#831: Tucker, The Man And His Twitter- Episode 4
Today, Dan and Jordan explore a very bullying and transphobic episode of Tucker Carlson's Twitter show that leaves both of them confused. Click here for tickets for the live show in London
July 24, 2023 - Knowledge Fight
57:53
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
It's time to pray. | |
| I have great respect for knowledge fight. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Knowledge fight. | |
| Dan and George. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for holding me. | |
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Knowledge Fight. | |
| KnowledgeFight.com. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are, Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Dan? | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| I have a quick question for you, sir. | ||
| Sup? | ||
| My bright spot today. | ||
| Jordan is, once again, I mean, it's been a bright spot before, but many blocks. | ||
| Many blocks. | ||
| Black Dragon Queen Christy sent me some succulents. | ||
| Some Lego, mini Lego succulents. | ||
| And I spent a little bit of time building these yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. | ||
| Got some cacti, some little desert flowers and what have you. | ||
| It's nice. | ||
| I'm thinking about making a bit of decor out of these mini blocks. | ||
| Because quite frankly, it is just a great time to make them. | ||
| And they're small enough that it's not like six hours. | ||
| Yeah, but it's meditative though. | ||
| It feels like you're... | ||
| I don't know what it is. | ||
| It's your bonsai tree. | ||
| I mean, I have one that is a bonsai tree. | ||
| Well, see, there you go. | ||
| That's literally what you're talking about, then. | ||
| There's something to it, like pretty simple instructions, although I will say mostly just based on drawings. | ||
| And so sometimes you can look at those instructions and be like, I don't know what the fuck you're asking me to do. | ||
| But generally, it's just kind of a calm putting together this thing. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So I think I'm going to explore a bunch of them. | ||
| I don't know what I'll do, because some of them I probably want to build and then don't want to keep around the house. | ||
| I am desperately hoping now that I'll walk in someday and you'll just be like, I've decided to turn this room into a rock garden. | ||
| I am putting it in all sand. | ||
| I'm making this purely, and you'll have a Lego rake that you'll kind of make through. | ||
| Oh yeah, that's the way to do it. | ||
| I don't want to go too far, because I have that tendency in me to dive in a little bit too much. | ||
| There is that. | ||
| In the dreamy, creamy direction. | ||
| But yeah, I like these succulents quite a bit. | ||
| I have a world map, a Lego world map, mini block world map. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| That you can hang on the wall that I'm going to be doing. | ||
| Oh, okay, okay. | ||
| So it's not a world map of where all the Lego... | ||
| No. | ||
| It's a map of the world. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| Made out of Legos. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's big enough to hang on the wall. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then you can put little Lego pieces where you've been. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| To note. | ||
| Yeah, that's cool. | ||
| Like a pin. | ||
| Yeah, that's very cool. | ||
| So I have one of those. | ||
| That's going to be a giant project. | ||
| Yeah, I can't even imagine how many pieces that is. | ||
| I'm excited. | ||
| You're about to put the little red dot on Glasgow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Ooh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Glasgow. | ||
| I'm going to have to put two. | ||
| Two on that island. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, yeah, so that's Legos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So what's your bright spot? | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Two-fold. | ||
| Two-fold today. | ||
| You're a glutton for bright spots lately. | ||
| I'm loving it. | ||
| You had two last time, two this time. | ||
| Well, I mean, one of them has always recently been announcing a different show. | ||
| And the other one's tennis. | ||
| No, the other one is the Venture Brothers. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The Venture Brothers ended. | ||
| They released the movie. | ||
| I feel like it's been on the air for 50 years. | ||
| 20 years. | ||
| Wow, yeah. | ||
| 20 years. | ||
| I thought that had gone away already, quite frankly, because it wasn't a show that I ever really watched. | ||
| I caught some here and there. | ||
| Yeah, for some reason I thought it had been gone for ten years. | ||
| I think it was cancelled like five years ago. | ||
| But I mean, that's the way that they've always worked is over 20 years they've put together like eight seasons. | ||
| Well, seven seasons and then this movie. | ||
| And they've been spread out so all of a sudden they'll go four years without an entire season, you know? | ||
| That's just how they've worked. | ||
| That must be why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It enters in and out of consciousness a little bit. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And it's one of my favorite shows ever. | ||
| And they're committed. | ||
| The commitment to only doing the thing that they believe is as good as they can make it, that's their, I mean, it's amazing, you know? | ||
| It's like the anti-South Park. | ||
| They're not like, ah, let's put it out in a day. | ||
| No, they're like, we'll see you in six years at least. | ||
| Get out of here. | ||
| Shots fired at South Park. | ||
| Yeah, whatever. | ||
| What's the point of even criticizing or not? | ||
| One thing I think I'm glad about, and I apologize to any South Park fans who are listening. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Something I'm really glad about is that I never got really into South Park. | ||
| Yeah, I know, right? | ||
| I watched some of it, and I thought, like, eh, it's a little preachy, but I'll make some good points here and there. | ||
| Sometimes it's kind of funny. | ||
| I think the movie... | ||
| The only thing I remember about the movie is that song, What Would Brian Boitano Do? | ||
| I mean, it's a catchy fucking song. | ||
| It is. | ||
| I mean, you can't take that away from them. | ||
| They wrote a catchy goddamn song. | ||
| Yeah, they're good at music. | ||
| They are really good at music. | ||
| They're really good at musicals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe better at that than political points. | |
| Bob's Burgers is better than that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I could have gone down a very cynical, angry path had I been too into them. | ||
| I think that could have ended up a goddamn libertarian or something. | ||
| Anyway, I'll give that a shot. | ||
| If there's eight seasons of it, that means there's plenty to dive into, and that could be helpful. | ||
| I don't have any more Survivor to watch. | ||
| I'm telling you, it's just a great show. | ||
| It's a great show because it starts off with your basic Johnny Quest kind of send-up. | ||
| And then they are so committed to character development. | ||
| It's beyond what... | ||
| You know, every season, every single season, each character changes permanently. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| And that goes on throughout the entire series. | ||
| Yeah, there's continuity. | ||
| There's never any situation where it's like, oh, this character stays static, or there's the traditional TV, you know, instant change, we learned a lesson right back to, you know, baseline. | ||
