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June 4, 2025 - Lionel Nation
01:11:59
I Debated a Liberal and It Was Worse Than You Think
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Welcome to another episode of the Ted Manila Information Show.
That over there is the Ted.
I'm Manila Chan.
That's Ted Rall.
TMI Show for short.
Thank you for joining us on another Rumble Premium exclusive where it's no holds barred and we can have all the conversations that you can't dare to have on YouTube because it'll get taken down.
Just cut us right off.
Today we've got...
I'm going to pop him up on the stage now.
Aha!
There he is!
That is Lionel of Lionel Media, attorney, media analyst, legal analyst.
You can find him at Lionel.
that YouTube thing where we're still on.
Lionel just revealed...
Lionel's from the South.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
I'm a goat roper.
Oh, yeah, buddy.
What's a goat roper?
Well, I'll show you.
I'm stump broke.
That's all I'm going to tell you.
It doesn't matter.
I know.
Your producer knows.
That's all you got to know.
Ted, I guess it's a southerner thing.
By the way, you know how you can tell the inventor of the toothbrush was from Pensacola?
Anybody else would call it a toothbrush?
Just want to throw that one in there.
There you go.
And the national mouthwash there of Pensacola, is it Mountain Dew?
Producer Robbie, what is that, Robbie?
It's Coke.
It's Coke!
It's all Coke.
It don't matter.
What kind of Coke do you want?
It's all Coke.
Everything in the South is Coke.
It's all Coke.
Exactly.
It doesn't pop, soda, but no, Coke.
Any brown, fizzy, anything is Coke.
What about a clear fizzy thing?
No, we don't do that.
You don't do that?
It's all a Coke.
What kind of Coke do you want?
You can also tell somebody from the South and you can say, you know what you do when you get a chigger, be careful how you say that, a chigger, and that's not a conflation, you put nail polish on it.
You ever hear about these things about the stuff you get in Florida, the snakes and this, but we always have these, beware of chiggers, these things, these subcutaneous kind of parasitic things, and when you got one, you put nail polish on it and you suffocated it.
Oh yeah, this is my mentality.
We have those now.
Due to climate change, we've got them up here in New York.
We've had them for a few years.
Oh, you mean weather?
You mean weather?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The warmer weather.
The line is in New York, too.
Shiggers be out on Long Island, too.
Also, another little nugget of knowledge, if you ever have a dog that has the mange, if you give them a bath in diesel fuel, it'll kill the mange.
I've heard that.
Especially if you set it on fire.
Oh my god!
They were like paint?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
White.
They painted white.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Yeah, buddy.
What's the purpose of that?
I have no idea.
Forget Manila.
They do that all over the world.
I saw that in other countries.
Let's talk about this arcana.
Mr. Lyle, I can tell you why they do that after the show.
Okay, good.
We'll do that.
I told that joke to my wife once, and I thought she was going to slap the white right out of me.
But that was hilarious.
Yeah, there's a couple of them.
I think Robbie's going to want to weigh in a little bit later, especially because, well, you know, there's a lot of different racial issues here.
H-1B visas and people coming from overseas.
A lot of conversation to be had here.
So for right now, I'm going to kick producer Robbie off.
So Robbie, we'll send you to the background.
That's racist.
That's right, indeed.
Okay, so the reason I thought we've got to bring Lionel on is I received Lionel's newsletter.
How do people sign up for that, Lionel?
Just go to lionelmedia.com.
In fact, I've got one today that's out also about racism is the official sport.
We love race.
We love it.
We love to complain about it.
But just go to LionelMedia.com and there's a sign-up piece.
And it was about that wonderful Indian boy who won, yet again, the Scripps Howard or the Spelling Bee.
And it was, of course, people just go crazy over that because, for some reason, there cannot be any kind of specialized talents among people based upon either ethnicity or color or tradition.
That can't be.
And that is...
Indian as in the Vivek Ramaswamy Indian, not Native.
Not Native American.
So, not Native American.
Correct.
So, we've got the kids playing in the background here.
I agreed with, but it was still provocative, Lionel, I gotta say.
A lot of people are going to disagree with you to say that, you know, there are certain groups of ethnicities who kind of specialize in certain things.
And correct me if I'm wrong.
I read that in your newsletter that there's a reason that Indian American kids have, I think, I don't know, something like the last 20 years.
Why do you suppose that is?
Well, the reason is because of cultural differences.
These kids study and work on this like others would, would let's say involve themselves in athletics.
The, the, the, the mindset, the culture, the work ethic, the fact that, But the thing is, they're multilingual, but English is not their official language.
But when it comes down to this, hard work, family, tradition, values, all the things that other people don't want to talk about.
You know, it's funny, Malilla, we talk about DEI, diversity and whatever the heck, equality and inclusivity.
Yeah.
And we also have ESG, which is another one, too, which is the bastard cousin of that.
But when it comes to talking about diversity and inclusivity by virtue of hard work, that's verboten.
Do you know that in New York City, our old Mayor de Blasio wanted to stop, wanted to eliminate the basic testing for our two prestigious, or one of our prestigious high schools, Bronx School of Science and University.
Because too many Asians.
There's too many Asians we're getting in there.
That can't be.
Now, I would submit that if it was 100% black or African-American, they'd say, well, there you go.
I mean, it's virtual.
That my husband and I dreamed that one day our son could maybe get into is TJ, Thomas Jefferson.
It was nationally the top, the premier, the premier public high school in the United States.
Highest STEM, just everything about this school.
It was like 100% graduation rate.
Something ridiculous, like 98% of these kids got into Ivy League schools, and suddenly, the last couple of years, during the Biden administration, there was all this squawking about how, well, gee, this school had way more Asian kids, and then secondarily, white kids, and third, a small, single-digit amount, was other.
Could be any other, but we're talking Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, and then white kids, and then everybody else, right?
And the whole DEI movement during the Biden administration, they poured money into campaigning against the school to change, lower their admission standards.
That was supposed to be the prestige of going to the school was meritocracy, that you had to be above art.
No, of course.
What is the opposite of equality or something else?
This is where you deliberately gin up or jigger the results.
Based upon a result you want.
It's not equality.
