more
00:25:57.800
undecided voters, et cetera, et cetera. It's a bandwagon effect, what I call a digital bandwagon
00:26:03.600
effect. And I've measured these things very precisely. And again, 2016 was a, was a tremendous
00:26:09.700
milestone year for us because we actually built a Nielsen type system to look over people's shoulders
00:26:17.720
with their permission and see what these companies were showing them. Then we built a bigger system
00:26:22.640
in 2018. And in 2020, we're trying to raise the money to build a much bigger monitoring system,
00:26:28.880
because you will never know why the next presidential candidate wins unless there has been extensive
00:26:37.620
monitoring of all this ephemeral stuff, news feeds, email suppression, shadow banning,
00:26:44.980
search suggestions, search results, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm the only person in the world
00:26:51.020
who's ever built such systems. And we have to have these systems, or we will not understand
00:26:57.520
what is going on and who, why somebody won or lost an election.
00:27:03.320
All right. So, so Dr. Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist, American Institute for
00:27:09.760
Behavior Research and Technology. He is talking about Google and these algorithms that are changing
00:27:16.280
the way we behave, the way we look, the way we think all underground and how they have impact our
00:27:22.360
elections. Is it mygoogleresearch.com where people could donate if they wanted to donate?
00:27:29.280
Yes. And yes, I'm glad. And you have been more helpful to me in that regard than just about
00:27:35.160
anybody. You've actually raised, without you knowing, just because you keep giving out that
00:27:39.200
link, you've raised a lot of money for this research.
00:27:42.440
I want you to know that I believe this is one of the most important things that we can do.
00:27:49.020
You are, you are actually, and I think you'll agree with this, you're actually way behind where
00:27:54.260
you should be, but you're, you are light years ahead of anyone else on the planet. Would you agree
00:28:00.020
with that? Positively. And I've been slaughtered now by mainstream media, which is my media. That's
00:28:08.440
my media. I'm not a conservative. This is an incredible story. Okay. We have some,
00:28:14.420
some detailed questions. And then I want to talk to you a little bit about, um, uh, what Google may be
00:28:19.840
doing, um, not only during this election, but also, uh, with ice. We'll get into that. I'd just
00:28:27.420
like to pick your brain on, on theories. If you had any, um, you can donate. And I urge you, I urge
00:28:34.620
you in the strongest of terms, if you have money that you can donate five bucks or, you know, a hundred
00:28:43.060
thousand dollars that you would consider this, uh, project, there is nothing more important than
00:28:49.680
getting your arms around the algorithms at Google, my Google research.com, my Google research.com.
00:28:57.440
Every day. It seems somebody pops up in my world. Like what Dr. Robert Epstein just said, uh, this is
00:29:05.820
wait, they've turned the guns on me. Yeah. And this is my side. Oh, look at what they turned the guns on
00:29:10.660
here. Peer review. Yeah. Now peer review doesn't matter. I thought that was the end all be all.
00:29:15.580
We're supposed to now peer review those studies. They're gone. How about, um, the fact that all
00:29:19.500
of a sudden we're supposed to trust gigantic companies making decisions for us. I mean,
00:29:23.360
I thought this was the exact opposite of what the left wanted. You know what, you want companies
00:29:26.880
controlling all this information? Well, it benefits them in this particular moment. Ignoring peer review
00:29:31.940
benefits them in this particular moment. So they'll take out a guy who voted for them,
00:29:36.900
which doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Apparently he's garbage now.
00:29:40.840
It's really horrible. Reprehensible. I urge you to donate at my Google research.com.