| It's always been a narrative movement, and it's really, really, it's an achievement. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Good on you, Jackson Public and Doc Hammer. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Those aren't real names. | ||
| No, they are not real names. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| No, they're not real names. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Hey, we agree. | ||
| It's your second bright spot. | ||
| My second bright spot, Dan, is that the tickets are available today for the London show. | ||
| In the description of the episode, we'll have the link to the tickets. | ||
| Folks can buy London tickets. | ||
| And I don't know if we have... | ||
| We're doing a live show at the QED! | ||
| Oh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I didn't realize that. | ||
| Oh, you didn't? | ||
| We've talked about this so many times! | ||
| I thought that that was the London show. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
| The London show is not that. | ||
| We do not have... | ||
| First of all, this is great evidence that we don't have meetings. | ||
| No, this is good communication. | ||
| This is great. | ||
| I've tried to explain. | ||
| I understood that there was discussion of doing a show with QED, and I know that that had been something that we had talked about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| But I thought that that was London. | ||
| I didn't realize that. | ||
| So we have three shows total. | ||
| We have three shows total. | ||
| Four, if you count my lecture at QED. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| My speaking engagement. | ||
| I won't be riffing during that. | ||
| No. | ||
| That'll just be you solo. | ||
| Although you might feel the spirit from backstage or the audience and scream something, I'm sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, sure. | |
| But yeah, the QED one is available only to people who have tickets to the festival or the conference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So if you'd like to attend QED, one of the things that is going to be available for you is a live one of our shows. | ||
| And it's in Manchester, and that's difficult for me because I've told you. | ||
| A bunch of times. | ||
| All I want to do is do an episode about Oasis somehow. | ||
| That's all you want to do. | ||
| But he's, like, the Gallaghers haven't been on... | ||
| You know Oasis just released a new album. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Together? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Oh. | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| Okay, what? | ||
| It's like, I know that they've gone their separate ways, and he has like the Flying Vultures or whatever the fuck. | ||
| BDI, I think, is one of their bands. | ||
| I think it's released officially under Oasis, but with like a subtitle. | ||
| Asterisk? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oasis, but you know what? | ||
| You know what Oasis is now. | ||
| You've read the fucking news, assholes. | ||
| Yeah, and I just don't want to bother the people in Manchester, quite frankly, because I'm sure they're tired of hearing about it. | ||
| Eh, probably. | ||
| Probably tired of hearing about Oasis. | ||
| I mean, I'm sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Americans coming over and being like, total back in anger was amazing, man! | |
| I mean, I imagine if you believe your city has a rich cultural history, to have it boiled down to Oasis is probably not the best. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I mean, what are the other things? | ||
| What else has happened there? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Don't put me on the spot. | ||
| The Bee Gees? | ||
| The Bee Gees grew up in Manchester. | ||
| They did not. | ||
| Yes, they did. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, the Gibb brothers, they grew up in Manchester. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No shit. | |
| Yeah, that's one of the other options that I have about... | ||
| I feel like the Bee Gees and the Beach Boys are the same people, and that's what gets caught up in my head. | ||
| No, because the Bee Gees are disco, or yeah, they're disco, and the Beach Boys are surf rock. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| No, it's just Bee Gees. | ||
| Very different. | ||
| Very different. | ||
| And the Beach Boys were not related. | ||
| The Bee Gees were the... | ||
| Some of the Beach Boys were related, weren't they? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| No, now I don't know. | ||
| I don't know anymore. | ||
| Yes, some of the Beach Boys were related. | ||
| Manson didn't like the Bee Gees. | ||
| Yes, I know they were because Manson got in with the brother in... | ||
| Brian Wilson. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The Wilson brothers. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, the Gibbs, they grew up in Manchester. | ||
| The original Mbop. | ||
| You know what their first single was? | ||
| Mbop. | ||
| No. | ||
| That was the first single for Hanson. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The Bee Gees' first single. | ||
| You'll never guess. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Because they have so many of these big disco classics. | ||
| I love being told that I'll never guess and yet still be given the prompt to try. | ||
| Try and guess! | ||
| BG's on the block. | ||
| Do you even think you know? | ||
| I don't know the name of any BG songs off the top of my head. | ||
| Oh, well, I mean, obviously. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But I mean, come on. | ||
| But that wasn't their first hit. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Their first hit was called New York Mining Disaster 1941. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So, we were all very close to having a wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald from the Bee Gees that we all sing karaoke. | ||
| But it got forgotten. | ||
| But it was apparently quite a, like, very similar to the Beatles. | ||
| And got them noticed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And then they went disco. | ||
| Anyway, this is stuff that I know because I previously was trying to figure out a show to do in Manchester and I'd given up on it and now I know that now I have to do it all over again. | ||
| This is what happens whenever I organize the tour, is that no matter how many times I tell you things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh. | |
| Well, I'll figure something out. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Anyway, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And it's going to be a Tucker episode. | ||
| Alex wasn't bringing it. | ||
| I listened to a couple episodes from 2004 and they were just barren wasteland. | ||
| What else happened? | ||
| Oh, I stumbled across a nine hour recording of Robert Welsh giving a John Birch Society speech from 1965 and I got caught up in that a little bit. | ||
| Yes, of course you did. | ||
| I just really sink my teeth into that. | ||
| I do appreciate this is the only place where I can hear somebody say it like that. | ||
| Oh, I mean, look, a nine-hour thing by John Bercher? | ||
| Of course I got caught up into that. | ||
| Very deep, interesting stuff. | ||
| And then also I was trying to find a couch, and I was unsuccessful. | ||
| But we're doing a Tucker episode, and I'm going to give some disclaimers. | ||
| Here in a minute. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because this episode's bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's not good. | ||
| No. | ||
| But what do you expect? | ||
| But before we get to those disclaimers, let's take a little moment, Jordan, to say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Ooh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Happy uber-belated birthday, diggle. | |