Equity, equity, equity.
Let me ask you something.
I'm going to ask this question, and I've tried this for years on talk radio, and I do talk radio now, which is, of course, making a tremendous comeback.
I'm on WABC here in New York, back to my alma mater, and talk radio, hardcore talk radio, is like the vinyl.
You know how vinyl makes it back.
Kids are discovering vinyl where, believe it or not, people are taking talk radio and applying our standards.
Let me ask you this question.
Do you think Manila, do you think that and Ted as well, that Asian people look different, look differently than, uh, Remember the old days?
Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid.
Do you think that Asians look, either because of the apricanthus or whatever it is, do you think, for the most part, Asians morphologically and because of your physiognomy look different?
We'll just put Asians into this.
Do you think they look different?
Do you think they do?
Okay, yes.
If there can be a genetic phenotype or some type of genetic expression that allows Asians to look different, not better, just different, is it also possible that there could be a neurological, a gray matter, a cerebration or mentation quotient that allows them to think different?
To appreciate different.
Same thing with black folks.
Do you think there could be spatial differences?
Do you think that it could be possible that a race could be better at judging distance?
On the whole, not exclusively, just as people look different, people might think differently.
People may have different talents.
People may not be as good at it.
And I say, yes!
Of course!
On the biological level is what you're saying.
The problem is, I mean, so...
And because there's been so many studies that show that racial characteristics, they change so quickly depending on where people live.
So, for example, if you take Nordic people and you move them to Africa, to equatorial Africa, and they live there for 10,000 years.
which isn't really very long in terms of evolution.
But basically those outer characteristics, like whether your hair is straight or kinky or curly or your skin color, those things change within 10,000 years, if not quicker.
But your brain wiring, I mean, obviously it will change over time, but not that quickly.
So I think...
I don't think there's any studies that really indicate that there's substantial difference between the various three main races that you described.
No, but I also think you're kind of defaulting away from the usual.
That's a very nice PBS answer.
And that's great, and I appreciate that.
But just as you said change, there might be something to this.
I don't care what you say.
It's theoretically possible, but there's nothing to evidence that it's actually happening.
No, but I'm not saying there is.
What I'm saying is if there is, if there is, you might say, yes, there's something to this.
There have been studies, for example, that Native Americans.
That's been proven.
Well, now you're a sexist.
Their brains are wired differently.
Why wouldn't it be possible that Asian brains are wired differently or white brains are wired differently?
Because that's a genetic difference that goes back millions and millions of years.
No, no.
You're missing the point, Ted.
I'm not saying that's true.
I'm saying, and you're also reflexively, with all due respect, you're reflexively in a patellar reflex.
You're saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
There's a reason for that.
I'm saying it's completely theoretically possible that it could happen.
Yes.
So therefore, and it's not because of racism.
It's not because of anything else.
I'd probably say that for the most part, no, there's really not a big difference, other than, you know, morphology is one thing, height, and there aren't too many Cambodians on the NBA.
I recognize that.
I worked for a Japanese bank, and Japanese people are shorter than Americans, a lot shorter.
But then the ones who grew up here, holy cow!
They're like 6 '1", 6 '2", 5 '11".
And diabetic.
Anyway, but aside from this, I'm saying, and I'm not worried about saying this, it's probably not, but if the almighty God said, I want to make sub-Saharan, whatever, smarter on IQ tests, I'm just saying this.
I'm saying, okay, fine.
I'm not going to argue the point.
So if there are genetic, cultural, familial, whatever differences, Accept them.
Accept them.
And don't try to eliminate them by bidding them out or by being Mayor de Blasio in New York and saying, oh, I don't like the fact that we have too many Asians in these procedures.
We've got to change that.
You know that when you take these, a lot of black kids from schools who have never really, really been...
The flunk out rate is out of this world because they've never had this.
So somebody says, but what about the diversity?
But diversity without ability doesn't make any difference.
So then they have to lower the standards to allow or to have maybe a separate multi-tiered school.
And it kills the notion of competition.
That's all we're saying.
And the thing is, is that for whatever reason, for whatever reason, it just so happens that just like Mexicans make better jockeys than Swedes, there may be something to it, in addition to familial and cultural, that might give Asian, Indian Americans or whatever, a step up.
I think it's cultural.
I mean, you know, look, people eat with chopsticks because of culture, not because of the way their brains are wired.
And I think, you know, people who, if Indian people get obsessed over the spelling bee in a way that, say, the French don't, it doesn't mean that the French are worse at spelling.
It just means they're more obsessed with maybe cooking than they are with spelling.
So it's got to be – I mean, the thing is I totally – But in the absence of empirical evidence that shows that there's a genetic difference in the way that people think, you can't assume that there is, right?
I'm not saying there is.
I'm not saying that.
Let's listen to this video.
But immediately you go for it.
That's not hardwired.
That's cultural.
See, what you're doing is you don't even realize it.
It's like, maybe because you've been indoctrinated, maybe you've been so scared and demonetized.
I've thought a lot about this topic, and I find it fascinating, actually.
Maybe you're living in this timorous world.
And more to your point, there are physical differences.
For example, if a body is found, the forensics team can identify, based, for example, on the shape of your incisors, what race you are.
Like, oh, the victim had shovel-shaped incisors.
And therefore, it was more likely to have been East Asian than, like, a person who doesn't have those incisors is not Asian.
So that's, like, that's science.
That's just true, right?
You racist.
And let me tell you something.
After a couple more generations of grain, we're going to lose that.
You, you, you, you, you.
Could be.
You dentitionist.
Of course there is.
Look, I don't care what anybody says.
All I know is.
Everybody goes into, it was like, one, two, three, and me.
Here's my genetics.
Here's my blood test.
I have a predestined for this.
I have traits for this.
There's this incredible new, there's this new cholesterol test, LP little a, lipoprotein A, which everybody's looking at right now.
Oh my God!
People with really good cholesterols are like having heart attacks because of this familial genetic thing.
So anyway, if that's possible, I'm not saying it is, but if that's possible.
There may be something to this.
And that's all.
So if you tell me, for whatever, you know, fat people tended in the old days to be better opera singers and happen to be Italian.
