On this episode of Pop Culture with Brett and Mary Talk Politics, we discuss Joe Biden's farewell address to the nation, the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire, and the upcoming Trump-Biden confirmation hearing. We also hear from the lead singer of the heavy metal band All That Remains, Phil Labonte.
00:00:27.000This man negotiated the end of the Israel-Hamas war.
00:00:31.000He's getting credit from people who do not like him, and Joe Biden's trying to steal that credit.
00:00:36.000But I am seeing people who love Palestine and are critical of Israel, and I see people who love Israel and are critical of Hamas, and they're all basically saying Donald Trump did an amazing thing, putting pressure to get this ceasefire agreement.
00:01:11.000As you watch him give this speech, just imagine every word out of his mouth or every sentence is simply, I'm leaving, I'm leaving, I'm leaving, I'm leaving.
00:01:19.000And it doesn't matter what else he says.
00:01:23.000And in about four and a half days, oh boy, we're going to have President Donald J. Trump, and hopefully we'll get confirmations on everybody else.
00:01:31.000Before we get started, my friends, head over to castbrew.com and buy some coffee.
00:02:44.000We just had someone call the other day and said that they're working on new projects together.
00:02:47.000If you want to meet people, if you want to find a passion, your mission, and make friends, TimCast.com Discord, where it's at, and you get to call into the show, talk to us and our guests.
00:02:56.000So smash that like button, share the show with everyone you know.
00:02:58.000Joining us tonight to talk about this and so much more is Bobby Sauce.
00:05:30.000It's remarkable for me to see people who hate Donald Trump.
00:05:33.000Posting on X how happy they are with Trump.
00:05:35.000And there's this clip we got from Don Lemon's show where this woman is like, I don't like Trump, but my sources are saying Trump did this and Don Lemon just goes off.
00:06:10.000I'm wondering if Joe Biden comes out with his farewell address taking credit for the Israel Hamas ceasefire.
00:06:17.000I mean, all of those are kind of great litmus tests for how much people actually pay attention to what's going on because they kind of did the same thing, not just because Trump negotiated the...
00:06:29.000You know, the pullout of Afghanistan and then, of course, they botched it after the fact.
00:06:33.000But if you knew the people who actually paid attention to politics, they would have known beforehand that he was the one who actually negotiated it and then they moved it up.
00:06:41.000So whether they know Trump's relation to what happened with the Abraham Accords, the Israel-Palestine, this now, that's a good way to check to see if people are actually paying attention or just looking at headlines.
00:06:54.000Well, they've been taking credit for the oil production, which a lot of that came into play because of all the different changes that Trump made when he was in office.
00:07:02.000And they're like, we're outputting more oil now than we were under him.
00:07:05.000And it's like, yeah, because these things take time to drill, refine and all the rest.
00:07:08.000And he banned Keystone and fracking on public lands, which is going to shock.
00:07:13.000Production for the next several years.
00:09:49.000The Statue of Liberty is also an enduring symbol of the soul of our nation, a soul shaped by forces that bring us together and by forces that pull us apart.
00:10:00.000And yet through good times and tough times, we've have stood it all.
00:10:05.000A nation of pioneers and explorers, of dreamers and doers, of ancestors native to this land, of ancestors who came by force.
00:10:15.000A nation of immigrants who came to build a better life.
00:10:50.000But we know the idea of America, our institution, our people, our values that uphold it are constantly being tested.
00:10:59.000Ongoing debates about power and the exercise of power.
00:11:03.000But whether we lead by the example of our power or the power of our example.
00:11:09.000Whether we show the courage to stand up to the abuse of power or we yield to it.
00:11:15.000After 50 years at the center of all of this, I know that believing in the idea of America means respecting the institutions to govern a free society.
00:11:59.000It may not be perfect, but it's maintained our democracy for nearly 250 years, longer than any other nation in history that's ever tried such a bold experiment.
00:12:11.000In the past four years, our democracy has held strong, and every day I've kept my commitment to be president for all Americans through one of the toughest periods in our nation's history.
00:12:24.000I've had a great partner in Vice President Kamala Harris.
00:18:48.000Protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power.
00:18:55.000Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.
00:19:03.000Nothing offers more profound possibilities and risks for our economy and our security, our society, for humanity.
00:19:16.000Artificial intelligence even has the potential to help us answer my cold and cancer as we know it.
00:19:21.000But unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation.
00:19:32.000We must make sure AI is safe and trustworthy and good for all humankind.
00:19:39.000In the age of AI, it's more important than ever that the people must govern.
00:19:46.000And as the land of liberty, America, not China, must lead the world in the development of AI. You know, in the years ahead, it'll help to be, it's going to be up to the president, the presidency, the Congress, the courts, the free press, and the American people.
00:20:18.000That's that hidden funding behind too many campaign contributions.
00:20:22.000We need to get it out of our politics.
00:20:25.000We need to do an act, an 18-year time limit, term limit, time and term, for the strongest ethics and the strongest ethics reforms for our Supreme Court.
00:20:35.000We need to ban members of Congress from trading stock while they're in the Congress.
00:20:41.000We need to amend the Constitution to make sure that no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office.
00:22:21.000In the painting, there's several workers climbing on the outstretched arm of the statue that holds the torch.
00:22:31.000There's a story of a veteran, son of an immigrant, whose job was to climb that torch and polish the amber panes so rays of light could reach out as far as possible.
00:22:51.000He was known as the keeper of the flame.
00:22:55.000He once said of the Statue of Liberty, Quote, speaks a silent universal language.
00:27:13.000In this clip that we just played, Joe Biden takes credit for what is the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
00:27:21.000People on the left, people on the right, pro-Israel, anti-Israel, they're all celebrating Donald Trump.
00:27:27.000Dave Smith said before the news was announced that if Trump does pull this off and there's no major concessions to Israel, he will enter his second term as a heroic president.
00:27:37.000And if he also negotiates the end of the Ukraine war, put him on Mount Rushmore.
00:27:42.000There have been other people who hate Donald Trump.
00:29:41.000Just to make people understand, President Biden not only refused on multiple occasions to put any pressure on the Prime Minister of Israel to do any deal, people who were involved in the negotiation,
00:29:58.000including Israeli negotiators, told me firsthand that very often they felt I love it.
