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Feb. 3, 2025 - Louder Than Crowder

01:47:11

EPISODE 54: PRECARIOUS DEPOSITION (AUGUST 26TH, 2024 & MAY 8TH, 2023)

This week we analyze Steven's oral statements, made after he wrongly accused someone of being a neo-Nazi, mass murderer, in a deposition conducted by hero lawyer Mark Bankston. Is he fine with it? Like what we're doing? Want MORE for FREE? Join the Shrug Club at http://patreon.com/shrugclub Email: louderthancrowder@gmail.com Twitter/X: @thancrowder Music by DJ Danarchy

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Time	Text
	This is an AudioWool original.
	Uh, no.
	Sure, yes.
	Okay.
	Louder Than Crowder, a podcast about the Podcast Louder with Crowder.
	My name's Byron, and I'm joined in the studio.
	The Lone Star Brothers have broken up, and Dennis has returned to me.
	I'm so thankful to be back, and I sounded so bad on the last episode, so I'm sorry for everybody.
	You sounded like absolute trash because you were going through your iPod headphones there.
	So I'll tell you, I was laying quietly in a room with my wife sleeping next to me, and she only heard my track.
	I was sitting there in silence for like 20 minutes, and then I'd be like, What a piece of shit!
	Soon to not be in silence, all the way in Occupied Texas, it's Jared.
	She's like, who did I marry?
	Tourette's dad?
	Basically, yeah.
	And also, I was in a house with a lot of other people.
	Yeah, we heard you kind of rustling around, opening up screen doors and kicking stuff.
	I cut most of it.
	Good, thank you.
	Welcome back.
	Hello, it's me, Jared.
	Nice to see you.
	Yeah, there he is.
	Glad to hear you.
	I wish I could have seen you in Texas, but we were...
	We were about ten hours away from each other or something like that.
	And it's been a whirlwind.
	Trump is president.
	What?
	Not my president.
	Despite our best efforts last week, Pete Hegseth was confirmed secretary of defense.
	I thought we would have swayed the minds of Congress.
	They didn't hear the episode.
	More hearings are taking place.
	Tulsi, RFK Jr., Kash Patel.
	Trump is doing what he does best.
	Firing folks and freezing funds.
	And then unfreezing funding.
	Yeah.
	All will be revealed surrounding the assassination of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King.
	Certainly not the files surrounding his pal Epstein being released.
	Those might come out bad.
	Yeah.
	He was worried about some, you know, it might be weird what's in there.
	Uh-huh.
	All the hostages are free and pardoned from the DC gulags.
	Finally, man.
	One of them we'll talk about in a minute.
	But first, I've been going through it a bit lately.
	So thanks again to the...
	Do you want to talk in detail on the show?
	We sure could.
	If you'd like, maybe we'll throw that behind the wall.
	A special Crowder therapy episode.
	Nah, I'm good.
	Thanks, my Lone Star brothers, for taking good care of me.
	I do know one thing that always cheers me up.
	Is that clip of Fundip Dan?
	Oh man, I tell you what.
	This one?
	Oh man, I tell you what.
	More than that, it's a Steven Crowder follow-up.
	I love a good follow-up.
	So last episode we premiered his new catchphrase.
	Oh yeah, he's fine with it.
	He's fine with it.
	How fine do you think he is now?
	Probably not very, usually.
	He's never actually fine.
	He's just covering it up.
	I bet that he's like walking it back a lot.
	YouTube...
	Oh, no.
	Now you got me thinking.
	Now you think he's really fine with it?
	Maybe he is fine with it.
	No, he's never going to be fine with it.
	He needs the friction.
	He needs the attention.
	What is he going to do without his YouTube strikes?
	That's a great point.
	I dug into the transcripts of his YouTube every episode since the last time that we recorded.
	He was only fine with it one...
	Really?
	So he wanted to have this phrase, but it didn't land the way he wanted to?
	And it was in agreement with a different behavior than the previous times.
	Not so much the transphobia or the racism.
	Yeah, but he likes butts!
	Oh, I'm fine with that!
