The FBI and DOJ agree that the Hunter Biden laptop and its contents are not part of a Russian disinformation campaign, yet somehow our news media is still peddling the lie that it is. We're joined by Ian Crossland and Drew Holden to talk about it.
00:00:38.000They haven't gotten the memo, and I think it was on MSNBC, some guy was like, it's clearly Russian propaganda, and of course, CNN's still pushing the lie.
00:00:45.000Because it's not journalism, it's anti-journalism.
00:00:49.000It's not enough that they must not be journalists, they must actively be anti-journalists.
00:00:53.000That's their thing, that's their motto.
00:01:11.000So you're going to, so some people are saying you're going to end up with some regular old cop being like, I don't know, man, I saw this on the laptop and they're going to, they're going to testify as to exactly what they saw.
00:01:19.000Whereas with, you know, FBI, there's concerns over partisanship, especially following Obamagate and all this stuff.
00:01:24.000So we're going to talk all about the rushest nonsense, the media garbage.
00:01:29.000There's this new thing with Rudy Giuliani and Borat, which is complete fake news as far as I understand it, claiming that he was trying to get down with some young journalist and he was caught.
00:01:38.000As if that's a scandal anyway, but sure, they want to get a 70-something-year-old man in a bedroom with a secret camera.
00:02:05.000So, smash the like button, subscribe, notification bell, show, Monday to Friday live, 8pm, blah blah blah, you know how it works.
00:02:12.000And tomorrow's the debate, so we're going to be hanging out for the debate.
00:02:14.000We won't have a show tomorrow, but we'll start with this, the Russian stuff, man.
00:02:17.000And then we'll jump into the weird, creepy, Hunter Kids thing.
00:02:22.000But I actually used one of your threads on Russian disinfo, I think it was today, maybe it was yesterday, where basically you have all of these media companies continually pushing this lie that the Hunter Biden laptop and the emails that implicate Joe Biden in these, you know, pay-for-play deals and using his son as an intermediary to cash in on his name, this is all Russian disinformation with no evidence.
00:02:48.000Why don't you just go ahead and rag on the media?
00:02:51.000At this point, it's a knee-jerk thing, right?
00:02:53.000We saw after everything happened with the Russian collusion narrative that if something comes out that's inconvenient or not politically expedient, particularly during an election, of course it's got to be the Russians.
00:03:04.000Heaven forbid that Joe Biden's troubled son maybe did something wrong.
00:03:08.000Maybe there's news out there that hurts Dems.
00:03:38.000There was one report that there was investigations into—and who knows?
00:03:41.000I mean, it was one unnamed source from the FBI said that it's being investigated as Russian disinformation.
00:03:46.000And in a heartbeat, it went from there's an investigation into whether or not this could potentially be Russian disinformation to it is Russian disinformation.
00:03:57.000The headline was like, former intelligence say this is a Russian disinformation campaign.
00:04:02.000And then in the story, there's a quote, let me be clear, we have seen no evidence and have no reason to believe it's Russian disinformation.
00:04:12.000And so my favorite, so James Clapper, who I think has outed himself as a hardcore partisan who has One, a tenuous grasp on reality at best, and two, he's a political hack, right?
00:04:23.000He came out, the first night it came out, he was on CNN, and he said, this is textbook, by the book, Russian disinformation.
00:04:31.000And it's, again, they're wired, I think so many of these people, to see something they don't like and assume that it has to be Russia, and so it's so easy for them to just take that Is it the best they can do?
00:05:29.000Could you imagine if we make it to the point where we have history on this era that's accurate?
00:05:33.000They're gonna be like, and at some point, for some reason, all these Democrats thought Russia was around every corner.
00:05:37.000I almost kind of envy some of these people, because life is boring, you know, in a lot of ways.
00:05:44.000Could you imagine if we really lived in a world where it's like you were James Bond, and you go outside to get the newspaper, and there's like a Russian behind your garage, and he's like peeking at you, and you're like, Russia!
00:05:55.000And you wiggled your fist at him, and then he leaves, and then, you know, you're like, you go into your basement to get some, you know, extension cables, and there's like some Russians, and you're like pushing him with a broom, like, get out of here, you Russian!
00:06:05.000Yeah, I mean, it's like, have you guys seen the TV show The Americans?
00:06:10.000It's the same thing, where you've got like, it's a suburban household, and you've got, sorry if I'm spoiling this, I think they get to it in season one, there are like these undercover KGB agents back in the Cold War, and it's like, yeah, wow, that's exciting!
00:06:20.000Like, wouldn't it be And so much of this too, I think we see it with the BLM movement, we see it with lots of different people, there is this desire to have a life that is meaningful and interesting.
00:06:29.000And where we live in such hot and heady times, it can be really easy to say, it's similar to that we're living in the most important, most consequential election of our lifetime.
00:06:39.000If you can convince yourself time and time again that the things that are happening are not as boring as they appear, And they are exciting, and they involve you, and you're in the thick of it, like if you're a journalist.
00:07:23.000I saw him post about this and I was like, that's a really good point.
00:07:26.000And he mentions that when you look at these threads where the people are like, the white supremacists are hunting me and they're targeting my family and sending us letters and things, it is the exact same narrative as the agents.
00:10:04.000If you were to tell me, following those meetings, Joe Biden was telling his son, I want a cut, I'd be like, makes sense, he was the one giving the ride on government property.
00:10:12.000So now we get these emails where Hunter Biden is doing a deal with Chinese officials, and they're all part of the Communist Party, because if you're going to do anything, you're a member or whatever.
00:10:22.000And then they say, you know, 20 for H, 20 for L, and 10 for, uh, held by H for the big guy.
00:10:28.000And everyone's like, I wonder who the big guy is.
00:10:31.000The first story comes out insinuating, could this have been Joe Biden?
00:10:35.000Then Fox News reached out to someone on the email chain, asked, and they said, yep, that was Joe Biden.
00:10:40.000So you want to know why Joe Biden and the Democrats or whatever won't say China's doing it?
00:10:54.000My question with all of these people is, how did they enter public service, getting paid, at the time, 47 years ago, probably wasn't even getting six figures.
00:11:05.000I get it, maybe in the past four years he did book deals and speaking tours and stuff, but this is somebody who made wealth off of public service.
00:11:14.000More importantly, in response, finally Joe Biden responds to these emails, and he was like, first of all he goes, it's really nuts, these journalists are terrified to even ask him questions, it's pathetic.
00:11:25.000And then he's like, you know, he was asked, did your son make money off the family name?
00:11:31.000And then The Daily Caller plays the clip from last year where Hunter Biden's like, he gets asked by a journalist, do you think you would have been put on the board of Burisma if your name wasn't Biden?
00:11:44.000There's probably a lot of things in my life that I, you know, he said probably every part of my life has been influenced by the fact that I'm, you know, the son of the vice president or whatever.
00:11:53.000So, of course, the only reason they hired the guy, and it's like it's in the correspondence, he knows it.
00:11:58.000He's even talked about leveraging his name to get more money, like, I can talk to the big guy, if you know what I mean.
00:12:04.000So, correct me if I'm wrong, because you probably followed a lot of this with the Michael Flynn stuff.
00:12:09.000I remember reading that, I think it was Sally Yates, Someone said they were really concerned about Michael Flynn when he said Russia isn't our biggest threat, China is.
00:12:19.000And that prompted them to start spying and investigating him and whatever.
00:12:54.000I can't even believe I'm saying that as someone who's like a pretty committed Russia hawk.
00:12:57.000But it's insane the way that they can blow them up into a boogeyman and a bad guy who's hiding behind every rock, who is out there waiting in the wings to disrupt whatever it is.
00:13:08.000And at the end of the day, all that does is help Russia.
00:13:11.000If you follow the case out, all that does, if all of us are sitting here scared by Russia, you know who's just had an incredible return on their investment?
00:13:19.000I want to animate a little cartoon where it's Brian Stelter with a push broom and he's like, you know, trying to clean up and there's little Putins running around and he's like trying to, you know, shuffle them out of the room and he's like, you know, puts his hands on his hips like... Amazing.
00:13:33.000Little Putin's running around and they're like knocking things over and making a mess and he's like, oh, yeah, that'd be funny That's good.
00:13:40.000It's it's it's a more hokey and family-friendly version of where they actually live I think to them it's more like Slenderman.