00:30:28.000Netanyahu already gave up on the hostages.
00:30:30.000He was willing to sacrifice the hostages for his political desire to stay in power.
00:30:35.000However, Donald Trump happened to be a transactional president, happened to be a transactional man.
00:30:40.000He wanted to come to the White House with a win.
00:31:01.000I think Donald Trump would like to have started off, we know Donald Trump, the day of his inauguration or on the day to announce a ceasefire.
00:31:08.000The fact that it happened on Biden's watch, I think that leads many people to question whether it was.
00:31:15.000Look, I'm not saying that you're wrong.
00:31:16.000Let me just try something for you, Donny Boy.
00:31:19.000Could it be that Trump actually cares the hostages get released?
00:31:25.000When you are a political demon and you can't imagine doing something selflessly and not for political motivations, they can't imagine that somebody would do it just because it's the right thing to do.
00:31:35.000Like I was saying yesterday, it's kind of the officially kind of close to the same deal that Biden has been doing for months or their administration has been doing for months.
00:32:24.000Plus, it doesn't hurt that you have the leverage of a guy that's coming in in five days that's like, I'm going to rain hellfire down upon you.
00:32:31.000And that kind of changes the leverage of the conversation a little bit.
00:32:34.000Well, so there's this viral tweet here.
00:32:35.000Second City Bureaucrat says, Israel's are reporting that Trump blew Bibi's back out.
00:32:46.000The great and huge Donald Trump took Netanyahu's hand, bent it behind his back, bent it a little more, a little more, then pushed his head on the table and whispered in his ear that he would kick him into balls in a moment.
00:32:57.000It's a shame Biden didn't realize this a long time ago.
00:33:04.000I'm just going to pretend that that's the case.
00:33:07.000Look, remember, the United States has always had the United States, just because as much as Donald Trump is going to do great things and has done great things just by the force of his personality, the reason that people listen is because he's the president of the United States.
00:33:22.000That means that it's the United States power, soft power and military power, that actually does the job.
00:33:29.000So Biden could have done this at any point.
00:33:33.000If he had the balls and people believed that he would follow through, he could have called up Bebe and said, look, this is going to happen.
00:33:44.000Of different levers of power that the United States has had at its disposal for the entire time that Joe Biden has been president, and Joe Biden is too inept or too much of a coward to actually do it.
00:33:58.000So it's great that Donald Trump did this.
00:34:01.000But it's not like Donald Trump, the man, is what made this happen.
00:34:06.000It's Donald Trump threatening to use the power that the United States of America has.
00:34:13.000All, and the fact that Joe Biden hasn't done it is all because he's a terrible president.
00:34:19.000I think a lot of the foreign policy we see, or I should say a lot of the actions we see overseas, particularly under the Obama administration, they wanted to happen.
00:34:31.000The spread of ISIS, the deep state, Obama, wanted ISIS to dismantle Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria.
00:35:34.000Well, isn't this isn't the solution to every conflict every war every disagreement Communication and agreement between two powerful people and if you but whether or not you believe Putin in his interview with Tucker Carlson He's like he's not even calling me.
00:35:48.000He's not even trying to talk to me It's probably pretty reasonable to believe that most if not all conflicts could be solved through negotiation and discussion and communication If he's not doing it, it's no wonder that this took this long.
00:35:59.000I don't completely agree I think it's largely true because there's a reason people go to war.
00:36:06.000But I do think there are a lot of circumstances where he ain't convincing anybody of nothing.
00:36:10.000The Taliban, I mean, Trump negotiated with them, but it was under threat, saying, we're going to back off, but if you go anywhere near these areas, we will come back and we will wipe you off the map.
00:36:20.000And the only reason they're able to come in is because Joe Biden, like, intentionally does these things.
00:37:07.000I don't think communication guarantees it ends.
00:37:13.000Trump puts the weight of nuclear bombs behind his words.
00:37:17.000And those are the kind of words that might actually stop the fighting.
00:37:20.000Well, the point of that is, yes, I don't disagree, but I guess the point of what I'm trying to say is that ultimately it comes down to a negotiation.
00:37:27.000It's like I'm twisting your arm, you're twisting my arm.
00:37:30.000It's a negotiation that solves it ultimately.
00:37:32.000I lose a power position, I lose the upper hand, whatever.
00:37:36.000So at the very least, if it couldn't be solved purely on negotiation, then isn't it reasonable to say that you should probably be calling this dude regularly.
00:37:43.000You should probably at the very least be in communication regularly to figure out what the deal is.
00:37:49.000It's no surprise that it would never end.
00:37:51.000That was also a problem as well, because they would get mad whenever Trump would say, yeah, I talked to Putin, I talked to these guys, and then say, why are you talking to him?
00:37:57.000Because they don't understand what diplomacy actually is.
00:38:00.000One of the most interesting things she said in that interview was calling him a transactional president, meaning that is actually the point of diplomacy when you actually have leverage, which is that he will open lines of communication with them, but also they have to take worry that if he actually puts a threat out there, that he would enact it where they don't have to worry about it.
00:38:45.000I've long said that if the Democrats had embraced him at the very beginning of his presidency in 2017, if they'd embraced him and said, we love this guy, and patted him on the back and said, let's go win for America, if they had done that, he would have played ball and he would have been an asset to the Democrat Party.
00:39:06.000He would probably not have had, he probably would have destroyed the MAGA coalition that Grew around him during his first term, and he would have essentially become a Democrat.
00:39:18.000That's because he wants people to like him, and he wants to win.
00:39:23.000So if it's not a situation of, oh, I have these deeply held convictions that I want to see happen, all he wants is good things for the country.
00:39:33.000That was actually evident in the first term.
00:39:35.000Do you remember when he sent invitations to all the members of the National Black Caucus and asked them to come in for a meeting?
00:39:41.000And they all just refused to go in there.
00:39:44.000He wanted to play ball with everyone from day one, but they couldn't do that because they had backed themselves into the corner of calling him a bunch of names that didn't actually pan out.
00:39:53.000If you look at what Biden was saying, he was basically saying, that thing Trump did, I did.