	And beer!
	Oh, so it was a mockery.
	It was a little bit of light misogyny, plus Gerald being kind of a loser.
	Sorry, I have a soundboard now, so this is not great for us.
	Byron, if you are there, come up.
	I'm right here.
	Sorry.
	We have him on the show?
	That's amazing.
	Our president, 47th one.
	How did you do that?
	I know.
	That lasted very shortly, kind of like his last one.
	Clean Slate.
	Clean Slate was only about a week as well.
	He tries all these things and they never land.
	This one landed, I thought.
	I felt like it was going to land.
	And truly, they have no problem stating that they're fine with beer and butts, which I guess I'm fine with.
	Fine with beer and butts?
	I'm fine with that, yeah.
	Bipartisan issue.
	You know what else I'm fine with, boys?
	What?
	The Shrug Clubbers and Chowderheads at shrug.com.
	Hello, Shrug Nation.
	You've entered the Shrug-tuation.
	Folks who have, of course, decided to financially support our efforts to monitor and mock Stephen, his guests, and the people he pays to tolerate him.
	It's been a long time coming.
	I finally want to start thanking the folks who are joining us at Shrug.com.
	And the first person who did this was Branigan.
	So I'd like to say thank you, Branigan.
	Thanks, Branigan.
	Thank you, Branigan.
	You piece of shit.
	Also, Matthew B., thank you so much.
	Thanks so much, man.
	Matthew B. What a piece of shit.
	Oh, my God.
	And finally, Kicker Mike.
	Kicker Mike is my favorite.
	Yeah, really appreciate you, Kicker Mike.
	Kick this one off, Mike.
	He's a piece of work.
	Piece of shit.
	Piece of shit, sorry.
	Thanks so much, guys.
	If you like our show and would like to support it, go to shrug.com.
	That's the place to do it.
	Yeah, sign up.
	Be a piece of shit.
	Sure.
	It's also the place where you can access VODs of our live streams and content that may be too hot for the main feed.
	Oh, man, I tell you what.
	The hot stuff.
	The hottest stuff, yeah.
	So, last week, Stephen teased...
	What do you think of that?
	It's kind of fun.
	I love it.
	I love it so much.
	Okay, good.
	I'm glad.
	Pretty funny.
	What a piece of shit.
	You piece of shit.
	Piece of shit.
	So, last week, Stephen teased that they would have the first interview with seditious conspirator, J6 hostage, and serial name historian Enrique Toro.
	Yeah, the classic old, I'm sorry for what I did, but now that I'm out, I'm not.
	Yeah, unfortunately, that interview...
	It was given to Alex Jones at Infowars.
	Oh, whoops.
	So a few days later, Tario's first sit-down interview was released.
	With Stephen?
	Well, that's the interesting thing.
	It's still a first.
	This is the sit-down.
	Okay.
	But, yeah, it wasn't with Stephen.
	He didn't conduct the interview.
	It was Brianna Morello.
	Okay.
	Tom Morello's daughter.
	That's not true.
	This is former producer at Fox News.
	She quit after 10 years of being there over COVID vaccine mandates.
	She seems like a lot, having claimed in October of 2024 that FEMA was diverting disaster relief funds a billion dollars to support the illegal invasion.
	Cool.
	She also alleged that TSA was using facial recognition software, storing and sharing passenger images for Homeland Security, and then claimed to be on their undesirable list.
	I don't know if they have that.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	She said that she got an email from an employee at TSA that stated that that's...
	Really?
	Yeah, it's a thing.
	That's so funny.
	She sounds like a really fun person.
	Yeah, this sounds awesome.
	I wish TSA would email me and tell me my standing.
	Wouldn't that be nice to know?
	You can check your Uber rating.
	I'd love to know my TSA strike count.
	We've checked your Pelican box a hundred times.
	Mine dipped to like 4.8 something for a while.
	Oh, your Uber rating?
	Yeah, and I realized it was because I was doing zero conversation and had my earbuds in the whole time.
	And then I started talking to people and they went up.
	I feel like that's...
	Sometimes they're like, I don't want to talk to you.