| D-I-G-G-L. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, thank you, Louis Beyer. | ||
| It's pronounced Beyer like Breyer's Ice Cream, but without the R after the B and dropped the S on the end. | ||
| I think I nailed that one. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, happy severely belated birthday to Elena in Montreal from Stringbean. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much! | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, my landlady went to the January 6th march. | ||
| The next day, she told me Antifa did the riot and spends almost every waking moment listening to far-right radio. | ||
| Dan and Jordan, help keep me sane. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, Thomas's bright spot is hearing Jordan say thank you very much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You did it. | ||
| I brought it on that. | ||
| Just for him. | ||
| I brought it on that one. | ||
| And we got a technocrat in the mix, Jordan, so thank you so much, too. | ||
| Congratulations to my absolute academic weapons, PJ and Caleb. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a technocrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Four stars. | ||
| Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. | ||
| Someone sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. | ||
| Daddy Shark. | ||
| Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent. | ||
| He's a loser little titty baby. | ||
| I don't want to hate black people. | ||
| I renounce Jesus Christ. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Yes, thank you very much. | ||
| So, we're going to talk about this Tucker episode. | ||
| I believe it's episode... | ||
| It's the one, I think, right before his Andrew Tate interview. | ||
| And I think that you and I are both of the opinion that... | ||
| I'm not sure about a two-and-a-half-hour, two-hour Andrew Tate-Tucker Carlson interview. | ||
| I'm very sure. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| Strong no. | ||
| You are definitely a strong no. | ||
| I'm a strong no. | ||
| Whereas I have a little bit of a... | ||
| Man, maybe there's a point to do that. | ||
| But I'm not sure. | ||
| So anyway, this is episode 8 of Tucker's show. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| The Tate interview is 9. Might do that eventually, just to really torture Jordan. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But this episode is... | ||
| Deeply transphobic. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Very bad. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| I mean, we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording when I was describing just in sort of broad terms what the episode is. | ||
| It's not necessarily super disgusting in terms of graphicness or passion in the disgusting way Alex expresses some of his hate. | ||
| But it is very... | ||
| Insulting and bullying towards a specific person. | ||
| And I don't really know exactly how to gauge what is more hard or awful to listen to for people. | ||
| But I would say that it's offensive, certainly. | ||
| He consistently misgenders the person and uses their dead name. | ||
| So there's that element of it. | ||
| And then there's... | ||
| Dumb. | ||
| Yeah, there's not a hierarchy of pain, but there's definitely the chart with the different smiley faces on it. | ||
| It's a spectrum of smiley faces that turn very, very frowny. | ||
| Yeah, so I would say that, you know, just be aware of that up front here. | ||
| And then also, I apologize that I'm not gonna call it out every time he misgenders or uses a dead name. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Maybe I'll... | ||
| I guess maybe I should bleep out the dead name. | ||
| I think that's what... | ||
| I think that's probably the right way to do it. | ||
| But, yeah, I'll do that. | ||
| But, like, I'm not going to call it out every single time because I'm just calling it out in advance. | ||
| He does it throughout, and it's awful. | ||
| You know how disgusting he can be. | ||
| He's that disgusting. | ||
| He's Tucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, anyway, here is where we begin our excursion through Tucker's gross mind. | ||
| Hey, it's Tucker Carlson. | ||
| Belmont Hill is a small private school outside of Boston. | ||
| It's not famous for its athletics. | ||
| The school's mascot isn't even an animal. | ||
| It's an 18th century navigational tool. | ||
| The Belmont Hill sextants doesn't even make sense. | ||
| All right, so there's no bigotry yet, and I decided I'm going to really take advantage of this. | ||
| Yeah, I'm really enjoying this part so far. | ||
| So the Belmont Hills School has a bunch of really strong sports teams. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They compete in the Independent School League, and their baseball team has the record for most league titles with 16. That's not great. | ||
| Their golf team has also won 16 ISL titles in the time just since 1989, and they won the title in 2022, just before when you would have any awareness of this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Undefeated the entire season, their golf team. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ugh. | |
| Their crew team has won the New England Rowing Association Championship 14 times, and this kind of statistic goes on into their hockey, lacrosse, tennis, and wrestling teams as well. | ||
| Tucker is trying to take a cheap shot at this school, but he didn't look into it at all. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Also, if Tucker had just gone to the school's website, he would have found an excerpt from a speech that the school's founder gave in 1924, where he explained that choice for the school's mascot. | ||
| I fucking love sextants, bro! | ||
| That's the show! | ||
| Well, I mean, just first of all, this is up in Boston, and so there's a bit of a nautical kind of vibe to New England. | ||
| So that's appropriate there. | ||
| And then, quote, to be appropriate, the device would have to symbolize some fine ideal in education. | ||
| It would have to express, in one way or another, the spirit that we wish to propagate, namely, that of service through scholarship. | ||
| And so, in the course of many weeks, quite a number of emblems were suggested. | ||
| Curiously enough, perhaps because several of us love the sea and everything connected with it, nautical devices seem to be the favorites. | ||
| Some of these, like the compass and the capstan, were apparently suitable, but one by one, either through too great intricacy or because of lack of originality, they were rejected. | ||
| Finally, however, it occurred to someone that the sextant might be used. | ||
| The sextant was a symbol of orientation, and the chief purpose of education was, of course, to orientate. | ||
| Therefore, it is only by finding ourselves, by discovering our capacities and aptitudes, that we can be of service to the community. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| It makes as much sense as anything else. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I went to Hickman High School, and our mascot was a Kewpie, which is apparently like a baby ghost doll. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Ours was tiger, and that's equally arbitrary and, at the same time, symbolic in the exact same annoying way. | ||
| But that's an animal, and that's what Tucker was complaining about. | ||
| It's not an animal. | ||
| But why is it socially accepted that animals are totally fine mascots, but you can't pick whatever you want? | ||
| This is a microcosm of- Of his own bigotry! | ||
| You can only choose one form of mascot! | ||
| Syracuse's mascot is an orange. | ||
| Wichita State's mascot is an anthropomorphic thing of wheat. | ||
| Purdue's mascot is the Boilermaker, which is a train. | ||
| Let people have fun with their damn mascot. | ||
| That is awesome. | ||
