Valuetainment - Babylon Bee Explains Importance Of Calling Out Media & Satire Today

00:00:00.160 So my guest today is Seth Dillon, the CEO of a satire website, comedy, making fun of

00:00:06.320 people both on the left and the right, who's gotten a lot of heat lately with New York

00:00:09.880 Times.

00:00:10.880 New York Times wrote negative things about them, then they sued them, then New York Times

00:00:14.560 had to change it.

00:00:38.060 So Cracker Jack changes name to more politically correct, Caucasian Jack, which is pretty hilarious. 0.99

00:00:44.480 I've read three of them, I haven't read the 10, so there's going to be a reaction on the

00:00:47.580 other ones.

00:00:48.580 Number two, Biden cuts hole in masks so he can still sniff people's hair.

00:00:53.540 Pretty impressive, by the way, that one's good.

00:00:55.540 Three, motorcyclist who identifies as a bicyclist sets cycling world record.

00:01:02.220 That is classic, by the way, David, I love that one.

00:01:04.980 Four, CDC, people with dirt on Clintons have 843% greater risk of suicide.

00:01:11.720 That's a pretty, that's pretty accurate statement.

00:01:13.420 I think it is probably accurate.

00:01:14.420 Could be pretty accurate right there.

00:01:15.520 Five, Fisher Price releases my first peaceful protest play set with house you can actually

00:01:22.480 burn down.

00:01:23.480 Very thoughtful.

00:01:24.480 Man identifying as a six year old crushes game winning homer in t-ball championship.

00:01:29.480 I can go on, by the way, they can go on and on and on and on and on and obviously this

00:01:33.480 is satire, which we're going to talk about here today.

00:01:36.480 But with that being said, Seth, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:01:39.480 Thanks for having me.

00:01:40.480 Glad to be here.

00:01:41.480 So, satire.

00:01:42.480 So, satire, it's very old.

00:01:45.480 I mean, I think this goes back to, I was looking at the history today, even back in Egypt 2,000

00:01:50.480 years ago, before Christ, they were doing satire and a lot of it was making fun of people in

00:01:55.480 power.

00:01:56.480 It was church.

00:01:57.480 It was politicians.

00:01:58.480 It was the government.

00:01:59.480 It was the rich people.

00:02:00.480 It's not like it's one sided.

00:02:02.480 It's been continuous to hold people accountable.

00:02:04.480 But this is your world.

00:02:05.480 Tell us how you got into this satire world.

00:02:08.480 Well, the Babylon Bee exists because nobody was really doing satire from this particular

00:02:15.480 perspective at the time.

00:02:16.480 You know, you've heard, you've probably heard of The Onion, right?

00:02:18.480 Absolutely.

00:02:19.480 The Onion is like.

00:02:20.480 They've dropped off a little bit though.

00:02:21.480 They used to be the biggest.

00:02:22.480 They haven't been.

00:02:23.480 Yeah.

00:02:24.480 Well, they've just been around for a long time.

00:02:25.480 They probably drop off by the time we've been around for 30 years too.

00:02:28.480 Who knows?

00:02:29.480 Hopefully not.

00:02:30.480 But, you know, they've been around for a long time.

00:02:32.480 It started as a print publication.

00:02:33.480 They did make it.

00:02:34.480 They broke into the online world and developed quite a bit of a following.

00:02:37.480 But satire has been something that the left, the political left, has used very effectively

00:02:42.480 to ridicule and mock their ideological and political opponents on the other side of the

00:02:47.480 aisle.

00:02:48.480 You think of like the Tonight shows, the late shows, you know, like the comedy shows.

00:02:52.480 Yeah.

00:02:53.480 You know, you know, you've got a weekend update.

00:02:54.480 You go down the list and all the people that are doing that well, including like when you

00:02:58.480 get into the media world, cartoons like The Simpsons and Family Guy and South Park, you

00:03:04.480 know, that often delve into satire.

00:03:07.480 It's being done well from their perspective.

00:03:11.480 It wasn't really being done that well or at all from the other side of the aisle.

00:03:15.480 So our founder, Adam Ford, started a website, threw up like a WordPress blog and started

00:03:20.480 publishing satire, thought he had a knack for it and could do it well and wanted to do it

00:03:24.480 from another perspective.

00:03:25.480 The thing took off, went viral.

00:03:27.480 Within a matter of a few months, we were generating millions of page views.

00:03:30.480 He was doing a lot of church jokes too, inside Christian humor, like evangelical church.

00:03:34.480 Is he a Christian himself or no?

00:03:35.480 Yes, he is.

00:03:36.480 He is.

00:03:37.480 Are you yourself as well?

00:03:38.480 I am myself as well.

00:03:39.480 But you're still making fun of the church.

00:03:40.480 Oh yeah.

00:03:41.480 Yeah.

00:03:42.480 Like what's a satire joke against the church?

00:03:45.480 A satire joke against the church.

00:03:48.480 Well, I'll give you an example.

00:03:50.480 Okay.

00:03:51.480 So like the guys, I don't know if you're familiar with like the different like theological terms

00:03:54.480 and stuff, but like there's Calvinists.

00:03:56.480 Have you heard of Calvinism?

00:03:57.480 Of course.

00:03:58.480 You know, kind of this belief in like theological determinism that God's predetermined who

00:04:01.480 he's going to save and what's going to happen and all this stuff.

00:04:04.480 One of the things I found so refreshing when I met Adam for the first time up in Michigan,

00:04:09.480 and I was talking about maybe acquiring a site from him because he was wanting to sell it.

00:04:13.480 We're having a conversation and it came out to me in that conversation, I didn't know

00:04:17.480 this, that he was a Calvinist himself.

00:04:18.480 I'm like, I'm actually surprised by that because I've read these jokes on your website

00:04:22.480 making fun of Calvinists.

00:04:23.480 Like, and it's escaping me like what the specific headlines were.

00:04:27.480 I'd have to pull them up to read them and I hate to botch headlines and like not read

00:04:30.480 them correctly.

00:04:31.480 But like there's a bunch of jokes on the website that like, just poke fun lightly at Calvinists.

00:04:36.480 I'm like, it's very refreshing to me to see like self-deprecating humor where you're actually

00:04:41.480 like confronting yourself and your own ideas.

00:04:44.480 And he said, you know, that's what, that's what you want to do with satire is you want

00:04:47.480 to, you know, obviously you want to speak truth to power, hold power accountable.

00:04:51.480 You want to obviously attack bad ideas.

00:04:54.480 When I try to like summarize our mission statement, I summarize as we ridicule bad ideas.

00:04:58.480 That's what we do.

00:04:59.480 Um, but at the same time, sometimes the ideas on your side are bad or the behavior on your

00:05:06.480 side is bad and worth mockery and ridicule.

00:05:09.480 Uh, and so I think it's a healthy exercise to kind of hold your own ideas.

00:05:12.480 Why is New York times pissed off with you though?

00:05:14.480 This is satire, right?

00:05:15.480 Why are they upset with you guys?

00:05:17.480 The New York times, uh, they don't like, okay.

00:05:21.480 So, so I said a moment ago that the left is really good at this stuff.

00:05:25.480 What they're not good at is receiving it.

00:05:27.480 When you start firing back, it really bothers them.

00:05:30.480 They don't like the jokes.

00:05:31.480 Uh, they don't think they're funny.

00:05:33.480 Uh, so the New York times has kind of jumped onto this argument.

00:05:36.480 It's been going around for a long time.

00:05:37.480 We had, uh, uh, years ago, probably three or almost four years ago, Brian Stelter tweeted

00:05:42.480 about us.

00:05:43.480 Uh, you know, he's a CNN personality and he said, um, the Babylon B is at the bottom of

00:05:47.480 all the shows.

00:05:48.480 I believe he's at the bottom of Don Lemon.

00:05:50.480 Yeah.

00:05:51.480 He said the Babylon B is a fake news site.

00:05:53.480 They call it satire and he put that in quotes.

00:05:56.480 Interesting.

00:05:57.480 And his point there is that we're only pretending it being satire.

00:06:00.480 We're like putting it on.

00:06:01.480 Yeah.

00:06:02.480 And trying to make people believe we're satire so that we can write these stories that are

00:06:05.480 false that people will believe.

00:06:08.480 Um, the New York times kind of picked that up and ran with it and wrote a piece about

00:06:11.480 us.

00:06:12.480 They've actually written a couple about us.

00:06:14.480 One of them that was kind of raising the question of whether we're, uh, just pretending

00:06:17.480 to be a satire site.

00:06:18.480 And then one of them actually said, we are a, and I'm quoting them, a far right misinformation

00:06:23.480 site that sometimes traffics in misinformation under the guise of satire.

00:06:27.480 So it's this, you know, devious malicious thing that they're accusing us of doing where

00:06:31.480 we pretend to be satirists.

00:06:32.480 Um, we objected strongly to it.

00:06:34.480 We're, we're a satire site no less than the onion.

