A viral video of a little boy crying about being bullied goes viral, and the heartwarming outpouring of support for him on social media goes viral. Then, a panel of Deplorables joins the panel of deplorables to talk about Jimmy Kimmel's slanderous treatment of his own son. Sarah Huckabee Sanders smacks around fake news, and Elizabeth Warren is calling her Senate colleague a slut.
00:10:05.660I don't know if you remember Ken Bone.
00:10:07.520Back during the 2016 presidential debates, there was a nice-looking man in a red sweater with a mustache, and he became an insta-celebrity.
00:10:16.960What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?
00:10:28.180So he became a meme because he just looks sort of silly.
00:10:46.360That cycle gets old after a day or two.
00:10:48.740So now we have to make him into a villain.
00:10:50.660Someone on Reddit found out that he had committed two egregious crimes.
00:10:55.000One, he had looked at the widely published naked photos of Jennifer Lawrence.
00:11:01.220And I think that makes him the only man in America to ever look at the completely ubiquitous nude photos of one of the most beautiful and famous celebrities in the world.
00:11:52.020The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works, no civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.
00:12:14.880Exploits a vulnerability in human psychology by creating a social validation feedback loop.
00:12:20.580To discuss that and much more, we will have to bring on our panel of deplorables.
00:12:26.440But first, before we bring on our panel, don't forget our third episode of The Conversation is coming today at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific,
00:12:32.900featuring the one and only big boss man himself, Ben Shapiro, Fox News Power Player of the Week.
00:12:37.900Subscribe today to be a part of The Conversation and ask Ben live questions, which he will answer for everyone to hear.
00:12:44.320The episode of The Conversation will stream live on the Ben Shapiro Facebook page and the Daily Wire YouTube channel.
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00:13:19.560Okay, now to our panel. We have from The Federalist, Ariel Davidson, and we have from The Daily Caller, Amber Athey, an all-female panel of deplorables.
00:13:40.040But I think what happens is social media tends to turn people into keyboard warriors, and so I think that there is a sense of boldness that can sometimes be helpful, but more often than not can be extremely inflammatory.
00:13:54.080So I think there is a give and take when it comes to social media.
00:13:56.900It's definitely been a way for people to exit their bubble, but it's also been a way for people to reinforce their bubble.
00:14:03.180Now that you can share your block lists on Twitter, or you can also just on Facebook choose to friend someone or choose to unfriend them based on the material they post, I think it does sort of reinforce our perception of a worldview, which is why when Donald Trump was elected, there was sort of a collective meltdown on the left.
00:14:20.160And I think a lot of that was because social media had created this false sense of where political opinions lie in the world, and that can be somewhat dangerous.
00:14:31.860So I think in some ways social media can do more harm than good, especially when it's used to sort of bolster, again, these keyboard warriors and people that take to Facebook and Twitter to get their political anger out instead of having a face-to-face conversation.
00:14:47.900There is that aspect. The unfriending phenomenon is really strange to me.
00:14:52.700There have been a number of studies that show that people on the left are much more likely to unfriend or disconnect from you on social media if you're a conservative than vice versa, and conservatives doing it to lefties.
00:15:04.240And I think the reason for that is because lefties have never heard anybody contradict their opinions.
00:15:09.940They preach tolerance and diversity, and they're shocked to find out that anybody disagrees with them.
00:15:13.800But for the other aspect of that is that we're more than our political opinions.
00:15:22.820People are more than our political opinions.
00:15:24.720So if you sit and have dinner with somebody and you find out they voted for crooked Hillary, that dirty, rotten felon, and my third cousin,
00:15:30.600if I saw that on Facebook, I might just ignore that person or look away or unfriend them or something.
00:15:36.080But in person, you have to talk to them, and it might be interesting.
00:15:39.400Different perspectives make the world much more beautiful.
00:15:41.620They make the world more interesting, and they help you think about what you really believe.
00:15:46.160A lot of that kind of disappears on social media.
00:15:48.600That said, CNN would not give me a show.
00:15:52.980And if these new media didn't exist, we wouldn't have a platform.
00:15:56.480Now, Amber, if social media have made our culture faster, more knee-jerk, more hysterical, is there any way back from here?