00:13:50.000It was like a game I guess or I don't know it was a creepypasta and then there was like a game where yeah You're like walking around this really nightmarish looking woods and then all of a sudden you turn around and Slenderman Slenderman is right there in front of you and you're like,
00:14:00.000ah, that's what it's like for them You know, they're like, you know, they open their
00:14:03.000refrigerator to put the milk away and Putin's in there Because easy right? Yeah, it's uncomplicated right? I think
00:14:10.000when like if you if you've got a weight into the China stuff
00:14:12.000It becomes a lot harder. You've got an ascended power We don't really know what to do where we're entangled with
00:14:16.000them in so many different ways Russia's easy Russia's been the bad guy for 60 70 years
00:14:19.000like since the end of World War two Russia has always been a super
00:14:22.000Give me a bad guy And all you have to do is plug it into the James Bond sort
00:14:25.000of mentality of like look these are the same bad guys This is the Cold War redux where it's happening all over again.
00:14:31.000And I think part of it is they just got hooked.
00:14:33.000Like, it happened once and it worked, right?
00:14:34.000They were able to sell the American people, unfortunately, really, really well and really, really convincingly that it is Russia, they're the bad guy, they're the threat, and they're not going away.
00:14:43.000And so now, when something new comes out, it's so easy to just take that idea and drop it right into this narrative they've already gotten.
00:14:49.000This is really great interaction between the Washington Examiner's chief congressional correspondent, Suzanne Ferrecchio, I'm probably pronouncing her name wrong, torches Brian Stelter for dismissing Hunter Biden news, defending Russia coverage.
00:15:03.000This is really, really, really interesting.
00:15:04.000So we have this tweet from the Washington Examiner, where Ferrecchio, it says, discusses media's treatment of the Steele dossier versus Hunter Biden's email.
00:15:24.000That dude is one of the most unethical and duplicitous people on TV.
00:15:27.000And I've made his acquaintance on several occasions.
00:15:31.000And it's amazing how far he's gone in taking this role at CNN.
00:15:36.000He's effectively gone from a media critic of the New York Times to a reality TV show about how the Russians are out to get you, and Donald Trump is evil, and that's all the show is.
00:15:46.000He brings on echo chamber personalities.
00:15:48.000He doesn't bring anyone to challenge his worldview.
00:15:50.000I'll tell you, to be honest, I've been trying to book leftists to come on the show.
00:16:24.000And we have a conservative here, and the conservative goes, I'm actually a conservative, though I support Joe Biden, and I also agree it was Russia.
00:17:08.000So, Steele Dossier, way back when, in the early aughts of 2015-2016, which oddly, I can't believe I'm saying this, seems like simpler times, right?
00:17:18.000At least there wasn't a global pandemic.
00:17:22.000The Clinton campaign reached out to a former MI5, so British intelligence, individual named Christopher Steele, who as part of a team of individuals pulled together what was meant to be originally an oppo doc that then I think the Republicans got their hand in.
00:17:36.000This guy Steele basically got contractors by Clinton.
00:17:40.000Background, it was supposed to be damaging background on Trump.
00:17:42.000And so when it first broke news, BuzzFeed was the one who got their hands on the content and they pretty, you know, unscrupulously pushed all of this out.
00:17:50.000Steele at the time, I guess kind of to his credit, said, listen, I can't speak for all of the underlying allegations here.
00:17:56.000I think whenever you pull together a dossier like this, you're relying on secondhand sources.
00:18:00.000You don't know the veracity of all the information that might live here, but I think it's probably 85% true.
00:18:05.000Wasn't in the Steele dossier like accusations that Donald Trump hired hookers to pee on a bed?
00:18:10.000This is where the pee tape comes from.
00:18:11.000This is where the pee tape comes from.
00:18:13.000And it was the bed that, if you remember the story, this was the bed that Michelle and Barack Obama
00:18:44.000The whole point is that it's supposed to sound bad.
00:18:46.000And the guy in charge of pulling it all together says, I don't know if all this is true, but our entire media ecosystem, because this was in the hot and heady days right after the 2016 election.
00:18:56.000Turbocharged all that directly into the mainstream narrative about Trump.
00:18:59.000It's almost like a circle of jerks were spreading information among each other.
00:19:05.000Very much like a certain individual who recently enjoyed a CNN analyst who enjoyed a bit of personal tubing.
00:19:19.000This, uh, from, uh, Suzanne, um, or Susan, uh, Ferretchio from The Examiner is criticizing the media for not taking the Hunter Biden laptop seriously.
00:19:30.000There's, there's photos of Hunter Biden with his dad on Air Force Two.
00:19:34.000Like, we know he went, we know he was on the board of BRISMA.
00:19:37.000So now he's accused of being corrupt, okay?
00:19:40.000Well, the guy who founded BRISMA was corrupt.
00:19:42.000They're, like, at the very least, Joe Biden's son was on the board of a company that was founded by a super corrupt dude who has fled the country now twice.
00:21:05.000They say, Rudy Giuliani said on Tuesday that he shared allegedly explicit materials involving underage girls from Hunter Biden with police in Delaware.
00:21:12.000The text messages and photos discussed by Giuliani, a personal lawyer to President Trump and former New York City mayor, appear to have been found in a laptop hard drive that purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden.
00:21:23.000Those computer materials are already in possession of the FBI.
00:21:25.000Quote, there's a text message to Hunter's father in which he says the following, and he's discussing his sister-in-law, who for quite some time was his lover, Giuliani told Newsmax.
00:21:35.000Setting up the background for the exchange, he says, she told my therapist that I was sexually inappropriate.
00:21:40.000This would be with an unnamed 14-year-old girl, and that's what Biden was apparently saying.
00:22:17.000And here's the thing too, like the idea that it's fabricated, right?
00:22:19.000Even setting aside anyone's personal feelings about Giuliani, that would be a felony.
00:22:23.000And not just any felony, like that would catch him in an enormous amount of very, very public legal penalty and legal problem.
00:22:29.000And so the idea that he would make all this up and fabricate it, like somebody, he's gotta be smart enough to know that if he does that, someone will find it.
00:22:39.000You know, James O'Keefe brought this up, that it feels like the New York Times and these media outlets are smearing him with outright and obvious lies because we got two weeks to the election, so just let her rip and deal with it later.
00:22:51.000If you want, whether you're in the media or whether you're in politics or whatever it is, if you want Biden to win, now is not the time to be curious.
00:23:00.000You don't want to be curious about any of this.
00:23:02.000And so I think, you know, there's a little bit of a, the ends justify the means, I think, going on in a lot of people's heads, where even the idea, like, let's say, and I don't think this will happen, but let's say it all comes out to be bunk.
00:23:13.000If you're a journalist at the New York Times or CNN, and you start poking around and start raising the profile of this thing, and it actually is disinformation, again, no evidence that it is, but in these people's minds, if it's disinformation, then they're doing what Comey did last cycle.
00:23:25.000They're giving weight to people to vote Against Biden in the run-up to an election, and they're too scared to even touch it, I think.
00:23:34.000If they report on it, in any capacity, it's out there.
00:23:39.000And you're not going to reach every single person, so the media, being at this point an apparatus of the Democratic Party, is just shutting up.
00:23:47.000Whereas an actual news outlet's gonna be like, I don't care when it is.
00:24:24.000Now, what are we as citizens supposed to do when we find out at the very last minute, the 11th hour, that Joe Biden might be selling his name, using his son as an intermediary to bypass laws?
00:24:52.000No debate moderator is going to touch it.
00:24:54.000It's going to go down the memory hole and we're all going to forget about it.
00:24:57.000Now Trump's going to bring it up tomorrow.
00:25:00.000Mr. Trump, we want to talk to you about Black Lives Matter and he's going to go, Hunter Biden's laptop has photographs of underage... The problem is, if he did, that doesn't have anything to do with Joe.
00:25:11.000In my opinion, if Hunter is a scheming narcissist, a dirty, underage, girl-doing guy, It's not Joe Biden.
00:25:20.000But if Biden's involved with Burisma, that's a problem.
00:25:23.000No, the CEFC is the bigger deal in my opinion.
00:25:39.000And I'm like, yeah, okay, how about the China email?
00:25:42.000I saw this one dude I know, he posted, Joe Biden may be meeting an executive from Ukrainian company is the worst October surprise I've ever seen.
00:25:52.000And it's responded with, the best I've seen was the email indicating Joe Biden was using his son as an intermediary to receive Chinese equity through a loophole, essentially.
00:26:05.000But I'll tell you what, if Joe Biden came out when this email dropped and these emails dropped, when the laptop dropped and the emails dropped, and he said, I think everybody knows at this point that I have a troubled son, and I think many people in this country have dealt with addiction and struggled through that, and they understand what it's like to have a loved one who does as well, and I would respect, you know, ask for privacy, and then if he actually was honest, addressed it, wasn't angry and snapping, no, you're lying!
00:26:51.000And he says, and now my only child has these addictions, these problems, and is struggling, and I'm doing everything in my power to keep him safe and protect him, and it's causing great struggles through my family, and I will do anything for my son.