Maybe that's cultural.
Maybe whatever.
I say embrace it.
Let's figure out maybe there's some other factors.
but I'm not hypersensitive like most of the people in groups of people who are not themselves included in the groups of the hyper-talented.
And they make some assertions here.
And one more thing I'll add to Lionel's thing about our genetics and blood tests or whatever.
So I have a condition called alpha thalassemia.
Have any of you ever heard of that?
Well, wear a long coat and nobody will notice.
Some Indian guy might be able to spell it.
That's right.
Alpha thalassemia.
It is actually within the iron deficiency realm, but it's not actually iron.
It presents as iron deficiency because my red blood cells are much smaller.
And guess what?
This is actually very common, if not the baseline.
For most people of East Asian ancestry.
So when it shows up in my blood test, they're not worried about me being actually anemic because I'm not iron deficient.
If it were to show up in your blood test or Ted's blood test, then you guys might be considered.
That's super interesting.
Yeah, there's lots of diseases like that.
Yeah, of course.
Sickle cell anemia.
Yeah, classic example.
Sickle cell anemia and others as well, which are weird adaptations.
I for example Am unable to digest Some carbohydrates And for some reason I right now have Hyperflatulence And see you laugh at that But I have lived my life With this horror And I don't appreciate You taking my particular horror And dismissing it I'm very sorry, Lionel.
I'm very sorry.
I can't be a scuba.
I'm sure she's very, very sorry.
I wanted to be a center.
I am very, very sorry.
Anyway.
So let's listen to this video.
probably would have put a crimp on your porn actor business as well.
True.
You had to become a lawyer because of it.
Indeed.
It would have been very interesting during litigation.
Yes.
The consequences of deficiencies in the education of Black students are grave.
And getting worse, in the sense that an increasingly demanding technology and an increasingly complex world economy have few places for those without skills of the mind.
Black students, by and large, lag appallingly behind whites, and still more so behind Asian Americans in those skills.
In 2001, for example, there were more than 16,000 Asian American students who scored above 700 on the mathematics SAT, while fewer than 700 black students scored that high, even though blacks outnumbered Asian Americans several times over.
This cannot be explained away by poverty, racism, or innate inferiority.
Even Arthur Jensen, the leading proponent of the theory of genetic racial differences in IQ, has said that among the disadvantaged, there are high school students who have failed to learn basic skills that they could easily have learned many years earlier, if taught in different ways.
Far from justifying the school's failures to educate black children or regarding these children as uneducable, Professor Jensen concluded, One of the great and relatively untapped reservoirs of mental ability in the disadvantaged, it appears from our research, is the basic ability to learn.
We can do more to marshal this strength for educational purposes.
In short, even the leading proponent of the belief in innate differences in intelligence does not believe that this could explain the educational deficiencies actually found among disadvantaged youngsters who could easily have mastered the academic skills in which they are lacking.
As for income, Asian American students from low-income families score higher on the SAT than black students from upper-income families.
But Asian Americans are not self-handicapped by the counterproductive attitudes toward education found even in middle-class black communities.
As for the racism of whites as an explanation of black educational deficiencies, there are enough black-run schools, colleges, and universities where there would be dramatically better results than in white-run institutions if racism were the explanation.
But no such dramatic differences are visible.
The segregated schools in which most blacks were educated for most of their history have provided a tempting explanation of racial differences in test scores and other indices of academic achievement, especially since the separate but equal rationale for segregation was a mockery in practice.
Okay, so with that in mind, obviously there's some controversial opinions.
And there's a lot there.
There's a lot to talk about.
There's a lot to unpack.
For example, this cultural conversation about poor Asian kids.
I'm one of them.
I'm the very first American-born kid in my entire family.
And they were immigrants fleeing communism, fleeing a civil war in Laos.
And before that, fleeing communist China.
And way before that, apparently, Siberia.
Because it was freaking cold.
Everyone floods Siberia.
That's why no one lives there now.
So anyway, here I am, born in California.
Poor immigrant family.
Had to flee with whatever they could carry out.
And I did pretty well on the SATs.
I did pretty well in school.
And, you know, for me, it was a culture of expecting excellence.
My family, despite them being poor, No, no, no, no.
It doesn't matter that you don't have this or that or the best calculator in school.
They demanded excellence out of me.
First of all, like Lionel said to the kid at the spelling bee, I'm trilingual, really.
And when I was younger, I even spoke French, but that kind of waned away and a little bit of Spanish.
But anyway, I was multilingual.
So that opens up another area in your brain.
That makes you more susceptible to learning and absorbing new things.
So just right out of the gates, me being bilingual and trilingual, that allowed me to more easily learn other things to begin with.
But then I had a family that regardless of our socioeconomic status, had an expectation out of me.
They expected A's.
If I brought home a B +, they'd say, why wasn't this an A?
You need to do something different to make sure it's an A. If it wasn't straight A's, I was browbeaten to death.
They were mellow compared to my dad.
I got straight A pluses, and my dad's like, what's with this A in gym?
But that's the point.
I think to Lionel's point, a lot of it, you know, is a cultural thing.
And perhaps the cultural thing stemmed The capacity to learn, like this video kind of outlined, is saying, is there more capacity in some than others?
Then you pair that with cultural values.
We have this disparity that we have, and then we try to attribute it to race or socioeconomic status.
It's very complicated.
There's a lot of things that go into the mix, and there may be things that we're not considering as well, or we might be overvaluing some, but there's a lot.
Well, go ahead.
Well, nobody's suggesting that the chemistry of this is not – That's not the bottom line.
Here's something interesting.
A while back, there was something called, I do not remember the name, but it was a fellow who was talking about why.
In fact, you can see on TED, on a TEDx, I don't really care for those, but a TED Talks, but there was one about how people and how certain people and ethnicities and size and morphologies do well in sports.
And they looked at long-distance running or, you know, marathons.
And there's one particular part of West African where they're all, in the past, you know, 1,000 to 2,000, the first non-African is like number 700.
Okay, fine.
And they were trying to explain maybe why.
What is it?
They only talk about twitch rates of muscles and people immediately – It was one explanation.
But they took immediate offense to that because you're saying that there could be a physiological...