00:29:46.340
Okay. Um, may I call you Bob or Robert? Robert, if you like, sure. Robert. Um, so Robert, we have
00:29:54.120
some questions. We, we went through the vanity fair article and if you read this article, if that's the
00:29:59.260
way you were doing the research, it's crazy. It's crazy. Would you agree with that? I, I, I did. I can't
00:30:07.180
even read these things. There are hundreds of them. Okay. So we're going to, we're going to go
00:30:10.660
through it piece by piece and you just tell us, is this how you do it? If not, tell us how you do
00:30:15.520
do it. Go ahead. The first accusation in here, uh, Robert is they basically say that the reason
00:30:21.440
why you're going after Google is because you have a vendetta against them because in 2012,
00:30:26.520
they warned visitors to your website that it had been hacked and serving malware to people
00:30:32.400
who are reading it. Okay. I have no vendetta against Google. I am probably Google's biggest admirer
00:30:39.300
in the world. Uh, I have friends at Google. Uh, yes, I, my website was hacked in 2012 as everyone's
00:30:47.020
is eventually. Uh, and, and I got notified of this by Google and that caught my eye. I said,
00:30:54.800
why is Google notifying me and not a government agency or a nonprofit organization? And then as
00:31:01.020
a programmer, I get intrigued too, because Google was now blocking access to my website, not just
00:31:07.400
through Google.com or through Chrome, which they own, but even through Safari, even through Firefox,
00:31:12.460
which is, you know, a nonprofit run browser. And I got curious, but how is that happening? How can
00:31:18.840
that be? How can Google block you through, you know, Apple Safari? And so I started to kind of just
00:31:24.720
look at Google more seriously. I have a vendetta against them. That's absurd. And then later that
00:31:31.040
year, there was research, uh, the early marketing research on the power of search rankings, uh, that
00:31:37.080
the power that search rankings have to influence people's clicks and purchases. And that, that made
00:31:43.400
me think, well, if that's true, then maybe, uh, search results could be used to shift opinions or even
00:31:51.920
shift voting preferences. And so I started my first series of experiments looking at that.
00:31:56.500
And it is, it is not like, it's not like you're Glenn Beck doing this. You are the former editor
00:32:02.180
in chief of psychology today. You are also the senior research psychologist of the American
00:32:07.880
Institute for behavioral research and technology. Your job revolves around how people make decisions
00:32:15.880
and what causes people to behave in certain ways. So of course you would be curious about this.
00:32:22.240
Of course you would investigate it because this is probably, I think in correct me if I'm, if I'm
00:32:28.260
wrong, doctor, but I believe that in maybe five years, but in the next 10 years, we're going to have
00:32:34.300
to have a serious discussion on, on if you actually have free will because of what they're doing in
00:32:42.480
nudging and, and how they will use and manipulate data.
00:32:46.280
Well, we're, we're, we're past that, uh, Glenn, uh, you know, in, in, in looking at, at, uh, Hillary's,
00:32:54.940
uh, horrendous, uh, tweet, uh, attacking me and, and telling blatant lies about me. I mean,
00:33:02.300
we're way past that point of, of, uh, having any free will left because you have to understand Hillary's
00:33:08.740
tweet by understanding how dependent she has been for years and years for votes and money from
00:33:16.100
Google. Google was her largest, uh, donor. Her, her, her chief technology officer, Stephanie
00:33:22.600
Hannon was a former Google executive. I mean, I could go on and on and on and on about that
00:33:27.040
relationship. And she got that information that she tweeted from Google.
00:33:38.340
It's a little, a little circuitous. There's a little, there's a little bit of incestual feeling
00:33:44.960
here to some of this. Um, we, uh, do you have a yes or no question? We have about 35, 40 seconds.
00:33:50.840
Yeah. I mean, I don't think we can get into any of those in 30 seconds. Okay. So we want to get
00:33:54.740
into a couple more though. A couple more. And then I want to ask you, I don't know if you saw this,
00:33:58.420
that the, the Google employees yesterday, they don't have a problem with China apparently,
00:34:02.160
but Google employees were protesting in front of Google. They want them to stop helping and working
00:34:08.460
with ice and the border patrol. And my first question, uh, was wait, what is Google doing
00:34:18.200
with ice? And are they providing information to the government? Because I don't think that's kind
00:34:25.660
of in the game plan for anybody. Is it? This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:34:43.600
Like listening to this podcast. If you're not a subscriber, become one now on iTunes. And while
00:34:48.920
you're there, do us a favor and rate the show. A man who began his journalism career
00:34:54.180
in the Bombay based Indian express newspaper group. I don't even know how you would go about
00:35:00.400
doing that. Kevin Williamson is here. Hello, Kevin. How are you?
00:35:04.060
It helps to have a friend in college whose family lives there and, uh,
00:35:06.660
really introduce you to some people. Yeah. So I ended up there. Okay. I didn't know the first
00:35:09.720
thing about it. So you were, uh, you were a, uh, you started there in Bombay. Yeah.
00:35:14.340
Had you ever been to Bombay? I'd never been outside of the United States except for Mexican border
00:35:18.700
towns growing up in Texas. Yeah. So it's a little different than Texas, the U S or Mexico.