00:27:11.000And there's so many people in this country who probably can sympathize with having a messed up kid, but knowing they still love him and will do anything for him.
00:27:17.000Instead, what's ended up happening with Joe Biden is he snaps at reporters, he refuses to take questions, and it makes it seem like he's the mastermind using his son to make cash.
00:30:37.000Let me go back to the first point I was trying to make about the emails, is that he may just be dull and unable, and it's really frustrating to, like, not be able to do it anymore.
00:30:56.000And I mean, that's the thing too, like it's, it looks like, I think that obviously it all looks bad, but can you imagine if anyone in good faith in the media or whatever it is, if they actually thought that this was something that was, that was a non-story, if they actually spent some time to, to look into it, I think one of the reasons it looks so bad and him looking frustrated looks so bad is everyone is saying, don't look, don't look in the corner, don't look in the corner.
00:31:17.000And so what are your eyes going to do?
00:31:18.000They're going to drive into the corner.
00:31:20.000Like there's nothing else for them to do.
00:31:21.000And so when you have this concerted effort around it to make sure that no one is looking at this thing that like, I don't know, it's the 800 pound elephant in the room.
00:31:28.000But you know what the media is looking at right now?
00:31:42.000There's illicit, illicitly obtained footage of Giuliani, and there's a photo that was published where he's leaning back on a bed with his hand, like, partially down his pants.
00:31:53.000And I was reading the story and it said, because these news outlets want to insinuate something, but they struggle to because they'll get sued.
00:32:01.000And it said Giuliani laid back and fiddled with his untucked shirt.
00:32:07.000The photos make it look, they're trying to make it seem like Giuliani got caught by Sacha Baron Cohen trying to like hook up with a young journalist or something in a hotel room, when in reality he was tucking in his shirt.
00:32:19.000He did an interview, they took the mic off, and when they mic you up they have to put it through your shirt, right?
00:32:55.000Yeah, I mean, it's the entire media who just lectured us for a really long time about how we have to wait for things to shake out and wait for more evidence to develop, or else it might be someone who is deliberately trying to mislead us, can 100% jump the shark as soon as it becomes convenient for them, right?
00:33:11.000And I think this is why, you know, we brought up the Steele dossier earlier.
00:33:13.000I think this is why a lot of conservatives look at these, hey, don't look at the man behind the curtain and say, you've never cared about this before.
00:33:22.000When have you once showed even a tiny, tiny modicum of reservation before accepting a story when it's helpful and convenient for you, and they just did it again!
00:33:31.000They're in the middle of ignoring another story that matters, and they jump the shark on something else that is very clearly tied to it.
00:34:04.000Like, maybe instead of the Democrats finding a strong, charismatic leader to carry the party forward, Hillary demanded it, and she wasn't the person who was supposed to lead them, and that resulted in a substantive weakening of what the left was.
00:34:17.000And so the reason I bring this up is, I'm thinking about Sacha Baron Cohen and what he's trying to do, and I think ten years ago... Like, when was Borat?
00:34:27.000Back in the days of Jon Stewart, you had very smart, liberal individuals who, in good faith, mocked things that were ludicrous.
00:34:35.000And, you know, Jon Stewart, I mentioned this before the show, but he's even praised Project Veritas back in the day.
00:34:40.000And James O'Keefe, I think he may have tweeted about it at some point.
00:34:44.000James, uh, uh, uh, John Stewart was like, they did good journalism, they exposed this.
00:34:48.000And he even showed, like, the Acorn investigation Veritas did, and he was like, tell me this does not get worse.
00:34:54.000And he uncritically was showing Veritas, like, this is, this is, this is amazing stuff.
00:34:59.000Today, after John Stewart leaves, After Obama leaves in 2016, there is a power vacuum in the Democratic Party and the establishment left in this country where there's no charisma anymore.
00:35:10.000Hillary Clinton certainly didn't have any.
00:35:12.000And then they started creating all of these plastic versions of Jon Stewart.
00:35:16.000So John Oliver, Jordan Klepper, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah.
00:35:20.000They do not understand what made The Daily Show fun and interesting and exciting.
00:35:26.000So now what you get is, and looping back to Sacha Baron Cohen, it's, I don't know, make fun of conservatives, I guess?
00:35:34.000So what's happened is they've created this political structure based on people with low information individuals who don't do research, who don't read news, who literally get their news from Trevor Noah or John Oliver.
00:35:46.000When people were getting their news from Jon Stewart, it was kinda bad.
00:35:49.000But it wasn't that bad because Jon Stewart still would show you Veritas and uncritically be like, can you believe this stuff?
00:35:56.000So you were getting your news in a fun and interesting way where someone was being funny.
00:36:00.000To replicate this, B-tier individuals who didn't have the charisma or talent of someone like Stewart looked at his show and misunderstood what made it interesting.
00:36:12.000So you end up now with these like, look at John Oliver, I love this.
00:36:16.000John Oliver, when his show, Last Week Tonight, first started airing when it first came out, it was always blowing up on Reddit and getting upvoted to crazy every single time.
00:36:27.000And then one day, it slowly started going down and people were posting it less and upvoting it less.
00:36:31.000And I noticed in the comments, people were saying, dude, all of his jokes, his shows, are the exact same show with different proper nouns.
00:36:55.000So what happens when you create a bunch of knockoff plastic versions of what was once charismatic and entertaining to the left, you get something boring and unwatchable.
00:37:06.000But the low information individuals who like shows like Big Bang Theory with laugh tracks, no offense to Big Bang Theory viewers, but it's like it's you watch a show with a laugh track because they tell you when to laugh.
00:37:23.000You're not getting real information anymore.
00:37:24.000And you know you're never gonna be the butt of the joke, right?
00:37:27.000And I think that's one of the keys for someone like Oliver.
00:37:29.000In a way that Stuart, like, he was always happy to be a circular firing squad.
00:37:33.000He'd take shots at anyone, he'd take shots at himself, whatever it is.
00:37:35.000But I think one of the reasons why so many people, particularly right now when things are really scary for a lot on the left, are so drawn to a format like that is they are always the good and righteous one, and the person being laughed at is always someone else whom they don't like, and honestly, at the end of the day, they probably don't know.
00:37:49.000I think one of my favorite anecdotes that I always come back to is there was a journalist who did an interview with other journalists about the number of people who they knew who owned a Ford F-150, the biggest selling car in the country.
00:38:08.000Whereas everyday Americans, it's like one in one.
00:38:10.000And so when you've got this, uh, small and now narrowing group of people who are all laughing at the same joke over and over again, within what is essentially a coddled safe space where they know it's never going to be them.
00:39:06.000And so what you have is 200 New York-based journalists all sharing information and creating an echo chamber among themselves where they're talking about what they think is happening and they have no idea what's really happening.
00:39:16.000So when you say they don't know anybody who has a Ford F-150, which is like the top-selling vehicle or whatever, I understand the point you're trying to make, and I think the Jeffrey Toobin thing is a better point.
00:39:26.000That they would post an article thinking it was funny to say that they whack off during business meetings.
00:39:30.000And I'm like, do you think that's relatable to the hard-working, you know, carpenter, or electrician, or plumber?
00:39:37.000I'm pretty sure plumbers has never occurred to them that during work they could crank one out.
00:39:52.000When I heard that story, and I'm like, I know they're not really serious, but they thought it would be funny to be like, come on, weren't you in a business call and you did something?
00:40:01.000And I'm like, I take my work very seriously.
00:40:46.000Because I think the other thing, the other reason it's so funny is they can probably look at all seven of their friends and say, hey, you guys all do this too?
00:40:53.000It's like, oh, look, all seven of us do this.
00:40:55.000I'm sure everyday Americans are the exact same way.
00:40:58.000And I think it's one of an innumerable number of different cases where people in the media
00:41:02.000are really, really bad at generalizing out what an everyday American looks like.
00:41:06.000And so you saw, I think this is why Trump caught everyone by surprise.
00:41:08.000Because you had a whole lot of journalists who looked at all their friends, and none of their friends
00:41:14.000And you saw, like you remember right after the 2016 election, the New York Times did like, they had this big push where they were gonna go out to the heartland and it's hysterical.
00:41:23.000It's like, if you remember those videos of British explorers contacting the uncontacted tribes in the Brazilian rainforest?
00:41:29.000What's the name of the guy who does those, David Attenborough?
00:41:46.000And it's true, it's easy I think for most normal people to laugh at, but it's a community of people who are really unbelievably insular, and even their closest concentric circles going outward Are also very, very insular.
00:42:00.000And so when they think of a Trump voter, it's like, oh yeah, I guess I do have that one racist uncle with a big Trump sign in his yard.
