New York Times Smears The Bee and How To Use Tragedy To Score Political Points
Kyle and Ethan talk to The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon about The Bee's recent mention in the New York Times as an example of a far-right site trafficking in misinformation disguised as "satire". Kyle and Ethan talk about how to score political points during a national tragedy, why we can't reach for the stars until we have a progressive tax system, and what not to do at the zoo. Intro Ethan Nicolle is on weird drugs Kyle had car trouble Weird News Washington Man Arrested For Allegedly Stealing Slide From Playground, And Mounting It To His Child's Bunk Bed Police Seize Real Gun Disguised As Nerf Toy In North Carolina Drug Raid Man Arrested After Taking His Toddler Into An Elephant Enclosure At The San Diego Zoo This Australian Performer Really Wants You To Call Him By His Preferred Pronouns, Which Are Tree, Treeself Virginia Police Officer Shot During Attempt To Catch An Escaped Cow Why Did Bernie Sanders Criticize Elon Musk With This Anti-Space Travel Tweet? President Trump Building His Own Social Media Platform? Mike Lindell Free Speech Website President Biden Fell Down Air Force One Stairs On Friday Before Heading To Georgia… Southern Minnesota Man Stole $1,250 Worth Of Girl Scout Cookies From Loading Dock Maine Man's Car Stolen From Police Station While He Was Inside Reporting Suspected Nike Theft United Airlines Flight Diverted, Man Arrested, After Report Of 'Someone's Ear Being Bit Off' Taiwanese People Are Changing Their Names To 'Salmon' To Qualify For Free Sushi Mattress Retail Chain Breaks Record For Tallest Stack Of Mattresses CEO Seth Dillon On The Line Seth comments on the New York Times hit piece The Babylon Bee Guide: 7 Ways To Score Political Points Online After A National Tragedy Here Are 25 Of The Worst Knee-Jerk Reactions From Woke Twitter Users Who Assumed The CO Shooter Was White Hate Mail Janice is ashamed of the Babylon Bee Subscriber Portion Bonus Hate Mail Mailbag Best Forum Headlines of the week Depressing Stories
In a world of fake news, we bring you up-to-the-minute factual inaccuracy and a heavy dose of moral truth with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
This is the Babylon B. Fake news you can trust.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the Babylon B weekly podcast.
I'm Kyle Mann, and I work at the Babylon B or something.
And this is Ethan Nicole, who also works at the Babylon B or something.
And we're just two guys that maybe tell funny jokes once in a while, hopefully.
No?
Yeah.
Sure.
Whatever.
I'm on weird drugs.
Yeah.
Just so you know, I'm on painkillers right now.
So does that, when you're Ethan Nicole and you're on weird drugs, do you act normal?
Or what's it like?
This is more like it makes me like want to just suddenly go to sleep.
I don't know.
No, okay.
So if you close your eyes, either.
Yeah.
So yeah.
Okay.
Might need to slap me or throw your coffee at me or something.
That's something.
Okay.
So yeah, I mean, because I found out I have a blood clot in my leg this week.
So that's my adventure of the week.
Went to the ER.
They did the whole slimy thing on your leg.
Ultrasound.
That's not...
Never mind.
And yeah, I got blood clots.
So, man, they hurt too.
Man, my leg's like this, like a microwave sausage right now.
It's all red and veiny and giant and pain.
Yeah.
So that's why I'm sitting on this side of the desk because I need to prop my leg up because the moment I put it down, it must explode.
Yeah.
Well, last week I had some health issues and Ethan had car trouble.
This week you have health issues and I had car trouble.
So.
Life's coming out as fast.
It's coming out as fast.
Next week, we're both going to have health issues and car trouble.
Right.
That could be bad.
That sounds like a fatal accident.
So me and my wife decided to go away for the weekend with the kids.
I went to Phoenix, the exotic locale, and it turned out to be a very expensive vacation because...
Complete and total disaster.
So almost exactly one year ago, we went.
When did you do this before?
Almost exactly one year ago, we went to Phoenix.
And it was like in the middle of the lockdowns, and Phoenix was like reopening the restaurants for the first time.
So we're like, let's go.
You know, we're all cooped up.
We went to Phoenix.
As soon as we got off the freeway, my transmission blew $4,000.
So this time we went.
It was fine.
But they were having all the spring training games right now.
So everything was just packed.
You couldn't go out to eat.
It was just insane.
And so we came home and we get to Indio out in the desert.
And we're like, let's pull off and one more stop and we'll get some snacks and then we'll be home in an hour and a half.
So we pull off the freeway and then my car, the little needle goes all the way hot.
I'm like, oh, crap.
Ah, the hot.
I hate the hot.
So I'm thinking, okay, small leak in the radiator hose, no problem.
I can get some water.
We can get home at least.
And I'm looking at it.
It's bubbling out of the engine.
Like the fluid's coming out of the engine.
And I'm just like, oh no.
So we end up like, it was just insane.