00:06:36.480 We just have a different political perspective, different theological perspective.

00:06:39.480 That onion is left.

00:06:40.480 Onion would be considered as a...

00:06:41.480 Onion would be on the left.

00:06:42.480 Yeah.

00:06:43.480 Yeah.

00:06:44.480 So when you see issues like a gun control or abortion or whatever the issue is that people

00:06:47.480 come down either hard on the left or hard on the right about the onion is always satirizing

00:06:52.480 from that perspective on the left side, you know, making fun of the gun rights people

00:06:56.480 or something like that.

00:06:57.480 Um, and, and, you know, we, we're just doing it from the other side and, and, and kind of

00:07:01.480 firing back.

00:07:02.480 But, but to call our motives into question, how do they know our motives?

00:07:05.480 How do they know we're writing this satire to try to mislead people? 0.80

00:07:07.480 It's silly.

00:07:08.480 Our website is so obviously a satirical website.

00:07:10.480 So, um, we actually, we sent them a demand letter demanded that they retract that story

00:07:14.480 within five days, they edited that story.

00:07:16.480 They did.

00:07:17.480 And so they at least did it.

00:07:18.480 Yes.

00:07:19.480 Okay.

00:07:20.480 They deleted all the references to us in that story.

00:07:21.480 I think it's important for the audience to know if they haven't heard about you guys,

00:07:23.480 you've got 20 million visitors a month.

00:07:26.480 I think you've got 20,000 paid subscribers.

00:07:28.480 I believe those numbers could be bigger today.

00:07:29.480 Yeah.

00:07:30.480 They're old numbers.

00:07:31.480 Yeah.

00:07:32.480 So it's not like you're not getting, you're getting a ton of traffic.

00:07:34.480 Everyone's talking about you guys right now.

00:07:36.480 You guys are funny.

00:07:37.480 You're, you're doing it the right way.

00:07:39.480 When has satire ever been canceled?

00:07:42.480 Has there ever been a satire side show, uh, uh, talent that's ever been canceled?

00:07:47.480 Well, there's certainly been comedians who have been canceled, right?

00:07:50.480 There's been comedians who have been attacked.

00:07:52.480 Um, there's been the comedians who have lost their Twitter pages or their Instagram pages,

00:07:57.480 uh, for making jokes that were considered beyond the pale politically incorrect.

00:08:00.480 Um, usually it's not for misinformation.

00:08:03.480 It's unusual the way that we're getting, you know, we get, we got caught up in this whole thing where,

00:08:07.480 uh, around the last election, there was all this concern about fake news influencing voters, right?

00:08:14.480 So, uh, Facebook, Twitter, um, they were really concerned about the spread of misinformation,

00:08:20.480 how it would lead people to believe false things about the candidates, about what was going on.

00:08:24.480 And so they wanted to clamp down on that and control misinformation.

00:08:27.480 So they started working with third party fact checkers.

00:08:30.480 And they started fact checking stories that were, uh, factually inaccurate and writing them false.

00:08:36.480 Yeah.

00:08:37.480 So they could then flag them and let people know that they were false or take them down and completely pull them down.

00:08:41.480 They started doing that with us.

00:08:43.480 So we got fact checked.

00:08:44.480 Uh, the most notable one happened, uh, the first big one that happened was in 2018.

00:08:49.480 We wrote a piece about how CNN had purchased an industrial sized washing machine to spin the news in before publication. 0.72

00:08:55.480 Which is pathetic. 0.97

00:08:56.480 Yeah. 0.94

00:08:57.480 You may want to say that one more time and we're going to put the picture up here for people to see.

00:09:00.480 Yeah.

00:09:01.480 Can you, can you repeat that?

00:09:02.480 CNN purchases industrial sized washing machine to spin the news in before publication.

00:09:06.480 Now it's absurd, right?

00:09:07.480 Of course.

00:09:08.480 It's like that can't actually happen.

00:09:09.480 There's no real way to spin the news.

00:09:11.480 That's a metaphorical thing.

00:09:12.480 It's not a physical thing.

00:09:13.480 Yeah.

00:09:14.480 So, so that the joke is just silly on the surface, but they rated it false.

00:09:18.480 And then Facebook threatened to de-platform and demonetize us because of that joke.

00:09:22.480 So that's a great example right there of the type of action that's sometimes taken against,

00:09:26.480 uh, you know, comedy sites or satirists.

00:09:28.480 Um, it could be either because of misinformation or because it's deemed to be hate speech because

00:09:33.480 you're making fun of the wrong people.

00:09:34.480 Did you see what the, uh.

00:09:35.480 You saw what just happened with Dave Chappelle recently.

00:09:37.480 Yeah, of course.

00:09:38.480 Yeah.

00:09:39.480 Dave Chappelle is, you know, you've got people doing a virtual walkout at Netflix.

00:09:43.480 It's been a story in the news now for weeks.

00:09:45.480 Uh, because he, he made comments and jokes that people didn't like.

00:09:48.480 So they're trying to get him taken off Netflix.

00:09:50.480 They're trying to get Netflix to take down the special.

00:09:52.480 But Netflix is staying strong, by the way.

00:09:53.480 They're not moving.

00:09:54.480 They're standing with him.

00:09:55.480 Yeah.

00:09:56.480 They are standing with him, which is great.

00:09:57.480 Which is impressive because Reed Hastings is on the left and he gave $3 million to Newsom

00:10:00.480 to help save his recall.

00:10:02.480 Right.

00:10:03.480 It's not like they fully agree with everything he's saying.

00:10:06.480 It's just a business model saying we're okay back in Chappelle and leaving him on there.

00:10:09.480 Right.

00:10:10.480 Right.

00:10:11.480 It's important.

00:10:12.480 I mean, it's, it's nice to see liberals being liberal and actually standing for free speech.

00:10:16.480 Bill Maher is one of them I respect who is always coming out against cancel culture.

00:10:20.480 Did you hear about what he said recently?

00:10:21.480 Uh, it may have been in August, like two months ago where he's having a conversation about

00:10:26.980 how for the longest time, you know, conservatives tried to do comedy and it never worked because

00:10:31.480 uh, Pelosi is not that fun.

00:10:33.480 And he was talking about Dennis Miller.

00:10:34.480 He says, Dennis Miller is a very good comedian, but the moment Dennis Miller became a conservative

00:10:38.700 and they had him do a 10 minute skit on Nancy Pelosi, you just can't do it.

00:10:41.880 He says, but Sarah Palin, let's face it. 1.00

00:10:44.080 She's a, I don't know what he, if he called her stupid moron, something he called her something 1.00

00:10:47.980 like that. 1.00

00:10:48.980 And he said, but today things have flipped.

00:10:52.580 He says today, the stuff they're writing about and the stuff that the liberals are doing on

00:10:56.780 the left, it's officially comedy.

00:10:59.780 There's officially comedy for conservatives to have an SNL model to make fun of the left

00:11:04.980 because half the stuff just doesn't make sense.

00:11:07.080 You're making it easy for them.

00:11:08.080 It wasn't the case 10, 20 years ago.

00:11:10.080 Would you have guessed a Bill Maher saying something like that in 2021?

00:11:15.280 A Bill Maher who's been known as a guy on the left.

00:11:17.680 Yeah.

00:11:18.680 Well, you know, he, he, what I respect about him is he takes his own side to task.

00:11:22.880 It's one of the things that we try to do with our satire is make fun of the, you know, 0.99

00:11:26.280 we make fun of Trump like crazy.

00:11:27.980 And a lot of people that follow us who are Republicans or conservatives who like our humor

00:11:31.680 because we align with them politically, they can't stand when we make fun of Trump.

00:11:35.180 But we do it anyway because Trump deserves to be made fun of.

00:11:37.680 Are those your best articles?

00:11:38.680 Are those the most viewed?

00:11:40.280 We did one on how some of the ones that you read are some of our most viewed.

00:11:43.480 It looks like you looked up ones that have the most paid views or shares.

00:11:46.280 We did one about how Trump claimed to have done more for Christianity than Jesus himself.

00:11:52.280 And that was just a straight quote from Trump.

00:11:56.280 Trump, I have done more for Christianity than Jesus himself.

00:11:59.280 Now that's believable.

00:12:01.080 I find that believable, right?

00:12:02.880 Because you're playing into Trump's ego.

00:12:05.080 I could totally see him saying that.

00:12:06.680 Now we wrote that in 2019.

00:12:08.280 You listen to this, this is crazy.

00:12:10.280 We wrote that in 2019.

00:12:11.480 Snopes fact-checked it and rated it false.

00:12:13.480 Now the reason Snopes fact-checked it is because it was going viral.

00:12:16.280 People were sharing it believing it was true.

00:12:17.280 That is hilarious to me.

00:12:18.280 Now answer this for me.

00:12:20.280 I'm going to interview you for a second.

00:12:22.880 If people believe that story is true, is that an indictment of satire or of Trump?

00:12:27.880 It's an indictment of him, right?