It's more than just that.
They also looked at biological freaks like Michael Phelps, who was born.
His inseam of his pants is like the same as somebody who's five feet tall, but he's 6'4".
He's all trunk, and he can express...
The bottom line is simply this.
Some people love to, they hate to think that maybe, maybe there's something you either have a step up or a step down or an impediment or a benefit based upon something as awful as where you're from or what your family is.
And to some people, they have eliminated it.
And the first thing you do is, oh, no, no, no, no.
It's cultural.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
It's diet.
Oh, no, no, no.
It's something else.
We are born all the same.
Everybody's the same.
No differences.
Tabula rasa, the same lump of clay.
And you might have different eye configurations or your average height might be different.
But deep down inside, there's this equality and equanimity.
Not necessarily.
There may be some people who, in addition to societal...
And if it is, so be it.
I don't care.
But immediately when somebody argues over the fact without even looking at the data, look at this right now.
Look at this.
And when you ask somebody the question, like take your family, Manila, on a different level.
Did you have any particular...
Were you handed EBT cards?
Were you handed free insurance?
Were you given low-income housing?
Were you put in, were certain percentages of certain, let's say, schools or enrollment set aside for Laotians?
No!
For some reason or other, no.
Here in New York City, you will never see an Indian.
A Cambodian, a Persian beggar.
You will never see this in the street.
I've never seen him.
Never seen him.
And then when you talk about this, look at the number of Jewish people, because in addition, in that article, a piece I wrote, I did some data on, Jewish, less than 2% of the population here in New York, or in this country, a de minimis faction, have excelled beyond whatever.
Right.
And exactly from parts of Europe or whatever next to others.
So that's definitely culture.
Whenever you point this out, there are some folks, especially those individuals who consider to be on the lower end of the success rate, who blame institutional racism, some type of predisposition, a preference.
And that's kind of where we are.
And as long as we do this.
As long as we always say, well, there's a reason for that.
There's a reason.
As long as we do this.
You know, it's funny.
Whenever you have a race and you win the gold medal and they're having the Olympics, nobody says, hey, wait a minute.
Hold it.
Of course he won the gold medal.
Of course he did.
But I have to work.
I'm in a country that doesn't subsidize this particular race.
I had to work.
I had to work two jobs and train for this.
I didn't have a deal with Nike.
So therefore, based upon who deserves it most, I deserve it.
So give me that gold medal.
Yeah, sure, you were faster.
But there's more to speed than acceleration.
There's the worth involved in the recognition.
The worthy.
It's kind of like everybody gets a trophy type of stuff.
And that's where all of that argument has muddled this entire discussion.
I want to talk about the bare bones ability and other people.
By the way, I'm so distracted in a wonderful way by this B-roll.
That I lose myself.
Try not to do that.
I fall for that, too.
It's one of my cultural disadvantages.
Lionel, I do think, however, it's hard to downplay the role of things like structural racism.
I went to Columbia, full scholarship, poor background, and I was a TA in the math department.
And I had students who were clearly very smart, but had been admitted under affirmative action.
And when I would help them in the help room, they would turn up because they were having trouble.
Columbia requires calculus starting in freshman year, or at least they did.
And I would be like digging down, like what exactly, why are you having trouble with this problem?
And it would be like, In some cases, some of these kids who were Ivy League kids, to your point, Lionel, they're going to be thrown out because they don't know their multiplication tables.
How are they going to do calculus?
It's not possible, right?
So you're not doing them any favor.
But what we try to do in our country is we send people to And then we say, oh, don't worry.
If you were disadvantaged due to race, we'll let you into a fancy college.
But then you can't do the work because you're not prepared.
It's an ability thing, sure.
But it's an ability thing, not because you're stupid.
It's an ability thing because you didn't have the proper foundation.
And I mean, I think it's like really hard.
Like, for example, you mentioned the Olympics example.
It's a great example, actually, right?
Like if you ever saw I, Tonya.
Tanya Harding really kind of reflected how even though she was a striver, she had a lot of institutional disadvantages because figure skating is a rich person's sport.
And you need to buy the fancy outfits and you need to pay for the trainer.
It's very rough for a working class girl.
Whereas in Russia, they identify a talented figure skater when she's three or when he's three.
Bam!
They sweep them up.
They're not going to want for anything.
They're not going to be paying for any outfits.
The Russian Federation makes sure they're taken care of.
And they tend to do great at the Olympics, right?
I mean, how much support you get really does matter.
You can say, look at me.
I'm from a very poor background.
I went to an Ivy League school.
I succeeded.
I have 20 books.
I was a Pulitzer finalist.
I'm a story that's worth talking about because I'm the exception.
Most people in my situation are back home in Dayton, Ohio, addicted to methamphetamine and basically picking up a 12-pack of Strohs before going home to drink themselves to death every night.
I mean, that's how it goes for most people.
Well, interesting and kind of a different take.
Everything you said was correct.
Everything you said was correct.
The premise of this initially was I am not trying to figure out the purpose of this.
My particular position is not to determine why Asians do better or the reason.
We just know that they do.
But if they do, the question we should be saying is how do we replicate this?
How do we do this?
Do we want to?
Do we want to?
How important is it that people spell really well?
Well, not just spelling.
I think we're talking more broadly about college, school, high school, whatever.
How important is STEM?
That's always part of the political conversation around education.
I think a lot of that became part of the mainstream conversation in 2024 because of this guy.
And very recently, I mean, right before he jumped out of the Doge operation, he tweeted stuff that kind of caused a huge fracture.
Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted whatever he tweeted about H-1B visas and how that corporations can't find highly qualified workers, so they have to import them.
There's plenty of highly qualified workers in the United States.
They don't want to hire them and pay them.
How do you know that?
Well, because the statistics are very clear.
There are, you know, around four to five percent of STEM workers are unemployed or underemployed or unemployed.
Well, that could be.
But the point is, a lot of them are just 50 or 60. And like they won't be, no one will hire them in Silicon Valley because they don't, they have a, they're ageist assholes.
But what you do is, you are something, and I say this with all due respect, Ted.
You were the prototypical liberal.