00:35:24.180
Yeah. Um, you know, when I got there, um, no one even knew what the population of Bombay was at
00:35:28.980
that point in the nineties, because it was such a crazy chaotic place. They thought maybe 20 million,
00:35:32.960
maybe 25 million. It was a, but it's a great place to be a newspaper guy because everyone
00:35:37.080
read newspapers there. You know, typical household would get four or five newspapers a day. So
00:35:40.840
wow. Tremendously fun place to, uh, start a newspaper. Yeah. And then you became a theater
00:35:45.160
critic. Uh, some years later. Yeah. When I was living in New York, I wrote the theater column
00:35:49.080
for the new criterion for a while. But aren't you, I mean, don't you have to be an old cantankerous
00:35:54.460
bitter man to do that? Or are, are you, I've been an old cantankerous bitter man since I was about
00:36:00.240
11. And, uh, so I, I'm kind of growing into it. Okay. Yeah. Your body is starting to catch up
00:36:07.020
with your mind. Unfortunately, I've been waiting for my hair to turn gray for years. Yeah. Don't wish
00:36:12.180
for that. Cause I, I always wanted my hair cause everybody in my family by 30, they're white.
00:36:17.140
Yeah. And it took me to 50 and now, and I was like, well, everybody's got the great white hair.
00:36:22.340
And now I have it. And I'm like, good God, you look like you're a thousand years old. Um, all right.
00:36:27.820
So, um, you've written, you've written a new book, the smallest minority by borderline unpublishable
00:36:34.620
angry profane book. Uh, so I, um, I just, I, you can't read from this book on the radio. Oh yes.
00:36:40.980
There's one paragraph, there's one paragraph that I'm, I'm not going to read, but I'd like
00:36:46.160
you to read, uh, because it is one of the greatest screeds of all time. Oh no, I don't
00:36:54.240
know if I can find it here. It was, uh, you describing, you describing people, uh, uh, that
00:37:05.860
you, you know, you had a, Oh shoot. Where is that? Uh, Oh, here it is. Here it is. Here
00:37:10.040
it is. Uh, pick it up right here. Um, let's see. It's like testimony. You're like, actually,
00:37:15.460
did you write this? Everyone knows I'm a monster. Can I give this book to you? Do everyone
00:37:20.360
I know my own work. Do everyone I, uh, to a monster to the end of that paragraph on the
00:37:25.560
next page. I would much rather you read it. No, no, no. I would not. It's got words in
00:37:29.820
it. I can't pronounce. It's strange to read your own work. No, it's not. Um, this is like
00:37:34.020
when you got to read it the way you meant it too. Well, um, I should sometime tell you the
00:37:39.360
sentences that got left out. They edited this thing? Are you saying? Oh man, you wouldn't
00:37:44.780
believe the original version of this book. Oh my gosh. This is after edits. This is the
00:37:49.860
boulderized version. Oh my gosh. Because this is the first paragraph. Listen to this. So
00:37:54.760
it starts, everyone knows I'm a monster. And by everybody, I mean all good, decent, serious
00:37:59.060
newspaper analog reading people. And by all good, decent, serious newspaper analog reading
00:38:03.160
people, I mean you sad, atavistic, masturbatory specimens out there in the woolly wilds of
00:38:07.800
America. By which I mean you put pounding nobodies in Brooklyn or Gaiman, Oklahoma, depending on
00:38:12.460
your tribe. Obsessively following intra-media squabbles on social media, cheering for what
00:38:16.880
you imagine to be your side, like a bunch of marginally employed and past their time NFL
00:38:21.300
cheering leg tattooed douche rockets at some ghastly exorbitant sports bar, and enjoying
00:38:26.180
a nice bottle of the warm and comforting illusion of solidarity as though Tom Brady or Le'Veon
00:38:30.360
Bell would have taken a voluminous equine piss on you from a great height if you were smoldering
00:38:35.200
crackling on the sidelines like a sizzling plate of Kansas City burn-out.
00:38:39.860
No, the question is, that would have taken me a week to write that. That is just brilliant.
00:38:47.020
How long did that take you to write? Did that just pour out?
00:38:51.860
So, okay, funny thing about this book is, you know, it's got a bunch of footnotes in it.