It was like, we managed to get the car to an autobody shop, but it's Sunday night.
So we had to wait until Monday morning.
He could do it like by Tuesday night.
We had to spend all this money on an Uber to get over to a hotel.
And then last minute, you know, but it worked out okay.
We ended up staying at a really nice resort on accident because they were like, I thought it was, I thought I was calling, I thought it's a two-star resort on Google.
Is it like a couple hundred bucks or something?
Column, you know, and it turns out to be like the super nice like Hilton resort in the foothills and like all these rich old people that stay in there.
Clay bags and stuff.
Yeah, it was insane.
It was like tech shamans.
It was like a separate villa or whatever.
It was like the place that on Breaking Bad where he went on a retreat to get drugs or something.
Exactly like that.
And I guess it was actually like $1,500 a night.
Oh.
But the lady at the front was like, what?
Oh, you know, I'll get you taken care of.
So she reduces the rate all the way down to like a couple hundred bucks, you know.
And so he ended up getting a nice couple of days out of it.
It was actually more fun than the Phoenix part for the kids.
But, oh man, it was insane.
So we're dying.
We got to get rid of our man.
It's terrible.
Don't buy a Dodge caravan.
Well, sorry for all the depressing news.
Let's go on to some weird news.
This news is weird.
Washington man arrested for allegedly stealing slide from playground and mounting it to his child's bunk bed.
I just want to make sure you guys look at the mugshot of this guy.
So you go, oh, yeah, okay, I get it.
400-pound.
He's like, yeah, I did it, and I'll do it again.
Yeah, 400-pound slide.
So he stole a 400-pound slide.
Was he alone?
I love that he's trying to be dad of the year.
He mounted it to his kid's bed.
So I guess they were looking for some parts that people were stealing, like a chop shop type thing.
They were taking catalytic converters off cars, and they were looking at his house.
And they're like, where'd you get that?
Oh, so he had stolen other things.
He just goes out and steals stuff and puts it on his house.
Wow.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, police seize real gun disguised as Nerf Toy in North Carolina drug raid.
So this looks like a legit nerf gun, but it's real.
That seems dangerous.
That seems not very smart.
What is the context in which you need a real nerf gun to win?
Has he lost a lot of nerf fights?
And he's like, all right, I'm winning this time.
His kids are like beating him in nerf fights.
He's like, all right.
That was like the time I got in the squirt gun fight and I decided to put P in my squirt gun because I wanted to win.
I try to teach my kids about gun safety with Nerf guns.
I'm like, you know, this is a Nerf gun and you're not old enough to touch a real gun yet.
But don't look down.
Don't look down the barrel.
Don't put your finger on the trigger and they'll just immediately shoot themselves in the air.
Shooting you in the face.
So this seems like a really bad idea.
EB guns are good for that because they at least hurt and can make you blind.
Which is good.
Man arrested after taking his toddler into an elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.
Apparently the video is amazing.
I haven't watched it, but he went past multiple barriers on Friday in order to sneak into the elephant enclosure.
So another guy attempting to be dad of the year.
Come on, two years old.
A two-year-old's not going to remember anything that happened.
But I guess they have the video now.
Amazing video to see.
I'm watching it.
Okay, you're watching.
The elephant charges at him.
I guess he dropped the kid.
He dives out and then drops the kid and picks the kid up and runs away.
Huh.
So worth it?
Yeah, the kid's not even going to remember it.
Yeah.
Sad.
But she'll have the video.
Yeah, that's true.
That reminds me because my dad tried to get me a pet possum, but my mom wouldn't let him.
But now at least I know he tried.
I always wanted a possum.
He put it in the trunk while they were on a date.
In the trunk of the elephant?
No, the trunk.
That's a different story.
Gotcha.
This Australian performer really wants you to call him by his preferred pronouns, which are tree, tree self.
I saw this.
I actually recognized this guy from The Flash because I used to watch The Flash until the whole DC TV universe went woke near Overs.
But Besties, once again, I'm reminding you that Keenan Lonsdale prefers tree, tree self pronouns.
So he said, this might sound stupid, but I don't care.
I don't think this is offensive, but I don't want to go by he anymore.
I just want to go by tree.
How do you use that?
Good for tree.
Good for he?
But you don't say good for he.
But it's always talking about him in third person, right?
Tream?
Trim.
Tream.
Good for Trim.
Tream self.
Tree self.
Trim.
Trimself.
Like normally you'd say, I'm like, hey, you're going to be acting in the flash again this week.
Here's your script.
There's nowhere in there I need to say tree.
I'm trying to think of where you'd use it.
Yeah, I guess you would usually use someone's personal pronouns when they're not in the room.
Right.
That's the weird thing.
So what do they do?
So he leaves the room and then he opens the door again.
I hope they're all saying tree.
I wonder if actual transgender people get offended by this stuff.
Like they're like, we're just trying to get accepted and we just get another.
Come on, man.
We're trying to.
This is a serious thing.
We're going to bring tree into it.
