The Tucker Carlson Show - Seth Dillon

00:00:00.000 When was the last time you're reading the news in this country and thought to yourself,

00:00:14.780 this can't be real, this has to be a parody? It's been more than three days, you haven't

00:00:19.740 been reading the news. It's reached the level where it's almost impossible to tell the difference

00:00:25.020 between what's reported as fact by the news media and what someone with a dark sense of humor has

00:00:31.040 made up. Well, we thought this was exactly the moment to speak to the man who makes up

00:00:35.940 more news than anyone in America, Seth Dillon, who runs Babylon Bee, and he joins us now.

00:00:41.460 Seth, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.

00:00:43.260 So we're really talking to you today, not as the proprietor of America's premier humor site,

00:00:49.600 but as a prophet, as our own Isaiah. Because it turns out, and we went through quite a few

00:00:56.040 examples, that the Babylon Bee's parody stories have come true in dozens, scores, nearly 100 cases.

00:01:03.760 I'm going to put three on the screen and get your reaction to them to kind of set the stage

00:01:07.500 to announce you as America's most accurate prophet. So let's go in order here. This is from January

00:01:14.700 2023. Here's the headline. Experts say they don't know what thing is causing everyone to suddenly

00:01:20.240 collapse, but it's definitely not that one thing. Let's go to the news story. Something has been

00:01:27.760 killing American young people in sharply rising numbers, but it's not vaccines.

00:01:33.100 They don't know what it is, but they know it's not vaccines.

00:01:35.240 They can rule that out safely.

00:01:37.720 Exactly. So when you see the news story that confirms what you thought was a pretty out there

00:01:44.600 joke, what's your reaction? I mean, we're getting accustomed to it at this point, but I think it's

00:01:51.940 probably the most common misconception people have is that when the world goes really wild and insane

00:01:56.900 and there's crazy stuff happening, that it's easy to satirize that. It's easy to make fun of it. And

00:02:00.800 it's actually the opposite. We find that it's... The way that I put it is, imagine if your job is to

00:02:05.860 write jokes that are funnier than what Democrats are doing in real life.

00:02:08.180 I know what's right.

00:02:09.500 Imagine if your job is to write jokes that are funnier than a Kamala Harris speech.

00:02:12.900 No, it's totally wrong.

00:02:13.480 I mean, it's challenging. It's actually very challenging.

00:02:15.920 So you really want to live in like Amish country where everything is like orderly and neat and 1.00

00:02:19.620 sensible. That's something fun to pivot against.

00:02:22.740 Yeah, exactly. So I don't know. We see this stuff happen where I'm used by it on the one hand,

00:02:27.560 and on the other hand, we're like, this is... It's crazy that satire can't stay satire for more

00:02:31.340 than a few hours and a few days.

00:02:32.680 What the shelf life of your pieces is here. Let's throw up another one. This is from September 2020.

00:02:38.800 State with no electricity orders everyone to drive cars that run on electricity. And there

00:02:43.100 you have Gavin Newsom, who's the governor of what state?

00:02:46.420 California.

00:02:47.000 California. Here's the news story.

00:02:49.560 California is told not to charge electric cars days after gas car sales ban.

00:02:56.140 How'd you see that coming?

00:02:57.060 It's comical. I mean, well, in some sense, we're just reporting the news when we're doing this

00:03:00.860 stuff. You know, like, you see it happening. You see the madness happening all around you.

00:03:03.780 You call it out, and next thing you know, it's actually in the headlines.

00:03:07.520 But you... I guess the joke is you see the implications of the news?

00:03:11.520 Yeah. The joke is that you see what's... You can kind of see around the corner. And I think

00:03:14.740 it's easy to... You can kind of guess at what people are going to go to next. What's the next

00:03:18.060 logical step here, given where we've... What is Kamala Harris's line about how... Where we've

00:03:24.660 been and where we're going or something? The line she keeps repeating all the time.

00:03:27.200 And wherever you are, you are. And wherever you are, you are. I don't know. I mean, it's...

00:03:31.840 You can kind of see around the corner with this, especially when you're trying to think to

00:03:34.860 yourself, well, you know, what's the... What is the next insane thing that they could...

00:03:38.560 That they could come up with that they haven't already come up with? You just throw that out

00:03:42.760 there and see what sticks. I mean, eventually, it's going to come true.

00:03:45.200 How long are your story meetings?

00:03:48.420 Well, it's a constant meeting. It's an ongoing meeting. It's just, you know, pitching ideas

00:03:51.940 all day long. So we just pitch them back and forth. Based off that, we read the headlines.

00:03:55.700 We read the real headlines. And then we exaggerate them a little bit. You know, we do this little

00:04:00.360 caricature of the headlines. And then that's when they come true.

00:04:03.880 Are you getting to the point where no idea is too outlandish for a joke?

00:04:12.080 Well, I mean, I guess part of the problem is some of these ideas are too outlandish for

00:04:18.860 a joke, but they do actually happen in real life. So people don't realize they're a joke.

00:04:22.380 Right.

00:04:22.820 You know? So you have these things. We'll publish a joke that's clearly a satirical

00:04:27.040 joke, but everybody thinks it's true. And they share it as if it's true because they're

00:04:31.460 so used to seeing almost satirical headlines in the real news.

00:04:34.840 Yes.

00:04:35.020 So reality is at fault for that. It's not that, you know, our jokes are too believable.

00:04:40.180 It's that reality is too close to satire. Oh, we get fact-checked all the time. We've

00:04:45.340 been fact-checked dozens of times. Snopes has fact-checked us at least 20 times, 20 plus

00:04:50.200 times.

00:04:51.140 Do they know that you're a parody site?