| Just have fun with the mascots. | ||
| Yeah, just have fun with the mascots. | ||
| He's just using some selective criticism here about something he doesn't even care about. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Why are you being a dick about the mascots? | ||
| Who has the time for that? | ||
| This place with a good sports program doesn't care about sports and they have a dumb mascot. | ||
| You don't care about that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't understand how it's possible for an adult man with millions of listeners to think it's a good idea to talk about high school sports. | ||
| I just don't understand it. | ||
| You can talk about professional sports. | ||
| Those are other adults. | ||
| You're an adult. | ||
| Don't enter into the high school sports world. | ||
| Just don't do it. | ||
| Yeah, their sports program was good, despite what Tucker has to say. | ||
| And now here's where he uses this false outrage that he has at the beginning in order to pivot into what he really wants to complain about. | ||
| So when it comes to sports, Belmont Hill is not trying very hard. | ||
| But the school's athletic program can claim at least one important footnote to history. | ||
| In 1975, its football roster contained two names that you will recognize even now, Mark Milley and Richard Levine. | ||
| Millie is now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. | ||
| Levine, of course, is our country's most famous admiral. | ||
| Both transitioned late in life into overweight middle-aged women. | ||
| Both wound up working as high-level officials in the Joe Biden administration. | ||
| Their teammates at the All Boys School in Boston probably wouldn't have predicted any of that. | ||
| This is weird. | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| Because he's having a joke about Mark Millie, General Millie, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, transitioning, but he didn't. | ||
| He's not. | ||
| It's just, I think he has like a picture of Mark Milley and he thinks he looks like a middle-aged woman. | ||
| So the joke is just that they're physically unattractive to Tucker. | ||
| Yeah, maybe that he thinks that Milley is unmasculine in some way. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| Because he wasn't supportive enough of Trump. | ||
| I was going to say. | ||
| But it's weird because it's supposed to be a joke. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Yes, it definitely is, but it's confusing. | ||
| It's more confusing than it is like a bad joke. | ||
| The first problem is you assumed already that I... | ||
| I knew those names. | ||
| I can just pull those names out of a hat. | ||
| No, thank you. | ||
| I don't want to be able to instantly pull the name of any Joint Chief of any staff. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| You know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I shouldn't know that. | ||
| I think if I just lived a day-to-day life, I probably wouldn't know General Milley's name either. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But Alex yells about him a lot. | ||
| Well, right. | ||
| I mean, in our capacity, yeah, of course we, yeah. | ||
| But at the same time, it's not a joke. | ||
| It's not a turn. | ||
| There's no turn. | ||
| There's no surprise. | ||
| He doesn't have any delivery that would suggest it's a joke? | ||
| No, that's the other thing, too. | ||
| The way it's presented is, again, confusing. | ||
| It's very factual. | ||
| It feels like he's telling me something, and I immediately... | ||
| Well, the factual nature of it is that Rachel Levine is the Assistant Secretary for Health. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And she transitioned. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| And so that's the thing that he's playing with. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But there isn't anything really going on. | ||
| Like you said, there's no structure to it as a joke. | ||
| I mean, the idea is that they both went to an all-boys school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And then later on in life decided not to be boys. | ||
| But one didn't. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So now he's... | ||
| But he's not... | ||
| I'm so annoyed. | ||
| Yeah, and like I mentioned, their sports program's pretty good. | ||
| They've produced a bunch of NHL players, but this is the perception that Tucker's trying to cultivate at the beginning there because it's part of attacking the school's masculinity in some way. | ||
| That's what's mixed up here. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Also, I'm disappointed that he didn't bring up that David E. Kelly also went to Belmont Hill. | ||
| So without that school, we never would have gotten Allie McBeal, Chicago Hope, Doogie Howser, MD, and of course Lake Placid. | ||
| He did all of the- Yeah, he did a lot. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's a career. | ||
| And The Practice. | ||
| Oh, man, that is a career. | ||
| And Harry's Law. | ||
| Kathy Bates. | ||
| That's some challenging Dick Wolf kind of shit right there. | ||
| He had a lot of pretty long Boston Public, too. | ||
| He had a lot of TV shows. | ||
| I do appreciate his formula of take a profession. | ||
| Next. | ||
| Done. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| A lot of lawyers, too, because I think he might have gone to law school. | ||
| Well, I mean, he went to prep with these Titans. | ||
| I don't know what year. | ||
| I didn't get that part down. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| So, Tucker plays a clip of Levine, and he's weird. | ||
| His point is weird and he's asking questions that aren't questions and don't mean anything. | ||
| Here's what Rick Levine looks like now from a video he just posted on Instagram. | ||
|
unidentified
|
in. | |
| Hello, my name is Admiral Rachel Levine, and I have the honor of being the Assistant Secretary for Health at the United States Department of Health and Human Services. | ||
| Happy Pride! | ||
| Happy Pride Month, and actually, let's declare it a Summer of Pride. | ||
| Happy Summer of Pride. | ||
| Happy Summer of Pride! | ||
| you about it all summer and possibly into the fall. | ||
| He's got a lot to be proud of. | ||
| What specifically, you ask? | ||
| Well, strangely, he doesn't say, nor does he mention his former wife or children. | ||
| He doesn't tell us whether they're proud, too. | ||
| What? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Since none of them have been invited onto the Today Show to talk about their feelings, we're going to have to guess. | |
| For now, we're going to assume his former family is proud. | ||
| And why wouldn't they be? | ||
| Few Americans in our history has come as far as... | ||
| Levine. | ||
| Here's a fat guy in a Halloween costume who somehow became a federal health minister. | ||
| Not a small thing. | ||
| You try that. | ||
| See, like, that's what I'm talking about. | ||
| That's just bullying. | ||
| That's just insulting someone. | ||
| That's just being mean. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that's... | ||
| There's no point to that. | ||
| That's such... | ||
| That's... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| That's fucking fucked up. | ||
| And it's cowardly. | ||
| It's cowardly on a scale that you can't really process. | ||
| Because... | ||
| That's the type of shit, if you said that to somebody's face, shit's going down. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| And it's reasonable. | ||
| If you say that shit, fuck you. | ||
| Fuck you. | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| Well, I mean, I think we're in the... | ||
| The feeling like a window might be open. | ||
| But it's like, that is stuff that cannot be confronted any other way. | ||
| You can't talk someone through why they're doing that, because they've already thought through why they're doing that. | ||
