Best of the Program | Guests: Kevin Williamson & Lisa Paige | 8⧸5⧸19
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Summary
On this episode of the Glenn Beck Program, host Glenn sits down with Pat Gray and Kevin Williamson to discuss the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings, and how the media and politicians have crossed the line with their lack of empathy for the victims.
Transcript
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Hey, it's Stu, in for Glenn on the Glenn Beck Program today.
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Obviously, the weekend stuff that was going on was devastating,
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including something that is absolutely not being talked about
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in the media coverage revolving around these shootings.
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being thrown completely on Trump, on white supremacism in general.
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that the media is not telling you, and we'll get to that today.
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We'll also talk to Pat Gray about the shootings, get his perspective,
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The Smallest Minority, Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics.
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He gets in on what's going on with the shooting,
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but also just kind of generally what's going on with the country
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We will also take on as many arguments as we can think of
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that you're going to be seeing in your Facebook feed
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and I think this is the way most people experience the news these days,
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getting in fights on social media with all their friends about it.
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And that's basically how Venezuela got into the
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We've seen things happen like that in countries
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like India and Pakistan, and to a lesser extent
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And one of the phrases that you, again, another
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When you say, hey, look, you can't shout fire in a
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That's supposed to mean, well, whatever speech I'm
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against at this moment is okay for me to censor.
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So this came out of a Supreme Court argument in
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which the court was trying to decide whether we could
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was, well, if this guy is allowed to speak this
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And so essentially, this is Justice Holmes coming
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up with a legal rationale for the heckler's veto
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The problem, or rather, the problem isn't the fact
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that people are going to commit violence in reaction
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And this is a really interesting thing for where we
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are as a country right now, because we've got really
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The First Amendment legally has probably never been
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ideas as being unutterable, as being outside of what
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This is where the idea of hate speech comes in.
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Well, we want to protect political speech unless
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we're going to call it something else, and it's
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And of course, the whole idea of the First Amendment
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is to protect speech which is controversial and
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Because if it weren't, it would need protection in
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the first place because no one would be trying to
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So these things kind of feed off of one another.
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What's considered culturally undoable is part of how
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things get defined in places like Canada and Austria
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and Germany, where they've got more invasive speech
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rules than we have here in the United States, but also
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how people here in the United States foresee a future
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regime of which you've got hate speech laws, more controls
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on political speech to what we euphemistically call campaign
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And that's an important thing, I think, to keep in mind
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that any time you're putting something outside the realm
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of what should be protected, that's what you're really
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setting yourself up for is a future regime of censorship.
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Does it worry you that they're already talking about
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the DOJ looking into ways to partner with big tech firms
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I mean, nobody's going to stand up, I think, more than
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conservatives to say white nationalism, especially as a
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government ideology, which, you know, is just implied.
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You have gigantic government to enforce these types of
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I mean, it's just totally against what conservatives want.
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We should all stand up against white supremacy and this
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When it comes to government trying to implement laws to
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stop this, that is, I hate to use the slippery slope thing,
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Well, and the slope is slippery for reasons that people
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You know, corporations like one-size-fit-all solutions.
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And the problem with that is that companies like Facebook and
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And it's tempting for them to take the most restrictive
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standard and make that their default position, the same way that
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California essentially sets automotive emissions rules for the
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So in places like Germany, Austria, much of Western Europe, but
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also Singapore, China, and some other places, they have a whole
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different culture about free speech, and they have a whole
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Now, Western Europe is pretty liberal, and it's democratic, of
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course, but they've also got rules about political speech and
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They just simply wouldn't be acceptable in the United States or the
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They have a theory called militant democracy, and this is the idea
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under which they ban certain kinds of political speech.
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They prohibit certain kinds of political parties.
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You know, in Austria, you can theoretically go to prison for 25
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years for selling someone a copy of Mein Kampf.
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I don't want to lock people up for reading it either.
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And in the United States, we think of these things as being crazy,
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But these are not crazy, uncivilized countries.
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But the smallest minority, independent thinking in the age of
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A real thing going on with the media, where they quoted this one line,
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if we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable
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What they did not include is what the context of that was.
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Very clearly talked about the environment, how corporations are shamelessly over-harvesting
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resources, talking about watersheds around the country being depleted, talked about water
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being polluted from oil drilling operations, talked about consumer culture creating tons of
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unnecessary plastic waste, all of these things, left-wing things, that were just not,
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But I don't think that's how most people take this stuff in.
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I think the way that this hits most people, certainly, thankfully, not the violence,
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because our violence, our rates of crime are way down.
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But I think where this hits most people is in their daily lives on social media.
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Because you're getting hit with all these arguments.
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We went over a bunch of them this hour already.
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But you're getting in fights with all your friends over guns.
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And no better person to talk to this about is probably the greatest booking of my life.
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If there's ever a guest that I've booked on this program that I would marry, it's this one.
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My wife, Lisa Page, joins us here on the program.
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And the reason you join us, of course, Lisa, is because you get in these fights all the time on Facebook.
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And here you are posting what you believe to be the right thing.
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And your friends all can't help themselves, but they jump into your feed.
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So, you know, when something like this, a tragedy like this happens,
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And I really posted because I was really sick and tired of reading everybody else's opinions.
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Now, when some of my friends that disagree with my opinion or my view on what's going on,
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I don't normally reciprocate because I cherish our friendship.
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But I'm not going to let anybody know about that.
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But yesterday, I don't even think what I posted on my personal page because I rarely do this on my radio page or other things.
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If you don't know, Lisa Page, a much bigger national radio personality than myself or Glenn Beck.
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But I don't even think what I posted on my personal page yesterday was insensitive.