	You can feel it.
	You can judge.
	But I was kind of...
	Because I usually go to South by Southwest where I'm Uber.
	Ubering in and out and all over the place.
	I'll check mine and I'll let you know at the end of the show.
	Mine went down the other week when I was coming home from the airport after seeing you boys the last time.
	I said, hey, don't go down.
	This is a one-way.
	Don't correct people.
	We didn't.
	We didn't fix it until about four blocks in.
	And I was like, you might as well just take a left here.
	We're closer to my house than we are going the other direction.
	And he didn't like that.
	Didn't like it?
	4.87.
	That's not bad, right?
	It's not good, though.
	No, I wish I was better.
	I need to talk to people.
	Speaking of bad, let's hear just a second of that interview between Enrique Tarrio and Brianna Morello.
	You just were pardoned by President Trump.
	This is your first sit-down interview, so welcome.
	Thank you, Anna.
	I'm actually honored to be on...
	on this show and be here with you and be here with your audience and Steve.
	I'm actually kind of disappointed that we didn't have the Steve Crowder mugs.
	Oh, Mug Club!
	The Mug Club?
	Yeah, yes.
	Well, we'll get you some.
	Those are vintage these days.
	Yeah, I'm holding it against them.
	Lots changed since he was locked up.
	What a weird vibe.
	The mugs are no longer available.
	I don't know if you're aware of this.
	Since there's no more Mug Club, it's all Rumble Premium.
	There's no more mugs.
	Do you buy anything if you sign up for Rumble Premium?
	They're doing dick straws now.
	Okay.
	Nice.
	This is not a bachelorette party, folks.
	Well, not for you.
	That's a good point.
	We'll have to talk to you another time.
	I was kind of banking on the interview.
	I know Jared knows that that was what I was intending to talk about.
	Yeah, we listened to some other bullshit instead, huh?
	Yeah, I was feeling a bit deflated.
	That was until two videos from Caster, Lynch, Farrar, and Ball LLP's YouTube channel popped into my feed.
	Today's day is August 26th, 2024. The time is 1.31pm Central Time, and we are on the record.
	Mr. Crowder, if you'll raise your right hand, I'll swear you in.
	Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give in this matter will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
	Yes, ma'am.
	Thank you.
	In the words of stand-up comedian Dan Licata, you know we had to do it to him.
	This is the August 26, 2024 deposition of Stephen Crowder as conducted by hero lawyer Mark Bankston.
	That's so kind of them to do it on your birthday.
	I know, right?
	All right, sir, can you give us your name for the record?
	Stephen Crowder?
	You are the founder of Louder with Crowder LLC? Yes.
	Louder with Crowder LLC is your media company?
	Yes.
	you operate a website and make internet videos?
	Objection form.
	Yes.
	And he recorded this in the toilet at the studio?
	No.
	It does sound a lot like that.
	Yeah, the audio quality is not fantastic.
	But before we get into it, as was stated during our first episode of this podcast, we were inspired by a number of different shows.
	But the one that deserves the most recognition is clearly Knowledge Fight.
	As we've gone on, I've tried very hard to not bite their style as much as possible, cover Steven in a different way, in a different cadence.
	The formulaic objections series focusing on depositions of Infowars employees is masterful.
	I think it was one of the first things I showed you, Dennis, of Knowledge Fight.
	We had a great time listening to that after drawing a little road trip.
	It's wholly theirs, and I was very close to leaving lawsuit interviews to them.
	But...
	Shrug Nation went depo crazy on me.
	We got emails.
	People were atting me.
	Mentions on message boards and in Facebook groups.
	People were bored.
	That's why they were shrugging so much.
	We got to give them what they want.
	More depos and more of Public Justice 2023's Trial Lawyer of the Year, Mark Bankston.
	Of course, the man responsible for the Perry Mason moment when he revealed to Alex Jones while he was on the stand that Alex's lawyer had accidentally given him access to two years of cell phone records, revealing that he was entirely full of shit.
	Leading to a significant victory of almost $50 million in damages awarded to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of Jesse Lewis, who was killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting.