00:38:56.280
Yeah. And most of the book is sort of halfway like a normal political book. And then the
00:39:01.940
footnotes, which are about maybe a quarter of the book, are the kind of running commentary
00:39:06.680
of what I'm actually thinking as I write this stuff. And the footnotes were the part that
00:39:10.840
were problematic for some of the editors, I think. There are a few of them that didn't
00:39:15.820
make it in. I'll, I'll share with you off. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you could share in our
00:39:19.160
podcast. Yeah. I don't think I can even share on your podcast. Really? Wow. Did you think
00:39:23.880
that it would go in or you were just like, I don't care? I figured I would just give it
00:39:26.980
a shot. You know, um, Regnery, I like working with Regnery, but when they put out the press
00:39:31.360
release for this book, they called it, you know, hilarious and profane. This was before
00:39:34.580
the book was done. Yeah. I figured if they're going to put profane in the press release,
00:39:37.560
that's license, right? That's right. I can do what I want. Right. Right. And you did.
00:39:41.780
Kinda. Yeah. Yeah. And you did. So, so take me, take me through it. I'm going to, we're
00:39:47.300
going to talk about it. We're going to do a podcast, uh, today for a broadcast in a couple
00:39:51.400
of weeks, but, and, and we'll go through all of it, but take me through the, the premise
00:39:56.740
of the, uh, of the book. Yeah. I started writing. And don't leave out any of the, uh, acerbic
00:40:02.560
or. I started writing the book in, in 2015 after, you know, witnessing a number of these
00:40:07.460
dumb, you know, kind of Twitter mob freak outs. The, uh, a lot of them weren't really
00:40:10.960
exactly political or political people. I, you know, the Justine Sacco business and
00:40:14.380
the, uh, guy getting canned from Google and all that. And, um, there was something
00:40:19.280
to me that seemed weird and, uh, kind of ritualistic about this stuff. It was a kind
00:40:23.560
of public ceremony. It wasn't really something that was about the issues that it pretended
00:40:27.980
to be about. And so I wrote part of the book at that time and a book proposal and I sent
00:40:32.020
it around and nobody wanted it. And then a couple of years later, I went to work for the
00:40:35.820
Atlantic for three days and got fired. And my phone started to ring before I got to
00:40:39.680
the airport literally. And I was waiting on the plane to come home to Texas. And, uh,
00:40:44.340
people were suddenly interested in the book. So go figure. Um, it's an ill will, an ill
00:40:49.920
wind that blows me no some good. But, um, so the book is about, um, some of the social
00:40:56.820
and political reasons for why people have become so hysterical and theatrical in terms
00:41:03.240
of their political engagement. And what I really ultimately argue is it's not really
00:41:06.340
about politics. It's that people have a certain emptiness in their lives in a sense that they
00:41:11.400
lack connectedness and, um, these media mob phenomenon and social media, you know, this
00:41:17.660
kind of performative theatrical hysterical politics gives them a false sense of having
00:41:22.900
being involved in something important. It gives them a sense that they've been involved
00:41:27.580
in something meaningful when they're not. Um, but it, it, it kind of feels good. And so
00:41:31.880
people go to it in this weird, addictive, compulsive way. So it's not really politics
00:41:36.080
that's happening on Twitter. It's this weird, embarrassing public group therapy session.
00:41:42.000
So, um, it, it, but it is, it's being used by politics.
00:41:46.860
Sure. Yeah. Um, we just had, I said to Stu almost every day now I meet somebody, uh, and
00:41:54.200
usually now from the other side that is, has just been affected, lost their job, lost their
00:41:59.660
credit. We just had a really brilliant, uh, psychiatrist on with us a few, a few minutes
00:42:04.280
ago. And he, he's now being targeted by Google and Clinton who he voted for.
00:42:10.260
Yeah. He's a fan of, of Google. I mean, he has respect for Google. Um, and, and Clinton,
00:42:17.020
he said, I've, I've got a letter from Bill Clinton hanging above my desk and now they're
00:42:24.080
Yeah. Um, there's a bit in Coriolanus about that, how, you know, you're the favorite one
00:42:28.160
day and the villain the next day. And that's, that seems to be the case of it. Um, one of
00:42:31.680
the things I get into the book a lot is the emergence of that very thing of the use of
00:42:35.220
employment as a weapon of political coercion. And I think that's a really interesting, um,
00:42:40.320
subject to follow up on because this phenomenon of, uh, demand for homogeneity and conformity
00:42:46.340
is not really so much a problem for people like you or me. I mean, we're in the, in the
00:42:50.100
controversy business. It's what we do. Uh, you know, maybe you lose an advertiser here
00:42:53.940
and then maybe you lose a gig here or there, but you know, that's kind of what we do. It's
00:42:57.880
a much, much bigger problem if you're someone who's trying to manage a Starbucks in Philadelphia
00:43:01.100
and you're going to lose your job because you're enforcing company policy, but it becomes this
00:43:05.200
viral, uh, Twitter phenomenon. Or if you're a programmer at Google or you're someone who
00:43:09.400
works at a bank or you're someone who's a hairdresser and make examples of these people
00:43:14.200
and that kind of, you know, psychic terrorism is effective. And now people know just not to voice
00:43:19.380
opinions in the first place. If they're any way afraid that it might be unpopular or
00:43:23.500
nonconforming. I will tell you, I think that, um, I would have agreed with you just a few
00:43:29.660
years ago, but I believe my voice and I didn't feel this way at Fox. Okay. And they were coming
00:43:36.100
after me like crazy. I do believe my voice could be silenced. I could be erased now from
00:43:41.700
history and just not, you just gone. You think? Yeah, you don't. I think you, well, not to flatter you,
00:43:48.980
but you sell an awful lot of books and have an awful lot of listeners. I think it'd be hard
00:43:51.960
to do that. Um, but a lot of that, and I think maybe, um, we remind the, the, the Navy SEALs
00:43:58.380
when they turn dark and they're working for the corporations and come to get me at night.