00:12:28.880 That is believable?

00:12:29.880 Of course, but the point is, you know, if I read that article and I would have said,

00:12:34.880 yeah, after the 70th time of saying there's no way he would say something like that,

00:12:38.880 you're like, he probably would say something like that.

00:12:40.880 Yeah, it's believable.

00:12:41.880 He caused that.

00:12:42.880 It's believable.

00:12:43.880 It's believable because he's got that outlandish personality.

00:12:45.880 He's got a big ego.

00:12:46.880 It's believable.

00:12:47.880 Now that means that's good satire because satire rides on the back of the truth, right?

00:12:51.480 We go in the direction the truth is pointing and exaggerating.

00:12:53.480 I'm still laughing, thinking about it.

00:12:54.480 So now here's the thing.

00:12:56.480 On, I think it was like October 9th.

00:12:58.980 What is it now?

00:12:59.980 We're in mid-October, right?

00:13:01.680 It's been a couple of weeks.

00:13:02.680 Yeah.

00:13:03.680 Trump came on a program doing an interview and said, I have done more for religion and

00:13:10.680 Christianity than any other person in history.

00:13:12.680 He didn't say that.

00:13:13.680 Two weeks ago.

00:13:14.680 Trump said that.

00:13:15.680 Two weeks ago.

00:13:17.680 So we made that joke in 2019.

00:13:19.680 Snopes rated a false.

00:13:20.680 Give me the title again.

00:13:21.680 What's the title of the article?

00:13:23.680 I have done more for Christianity than Jesus himself.

00:13:26.680 Okay.

00:13:27.680 Go ahead.

00:13:28.680 I'm listening to you.

00:13:29.680 Yeah.

00:13:30.680 Here's the interesting thing.

00:13:32.680 Snopes rated it false, but now he's actually said it.

00:13:35.680 If you look it up, you can actually see he made that statement just a couple of weeks

00:13:38.680 ago.

00:13:39.680 Three and a half million, 15 million shares.

00:13:41.680 Yeah.

00:13:42.680 This article.

00:13:43.680 Yeah.

00:13:44.680 Yeah.

00:13:45.680 That one went crazy.

00:13:46.680 I have done more for Christianity than Jesus.

00:13:48.680 So now that he's actually on record saying it, Snopes might have to go back and change

00:13:52.380 that one to true because they'd rated a false initially.

00:13:54.380 And then the article, the way it reads, I'm just going to read this article so people

00:13:58.380 kind of have an idea.

00:13:59.380 Franklin D.C.

00:14:00.380 In response to Christian Today editorial calling for his remover, Trump called the magazine

00:14:03.380 a left wing rag and said, I have done more for Christianity than Jesus.

00:14:06.380 I mean, the name of the magazine is Christianity Today.

00:14:09.380 And who is doing more for Christianity Today?

00:14:11.380 Not Jesus.

00:14:12.380 He disappeared.

00:14:13.380 No one knows what happened to him. 0.94

00:14:14.380 But I'm out there every day protecting churches from crazy liberals.

00:14:18.380 Here's a part though.

00:14:19.380 Let me explain to you my experience with Onion.

00:14:21.380 Okay.

00:14:22.380 First time, I want to say 11 years ago.

00:14:25.380 I have no idea what the Onion is.

00:14:27.380 I'm not following, you know, Onion.

00:14:29.380 My friend Tom sends me an article from Onion.

00:14:31.380 Okay.

00:14:32.380 And I don't know what the article was about.

00:14:34.380 I'm like, Tom, are you kidding me?

00:14:36.380 When did this happen?

00:14:37.380 And originally, I believe the story.

00:14:40.380 Right, right.

00:14:41.380 Because I felt and says, no, Patrick, it's Onion.

00:14:42.380 Onion is a satire website that does it.

00:14:44.380 So meaning, if somebody reads this for the first time, those are the people's reactions.

00:14:48.380 You know how you watch a movie with somebody and you want to see their reaction for the first time?

00:14:52.380 I want to see someone's reaction for the first time who has no clue what Babylon Bee is.

00:14:57.380 To say, did you hear about this news site, what they posted, what Trump said today?

00:15:00.380 And you share it with them just to get their reaction.

00:15:02.380 How many people actually believe this stuff though?

00:15:04.380 A lot do because it's believable.

00:15:06.380 And again, I have to make this point.

00:15:08.380 It's a very important point.

00:15:09.380 The fact that satire is believable.

00:15:11.380 See, what they want you to do when they don't like your jokes. 0.96

00:15:14.380 The left was fine with this one because it fed into their narrative that Trump is an egotistical maniac and he is braggadocious and whatever. 0.92

00:15:22.380 So they didn't mind this one. 0.67

00:15:24.380 But what they're trying to get you to do when they don't like your jokes is they're trying to say, hey, look, people are believing this stuff.

00:15:29.380 It reflects poorly on us.

00:15:31.380 They want you to have jokes that are so divorced from reality that no one could possibly believe they were true.

00:15:35.380 But have you heard the saying, there's a grain of truth in every joke or it's funny because it's true?

00:15:40.380 Right.

00:15:41.380 That's what makes comedy effective is if it's got a grain of truth in it, it's rooted in the truth.

00:15:46.380 It's just exaggerating a little bit for hyperbole just to make a point.

00:15:50.380 So that's what satire does.

00:15:52.380 So this is good satire if it's believable.

00:15:54.380 People will try to criticize it for that reason and say, you guys are misleading people on purpose by publishing this stuff that's believable.

00:16:01.380 No, that's not.

00:16:02.380 That's not how it works.

00:16:03.380 I think about my friends.

00:16:04.380 Listen, for Armenians, Assyrians, Persians, man, they're naturally satire. 1.00

00:16:09.380 Right.

00:16:10.380 They're naturally like this.

00:16:11.380 They're very good at being sarcastic, telling jokes like this.

00:16:14.380 If an Armenian is watching this, one of you guys has got to do something with Babylon being for the Armenian side. 0.99

00:16:19.380 Anyways, so tell me how you come up with this.

00:16:21.380 Like what is the business model?

00:16:23.380 Is it mainly are you guys sitting in a creative room and everybody pitches?

00:16:26.380 Is it a lot of pitching, pitching, pitching?

00:16:28.380 How do you guys come up with these titles?

00:16:30.380 A lot of pitching.

00:16:31.380 Yeah.

00:16:32.380 I mean, so we primarily were riding on the back of whatever's in the news cycle.

00:16:34.380 Right.

00:16:35.380 So we want to be timely with it.

00:16:36.380 We want to be writing about whatever people are currently thinking and talking about.

00:16:40.380 So we wake up in the morning and look at the headlines, read the headlines.

00:16:43.380 And when I say we, I mean my team.

00:16:45.380 It's not me personally for the most part doing this.

00:16:47.380 I do pitch ideas, but we have a whole team of writers who are, you know, they're in the Slack channels, pitching ideas.

00:16:54.380 It's all in the headline, right?

00:16:55.380 We start with the headline.

00:16:56.380 We don't create the image.

00:16:57.380 We don't write the article.

00:16:58.380 We write headlines and pitch them over and over and over again until we get one that's right.

00:17:02.380 Or we iterate on it.

00:17:03.380 And, you know, we've got like a seed thought that's good, but the headline's not worded properly.

00:17:07.380 We'll, you know, keep rewriting it, toss it back and forth until we nail it.

00:17:10.380 And then once we got the joke in the headline, then we hand it off, get the Photoshop done, get the article written up and all of that.

00:17:16.380 So we pitch, for every article we publish, there's probably 100, 150 headlines pitched.

00:17:22.380 That were turned down.

00:17:23.380 That were turned down.

00:17:24.380 That didn't go live.

00:17:25.380 How many go, how many every day?

00:17:26.380 How many do you guys post every day?

00:17:27.380 Satire?

00:17:28.380 We probably publish between five and ten new articles a day, depending on the day.

00:17:32.380 And then we also repost some evergreen stuff from before.

00:17:35.380 So only five to ten a day.

00:17:36.380 So the entire model is to come up with the best five or ten a day.

00:17:41.380 Yeah, yeah.

00:17:42.380 Got it.

00:17:43.380 Yeah.

00:17:44.380 You know, people can only handle so much satire in their news feed and they're only going to share so much satire.

00:17:48.380 So I don't think it makes sense to have a model where, like Fox News, we're publishing an article every three minutes, you know, throughout the course of the day.

00:17:55.380 Makes sense.

00:17:56.380 There's just no way to inundate people with it like that.

00:17:58.380 It's not the right kind of content.

00:17:59.380 So we're going for quality over quantity.

00:18:02.380 So how much is, obviously, I would have to say the king of satire for satire business is Trump.

00:18:08.380 He's got to be at the top.

00:18:09.380 I don't, right?

00:18:10.380 I would put him at the top.

00:18:11.380 Oh, for who to satirize?

00:18:13.380 For who to target?

00:18:14.380 Yes.