| There's no conflict that is resolved without conflict. | ||
| There isn't a conflict that's resolvable. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| In essence, it's just... | ||
| This person hates somebody for their identity and wants to broadcast insults and bullying. | ||
| Yeah, to millions of people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For no reason. | ||
| No. | ||
| And it's not even... | ||
| Other than existing! | ||
| And it's not even like... | ||
| There's no criticism to it. | ||
| There's like... | ||
| I know, like, Tucker fancies himself to be, like, an important person with deep ideas that are challenging the system, and this is just, there's nothing. | ||
| This is nothing. | ||
| No, I mean, there's more than... | ||
| A middle schooler could write this. | ||
| More than enough just physical jabs. | ||
| More than enough to be like, oh, then you're just doing this vindictively, maliciously. | ||
| You're a piece of shit. | ||
| And what, I mean, it's a stupid question to ask, what are you proud of? | ||
| I mean, just, who the fuck... | ||
| Who are you? | ||
| Pretending to not know of the existence of Pride. | ||
| Who the fuck are you to ask any of those questions? | ||
| And how dare you bring up a family that is not yours to fucking discuss? | ||
| Yeah, it's a little inappropriate. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And for the record, Levine transitioned in 2011, and she and her ex-wife divorced in 2013. | ||
| So it's not even like a recent thing that he's drawing from. | ||
| This is a decade ago. | ||
| What makes him responsible to tell you anything? | ||
| No. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| So because this is something, you know, the divorce is, you know, in the past, you can find a record of what people thought, if you're curious. | ||
| Great. | ||
| So, for instance, Levine's ex-wife wrote a blog post in April 2012 that touches on the transition and how you can get through changes in life even when it seems... | ||
| You know, pretty difficult. | ||
| And quote, often when we come out the other side of change, we come out stronger for having gone through the experience. | ||
| It seems generally like the ex-wife was supportive of the transition. | ||
| And if I had to guess, the reason that she isn't going on shows to be interviewed about her ex-wife is because she doesn't want to. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's weird that Tucker is acting this way. | ||
| I mean, I just don't understand it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Very strange. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It isn't even meaningful to ask any of this stuff. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| The end. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, that is... | |
| Because there's no point. | ||
| there's no change that can occur from watching that other than trying to radicalize people in a vicious, hateful manner towards trans people. | ||
| Like, that's... | ||
| There can be no other reason that as a media figure other than, I mean, if you're Tucker, if you're somebody with that kind of intentionality behind what you're doing, there's no reason other than that. | ||
| And to model behavior that you want your viewers to feel is appropriate Yeah, totally. | ||
| And that's fucked up and irresponsible and bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we have another clip. | |
| I mean, we're just going through the piece. | ||
| Not too long ago, this same man was a married pediatrician with kids, lecturing about eating disorders at Penn State. | ||
| Now he's emerged as a path-breaking lady admiral with medals on his chest. | ||
| And he did all of that without winning a single naval battle, or even being female. | ||
| It's pretty inspiring. | ||
| What we have here is living proof that in this country, you really can be whatever you want to be. | ||
| If Levine can become Admiral Rachel, why can't you be Napoleon? | ||
| Or Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India? | ||
| Ever see that guy's uniform? | ||
| Or why not Shaka, the legendary Zulu war chief? | ||
| You could bring your Asagai and Leopardhide shield to work at Deloitte, and no one would be allowed to say a word about it. | ||
| The HR department would have your back. | ||
| Plenty of reasons why you can't be specific people from history, but some people claim to be like Cleopatra in a past life and what have you. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| So this is just disgusting garbage, but I wanted to take a second to point out how Tucker is insulting Levine's service and rank by saying she's never been in a naval battle. | ||
| Does Tucker know when the last U.S. naval battle was? | ||
| So it was the Battle of Leytegulf in October 1944. | ||
| That's considered by the Navy to be the, quote, last sea battle between forces employing battleships. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anyone who was in that battle would have had to have been born in 1926 at the absolute latest. | ||
| So it would be like 94 years old today. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Tucker doesn't mean this insult, because if he actually did, he would be impugning the service of every single person who served in the Navy past October 1944. | ||
| He's just being a dick. | ||
| This is a tactic that folks like Tucker use to add the false pretense of reasonability to what they say. | ||
| The implication is Levine isn't a real admiral because she's never won a naval battle, which contains the assumption that it would have been possible for her to do so. | ||
| The subtext is that if she had won a naval battle, Tucker would then see her as a legitimate officer in the Navy, but because she hasn't, her career isn't respectable. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But here's another twist. | ||
| Levine isn't an admiral in the Navy, where she might have been in naval battles or whatever. | ||
| She's an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. | ||
| They often are deployed to natural disasters to provide logistics and health services and that kind of stuff. | ||
| The admiral is whoever's the assistant secretary for health. | ||
| The vice admiral is the U.S. Surgeon General. | ||
| When the people who fill these positions... | ||
| are part of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. | ||
| They're given these ranks as title. | ||
| There was a situation during the Clinton administration that was really interesting where the Assistant Secretary for Health and the Surgeon General were the same person. | ||
| This guy, David Satcher. | ||
| Though he was Vice Admiral through his office as the Surgeon General, he still was given the rank of Admiral because of that higher office that he also existed in. | ||
| However, in 2001, he was replaced as the Assistant Secretary for Health, but Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Point is, it doesn't quite work like other enlisted branches of service, and Levine couldn't have been in a naval battle if she wanted to. | ||
| Tucker just hates her because she's trans, and he's trying to find any semi-reasonable-sounding excuse to make this bigotry seem grounded in reality at all, like there's some sort of condition that she could meet that would make him not act this way, when in reality, no, there's not. | ||
| No, no, he wouldn't move the goalposts at all. | ||
| I have no doubt that upon meeting this, because we've gone through this So many times in the past with conservative whining. | ||
| You know, they have these demands that we must meet, and then once we have met those demands, they go away. | ||
| That's how it's worked, and that's why we continue meeting their demands like a bunch of fucking morons. | ||
| It makes sense. | ||