00:39:59.000All the good stuff that Trump is about to do.
00:40:04.000All the stuff I did and all the things that are coming, I planted the seeds for.
00:40:07.000He's literally just vacuuming up as much credit as he possibly could.
00:40:12.000I think the worst part of all of that was the talk about...
00:40:16.000When he was talking about climate change and he was talking about, you know...
00:40:20.000Securing a future for your kids and your grandchildren while not addressing the fact that the debt just keeps piling and the national debt just keeps growing and growing and growing.
00:40:34.000They've sold out your grandchildren's future long, long ago.
00:40:39.000So to tie that to climate change, which is just another way to tax you anyways, is insane to me.
00:40:45.000Oh, I love it too, because just to reiterate what we said the other day, we played this clip where Bernie Sanders is like, oh, Borod, climate change is coming.
00:40:52.000And it's like, California enacts tons of regulations due to climate change.
00:40:58.000They tax people at the highest rate in the state.
00:41:02.000And then they fail to manage their problems and they get these wildfires and then blame it on climate change.
00:41:08.000So basically what they're telling us is climate change mitigation does not work, right?
00:41:14.000Well, because California is doing all this mitigation, right?
00:41:20.000Well, it's like, you know, people are saying like, oh, it's a natural disaster.
00:41:24.000It's like, you don't have to do a thing to make a thing happen.
00:41:27.000Like, for example, if I decrease the amount of the laws that happened if you broke into somebody's house, and then I turned off all the streetlights, and then I made it illegal for you to lock your door, your house is about to get robbed.
00:41:37.000So that's exactly what happened there.
00:42:12.000I believe he's led an effort prior and was already in the process of preparing to recall Gavin Newsom, but I'm for it.
00:42:21.000This guy should be removed from the governorship immediately.
00:42:24.000The mayor of L.A. should be removed immediately.
00:42:27.000And if they don't do it in California, I believe the federal government needs to intervene in whatever way they have to get a handle on what's going on.
00:42:38.000I do not know how this country operates with rogue states in this way.
00:42:42.000And it's not just about the wildfires, but it largely is.
00:42:44.000It's also about the free health care for illegal immigrants.
00:42:50.000California and New York, they're both operating as rogue states in defiance of constitutional rights.
00:42:56.000I don't know how we can be in a partnership at the federal level with Congress, the Senate, and the presidential elections with states that are in violation of federal law.
00:43:05.000Is that in relation to sanctuary cities?
00:43:07.000So what California does, sanctuary state, not just cities, they effectively allow people to cross the border in mass numbers, refuse to cooperate with federal government to deport them, effectively shield and protect these people.
00:43:26.000But there's a litany of circumstances in which California has been defiant and in violation of federal law and abusing our federal system, notably how they use illegal immigrants to gain more congressional seats and more electoral college votes.
00:43:41.000Then you've got the issue of them promising free health care to non-citizens.
00:43:45.000So right now, you're paying the highest taxes in the country in California, and then your house burns down because there was no water and there aren't enough firefighters.
00:44:11.000If California wants money, it comes with federal oversight committees going into California and assuming control of all of the garbage they're operating.
00:45:32.000There will be more fires, more disaster, more DEI. The only thing that we can do, because these people do need help, is to say, we're going to write you a check, but we are going to send in oversight to manage how your government is operating because they mismanaged this.
00:45:47.000Well, and the conditions are much like you would get conditions from your parents when you're in high school.
00:45:52.000If you get straight A's, then you get permission to do this or whatever.
00:45:56.000So it's not like the strings that they're attaching benefit them.
00:46:00.000The strings they're attaching are for their own good.
00:46:02.000These are precautions and benefits that will help them objectively and prevent them from being their own worst enemy, which is exactly what a parent does to a teenage kid.
00:46:19.000Let's go North Carolina who are like, who's a good state.
00:46:22.000Yeah, like I said the other night, they have been dragging their feet, taking care of North Carolina for eight, you know, what, three, four months now?
00:46:34.000Yeah, it was September that the hurricane went through.
00:46:37.000They've been dragging their feet since then, but they're...
00:46:41.000All hopskippity on California because it's millionaires that lost their homes, and these millionaires were all donators to the Democrat Party, to Joe Biden's...
00:47:18.000Because celebrities can change and persuade people to do tremendous things.
00:47:22.000So it's like, if you have a bunch of Hollywood types that say that we should try to kick Gavin Newsom out, the loudness of that is far more significant than any volume that could ever come out of.
00:47:31.000So let me play this clip for you guys from Jimmy Kimmel.
00:48:53.000What do you pay attention to the news, you loser?
00:48:55.000It's so much cooler to just sit at home and do absolutely nothing and just run away when they tell me or put on my diaper and my face when they tell me.
00:49:11.000First, I want to stress that when we looked up the ratings for Jimmy Kimmel...
00:49:16.000And I saw that his key demo ratings was 221,000.
00:49:21.000You know, we're about just on the live show at two and a half times that.
00:49:24.000I felt bad, you know, punching down on a little guy like Jimmy Kimmel.
00:49:28.000That's what they say, don't punch down, right?
00:49:30.000Yeah, you know, sorry about that, Jimmy.
00:49:32.000I know you're an up-and-coming young star with your tiny little show.
00:49:35.000I'm actually gloating because I'm so happy to see the failures of these networks because what Bill Burr is doing, and he is a funny guy.
00:49:43.000When he was on Joe Rogan talking about how people need to wear masks outside, he was still very funny because he made fun of rollerblading.
00:49:55.000He said, it's like, everybody rollerbladed, and there was one homophobic joke, and 100 million people threw their rollerblades in the ocean.
00:50:53.000The blame does fall on the governor and it falls on the mayor of LA. The people that have decided to not pick up the deadfall in the forest and essentially clean the forest so that way this stuff doesn't happen.
00:51:11.000That is part of what their job is by being the stewards of California.
00:51:28.000And if you're elected to public office, it is your job to do whatever you can do to mitigate The risk and make sure that when there is forest fires, because they're going to happen to some degree, when there is a forest fire, that there's water in the fire hydrants.