00:16:03.780Or are we just headed for even tighter news cycles?
00:16:07.380Oh, gosh, that's a really hard question.
00:16:10.180I don't see it really getting that much better.
00:16:12.840I hate to be a pessimist, but the more that I've been on social media, it seems like the more angry people get, the more political they get.
00:16:21.180I remember being on Facebook back in high school, and it was just about sharing prom pictures and posting cat gifs.
00:16:29.700And now it's like everybody is sharing a political opinion.
00:16:32.220It's all about getting those imaginary points from your friends or your followers.
00:16:38.260Everybody on Twitter is seeing who is the next person that I can drag.
00:16:42.320And then within 24 hours, they're on to the next evil villain, like we saw in the Keaton case.
00:16:47.600So it's definitely really dangerous that I think it's great that more people have a platform to express themselves in ways that they couldn't before.
00:16:56.780But as Ariel was saying, at the same time, it can really bolster sort of a almost bullying where people are constantly able to attack anybody that they want at any time.
00:17:09.120And it really piles on when there's so many other people who are there to join in on the crusade.
00:17:18.140It's been meticulously arranged, these technology, so that you will keep going back and you'll keep clicking and you'll keep tweeting and you'll keep piling on whoever.
00:17:27.680That aspect on psychology is probably not very healthy, but the effect on politics seems to be quite healthy.
00:17:34.700Could you imagine a world in which we had an administration like President Trump's, excellent conservative policy, legislation, nominations, cultural battles from the NFL to political correctness to the news media?
00:17:50.080Could you ever imagine that without Twitter?
00:17:52.380Donald Trump's appeal, his great strength is with Twitter.
00:17:57.240It may be the case that it has bad psychological effects, but politically, I'm not sick and tired of winning yet.
00:18:52.300Obviously, I pour whiskey in my morning coffee.
00:18:54.460But what it's really suited for are those salty and delicious Leftist Tears that you see around you all day and every day during the Trump administration.
00:19:01.120So make sure you go over there right now.
00:19:02.400You can have them hot or cold, always salty and delicious.
00:19:15.680Speaking of the shameless exploitation of children, here is Jimmy Kimmel parading his sick son around to make an inaccurate political point.
00:19:24.460They each gave a full day of their very busy lives to give me time off.
00:19:29.440And I'm grateful to them for doing that.
00:20:23.800I think in many ways Donald Trump has sort of brought the politics out of people who would normally be nonpolitical.
00:20:30.680Because, as a lot of these people say, Donald Trump is just the worst thing to happen to America ever.
00:20:35.960So we all have to share our political views now because we're in this unprecedented state of politics.
00:20:40.840At the same time, though, we do have to remember that we probably wouldn't be talking about Jimmy Kimmel's show if he weren't parading his son around on stage in this disgusting manner.
00:20:50.540So it has been helping their views to some extent.
00:20:53.680He's gotten a disgusting amount of YouTube views on all these clips of him crying about health care.
00:20:58.900And it's kind of easy Hollywood friendship and political points for them to be constantly attacking Republicans and Donald Trump.
00:21:42.440Well, it's interesting because Democrats actually were the ones that voted against renewing the funding, if I remember correctly, because they were upset about where Republicans wanted to get the funding from.
00:21:51.700So in my mind, it's not even just incorrect.
00:21:55.480It's actually humanizing the wrong party.
00:21:58.020So if you want to throw daggers, you're throwing daggers at the Democrats in this situation.
00:22:02.900But regardless, I think that the issue I have is sort of this form of grandstanding that's been taking place.
00:22:09.060And you kind of—we've talked about this in prior podcasts, but there's sort of a sense of notoriety and fame that's now become associated with attacking Trump and the GOP.
00:22:20.620Whether—I don't know how long that gravy train is going to last, but that seems to be sort of the prerogative of a lot of entertainers who see their ratings falling.
00:22:30.380And that can also apply to both entertainers and politicians, at least as we've seen.
00:22:34.120And I think I tend to fall in the camp that a lot of Jeff Blakes sort of trying to reinvigorate his popularity is through condemning Trump.
00:22:44.160But anyway, we can talk about that another time.