00:18:15.380 Now, okay.

00:18:16.380 So this might be, it's debatable, but Trump on the one hand is low hanging fruit.

00:18:21.380 He'll be offended if you say he's not though.

00:18:23.380 He will.

00:18:24.380 On the one hand, he's low hanging fruit because he's like an outrageous personality.

00:18:28.380 Biden, kind of the same way.

00:18:29.380 He's, you know, he mumbles this gibberish sometimes.

00:18:32.380 He's hard to understand. 0.51

00:18:33.380 He says crazy things.

00:18:35.380 He sniffs people's hair.

00:18:36.380 He does weird stuff.

00:18:37.380 It's easy to make fun of.

00:18:39.380 But when you're exaggerating the truth, to make your point, when the truth is, Trump is an exaggeration himself. 0.98

00:18:47.380 So you got regular reality, then you got Trump who's like a crazy guy, and then you got to try to exaggerate him. 0.95

00:18:52.380 You're exaggerating an exaggeration. 0.94

00:18:54.380 I find it more challenging to parody that which is already a parody of itself.

00:18:58.380 Yeah.

00:18:59.380 So Trump seems like a character out of a movie already.

00:19:01.380 Yeah.

00:19:02.380 So I think it's challenging to parody things.

00:19:04.380 In fact, I quote G.K. Chesterton all the time.

00:19:07.380 He said back in 1911, the world has become too absurd to be satirized.

00:19:10.380 He said that over a hundred years ago.

00:19:12.380 Today, we got crazy stuff happening, really crazy stuff happening, that actually makes the project of satire more difficult.

00:19:18.380 Because it's hard to exaggerate something that's already so exaggerated and extreme.

00:19:23.380 You didn't answer my question.

00:19:24.380 So who would be at the top?

00:19:25.380 Who would be the GOAT to satirize? 0.53

00:19:27.380 Is it a Bush?

00:19:29.380 Is it a...

00:19:30.380 Today, there's people like, I think Fauci is an easy one.

00:19:34.380 Because Fauci's been kind of on every side of these issues.

00:19:36.380 He's said things that contradict himself over and over again.

00:19:40.380 So we've made jokes about how Fauci debates, you know, the five previous versions of himself.

00:19:45.380 Isn't that hard to do when you're the sexiest man alive?

00:19:48.380 Like, it's kind of tough to do that, right?

00:19:49.380 See?

00:19:50.380 That's funny.

00:19:51.380 He's like been on the front of magazines, but he's like this elderly doctor.

00:19:55.380 It's just, the whole thing is just funny.

00:19:57.380 It's bizarre.

00:19:58.380 Unexpected.

00:19:59.380 So I think he's a good one.

00:20:01.380 I think that the more outrageous the personality like Trump, the more difficult it is.

00:20:05.380 But also, when you just nail it, when you get it just right.

00:20:08.380 I wrote a piece, a headline about how Trump went...

00:20:12.380 Twitter went down for a few hours, right?

00:20:14.380 And so I pitched a headline to the team about how, okay, he can't tweet because Twitter's down.

00:20:19.380 This was before he got suspended.

00:20:20.380 I'm like, what would Trump do?

00:20:21.380 What would Trump do?

00:20:22.380 Okay, let's do a story about how he, because Twitter's down, he went out on the balcony

00:20:27.380 of the White House and was just shouting his thoughts to whoever was listening, you know?

00:20:30.380 So he did a piece about like, during Twitter outage, Trump is out on the White House balcony,

00:20:34.380 just shouting his thoughts to like whoever's in earshot.

00:20:37.380 Just to whoever, you know, just because he has no other outlet for it.

00:20:40.380 And it was funny.

00:20:41.380 It got shared a ton of times because it was kind of like, kind of believable, but also pretty silly.

00:20:45.380 So for those reasons, Trump is fun.

00:20:48.380 But it's really challenging to find just the right angle on him. 0.75

00:20:51.380 Gay man miraculously turned straight by a single bite of Chick-fil-A. 1.00

00:20:56.380 Who comes up with that? 0.83

00:21:01.380 San Francisco bans people from eating at unsanitary In-N-Out must eat on poop-covered sidewalk instead.

00:21:09.380 If you've been to San Francisco, that one speaks to you.

00:21:11.380 Of course, two months ago.

00:21:12.380 I know how it looks like.

00:21:13.380 Yeah, that one speaks to you.

00:21:14.380 It's a mess today.

00:21:15.380 Liberal parents trying to figure out how to cheer for his son, Brandon.

00:21:21.380 This is a recent one, I'm assuming.

00:21:23.380 Oh, yes.

00:21:24.380 What a great NASCAR driver.

00:21:25.380 When everybody was chanting for him, it was very inspirational when I saw that happening.

00:21:29.380 It was.

00:21:30.380 And the NBC lady caught it. 0.99

00:21:31.380 Right.

00:21:32.380 So right now, can anybody mess with you guys today?

00:21:35.380 I mean, after you going back to New York Times and having them change it, was that ultimately like your insurance policy to protect yourself against them coming back after you?

00:21:43.380 Well, so I want to do a couple of things with that.

00:21:45.380 Like, there's a couple of things.

00:21:47.380 For one thing, I would prefer strongly to just laugh this stuff off and joke about it.

00:21:53.380 That would be in character for us, right?

00:21:54.380 To just mock the New York Times.

00:21:56.380 But because of the way the social networks treat misinformation and they take it so seriously, we literally just can't sit there and make jokes when the New York Times is out there saying that we are misinformation.

00:22:07.380 So we had to make a statement about it.

00:22:09.380 And my hope was that we would set some precedent for showing these media companies and these media personalities that when they make false characterizations of us, we're going to actually do something about it instead of just laugh it off.

00:22:21.380 So I think there was some precedent set for that.

00:22:24.380 With their retraction, I think it's less likely now that other media companies will make that same mistake, which is good.

00:22:29.380 I think that was, you know, a win for us.

00:22:31.380 We notched that as a big win.

00:22:33.380 But it doesn't mean there aren't other threats.

00:22:35.380 I think if you were to ask me right now what I think the main threat is to satire right now on like the social media platforms, it's this idea of punching down.

00:22:43.380 You familiar with punching down?

00:22:44.380 And I can explain it for people who are watching who may not be familiar with that.

00:22:47.380 But you have this new policy that Facebook is rolling out.

00:22:50.380 They've announced it recently, I think back in June, that they're going to put together a policy specifically around satire.

00:22:56.380 Satire is allowed on Facebook.

00:22:57.380 You can do it.

00:22:58.380 You just can't punch down.

00:23:00.380 And what that means is you can't make fun of people.

00:23:03.380 You can't make jokes or make fun of people who are below you. 0.89

00:23:07.380 It's hypocritical, by the way, what punching down means.

00:23:10.380 What do you mean? 0.94

00:23:11.380 Like if you're punching down, you can't say anything about women.

00:23:14.380 So you're saying women are beneath me? 1.00

00:23:16.380 Right, exactly.

00:23:17.380 What do you mean punching down?

00:23:18.380 That's what I say.

00:23:19.380 That's sexist.

00:23:20.380 Ain't it?

00:23:21.380 No, that's punching down.

00:23:22.380 But you're contradicting yourself with what they're coming up with.

00:23:25.380 Yes.

00:23:26.380 If I say, if I look at a woman, I say, you know what, I'm not going to make a joke about you because you're beneath me and I would rather not joke about someone who's beneath me. 1.00

00:23:32.380 That's not polite.

00:23:34.380 What does that say?

00:23:35.380 That's so condescending to look at somebody and say, I'm not going to joke about you because you're beneath me.

00:23:39.380 Now, what they'll try to say is that it's about power, right?

00:23:42.380 Like who has the power?

00:23:43.380 The people who have the power shouldn't be making jokes about the people who don't have the power.

00:23:47.380 That's really what they're trying to get at there.

00:23:50.380 But they're putting people into this hierarchy where you're in these tiers.

00:23:54.380 And based on your score from your race, your gender, you know, your status and privilege in life or whatever, you get scored and tiered.

00:24:02.380 And there's certain people that you just can't touch.

00:24:04.380 You can't make fun of.

00:24:05.380 I reject the whole thing for the reason you just gave.

00:24:07.380 I think it's condescending. 0.92

00:24:09.380 I think it's hypocritical. 0.63

00:24:10.380 I think it reinforces and perpetuates sexism, misogyny, racism, et cetera, to think less of people or to think that there are people beneath you.

00:24:18.380 I think that if we're all created equal, and I believe that we are, then we should all be able to joke about each other indiscriminately and not be like hands off certain groups.

00:24:27.380 Now, does that mean being like kicking somebody while they're down, being malicious?

00:24:30.380 No, but I see it as precisely the opposite.

00:24:32.380 Conservatives, in my mind, being one myself, conservatives really have been on the ropes in the culture war for a long time.

00:24:40.380 We've been on the defensive.

00:24:41.380 The left, the progressive ideas have been winning.