Virginia police officer shot during an attempt to catch an escaped cow.
So a lot of police get shot for noble efforts.
So the cow's charging and someone fires a gun and accidentally shoots the cop.
It escaped an auction and was wandering the city streets.
Police said they intervened.
The cow charged officers.
Someone fired a gun.
I don't know who it was.
And he's hopefully okay.
They still don't know who fired the gun, I guess.
They had.
Because there were some other people there helping catch the cow.
And they had to euthanize the cow.
Aren't all cows euthanized mostly?
I think at some point, right?
Do they call it euthanizing?
Like they have whole euthanizing factories.
Yeah.
I think it's just called slaughtering.
Okay.
Why did Bernie Sanders criticize Elon Musk with the bizarre anti-space travel tweet?
Bernie Sanders quotes Elon Musk, who talked about he wants to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.
And Bernie Sanders says, space travel is an exciting idea, but right now we need to focus on Earth and create a progressive tax system so that children don't go hungry, people are not homeless, and all Americans have health care.
The level of inequality in America is obscene and a threat to our democracy.
But we could just ship all those people to Mars and then Earth would be great.
Yeah.
So there's this rich guy that wants to go do space travel and Bernie's like.
Nope.
First thing we need to do is.
But the poor people.
It's his progressive tax system because you have to believe that that would solve all our problems.
This feels like one of those like, sir, this is a Wendy's type.
Exactly.
Sir, do you want to try our new Jumbo Krispy Chicken Sandwich?
It's an exciting idea, but right now we need to focus on the text.
We need to focus on this thing I've been trying to get done for 80 years.
Sir, this is an RPS.
Stop progressing until we get this is this is progress.
President Trump is building his own social media platform.
Senior advisors say Trump will be returning to social media in about two or three months with his very own platform.
Didn't Mike, the My Pillow guy, start one too?
It's called Frank.
And it's very, this is almost a weirder news story.
We need to post that logo.
Is that real?
Yeah, his logo looks like it was created in the late 90s in the print shop deluxe or something.
A man and a woman.
It looks like a weird dating site with the man and the woman silhouette there.
And there's a slogan.
I can't remember what the slogan is.
I don't have it up here.
I'm trying to find everyone.
Oh, here's franksocialco.com.
Oh, no, that's not it.
That's somebody else's.
I'm looking for the actual website because I just see all these stories about it, but nobody's like linking to it.
The voice of free speech.
Did you find it?
Yeah, well, I found that logo that Frank posted.
Frank Fleming.
Frankspeech.com.
Frank Speech.
So it's like we're being frank with each other.
Yeah.
And so it's like someone just created a very, it's like a static one-page webpage.
And they used like Microsoft Clip R just as Frank, the voice of free speech.
So they're going to be in competition?
Trump's.
So what's Trump's version of Twitter going to be?
I don't know.
That's going to be super interesting.
Like he can just, yeah, he has the ultimate ban hammer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Everybody has to have Trump avatars.
So it's all just Trump heads on everything.
Maybe it's just a drop-down menu.
You can only select pre-selected things that you can say.
Trump quotes.
So President Biden fell down Air Force One stairs, the Air Force One stairs on Friday before heading to Georgia.
Kind of fell up them.
Oh, I guess this fell down.
That's not correct.
Oh, yeah, it is funny looking at the different reporting.
Oh, so yeah, when Trump would fall down, we have the New York Times saying, Trump's halting walk down ramp raises new health questions.
Which that was kind of a funny video when Trump was like, it looked like he was trying to do one of those things where you fake and it makes it look like you're walking downstairs.
He just kind of slowly falls to the ground.
And then the New York Times, when Biden fell, they say, Biden is doing 100% fine after tripping while boarding Air Force One.
It's like they all saw the video.
Go over the line with 100% fine.
Yeah, it's just way.
Is 100% fine falling upstairs?
I'm not saying I fell upstairs.
I wouldn't say I was 100% fine.
Yeah.
This reminds me of the Washington Post's headline when Biden signed the stimulus check bill, the stimulus bill.
And it was like, Biden showers everybody with money.
It just parodies some of themselves at this point.
Showering them.
Making it rain.
Southern Minnesota man stole $1,250 worth of Girl Scout cookies from Loading Duck.
More than 20 cases.
Another guy trying to be the father of the year.
20 cases.
So that's 20 wholesale cardboard boxes.
So a case of a case probably has 10 or 16 something in there.
20 cases.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
He told the officers that he was dumpster diving in the GMC dumpster when he saw the loading dock door was partially open.
Inside were pallets stacked with Girl Scout cookies.
Whitaker pulled his car up to the loading dock and began filling his car with cookie boxes.
He stuffed the boxes in his car until the back seat and the trunk were completely full.
Not very good security at this place.
I think if you're going to commit like grand felony theft or whatever.
Grand theft cookie.
Grand theft cookie.
No, that ruined what I was going to say.
I was just thinking, you know, if you're going to steal stuff, steal something that's pretty valuable.