00:51:47.000And the fire chief said herself that they were understaffed and ill-equipped to handle it.
00:51:52.000So it's just like your own people from the inside are literally saying it.
00:53:16.000It's just an example of just government mismanagement and their inability to actually hold checks and balances to show that the projects that are getting such heavy funding are actually being completed.
00:53:27.000I also, real quick, the president or the L.A. mayor is not the mayor of the Palisades and there's other counties who are, they're mayors.
00:53:36.000No one's holding those folks accountable.
00:53:38.000We're just focusing on the L.A. mayor.
00:53:41.000So, you know, each town, each area has their own mayor, so we should just call them all out.
00:53:46.000Maybe the question that he should have asked Bill Burr, and this is, of course, the problem with these types of shows, is it's not a new show, it's a comedy show, and they blend the two however poorly they do because they're not actually funny, is to say, well, if not having water isn't mismanagement, what would you have considered the threshold for actual mismanagement?
00:54:06.000Or do you just let appeal to authority win and just say, oh, they must be...
00:54:10.000Well, it's a perfect example of you just saying, like, oh, the adults are in charge.
00:54:15.000They're going to take care of this issue.
00:54:17.000So it's like, if you have that type of attitude, that means that you believe everything that they tell you every single time, no matter what.
00:58:35.000And he's clearly shown, again, that he is incompetent and he's still there.
00:58:44.000The idea that if this guy actually runs for president in four years, which that was the talk, if he actually runs and is nominated, Woe is the United States.
00:58:59.000If he even gets to the point where he's nominated.
00:59:02.000Could you imagine what would happen if every single fire hydrant in the country was empty?
00:59:06.000Under his watch as president, that's what would happen.
00:59:22.000Because if the celebrities were all to say that he should leave, in the court of public opinion, I think that would be more effective at getting him out than any recall probably could.
00:59:30.000Because by then, the attention dies down.
00:59:32.000If this guy's getting ripped every single day by every major celebrity, that would be the one chance, I think, to get him out that really is there.
00:59:39.000The problem, though, right, is the people who are going to stand up for him are the ones who are shielded from the repercussions of his actions because of the tax bracket they fall in.
00:59:52.000Well, I mean, there was back and forth when Karen Bass was up for election with celebrities going back and forth between her and Rick Caruso.
00:59:59.000And a lot of people had their opinions on who would be the best case for them there.
01:00:20.000I assumed it was going to be one of those things where the phone just wouldn't update and then it would slowly become unusable, but it will eventually...
01:00:33.000They divest from their Chinese partner or they remove the apps from the App Store and the app still exists and can be downloaded off their website for anybody who wants to use it.
01:00:41.000However, the rumor is that TikTok decided to shut down entirely to spite its users, tricking them into getting mad at Congress.
01:01:35.000And China said, uh-oh, they're coming for us.
01:01:38.000So a couple years later, China basically says, ease up on the censorship of conservatives, make Trump look good.
01:01:45.000And all of a sudden, a bunch of right-wing personalities started getting traction on the platform and immediately changed their opinions.
01:01:51.000All of a sudden, the right was now, wait, I don't know if we should ban this, but it was too late.
01:01:56.000After October 7th, when there was what appeared to be an artificial boost in anti-Israel, pro-Palestine content, Democrats and Republicans came together and said, it's time to stop TikTok from being able to control what people think in this country.
01:02:09.000Now, the reason I say that is not because I'm biased one way or the other on Israel-Palestine.
01:02:13.000There's a lot of legitimate criticism from the pro-Palestine side and anti-Israel.
01:02:18.000The issue was, when October 7th happened, the majority of the content, it was largely pro-Israel, anti-Hamas.
01:02:26.000And then over a period of a couple days on the weekend, it flipped completely.
01:02:31.000That is not indicative of natural trends among people.
01:02:34.000It's indicative of an algorithmic switch.
01:02:36.000This triggered Democrats and Republicans to be like, we got to shut this down.
01:02:40.000But when Republicans started getting traction and Donald Trump personally started getting traction, all of a sudden he was like, nah, maybe we don't want to do this anymore.
01:03:07.000I also think that part of the reason why they want to shut down as opposed to sell it off or whatever is because the servers and the app itself is compromised.
01:03:18.000Whoever were to purchase it would see what they were doing and also see the algorithm and probably see the algorithm, I assume, that they've been using.
01:03:26.000And that would implicate the Chinese Communist Party in China.
01:03:30.000I think there's a lot of other far more serious risks to the American people, the mind of the American people, than TikTok.
01:03:40.000I think that China, for example, purchasing farmland in strategic positions around the United States is a far greater threat.
01:03:59.000Then on top of all that, they have a lot of influence in a multitude of other different aspects of American society, including sports.
01:04:06.000The Daily Wire did a great six or something part series about how they're infiltrated into all these other parts of culture.
01:04:12.000So to think that TikTok specifically represents some type of existential threat, I don't think is really true.
01:04:17.000And if you want to say that, okay, they don't have the right to free speech or they can't collect this data, well then make a rule that this type of data can't be collected by any By any social media platform.
01:04:28.000The issue is that they put Dylan Mulvaney on the front page.
01:04:41.000By going on TikTok, scraping the data and looking at what appears and what doesn't.
01:04:45.000and actually we actually do rather simple experiments on tracking this data you'd have to replicate what we do probably a hundred times but i think it's fair to say it's easily done by any ai you take a look at dylan mulvaney's earliest videos which we did and they have nothing to do with being trans they are gay safari yes and what dylan mulvaney was doing was basically poking the algorithm to figure out what kind of video would go viral when dylan mulvaney came out as it's gay Safari wasn't really getting a lot of traction.
01:05:45.000So you can see on TikTok that woke, weird gender garbage and ideologies that break the minds of young people have been massively dominant on the platform.
01:05:55.000And it was only when the right said, we are being censored, that TikTok switched it and gave conservatives a little bit.
01:06:04.000But couldn't you say that every other mainstream news outlet in America, including Facebook, including Instagram, including Google, including YouTube, every single other platform does the exact same thing?
01:06:14.000Well, I can sue Facebook in the United States.