00:44:02.600
But a lot of this stuff, when it comes to people like you though, I think, I think you saw this
00:44:06.060
really in the Roseanne Barr case where the public Twitter mob phenomenon is really a pretext for
00:44:11.880
things that are going on inside the company. You know, no one at ABC is making multimillion dollar
00:44:17.480
programming decisions based on what at Caitlin three, two, one vegan on Twitter has to say
00:44:23.900
about, you know, Roseanne Barr. Right. Right. Um, I didn't lose my job at the Atlantic because
00:44:30.020
people were freaking out on Twitter. I lost my job at the Atlantic because of things that were going on
00:44:33.680
on staff and in the company. And, uh, that tends to be the case, I think more for people like us.
00:44:38.620
And you've seen this in the, in the positive outcomes too, with, uh, I'll say a kind word for
00:44:42.960
the New York times, which has had several of its writers and people targeted in this way. And they
00:44:47.520
said, no, we're the New York times. We hire who we like, and we're going to keep Brett Stevens on
00:44:50.240
the staff and they don't like it. Yeah. That's the way premier radio is. That's a reason why we're
00:44:53.980
still on radio is because of I heart is an amazing company that just is like, I don't care where I
00:45:00.960
don't care. We'll put any voice on. And as long as they don't lose our license and they're generally
00:45:06.300
responsible, we don't care what their opinion is. We'll put them on. And we don't care what the mob
00:45:12.420
says. Yeah. And it's going to be up to institutions to stand up to this kind of thing. Uh, because,
00:45:16.940
you know, individuals, even, you know, ones that have some outlet like I do, um, really rely on
00:45:21.540
institutions to, to be the ones who are going to stand and run guard on this. But that's what I
00:45:25.300
mean. I think that, you know, you could erase because Google is quickly becoming every outlet,
00:45:32.280
right? It's becoming the, I mean, if you're not with Google, you're not around. And that's one of
00:45:37.560
the misunderstood things about this, you know, like that, that freak out about James Damore at Google
00:45:41.200
was not about some nobody programmer that no one cares about. It was about Google. It's not about,
00:45:46.700
we can get this fired. It's, we can make Google jump when we say jump. And we can make Facebook
00:45:50.540
jump when we say jump. And we can make the New York Times rewrite a headline when we said the
00:45:54.000
New York Times is going to rewrite a headline. So that the people involved in this who, you know,
00:45:57.860
get fired or otherwise are really just sort of instruments. They're, they're props for this,
00:46:02.420
this great active theater. It's more about controlling the institutions. And that's where institutions
00:46:07.060
really have to stand up for themselves. And that's the shame of particularly the university
00:46:10.340
culture, where you've got a bunch of academics who depend on intellectual honesty and intellectual
00:46:16.020
freedom, but will not stand up for it in their own institutions.
00:46:18.320
So I'd like to, may I change the subjects a bit here, Kevin, with you and go to red flagging.
00:46:23.360
Uh, I just got a, uh, a listener sent in a, uh, uh, uh, fundraising piece from a, uh, a senator in,
00:46:34.920
uh, uh, where was it? Pennsylvania that was making the case that we must have red flagging.