No offense, Girl Scouts, but the cookies aren't that good.
Yeah.
I'm a fan, but it's a banana smiles, you know.
Pretty good.
Maybe I haven't had the right ones.
I like the coconut ones.
Main man's car stolen from police station while he was inside reporting bike theft.
So is this the main man?
The main primary man of the story.
My man.
Main.
My main man.
So Logan Fontaine entered the Matawaska Police Department on Monday to report a stolen bicycle.
He'd been there for a minute when he walked out to find his car was gone from the parking lot.
This feels like a common after him.
So next he's going to go report the car theft.
And then his plane is going to get stolen.
I'm trying to figure out how this escalates from here.
Apparently they found the guy.
They recognized the car.
They arrested the driver.
And they say he may or may not have been involved in the bike stealing.
So he may have just this guy who's flying around stealing all this transportation.
Okay, now I'm going to wait until he goes to report this one.
It's the perfect crime.
United Airlines flight diverted.
Man arrested after a report of someone's ear being bit off.
Okay.
So was Mike Tyson on board this flight?
I guess.
I guess.
Forced to land in South Carolina after a man bit a passenger's ear and then punched him in the face.
He started to become agitated and restless after a trip to the bathroom.
He took his mask off.
Oh, so it's an anti-masker.
Makes sense now.
He's a Trumpet, Trumpite QAnon anti-masker.
They're not serving a lot of food on planes right now.
So it could be the guy just hungry.
Nice meaty ear, something to chew on for a long flight.
He yelled in the face of the person next to him, and the passenger raised his arm to protect himself.
I don't know if he's protecting himself from the guy not being masked, like he's protecting himself from the coronavirus or punched him several times, breaking his glasses.
Can you block corona with your bare arms?
Maybe you could probably get the brunt of a sneeze or something.
Slap him out of the air.
Yeah.
This guy was bleeding excessively from his ear, which required seven stitches.
This feels like a matrix thing.
Can you teach me how to block sneezes?
You want him to do that?
Look at his glasses, man.
These guys went at it.
Yurkovich is the guy's name.
He was arrested after a doctor on the plane tried to sedate him with a shot of Benadryl.
Does Benadryl sedate you then?
Yes.
That's all we got.
I got a lot of Benadryl.
Yeah.
I mean, we do that to the kids sometimes, but we don't.
That was a joke.
You inject them with it?
Yeah, you sneak it into their Kool-Aid.
Taiwanese people are changing their names to salmon to qualify for free sushi.
At Taiwanese sushi restaurants offering free meals to customers whose names contain the Chinese characters for salmon.
This is like a big commitment for the free.
Did that work?
It's a weird logic.
I'm just thinking like Chick-fil-A does the dress up as a cow.
And I get that.
I wouldn't do it, but I get it.
Seems desperate.
It's like I'll put on the little cow hat or whatever to get free.
But to change your name, that's pretty drastic.
Yeah, well, what's the logic there?
It's like, hey, I'm part salmon, so that's part.
That's my meat.
You shouldn't be, but I just have to pay for that.
It's like if you name yourself Big Mac, you get a like whatever your name is.
Or cow.
You get free things of.
I don't know how this works.
You're McDonald's.
My name's John Cow.
Oh, right this way, sir.
Come to the secret room.
Yeah.
All right, we're going for you, Kyle.
Oh, no.
Mattress retail chain breaks record for tallest stack of mattresses.
Yay.
43 mattresses measuring 24 feet, 4 inches.
Were they doing the princess and the pee?
Yeah, I get.
Well, these are thin mattresses.
Four inches.
Yeah, they're like four inches each.
That's nothing.
Four inch mattresses.
Well, not four inches each.
They're like two inches each.
What?
No, never mind.
I'm an idiot.
Six inches each.
Yeah.
Four inches each.
Wait, I'm lost.
I don't know what inches are.
All right, I'll have to do this 24 times 12, 288 divided by 40, say, three mattresses.
So there's six and a half inches each.
6.7 inches each.
I like this detail.
An on-site surveyor watched carefully at the looming mountain of mattresses to ensure that the entire column would be steadily planted for a full 10 seconds without toppling.
Arbitrary.
Arbitrary rules.
He's like, 10 seconds, 9, 8, and go.
7.
Yeah.
It's a little bit mountain.
I want to see what these Guinness record weebs look like that come out to these.
I got to picture them in a tweed coat or little bow tie.
We need to get one out here to do our Guinness record and then we'll give him a wedgie when he's here.
Yeah.
I think a lot of what we could do biggest wedgie.
Yeah, the biggest wedgie ever delivered to a Guinness World of Records.
Most brutal murder of a Guinness records judge.
He's like, he's looking at the list.
He's like, wait, what?
Just come.
You'll have to see what it's like.
All right.
Well, we're going to talk to the old CEO, Seth, because we got a little bit slammed in the New York Times this week.
They took a pot shot at us out of nowhere.