01:06:29.000We can make claims of government collusion, send investigative journalists and file lawsuits and FOIA requests.
01:06:35.000Turns out X and Facebook, Twitter, I don't want to blame X because X is new, Twitter and Facebook were operating portals to allow the feds to go in to take down posts or to flag them.
01:06:44.000And we don't know what TikTok does because all that's happening in China.
01:06:47.000So China divest, TikTok stays, we're fine.
01:06:50.000The problem right now is I'm not arguing for banning TikTok.
01:06:54.000I don't know why you would actually argue that China should be allowed to own it. - I just don't understand what is the grounds that require, I don't understand what forcing them to divest changes about this algorithm or changes about what they're doing there.
01:07:06.000Then couldn't theoretically China remain invested in it, but you have to reveal X, Y, and Z? Because is China not invested in a multitude of other different aspects of American society?
01:07:16.000The U.S. just named Tencent as a military company.
01:07:19.000It looks like the moves are happening on more than just TikTok.
01:08:32.000Okay, so then – So why are we allowing – So we should force everything – Why are we allowing a foreign corporation to have such a strong control over the economy of the United States?
01:08:42.000Imagine China being able to convince an American to argue for Chinese interests on a live show to 50,000 people right now.
01:08:48.000Rand Paul said you have the right to hear the wrong information.
01:08:52.000Who are we to say that you don't have the right to hear the information that's incorrect?
01:08:57.000And the other thing, too, to go back— Foreign adversaries operate—I'll put it this way. If you went to the Founding Fathers and said, do you believe that free speech extends to all peoples, they would say, of course, Do you think it extends to our adversaries to leaflet in our country?
01:09:14.000There's a lot of psychological subversion that's happening on any multitude of digital distribution platforms that is going anti to our own.
01:09:22.000And we have recourse against American platforms.
01:09:40.000That doesn't mean that we should just say, well, because other people can do it, TikTok should do it.
01:09:45.000So is the crux of the argument that TikTok shouldn't be able to psychologically subvert Americans that choose to download TikTok and choose to watch those videos?
01:09:52.000China should not be allowed to operate a massive influence program and economic control on our younger generation.
01:09:59.000If TikTok divests from China, then it's an American company, it can do it at once.
01:10:03.000Is that to say that they don't have any other influence from China?
01:10:06.000They will have influence, but then we have recourse.
01:11:27.000It's a literal philosophical liberal argument that there must be an underlying straight identifiable principle that affects all things that we can identify as either good or bad.
01:11:37.000I think that's, you know, right now, I would put it like for me, I came to a realization on this one.
01:11:44.000We would describe it as probably a post-liberal principle where actually there is no happy medium.
01:11:51.000There is no middle ground where we can definitively say one such thing is right or wrong.
01:11:56.000Let me try and get specific because otherwise it's hard to understand.
01:12:00.000The argument that we've often brought up on this show is should parents have the final say on medical issues for their children, yes or no?
01:12:07.000Should parents have the final say on medical issues for their children?
01:12:39.000Democrats argued if the doctor prescribes a sex change, the parents should be barred from preventing it, and the children should not even tell them.
01:12:47.000However, the government should be able to mandate vaccination.
01:12:49.000So the principle of parental rights in medicine does not universally apply to morality or ideology.
01:12:57.000I would say, based on the bill that we have, there is no universal principle of what we're going to identify as being right or wrong.
01:13:02.000The issue is a foreign adversary has control over a large swath of the American people's psyche by feeding them specific information and convincing them to argue in the financial and security interests of China instead of the United States.
01:13:17.000The idea that someone would come here and literally be like, China should be allowed to operate a mass media program in the United States to 112 million people blows my mind.
01:13:26.000Like, it should be a simple, like, we don't allow them to do that.
01:13:29.000Like, the argument is only they must divest and operate under U.S. law.
01:13:35.000And then we can subpoena their servers, pull their data, and if they're harboring outside of the country, we can charge them and shut them down in the United States.
01:13:42.000Right now, all we're saying is TikTok, divest from ByteDance, and keep doing your thing.
01:13:48.000I still don't understand specifically what is the thing that they need to do that is solved as a result of them divesting.
01:13:55.000If it's like, okay, then you have to be able to have our—your servers have to be able to be subpoenaed.
01:14:00.000Then couldn't that just be the universal practice of all platforms?
01:14:04.000I don't want Chinese interests to have a control over parts of our economy, be it farmland, be it TikTok, be it Hollywood.
01:14:11.000And we can start by— With TikTok and other platforms they try to introduce, and it's going to be a game of whack-a-mole, but I do think it's important that we do it.
01:14:23.000Well, if you're blocking them because, if you're blocking this country, or insert any other country, if you're blocking the information from coming in that could potentially be correct, then we don't have the ability to see the correct information.
01:14:38.000That's assuming we live in a country like North Korea and we have no means to do shows like this.
01:14:43.000It's also assuming that the only place you could get the correct information is that one specific app.
01:16:10.000We have almost no flaws on TikTok because TikTok banned us like five times.
01:16:13.000Right, and I don't like the censorious nature of TikTok.
01:16:15.000What I understand is that giving the government more authority to do X and specifically to limit the distribution of thought because this thought is wrong and or it comes from this place, therefore it can't be correct, is a dangerous precedent and an additional power and an additional authority that we're already giving to a government that largely mismanages just about every possible thing.
01:16:38.000So it's like, okay, they can ban this from China.
01:16:40.000Well, now, couldn't they theoretically ban information from whatever else?
01:16:50.000Like, honestly, at the end of the day, if the government wants to do something, they can do it.
01:16:56.000And the only thing stopping them is if the American people get loud enough and make enough of a stink, and that's it.
01:17:06.000Because the Constitution is just a piece of paper.
01:17:07.000And the government has gone around every single law, every single liberty the American people have that's protected by the Bill of Rights, the government has found a way around it.
01:17:19.000So we should give them more power so they can do more censorship?
01:18:42.000And she played this app and said, let's do a video.
01:18:45.000And when she did the video, she got tons of comments that said, wow, bang, high, cool, amazing, so good.
01:18:53.000And the journalist said, isn't it strange that all the comments are saying nonsense words and not actually responding to you in any way?