00:04:52.680 Right. They do. They, when they, they used to attribute, uh, nefarious motives to us. They

00:04:59.220 used to say that we were like misleading people on purpose with these jokes because they were

00:05:02.940 believable and people were sharing them as if they were true. Again, not our fault. I think

00:05:07.120 that's the fault of reality being too close to satire.

00:05:09.240 Yes. Um, but they would fact-check them regular, ridiculous jokes. Like, you know, 0.89

00:05:13.460 AOC goes on the price is right, guesses everything is free or, um, or, you know,

00:05:18.720 Ninth Circuit court overturns death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You know, these, these are,

00:05:26.000 they're, they're, they're silly jokes. They're funny jokes, but sometimes people believe that

00:05:29.580 it's true because you could actually see somebody doing this.

00:05:32.380 Who came up with those two?

00:05:33.920 Uh, I don't know. I don't, we don't, we don't actually put the name of the author on the article.

00:05:38.080 So I'd have to go back and look and say, yeah, yeah. We have a, we have a, we have a very,

00:05:42.740 very sharp writing team. They're very good at this. Super good at this. I think one of my,

00:05:47.760 honestly, one of my favorites that got fact-checked was our joke about Trump saying that he had done

00:05:52.600 more for Christianity than Jesus himself. And that was, uh, that was your headline.

00:05:56.680 That was the headline. Trump, I have done more for Christianity than Jesus.

00:06:00.500 But he kind of said that at some point, didn't he?

00:06:02.380 He did. Well, yeah. So we, we made that joke in 2019. It got fact-checked shortly thereafter

00:06:06.820 because it went crazy viral. And then in 2021, I think it was 2021 or 2022, he said he'd done more

00:06:12.940 for Christianity and religion in general than any other person in the history. So I, it's hard to

00:06:19.340 tell sometimes, are people reading our website and getting ideas for what to say and what to do?

00:06:23.480 I don't know. But that, that one was kind of fun.

00:06:25.260 So how do you respond when someone fact-checks a joke, AOC on Price is Right, Trump's better

00:06:31.380 for Christianity than Jesus. How do you respond to that? Uh, well, when they fact-check it, I think 0.75

00:06:38.160 it's hysterical when they fact-check it. What I don't like, what I don't like is when the fact-check

00:06:42.100 says they've managed to pull off this ruse before they're tricking people. Um, you know, the reason

00:06:47.500 your grandma shared that joke on Facebook is because the Babylon Bee tricked her into believing it was

00:06:52.140 true. You know, it's, that kind of stuff is ridiculous. We actually threatened to sue Snopes 0.99

00:06:55.960 because they were, they were literally maligning us and suggesting that we were

00:07:00.760 misinforming people on purpose. And then Facebook was saying that they were going to demonetize and

00:07:05.480 deplatform us because we were being fact-checked by Snopes. So they're saying you can't spread fake

00:07:09.860 news on our platform. I'm like, it's satire. So what, I assume Snopes is run by the CIA or,

00:07:14.880 I mean, I don't have evidence of that, but I like Wikipedia. I, it seems obvious, but what do you

00:07:19.380 know about Snopes? Uh, there was a couple that started it and they were running it for a long

00:07:23.980 time. I think the guy's name, I might mess it up. It was David Mickelson or something like that,

00:07:27.740 or Michelson. Um, I may be getting that wrong, but anyway, I, it changed hands recently. Somebody

00:07:32.340 else took it over. Oh, someone else. They actually reached out to us and said, I know we've had a,

00:07:35.600 you know, we've had a rough past, but we want to put that behind us and move forward. And

00:07:40.200 I mean, in, in your experience to the, the fact checkers, which are, I mean, again, clearly at the very

00:07:47.000 least influenced by the Intel agencies. Yeah. Do they play any constructive role in our public

00:07:53.100 conversation? No, no. I mean, well, first of all, they're spending their time fact-checking satire.

00:07:59.880 This, the, the joke about Ruth Bader Ginsburg that, or her death being overturned by the Ninth

00:08:04.200 Circuit Court. Can you overturn someone's death, by the way? Uh, it happened, it happened once.

00:08:09.000 It happened once. I don't think it happened with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but USA Today fact-checked that

00:08:15.360 one. And they cited 15 sources in their fact-check. Like they were taking it so seriously. They

00:08:20.400 checked the Ninth Circuit Court website. They placed phone calls. It's like, just look at the website

00:08:25.120 that published it. It's the Babylon Bee. It's insane. Right? Yeah.

00:08:28.600 So I always think that behind every ludicrous event like that is a person who spent his day

00:08:33.300 doing that thing. So imagine if he went home at night and your wife says, you know, like,

00:08:37.020 what, Seth, what'd you do today? Yeah. What'd you accomplish today?

00:08:39.120 And you're like, well, I fact-checked a joke with 15 sources. Like the respect level from your wife

00:08:45.060 has to plummet, right? The, the, the fact that it got fact-checked is funnier than the joke itself.

00:08:49.600 Yes. Like the one, so, um, I, I had spoken with you about this one before. CNN purchasing an

00:08:54.720 industrial-sized washing machine to spin the news in before publishing it. That's a ridiculous joke. 0.81

00:08:59.100 It's silly. It's a CNN bias joke. And that got fact-checked and rated false. So they're spending 0.99

00:09:03.980 their time on stories that aren't even- Wait, so CNN didn't actually purchase an industrial-sized washing machine?