00:24:43.380 They dominate education.

00:24:44.380 They dominate the corporations.

00:24:46.380 They dominate media and entertainment.

00:24:48.380 They dominate right now in politics.

00:24:50.380 So, you have progressive ideas that are dominating everywhere, and cultural conservatives are really on the defensive.

00:24:57.380 So, when they make jokes back in the other direction, if anything, I would say they're punching up against the institutional powers,

00:25:03.380 not punching down at people who are less powerful or influential than they are.

00:25:07.380 When's the last time conservatives were winning all those areas, though?

00:25:10.380 Like, when's the last time conservatives were winning education, universities, politics, media?

00:25:17.380 You know, when's the last time they had it?

00:25:20.380 It's been a long time.

00:25:21.380 What's a long time?

00:25:22.380 Not in my lifetime.

00:25:23.380 What I'm trying to wonder is if they ever had it.

00:25:26.380 Like, you know, in one sense, like, I'll give you an idea.

00:25:29.380 Time magazine is for sale for $350 million.

00:25:33.380 Why don't you buy it if you're on the right?

00:25:35.380 Why doesn't somebody who goes and buys it?

00:25:37.380 Mark Benioff buys it.

00:25:38.380 Washington Post is for sale for a few hundred million dollars.

00:25:41.380 You mean that's a lot of money?

00:25:42.380 How many billionaires on the right can go buy that?

00:25:44.380 Right.

00:25:45.380 So many of them.

00:25:46.380 You know, you got LA Times is for sale for $550.

00:25:48.380 I think Peter June bought it for $551 or $541, some number like that.

00:25:52.380 That's nothing.

00:25:53.380 You could have bought LA Times.

00:25:54.380 How about if you would have made an offer for a billion dollars?

00:25:57.380 Forbes magazine is owned by Forbes, the family, right?

00:26:00.380 You know who they end up selling to?

00:26:02.380 Have you seen what's happened with Forbes lately?

00:26:03.380 It was always known as protective of fiscally conservative capitalists, all this other stuff.

00:26:08.380 Do you know who owns Forbes magazine today?

00:26:10.380 I don't.

00:26:11.380 Do you have any idea?

00:26:12.380 If I told you right now, I'm so curious to know what your reaction will be.

00:26:14.380 I'm actually going to show it to you so you see it.

00:26:16.380 Here's Forbes Wikipedia.

00:26:17.380 The only acquisition I know of in that list was Bezos buying The Post.

00:26:20.380 Okay, so here's Forbes.

00:26:22.380 Who owns 95%?

00:26:23.380 Integrated Whale Media.

00:26:25.380 China.

00:26:26.380 How the hell does, how do you sell to China?

00:26:28.380 How does the number one business magazine sell to China?

00:26:31.380 That's wild.

00:26:32.380 So this is the part where I think you got to respect the left because they were long-term thinkers.

00:26:40.380 But for you, since you're in the world, I wonder, maybe you had a different story where it was a time where, you know, Cronkite even was secretly on the left, but he played the position of center and people trusted him on what he would say.

00:26:51.380 You know, not Cronkite, whatever he was politically, but he would stay center so you can kind of make a decision for yourself.

00:26:56.380 We don't have that today.

00:26:58.380 When did that change?

00:26:59.380 Did it change because we gamify TV?

00:27:03.380 Did it change because hosts were all gamified on who can get the most views?

00:27:07.380 Did it change because of a Morton Downey Jr. came and showed, I don't know if you remember Morton Downey Jr.

00:27:12.380 He became so crazy and wild and controversial that all of a sudden he passed up Oprah Winfrey, Springer, Montel, and those were all faces of TV.

00:27:22.380 And Morton came in 18 months.

00:27:23.380 He's number one on all these platforms.

00:27:25.380 Did that become inspirational?

00:27:27.380 We're off some of Beck is kind of going that direction.

00:27:29.380 You know, MSNBC goes that direction with some of the stuff Matthews was doing.

00:27:33.380 What flipped for these guys to start winning?

00:27:36.380 Well, there's a lot of things.

00:27:37.380 So, I mean, if you go back in the history of religion, for example, you know, there's, you had basically this idea of like theocratic fascism and, you know, religious groups that were trying to control society and impose their morality on society and make sure everybody was abiding by their religious principles, basically.

00:27:55.380 You know, you've had that happen historically.

00:27:58.380 With conservatism, though, when you get into like politics, generally speaking, you know, conservatives, libertarians, they want to kind of, they want to live and let live and they're happy to have people have ideological disagreement with them and they welcome the debate and they welcome ideological diversity.

00:28:14.380 The left wants diversity of a different kind.

00:28:16.380 The left wants diversity of skin color and gender and intersectionality.

00:28:20.380 You know, they don't want diversity of opinion and viewpoint.

00:28:23.380 Yeah.

00:28:24.380 So when they take over an institution, they lock it down.

00:28:27.380 They try to hold that ground and prevent people from coming in.

00:28:32.380 Even when, you know, you look at corporations that are predominantly leftist in their corporate makeup, who they donate to, which kind of candidates they donate to.

00:28:39.380 It's hard to even get into these places.

00:28:41.380 If you're conservative, it's hard to get a job at Facebook, Google.

00:28:44.380 You can't be publicly out about who you are politically.

00:28:47.380 They don't want diversity of viewpoint.

00:28:49.380 They want diversity of other factors.

00:28:51.380 So once they gain that power, it's very difficult to wrest it back from them.

00:28:55.380 And so I think a lot of people on the right right now are trying to create alternatives.

00:28:59.380 They're trying to create alternative social media platforms.

00:29:01.380 Daily Wire is trying to create alternative media, release their own movies.

00:29:04.380 People are trying to publish books for kids that are coming from a conservative perspective.

00:29:08.380 Daily Wire just signed a guy from ESPN.

00:29:10.380 Daily Wire just signed a couple people from ESPN.

00:29:12.380 Yes.

00:29:13.380 They're uncancelling people who are cancelled in other places.

00:29:15.380 I love that.

00:29:16.380 Good for Ben Shapiro.

00:29:17.380 He's doing the right thing.

00:29:18.380 Gina Carano, who got cancelled from Disney.

00:29:19.380 And they're doing a movie with her.

00:29:20.380 They gobbled her up and they're doing a movie with her.

00:29:21.380 They're doing a movie with her, which is great.

00:29:23.380 That's great.

00:29:24.380 It's not a big budget movie.

00:29:25.380 It's a million and a half, two million dollars.

00:29:26.380 But still, you're getting the eyeballs and they're putting it on the app.

00:29:28.380 I think the number I got is 300,000 people watched their movie they did on the app.

00:29:34.380 Whatever the movie is about the shooter, you know, the 17-year-old shooter.

00:29:37.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:29:38.380 Run, hide, fight or something.

00:29:39.380 Run, hide, fight and something like that.

00:29:40.380 Yeah, so question for you.

00:29:41.380 So for me, I'm in the military.

00:29:43.380 I'm an atheist.

00:29:44.380 I'm a Democrat when I'm in the military.

00:29:47.380 And I was a registered Democrat and atheist till 25.

00:29:51.380 This is what I was.

00:29:52.380 And here's what I always learned, okay, when I would watch people.

00:29:56.380 I always made fun of people who were too square, like too proper.

00:30:01.380 You know what I mean?

00:30:02.380 Where it's like, well, so what are you doing this weekend?

00:30:04.380 Well, I'm going to go to church and I'm going to do this.

00:30:06.380 I'm like, oh my gosh, freaking, what a boring weekend.

00:30:10.380 You're going to go to church on a, you have two days.

00:30:12.380 You got seven days, five days we're in school.

00:30:14.380 You got two days to yourself.

00:30:15.380 You're going to spend Sunday going to church.

00:30:16.380 You're out of your mind.

00:30:17.380 That doesn't make any sense. 0.98

00:30:18.380 What a boring guy you are, right?

00:30:19.380 So a way of looking at that thing about going to church, you fall in the square category.

00:30:24.380 Because if you want to party, like, let's look at this.

00:30:26.380 You got the far left, you got the conservative, you got the liberal, you got the libertarian.

00:30:30.380 Okay.

00:30:31.380 If I put it in there, you got the independent in the middle, right?

00:30:33.380 Okay.

00:30:34.380 Okay.

00:30:35.380 If you probably want to party and have fun, who are you going to have the most fun with?

00:30:39.380 If you want to party, get drunk, get hammered, have fun, no responsibility, no rules, no regulation, just screw off.

00:30:48.380 Who would you want to party with?

00:30:49.380 Well, it depends on how you look at it.

00:30:51.380 I'd say there's a lot of people, if you go to like a town, if you go to like a town like Nashville and you're hanging out with a bunch of country folks who are like, a lot of them are super conservative, Christian, church going people, but they'll throw back some beers with you and party with you and have a lot of fun.

00:31:04.380 Silverado.

00:31:05.380 I mean, I wear Silverado every Saturday night.