00:42:24.000And she talks about the elites and the people who, while other people were starving, she would talk about how they would have to make themselves throw up so they could eat more.
00:43:16.000And then, you know, I ended up getting a job and slowly started making my way through life, doing better and better.
00:43:23.000Then I went to Occupy Wall Street, I got some notoriety, and eventually I got interest from a company and said, we want to hire you to come into our newsroom.
00:43:58.000Who comes in whenever he wants, sometimes doesn't even come in, who publishes a couple articles per week or whatever, from other people who submit them, and he's getting paid double what I got doing backbreaking labor.
00:44:26.000And the best part, many of them write about like communism, like Teen Vogue.
00:44:30.000Didn't Teen Vogue just call for abolishing capitalism or something?
00:44:33.000Teen Vogue weirdly has taken like this kind of like, like 1970s Central America view on economics and how it works, which is like, it's my understanding.
00:44:43.000Like the reason teen is in the title of it is that it's, it's for children, right?
00:45:38.000In the same way that if you're a 13-year-old kid, you pop open Teen Vogue, and in between how to do your hair and how to put on makeup or whatever, you have this glowing piece on Karl Marx and the benefits of seizing the means of production.
00:46:30.000And it's going to come across the radars of other people because, I don't know, someone like you or I retweets it and they're like, look how dumb this is!
00:46:35.000And all that matters to them is they're getting the views, they're getting the eyeballs, they're getting the ad dollars.
00:46:39.000You know, the way I view the media is like, we're in this big pool of water and there's a maelstrom that they've all been sucked into where they're spinning around in circles, feeding each other BS.
00:46:54.000These poor people are trapped in this psychotic, paranoid, delusional world of Russia and this other, you know, whacking off on camera or something like it's a normal thing.
00:47:03.000They're separated from the rest of us.
00:47:06.000And you know, I have to go back to this example.
00:47:08.000If you've listened to my content, you've probably heard me bring it up several times, but it is the best possible example ever of how Trump knows this and Trump manipulates this and Trump knows the regular people better than these media companies do.
00:47:18.000Do you remember in the first 2015-16 cycle when Trump had a very expensive steak cooked well done with ketchup?
00:50:09.000But to an everyday person, they're like, well, why don't you just run the unedited?
00:50:13.000I think it gets back to a lot of what Trump ends up doing, where if this scares you, if what happened and the full accounting of what happened is something that you don't want to hear, why is that the case?
00:50:25.000And what does it say about you that you are so determined to edit these sorts of things to fit a certain narrative?
00:50:30.000Because I think every day people are going to look back and be like, well, why wouldn't they just play everything that he said?
00:50:34.000Why wouldn't they just run this whole thing through?
00:50:36.000You know what's crazy is that people don't realize, compared to where we are now in terms of long-form podcasting, every single interview that wasn't live ever was edited out of context.
00:50:48.000But the thing was, there was acceptable out-of-context moments for a lot of people.
00:50:52.000So I remember, you know, when I worked for Vice and many other companies, you would be like, we have a 15 minute slot, which means it's actually going to be like 12 and a half or whatever.
00:51:01.000So you do an interview with someone that would be 45 minutes.
00:52:46.000I want Biden to talk to Trump, not to us.
00:52:48.000I want to hear Biden say, no, look man, you know, when you, you, you were over there and you're doing this, you cutting us out of these deals and the Paris agreement.
00:52:54.000And then I want Trump to be like, no, you're nuts.
00:52:59.000And here's the thing, most people do too.
00:53:01.000And I think this, again, this is what helped Trump get elected in the first place, was he looked at the American people and said, hey, you know what?
00:53:07.000For a really long time, different people in politics, right and left, in the media, have been keeping something important from you.
00:53:14.000And I'm gonna be here, and we talked about this last time, a bull in a china shop, to come through and just give you everything.
00:53:19.000Knock down all the walls, knock down everything, and it's going to be raw, it's going to be unpleasant and cringeworthy sometimes, but it's going to be about as close to the truth as a good approximation is going to be able to get.
00:53:28.000And so I think that's why when he says, I'm just going to air the clip, I'm just going to play it.
00:53:34.000It's the sort of thing where a lot of people, particularly a lot of people who aren't super tapped into the media or super tapped into the news or super tapped into politics are like, wow, yeah, like I've kind of got this perception that I've been lied to and kind of bamboozled here for a long time.
00:53:46.000And even if the truth isn't pretty, I would really like to see that.
00:53:48.000Do you remember when Trump did that interview, sit-down interview with Chris Wallace at the White House?
00:53:57.000I think that's the pundit class sitting in their, you know, sitting on their Zoom meetings, whacking off to each other with the camera muted.
00:54:04.000And they don't realize that Trump had a long-form sit-down conversation where he was willing to do it.
00:54:11.000And the fact that he was willing to do it probably is so refreshing to so many people that Trump Could be sitting there in a two hour long conver- This is what his rallies are about!
00:55:12.000Here's, I think, a big part of it is there are a lot of people in media who would see something like that, the Trump sit-down interview with Matthews, and they'd be like, wow.
00:55:20.000Back when I was on the Hill, back when I was prepping someone to go in an interview, that would be a disaster.
00:55:34.000So much of your job is making sure that your maybe crazy boss doesn't go off script because you've got an entire team of people who spend all day developing and designing scripts for what they do and what they say and how that whole narrative flows together.
00:56:34.000When you turn it on and they're like, today Russia killed a bunch of innocent children because Russia is evil and you're like, dude, shut up.
00:56:40.000It's because their client, Hillary Clinton, was committing white collar crimes and they don't want to look at it.
00:56:45.000And ever since 2016 when her emails dropped and she's acid washed, 30,000 emails, destroyed federal property.
00:57:37.000I wonder if that is a play to say, if we don't win, the Democrats are gonna end the investigation, so if you want the investigation to carry on, you better get Trump a victory.
00:57:56.000I don't know what's going to come out from the worm probe.
00:57:57.000I'm definitely interested in hearing about it.
00:58:00.000I wish, selfishly, as someone who I think would like to have more answers rather than fewer to what's going on in the world, it would be really helpful to have that going into the 2016 election for everyone.
00:58:09.000At the end of the day, I think that with the Durham probe, with the comedians, with most people, I try and look with a little bit less malice.
00:58:17.000But to look at it and say, hey, you know what?
00:58:19.000It's probably... What I think it has to do with is a whole lot of people who see the world in a pretty monochromatic way.
00:58:26.000And all the people who work at CNN, a lot of the people who work at the FBI, unfortunately, most people who work in democratic politics, they have a certain way of viewing the world.
00:58:35.000And in simpler times, it wasn't necessarily bad, it was just different, right?
00:58:38.000And now, there's a little bit of, they're all, in terms of the chicken running around with their head cut off, they're all obviously very worked up and very concerned.
00:58:47.000And to me, a little bit, it's like, imagine watching a silent disco where you're the only one without headphones on, and you have no idea what a silent disco is.
00:58:53.000It's probably very weird and very confusing and a little bit concerning, right?
00:58:58.000You see all these people gyrating and moving around to a tune that you can't hear.
00:59:02.000And I think for people like us, that's kind of what it is.
00:59:04.000And that we end up seeing... We see the dance that they're doing, it's admittedly weird, and it's all in lockstep.
00:59:10.000But I'm not sure that it's necessarily... I'm not sure it's that dark.
00:59:13.000Whether or not they were able to remove Trump, their intention, they've succeeded in their goal of obstructing him to a ridiculous degree.
00:59:23.000Before Trump was even inaugurated, they were screaming Russia.
00:59:27.000When the Russia investigation started, even during it, I was wondering, what's the point of all of this?
00:59:33.000I entertained it for a while in the beginning, and I was like, if there's something here, then we'll figure out what it is.
01:00:46.000But I think my biggest concern with it is that this whole... If Biden wins, particularly if the Senate flips, particularly assuming the Dems probably pick up more seats in the House, All of this goes right back down the memory hole.
01:01:00.000Everything that happened, the three years that Trump and his administration spent having to battle against what turned out to be a lie, right, and something that was deliberately malicious, all of that work gets erased.
01:01:09.000All of it goes back on fire, and we never touch it again, right?
01:01:11.000Like, we're gonna write the history books one day, and that'll be an afterthought.
01:01:14.000And to me, as someone who, like, I didn't just entertain it.
01:01:17.000I had a piece up in the Federalist not too long ago where I talked about, like, I bought it pretty hard.
01:01:50.000I think we sometimes forget, I certainly forget, I end up checking my tweets from two years ago or four years ago, whatever it was, like, Jonathan Chait, for New York Mag, literally wrote, what if Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987?
01:02:02.000And then he'd get left out of the room!