You were the prototypical, archetypical, archetypal, knee-jerk, patellar, dyed-in-the-wood, dictionary version of the...
Oh, no, no.
That's not it.
That's not it.
It can't be that.
Yes, it can be.
It can be, but I just don't think it is.
That's different.
But your first reflex to everything so far, and I say this with all due respect, and I like your son, Ted, Mr. Grant, notwithstanding, there's always this idea that, look, I have been saying one of the biggest problems that we also have today are these American youngsters, as it were, young kids or whatever, these weird, strange kids who can't look you in the eye and can't shake hands and can't sign their names.
I call them children of the corn.
And when you talk to teachers and they'll say, these kids can't do anything.
They freak out.
You give them an assignment.
We lived in a country where all of a sudden there were people who were eliminated from positions in Washington because they were asked, next week we're going to ask you to give us five sentences of what you do.
You don't even have to be good.
Just we have an assignment and people couldn't even do that.
So what happens is, There's no excuse for this!
When people go into the Marines, when people go into hell, to join a gym, to be in a jazz class or a spinning class, there's no excuses for that!
Don't you think it's the job of your boss to define what you're supposed to do at work?
Not for you?
I mean, I think people just viewed it as insulting.
Five sentences?
Five sentences?
But like, okay, so let's say you hire me to do talk radio.
Well, you tell me what to do, right?
And then I do what you ask me to do.
These are implications.
Elon Musk was Was the special advisor.
I mean, bottom line is if you're working for the federal government, Elon Musk was brought in as the special advisor.
We can hearken back to the movie Office Space when the guys come in to interview everybody one by one.
But they were hired by the company to interview the workers.
Right.
And in office space, that's considered satirical to show how insulting the employer is to the employee.
I mean, because the employers, the bosses are so out of touch with their own workers, they don't know what the fuck is going on in their own company.
How did we get from that when I said, And now we're off to office space.
We don't know that they couldn't come up with it.
You make excuses for everybody.
You can't let people fail.
And you have a hard time saying you are inferior.
You are an inferior person, an inferior employee.
And whatever the reason is, whether because of your genetics, your mitochondria, or where you're from, you have failed at this.
Get out!
Look, I have no problem answering that question.
I would have no problem answering any question like that.
But I didn't ask that.
That's not what we're saying.
But maybe these federal workers who've been working there for years and who have been earning low salaries, lower than in the private sector, they feel they're contributing to the nation and the good of the nation.
What are you talking about?
That's what they think.
For somebody who's so brilliant who went to Columbia on a scholarship and a Pulitzer, you can't follow the simplest thing.
I'm telling you, there are people who say, Jesus, I've got the easiest thing in the world.
I've got to come up with five sentences next month.
Help me out.
Let me go to ChadGPT.
But no, they didn't do anything.
They stopped.
And they said, I can't do this.
And that was it.
And I could tell you from secondhand experience, I have insider, I have intel into the inner workings of how this is done, and I see things, I've seen them in real time, that many of these government workers, the reason they have the reputation that they have for being these idiots that just deliberately stand in the way of progress.
This has now been exposed by the threat of H-1B visas, by the threat of Doge coming in.
Much of that has been exposed.
I'm not saying Doge is perfect, but much of that has been exposed.
The ineptitude of the American attitude.
What happened to the American?
We can do it.
I can do this.
Let's get this shit done.
I'll tell you about it.
They don't do it.
When Elon Musk, whether this is true or not, how he said he slept on a couch and all this stuff, I don't know, it's true.
I think it probably is true, yeah.
I think it's bullshit.
I think it's complete bullshit.
Listen, for what he's done, God bless him.
And by the way, he is not the innocent, he is not, do not trust him like what he's doing, but he must continue to earn my trust.
Because you don't get to be a billionaire being a nice guy.
I don't think he saved the federal government a penny.
No, no.
Not enough, anyway.
That was what he was there for, right?
Aside from that, again, we're having the hardest time, I'm having the hardest time, focusing on a very simple fact without going off into the woods about other things and whatever.
Let me just focus on this one.
Okay.
I'll give you an example of people who said, I want a job.
I know, and we all have these anecdotal stories, and one in particular, I know of a girl who wanted to, where her dream was to work at some particular agency or whatever in D.C. Okay, fine.
And when she got this job, she says, you're not going to believe this.
They want me to come into work five days a week.
I said, yeah.
I said, in the old days, remember the old Goldman Sachs, you know, this one guy who died at his desk, you know, they were overworked.
Now it's like, because COVID killed the spirit.
Excuse me, I'm not going to work.
Whoa, whoa.
How many hours a week?
No, forget it.
I can't do that.
The millennials killed the spirit.
COVID gave them the cover.
And one of the things which is, but COVID gave us remote working.
And people sat around in their pajamas and watched Netflix and ordered from DoorDash.
Anyway, but aside from that, there was this other thing that happened, which is a really weird thing.
It's the idea that whatever you feel, you're feeling of anxiety.
You're feeling a pressure?
A friend of mine, for the first time, a while back said he works, he's an HR specialist.
He said that for the first time, people were showing up with their parents.
With their parents!
For jobs!
And the parents said, excuse me, when does he get off for yoga?
And they said, excuse me, who are you?
He said, I'm their parents.
You're their parent?
And they actually showed up.
So there was this idea that, wait a minute.
Where is this world?
Something happened.
Now, again, we can argue the cause all day long.
I swear to you, I have no interest in the cause.
And you, Ted, love the cause.
I'm sitting, I'm a doctor at an emergency room.
The patient is dying.
We have a massive MI.
We've got to act.
We've got to do some kind of interventional something or other.
And you want to talk about, well, you know, I think probably diet.
Had a lot to do with that.
Excuse me.
We'll get to that later.
I don't care why.
He's dying.
We've got to fix this now.
I don't care why.
It doesn't matter to me.
The patient is dying.
This generation is dying.
And we're losing this.
And we're, instead of sitting around and saying, you don't understand, starting immediately, you can complain, but somebody will take your job.
You can complain all you want.
You can attribute this to whatever you want, your movies and whatever, and the vitamin deficiency and I'm Asian or I'm black, whatever.
That's fine.