00:31:07.380 Right.

00:31:08.380 Exactly.

00:31:09.380 Yeah.

00:31:10.380 So, I mean, it depends.

00:31:11.380 Now, Nashville can also be a pretty liberal town, at least it is from a governmental perspective.

00:31:16.380 But I don't know.

00:31:17.380 Is this a trick question?

00:31:18.380 There's no trick question here.

00:31:19.380 No satire, no trick.

00:31:20.380 I don't have a follow-up.

00:31:21.380 The only reason I'm asking you this is because I'm thinking about, I'm a businessman, right?

00:31:24.380 Yeah.

00:31:25.380 So I run businesses.

00:31:26.380 I'm thinking about it from a marketing standpoint, how terrible of a job conservatives have done pitching their life.

00:31:33.380 Right.

00:31:34.380 As being fun.

00:31:35.380 Because the life is like this, well, listen, because you want to save yourself because it's the right thing to do.

00:31:41.380 And the drugs, you don't want to touch drugs because God is watching.

00:31:45.380 It's so much like fear-based that maybe you've got to re-market that store.

00:31:49.380 You can talk to young people and say, young people like to be rebellious, right?

00:31:52.380 You know what's rebellious now?

00:31:53.380 What's that?

00:31:54.380 Get married young.

00:31:55.380 Have kids.

00:31:56.380 Raise a family.

00:31:57.380 Take your son fishing.

00:31:58.380 Teach him to read.

00:31:59.380 Teach him values.

00:32:00.380 That's rebellious today.

00:32:01.380 That's rebellious.

00:32:02.380 The way they want you to live now, today, the proper way to live is to find yourself and explore and do all this crazy stuff and don't have any principles and who cares what gender you are or who you're dating and who you're seeing or how many you're seeing at the same time.

00:32:18.380 Like, there should be no restrictions.

00:32:20.380 The rebellious way to live now is the way that's kind of that straight and narrow path where it's rooted in values and tradition, you know?

00:32:28.380 I ask this question because you've got eyeballs, right?

00:32:31.380 You have to win the young. 0.84

00:32:32.380 Yeah.

00:32:33.380 Younger audience.

00:32:34.380 You don't win the younger audience.

00:32:35.380 Somebody's going to win the younger audience over if you don't do it, right?

00:32:37.380 Right.

00:32:38.380 So the left has what?

00:32:39.380 They have most of sports.

00:32:41.380 I would say probably not baseball.

00:32:43.380 I think they've got football.

00:32:44.380 Maybe baseball is 50-50, let's just say, right?

00:32:46.380 They definitely have NBA.

00:32:47.380 It's 95% minus a couple, you know, maybe a couple guys from Orlando Magic or different places.

00:32:52.380 But they have NBA.

00:32:53.380 You know, NHL.

00:32:55.380 Nobody messes with the NHL.

00:32:56.380 Have you ever noticed NHL and politics?

00:32:58.380 They just don't touch them. 1.00

00:32:59.380 They're somewhere they're going to whoop their ass. 1.00

00:33:00.380 They're like, listen, we'll fight anybody else. 1.00

00:33:02.380 These NHL guys are missing teeth.

00:33:03.380 I probably don't want to mess with these guys. 1.00

00:33:05.380 They'll find me at a bar and whoop my ass. 1.00

00:33:07.380 But everything is marketing. 1.00

00:33:08.380 They have the movies.

00:33:09.380 They have the nightlife.

00:33:10.380 They have the social media.

00:33:11.380 They have the education.

00:33:13.380 They have all of that.

00:33:14.380 So I think the rebranding of the right.

00:33:16.380 So I'm asking this only from the perspective of whoever is here.

00:33:21.380 So, for example, one of the pastors invites me a month ago and he says, would you mind

00:33:28.380 doing a very big church.

00:33:29.380 This is a church that's known, linked to Billy Graham, massive, but the marketing isn't that good.

00:33:35.380 They have a meeting with me and the senior pastor and I are working together on marketing very closely.

00:33:40.380 Okay.

00:33:41.380 But we're working at market.

00:33:42.380 They're going to come to my house once a month.

00:33:43.380 We have this meeting together.

00:33:44.380 Great.

00:33:45.380 So how do we get this exposure out there?

00:33:48.380 I said, first of all, because, you know, church attendance has been coming down.

00:33:51.380 Christian church attendance is coming down.

00:33:53.380 Tithing is coming down.

00:33:54.380 You go to a lot of churches.

00:33:55.380 We used to have 20,000 people here.

00:33:57.380 Well, you don't today.

00:33:58.380 You only got 2,200 and it's a big difference between 2,200 and 20,000.

00:34:02.380 What changed?

00:34:03.380 You're not marketable. 0.86

00:34:04.380 You're boring.

00:34:05.380 You're still trying to convert the ways of 50 years ago, the way you converted, the way you converted 40 years ago.

00:34:10.380 It's just not going to work today.

00:34:12.380 You're still not allowing people in that maybe are slightly more different than you, that are rebellious,

00:34:17.380 that want to have conservative belief, but they got to fit in your box if they don't fit in your box.

00:34:21.380 So a guy like me, I went to a church, and I went to 26 churches.

00:34:26.380 I went to Scientology.

00:34:27.380 I went to LDS, Mormonism.

00:34:29.380 I studied everything from Godmakers to Joseph Smith to Book of Moroni.

00:34:33.380 I went to Seventh-day Adventist.

00:34:34.380 I looked at Jehovah Witness. 0.94

00:34:36.380 I looked at Los Angeles Church of Christ that ended up being a cult.

00:34:39.380 I looked at everything.

00:34:40.380 Everywhere I would go was too much about this, right?

00:34:42.380 And then one day I go to this one church, and sitting all the way in the back, I'm like,

00:34:46.380 every Christian church I've gone to has told me I'm going to hell.

00:34:50.380 This is the first church I've gone to that maybe let me stand in line to have a spot in heaven.

00:34:56.380 I already know I'm going to hell based on the life I've lived.

00:34:59.380 Maybe I've got a spot in heaven.

00:35:00.380 Who knows, right?

00:35:01.380 So guess what I do?

00:35:02.380 I stick around a little bit, and I like the guy's approach.

00:35:05.380 I'm like, I think there's something here.

00:35:08.380 The guy's got 25,000 members today in L.A., crushing it.

00:35:11.380 Dudley, absolutely crushing it in the valley.

00:35:14.380 A big liberal county has got 25,000 people going to his church.

00:35:17.380 But I think the approach that's taken in the last 5, 10, 15, 20 years,

00:35:21.380 maybe the reason why they've lost it is because the left adapted, and they didn't adapt.

00:35:26.380 Well, maybe the reason that church is so popular is because it's just telling people what they want to hear

00:35:29.380 rather than confronting them with the truth.

00:35:31.380 I mean, and I'm not speaking to your situation specifically, but when I think of like what would resonate with young people,

00:35:37.380 there's just this video that I saw recently.

00:35:38.380 I forget who it was put out by.

00:35:40.380 Maybe it was like Heritage or something, or Campus Reform, like this college organization.

00:35:46.380 And they interviewed college kids, and they asked them about, it was about affirmative action and, you know, diversity in hiring and stuff like that.

00:35:52.380 And they're asking if, you know, affirmative action should be something that not just happens at the university,

00:35:57.380 but also at corporations where people hire based on diversity quotas to make sure that the makeup of the company matches the makeup of the community.

00:36:05.380 You know, if the community is 40% black, the makeup of the company should be 40% black, right? 0.99

00:36:09.380 And all the students agreed.

00:36:10.380 And then they asked, okay, well, what about the sports teams?

00:36:13.380 What about your team?

00:36:14.380 If the makeup of the community is 80% white, does the basketball team need to be 80% white?

00:36:19.380 Do we need to do that?

00:36:20.380 Oh, no, no, no, that should be skill-based.

00:36:21.380 That should be skill-based.

00:36:22.380 They all answered the same.

00:36:23.380 They're like, okay, so with the sports, they want to win, right?

00:36:26.380 They want to win.

00:36:27.380 That's all they care about.

00:36:28.380 So with sports, they were really, they saw that it was better to be skill-based and talent-based and rooted in that.

00:36:34.380 But then when you ask them about like the workplace and everything, they were completely fine with the diversity quotas.

00:36:38.380 This interviewer got every single person they interviewed, all these college kids, to change their mind

00:36:43.380 and see that maybe the diversity quotas aren't the best thing for companies or sports teams.

00:36:48.380 If you want to win, what should really matter is the talent, the drive, the ambition, the skill.

00:36:53.380 It should be, it should be based on merit and not on your skin color, for example.

00:36:57.380 Got to take that out of it.

00:36:58.380 And it convinced a lot of people to change their minds.

00:37:01.380 I think it's just a matter of presenting the truth in the right way to young people.

00:37:04.380 Young people are going to be receptive to truth.