01:02:05.000Do you know what the best part about that insinuation is?
01:02:07.000The Soviet Union is secretly still in existence.
01:02:11.000or or this is how this is how smart they are that they're still behind the curtain right like right right right insane and the best part was what should have happened under normal times one his editor probably would have looked at that and be like don't let this anywhere near my esteemed magazine i don't i don't want your your conspiratorial claptrap anywhere near this one seriously Even if it got to print, right?
01:02:29.000Even if, let's say there's a problem with New York Mag or whatever it is and they run with this thing and they let it go, at least he would get laughed out of the room.
01:02:58.000I love how this email comes out, and they're like, it is definitively Russian, you know, intelligence operations, and then Adam Schiff, and all the people are immediately just like, well, one person said it, therefore it's officially historically true, and we're gonna say it a million times, and once again we find ourselves back... You know what I'm gonna say?
01:03:55.000And they're like, but this time we're gonna do everything the exact same, but this time Trump loses.
01:04:00.000We're going to flip, we're going to flip, we're going to flip who, we're going to flip the people that we believe, and we're going to flip who wins the election.
01:04:26.000Like, unless they're, you know, revealing themselves on Zoom these days, like, it is impossible for these guys to lose their job or face any sort of professional repercussions.
01:04:34.000Why wouldn't they jump at the next quickest, easiest thing that might look like Russian disinformation to one unnamed source at the FBI, maybe, that you didn't vet anyway?
01:05:15.000So they're all posting the same jokes, they're all posting the same... Like, you know what's interesting is that these journalists live in New York, so they're surrounded by progressive activists.
01:06:03.000It's one thing when you've got a lefty politician who runs in and says, I want to fit in with the cool progressive kids at that trendy bar in Brooklyn, and it's another when you have someone whose sole occupation it is to bring you something that should be a good approximation of the truth, right?
01:06:16.000The first rough draft of history is what's in the hands of the media, and so when they're the ones who are crafting that narrative and they're chasing the, like, retweet if you agree types of retweets for progressives, It's so much more corrosive, I think, to our body politic when they do that, because the power and the influence that they have to be able to pull in other people who aren't necessarily partisans is a lot more dramatic.
01:06:38.000And so to me, someone like Yamiche is way more dangerous and damaging.
01:06:49.000She's the chief DC correspondent for NPR, who is someone who gets paid an enormous amount of money to be very popular on Twitter and to largely be indistinguishable from any progressive activist who you could imagine.
01:07:00.000But what happens is, when you have people who are progressive activists who are masquerading as someone who is meant to bring you the truth, I think that corrosive influence is way, way more difficult to the rest of us than a Democrat doing it.
01:07:12.000I just want everybody to realize for two seconds.
01:07:14.000Ask yourself, how much money do you make doing your job?
01:07:18.000Now I want you to go to glassdoor.com and look up Ryder at BuzzFeed and Vox and Vice and then when your blood boils, channel that energy into a pot of tea and boil that water and pour yourself a nice glass and sit back and relax and just realize what this world really is.
01:07:35.000Yeah, do it tomorrow Don't do it before bed, you'll get really wound up.
01:07:39.000I agree that journalism's doing that is nasty, but I hate lying under oath.
01:07:44.000When politicians lie under oath, or people in our government lie under oath, like James Clapper saying that they were not wittingly spying on the U.S.
01:07:51.000people, and they let him off, and he hasn't been punished for lying under oath for committing perjury.
01:08:17.000So we have the best system even though it's terrible?
01:08:19.000We have problems because for too long, the American people have went, I'm just going to click D or R and walk away and not have any idea who I'm voting for.
01:08:28.000And you end up with 30-year Pelosi and 30-year Schumer and 47-year Biden, and they don't care about you.
01:08:35.000George Carlin, man, that's the guy I grew up listening to.
01:08:52.000Even if you want to look at it, people who go into politics for the right reason or whatever, which, to be clear, very, very few, I would imagine, do this.
01:08:59.000On the whole, as someone who lives in D.C.
01:09:02.000As someone who lives in D.C., it does seem like there's a certain set of personality characteristics that tends to draw someone to politics, and most of them aren't good things.
01:09:10.000But even if you want to take the best of intentions for a lot of these people, year one, year two, fine. 30 years in, 40 years in, you
01:09:17.000know you've got a new book you've got to write every year that will make you a couple hundred grand, and
01:09:21.000you've got TV shows, and you've got people to not piss off. And so that's what's happening. And
01:09:25.000you're right, it's no different, unfortunately, in so many different, you know, the wide and
01:09:30.000sprawling bureaucracy, be it within intelligence or otherwise, it's the same thing.
01:09:34.000It's the same people, it's the same jaded sorts of personalities who have been
01:09:38.000here forever and have no interest in changing or learning a new set of rules. And right now they're
01:09:44.000Yeah, didn't used to be, was it like that in the beginning?
01:09:47.000I don't know, I mean I wasn't around, I assume you guys weren't around 200 years ago. Did they
01:09:51.000didn't have term limits though back then?
01:09:52.000You were, you were definitely yeah. So walking the earth for 800 years. In 1790, they didn't
01:09:58.000have term limits ever, right? Congress people could just.
01:10:01.000Well this was the beauty of it, right? So once upon a time. They don't have term limits now.
01:10:04.000No, I know. Once upon a time it was, they, you know, I think this was this was back before it
01:10:09.000was a particularly lucrative career to be in, to be in politics, right? And so I think part of the
01:10:13.000problem is, you know, You've got people who, like, there are plenty of people who are lobbyists or otherwise connected to the DC ecosystem who get paid lots and lots of money to be former politicians or to be former staffers or whatever it is.
01:10:25.000And so once upon a time, it wasn't a particularly sexy or desirable sort of job and occupation to have.
01:10:34.000And now it's become something that is a producer of wealth and power and influence.
01:10:38.000And so people, the people who are looking for those three things, are drawn to it like a moth to the flame.
01:10:42.000When these people get into Congress, if they lose or they leave, they still retain access, security, like access to the Hill and stuff like that, making it very, very easy for them to be lobbyists.
01:10:54.000So that's why it was actually AOC and Ted Cruz, I think, both were teaming up on a bill to kind of shut down this politician-to-lobbyist pipeline.
01:11:02.000I don't know if they were successful on it, but my respect to both of them for working on that.
01:11:06.000I think it's, you know, AOC is interesting because she is an influencer.
01:11:10.000And I feel like she's using her position to become famous.
01:11:15.000And I feel like she's personally more interested in fame than she is the office.
01:11:19.000With that being said, I can definitely give her tremendous praise and credit for working with Ted Cruz on a couple things, notably that one in particular, and I think Term Limits, too, was part of it.
01:11:42.000And so anything we can do to end that pipeline where you become a politician and then immediately get access to being wealthy, that's a serious problem.
01:12:05.000There's so much that has to go into... They're supposed to be doing work in their communities, helping people, and then representing them to the federal government.
01:12:32.000You also, if you are a normal person who can't just leave their job for an extended period of time to go have a dalliance with running for office, then it's tough.
01:12:40.000But yeah, I think you make a good point.
01:12:41.000I think for a lot of people, A lot of people who tend to get re-elected, particularly people in their first, I don't know, call it eight to ten years, they get re-elected because the people who they come into contact with see them as actually fighting for their communities.
01:12:54.000Whether or not that's true, I think there are a lot of people who are good at making it seem like that's the case.
01:12:59.000And so a lot of the good ones, right, and I do think that there are good ones, are doing that.
01:13:03.000They're pounding the pavement back home, they're collecting signatures, whatever the hell it is.
01:13:07.000But there are so many people who don't have to do that.
01:13:09.000Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, people on our side too.
01:13:14.000They don't have to keep working so hard.
01:13:16.000And so to me, the bigger issue is when you've got someone like a Ted Kennedy who's been in office their entire life and everyone knows who they are and likes who they think they might be, then they can coast and then they can skate.
01:13:27.000It's not just her, but I mean Mitch McConnell, too.
01:13:29.000I'm not a fan of either of these parties.
01:13:32.000I find them all to be... The only reason the Republican Party, in my opinion, gets any kind of past this point is because Trump stood a sledgehammer to the Republican Party.
01:13:40.000And he chased out a bunch of the crony politicians, several dozen have retired.
01:13:46.000Many others are just, like, pathetically trying to maintain some kind of semblance of actually caring about the American people.
01:13:52.000Yeah, and I mean, I think for a lot of them, it really did upset the apple cart.
01:13:56.000They had an idea of what they needed to do to get by and skate by in Congress.
01:13:59.000They had an idea of how the system worked.
01:14:00.000They knew who the good guys were and the bad guys, and who they had to play off and placate.