00:46:46.900
I don't understand the basic case for red flag laws. So David French at National Review and I've
00:46:51.340
debated about this a little bit on the corner. Um, I kind of distrust the, the, the whole premise
00:46:55.760
of it, but what's used as the, as the example is that we have these laws for involuntarily committing
00:47:01.280
people, uh, for mental care when they seem to present an immediate threat to themselves or
00:47:06.340
others. And there's a process there by which a judge and a doctor involved, and we've got this way of
00:47:10.580
doing it. So they want to use that as the basis of the red flags laws or the red flag law. I think
00:47:16.200
that ought to be the red flag law, that if you think someone actually is a danger to himself
00:47:20.560
or someone else, rather than messing around with whether this person can buy a gun, uh,
00:47:25.220
then we should probably, you know, ensure that this person is under, is under, is under
00:47:28.580
mental health care. So I think to that extent, we've already got the red flag law that we need
00:47:32.640
and people will say, well, it's, it's, it's very onerous and it's hard to get through this
00:47:36.240
process and it's hard to do. It should be. Yeah, exactly. That's how we want it. We're talking
00:47:40.140
about the bill of rights here. And, um, I'm, I'm always pretty queasy about the idea of suspending
00:47:46.020
anyone's civil rights, uh, when they haven't been charged with a crime or convicted of a crime or
00:47:50.680
even arrested for a crime. We're taking, look, if, if somebody comes in and if I, you know, I come in
00:47:56.360
in the day and I say, I got pop tarts in my pants. I had pop tarts in my pants and I'm eating pop tarts
00:48:02.340
from my pants. You might say, Glenn, you might, you know what, why don't you take the day off?
00:48:07.020
You might call Tanya and say, he might need to see a doctor. Um, but if I'm coming in with a gun or I'm
00:48:12.940
dangerous, then you might call police and I should be taken to the doctor and a doctor and a judge
00:48:18.700
should decide with my wife. If maybe I, you know, have more than pop tarts, uh, I may have guns and
00:48:24.280
maybe that's a danger. That's the way you deal with it. What they're trying to do is with this
00:48:29.800
red flag law, nobody will take it that far. Nobody will take it that far, but I I'm telling you right
00:48:37.540
now. You can't tell me that there aren't a lot of people who have been divorced that in that divorce
00:48:44.760
proceeding, somebody might say, you know what, man, he's dangerous and he's got a lot of guns.
00:48:50.660
Yeah. One other thing about having been a small town newspaper editor is you spend a lot of time
00:48:54.720
reading court records of those very things, you know, divorce cases, custody cases and stuff like
00:48:59.080
that. And you're probably half of the death threats I ever got in my life were, uh, editing a
00:49:04.500
small town newspaper and writing a DUI story about some guy who was in a custody dispute with his
00:49:08.540
wife and thinks he's going to lose his kids, uh, because this thing comes up and the sorts of
00:49:13.300
accusations that are made in those situations tend to be often irresponsible. And there's not much of
00:49:18.440
a downside for doing it. We don't really retaliate against people for that sort of thing. I, um, don't
00:49:23.820
have as much faith as a lot of conservatives do in the law enforcement and prosecutorial apparatus.
00:49:28.820
Although I think that the prosecutors are a bigger problem than the police officers are for the most part.
00:49:33.600
Yeah. And I don't really trust them with the power they already have and to give them additional
00:49:39.840
power on top of that to essentially make an end run around the bill of rights. Um, you know,
00:49:45.300
I'm going to take some convincing on that. Yeah. I'm going to take a little convincing.
00:49:48.920
But I don't think, I don't think a lot of America's needing a lot of convincing.
00:49:52.440
The really maddening thing about this is that, um, you know, if you look at say the U S attorney's
00:49:57.000
office for, for Illinois, they will not prosecute a straw buyer case. They just won't. Uh,
00:50:01.440
they don't think it's worth their time unless it's part of a big organized crime investigation.
00:50:04.740
The current conviction rate for, uh, illegal handgun cases in the Chicago area is about 14%.
00:50:11.100
Um, we've got laws on the books that we ought to be enforcing. We really ought to be going
00:50:15.840
after straw buyers. We ought to be going after people for minor weapons charges before they
00:50:20.020
become homicides. Um, we've got a lot of things that we could be doing on this front that we just
00:50:24.580
simply refuse to do because law enforcement is basically lazy. Um, if you look, all of our gun
00:50:29.960
control proposals are targeted at licensed gun dealers and the people who do business with them.
00:50:36.020
They've got addresses and business hours and records. They're really easy to police.
00:50:40.060
Whereas guys who are selling, you know, Glocks out of the trunk of their car off the interstate
00:50:43.820
somewhere are a lot harder to catch. All right. More with Kevin Williamson in