00:22:46.700But I do think that this is, like Amber said, it's highly inappropriate, but does go to show that people appreciate or maybe they don't appreciate everything's become politicized now.
00:22:57.200I would say it's not even—I think it's the politics hysteria, and I think that there are a lot of people who feel like they know everything they need to know by just watching Jimmy Kimmel or John Oliver and seeing, you know, 140-character tweet.
00:23:11.460You know, understanding the process of CHIP and how it gets—how funding gets approved, it takes a little bit more—it takes a little bit more effort.
00:23:20.940And I just don't see that taking place in sort of our soundbite-driven social media.
00:23:24.920And it doesn't fit into 140 characters.
00:23:32.260Federal programs require funding from certain places, and the way that that legislation is made is like the way that sausage is made.
00:23:40.600But how many of these people who are harping on it, how many people like Jimmy Kimmel could explain to you what CHIP is, how it was—how it became a federal program, where the funding comes from, how the funding is spent, and how much money is wasted?
00:23:57.840Well, I think there's an element—like I said, I think hysteria is what drives a lot of the political dialogue, and especially coming from the Democrats, it's a politics of fear.
00:24:05.580You know, how many times did we hear with the tax bill that millions were going to die?
00:24:11.160How many did we hear when, you know, Republicans were advocating for repealing the individual mandate from Obamacare?
00:24:16.400How many times did we hear the Democrats say millions are going to die?
00:24:19.720I mean, this is their classic response to nearly every policy decision.
00:24:23.840What makes Jimmy Kimmel's situation different is that he's advocating for—or he's presenting a position that didn't exist on the GOP side.
00:24:32.720So he's still saying that GOP decisions—basically, no matter what the GOP does, millions are going to die.
00:24:37.300That's pretty much become the narrative of the left.
00:24:40.400No, that's because Trump is literally Hitler.
00:25:05.900Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago and would do anything for them, is now in the ring fighting against Trump.
00:25:50.460I can't, it's, that response is unbelievable.
00:25:54.920But Ariel first, is it fair to say, the premise of Senator Liawatha Focahontas' tweet is that Donald Trump called Kirsten Gillibrand a slut.
00:26:11.060He just suggested that she's willing to do anything to get campaign donations.
00:26:14.720Now, if you interpret that as a sexual innuendo, that's on you.
00:26:18.420I think Donald Trump has gone after many different people for, along the same lines of saying that they're eager and they're begging for donations.
00:26:27.980So that's not unusual for Donald Trump.
00:26:30.360I think that, again, this sort of appeals to the mass hysteria.
00:26:33.700What's more disturbing to me is that, you know, Elizabeth Warren is suggesting her colleague is a slut and that Trump is shaming her for it.
00:26:41.960How dare anyone shame you for being a slut?
00:26:44.600I don't think Elizabeth Warren knows what slut shaming means.
00:26:47.580I would be—I was surprised to see that that's the word she chose to use to sort of capture Donald Trump's criticism.
00:26:55.920But, Amber, you probably have—you've probably been following this more on Twitter than I have, but it's been pretty ludicrous, the responses.
00:27:02.580Well, it's amazing, the reaction, because Donald Trump knows what he's doing.
00:27:08.020He knows what he—especially with these tweets.
00:27:10.120He is the true—he is the poet of tweeting.
00:27:14.080He is the William Shakespeare of tweeting.
00:27:16.040So he knows when he says something, she would do anything.
00:27:19.320He knows how the left is going to respond.
00:27:21.500Now, obviously, saying that you will prioritize—that a Democrat or a politician will prioritize donors over the American people and constituents, that's the oldest political attack there is.
00:27:32.920Donald Trump eroded that line of attack all the way to the White House.
00:27:36.020He said, I can't be bought by everybody.
00:27:38.340Everybody else is bought and paid for by donors.
00:27:40.780But he knew that they would respond that way, and they can't resist from doing it.
00:27:45.560They have to put their heads right in the gutter, and then he can stand there and say, what's the matter with you?
00:27:49.840I'm saying a typical, timeless political insult, and you're bringing it right back to sex, you dirty mainstream media perverts.
00:27:57.840Now, Amber, Liz Warren alleged that he called Gillibrand a slut, but she didn't attack him for calling her a slut.