01:18:59.000How do you have so many followers on this platform?
01:19:01.000You don't have any followers anywhere else, and you have no large body of work.
01:19:05.000Shrug, says the production specialist.
01:19:07.000the idea at the time again fictional story was that a foreign entity had produced a social media platform marketed to high school kids and then gave them fake followers to trick them into advocating for this platform instead of other social media platforms then later on when there was upset over what the platform had been engaged in politically a bunch of people with fake followers started defending it publicly again a fictional story i just made up to again these this is to presume that that
01:19:37.000There is some inherent bias that position can only be held by a person who seeks to personally benefit as a result.
01:19:45.000So if I deleted my TikTok right now, would that mean that that point no longer exists?
01:19:50.000I made the point that I have no TikTok followers.
01:20:59.000I think there's a reasonable case to be made that your argument about me only arguing for TikTok would be inverse that you already have a huge platform on YouTube.
01:21:10.000So you arguing against TikTok, which is a place where people that are smaller creators are actually able to gain prominence, you don't care.
01:21:17.000You're never going to get the gas on Rumble that you're going to get on TikTok.
01:21:31.000The difference between TikTok and every other social media application is TikTok is an interest-based algorithm, which means that you don't have to have a...
01:21:39.000It's not a subscription-based algorithm, which is like Rumble, like Instagram, like YouTube, like literally every other thing, including...
01:22:23.000What proof do you have that the numbers are fake?
01:22:26.000Can any number on any platform be determined as fake?
01:22:30.000So for American companies that are publicly traded, they are under regulation through the FTC and the SEC, if they're publicly traded, to not do that.
01:23:20.000Yeah, but that doesn't mean that sooner or later it's China and then it's conservatives and then it's people that believe in free speech and then it's conspiracy theories.
01:23:33.000Giving additional power to reduce the distribution of thought is a problem.
01:23:37.000I think the U.S. government should ban foreign influence operations from...
01:23:42.000Any adversarial nation that can be proven in court in an adversarial way, like this bill gives TikTok the right to file a lawsuit to counter the claims, which they've appeared to have lost.
01:23:53.000The Supreme Court refused to issue a decision on decision day, meaning they may take up an injunction but likely will not.
01:24:04.000Now, I do agree that there is a risk in that they'll say, oh, Russia is doing influence operations and they'll also accuse people of these things.
01:24:13.000This bill only refers to platforms with more than one million monthly active users that allows users to—it's got four stipulations to determine what is a covered company.
01:24:23.000Ultimately, I do not believe in this absolute libertarian position that in a time of conflict, a nation should allow its enemies to exploit it.
01:24:32.000There is this liberal universal principle concept of, hey, look— China's going to run a program in this country.
01:24:38.000We are obviously in a trade conflict, and we've got tensions over Taiwan.
01:25:05.000If we're anti-fact-checker, meaning that there is some authority that suggests that this information is correct or wrong, or you can see it or you cannot see it, isn't it safe to say that that's exactly what's occurring here?
01:25:18.000If you're saying that this information that China's pushing out is wrong, then who determines that it's wrong?
01:26:48.000112 million people on a platform, arguably assuming it's true, affects an entire generation into engaging in behaviors that will destroy a country from the inside out.
01:27:32.000I literally sat down with the CEO and the head of legal for Twitter and explained to them that they had a biased rule set that was favoring people who were suffering a DSM-5 mental disorder and then...
01:27:43.000Elon Musk bought it and ripped it to shreds.
01:27:46.000Why should the United States allow TikTok, which is run by China, to operate in the United States when China doesn't allow Facebook or Google or any number of other American companies to operate in China without having strict...
01:28:25.000Why would we allow communists to control a large economic driver in the United States and information driver?
01:28:29.000Because the moral hazard of restricting thought distribution is a problem and is an additional power that you're granting to an already bloated government that mismanages everything.
01:29:45.000Yeah, we could do it ourselves if we wanted to.
01:29:46.000But having Chinese control the minds of youth, I mean, I give zero F's.
01:29:50.000But that's a stretch to just be like, they are controlling the minds of youth because people choose to go on this platform and consume information with their own free will.
01:29:58.000The content that I watch on TikTok doesn't suggest...
01:30:01.000And even if it did, to say that my free will is determined by the algorithm and I don't have agency to choose what I want to watch or not want to watch, I could also not have an account at all.
01:30:13.000Sure, don't say you don't have an agency.
01:30:14.000If what you were saying was true, Coca-Cola would never buy an ad again.
01:32:03.000If you think Coke isn't successfully running advertisements and those ads appear because they don't know what to spend their money on, I got a bridge to sell you.
01:32:10.000So the issue is when China, for instance, wants to run – oh, they run Xinhua in the United States as well.
01:32:16.000And to a certain degree, you want to run a company like that, fine.
01:32:19.000We're talking about the scale of what TikTok is and the stranglehold they have over a large amount of young people.
01:32:24.000The slippery slope goes in every direction.
01:32:27.000If we say we will do nothing, we are saying the Chinese Communist Party can effectively control what 112 million people in the U.S. get to see.
01:32:35.000And they're going to send them things that are bad for U.S. interests.
01:32:38.000If we say we want China to divest, the argument is sooner or later, the U.S. will ban other countries.
01:32:49.000I think if you had a very specific outline of what are the things that any thought distribution platform has to follow, and all American companies included would have to adhere to these specific guidelines, and TikTok has to adhere to those same guidelines.
01:35:32.000What about the NBA? We all agree on that.
01:35:36.000The fallacy is, when I say X and you say Y, we're not talking about Y. You are right about Y. Let's figure out whether this ban in a bill right now should be implemented.
01:35:46.000If the argument is, why don't we ban them from wanting farmland?
01:35:55.000Look, I didn't read the bill because I didn't know that we were specifically talking about it except for seven months ago.
01:36:00.000No, I read it seven months ago when it first came out.
01:36:02.000And to me, it appeared to have a lot of vagaries that could affect all types of other websites and other unnamed countries and ultimately...
01:36:21.000And if that was passed, wouldn't a modification to include some other...
01:36:26.000Thought process or country be a lot simpler.