01:14:04.000And for so long, it was so easy and so comfortable to be able to do that.
01:14:09.000I think one of the things, getting back to your question about the founding of this country, the idea of a career politician, someone who's going to spend their entire life running for office and holding office and running for office again and holding office again, That didn't exist.
01:14:21.000You had people who were part-time farmers or part-time whatever, and they would come in and they'd, I don't know, they'd take their horse to DC or whatever it was, and then they'd go back home.
01:14:28.000And it was a lot, it was a lot easier.
01:14:30.000And so now you have people who like, this is their life.
01:14:31.000This is their lifestyle in a way that's, the system was never designed to do something like this.
01:14:36.000And it's, it's even more poorly designed today because of the amount of money.
01:14:54.000But it's that because of the way the hierarchies are ordered, people who are more senior are put on individual committees based on their seniority.
01:15:08.000You've really got, I think, pulled back a lot of the layers.
01:15:10.000Think about something like this, like, you and your friends are all hanging out, and you're like, we need to figure out who's gonna be the person to go pick up the beer.
01:15:17.000And then you're like, okay, who's doing it?
01:15:19.000Someone first has to volunteer to be, you know, I'll go get the beer, like, do you guys want James to do it?
01:15:25.000That's kind of what it used to be like, you know, you'd have this community of, like, back in the day, probably a couple thousand people, if that's somewhere, it's probably even less, and they'd be like, who wants to go down there and tell them what we're doing?
01:15:36.000And it would be like, hey, Bill, will you go down there and tell them that we're growing corn and stuff?
01:16:23.000She ends up winning again, even though she's not good.
01:16:28.000If you look at her record, I understand she's a freshman with limited experience and an understanding of the political space and the world, but she didn't even do anything.
01:16:37.000Like the bills she co-sponsored was like renaming a post office.
01:16:53.000But when it comes to politics, she hasn't done anything.
01:16:55.000Other than botching the Green New Deal and talking about farting cows, she's really good at generating negative press for the party.
01:17:01.000You would think anyone who was a Democrat would be like, Michelle Crusoe Cabrera was way better because she was competent, mature, and understood how the system worked.
01:17:11.000We got a lot of problems with how our system works.
01:17:13.000And right now, one of the issues is, if you're someone who knows how to play to media, you win.
01:17:18.000And that's, and one of the things she's done with her staff too, is she's invested very heavily in the comms function, rather than investing in, like traditionally, like you'll have a number of LAs and a number of people in your office who run policy.
01:17:28.000But if all you're trying to do is score retweets and score positive articles and build, you know, the best relationships you can with the editors at Vanity Fair, so you can get a new puff piece every couple of months, then you're going to allocate the amount of money that they all get to staff their offices.
01:17:41.000And throw all of it to comps, and throw all of it to digital, and find a way to make sure that you are getting the positive, supportive stories that you need that are gonna keep you in the public's attention, in the public eye, and keep building that celebrity status and that rockstar status that she's been able to do.
01:18:36.000That's the easiest thing to go off of, but it's definitely not the only thing.
01:18:40.000So we should look at what it takes to fix this system.
01:18:44.000I'm not confident term limits solve the problem either, you know why?
01:18:46.000No, it doesn't, that's what I'm saying.
01:18:47.000Because what'll happen is you'll have some dude who's like, okay, I'm funding person A for this first run.
01:18:54.000Then once their run is expired, I have person B training and being ready to go, and they all work for me.
01:19:01.000So what do you, I mean, it's probably that way and still, it's probably still that way for a lot of special interests.
01:19:06.000Definitely donors, special interests and stuff.
01:19:08.000I don't know how you solve the problem.
01:19:11.000I do think there's a solution to how we do better, but I don't know what it is.
01:19:16.000I'll just say this, I want to stress that I think AOC, and to a certain degree Trump, but Trump certainly has a better understanding of how economics and trade functions, but this element of press mogul politicians is a problem for us.
01:19:29.000I think AOC is a bigger problem because she has no experience and no understanding.
01:19:33.000There's a lot of things Trump has done.
01:19:36.000Whether you like it or don't like it, he's done a lot of things.
01:19:56.000And I think even worse, you will get generations more of AOCs, right?
01:20:01.000I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to be Trump right now.
01:20:03.000So whatever else you think of the guy, I don't think his situation and his position is enviable.
01:20:08.000And certainly he's probably not living the sort of carefree and easy life he probably led 10 or 15 years ago.
01:20:13.000But what you're going to end up, I think, what you're going to see, and unfortunately I think you're going to start seeing it on the right too, no different than on the left, is you're going to see a whole bunch of people who are probably in their teens and twenties now who want to be AOC the next cycle, or the cycle after that, or cycles down the road.
01:20:26.000And so you're going to end up with a whole bunch of new, a new crop of politicians who want nothing other than the star power, and right now, the way the incentives are aligned, they're going to get the followers, they're going to get the money, they're going to write books, they're going to sell out, they're going to be on all the podcasts and the TV shows and everything else.
01:20:41.000And so all of their incentives will be met.
01:20:43.000And the only person who's getting the short end on that deal is the American people who elected all of these people to lead them.
01:20:49.000Now, all of that operates under the assumption that from where we are now, there's no dramatic and immediate escalations, particularly following November 3rd.
01:21:00.000So, assuming that what we see, we get increments of, I agree with you, we'll end up with a bunch more social media influencer types who don't really do anything other than like, yo, look at my selfie, I'm on Instagram, vote for me, and then people do because They're on Twitch.
01:21:32.000So everybody's kind of expecting this to reach some kind of boiling point.
01:21:35.000So I guess, you know, in that regard, I wonder what your thoughts are, Drew, on where we're going.
01:21:39.000Yeah, you know, I go back and forth with a few buddies of mine.
01:21:42.000So most of my friends are pretty left-leaning.
01:21:44.000And I think one of the things that we always come back to is, how does the fever break?
01:21:48.000Right now, I think we can all agree, whether it's chicken with head cut off or whatever metaphor you want to use, we're at a point where it's not tenable.
01:21:55.000And there doesn't seem to me to be a good, easy way to back down from the sort of abyss that we're staring into and have us come to a more peaceful understanding of our differences and the way we all work and what have you.
01:22:08.000I think where I net out to and where I always fall out to in these conversations is, I'm worried that there probably will be violence before it gets better.
01:22:15.000It will continue to get worse before it gets better, and at some point there's going to be nothing but violence.
01:22:22.000I get that I sound a little bit like an extremist and a little off my rocker when I say that I think that's going to be the case, but I guess I just don't know how else We continue to move forward at the pace we're at, at the increasing kind of... It's like the music keeps getting faster and faster, and there's no one there to shut off the music.
01:22:38.000And so what happens when we're all running into each other headlong?
01:22:40.000I think people are scared to admit that there's going to be violence.
01:22:59.000I just have a feeling, based on the tightening of the polls and the voter registration gap, it looked really good for Trump and Republicans.
01:23:39.000I think it's, I think it's very, very difficult for Americans who, you know, none of us have been alive for 150 years.
01:23:44.000We've never really seen anything like this.
01:23:45.000And so, One of the models that I think is more helpful to look at rather than like a U.S.
01:23:49.000Civil War or what have you is something like the Troubles in Ireland, where you have two different sort of factions of people who, like, it gets more and more tense and more and more frustrated and at some point people start shooting.
01:24:06.000Did you look at the weird graffiti on each side of it?
01:24:08.000So this is really interesting for people who aren't familiar.
01:24:10.000Do you want to explain the troubles a little bit?
01:24:12.000Yeah, so in Ireland, there was a tenuous relationship between the Irish and the English for a long time, dating back to the first British occupation was in what, like 1099, something like that?
01:24:24.000And so eventually, after years and years of strife, centuries of strife, it hit a boiling point when what is now Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, seceded from what was then England, what's now the UK, to become their own sovereign country.
01:24:40.000And then we were left with Northern Ireland, which had about a 50-50 split, I think, at the time of Catholics and Protestants.
01:24:45.000There was a lot of sectarian frustration and the spillover violence, and then eventually it all came to a head.
01:24:51.000And people started shooting, and you would have... Bombings.
01:24:54.000There were bombings, there were shootings, there was the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, who was a faction of people in Ireland who thought that by causing violence, particularly in Northern Ireland and in London, that they could get the rest of Northern Ireland free, they could get the English out.
01:25:08.000So the Peace Wall separated, correct me if I'm wrong, two communities, right?
01:25:12.000It was like, you know, the, I don't wanna, I don't know the names of them, but basically I went to Belfast, and I was there for that big bonfire night they do, where they set up those, that's crazy, it's like 30 feet tall of just pallets and wood, and they torch the whole thing, and man, it lights up the sky like the sun.