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It was just me saying, listen, guys, there's only so much we can do.
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You can sit here and you can ask why, why, why, but we can't do much more than to support, to donate, to get involved.
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But as far as voting, we've heard this over and over and over and over again.
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There's always going to be someone who decides they're going to do something terrible.
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And whether it's guns or as we saw in France, for example, someone decided to drive their truck over a bunch of people at a festival.
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Was that an improvement for their families that they didn't get shot?
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It was more than triple the amount of people who died in this past weekend's attacks.
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And, you know, like I said in one of the, I was, I was going back and forth with one of my friends about mental illness.
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And, you know, she's saying, well, not all the cases are.
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Well, maybe because a lot of these guys that have been, you know, committing all these mass murders, they didn't maybe check out.
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And, like, if you watch any of the morning shows this morning, they had a lot of specialists on saying that there, at some level, there is a mental, there's something wrong in their head.
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Listen, anybody that wants to go in to a place with the intention of murdering hundreds of people or a handful of people, you're, something's not right in your head.
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So you can classify it as, well, no, but he didn't check out as, he wasn't mentally unstable.
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He got it like, well, people are going to kill if they want to kill.
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And they have with all sorts of different things when it comes to whether it's, you know, poisoning people or bombing people or running people over or stabbing people.
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But we were saying yesterday, Stu and I were talking, and we're like, you know, every day in the country, there are people that are getting huge car wrecks.
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Where's the outrage for the drunk driver that hit somebody over the weekend and killed 12 people?
00:48:50.640
Yeah, because there's not a political advantage.
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My Cory Booker doesn't get to get a couple more donations if he comes out and talks about car accidents.
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But it's like, it's an interesting part of this.
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When you have a situation where there's political divides, the most difficult road to solve a situation like that is to attack the place where most people disagree.
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So if you want to keep – if your goal is to stop mass shootings, well, that's not the right goal.
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There are – automated cars, the whole self-driving car things.
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They estimate that that would wipe out 94% of deaths.
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We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people that would be alive instead of dead over a decade.
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There's not like Republicans like it and Democrats don't.
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You know, and I will say that it's not everybody that I know.
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But, you know, a couple of my friends genuinely want to know.
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Like, I have one friend, and we've been friends for almost 20 years, and she genuinely wants
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to know why people like guns or why, you know, like –
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She's very left but tries to understand the arguments from the other side.
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I will say, on Facebook, right, it's people just stating whatever their preconceived notion
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And I will state my opinion, and they just keep coming back.
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And at some point, you just have to – you got to just end the argument.
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I mean, this is why yesterday will probably be the first and maybe the last time I even
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express my political opinion about it because it's not worth getting in fights and getting
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frustrated and causing conflict with your friends.
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If you are a friend on my personal page, you know – you know where I'm coming from.
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Because this is – you've brought this up before, and I think this is a really interesting
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If people know where you stand, why bother – if you're friends, why bother jumping in there
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Well, I guess because I feel like I would get support from my friends.
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I feel like maybe – because most of our friends – most of my friends are like-minded
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Our kids go to a school where many of the parents – we're all kind of in the same
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And I think my intention was, well, I'm just going to put this out there because I am
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going to – I know I'm going to get support from my friends.
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But then there's a couple people back and forth, back and forth, back, and then our
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And now – last night I went to bed, and I'm like, I'm not – I'm glad I am not
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It's hard because you do – it's social media.
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And I mean, thankfully, my show is not a political show, so I make no mention of it
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You enter the debate the same way we do in political circles.
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This debate starts working – you know, playing out on your Facebook page.
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Whoever your friend is has strong feelings about it.
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You want to find the perfect thing that's going to shut them down.
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Like, in the end of the day, you never solve a debate when you feel like that.
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But it kind of puts you in that same position of, like, hosting – you know, you're obviously
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And so you're in that circle where, like, you are now in front of all your friends, arguing
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back and forth, looking for that, like, sort of mic drop moment to win this debate.
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I mean, because you know why you have the people that want to just keep coming back
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Really, what I should have did was plop up my laptop right next to you and said, just
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But honestly, like, it is – it's one of those things where you – it's hard to not
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Because especially when topics like this arise, like, I get very heated, as you know.
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And a lot of times, Stu will say, just get off of Facebook.
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And, you know, ironically, like, a lot of these conversations we'll have.
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And then, like, five minutes later, I'm just on the phone texting with a friend that I
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was just sort of kind of having a – maybe a little bit of an argument.
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And we're talking about, you know, what are you wearing tomorrow?
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You know, did you get your – so it's very – you know, it's confusing.
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It's hard to not address, but also you want to not address it, but –
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Well, you don't want to get in the middle of it, but it's also, like, you don't want
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Like, to just eliminate the debate and take yourself out of it is not the right answer
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I think my favorite, actually, moment of this was – I think at one point you posted something
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And, you know, you're in the middle and someone made some anti-gun comment and all of a sudden
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And it's like, can you imagine the mismatch which is going on right now?
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You have Dana Lash who's, like, written multiple bestsellers.
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And this poor person who thinks they're going to win this debate is now arguing against
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So, well, I like – are you still friends with these people?
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And we will just have to always continue to agree to disagree on a lot of these things.
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I didn't threaten you at the beginning of this relationship.
00:55:03.540
If you're a guy who wants to figure out good presents for your wife, I would recommend
00:55:09.620
And if you're a lady or you happen to identify today as a lady and you like –
00:55:16.440
All the – you know, whatever products or whatever you're spending, you know, 90% of
00:55:19.820
all of our money on, you can go to Lisa Page made me do it as a podcast.
00:55:27.860
And hopefully you can keep your friends here for the next few days at least.