We're not picking fights.
New York Times.
We were just sitting here in the corner of the party telling jokes, minding our business.
Amen.
Drinking our punch.
Did you hear about the chicken that knocked on the door with the priest and the New York Times?
They run up and bite her ear off.
That's fake news.
Let's talk to Seth.
Let's do it.
All right, on the line, we have CEO of popular satire site, maybe far-right disinformation.
Disinformation site.
Babylon Bee.
Hi, Seth Dylan.
Is it Dylan?
Dylan.
Dylan.
French thing.
How are you doing?
So what the heck is going on with the New York Times, man?
I don't think I've even read the piece yet, but there's this piece about some random other political cartoonist, and they just dropped in this random mention of the Babylon B in there and called us far-right disinformation or something.
It's kind of wild.
I mean, well, the piece itself was supposed to be about the issues Facebook is having dealing with satire and how it doesn't, the algorithms don't recognize it easily.
Even the staff doesn't recognize it easily.
And so they have this challenge where they are sometimes dinging liberal satirists, like the guy that they feature in this piece.
And they have his picture in there.
They're very friendly to him.
They're talking about how he's been mistakenly censored a couple of times on Facebook.
Similar issues to the issues that we've had, but it's funny because they're kind of sympathetic to him.
But rather than just mentioning us as another example of a satire site that comes at the issues from a different perspective and has had the same problems as him, they throw us in there as a, quote, far-right misinformation site.
And, you know, and then site, they mentioned the Babylon B as the only example of a far-right misinformation site that has used the satire label to exist safely on these platforms despite the rules against misinformation, which is just a horrible cheap shot.
Yeah, okay.
So, but satire kept popping up as a blind spot.
In 2019 and 2020, Facebook often dealt with far-right misinformation sites that used satire claims to protect their presence on the platform, Mr. Brookings said.
For example, the Babylon Bee, a right-leaning site, sometimes trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire.
Guys, oh, that sounds so sinister.
Man.
It really does.
For example.
Yeah, so I mean, they don't name any other examples.
There's no other far-right misinformation sites mentioned in this piece.
So it's pretty blatantly targeting us and singling us out, which is extremely dishonest and disingenuous.
And I mean, what highlights the fact that it's dishonest is that he takes those words, traffic to misinformation, and he hyperlinks them.
And the assumption, when you look at a hyperlink on a claim like that, the hyperlink is to support the claim, right?
That's why you would provide it.
And then you click through that link and it takes you to another New York Times article that doesn't make any claim like that.
It doesn't mention misinformation.
It just talks about how the B is a conservative satire site that used to make fun of Trump a lot more, but now it's like, now it's, now it makes fun of the people who hate him more.
You know, it's one of those pieces.
So just to assume, I guess, you know, the readers, a lot of readers, just casual readers who are reading through that, aren't going to click the link.
They're going to assume that it's a supportive link and that there's actually some merit to what they're saying.
But they're just pulling this out of the air, guys.
This is, you know, it's baseless.
It's not just that we are a legitimate satire site.
We're one of the most legitimately, like we joke, you called us a popular satire site.
We are popular.
We have more traffic than The Onion, I believe, some months, maybe regularly at this point.
And we're widely circulated.
We're very well known.
And we've been doing satire from the beginning for five years.
So for an outlet like the New York Times to be saying stuff like this is really, it is defamatory.
It's false and defamatory.
And it's problematic for a very key reason.
And we've discussed this a number of times.
If New York Times, which is considered a reliable source, and Snopes and Wikipedia and all these places that are considered objective, reliable sources, not necessarily by you and me, but by the world, the liberal media and all of these social networks and platforms.
If they can get this narrative to stick about us, then we have no more life in existence on social networks.
Yeah, like we were talking about with the Wikipedia discussion.
If they can link to these what they consider highly rated news sources or whatever that are referring to us as misinformation, then they can label us that on Wikipedia or Facebook could take us down or all that stuff.
So Mike Isaac from the New York Times responded after you guys created some little brouhaha on social media and said, oh, don't worry, the article's been updated.
And then the update, they just kind of say the same thing and then say, the Babylon B, a right-leaning satirical site, has feuded with Facebook and the fact-checking site Snopes over whether the site published misinformation or satire.
So they just kind of throw their hands up and go, I don't know, they could be, but we're still the only thing they reference when they talk about far-right misinformation sites that use satire to protect their claims.
Yeah, the best thing that he did in that edit was throw in the word satirical.
He describes us, remember, if you read the original version, it's a right-leaning site.
Right-leaning site, I think.
Yeah, just site.
But in this one, it's a right-leaning satirical site.
So he threw in that word, acknowledging that it's a satirical site, but then mentions that there's a feud.
It's in dispute whether we're really satirical.
We've been battling with Snopes and Facebook about whether we're satirical.
And now he links off to a Snopes piece that if you dig into it, the editor's note in that piece clearly says that they aren't trying to suggest that we have deceptive intent.