01:25:30.000Anyway, the Peace Wall's interesting because on one side, it's very imperial, militaristic, And on the other side it's very SJW left-wing, very stereotypically culture war.
01:25:42.000And I was asking this dude there about it, I'm like, on one side it's, you know, pro-Palestine, on the other side it's pro-Israel.
01:25:49.000What does that have to do with Ireland?
01:26:03.000Yeah, and it only goes one direction, right?
01:26:05.000And so what ended up happening, there's the Good Friday Peace Accords, after years of bloodshed, right?
01:26:10.000Serious bloodshed, eventually they signed a peace treaty, but it's because the fire had kind of burned itself out.
01:26:16.000And my worry is, we're at a point where we've got a lot of embers, and the embers keep kicking up, and they keep getting hotter, and they keep getting hotter, and there's no one sitting around to throw water on the situation that we have now.
01:26:24.000And so until those embers kick up into something like a fire, and then that fire burns itself out, I don't know how else we walk.
01:26:30.000We're a much bigger country than Ireland.
01:26:36.000We're talking about the entirety of the country.
01:26:38.000So, my concern is that, initially, when we started seeing culture war conflict, street battles, a lot of people were like, oh, it's not gonna get any, you know, I had people telling me, when I said this is gonna get worse, they were like, no, because the government will never allow it.
01:26:54.000What happens when you have someone in one branch of the government who's on one side of the debate, and a person in the same department is on the other side, and they start butting heads with each other about who's evil, who's not?
01:27:04.000What happens when you start seeing, like we're seeing now in like the Pacific Northwest, these racially segregated trainings they're doing?
01:27:09.000At a certain point someone's gonna be like, I refuse.
01:27:13.000When, you know, the trans children issue, Joe Biden was asked a question about, I think, an eight-year-old trans child.
01:27:21.000I'm not here to make a judgment call or a moral call, because I don't want to inflame tensions worse than they are, but I tell you this.
01:27:28.000You have a fight happening in Texas, and I don't know what the latest development is, where the mother says the child is trans and the dad says the child is not.
01:27:35.000I am worried to think about what's going to happen when one parent feels their child is being physically harmed and they have no choice but to engage in some kind of physically, you know, physical maneuver of some type.
01:27:49.000And how many, and I think that's a really good microcosm, but think about how many other situations in American life that could lead to something like that.
01:28:43.000I was in New York City that day, actually.
01:28:45.000I lived there, and everyone came out of their houses and was, like, sitting together on the street and talking, and there's a lot of humanity, and it was this tragedy that bound us.
01:28:54.000And I think that there's going to be a false flag tragedy coming up.
01:28:58.000I think I would imagine that they've been trying it.
01:30:33.000Now they're talking about they want to divert freshwater from the Delta, from the Bay Area, south, to help the farmers, which could potentially cause the water pressure to invert.
01:30:45.000So saltwater would pour in to the Bay Area, turning all of the water brackish and just mutilating all the farms.
01:30:54.000They're not going to come together in a natural disaster.
01:30:57.000When people have a fundamental tribalist view and the only thing that matters is my tribe versus your tribe, the earth could explode and they would be like, it's your fault.
01:31:06.000Yeah, but I guess technology can help us in a time of crisis.
01:31:10.000Because if we all had electricity and we could all condense our water from the air, then if there was a flood or something, we could share water and not have fear of not having enough.
01:31:20.000I'll tell you what, where we are now, it's like ten gallons of water and condensation every morning on the deck.
01:31:25.000It's like, you walk outside and you're splashing.
01:31:27.000I'm like, man, I'd like to get a funnel and just... Yeah, dude, there's a lot of water out in the air that you can make.
01:31:34.000And it was funny when I saw the canals full of fresh water, and I asked the farmer why they weren't just using that, and he said, the city's voted, we can't touch it.
01:32:16.000Yeah, to me, I feel like it would be like if Hurricane Katrina happened everywhere in the country all at once, right?
01:32:21.000And so, unfortunately, Tim, I think you're right.
01:32:24.000I think that We're at a point now where you have two camps of people who really, really struggle not only to see their own fellows as patriots or compatriots, they struggle to see them as human, right?
01:32:45.000Two, even in the more mundane, the more milquetoast variety, I think it makes it easier to believe someone like Rudy Giuliani would do something like whatever it is.
01:33:00.000Two, about someone who we think shares our worldview.
01:33:02.000Or three, like, at least someone who we can assume is going to be acting in good faith.
01:33:05.000And so where we are now is, the reason you get these media cycles, whether it's Russian disinformation or whatever it else, the reason they pick up so quickly is we're all, like, we're all pointing our mental guns at one another anyway.
01:33:15.000And when you're, and I think when you're doing that, all you need, like all you need is the tiniest little semblance of a match to be able to kick things off and kick them off badly.
01:33:22.000And it seems like every morning we wake up to do that anew.
01:33:43.000The internet's making everything worse.
01:33:45.000I don't know that we spend enough time talking about the second or third consequences of social media and the internet and other things like that, because you're right.
01:33:51.000I mean, I think one of my big contentions with the media is that the thing that they are doing that tends to be bad is they are responding to a certain set of incentives that aren't, that their readers are not well served by.
01:34:02.000If a media needs to make money by serving ads, they need eyeballs.
01:34:05.000If they need eyeballs, they're not going to publish things that matter.
01:34:07.000They're going to publish things that collect eyeballs.
01:34:10.000And as a result of that, you have all of these twisted incentive systems that I think are too big, and they're too scary, and they're too colossal for any of us to try and talk about and wrestle with, because this is a system that we all live within, and the idea of trying to break out or punch out of that thing is scary and frightening.
01:34:23.000But I think if we invested a little bit more time and energy talking about those sorts of things, it would probably be beneficial.
01:36:16.000That's the other thing, too, is that, like, obviously there are people, I'm sure, who they are all online gun businesses, but there are also just a lot of manufacturers who, the same way that Amazon sells lots and lots of stuff, people sell things online.
01:36:27.000We're in the midst of a global pandemic.
01:36:28.000People are buying lots and lots of things online rather than in person.
01:36:31.000There are some companies that make ammo, but they're based in the middle of nowhere because they ship the ammo to various stores.
01:36:52.000To me, the gun issue is, I think, one of the most ridiculous ones because the people who are writing the rules don't really understand guns and don't understand how they work.
01:37:00.000And so I would imagine there's probably someone who drafted that policy sitting in a city who is like, well, why can't I go down this?
01:37:08.000They've, they've never been someplace that, that isn't particularly densely populated.
01:37:12.000They've never held a gun before in their life.
01:37:13.000And so these things are just fundamentally scary weapons of war or whatever, like assault rifles or whatever kind of language they want to use.
01:37:19.000And they're writing sweeping policies and the journalists fall into this trap too, where they have no idea what they're doing.
01:37:25.000And so the second and third order consequences that are going to come from writing bad policies are enormous.
01:37:30.000Think about what that means, banning online sales.
01:37:32.000Let's say you live in a very, very small town, and you have no gun store.
01:37:52.000Anything that some 25-year-old guy who admittedly probably looks like me, who lives in New York City, who's writing these gun laws, Anything else from their day-to-day life, if they couldn't get it online, would collapse in on themselves and they would know it really quickly.
01:38:27.000Yeah, like the main guy from Trafalgar said, the polls are not taking into consideration the secret Trump voters, the shy voters, and Trump is gonna win.
01:38:46.000And I think one of the interesting things in that too is it's lost on a lot of these people who are doing the war games that the side that seems to precipitate all the violence would be the side who would be upset if Trump wins.
01:41:56.000But I read his tweet and I was like, this is it.
01:41:59.000I swear to you, if a Democratic politician said we should have a truth and reconciliation commission, the first thing I would do is buy a gun.
01:43:41.000There's no evidence, there's no photo, there's no documents, literally nothing.
01:43:45.000And we're supposed to just take it at face value.
01:43:46.000So the New York Post comes out and says, here's a literal email, I say, okay.
01:43:50.000Well, Fox News verified the emails, the DOJ and the FBI, the FBI said they have the laptop, and both have said it's not Russian disinfo, and the Director of National Intelligence said it's not Russian disinfo, so I don't see what the big deal is.
01:44:03.000And it's always, I think historically it's been incumbent on news media to be able to prove beyond some level of doubt to a generally credulous and skeptical public that incredulous and skeptical public that these things are real right like once upon a time when they were unsubstantiated allegations they they would mean something because a news media outlet was willing to put their name behind it right all right here we go the real darth squishy says this 20 says the debate tomorrow never happens
01:44:32.000What happens if a Biden aide comes out with COVID?