00:09:07.540 Never happened. They never, they never did. They never slapped their logo on a washing machine and

00:09:11.240 spun the news in it before it never happened. It was a joke. Um, but the joke is that they fact-check

00:09:15.840 it. They took it seriously, but no fact-checking. So the way that I look at it is, you know,

00:09:19.620 fact-checking is a, um, it's an arm. It's one of the methods that's employed by the lovers of

00:09:27.980 censorship to guard the narrative, not the truth. Yes. And so what they're doing with fact-checking is

00:09:33.240 they're, they're, they're very selective. First of all, they're super selective about what they fact-check

00:09:37.260 and then the fact-checks themselves often get the facts wrong on purpose. And so they're not

00:09:42.380 guarding the truth and saying, okay, there's this problem of misinformation and we're going to prevent

00:09:46.620 it spread. And we're going to do that by having objective people look at what the facts are.

00:09:51.320 It's all narrative driven. It's all about protecting the popular narrative.

00:09:54.820 And by narrative, you mean lie?

00:09:56.460 The lie. Yeah. Whatever the popular lie is that they want you to believe. Yes. That, that, that,

00:10:00.440 the, the claims around that, you have the press secretary for the current administration saying

00:10:04.660 that, uh, Biden has done more to secure the border than any other person. That's a straight-faced

00:10:11.480 claim from the press secretary. Fact-checkers haven't touched it. It has not been rated false.

00:10:15.140 Now, uh, governor Abbott in Texas, governor Abbott in Texas, um, had, was talking about how this

00:10:22.600 administration currently has basically an open border policy and that got fact-checked and rated false.

00:10:27.440 So, you know, the, the challenges to the narrative are fact-checked and rated false. The narrative

00:10:32.580 itself, which isn't true, is allowed to go unchecked. So normally we wouldn't care what

00:10:37.680 the fact-checkers say because they're obviously discredited. I mean, they're disgusting by their 0.93

00:10:42.440 nature, but we have to care because they are the triggers that set into motion the censorship

00:10:48.980 apparatus at the social media companies, correct? Well, they rely on the, so they use the, the fact-checkers

00:10:53.500 are the way of them, uh, getting out of the way and saying, well, we're not the ones

00:10:57.240 determining. We're not the arbiters of truth. Facebook could go, could punt to Snopes or whoever

00:11:01.300 else, USA Today, whoever's doing the fact-checking and say, we're not censoring you. We're not removing

00:11:06.060 your content based on, you know, arbitrary rules. We have third-party fact-checkers that are objective

00:11:10.980 and they're the ones deciding what's true and what's false and what can stay and what goes.

00:11:14.980 So they just, they fit in as a piece that allows them to basically have like plausible

00:11:18.660 deniability that they're involved in censorship. But the USA Today fact-check on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's

00:11:25.240 death, that was funded by grants from Facebook. So Facebook paid USA Today to write that.

00:11:31.660 Well, didn't Facebook steal the last election too? They put almost half a billion dollars,

00:11:35.140 Mark Zuckerberg, into changing the way we vote. So I don't know. Are they going to fact-check

00:11:40.060 that? Does that actually happen? Okay. Let me get to the third example of the Babylon Bee's prophetic

00:11:49.060 accuracy. And I don't actually know how else you describe this. This is from April of 2022.

00:11:53.420 Government disinformation board determines all criticism of government disinformation board to

00:11:57.920 be disinformation. It is a self-licking ice cream cone. Okay. So that was your headline.

00:12:03.440 Here's the fact. Mayorkas cites misinformation about Homeland Security's disinformation board.

00:12:12.500 It's, you know, the world is too absurd to be satirized.

00:12:15.380 So when you see that, I mean, do you feel vindicated?

00:12:18.600 Yeah. Yeah, of course.

00:12:19.680 I mean, did Jeremiah feel vindicated?

00:12:21.920 It means we're onto something. What it means is that there was, okay, so this is another criticism

00:12:26.600 of the Babylon Bee. We're narrative driven. We're propagandists. We're trying to push our own

00:12:34.040 viewpoint that has no basis. Is that what the propagandists say about you?

00:12:36.760 Yeah. Like Slate, all these people, Rolling Stone. When they write, when they write, they do. Yeah.

00:12:41.880 And when they write pieces about us, they talk about how we're trying, or the reason our jokes

00:12:45.960 aren't funny is because they're not writing on the back of the truth. They're not carrying a message

00:12:50.520 of truth. They're pushing a narrative. They're based on a narrative. So, so the joke isn't funny

00:12:54.960 because it's rooted in a lie.

00:12:56.360 So Slate doesn't think it's funny.

00:12:57.580 But, but I think the fact that we get fact checked so much and these jokes are coming true

00:13:01.840 vindicates that there is truth to them, obviously. They're rooted in the truth because

00:13:05.660 they're coming true. You have to fact check them and rate them false.

00:13:08.460 So, I wonder if we take this seriously enough. I mean, if someone is trying to stop you from

00:13:15.400 talking, that person doesn't consider you human, of course, because you can't, if you consider

00:13:20.680 someone human, that person has every bit the right to speak that you do. If you consider the

00:13:24.800 person subhuman, a slave, then you can make them shut up. So it's the way they see you is not how

00:13:30.260 you see them at all. You see them as human beings, correct? The censors, the fact checkers,

00:13:33.980 Slate. You don't want to shut them up or put them in prison, do you?

00:13:37.900 No, no. And I, this is, I actually like the way that Twitter now acts as handling

00:13:44.260 false claims or, or misleading claims because what they're doing is instead of trying to shut

00:13:50.980 anybody up, you know, the community notes thing where they tag a note on it, but it's the best

00:13:54.340 feature of the platform, by the way. It's so entertaining when people get noted and it's, you know,

00:13:57.940 they make a ridiculous claim. Biden's been noted a bunch of times. Even Elon's been noted a couple

00:14:02.220 of times. So you share something that's either from a, you know, a dubious source or you make a

00:14:07.600 claim that's, you know, obviously false and a community note gets attached to it that offers

00:14:12.240 context, readers added context, right? That's at least more speech in the answer to speech that's

00:14:17.340 disliked. It's, it's, it's a rebuttal that's, that's prominently set up next to whatever the claim

00:14:23.420 was. I like that a lot more than, okay, Snopes rated you false. Therefore we're taking your page

00:14:28.520 down. You can't talk anymore. Um, you know, the answer, the answer to speech that you don't like

00:14:33.280 should be more speech, right? A refutation or an argument, not removal of your voice.