00:28:06.180She attacked him for suggesting that it's bad to be a slut.
00:28:09.180Has the sexual revolution advanced so much that the left can no longer take offense at being called a slut?
00:28:15.980You simply have to accept that premise and then say that that's not a bad thing.
00:28:20.240Well, yeah, it's so strange the way that she chose to attack the Trump tweet.
00:28:24.540A normal person, if they really thought that Trump was making some kind of sexual innuendo,
00:28:30.840I would imagine they would throw up their hands and they would say,
00:28:33.420how dare you accuse my colleague of wanting to use sexual favors to get campaign contributions?
00:29:15.500It's so funny that even if that's what Trump was implying, for them to take issue with the fact that he was calling her a slut rather than that he was accusing her of doing something unethical is just indicative of how politically correct the left is.
00:29:32.760And Elizabeth Warren's clearly trying to play into the young millennial, slut walk, modern feminism ploy where women are allowed to do whatever they want and they can't be criticized for it because you're just slut shaming or being sexist.
00:29:45.540So I think this is just another example of her trying to get ready for 20 to 20, trying to get those young people in her base.
00:29:52.000And Ariel, well, shame is very much under attack right now.
00:29:56.280People don't like shame probably because our culture is decadent.
00:30:03.180But shame is getting short shrift here.
00:30:06.520Isn't there a place for shame in society, in self-discipline, in the way that you live your own life?
00:30:12.820Isn't shame, doesn't it serve an edifying role at times?
00:30:17.760It actually plays a very important role in society.
00:30:20.700Shame is sort of how we depend on internal shame and both external shame to regulate our own behavior.
00:30:26.520And that's something even like behavioral psychologists will tell you, whether it be in a business setting, like a professional setting, or whether it be on like personal, you know, person-to-person basis.
00:30:36.480Shame is what prevents us from hurting those around us and from making decisions that are best for our own interests.
00:30:41.660And so when it comes to, you know, kind of what Amber was alluding to, this, you'll see, we're going to see a lot more of this sort of permitting, you know, behavior or preventing anyone from engaging in self-evaluation, especially from the left, because you have a lot of figures who tend to be on the older end of the spectrum on the left side of the party.
00:31:02.660And they're really trying to appeal to those young leftist voters.
00:31:05.960And this is a way for them to sort of show their progressive chops.
00:31:09.440We're not going to be judgmental like the establishment Democrats.
00:31:12.580You know, we're going to be free-loving and more free-spirited and you do you and there's no real element of self-evolution.
00:31:20.480There's a really big hypocrisy to it, too, because these are the same people who are using public shame to rid politics and the media of all of these sexual harassers.
00:31:31.400It's the same exact tactic, yet they don't want to apply it inward.
00:31:34.260Well, this is the irony of cultural relativism is the same people who are saying that no culture is better than any other culture and all cultures are the same and how dare you assert cultural superiority are the same ones who are claiming that there's a rape culture on college campuses.
00:31:49.820If no culture is better than any other, why should we worry about a rape culture?
00:31:53.720They can't answer that because obviously we all know that certain cultures are better than others and we wouldn't choose a rape culture if that were a reality.
00:32:03.520But it really, it harshes their mellow and it makes them get all judgy, you know?
00:32:12.720I need to get a little judgmental on the fake news media because we have another fake news roundup today.
00:32:18.000We did a whole episode on fake news, but then one of my favorite fiction novelists, Chris Silliza, and the Will Ferrell impersonator, Jim Acosta, have really given us a great performance today.
00:32:30.840Here is Sarah Huckabee Sanders smacking around Jim Acosta, star of Anchorman.
00:32:37.260I would just say, Sarah, that journalists make honest mistakes and that doesn't make them fake news.
00:32:52.700There's a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people, something that happens regularly.
00:33:03.920You cannot say that it's an honest mistake when you're purposely putting out information that you know to be false.
00:33:12.980Or when you're taking information that hasn't been validated, that hasn't been offered any credibility, and that has been continually denied by a number of people, including people with direct knowledge of an instance.
00:33:24.060This is something that I'm speaking about.
00:33:28.380The number of reports that have taken place over the last couple of weeks, I'm simply stating that there should be a certain level of responsibility in that process.