Now, Snopes originally did suggest that, but they backed off of that when we came at them with our lawyers, edited the language of the piece, and then added an editor's note to it to say that they're not putting deceptive intent on us.
So Snopes isn't even supporting what they're claiming here, even though they're linking to them as if Snopes does support it.
So it's just an imaginary, fabricated foundation that they're trying to build a case on against us.
And they walked it back a step, but they didn't walk it back as far as saying the Babylon Bee is a legitimate satire site.
And they actually, if you want to properly characterize us, you'd characterize us as a genuine satire site that is sometimes mischaracterized as a source of disinformation, but that's false.
And New York Times is a little nervous right now, right?
They just suffered a loss in court with James O'Keefe.
James O'Keefe in blanking out on drugs right now.
James O'Keeffe.
They've accused Project Veritas of being a source of, yeah, yeah, they've accused his outfit of being a source of deceptive information.
And they're doing the same thing to him.
They're doing us, but using deceptive information to accuse him of engaging in disinformation.
So they're just doing it to us.
We're losing your science typical.
Very distorted modesty.
Yeah.
Okay, what was the last thing you heard?
Pretty much the whole James O'Keefe thing lost it all.
Okay.
Let me try again.
Can you hear me okay right now?
Yeah, we can hear you now.
Okay.
Yeah.
So James O'Keefe and Project Veritas are going head-to-head with New York Times for the same reason.
I mean, the New York Times is using deceptive disinformation to say that Project Veritas is engaged in deceptive disinformation.
And so the victory that they just had was they got a judge to dismiss that the New York Times had filed.
So they keep the case going.
So now it can go to Discovery and they can try to figure out if New York Times is acting with malice and all of that.
Oh, nice.
So what are you going to do with all the money that you win in your lawsuit against the New York Times?
Any plans?
I've run out of room and in my second house.
No room for money.
I'm not sure.
I have to get another house somewhere and put it in the third house.
I need a Bernie Sanders third house.
Perfect.
Well, all right.
Well, thanks for coming on, Seth.
Yeah.
We'll keep everybody up to date as things develop here.
Go own the New York Times.
Facts and logic.
You're just going to get rid of.
You just want to be done with me that you guys talk for hours, but you only want 10 minutes of my time, huh?
Yeah.
Yes.
All right.
That's correct.
You're breaking up a lot, too.
So we're just trying to be polite.
Yeah.
There was a little bit of breakup there.
We're going to have to add words in later.
Should we go back to James O'Keefe and start there again?
No.
More breaking up for the Taylor Swift album.
All right.
Thanks a lot, Seth.
All right.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
All right.
Later.
Okay.
We are a nation beset by national disasters and tragedies.
And it's very sad.
It is sad.
Yeah.
Lots of things going on this week, it seems like.
I don't know if it's the end of lockdown and people are all cooped up and they're coming out.
Yeah, they've been waiting.
It's sad.
I mean, it's sad, but it's like with all the schools being closed, we haven't had a lot of shootings and stuff this year.
But at the Babylon B, the most important thing, we want to remind you guys that the most important thing when it comes to disasters is how to score political points, how to totally own your opponents online.
Exploit every national tragedy and disaster.
And some people aren't that good at this.
Other people are masters.
Yeah.
So we have seven easy ways that you can get a ton of likes, retweets, followers by exploiting a terrible tragedy.
All right.
Good.
Yeah.
Make a mountain out of no, not a mountain of a molehill.
Make some positive out of a negative.
Yeah.
Turn lemons.
I'm on drugs.
Painkillers.
To clarify, if you didn't start from the beginning of the episode.
So, first of all, we want to remind you: wait a few seconds out of respect for the victims and then jump in to score all your political points.
Don't jump in with the political jabs right away.
Wait a few seconds.
You just need a cushion.
Yeah.
A few seconds of cushion and then dive in.
Moment of silence, thoughts and prayers, and then immediately just go for the jugular.
And then the details probably won't be out, but it's just assume the facts fit your narrative before they come out because you can't be wasting any time waiting for facts.
So your hot take, it's going to be lukewarm by that point.
So just assume that everything fits into your preconceived worldview and just go.
Just go for it.
Have at it.
Do it.
Baby.
Because what the world needs most, mostly at a time of tragedy is your hot take.
Yeah.
Your tweet.
That's what they need, is your tweet.
Third, point out that your pet projects and political policies definitely would have fixed this.
Right.
All the policy proposals that you were pushing and you believed in before the crisis are definitely exactly the same.
The Venn diagram is exactly the same as the solution to this crisis.
So leverage the tragedy to push your agenda right away.
After the few seconds of work, of course.
Like while everybody's sitting around crying, you walk into the room, you go, I told you so.
Be that guy.
Yeah, just be that guy.
And then my brain.
Oh, offer thoughts and prayers that the shooter was the right skin color for your narrative.
Yeah.
So just pray, please, God, let him be whatever would advance your.
Oh, yeah.
We hope he's white.