00:14:38.680 Well, of course not. So, but your voice was removed from Twitter back when it was Twitter.

00:14:42.800 You were in Twitter prison. I can't remember why were you there? Prison changes. Like how was your

00:14:48.000 time in Twitter prison? Uh, um, we were in Twitter jail, uh, as you could put it for eight months.

00:14:56.340 Wow. Did you join a gang?

00:14:59.580 We were there with a few other interesting people, Jordan Peterson, Captain Cripton.

00:15:03.300 You can't let the time do you.

00:15:05.600 You know, a lot of, a lot of interesting people in Twitter jail.

00:15:08.160 I can't even imagine. I can just picture you smoking your home rolled cigarettes, playing

00:15:14.120 pinochle, cooking pasta. So we had, uh, we had made a joke. So, so there was a real headline.

00:15:20.060 Um, USA Today names Rachel Levine, uh, woman of the year. So Rachel Levine is the transgender 1.00

00:15:26.120 health admiral in the Biden administration. Oh, the dude in the, with the medals.

00:15:28.880 Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, woman of the year. So that headline itself, I think is comical. It's

00:15:36.960 funny. It's, it's, it seems like a parody, but it's not, it's real. So we were thinking to

00:15:41.860 ourselves, what, what do we do? Very bold and beautiful woman. I don't know what you're

00:15:46.980 talking about. Sorry. Brave, stunning. So we were, we were trying to, we were looking

00:15:53.660 at this headline and thinking to ourselves, what do we do with this? Like, what is the

00:15:56.460 angle here to make a joke out of what's already a joke? This is already a joke and women should 1.00

00:16:01.280 be offended. Everybody should be offended that this, that, that a male person is winning

00:16:04.560 this woman of the year. But, um, the only thing that we could think of to say was, okay,

00:16:09.280 well, how about in defense of women insanity, we just simply say the Babylon bees pick for 0.99

00:16:14.000 man of the year is Rachel Levine. So that was the headline that we put out there. Babylon

00:16:17.540 bee names Rachel Levine man of the year. So, you know, Twitter didn't like that. It's

00:16:22.140 misgendering. It's, that's so hateful. Yeah, exactly. So, um, misgendering falls under the

00:16:28.280 hateful conduct. You're calling him a man. You're referring to a male person as a man. Yeah.

00:16:34.240 That's hate. And that's, it's hate, hateful conduct. It's, it's misgendering by their

00:16:39.520 policy. It's not, you know, it's not acceptable. So, um, what the, basically what they, what

00:16:44.760 they said was this, you can have your account back. If you delete the tweet with that joke

00:16:50.300 attached to it, you have, but you have to delete it. They're, they didn't take it down. They

00:16:54.200 wanted us to delete it and check this box that said by deleting, you know, when you delete

00:16:58.100 this tweet, you acknowledge that you violated the rules, including the rules against hateful

00:17:01.160 conduct. So sign a confession, sign a confession, bend the knee, you know, censor yourself, delete

00:17:06.680 your own joke. Like we were, I was basically telling Twitter, I'm like, you guys delete,

00:17:10.600 if you don't like it, you take it down. Why make me take it down and admit that I did something

00:17:14.120 wrong? Well, that's the whole point. It's not censorship, it's subjugation, right?

00:17:17.160 Yeah, exactly. So, uh, we said no. So we're like, no, we're not going to delete it. And we

00:17:21.460 got into this standoff with Twitter. Can I ask you just a question? So, um, which is a little

00:17:25.140 bit off topic, but maybe central, central. You are a Christian, son of a, of a pastor.

00:17:30.200 Yeah. When, when you're told by the authorities, not simply that you're being punished, but that

00:17:36.220 you have to agree that your punishment is just. Right. Is, is there like a theological component

00:17:41.160 for you when you say no? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's standing on, it's, it's standing on the

00:17:45.340 principle that not only do we think that this, first of all, it's a joke. Right. Second of all,

00:17:50.100 it's true. This is a male person referring to them as a man, a man means an adult human male.

00:17:54.840 So there's truth to it as well. Um, so the, the idea that we're not allowed to speak the

00:18:00.020 truth, uh, but, and that we have to censor ourselves and admit that we engage not just

00:18:04.560 in a falsehood, but something that was hateful. Yeah. I think, I think that there's, there's

00:18:09.000 a moral objection to, to playing any part in that. Um, so, uh, yeah, so that, that was really

00:18:15.880 the ground that we were standing on. It wasn't just like, oh, let's, you know, let's get some

00:18:19.240 publicity by refusing to do it. This was a costly decision, by the way, we had, there

00:18:23.380 was nobody in the world at that time knew that Elon was positioning himself to take over

00:18:27.360 Twitter. So, and we didn't know that if he did, that he would end up restoring us. So

00:18:32.260 it wasn't like we had any kind of fallback for that. It was just, our Twitter audience

00:18:36.460 was going to be inaccessible to us if we didn't delete the joke. And we deliberated about it

00:18:39.840 for like five minutes and we're like, no, we're not doing it. So we sat in Twitter jail

00:18:44.900 until, uh, Elon took the reins and was like, bring back the Babylon Bee.