01:36:29.000The reference in the bill refers to another separate bill that pertains to acquiring materials from adversaries, acquiring or distributing, and it lists four adversarial countries.
01:36:39.000The TikTok bill says a covered entity is one of those that is part of the adversaries listed in 18 U.S.C., blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:36:47.000If Congress wants to amend any one of these bills...
01:36:51.000Notably, the root bill which identifies adversarial nations to add another adversarial nation, that would actually affect any other bill attached to it.
01:36:58.000So it wouldn't just affect this one bill.
01:37:00.000But also, Congress does have the authority, the power, and nay, the privilege to determine who our adversaries are.
01:37:06.000That's what Congress is supposed to do.
01:37:08.000And I believe as a country, you need a governing body, should be Congress, to determine who our enemies are and to declare war when need be.
01:37:30.000Foreign-controlled of these four nations, blah, blah, blah, that has a website or app, what does it say?
01:37:37.000A website, desktop application, mobile application, augmented or immersive technology that, one, permits a user to create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, video, images, real-time communications, two, has more than one million monthly active users with respect to at least two of the three months preceding the date on which the determination of the president is made.
01:37:55.000Three, enables one or more users to generate or distribute content that can be viewed by other users on the website, desktop application, mobile, etc., etc.
01:38:02.000And then four, enables one or more users to view content generated by other users.
01:38:09.000They get TikTok got 165 days to file a challenge, which they did.
01:38:13.000And it appears that they've lost information.
01:38:15.000The federal courts upheld this, and the Supreme Court largely seemed like...
01:38:19.000They didn't see why China would have First Amendment rights in the United States, and there's nothing barring Congress from saying foreign adversaries can't operate this way.
01:38:27.000If the president makes a determination under this code as it pertains to a website following these four criteria, they can issue a report to Congress for which Congress can then make a declaration that this other website operating like TikTok in a similar fashion would also be forced to divest from one of these four nations.
01:38:44.000At that point, they would get 90 days to file action to challenge that.
01:39:46.000You would have more leverage by getting the people to speak up about it, which would be what would happen as a result of you doing that.
01:39:52.000So it puts you in a better negotiating position in the public to do that.
01:39:56.000The reason TikTok is shutting down is, according to the rumors, for illegal reasons, they want to offend as many TikTok users as possible with the blame being on the U.S. government.
01:41:23.000Give me one reason why TikTok should not divest from China.
01:41:27.000Again, I'm not saying that TikTok should not divest from China.
01:41:30.000I'm saying that to give them the power to force any company to divest from any country, specifically because of psychological subversion or whatever they want to blame right now, is a strange...
01:41:49.000In World War II, we had the U.S. Office of Censorship, which literally ran controls over all information in the country and all news outlets.
01:41:56.000A lot of us would find that offensive by today's standards.
01:41:59.000This is much, much, much, much, much lighter than that.
01:42:02.000It is simply saying, we don't want China to own a massive media company in the United States.
01:42:08.000What's one reason why that That should be allowed.
01:42:11.000Because thought should be allowed to be distributed and you should be able to hear the wrong thing.
01:42:31.000Because then you're saying that any company should have to divest from any other company, even though that bill- From one of four countries.
01:42:38.000Well, for now, until it's 10 countries, until it's 50 countries, until it's an ideology.
01:42:44.000Anybody that's anti-government is not allowed to post on these platforms.
01:42:47.000I'm just saying, you're just giving more power- The slippery slope goes in every direction.
01:42:51.000Fine, but you're giving more power to a government that mismanages a lot of things, that I think does a really bad job.
01:42:57.000If the only information that was true in the entire world, only- It's not an argument for why one country should not be allowed to run this company.
01:43:42.000Fine, but nobody seemed to have a problem with TikTok until the information was circulating specifically there, and then it's like, oh, now we have to get it.
01:43:53.000When was the first time the banning TikTok was proposed was before?
01:44:59.000These things are hard to break through.
01:45:00.000We went to war over Twitter and Facebook and Meta, and we won that war.
01:45:04.000I don't think a foreign country should determine what young people think about foreign policy.
01:45:08.000I think it should be our duty as Americans to resist the mainstream corporate garbage narratives among ourselves and not have China.
01:45:16.000China's interest is not helping the Palestinians.
01:45:18.000China's interest is causing internal conflict so that the Americans rip each other to shreds and then our young people become morons and our country falls apart.
01:45:25.000And that's the thing that foreign entities want more than anything else.
01:45:30.000They're not interested in actually having people.
01:45:34.000Having the majority of America have one particular opinion, they're interested in the strife.
01:45:39.000The less unified the United States is and the more the U.S. is at each other's throats, the better it is for foreign interests.
01:45:49.000I don't disagree with that, but I would wager that there's a multitude of other companies and industries and media conglomerates in the United States that operate in the United States that already do the same thing, of which none of these laws really apply.
01:45:59.000And nothing stops them from doing that.
01:48:10.000If I say, you need to do this, and if you don't hop on one leg and bark like a dog, then I'm not going to make this thing happen.
01:48:17.000And you're like, I don't want to do that.
01:48:19.000I would say a better analogy would be like the king torching the peasants' fields and then blaming the neighboring country saying they did it.
01:48:25.000One of the fundamental arguments you're making is that there's a slippery slope argument, but you've already acknowledged that RT is not allowed in the United States, and it's specifically because it is Russian propaganda or it's state-sponsored propaganda.
01:48:40.000We don't allow North Korea to have a channel here in the U.S. that's state propaganda.
01:48:46.000We don't allow other countries to have state-sponsored propaganda.
01:49:03.000I don't think that you can broadcast in...
01:49:08.000They're not on TV. I think it's Press 1, and their reporters are all over the US. But the point is, there are plenty of platforms that are banned by the United States.
01:49:21.000So why is, and so the argument that it's a slippery slope, it's not a slippery slope.
01:49:26.000It's just, it's like there are some that are, and there are some that aren't, and that depends on how much of a threat the United States decides it is.
01:49:48.000I think it's fine that the United States says these particular platforms or these particular channels, we think that what they're trying to do is actually a threat to national security and we're not going to allow them to broadcast here.