| It would be so funny to, like, if Levine would just pull out, like, actually, I've won so many naval battles. | ||
| I just, what is even... | ||
| What even is a naval battle that you can win? | ||
| Like, what are you even talking about? | ||
| One time, I was on a Sea-Doo. | ||
| And I ran into Blackbeard. | ||
| We can fly now! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| We shouldn't even want to fight a naval battle. | ||
| The resource management is silly. | ||
| It's a terrible place to fight. | ||
| It's inefficient on a number of levels. | ||
| You can't even turn quickly. | ||
| Yeah, that's why I didn't like Assassin's Creed Black Flag so much. | ||
| Yeah, that's fair. | ||
| The turn radius on a boat is hard. | ||
| It's hard to turn a giant boat. | ||
| It's infuriating. | ||
| Speaking of infuriating, let's get back into this. | ||
| Unfortunately, you can't actually do any of that. | ||
| The point of... | ||
| Levine's amazing transformation is not to free you from the inflexible husk that you were born in so that you can be more fully yourself, whatever you decide that is. | ||
| No, that's not the point. | ||
| Levine's personal journey has nothing to do with you. | ||
| It's about him. | ||
| It's his journey. | ||
| Your fantasies about becoming something totally new and different have not been approved yet. | ||
| In fact, they're weird. | ||
| Shaka, the Zulu war king? | ||
| Come on. | ||
| That's racist. | ||
| Shut up and be proud of Admiral Rachel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rachel L. Levine. | |
| She's the one who has smashed glass ceilings. | ||
| You just got some kind of weird fetish. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| He's implying, I guess, that if you wanted to be Shaka Zulu, you could be in the future once that's approved. | ||
| And I don't... | ||
| No, if that is good thinking. | ||
| Because I think people like Tucker like to try and make... | ||
| They like to try and do slippery slope type dumb arguments. | ||
| But they also try to make gender and race or ethnicity into analogous things that people jump from one to another. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| Or whatever. | ||
| In order to... | ||
| It's always in service, basically, of delegitimizing trans existence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And I just... | ||
| I do not... | ||
| I dispute the premise that they're analogous. | ||
| It just doesn't work. | ||
| If I understand what he's saying correctly, which is a very strange thing, because he's wording it thusly. | ||
| He's wording it like, you have a desire to become something different, but you can't. | ||
| Well, if that thing is becoming Shaka. | ||
| Well, I mean, but he's still essentially saying to people, You can't do this thing. | ||
| And he's saying that that's a bad thing? | ||
| Well, hear me. | ||
| Here's what I think. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He's saying that trans people are approved by the system, right? | ||
| So that is okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But the other, if you want to become, like, let's say you're a white person and you want to become black, that is not approved by the system. | ||
| So there is, like, you can, Transition gender. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But you can't do these other things because the system hasn't approved of it yet. | ||
| But of course, the underlying point that is behind this is, according to him, you can't do any of it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I was going to say, all of this is in your mind. | ||
| This is all pretend, Tucker. | ||
| You're an insane person. | ||
| You're mad at your own mind. | ||
| Yeah, you're mad at pretend. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And just making false equivalencies that are... | ||
| I mean, they're not uncommon. | ||
| It's something that you encounter a bit. | ||
| There's people making those kinds of non-analogous arguments, but I just feel like when you're someone like Tucker, you know what? | ||
| When we started doing some of these Tucker things... | ||
| I told you I was surprised at how bad the show is, just from a quality standpoint. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| One of the other things is I'm surprised by how unserious it is. | ||
| It's incomprehensible. | ||
| This is like a guy with millions and millions of dollars. | ||
| He has free reign and an automatic audience moving over from Fox. | ||
| And this is episode eight. | ||
| This isn't that far into his tenure. | ||
| This is where he ends up. | ||
| I want to put out a five-minute video insulting someone because they're trans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Like, there's no thought behind this. | ||
| There's no greater point. | ||
| This is the real deal with Bill McNeil. | ||
| Don't impune the real deal with Bill McNeil. | ||
| But it's the narrative arc of the real deal with Bill McNeil. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, this is... | ||
| I'm just baffled by, like... | ||
| How little care or thought is in this at all. | ||
| Right, but I mean, I feel like if he's telling this to an audience that is listening to him, then he is assuming that his audience is yearning for an opportunity to become something greater than what they are, something that they are maybe repressing, something that they're holding back. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| And he somehow... | ||
| Making them go like, yeah, it's a good thing I am repressing that. | ||
| Otherwise, Tucker Carlson will bully me? | ||
| I mean, that's certainly an unspoken element of this. | ||
| It feels like that. | ||
| But, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You know what I wonder? | ||
| There's a part of me that wonders that, like, you know, so the first couple came out and there's, you know, some pretty big numbers. | ||
| And then it just petered out, just sort of, you know, he was losing audience, the numbers. | ||
| For views we're cratering. | ||
| I wonder if this is kind of an attempt to bring in some shitheads or something. | ||
| I wonder if this kind of an episode is meant just to be bait. | ||
| For people to get mad at and then tweet about and get more attention. | ||
| And then also just bring in sophomoric bigots. | ||
| I wonder if it's kind of a desperation move. | ||
| Yeah, just like when Bill McNeil edited together Seinfeld's interview to make it look like Seinfeld was being a dick. | ||
| Just to get views, man. | ||
| I do think that dynamic might be at play. | ||
| It does feel like that. | ||
| Because the next thing after this was the way-too-long Andrew Tate interview. | ||
| So it does kind of have a feeling of, shit ain't working. | ||
| I mean, it would feel like he kind of doesn't give a fuck. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I can't imagine he gives a fuck. | ||
| If he didn't put out a two and a half hour interview with Andrew Tate afterwards, right? | ||
| Like, you can't not give a shit at all about your show and then still be like, yeah, I'm gonna put in two and a half hours with this monster. | ||
| I suggest the exact opposite. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Because if you cared, you might edit that thing down. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| On the other hand, I have also got a two and a half hour interview. | ||
| You might wanna... | ||
| You know, chop that down to a presentable length where you can really make this sex trafficker look good. | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| Same thing for me with John Ronson. | ||
| So, we have another clip here. | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| And this is where, I mean, I've been confused a bit, but I think that this is where I really got confused. | ||
| So actually, now that we're saying this out loud, it's pretty clear that Ray Levine has no interest in liberating you from anything. | ||