00:18:50.080 So how did that play out? I, and by the way, this is, you're one of the main owners

00:18:55.600 of the business. Your whole business is getting your content in front of viewers, selling ads

00:19:00.840 against it. I mean, this is like a, as you said, a very costly.

00:19:04.660 It was a very stupid business decision. It was, I think it was a morally right decision, 0.99

00:19:10.300 but you know, the right thing and the easy thing are rarely ever the same. It was a costly

00:19:13.300 decision because that's where we generate a lot of our traffic is through Twitter.

00:19:15.960 Well, yeah.

00:19:16.640 And that's where, so when, when people say, well, how costly was it to be off of Twitter?

00:19:20.480 Well, I mean, we weren't, we weren't getting engagement from people like Trump or yourself

00:19:25.320 or Rogan or, or, or Musk on Facebook or Instagram. It was happening on Twitter. That's where we

00:19:31.040 got engagement from people with big followings. That's where they, that's how they knew about

00:19:35.020 the bee and that's how they engaged with the bee. So once we were sidelined from Twitter,

00:19:38.120 we were basically out of the conversation. That's where the conversation was happening.

00:19:41.420 Right. So it was, it was a big cost to us, not just monetarily, but just being relevant.

00:19:45.580 We weren't relevant anymore. So, um, I mean, the way, the way it went down was really crazy

00:19:51.920 because you had, you know, obviously Elon was wanting to make a move to buy Twitter. You know,

00:19:57.240 when he, when he first found out that we were, we were suspended, he reached out to us and he's

00:20:00.260 like, is this true? Are you guys really suspended? That's what I'm hearing. At first he actually

00:20:03.980 reached out to our Babylon B account and we couldn't respond to him because we were locked out of it.

00:20:07.260 So we're like, we can receive the message, but we can't reply to it. So we're like,

00:20:11.200 Elon Musk is trying to message us and we can't get back to him. Yeah. So we couldn't even respond.

00:20:15.500 So eventually he, you know, he found our editor in chief's account and was able to message him

00:20:19.200 and get in touch with him. So we're like, yeah, we got, we got to find you guys. Oh yeah. He was,

00:20:23.620 yeah. He was trying to get in touch with us to figure out what was going on. Cause at the time,

00:20:26.600 unknown to us and anybody else, he was already buying Twitter stock and he was kind of positioning

00:20:30.840 himself, looking at Twitter as like a potential acquisition. So, um, and he wanted, and the reason

00:20:37.500 he wanted to do that is because he was concerned that there was a lot of censorship and people

00:20:41.380 weren't allowed to speak freely on the platform anymore. And that's something needed to be done

00:20:45.020 about that. So then he finds out that the B is suspended and he's like, are you serious? This is

00:20:48.640 ridiculous. You should be able to tell jokes. So yeah. So we had a conversation with him about, 0.99

00:20:54.120 you know, how insane it was that, that we were kicked off and we're like, and he's like,

00:20:58.000 why don't you just delete the tweet to get back on? And we're like, I don't think we should,

00:21:01.660 I don't think we should have to. And he's like, well, no, I don't, I don't think you should have

00:21:04.500 to either. So fast forward a little bit. I mean, we were on a roller coaster there for a while

00:21:09.120 because he was, you know, he made an offer and then he tried to get out. He tried to back out and

00:21:13.900 say, Oh, you know, you guys misrepresented your numbers. There's all these bots. I don't want to

00:21:17.280 buy bots. I want to buy real users. And so he was trying to get out of the deal. Maybe he bit off more

00:21:21.660 than he could chew and was like having, having cold feet about it. It was quite a mouthful. Yeah. Yeah. And then Twitter

00:21:26.540 sues him to try to keep him in the deal. And so we had no idea if anything was going to happen or if

00:21:31.160 he was actually going to take over, if this was just a big publicity play or whatever.

00:21:35.140 So I woke up to a message one morning, it was October, November last year. I don't know exactly

00:21:40.380 when it was that he took over, but he finally closed the deal. And yeah, it was in October.

00:21:46.280 He finally closes the deal. And I wake up at like, I don't know, eight or nine in the morning. I'm

00:21:51.900 sleeping in that day. It was a weekend. I think it was. And I had a message from Elon

00:21:55.720 that he sent overnight. He said, would you like me to restore the B's account? There

00:21:59.740 will be no censorship of humor. So he took over and was immediately wanting to rectify

00:22:04.460 the problem. And how long after he took over was that?

00:22:08.200 That was day one. Day one.

00:22:10.340 So one of his first texts was to you saying, you're restored.

00:22:13.720 Yeah. Well, would you like me to restore your account? There will be no censorship of humor.

00:22:17.280 Come to find out, we actually didn't get restored for another month because he started, you know,

00:22:21.620 he went into the meetings with the trust and safety team and they're like, you can't just restore people.

00:22:25.720 You can't just break the rules. There's rules. We enforce the rules. If you break the rules for

00:22:29.860 one person, you have to break them for everybody. If you insult someone in power, we censor you.

00:22:33.780 Yeah. Yeah. So they were like, dude, you can't just restore the Babylon Bee. And he's like,

00:22:37.460 well, why not? Why can't, isn't it like a presidential pardon? Why can't I pardon somebody,

00:22:40.960 you know, and set them free? And they're like, this isn't, that's not how this works. I mean,

00:22:44.880 I guess you can, if you want to. So they actually argued with him a lot back and forth.

00:22:47.960 Can I ask you just another sideline question? But like, you can't insult Richard Levine,

00:22:55.300 product of private school, doctor, guy posing as an admiral or whatever. He's in power. He works

00:23:01.560 for the current administration. But if you were to find like some 45 year old white guy drywall 0.89

00:23:08.160 hanger in Iowa, is there anything that you would not be allowed to say about him?