But in the meantime, I've got somebody who is from a country you can't even pronounce who wants your job and will outwork and outthink you and I'm going to pick this person.
So you go ahead and you go to your classes and symposia and talk about why you are disenfranchised and disenabled from doing this.
But in the meantime, that day is over with.
This is performance-based.
And let me also tell you something.
Let me just riff on that.
Okay, so forget about the whys.
I'm fine with that.
What do you diagnose?
What do you think the illness is?
What's wrong in your mind exactly?
Well, one of the things that's wrong with how we react to the problem.
For example, one of the ways you cure diabetes is not to change the numbers.
What do you have an A1C?
You have 75. That's terrible.
Make it 90 then.
You don't have it anymore.
Hey!
But you do have it.
But I'm going to call it something else.
Because you are so worried.
People are so worried about the diagnosis.
That they're worried about the reason why and let's change it.
And people get their feelings hurt.
Their feelings are hurt.
And we're creating generation upon generation of people who think that you can complain or excuse your way out of performance.
If Asian Americans or Native Americans or Swedish Americans do better on long jumps for whatever reason, that's the answer.
Not, why is it?
Is it diet?
Is the long jump unfair?
What about kids who are shorter?
No, we don't care about that.
Do you or do you?
Here's one for you.
Manila, if you wanted to be a fireman, or if I wanted to be a fireman, and one of the requirements is that we have to carry a 200-pound hose, whatever the hell it is, up a stairs, I don't care where you're from, I don't care.
If you can't do that, you're not a fireman.
If that is a legitimately important, let's say, position.
And I accept it.
I understand it.
Somebody else would say, wait a minute.
I'm a woman.
Now, it's funny how that transgender stuff works and it doesn't work.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't.
And I can't do this because that test is unfair.
Excuse me.
You're ill-equipped.
The test is fair because the qualification is fair and the ability is legitimate.
That's all.
That's it.
So we can talk about why.
We can talk about, well, maybe women shouldn't be.
You know what?
Maybe.
Maybe we shouldn't have women as firemen or people because they can't lift this amount on the whole.
But if you are that rare woman who can pick it up, fine.
That's the way it should be.
We don't do that.
We talk about diet.
We talk about the cultural biases.
We talk about the inherent, the male, this androgenic racism.
And we've had it.
And a lot of us have just had it.
And instead of us saying, good for you, Rami, Vivek, Shandalapan, good for you, you won.
We'll say, I wonder, I wonder if maybe the African-American, oh, here's one for you.
Remember, and I've got another little story coming up.
Do you know how people will say sometimes, why do black people say ax?
They can't say ax.
Do you know that that was actually the preferred version during the times of Chaucer and Shakespeare, which I find kind of interesting.
So I'm going to do a piece on that and say, surprise, ha ha ha, they've been saying this correctly.
No, they haven't.
Yes, they have.
Let's talk about that.
Let's talk about it.
When Jasmine Crockett said one time, she would say, I finna go.
And I said, this is ghetto.
I said, excuse me, that's not ghetto.
That's African-American vernacular English.
Not Ebonics.
And I said, excuse me.
If Ted or Robbie or one of us, we got up there and we, unless you're John Kennedy, spewed off some unintelligible, grammatically incorrect chain of English gibberish, we couldn't say, well, you don't understand.
That's Appalachian.
That's Northern Virginia, D.C. No!
We always want to explain away something that attributes this.
Sometimes you're going to say, excuse me, that's wrong.
It's just plain wrong.
You might say that at home, but that's not English or it's incorrect.
There's always an excuse.
Well, that's the way they were.
That's the way people spoke.
Manila, look at your family.
And again, I keep looking.
Are you, is the Chan dynasty somehow geniuses?
You're hard work.
They came here expecting nothing.
And everything you got, what they instilled, was based upon something in them.
It had nothing to do with genetics.
I have a name for that that I wish to put out there into the Rumble universe.
I call it rice paddy culture mentality.
There's a reason behind this.
It's obviously the Lao culture.
And ultimately, Greater China is basically what it was.
We're talking 5,000 years of culture and cultivation of wet rice farming.
Wet rice farming requires a great deal of fastidious, hard work in wet, soggy conditions all freaking year before you can harvest.
And then you save and you save.
That is the baseline of the culture.
It's all built around rice, right?
5,000 years worth.
Especially, you know, basically all East Asian cultures, right?
It's a rice, I call it the rice patty culture mentality.
And that's what I was brought up with, was you will reap what you sow.
and you have to sew and sew and sew.
And then one day you'll, My family came here, even though they believed, you know, America was this beacon of democracy and, you know, greatest nation on earth.
This is where you're going to have, we're going to have a chance.
We're going to have a chance.
So as soon as we have a kid, that kid will be American.
That kid will speak perfect English.
That kid will go to school and only speak English.
At home, learn both.
But outside of the house, only English.
None of this.
And I come from, you know, near East L.A. border.
There is a particular accent in that area.
It's like 87% Mexican-American.
And there is vernacular and there is accent.
But I was not allowed to soak up any of that.
There was a certain expectation and I had to bring the deliverables.
Now, I don't know what would have happened if I didn't deliver, but I always delivered.
I don't know what the alternative was.
You didn't want to find out.
I did not want to find out.
So I just kept delivering because the expectation was set forth by this rice patty culture.
And I think America has lost its way because of pop culture and what we expect out of our children.
He's the culmination of the two of our smarts, the culmination of both of our family upbringings, and I expect him to do better than me.
God forbid he become a journalist.
Not going to happen.
But I think there's a lot of...
Oh, I agree with him 100%.
American pop culture is the prom queen, is the duck lips, is the, hey, your road to success is put out a sex tape.
It's idiocracy.
And that's who American culture is.
Let me give you another one, too.
I'm a trial lawyer, a criminal trial lawyer, I guess by profession.
And we've been talking about this forever, forever.
And African-American population is, what, 13%, 14%.
I don't know.
But there's this overwhelming predominance or population in the criminal justice system.
Now, I'm thinking, all right, we can adjust for all kinds of things.
First of all, because they can't make bail and blah, blah, blah.
Okay, fine.
And we can argue that is the system racist?
Yes or no?