No, we don't want him to be white.
We don't?
No.
The limerals want him to be white.
Oh, we're not liberals?
Well, we want him to be white.
Yeah, we're liberals.
What character are we playing?
I don't know.
A fifth, set up a memorial in the form of some dank memes.
Right.
Memes are the best way to remember a senseless act of violence.
Don't bother any nuance or thoughtfulness.
Just find savage memes.
Right.
This is the time to own your political opponents hard.
Yeah.
With dank memes.
Destroy them.
Immediately vomit all your darkest thoughts and worst prejudices online for all the seasons.
Yes.
Just let loose.
Like draft the absolute worst tweet of all time.
And like, you know, usually if you draft a tweet like that, you should let it sit, maybe get some input.
Yeah, think about it.
Not in a national tragedy.
Just let it out.
Yeah.
You know, you might get ratioed to heck and we'll have to delete it at some point, but it's worth it.
Yes.
When you think about the whole big picture.
And stay tuned because we're going to, in a second here, we're going to look at the greatest hits.
Yeah, we found some great ones, some great examples of some people that really nailed it on Twitter.
And the final tip that we have for you for engaging in online discussions and getting political points after a tragedy is if anyone says anything about God, they're praying for the victims, their thoughts and prayers, oh, you know, this is, I'm sorry, God's in control, you know, any kind of comfort Bible verse, just destroy them.
Yes, annihilate.
This isn't the time to pray.
This is the time to petition the government to do something since the government has always proved to be calm, rational, and effective at any job they do.
Nothing bad has ever happened when the government has gotten involved.
Exactly.
So let's get out there.
Let's look at some of the good examples of how to respond to a national tragedy.
Yeah.
Let's move to some examples.
Let's see if reaction.
So this is someone named Julie DiCaro who has a blue check.
Good old blue checks.
And she says.
So we know she's a professional.
Okay.
And so this shooting was, this particular shooting in Colorado this week, the tragic shooting was, ended up being an Arab.
Unfortunately, it ended up being a Muslim guy.
One of the bad Muslims, not all the good ones.
Yeah, just whatever.
So he ended up being a Syrian immigrant.
And the initial assumption was he was white.
And I don't know why they were assuming this.
Maybe they were just looking at videos and his skin looks white.
And they hold up a chart.
Oh, yeah, good.
He's on the right.
So Julie DiCaro says, extremely tired of people's lives depending on whether a white man with an AR-15 is having a good day or not.
Well, that's all I ever think about.
Hashtag nailed it.
And then someone, yeah, her friend, another blue check, Hamal, said, it's always an angry white man.
Always.
Well, is it?
Not always.
Not every time.
Come on, man.
Rosanna Arquette says, blue check?
Hollywood starlight.
It's Hollywood star.
Call it what it is.
White supremacist domestic terrorism.
Call it what it should be.
These people were reading the Babylon B guide to respond to me.
Don't even wait for us to know who the suspect was.
This one might be one of those poems with a certain amount of syllables.
My brain is fried.
This is like a haiku.
Or a Dr. Seuss book.
Sasha, she doesn't have a blue check, but she has two wine glasses tinkling dingy.
Is that close to?
Is that better?
That might be better than a blue check.
America has a white male terrorist problem.
They're shooting up schools.
They're shooting up concerts.
They're shooting up malls.
They're shooting up churches.
They're shooting up spas.
America has a white male terrorist problem.
I guess it's the feels like the sandwich.
I also feel like the meter is maybe Dr. Seuss, like very Seussian.
Seussish, which is racist.
They're shooting up malls in churches.
I guess we don't want to.
We'll find some good ones in here.
We'll pick out the best.
Qasim, I'll probably say that wrong.
Qasim Rashid.
Beyond infuriating that the Colorado terrorist killed a cop but was arrested alive, a cop shot Tamir Rice dead for holding a toy because the cop feared for his life.
How is an unarmed black child more frightening than a grown white male mass murderer?
It's like if your entire opinion on the shooting hinges on the skin color of the shooter, maybe wait until you know that it is what you thought.
If that's your position, if that's what you're hinging everything, hinging it on.
Uzair Hassan Rizvi.
Rizvi.
Blue check.
He actually says he's a debunking misinformation fake news.
That's his job.
And he posted, a poor white guy who may have had a bad day or just a sex addict killed at least 10 people.
He was only apprehended and not choked or shot to death because he was not brown, black, or a Muslim.
Except he was kind of John Pavlovitz.
We really need to bang, ban.
Bless our ban angry white guys with guns.
There's some funny ones here where after they find out he's Muslim.
Oh, they pivot.
Yeah, they do the pivot.
Yeah.
See, we can find this is Don Winslow.
Description: Police have taken him into custody.
Translation, he was white.
Thanks for playing.
We should have made this a game show.
Okay, here we go.
Tariq Nasheed.
So he first says the Boulder Colorado shooting suspect is a white man named Ahmad Alisa Alissa.