00:23:13.260 No, nothing. Nothing. Yeah. No. So this is, let's kill him and everyone like him. Right,

00:23:17.260 right, right. No. So this is such an important point you're bringing up the idea, this concept

00:23:20.740 of who you can and can't make fun of. So Richard Levine, Rachel Levine, whatever you want to call

00:23:26.940 him, man of the year, uh, high ranking white male government official. Yeah. High ranking white 0.73

00:23:33.080 male government official. And this is a person that you can't joke about because they're

00:23:35.800 marginalized and oppressed supposedly. I do words even have meaning. What does the word

00:23:40.320 marginalized mean? Dylan Mulvaney. Is Dylan Mulvaney on the red carpet at these events

00:23:44.380 and, and sponsored by every major, uh, you know, brand marginalized and oppressed? What

00:23:49.960 does that word even mean to be marginalized? Right? So we're looking at this and we're like,

00:23:54.280 so wait a minute, they're telling us they have a rule. Facebook now has a rule. The other platforms

00:23:58.900 are adopting this rule and they're trying to make comedians live by the rule. You're not allowed

00:24:03.980 to punch down. That's what they say. You can't punch down and punching down.

00:24:07.500 Dylan Mulvaney towers above the rest of us in his power, right? Right. Right. But the rule

00:24:13.380 against punching down. Who has more power when you were Dylan Mulvaney? Uh, I can't get anybody

00:24:18.160 censored for making fun of me. So, uh, I think, I think if you have the will and the power to,

00:24:22.340 to, to silence people who so much as make a joke at your expense, then you have more power

00:24:26.400 than anybody. You're punching up. Exactly. Ibram X. Kendi has way more power than anyone in the

00:24:31.220 county I live in. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So this idea, the punching down, like the number

00:24:35.260 one rule of comedy should be funny. It's to be funny, right? When a, when a, when a humorist

00:24:39.100 or satirist, a comedian is sitting down to write a joke, they should be thinking to themselves,

00:24:43.160 is this joke funny? Not, am I, am I going to be making fun of someone who supposedly has

00:24:49.720 less power and privilege than me, but can actually get me punished if, if they're offended by my

00:24:53.720 joke? Right. Um, and it's such a, but I think it's a matter of reclaiming the language. Like

00:24:58.980 Dylan Mulvaney, Rachel Levine. I mean, these are our rulers actually. Right. Yeah. They're,

00:25:07.680 they're the most powerful and privileged people in our culture and you're not allowed to joke

00:25:12.240 about them. So, and that's, and that's how Michelle Obama is. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this

00:25:16.480 is a, everybody understands this too. This is a, it's a well-known saying that, you know,

00:25:19.840 you can tell who you're, you can tell who rules over you by who you're not allowed to criticize

00:25:23.220 or who you're allowed to joke about. And that's exactly the situation. I don't think you're

00:25:25.580 even allowed to say that though. Are you probably not? I don't think you are. Yeah. Yeah. That's

00:25:30.160 hate speech right there. Yeah. But we're not, but we're not, we're not punching down. We're not

00:25:35.520 punching down. I think we're punching back, but this is the thing that this is the, so, so comedy

00:25:39.400 when they, when they make this rule, you know, well, there's, there's a number of elements to this

00:25:44.180 too. Imagine thinking to yourself when you're making a joke too, like, you know what? I shouldn't

00:25:47.940 joke about those people. They're beneath me. Imagine if that's the mentality that you're in,

00:25:52.220 right? Like that's a condescending mentality. Well, any man who's ever lived in

00:25:55.520 a dorm knows that mocking somebody is a sign of fraternal friendship. That's your peer.

00:26:01.960 Right. I had a friend whose birthday was this morning. I mean, I sent him a whole barrage

00:26:06.340 of insulting jokes about his age and his sexual potency. And that's the first thing I do when 0.50

00:26:11.640 one of my closest friends gets older. You know what I mean? The way of treating each

00:26:14.260 other equally is joking about each other indiscriminately. So yeah, I think, I think

00:26:17.980 comedians who, and this is, this is why so much of comedy is not funny today. It's, it's my chief

00:26:22.920 criticism of like late night comedy, which I find unwatchable. I think it's totally

00:26:26.480 unwatchable. But also contemptible. I mean, they're collaborators.

00:26:28.560 They are, they are, um, they're just like the fact checkers, they're guardians of the narrative.

00:26:35.200 You know, they are.

00:26:35.780 How can Jimmy Kimmel live with him? Like Jimmy Kimmel is a talented guy and I don't, I don't

00:26:40.220 think he's like an evil person or something, but he's made this deal where he just serves

00:26:45.060 power and attacks anybody who challenges power. Like how can, honestly, how can he look in

00:26:51.300 the mirror and say, I'm doing something honorable? Like how could he live with himself? How could

00:26:54.960 his wife sleep with him? Well, it'd be, it'd be one thing. It'd be one thing if, if his job wasn't 0.99

00:27:02.740 to be a comedian and to do that, but his job is to be a comedian. He's supposed to be funny

00:27:06.900 and comedians are supposed to hold people in positions of power. 0.97

00:27:10.160 But he's a pure suck up to the people in charge. 0.98

00:27:12.420 Exactly. 0.99

00:27:12.920 He's their Praetorian guard.

00:27:14.560 Yeah.

00:27:15.000 And it's like the self-hatred he must feel because he wasn't always, that's my point.

00:27:20.320 I mean, Colbert has always been a hard partisan, talented guy, but obviously a part, you know,

00:27:25.220 not, he's not a comedian, but Kimmel was a comedian. Like how does he, I don't understand.

00:27:30.420 I don't know.