Aside from that, all I know is that's a fact.
It's very racist.
Of course it is.
And you have to say this because you went to Colombia!
You can't possibly say it!
I have to say it because I've observed it personally.
You have to say this because you're going to turn in your L card.
You're going to say no because black people don't do anything.
They're not in control of anything.
They're not in control of nothing.
They have to commit these crimes.
That's not what I said.
The system is racist.
It is a racist system, and the only reason why 40% of the population represents, let's say, 60% of certain things is because of a racist, not because they have a higher propensity, not because they have a higher predisposition and a higher frequency of committing crimes, because in your calculus, that's impossible.
Okay, but aside from that, but you see what you did?
The first thing you did, it's racist.
No, I said you said the system is racist and the system is racist.
Why isn't it racist for Laotians?
Why is it racist for Japanese?
You're going to hang on to this?
Ted, you are going to hang on to this because you know I've got you this time.
There is no other ethnicity.
There is no other ethnicity.
None.
None that by proportion equals falls into this trap.
And what we do is we sit around and we say, it's not your fault.
Of course, of course you have a record.
Of course everybody in your family has been arrested.
Multiple, I'm just saying, not in all cases.
And what we do is, in this paternalistic way of patting people on the head, it's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
It's a racist system.
Like, you had to shoplift.
You had to not have a driver's license.
There is something which is so interesting.
The number one response that people, officers, police officers, are hearing all over black, white, whatever the officer's ethnicity is, is people saying, I can't breathe.
They haven't even put cuffs on them.
All of a sudden, they're asthmatic.
I can't breathe.
I just pulled you over.
And there is this sense of, it is not your fault.
It's the George Floyd, the apotheosis of George Floyd, the beatification of George Floyd.
And people have been told, it's not my fault.
Black Lives Matter, George Floyd.
Remember, it's this thing.
Yet, there is no other version or expression of this.
From what we've been able to see.
And I'm not suggesting, believe me, 99% of black people have no problem whatsoever.
That's not what we're talking about.
But what happens is, there's this, they did what you did.
It's racist.
It's never, we don't even consider.
We're all responsible for the, you know, basically we're all given a certain hand of cards.
And we have to play those cards as best as we can.
And if you want to, if one wants to argue.
That point, I'm on board with you.
No question.
I mean, that's reality.
Everybody has agency for themselves.
And everybody's got advantages and disadvantages, things going for them, going against them.
But to say that, I mean, I'm not saying that systemic racism, which is undeniable, is an excuse to succumb to dysfunction, drug abuse.
You know, criminality.
But it's also true that, like, if you subject 13% of the population, millions and millions of people, to systemic poverty, racism, abuse, cultural marginalization, some of them will succeed, some of them will fail, but they'll fail at a higher rate in general than others.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right.
Yeah.
Your point earlier about growing up in Dayton and the kids you knew growing up are probably, you know, dead or alcoholic somewhere hanging out in Ohio.
And it's a bunch of white kids, right?
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true.
Yeah.
This is a class issue more than, I mean, race has an interplay with class, but class is more important than race, really.
I mean, it's like I would much rather be rich and grow up rich and black than grow up poor and white.
And again, we've completely missed the initial subject that I was talking about.
We're always explaining, it's not your fault.
I understand.
I understand, Mr. and Mrs. African-American or young people or gay or LGBT.
Cultural mores.
It's not your fault.
That's a dysfunction, but dysfunction tends to be bigger among people.
criminality, drugs, alcohol, all that stuff.
And they rob liquor stores more.
Maybe.
But Ted, but here's, you know, I'm leaning.
Like the Hamong in the Laotian population in the suburbs of Minneapolis.
Yeah.
Are they, they're a lot of.
Yeah.
And that's only there.
It's a cultural thing.
Let me just tell you, it's...
And historical.
Within your micro-cultural phenomenon, like, you are...
And I had a family that was more, that expected more out of me and kept my ass in line.
Could I have been?
I did.
Same with me.
I hung out.
My mom wasn't going to let me hang out with the groupers.
With Mexican gangbangers.
Absolutely.
They were all around me.
But I didn't become.
A gang member because I knew that was a dead end for my life.
My family put that into my head and I accepted that at face value.
Whether I knew it or not, I don't know.
I was 11, 12 years old.
But I accepted it at face value.
So what I think this boils down to in the argument that Vivek Ramaswamy was making that I believe, and I know we're running out of time here, but Vivek Ramaswamy said it and it erupted in the MAGA camp.
Is that American culture has shifted into this place where we no longer value families.
We no longer value religion.
In fact, we demonize people that like religion.
People like Robbie, for example, with deep-rooted family values, deep-rooted Christian values.
Those people are evil in American culture now.
People that want to Have a higher education.
They're made fun of.
They're not cool.
We value broadly in American culture this loser ghetto mentality, and it's just spread all over young American culture, and somehow they think they'll just make money from being some influencer or something.
But if you break it down by ethnic groups or racial groups, you will see the disparities of, you know, Within the black community, how kids are influenced into doing the wrong thing, or within the white community, what does that look like?
Or with the Asian, you can see the difference, and it's just what people value, whether in their tiny microcosm at home, you know, in their little apartment at home with their two or three kids, or the greater neighborhood that they grew up in, and then greater, when we say community nowadays, we're talking Asians aren't a monolith, right?
Ted, you pointed out the Hmong community in the Minnesota area.
My family came here around the same time in the 70s just as poor.
Just as poor.
But I guess for me, I lucked out being born in sunny Southern California.
I lucked out, but I grew up.
But I had my particular set of parents who, despite being poor, instilled in me that they And we see parents like that in the black community, too, who are like, they're not running in the streets.
But fewer and farther.
Yeah, there's fewer.
But it's fewer and farther.
That's right.
The crime problem, for example, here in Washington, D.C., out in Navy Yard, now that schools are getting out, there are whole giant gangs of kids, and I don't mean official gangs, I mean just in the term groups of children.
Goggles.
Gaggles of teens, primarily African-American, hanging out in Navy Yard, scheduling fights that they're going to stream.
Fights!
We're talking kids in the hundreds.
And they are breaking into cars.