00:37:06.380 And I think in our current day and age where we're drifting so far away from truth and everything is subjective and everybody has their own truth,

00:37:13.380 I think that a lot of people are going to become very disenchanted with that, feel very unfulfilled and unsatisfied with that.

00:37:19.380 And they're going to really be craving the truth.

00:37:21.380 But when it comes to like entertainment and the right not doing it right, look, I'm here sitting here as evidence running.

00:37:27.380 I run right now the most popular satire site on the internet and it's a conservative publication.

00:37:33.380 We are the most popular satire site on the internet and we're run by conservatives and have a largely conservative audience.

00:37:37.380 But I don't think you're following the status quo though.

00:37:41.380 I don't think you're following the status quo.

00:37:45.380 I don't think you're going doing it the way they're doing it.

00:37:48.380 I think you're crushing it because you're so creative.

00:37:51.380 And I think the right has forgotten that they need to get creative.

00:37:54.380 They've been so much about, you know how sometimes you're married, you're like, whenever you see marriages like,

00:37:59.380 Hey, same spot, same bedroom, same position, same restaurant, same dinner, same travel, same vacation, same conversation.

00:38:07.380 It's just like, Hey, you're just kind of going seven years later.

00:38:09.380 You look at a couple, we go to restaurants, right?

00:38:11.380 My wife and I, sometimes I'll just look at dinner, different couples having dinner.

00:38:15.380 I'll say, wow, those guys haven't sat there for six minutes.

00:38:18.380 I haven't talked to each other yet.

00:38:19.380 Okay.

00:38:20.380 Those two have sat there and they've been on the phone the entire time for 15 minutes.

00:38:23.380 Those guys are into each other.

00:38:24.380 They're married.

00:38:25.380 And I'll go up and I'll say, I'm sorry, how long you guys been married together?

00:38:28.380 25 years.

00:38:29.380 How do you guys still enjoy each other's company?

00:38:31.380 What's the secret sauce here, right?

00:38:32.380 Right, right.

00:38:33.380 I think the conservatives is just business as usual.

00:38:37.380 No more.

00:38:38.380 Let me get creative.

00:38:39.380 You're getting creative.

00:38:40.380 You're mixing it up.

00:38:41.380 Well, yeah.

00:38:42.380 I mean, what we are doing what they do.

00:38:43.380 Well, we're doing it back.

00:38:45.380 And that's what I was saying before.

00:38:46.380 It's like, it's, it's, it's this concept of punching back.

00:38:48.380 They're very good at being creative.

00:38:49.380 They're very good at mockery and ridicule. 0.89

00:38:51.380 And, and, and I think bad ideas, bad behavior, hypocritical behavior, whatever, 0.90

00:38:56.380 it needs to be mocked.

00:38:57.380 It needs to be, uh, scorned and ridiculed, uh, especially before like people,

00:39:01.380 young people start adopting those ideas if they have bad outcomes.

00:39:04.380 No C.S. Lewis quote you say.

00:39:05.380 It's a powerful quote.

00:39:06.380 If you don't mind sharing the C.S. Lewis quote about philosophy.

00:39:08.380 Oh, yeah.

00:39:09.380 Good philosophy must exist if for no other reason because bad philosophy needs to be answered.

00:39:13.380 That's right.

00:39:14.380 Yeah.

00:39:15.380 And I, and I say this all the time when I give talks on this or interviews on this.

00:39:17.380 It's a bad, uh, satire is necessary for the exact same reason that good philosophy is necessary.

00:39:22.380 It's to confront those bad ideas.

00:39:24.380 It just does it in a different way.

00:39:25.380 It does it with humor, sarcasm, mockery, irony.

00:39:28.380 Um, but I think that that is a very aggressive, um, you know, rather than being polite and

00:39:34.380 just saying, oh, you guys have a different viewpoint than we have.

00:39:37.380 Here's our, here's the reason that we believe what we believe.

00:39:40.380 What satire does is it aggressively goes after those bad ideas to try to tear them down and 0.99

00:39:44.380 make them look foolish and silly and, and expose them for what they are. 0.98

00:39:47.380 Um, and that's something that historically the left has been better at. 0.99

00:39:50.380 We're, I think, finding so much success because we're doing it back in the other direction.

00:39:54.380 I think it's great. I think that's the part where when I look at these guys and I see,

00:39:59.380 were you a strong Christian as a kid or no? Were you?

00:40:01.380 Yeah. I grew up in a Christian family.

00:40:03.380 Yeah. My dad's a pastor of a church, uh, throughout my youth.

00:40:06.380 Are you married?

00:40:07.380 I am. Yeah.

00:40:08.380 How long have you been married?

00:40:09.380 I'm married 11 years.

00:40:10.380 Kids?

00:40:11.380 Two boys. Yeah. Eight and five.

00:40:13.380 And, and you look like you're in your thirties though.

00:40:15.380 I'm 38. Yeah.

00:40:16.380 So, so you've lived in a house with solid values, strong values.

00:40:20.380 You went through it.

00:40:21.380 Uh, uh, and, and being a good citizen today with your eight and five year old, I'm married.

00:40:26.380 I don't know how many years it is right now.

00:40:28.380 12 and a half years.

00:40:29.380 Got to get that right.

00:40:30.380 Well, our daughter was born on our anniversary date.

00:40:32.380 The last one, we have a nine year old and eight year old, a five year old and nearly

00:40:37.380 a four month old is what we have.

00:40:39.380 Yeah. So it's, it's nonstop with us.

00:40:41.380 But you know, if you now let, let, let imagine the conservative billionaires are watching.

00:40:47.380 Okay.

00:40:48.380 They hire you as a consultant.

00:40:50.380 You're a young guy.

00:40:51.380 That's figured it out, right?

00:40:53.380 You're doing it right in your own way.

00:40:55.380 Daily wire is doing their part.

00:40:56.380 You doing your part.

00:40:57.380 You got a couple of these guys that are doing what they're doing to protect their own,

00:41:01.380 uh, values and principles that they have.

00:41:03.380 What feedback would you give to folks who are in the church or asking why are memberships

00:41:09.380 down?

00:41:10.380 Why is attendance down?

00:41:11.380 Why is the tithing and involvement down?

00:41:14.380 Second, if you talk to some of these guys who are, I'm not talking about the Larry Arns

00:41:19.380 of the world.

00:41:20.380 We've had Larry Arn on from Claremont Institute, Larry Arn.

00:41:23.380 I'm not talking about those guys who are doing their part with school education.

00:41:26.380 I'm talking about some of the guys that are sitting on the sidelines that are wondering,

00:41:29.380 what can we do about it to get more creative?

00:41:31.380 What feedback would you give them?

00:41:32.380 Well, first of all, I wouldn't probably be a consultant for them because I just make jokes

00:41:36.380 on the internet. 1.00

00:41:37.380 They'd be stupid to ask me. 0.95

00:41:38.380 But if they did ask me, I think that, I think that right now the left is creating a massive 0.99

00:41:43.380 opportunity.

00:41:44.380 By going completely woke, by making all kinds of rules about what you can do and what you

00:41:49.380 can say.

00:41:50.380 You must be vaccinated.

00:41:51.380 You must not make, you must use the proper pronouns.

00:41:54.380 You must not say.

00:41:55.380 They try to compel speech.

00:41:56.380 They try to compel thought.

00:41:57.380 They try to make certain thoughts crimes, certain words crimes.

00:42:01.380 And they do that in entertainment areas.

00:42:03.380 Comedians are feeling that pressure.

00:42:04.380 We talked about Dave Chappelle briefly.

00:42:06.380 Chappelle's feeling that pressure.

00:42:07.380 But here's the thing.

00:42:09.380 We're talking about Chappelle and he's getting more views than anybody else.

00:42:12.380 The people who are willing to make the jokes you're not supposed to make and say the things

00:42:16.380 you're not supposed to say are going to have a massive, massive audience.

00:42:20.380 Because that majority, they call it like the silent majority that got Trump voted, right?

00:42:24.380 There was always like people were wondering where's all the support for Trump come from.

00:42:27.380 There were a lot of people who were like holding that in and not talking about their support

00:42:30.380 for Trump until they got to the ballot box and they voted for him.

00:42:33.380 There's a lot of people in this country.

00:42:35.380 A huge, huge, huge percentage of people in this country who reject all of that kind of control.

00:42:42.380 And they just want personal liberty.

00:42:44.380 They want personal freedom.

00:42:45.380 They want to live and let live.

00:42:46.380 And they want real comedy.

00:42:48.380 They want people to be able to joke about things, anything.

00:42:51.380 And nothing off limits, you know?

00:42:53.380 And actually engage in real conversation and entertainment that's not watered down with

00:42:58.380 all the things you're supposed to say and supposed to do.

00:43:00.380 Okay, so what Daily Wire is doing is a great model.

00:43:03.380 They're taking people who've been canceled like Gina Carano and I don't know the name of the ESPN personality. 0.89

00:43:08.380 You're going to continue to see people do this where they gobble up the canceled people

00:43:13.380 and serve those people right back to an audience that's even bigger than the one that they had before.