00:27:31.200 How he can sleep.

00:27:32.760 He might, he might buy into the narrative to the extent that he thinks it's morally wrong

00:27:39.240 to joke about these, these certain topics.

00:27:42.540 But it's not just that. He's like pouring hot oil on the peasants from the parapet.

00:27:46.320 Right.

00:27:46.600 Like he's hurting anyone who challenges the king.

00:27:49.500 Right.

00:27:49.660 It's crazy.

00:27:50.380 It is crazy. It's upside down.

00:27:52.220 The, the comedians should be poking holes in the popular narrative, not propping it up. 0.98

00:27:55.480 What a filthy man Jimmy Kimmel is, but truly. 0.98

00:27:56.860 No, I mean it. 0.99

00:27:57.560 You said it, not me.

00:27:58.060 Like no amount of money is worth what he's doing, in my opinion.

00:28:00.860 Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:01.900 Okay. So speaking of handmaidens to power who want to kill you and anyone else who speaks

00:28:07.500 the truth. So you get back on Twitter and this deeply upsets a figure called Brandy Zedrozny,

00:28:14.240 assuming I'm pronouncing its name correctly. And I'm also not guessing gender on this one.

00:28:19.560 But I will say, as you watch this clip, this is Brandy Zedrozny complaining about you speaking 1.00

00:28:24.100 out loud. Keep in mind, it's not just about Brandy Zedrozny, whatever that is. This is

00:28:29.380 the person who runs our society. This person and people like it are actually in charge.

00:28:34.860 And I just can't wait till the rule ends because there's never been a worse ruling class 0.99

00:28:38.400 than Brandy Zedrozny and friends.

00:28:40.620 Who did he bring back yesterday? He brought back Jordan Peterson, the Babylon Bee and Kathy

00:28:44.780 Griffin. So the Babylon Bee and Jordan Peterson, they were taken off the platform. They were

00:28:50.380 suspended for misgendering trans people. So apparently that policy against hate speech and

00:28:57.880 harassment of trans people, that's done with. That's important. This comes at a time when 0.99

00:29:02.700 trans people are being harassed and violence is aimed at them at sort of unseen levels before.

00:29:08.200 So this, this sort of matters. Everything about that, the sort of the, obviously the low IQ,

00:29:16.920 the up talk on there at the end of every sentence, the ersatz glasses, the completely theatrical fake

00:29:23.200 glasses, the made up stats, the fake concern for some group that she knows nothing about at all.

00:29:32.260 And then under all of it, the desire to press harder with her boot against the neck of ordinary people

00:29:40.760 and to shut them up on behalf of her bosses, the people who run the world. Like every, that's just,

00:29:47.040 that's the perfect, I hope that someone puts that in a time capsule for when the revolution finally ends

00:29:51.280 and like we're rid of people like that. They ran the world. How do we let them?

00:29:55.540 I know it's insane, but it's, you know, it's, it's, it's how they control speech and thought. It's how

00:30:01.780 it's, if you, if your worldview is incoherent and impossible to defend rationally, then you have

00:30:08.900 to insulate it from criticism. And what's the most effective kind of criticism there is? I think it's

00:30:12.260 mockery, which exposes foolishness for what it is. So it, it makes perfect sense to me. I honestly,

00:30:18.280 I was, I was mistaken about this. It's, it's something I admit I was wrong about is when early on,

00:30:22.660 when we first started getting fact-checked and we first started having these issues with censorship

00:30:25.880 with the Babylon Bee, it was my belief that humor, uh, these were humorless scolds who just didn't

00:30:34.200 think our jokes were funny and they thought they were offensive and they were being hypersensitive

00:30:38.480 and that's, it's not, that's not the case. No, it's not. You're going through the stages of

00:30:43.400 realization. The stages of realization. I eventually learned and came to realize that it's not humor.

00:30:49.380 Humor is a vehicle for truth delivery. They don't like the fact that the narrative is being

00:30:54.200 challenged in a way that's effective. And so they have to shut you up. And so that's what it's about.

00:30:59.640 It has nothing to do with them being, and it has nothing to do with being offended. This whole

00:31:04.100 thing, you know, the, the, the hypersensitive, the people getting up in, in comedians faces or

00:31:08.560 charging their state, the stage to slap them in the face when they make a joke they don't like

00:31:12.140 the, um, you know, don't bring your speaker to our campus because we need a safe space here and this

00:31:17.080 will offend people. The, it, they're not, it's all fake outrage because they've learned that fake

00:31:23.160 outrage can be used as a tool to bludgeon you into silence and submission.

00:31:27.940 But that's, that's exactly right. If they would censor you, they would kill you. Period. Because 0.99

00:31:32.460 you don't censor a peer, another citizen, another human being. You censor your slaves. You censor 0.65

00:31:38.160 someone you consider less than human. So if censorship doesn't work, they'd indict you. If that doesn't

00:31:42.660 work, they would kill you. I mean, that's just, it's a very obvious continuum. But I'd also say, 0.90

00:31:46.600 and I want to ask you this, as the target of people like Brandy Zedrosny, wouldn't you rather

00:31:51.820 be the target of an explicitly fascist regime where it was aggressive rather than passive aggressive,

00:31:57.360 where some guy in a funny mustache got up and said, you're going to jail instead of having someone

00:32:02.000 in fake complex glasses telling you you're endangering trans people. I mean, there is a kind

00:32:07.000 of, the passive aggression is very hard to take. I'd rather neither of them, but well, I don't know.

00:32:11.200 If I have to take my pick, I'll take Twitter jail over real jail any day. But

00:32:14.100 Well, like, that's where that's going. You don't censor people if you consider them human. Period.

00:32:18.800 Yeah. No, they're both bad. They're both bad. They're just two sides of the same coin.