01:50:04.000We've got to go to Super Chats because we're way late, so smash that like button, share the show, become a member at TimCast.com, ladies and gentlemen.
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01:51:23.000Adaptive Outdoorsman Podcast says, Hey Tim and Co, if you're looking for inspiration, perseverance, and hope, give a listen to the podcast about disability and healing in the outdoors.
01:52:39.000The text vet says he doesn't want to give the U.S. government more power because they might exploit, but he's defending the CCP having more power by the merger of corporation and state.
01:52:51.000One of the big points that Riley Moore was making on Friday was talking about just the, you know, it's also got to do with spycraft and with intelligence operations and data leakage and stuff like that.
01:53:44.000I think my issue is that TikTok is a dominant platform that has no accountability to the United States and it limits information.
01:53:53.000So, you know, with TikTok having 112 million users and banning certain ideas, it's a massive, powerful platform that we can't do anything about, we have no control over, and it limits information.
01:55:45.000I would be curious to hear what is his position as to why it shouldn't be banned.
01:55:48.000He said it's because he saw tremendous growth among the youth, one with 36 points, so maybe we should hold off on the ban and have a negotiated settlement.
01:55:55.000I would bet it's a lot deeper than that.
01:56:43.000I think Donald Trump's motivations are not just about himself, but he sees TikTok as having turned around from what the problem was perceived initially by conservatives.
01:56:51.000So now he's saying, okay, negotiated settlement.
01:58:50.000I don't know if you have a real moral position on the issue, because you said some things should be legal, and I'm asking if there's a moral limiting factor, and if you do have one, what is it?
01:59:41.000I've heard both of those terms, but I don't know.
01:59:43.000So these are chemicals that leach out of plastics into our food and water that are called endocrine disruptors, and they cause physical, what's called abnormality, and they can cause mental problems.
01:59:57.000It's endocrine disruptors, so it's hormonal imbalance issues.
02:00:00.000Some people think that it's one of the reasons why we see a spike in gender dysphoria, because many of the young millennials and younger that were born today...
02:00:10.000And you'll see that everything is tin or glass.
02:00:14.000And then around the late 70s, 80s, we started putting all our food in plastics.
02:00:18.000Phthalates PCBs begin leaching into food.
02:00:20.000I believe that we should ban plastics for food because it is poisoning us.
02:00:25.000Just like we said, we got to take lead out of gasoline.
02:00:28.000It's going up in the air and it was...
02:00:29.000Actually correlate with an increase in crime.
02:00:31.000The reason why I think someone shouldn't be legally allowed to sell drugs to children is that it can create a psychological and physiological dependency that does not affect an adult in the same way as can social media.
02:00:42.000So there are certain things that can destroy a society that we regulate against.
02:00:48.000I think good parents tell their children they can't have certain things.
02:00:50.000and good leaders stop countries and people from consuming poison because it is not the job of the plumber to do research on why the PCBs are poisoning him or his children.
02:01:21.000Yeah, I think that the child variable is the part of it that muddies the water of the discussion.
02:01:27.000If you say, okay, it shouldn't affect children, okay, then if the discussion is about people that are willing and consenting adults, I think that simplifies the argument one way or the other, if we take that piece out of it.
02:01:38.000Like no children should be able to get access to TikTok?
02:03:44.000figured it out and they purchased reusable glass bottles to avoid ingesting foods that come from plastic though no matter what we still largely do we can't escape it we try our best i think that if a lot of people could see direct impact of say like eating lead paint chips they'd probably smack it out of a kid's hand and say stop doing that but unfortunately there are a lot of people who are doing their best to raise their kids and so they elected to to have governmental institutions to try and do that work for us because we decentralize we can't do it perfectly
02:04:10.000now our government is largely corrupt and government itself largely is is is not a good function of things that's why rfk jr is now going into the f into the fda which is fantastic because we won those battles uh the price for freedom is eternal vigilance i do think a father tells their kid stop eating ho-hos and ding dongs run three laps and do push-ups no Nowadays, liberals say, what an abusive father.
02:04:54.000Well, I very much hate cigarettes, but I largely agree that people should be able to free to choose so long as they're over the age of 18. Probably a lot more poisonous than plastic.
02:05:10.000My presumption is that cigarette smoking is more dangerous than endocrine neurotic disruptors, probably.
02:05:15.000Choosing to smoke a cigarette that you know causes harm to you and is addictive is one thing.
02:05:21.000Everyone in the country having no choice but to breathe in lead or be forced to take some kind of medication or to consume plastics without their knowledge is totally different.
02:05:30.000So the knowledge is the issue, not the poison.
02:05:47.000And now everyone is ingesting these chemicals which are causing sickness.
02:05:50.000Hence, the FDA just banned red dye 3. Because the average person doesn't know what it is.
02:05:55.000Tartrazine, for instance, RFK Jr. brought up, most people don't know that Yellow 5 is this coal tar byproduct that's put in all of their foods for literally no reason, and they don't realize that it causes physical health effects.
02:06:07.000I would say that the information is more important than the outright ban.
02:06:14.000The outright ban is not as important as the information, right?
02:06:17.000So couldn't you solve the problem through information as opposed to through banning?
02:07:44.000It's like, I just don't believe, generally speaking, in the banning of things as the solution to things.
02:07:50.000The government decree to ban is not necessarily the solution.
02:07:53.000I was having this discussion with somebody the other day about GMO vegetables, and it was like...
02:07:57.000If you were to ban GMO in the United States, which I probably think is good.
02:08:02.000I think the initial thought is banning GMO is good.
02:08:04.000Well, if GMO vegetables allows there to be a lot bigger bananas that could feed a whole family, and you can buy these bananas for considerably cheaper, then a person that is in poverty can afford to eat bananas and have it with their whole family.
02:08:19.000If without it, then they would have maybe no banana at all.
02:09:02.000I did find it funny that of all the headlines that this is going on, I saw somebody say that Bob Dylan joined TikTok today, so you're just a little bit late, bro.
02:09:10.000That's why Bob Dylan sucks, as I've always said.
02:09:12.000If you want to follow me, I'm on Instagram and Twix at Brett Dasvig.