00:43:20.380 I think that that's going to be a winning model in the future especially as they basically try to create

00:43:27.380 ideological conformity in all of these areas.

00:43:30.380 People are going to push back on that.

00:43:31.380 I think they're going to push back hard.

00:43:32.380 That creates market opportunity in my opinion.

00:43:34.380 I agree.

00:43:35.380 Alison Williams is her name by the way from ESPN who left to go there.

00:43:38.380 She was with them for I think 10 or 11 years.

00:43:39.380 Yeah.

00:43:40.380 You said something very important earlier that we just kind of went to the next subject.

00:43:44.380 The next subject is when I said the whole thing about who you want to party with out of these three

00:43:49.380 and you got the left, you got the liberal, you got the libertarian, you got the conservative.

00:43:53.380 To me, when I look at this I think if you want to hang out with guys and go shoot a bunch of things

00:43:57.380 and hang out with military guys, probably libertarian.

00:43:59.380 Right.

00:44:00.380 You want to smoke weed.

00:44:01.380 Libertarians.

00:44:02.380 Yeah.

00:44:03.380 If you want to go hang out with guys that you're going to feel safe and you're going to be able to entertain ideas,

00:44:06.380 maybe go hang out with independents.

00:44:08.380 You know, if you want to have your kids learn maybe, you know, safe values principles in an environment, maybe you're going to go.

00:44:14.380 Hunting, fishing.

00:44:15.380 Yeah.

00:44:16.380 So you want to go, you know, party your ass off and be around guys that want to break the rules and all this stuff.

00:44:21.380 Maybe you go with liberals.

00:44:22.380 If you want to go have a headache, maybe you go hang out with lefts. 0.97

00:44:25.380 You know, you have areas you can go.

00:44:28.380 A headache.

00:44:29.380 If you want to go save some trees or pick garbage out of the ocean or something like that.

00:44:32.380 I don't even think that's it.

00:44:33.380 I don't even think they realize what the hell they're saying half the time.

00:44:37.380 Like what are you talking about? 1.00

00:44:39.380 Like it blindly following a political party over your country is absolutely naive and stupid blindly just because you're like, oh, I'm supposed to do this. 1.00

00:44:49.380 Oh, because I'm this. 1.00

00:44:50.380 Okay.

00:44:51.380 I got to support it.

00:44:52.380 No, you don't.

00:44:53.380 You got a question to say, maybe this is not a good idea.

00:44:54.380 Maybe this is not something you ought to support.

00:44:56.380 And sometimes your own party will come up with bad ideas.

00:44:58.380 But you said something.

00:44:59.380 Here's what it was.

00:45:00.380 You said maybe the way to sell being a family guy today, having the kids doing it the right way is a form of rebellious because you are rebelling against what they're making seem the norm to be.

00:45:15.380 Right.

00:45:16.380 Where you have to market that.

00:45:17.380 Hey, you know, the other thing I would also add is the following.

00:45:20.380 Like here's what I would add to that, which again, you use the word must.

00:45:23.380 Right.

00:45:24.380 You must get dot, dot, dot.

00:45:26.380 Finish the sentence with whatever you want to add to it.

00:45:28.380 Right.

00:45:29.380 Vaccinated. 0.92

00:45:30.380 You must go there.

00:45:31.380 You must follow the rules.

00:45:32.380 Everything that's not mandatory is banned.

00:45:34.380 It's either mandatory or it's banned.

00:45:35.380 Makes no sense to me.

00:45:36.380 Right.

00:45:37.380 But to, to, to me as a rebel, I would sit there and said, I must, no, no, no, it's not how this works.

00:45:43.380 No, no.

00:45:44.380 I escaped Iran. 0.63

00:45:45.380 So I don't have to do a lot.

00:45:47.380 You know, they, everything there is, you must, you must, you have to, you have to, you have to, and you have to bow down constantly.

00:45:52.380 No, no, we left there.

00:45:53.380 So we don't have to.

00:45:54.380 So I get to pick and choose the kind of a life I want to live.

00:45:58.380 And if I get a speeding ticket, which I got one the other day, very annoyed because I got a, I got a 32 mile an hour speeding ticket.

00:46:04.380 And it was like 20 miles.

00:46:06.380 He gave me it.

00:46:07.380 I'm like, why would you wait?

00:46:08.380 I have a Ferrari.

00:46:09.380 I'd love to go 150 and get a speeding ticket.

00:46:10.380 I don't want to waste a speeding ticket on 32.

00:46:12.380 Right.

00:46:13.380 So I get a 32.

00:46:14.380 I was so annoyed.

00:46:15.380 All that was annoyed.

00:46:16.380 I'm like, I don't want to get a speeding ticket at 32.

00:46:17.380 Honestly, I feel embarrassed even sharing the fact that 32 over the speed, 32 miles an hour, not even 32 miles over.

00:46:22.380 Okay.

00:46:23.380 Just 32 miles an hour in a 20.

00:46:24.380 They gave me a speeding ticket.

00:46:25.380 But if I break the rule, break the law, give me a ticket.

00:46:28.380 Right.

00:46:29.380 But if you create so many laws that I feel like you're suffocating me.

00:46:32.380 Right.

00:46:33.380 It's just a little too much.

00:46:34.380 And I think that's the climb.

00:46:35.380 You know how, you ever watch your friends, maybe they had a parent.

00:46:38.380 I had one of my friends who's dad.

00:46:40.380 The guy would go like this.

00:46:42.380 Hey, he'll go like this.

00:46:44.380 He was like, dude, I couldn't do it around you.

00:46:46.380 I'd be suffocating if I was around you.

00:46:48.380 Right.

00:46:49.380 I think today, politicians today are like that parent that is not allowing you to make your own mistakes.

00:46:56.380 Like as if they know what's right for you and God forbid.

00:46:59.380 Right.

00:47:00.380 So maybe the way to reach young people is to present to them, here's what you can do with freedom.

00:47:04.380 Right?

00:47:05.380 We offer freedom and truth.

00:47:06.380 We think two plus two equals four.

00:47:09.380 You know, we hold to that gender is rooted in your biological sex. 0.99

00:47:14.380 You know, basic facts of biology that you learn in first grade.

00:47:18.380 That's what we affirm.

00:47:19.380 We affirm freedom.

00:47:20.380 You know, vaccines are good.

00:47:22.380 They do good things, but we shouldn't mandate them.

00:47:25.380 It's your personal choice whether or not you'll get one.

00:47:27.380 You know, like those types of things I think are speaking to young people.

00:47:30.380 And I think young people are jumping onto that.

00:47:33.380 I've seen people personally.

00:47:34.380 We had a nanny that worked for us a while ago. 0.93

00:47:37.380 She was younger in her 20s, probably mid 20s.

00:47:40.380 Very liberal on a lot of things and has taken a total turn in the other direction over this whole COVID stuff.

00:47:49.380 You know, the lockdowns and the masking and she's got young ones and she doesn't want her little babies masked. 1.00

00:47:54.380 And the vaccine mandate, she's fine with vaccines, but she doesn't want to be mandated.

00:47:58.380 And she's seeing all this stuff and she's changed her mind.

00:48:00.380 So I think a lot of young people, especially young people that are at the age where they're starting families,

00:48:04.380 are going to see a lot of value in that.

00:48:07.380 Had a blast having you all, man.

00:48:08.380 This was great.

00:48:09.380 Yeah.

00:48:10.380 Very good to be spending time with you.

00:48:12.380 We're going to put the link below to your site.

00:48:15.380 Specifically, I'm going to put the link below to the quote Trump gave.

00:48:19.380 Yeah.

00:48:20.380 About the fact that he's done more for Christianity than Jesus himself.

00:48:23.380 And look up his real quote where he actually said it a couple of weeks ago.

00:48:26.380 David, make a note to have both of those.

00:48:29.380 Maybe if you can show it to him afterwards so you can put the link of both of them below.

00:48:32.380 Sure.

00:48:33.380 But having said that, man, thanks for coming on.

00:48:34.380 This was great.

00:48:35.380 I really enjoyed it.

00:48:36.380 Yeah, thank you so much.

00:48:37.380 Great conversation.

00:48:38.380 Yes, absolutely.

00:48:39.380 Thank you.

00:48:40.380 Really enjoyed the interview with him.

00:48:41.380 I think satire is very necessary today.

00:48:42.380 If you agree, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.

00:48:44.380 If you enjoyed the interview with Seth Phelan, I think you're going to enjoy the interview

00:48:47.380 with Gad Saad that I did.

00:48:49.380 It was funny, entertaining, and I think your brain is also going to have a workhead.

00:48:53.380 If you've not seen that, click over here to watch it.

00:48:54.380 Take care, everybody.

00:48:55.380 Bye-bye.

00:48:56.380 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - November 10, 2021

Babylon Bee Explains Importance Of Calling Out Media & Satire Today

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