00:32:24.020 How long do you think your moment of freedom will last?

00:32:30.140 Well, a lot longer now that Musk is running one of the predominant platforms.

00:32:35.460 If that hadn't happened, I mean, it was just a matter of, like, Facebook throttles us so badly

00:32:42.260 now. We don't get any reach on Facebook. We don't drive any traffic on Facebook. It's not,

00:32:45.520 it's not really that valuable to us anymore.

00:32:48.800 Do you talk to them about it?

00:32:50.340 We've tried. We don't, you can't get straight answers.

00:32:52.800 Do they wear complicated glasses too and up talk?

00:32:55.500 They just give you like really like canned responses or they point you to their policies.

00:33:00.140 Bureaucratic language. Exactly.

00:33:01.980 That's kind of my point though.

00:33:02.920 Or they have people in place. They'll have some kind of like policy person who's there

00:33:06.200 to mollify you and just hear what you have to say and tell you we're, we're, we're looking

00:33:10.000 into this for you. And then, you know, I'm going to run this up the chain kind of like

00:33:13.220 the people who are there to listen to you, to make it seem like they're actually paying

00:33:16.160 attention, but they don't do anything about it.

00:33:18.380 Honestly, wouldn't you rather, and I'm not being only half facetious, deal with like the 0.98

00:33:23.440 North Korean security apparatus where they're like, say that and we'll kill you. 1.00

00:33:26.660 It's super straightforward and they're not going to lecture you about trans law. 0.93

00:33:29.140 At least that's honest. At least it's honest.

00:33:31.040 Yeah. And it's, it's less self-righteous.

00:33:33.640 Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, I think I, I'm, I'm hopeful for a couple of reasons.

00:33:37.180 I think, I think Musk really is committed to free speech. I think he means that. I don't

00:33:40.580 think, you know, Twitter was not a money play for him. I don't think that he's, you know.

00:33:44.460 No, it was not a money play for Twitter. Twitter was, is an absolute money pit. And,

00:33:48.960 and he realized very early on it became real. So one of the conversations that they were

00:33:53.200 having internally about whether to restore us was, well, what, what are going to be the

00:33:56.980 advertisers reactions to us putting people back on the platform? And so this, and this

00:34:02.360 is where the censorship gets all the more complicated is the brands themselves don't

00:34:06.860 want that speech. They will with pull, they will pull out their funding. They will pull

00:34:10.940 out their ad buys and cripple Twitter financially if Twitter doesn't do their bidding. And so

00:34:16.860 it's coming from the government. It's coming from the advertisers. It's coming from everywhere.

00:34:20.240 All the positions of power are controlling our speech and saying that we can't joke about

00:34:24.540 these people and things, but we're punching down. Um, so yeah, I mean, he had to, he's,

00:34:30.040 he's, he's walking that tightrope of, I want free speech, but I need revenue in order to keep

00:34:36.020 this business going. So, you know, he was doing this drastic cost cutting measures, you know,

00:34:40.820 all of that stuff. Um, but trying to, I don't know how you actually run a free speech platform

00:34:46.320 and have it be, have it generate enough revenue for you to survive. I don't know how he's going

00:34:52.280 to figure out. Maybe he will, if anyone can do it, Musk can do it. He's, he reuses rockets

00:34:57.040 and lands them on platforms in the middle of the ocean after they've already launched

00:34:59.980 and crazy stuff like that. So I think he can figure this out, but I don't know how he's

00:35:03.520 going to do it. So you expect to be up and available to the public through the election?

00:35:09.060 Yeah. Yeah, I do. I mean, will we, uh, do we have as much reach as we used to have? No,

00:35:16.920 but I mean, we still have, we still have a platform. I don't, I've never been an advocate

00:35:20.940 of let's go create new platforms and do our own thing because then you're just creating

00:35:25.480 a new echo chamber where people who agree with you are on that platform. And, uh, there's

00:35:30.020 not interesting conversations happening there. So I am wanting to stay in the conversation

00:35:35.540 where the conversation actually matters. These prominent platforms where that you could

00:35:39.040 call the public square of the modern age. And I think that we have a hopeful outlook when

00:35:44.240 it comes to legal recourse there too. I mean, you have, you have these laws that were passed

00:35:49.180 at the state level, but in Florida and Texas that make it illegal to, for these platforms

00:35:53.720 to engage in viewpoint discrimination. And the Supreme court is now going to hear these

00:35:58.040 cases because, you know, one of them was rejected by the 11th circuit. One of them was upheld.

00:36:01.560 The Texas one was upheld by the fifth circuit. So, um, the Supreme court is going to make

00:36:07.020 a decision on whether or not these companies can engage in politically motivated viewpoint

00:36:10.480 discrimination. And if they can't, then we're legally allowed to be there.

00:36:14.240 Last question as someone who operates in this world every day, which platform do you think

00:36:20.020 is more censored? The Facebook American owned by Mark Zuckerberg or Tik TOK owned by the Chinese 0.99

00:36:28.140 communist government? Uh, I'm not sure that that distinguishable at this point. I mean,

00:36:35.280 what do you think? Uh, that Facebook is not a free speech platform at all. They may give

00:36:40.620 more lip service to free speech. In fact, Twitter did too, back when we were censored that they're

00:36:44.280 a platform for free expression without barriers. Um, they're liars. They're liars. They lie 0.98

00:36:49.140 straight to your face and that's fraud. They shouldn't be allowed to do that either.

00:36:51.720 Seth Dillon, thank you for everything you've done. Thank you.

00:36:54.720 Thank you. Congratulations on your prop seat. Thanks.

The Tucker Carlson Show - December 19, 2023

Seth Dillon

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