| This is not about liberation. | ||
| It's just the opposite. | ||
| It's just another religious war, same as all the others. | ||
| The people who think they're God versus everybody else. | ||
| In primitive civilizations, which would include every civilization since the beginning of time in hours, people assumed there were rules. | ||
| Rules that no human being made, but that people could ignore only at their peril, at great risk. | ||
| Some called these rules nature, or natural law, or even as societies advanced, theology. | ||
| But most of the time, people didn't call them anything. | ||
| They didn't have to. | ||
| There wasn't a debate about whether the rules were real. | ||
| People assumed there were consequences to pretending that you were God. | ||
| They thought Sodom and Gomorrah were real places that were destroyed for disobedience. | ||
| They imagined the same thing could happen to them. | ||
| Not anymore. | ||
| I'm very confused. | ||
| Tucker, let me tell you something. | ||
| I no longer imagine that it's possible for Sodom and Gomorrah to happen to me. | ||
| I think that's a reasonable belief. | ||
| I guess, you know, if you're trying to just put into simple language what he's saying, it's that trans people are God, or they think they're God, and they have violated natural law, and that Sodom and Gomorrah is gonna happen, or something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| Well, I mean, it is a common underpinning of the most religious beliefs of, like, God gave you a body, don't fuck with it, you know? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But, you know, tattoos should be outlawed. | ||
| Ear piercing, all of this stuff. | ||
| Like, when I was growing up, that was the case. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Based on those Bible verses of like, hey, don't fuck with your body, God gave it to you. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| Body is a temple and all that. | ||
| The problem is, you can either do all of that or none of it. | ||
| You can't be like, hey, don't fuck with your body, except you can get a bunch of tattoos. | ||
| You know, you can't do that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Otherwise, you might as well say, fuck it, I don't care. | ||
| But yeah, what is the limitation of these primitive beliefs that still hold true? | ||
| That Tucker feels we do still need to hold on to? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| If I... | ||
| Does he legitimately think a smiting is coming? | ||
| I mean, I will absolutely agree with him if he is struck by lightning. | ||
| If he is struck by lightning, I will change my life. | ||
| I will believe that there are possible God-given punishments. | ||
| You're taking a little bit of a gamble. | ||
| I think I'm going to take that bet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| Because I win either way. | ||
| You don't have to change or Tucker gets struck by lightning. | ||
| One of the two. | ||
| It's very simple. | ||
| Yeah, I just got confused. | ||
| This was the way that this was pivoting. | ||
| It just felt very strange to me. | ||
| I don't really know what to make of it. | ||
| I do like the conception, though, that every civilization up until ours has been primitive. | ||
| That was fun. | ||
| I appreciate somebody saying, oh, these people want to act like God. | ||
| Now, obviously, I'm going to tell my millions of people how to behave. | ||
| Yeah, there's an irony. | ||
| And I don't know what the, like, being God, like, I don't know what that means in this context. | ||
| Existing? | ||
| I think it is agency. | ||
| I think it is essentially agency. | ||
| Either you believe that you have to do everything God says, word for word, despite the fact that only Tucker is saying it. | ||
| Or you have control over yourself. | ||
| And if you have control over yourself, then you are a god or whatever it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what? | |
| That's such a weird thing to be upset about for people who are so invested in the individual and so obsessed with personal liberty and shit. | ||
| This is what we can do by ourselves. | ||
| You can't do that! | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| That's so inexplicable. | ||
| So we have one last clip here, because it's a short report. | ||
| What is there to say? | ||
| And I just think that Tucker is a fucking weirdo and an asshole. | ||
| Levine doesn't worry about being punished by forces he can't see. | ||
| He knows he's in charge. | ||
| He makes the rules. | ||
| He sets the limits. | ||
| Reality is what he says it is. | ||
| That's his view, and he shares it with virtually everybody else in a position of authority in the United States. | ||
| That's a pretty bold bet, really. | ||
| For seven million years, human beings have believed one thing, presumably based on some evidence. | ||
| Around 2015, they begin convinced of something completely different. | ||
| Are they right? | ||
| It feels like we're going to find out soon. | ||
| So, yeah, I guess he does think there's a smiting coming. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wait. | |
| What? | ||
| What are you confused about? | ||
| Everything? | ||
| I mean, did he just Pascal's wager us? | ||
| What just happened? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did we just get Pascal'd? | ||
| I mean, obviously there's the stupidity of, like, 2015 being a delineation point where trans-existence was a thing. | ||
| Yeah, oh no, there's definitely no... | ||
| When, I mean, Rachel Levine transitioned in 2011, so that's even before 2015. | ||
| Yeah, that's before 2015, yeah. | ||
| Tucker? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I really think that he's suggesting that divine retribution is likely to come upon us in a short period of time because of acceptance of trans people. | ||
| I guess, I mean, you know, we're back on the, oh, hurricanes are because of gay marriage. | ||
| You know, we're right back there. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It's right back there. | ||
| It is, except... | ||
| Well, I mean, it's not that much of a difference, but at least in that case, there was an actual hurricane. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| It was Pat Robertson being a dick after a hurricane. | ||
| It wasn't after the fact accusation. | ||
| This is something that may happen in the future. | ||
| Whatever natural disaster occurs next, we're just calling our shot on this one. | ||
| I understand that it's not that much of a meaningful difference, but it is very similar. | ||
| It is a threat. | ||
| Essentially, to the audience of like, hey, I know that maybe the heartstrings of your humanity might get tugged at and just think that these people are people. | ||
| But biblical retribution, Sodom and Gomorrah might be around the corner. | ||
| Do you want to take that bet? | ||
| He's essentially threatening people to not come any closer to embracing LGBTQ plus existence. | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| What I think is made clear here, that I don't think is the intent or whatever, but is what is underpinning this, is that conflict that he described. | ||
| She says reality is what she says it is, and I say it's not, because God. | ||
| I have a better reason for saying what I am saying to you, but essentially what that means is... | ||
| He believes that this reality cannot coexist with any others. | ||
| God's reality is the only one, which means everyone is subject to that, regardless of what you believe or not. | ||
| So that's not a coexistence. | ||
| You can't coexist with that. | ||
| Yeah, it's strange. | ||
| And I would wonder how frequently... | ||
| Levine's gender is an issue for Tucker directly. | ||
| Like, when is it ever... | ||
| Like, the dictating of reality for Rachel Levine in her own life... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| How does that affect Tucker and his reality at all? | ||