00:33:36.640So what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said there, by the way, is 100% true.
00:33:42.360Now, you might take issue, you say, well, we don't have evidence that they're intentionally cooking up stories.
00:33:46.940But just to point out her diction there, she said either if they're cooking up stories or if they're running stories recklessly without vetting their information.
00:33:54.680Because of that or, her statement is 100% true.
00:33:57.220And by the way, there's plenty of evidence that they're just cooking up stories and intentionally pushing them.
00:34:01.920This didn't stop CNN's Chris Saliza from running this headline today.
00:34:06.660Sarah Sanders just made a hugely offensive allegation against the media.
00:34:11.080Now, it might be offensive, but it's true.
00:34:13.360The reality is offensive to the news media because they're publishing fake stories.
00:34:17.820There have been three major screw-ups from the media, three major retractions in just the last three days.
00:34:24.600Chris Saliza, I love that he's the guy to run this story today because he ran another story before the election,
00:34:31.120which was titled, quote, Donald Trump's chances of winning are approaching zero.
00:35:05.200CNN, of course, had that botched report on Friday about Don Jr. and WikiLeaks where they got the date of an email wrong.
00:35:12.120The only thing about that report, by the way, the only thing that was wrong about that report was every single thing that they said about it.
00:35:17.460But other than that, the story was pretty accurate, I think.
00:35:19.640Yeah, and they talked to two different sources, supposedly independently, who both gave them the wrong date.
00:35:27.100I mean, it's incredibly hard to believe.
00:35:29.200I'm pretty sure what happened here is that the reporters at CNN basically had their own biases about alleged collusion between Trump and Russia confirmed.
00:35:37.820So they ended up running with the story, even though they didn't even see a physical copy of the email or have independent verification of such.
00:35:45.900By the way, do you know what I think about that story?
00:35:47.800I think this is my conspiracy hat on, so I'll put on the tinfoil hat.
00:35:51.880But having worked on some campaigns before, I would not be surprised at all if it was a Republican who leaked that info to CNN,
00:35:58.700knowing that CNN wouldn't vet the information, knowing that they would recklessly run with it because it confirmed their biases.
00:36:04.280We know that the Trump administration did this to Rachel Maddow over those tax returns.
00:36:55.120Is the way forward more opinion or should the news media be sacrificing some views to get less biased coverage or more balanced coverage?
00:37:05.140Well, my answer to this is always pretty firm in the sense that there are – if you really have a strong opinion and you don't think you are capable of producing a report on an event without that opinion impacting your report,
00:37:19.420then you should be an opinion journalist.
00:37:21.420You should write for a political journal that has a particular given slant.
00:37:27.800There are people that have slants and they know this about themselves.
00:37:31.220And so as a result of that, they, you know, they join – they become political journalists with a particular slant and they join that given publication.
00:37:39.800My issue is that there are plenty of wonderful journalists out there who work extra, extra hard – in fact, I know them and I'm close friends with them – that work extra, extra hard to make sure their opinion doesn't infiltrate their work.
00:37:52.000However, those people end up being in the minority.
00:37:55.620What I have seen from mainstream outlets is that we have too many journalists who are taking for granted now.
00:38:01.120They see themselves as sort of what I understand as moral arbiters.
00:38:06.480They see themselves as part of the resistance.
00:38:08.160And so everything they do in pursuit of resisting Trump is somehow morally good.
00:38:13.780And so in that sense, they don't – they put their resistance to Trump and their resistance to the GOP agenda as the number one priority as opposed to reporting absolute fact.
00:38:24.580What Sarah Huckabee Sanders said was not necessarily incorrect because the line between reckless reporting and intentional misinformation is there, but it's very slim and it's also often blurred, right?
00:38:36.080If you're driving at extremely high speeds and an accident occurs, are you no longer responsible?
00:38:43.380Amber can probably speak because she works directly in the industry.
00:38:47.000There are harsh penalties for plagiarism.
00:38:49.740And sometimes it's not even intentional, but the punishment is still the same.
00:38:53.940And that sort of goes – when I think about how we punish or how we respond to misinformation, yes, there are genuine mistakes, but the result of misinformation, whether it's intentional or just a matter of carelessness, the result is still the same.