Several white supremacists online are now trying to claim his white suspect isn't white based on his name.
They love playing the denial of whiteness game when it's convenient, so let's address white crime.
Then he says, the fact that this dude gunned down 10 people and the police didn't shoot his A, that means he's white.
We ain't going to start playing games just because he was born in Syria.
The suspect is white enough to benefit from the privileges of whiteness.
We ain't going to start playing games here.
It's like, he's white.
We're not going to mess around and talk about this just because he's not white.
One that I like at the end here, Amy Siskind.
Siskind.
Blue check.
Oh, this was a good one.
So she goes, first she says the shooter was taken into custody.
Well, she says the shooter is, was taken into custody.
In other words, it was almost certainly a white man again.
If he were black or brown, he would be dead.
And then after they find out that he's a Muslim guy, she says, let's mourn the victims but not glorify the killer with the attention of having his name widely known.
His skin color does not matter anymore.
Mina Harris, finally, this is Kamala Harris's niece.
The Atlanta shooting was not even a week ago.
Violent white men are the greatest terrorist threat to our country.
Wow.
But not just not in this particular case.
Yeah.
All right.
So that's how you do it.
That's how you do it.
This is, you know, don't be a big pansy and just sit there and not say anything.
Yeah, you don't, yeah.
You always have to tweet.
Always tweet.
Always.
Always tweet your take.
Coffee is for tweeters.
I don't know.
I'm trying to do let's do some hate mail.
I really miss Adam Ford.
This is a long one.
This is a long one.
Let's dive in.
This is from someone named Janice.
So he's replying to our response to a different hate mail because we there was the Satan cat one about the animal cruelty.
And we were just trying to say, we're not trying to say to actually put cats in a bag.
You can't get the joke.
It's just a joke.
Cats aren't really.
Satan really.
It's a satire site.
Or misinformation.
So she's replying.
What if someone thought we were a real site and then drowned their cat?
They're an idiot.
So this is Janice from Canada.
So I'll read the first part.
You can read the second half, I guess.
Oh, hello, Babylon Bee.
The other day you rebuked it.
I'm not doing Canada.
Very well.
Attacked and responded to a viewer's opinion on your article about animals, eh?
Unfortunately, you were attacking the person trying to defend the animals and nothing the people who attack animals.
Not maybe not the people.
Typed in passion.
Yeah.
Who attack animals?
You of all people know how stupid people are, don't you know?
Why do we know that people?
We're experts in how stupid people are.
The stupid kid next door that shoots the raccoon with his BB gun and then the infant raccoons die because they have no mother.
Or the kids who shove a firecrocker into a frog just for fun.
Or the guys who skin a dog alive and leave it hanging on a tree to die.
No, Babylon Bee.
You are 100% wrong.
I not only disagree with you and agree with the viewer you belittled, but your viewer was 100% right.
Imagine all the stupid people who actually agreed with you and thinks it's just a joke to dismiss or treat animals cruelly.
I'm turning into Jordan Peterson.
Yeah.
So she gave us a YouTube video and said, this is what people do to animals, kids out having fun.
Their addition of a definition of fun is death and destruction.
And she really goes into Greece here.
Watch this and see what is regular animal treatment in Greece.
Greece, the beautiful, tranquil, romantic notion of Greece, where animals are treated so inhumanely without one sense of remorse.
So I can't tell if that's an endorsement of Greece or a not.
And this stuff happens everywhere throughout the world, but also Greece.
Watch this and tell your viewers they're wrong to be angry about animal cruelty.
We never, I mean, be angry about animal cruelty.
Do we not say that?
Be angry.
Here are the stories on animals rescued by a man in Greece.
She's on Greece.
Who runs the shelter for dogs, cats, goats, etc.
This shows how stupid, ignorant, and cruel people are.
And the final line.
Today, Babylon Bee, if I were one of your mothers, I would be ashamed.
And that's from Janice from Canada.
Thanks, Janice.
We got anything else?
I got nothing else to say.
Well, everyone, this has been the Babylon Bee Weekly Podcast.
Thank you for joining us.
We're going to jump into our subscriber lounge where we're going to do some stuff.
Yeah.
Some bonus mail, some mailbag.
We'll see.
Yeah.
Can't wait to find out what it is.
Here we go.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
We have gotten a really interesting conspiracy theory from her.
The first person to ever think that Trump is actually Shiva Buff.
Though I never heard Kyle when he was a pastor, I can tell by his different voice in the Lord of the Rings episodes versus the regular episodes that he's pulling out his pastor voice.
But you have different modes of talking where it's more like when you're unsure of what you're saying, you're more Kermit.
Okay, and when you're very confident, you're less Kermit.
So the more when we interview someone and I'm like nervous, I'm like, sorry, sorry, Mr. Derrickson.
Wondering what they'll say next?
The rest of this podcast is in our super exclusive premium subscriber lounge.
Go to Babylonbee.com slash plans for full-length ad-free podcasts.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dillon for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.