01:44:36.000And then Biden says, although I've tested negative with an abundance of caution, we decided it's probably best we don't come out and risk infecting other people.
01:44:56.000But do you think that that gets through to people?
01:44:59.000Like, I agree with you that it's obviously going to be something of concern to the Biden camp.
01:45:04.000But at the end of the day, I think that Biden probably looks worse and knows that he looks worse if he runs from it.
01:45:09.000Do you think Donald Trump is going to say, Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor, who carried New York through 9-11, has just submitted evidence to the Delaware police of child sexual exploitation from your son Joe.
01:45:34.000But I think what ends up happening is he brings it up, he's shouting, Biden's shouting, the moderator's shouting, and the whole thing kind of gets lost.
01:45:54.000On some points, it just felt like noise.
01:45:56.000And at the end of the day, a lot of this bounced off the American people.
01:45:59.000And I think that we're probably gonna see something like that at the debate tomorrow night.
01:46:02.000And I think Biden and Biden's handlers know that all he has to do is get up there, say a few things, and walk out without everyone in the world thinking that he's completely lost his marbles, and it's a win for him.
01:46:11.000That's why Trump needs to let Joe talk.
01:46:13.000Yeah, because Joe Biden's going to be like, you know, 200 million people are going to die by the time this debate is over!
01:46:27.000I think what he needs to do is get out of the way and let Biden fall in on himself, or come out and be super aggressive on the Hunter thing and just stick to it no matter what.
01:46:33.000I think he's going to munch those two things and not do either of them.
01:47:31.000Yeah, he said so I'm trying to remember what it was but there's something that was tied to this was obviously before all the laptop stuff came out and he said he had some allegations related to I think it was I think it was Hunter it must have been he said we've got you we've got you on tape we've got you on camera whatever.
01:47:45.000But I don't know, again, like, I don't know, like, maybe, maybe he's, maybe he's teasing out the Big Bang and maybe it's, maybe it's the sort of thing that really does upset the apple cart and change the narrative or whatever.
01:48:17.000You don't put the big story out immediately.
01:48:19.000You want the maximum impact when it's most important, just before, as close as possible.
01:48:23.000I can't remember who we were talking to, but someone said, Hillary Clinton put out the ex-Hollywood tapes, or her people did, or whoever did.
01:48:53.000And you know, one of the interesting things, I think, I'm not sure I'm there with you, but like to play out the scenario a little bit, I think part of it too is they've already run, like they made Twitter and Facebook and a lot of other people who for no reason censored the New York Post look really, really bad in a way that if something bigger happens in a couple of days, they can't pull that again.
01:49:13.000So if they're playing it out, if they're thinking it through from a strategic perspective, and again, I'm always worried when I say that some people who prove themselves to not always be super strategic, that they have some masterful... It's like the Trump 14-dimensional chess thing that I never buy.
01:49:28.000I never buy the idea that he's playing 14-dimensional chess, because I think that it's mostly lizard brain, and so I'm worried of ascribing this grand strategy behind these things.
01:50:10.000I have such a hard time believing that these people are capable of these sorts of things, but if they were, this is what they would be doing.
01:50:17.000Grant Pickens says, imagine a civil war where the people disbanded the corruption of media, classical and online, replacing it with non-governed forum that will teach its own equilibrium.
01:50:55.000If I remember correctly, the normal guy was like, it was meant to be a spoof of a normal guy and what a normal person would do under normal situation.
01:51:02.000And it was so ridiculous from the top.
01:51:04.000I think they've got another one about what people would do at the end of the world.
01:51:07.000And the joke is, obviously no one would ever do this.
01:52:00.000I remember when we had Seamus here from Freedom Tunes and it was like, we took a super chat and then turned into like a 20 or 30 minute discussion about it.
01:52:26.000Yeah, and the Democratic Party shifted, I think, pretty quickly on that, and that drove a lot of it.
01:52:30.000Caitlin Flanagan, who's a writer at The Atlantic, writes really, really good and really compellingly on this about how Part of the issue is the two sides just don't talk to each other, right?
01:52:37.000The pro-life and the pro-choice sides are making two fundamentally different arguments about fundamentally different things, and at no point do those two ever intersect, and so we're just shouting.
01:53:14.000It's like, you fall on one side, and there's, it's, it's tough, man.
01:53:18.000So, I don't, I don't, I don't know how to answer the question adequately, other than, I'm not gonna, I don't want to reiterate the same debates we have over and over again on, like, life, liberty, and stuff like this, but, you know, much respect for the question.
01:53:30.000Cassette says, hey Tim, have some money because of millionaire cocksuckers.
01:53:35.000Well, it was George Carlin who said it, you know, but I'll take that in his honor.
01:53:39.000Long Reach Jones says, look at what is documented of Capitol Hill grind.
01:53:44.000Congressmen and senators being pulled away from meetings and important work to be forced to fundraise for their parties.
01:53:55.000And I think, again, like, I'm gonna sound a little bit wet behind the ears, I think, here, but I think a lot of them hate it, right?
01:54:00.000Like, I think there are a lot of politicians who really hate the fact that they have to go out hat in hand to so many people, many people they don't agree with, so often.
01:55:47.000Someone says Odysseus Horse says just breaking Fox News reports laptop connected to Hunter Biden also connected to FBI money laundering probe.
01:56:16.000It's like, well, they have a show, right?
01:56:18.000I mean, having the conversation is great, so.
01:56:20.000I would love to, but when you get that big, you start to run into like agents and then you have trouble actually getting in touch with people.
01:56:27.000I just want to talk to the person, not their agent.
01:57:52.000We got, we have, we have two cats in this house and it's really funny because when the stink bugs first started coming in, Betsy walks up to it and sniffs it and immediately recoils and goes, yeah.
01:58:02.000And then like a week later, Bucko walks up and sees one and I'm like, oh, he's going to do it.
01:59:00.000So I've actually it's really funny cuz I use that joke a ton of times on women and older women are of the you know that the Culture don't ask them in her age.
01:59:09.000Yeah, and so Sometimes it's usually a funny thing because they understand it's a joke, right?
01:59:14.000But I've had some sour responses like you can't ask me that I'm like, I know you're older than that means you are Yeah, exactly.
02:00:43.000Sedated and restrained says, with SCOTUS leaning conservative, do you think it'll be possible to get NFA and other gun laws ruled unconstitutional?
02:00:50.000I mean, I remember last time I was on, we talked a little bit about the kind of strict constructionist and constitutionalist views that some of the judges have.
02:00:56.000I think, I don't know, I'm of the opinion, maybe naively so, that it's going to be really hard, even with a conservative court, to overrule any long-standing principle.
02:01:05.000So I think that you probably, maybe some of the more recent gun laws you might be able to chip away at, you could have future challenges that do that, but I think the same way about gun laws and Roe v. Wade and other things, like if they're mostly settled precedent, I think they will continue to be mostly settled precedent.
02:03:10.000My bigger concern is with, like, spying on people's phones, not so much with asking people if they'd like to help us figure out where this disease went.
02:03:18.000If it's voluntary versus involuntary, that's the issue, right?
02:03:21.000And you've got, I think, like, part of it is there's plenty of social coercion that can go into something like that, and so I think some of that, honestly, is good, where if you've got an event that you want to go to, a restaurant you want to go to, and they ask you casually, like, hey, will you put down your name and your phone number and whatever, then, like, I don't know, that makes sense to me.
02:03:34.000I just, I've recently started going back to mass in person, and I know that that's something that they do there too.
02:03:38.000And so I know I feel a lot more comfortable doing that.
02:03:40.000And I get it, like, listen, I beef with the libertarians on Twitter all the time.
02:03:43.000I get that there are privacy concerns.
02:03:44.000I'm just not particularly motivated by any of them.
02:03:46.000There's actually a private property issue.
02:03:49.000If a business says, we want to track the people who come into our store, tell us, you know, you can come in under these conditions.
02:03:58.000So there are challenges, though, because what I often say in terms of public accommodation is if I'm paying taxes that support your business, then I think there needs to be, you know, restrictions have to be reasonable.
02:04:08.000But, I mean, my phone's always spying on me.
02:06:21.000And you can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Parler, at Timcast.
02:06:24.000Check out my other channels, YouTube.com slash Timcast and YouTube.com slash Timcast News, which apparently is slowly being removed from a blacklist, which is good news.
02:06:34.000Others are still telling me it's not visible, so we'll see what ends up happening.
02:06:38.000But this show is live Monday through Friday at 8 p.m., so smash that like button on the way out to help the channel.
02:06:43.000Subscribe, hit that notification bell.
02:06:45.000We'll have clips from this show up throughout the day tomorrow, and then Friday we will be back, but tomorrow we have no show because it is debates.