They are doing the face punch thing to tourists out in Navy Yard walking around.
This is a community thing.
These are teenagers.
And the parents are not putting the lockdown on them.
That is my point.
To the point that D.C. City Council is actually considering putting like a 9 o 'clock, or I think it should be earlier, that when the sun goes down, if you're a minor, you need to go.
Ticket, take them all home, paddy wagon them, whatever.
Take them home.
If they're out on the streets, curfew, out.
You guys are all rabble-rousers.
You guys are causing havoc on the street, hitting old ladies, walking at a dinner.
That's not okay.
Their parents are not there to stop them.
And many of their parents actually defend them, are actually defending these kids.
Saying, my kids can be out there, but don't tell me how to parent.
No.
This is a society.
We live in a society.
I shouldn't have to feel unsafe or scared coming out of dinner at 9 o 'clock.
With my family at Navy Yard because I'm, I don't know, maybe the wrong color or just simply because I'm an adult coming out of a restaurant.
These families are no longer involved and these families don't really care.
They just don't care.
And that's why we're getting the result that we're getting of all these juvenile delinquents all over Washington, D.C. And yes, disproportionately, they are black.
That's not their fault.
It's not their fault.
What is it, Ted?
It's not their fault.
Don't blame them.
It's just the way it is.
Look, everything, it's like, let's just say, okay, so in my family, we have a predisposition for alcoholism.
You know, I mean, so obviously, that's a challenge, and it's something that I have to be aware of.
You know, I mean, is it my fault if I become an alcoholic?
Sure.
It's my decision.
But on the other hand, I mean, it's not entirely my fault, right?
I mean, there's a genetic predisposition.
There's a family background.
You know, it's easier for, it's a little harder for me than for someone who doesn't have that background.
There's a sort of, you know, I mean, I think it's like, is it your fault?
I mean, you know, you only have one life to live.
You have to live it the best you can.
And you want to not succumb to that dysfunction.
So is it their fault?
Sure, it's their fault.
Of course it's their fault.
That's how the law and Western philosophy sees things.
But, you know, is it surprising or shocking that this culture has spread?
Is there something that the system or culture or the political system could do to help?
Mitigate that?
I mean, yeah, also, right?
I mean, it's sort of like, look at smoking.
People, was it your fault if you smoked back in the 1970s?
Sure, it's your fault, but it was an addictive substance.
And then the government made it harder to smoke.
They banned it at work.
They banned it in restaurants.
They banned it on planes.
They banned it you couldn't even smoke outside of your building in the rain.
And now far fewer people smoke because of government intervention.
I mean, so was it their fault if they smoked?
Sure, but not entirely.
Well, again, I have absolutely no interest.
If there was a group of people, let's say you had two Laotians or Laos, I don't know how I'm pronouncing it correctly.
Just Laos.
You have this Lao group, and they have a genetic predisposition for alcoholism, and then you have the Irish.
Let's just assume you have two samples, hypothetically, and none of them are alcoholic in the Laotian, but they are in the Irish.
So what does that mean?
Well, maybe there's a different sense.
Maybe there's guilt or shame or whatever.
I don't know.
All I know is I'll let you discuss that.
I'll let you figure that one out.
But if I have a law that says drunk driving, It's against the law.
I don't give a rat's ass if you're Laotian, if you have a propensity, if you have this, if you have some kind of predisposition, if you're like some Native Americans who cannot assimilate alcohol, I don't care.
It doesn't matter to me.
All I know is that's what the law says, period.
And you got to figure a way around that.
And if there is a.
Or it comes into sentencing.
Not whether you're guilty or not.
Not for a general intent.
No, not really.
No, sorry.
Sorry.
But a lot of laws, right?
Like, for example, did Trump and Biden know that they were bringing classified documents on that they weren't allowed to?
Well, that's intent.
Right.
This is intent.
For certain things.
You have to general intent crimes.
For example, if you're brought in for spouse abuse, and you say, well, you understand, in my particular culture, we even have t-shirts.
We call them wife beaters.
No, we don't care about that.
We don't care about that.
I'm sure you can point to all kinds of things.
So if you're the first lady of France, off to jail you go for spousal abuse.
And she's not the first.
She's the first dude.
But that's another story.
That's another story.
But there's these other things too.
You know, years ago, remember when they were talking about Bill Cosby and Bill Cosby was alleged to, well, I was convicted of drugging people and raping them, women.
They said, you know, during the 60s, believe it or not, there were these things called Mickey Fins.
And it was not considered that out of the ordinary for you to slip something into your date's drink.
I don't give a damn about that.
I don't care about the 60s.
I don't care what that means.
But see, but this is the way he, this is.
The mindset of Hollywood.
I don't care what the mindset of Hollywood is.
I don't care what that is.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
All I know is we started with this today.
Asian Americans, this particular kid, he is part of this incredible historic goal.
There was a great documentary about why, whether because of genetic or inherent evolutionary predisposition to spelling greatness.
I don't know.
Hard work?
I don't know.
All I know is there's something.
There's something to do with this.
So what we do is, in America, we sit back and the first thing we do is, oh, no, no, no, it's not what you think.
Oh, no, no, it's not.
There's nothing special.
What I'm telling you is, believe it or not, Ted and Manila, you may be able to do things that nobody can do based upon how you were born.
It's an individual talent.
And that individual talent might then be the Chan family.
The Chan dynasty may have this.
A little particular tendency, predisposition, talent, ability, whatever it is, genius.
And then we can take it a little bit further.
Not only that, people in your certain parts of Laos have this.
And then we grow.
And yes, it is possible for there to be groups of people.
Who only have either skin color or whatever it is, maybe on the rarest of occasion, but it is theoretically possible for them to enjoy an ability and conversely, a detriment, an inability, a disability that their particular genetic predisposition provides them.
That's all.
Now, I'll let other people figure out what it is and if it applies.
I don't think we should excuse it, but we are not equal.
And if you think that we're all equal, you're out of your mind.
It's so fun talking to you, and I thank you so much for coming out.
I have to go, but you guys can keep it going.
I think Robbie has a question for you after I leave.
Thank you.
I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Thank you so much.
Very interesting.
Take care.
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