| You know, I... | ||
| It does not. | ||
| Unless you look at it like how you're talking about the realities being unable to coexist. | ||
| Yeah, I think, I mean, from... | ||
| Like, from talking to Talia... | ||
| There's a part of me that thinks what it really is is a young girl saying to Tucker, like, no, about anything. | ||
| At its heart, it comes back to what he is interacting with, and this is an expression of that. | ||
| If I can control this, then I can get all of it. | ||
| I can go all the way down. | ||
| Every little girl has to do exactly what I say. | ||
| Every single one of these people is under my control. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| There's a power element to it, sure. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, there's a power, there's a control aspect. | ||
| And then I do wonder, too, and not because of the opinions expressed, because I don't think that these opinions are out of step with what you'd expect from Tucker, but the presentation of it, the consistent misgendering, the dead naming, the bad... | ||
| The stupid presentation. | ||
| That aspect of it, I feel really does have to have some element of desperation in it. | ||
| Like needing to satisfy a crowd of some sort. | ||
| And that, to me, is kind of sad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it is... | ||
| Well, I guess the desperate need for power is also sad. | ||
| It's so sad because, elementally... | ||
| This would be Tucker going up to a person and just repeating over and over and over again, you are not a person. | ||
| You are not a person. | ||
| You are not a person. | ||
| Unless you exist the way I demand that you do. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And since you won't, I'm just going to keep repeating it. | ||
| And it's like, it is so obviously sad because look at me. | ||
| I'm standing right here. | ||
| You're the one who's acting insane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I am a person. | ||
| You can see me. | ||
| I am here. | ||
| This is what I am. | ||
| Fuck you. | ||
| You're the person who's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| I'm left with a lot of conflicting feelings, you know? | ||
| I mean, not really. | ||
| Fuck Tucker, and I think this is trash. | ||
| Conflicting feelings about concepts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not this. | ||
| Not even maybe concepts. | ||
| I'm left with conflicting feelings of, like, I'm not entirely sure exactly what the point of Tucker's episode was. | ||
| Why he felt the need to put it out, outside of my theory about desperation and dwindling numbers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But the other thing is, like, what is he doing? | ||
| What is he doing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I just, I don't, I'm having an existential problem because of Tucker. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, he's supposed to be, like, the big show. | ||
| He's supposed to be big! | ||
| I mean... | ||
| He's supposed to do a good job! | ||
| Like, he has a staff! | ||
| I believe... | ||
| He has millions! | ||
| I believe truly that if it is... | ||
| If we have accepted that it is wrong to defame somebody in public words only... | ||
| I agree that it is wrong to deadname somebody in public in the exact same way. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And it should have the same consequences. | ||
| It does in many... | ||
| Not the exact same consequences, but it does have consequences in many settings. | ||
| You know, social media has a number of rules. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I'm not sure Twitter or X or whatever the fuck it is. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| Wait, what? | ||
| Twitter's changing its name, apparently. | ||
| Oh, for God's sakes. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I've seen a bunch of tweets about this. | ||
| Maybe it's a prank. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| But yeah, there is... | ||
| I guess here... | ||
| Man, it's so difficult to put my finger on what my attention is. | ||
| But it's like disappointment in somebody who's supposed to be a professional. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he's not even giving shit about this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then also just that this is seen as acceptable by some people. | ||
| Like it's... | ||
| It's baffling to me that this level of meaningless anger and hate and bullying is valuable to an audience in some way. | ||
| That's very weird to me. | ||
| I mean, you could stand in the middle of a crowd, listen to Tucker, and my thought is just like, fuck you, you're not even trying! | ||
| As thunderous applause surrounds you. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So very, very strange. | ||
| So I was thinking about it, too, in terms of his existence on Twitter. | ||
| And, like, obviously the numbers going down, I think, are a reflection of, like, well, when somebody's saying white nationalist shit on Fox News, it's very exciting for the right wing. | ||
| But when someone's saying it on Twitter, their voice number 10 million... | ||
| Yeah, you're just yet another one of them. | ||
| Yeah, you have a suit, but, you know, that's about it. | ||
| And the thing, like, it does feel like there's a desperation in this... | ||
| Episodes tone and what have you. | ||
| But it's a desperation in the wrong direction. | ||
| Because even this is still just voice 10 million on Twitter saying this kind of hateful shit. | ||
| This isn't special in any way in the way that I feel like Tucker would want it to be. | ||
| Tucker's job on Fox News was to bring white nationalism to old people who aren't on Twitter. | ||
| And that's why we paid attention to him, is because he was bringing it to people who could do shit. | ||
| Now he's just on fucking Twitter! | ||
| Bunch of assholes on Twitter! | ||
| Who gives a fuck? | ||
| Yeah, it makes you wonder if the relevance was the broadening of the audience. | ||
| That was where the power lied with Tucker. | ||
| And I think that... | ||
| From everything that I've watched of the Tucker show on Twitter, I think that he made a bad gamble in thinking that his talent and himself is what was the driving force of the Tucker phenomenon. | ||
| I don't think it was. | ||
| I think it was Fox. | ||
| When you lead a mob, you don't lead a mob. | ||
| You're just at the front of it. | ||
| And when the mob decides that you don't lead the mob, you find out you were never leading the mob. | ||
| It's just that simple. | ||
| Yeah, and a really good way to lead the mob is have access to a bullhorn. | ||
| And when that bullhorn is taken away from you, you are far less effective as the leader of the mob. | ||
| We can't hear you! | ||
| Right. | ||
| You're on Twitter! | ||
| I love Twitter! | ||
| You're in the middle of the mob now! | ||
| I still use mail! | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| Anyway, I'd like to apologize to people for bringing this to their attention. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| Because this sucked. | ||
| I mean, it was bad. | ||
| This is brutal. | ||
| But yeah, we'll be back. | ||
| Indeed we will. | ||
| With another episode. | ||
| Indeed we will. | ||
| But until then, Jordan, we have a website. | ||
| Indeed we do! | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep, we're also on Twitter. | ||
| We are on Twitter. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| We will be back. | ||
| But until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZX Clark. | ||
| Hey, Alex, do you want to rethink that whole thing about Tucker being the most important man in America? | ||
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |
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