	Remarkable moment and kind of the first time that Alex Jones was held accountable for all the fucked up shit that he's done over the years.
	Yeah, I mean...
	Did he pay that out?
	Did he actually?
	Not yet.
	But, yeah, I just want to give credit to the King's Jordan before we move forward.
	I also want to give a little bit of context as to why Stephen is in the hot seat.
	I'll read directly from the petition who Mark represented.
	In their haste to cash in on the eagerness of viewers and readers to learn the identity of the May 6, 2023 mass shooter at the Outlet Mall in Allen, Texas, several media organizations recklessly disregarded basic journalistic safeguards and published the photo of an innocent man several media organizations recklessly disregarded basic journalistic safeguards and published the photo of an innocent man branding him a neo-Nazi murderer to his local Whoops. - Oops.
	Louder with Crowder.
	They were just one of a handful of defendants named in this lawsuit.
	Hollywood Unlocked Incorporated, which I've never heard of.
	Newsmax Media, Owen Schroyer.
	Wow, okay.
	From Infowars.
	Timcast Media Group.
	Couldn't have happened to a better guy.
	Yeah.
	Televisa, Univision, Today News, Africa, LLC, and Simon Atiba.
	This case implicates the ever-deepening dysfunction in American media.
	As a cost-cutting measure, many of our legacy media organizations have dismantled the institutional guardrails previously in place to prevent the publication of false information.
	at the same time a growing number of hyper politicized alternative media organizations are managing to attract significant audiences using a low cost business model that has no interest in institutional guardrails to begin with the result is a media structure that is failing from top to bottom there's too little investment in newsroom capacity too much dependence on social media rumors and a growing financial incentive to rush publication before verifying facts gotta get it out dude
	Is this kind of like when Trump blamed DEI for the plane crash?
	Oh, wow.
	I guess it is kind of like that.
	The consequences for the public are dire, not merely in terms of a poorly informed citizenry, but in the reputational and emotional damages caused to individual citizens when accuracy is sacrificed in the pursuit of profit.
	The lawsuit seeks to address that harm.
	That makes sense.
	This is the really awful stuff.
	In the afternoon of May 6, 2023, an individual arrived at the Allen Premium Outlets, a large outdoor mall in Allen, Texas, in a gray Dodge Charger, stopping abruptly in the middle of a parking lot.
	Without hesitation, he exited the vehicle and immediately began firing at shoppers on the sidewalk using an AR-15 style rifle.
	The gunman, wearing tactical gear and armed with multiple weapons, continued his rampage, advancing towards the sidewalk while maintaining a barrage of gunfire.
	The attack lasted approximately four minutes before an Allen Police Department officer, who was at the mall on an unrelated call, confronted and fatally shot Garcia at 3.40 p.m. near the Fatburger restaurant.
	Was the police officer at Fatburger?
	I don't think so.
	Unsure.
	And I'm not going to report on that because I don't know.
	In a matter of minutes, five adults and three children were killed and seven other victims were wounded.
	The murderer, 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, was a far-right extremist.
	On the day of the shooting, no details were released about the shooter, but over the next three days, media organizations reported on his identity based on the release of his name and date of birth by law enforcement.
	During that process, several media organizations ignored elementary journalistic precautions, and as a result, from May 7th through 9th, they accused the wrong person, Mark's plaintiff, 36-year-old Mauricio Garcia, who had nothing to do with the shooting.
	But the name's the same.
	Yeah, I guess you're right.
	Are there any other Steven Crowders?
	Should we interview somebody else named Steven Crowder for the show?
	That's not a bad idea.
	In a court declaration, the innocent Garcia described the mental anguish he went through after being incorrectly identified.
	I can't imagine.
	Yeah.
	On May 7th, 2023, I first began to learn about the false accusations made against me in the media.
	I spent the next week in a total panic.
	Nobody could calm me down.
	My physical and mental state completely broke down.
	As the days passed and the more I learned about all the false accusations, I also spent so much time thinking about the huge number of people across America who believe I committed the worst crime imaginable, being a neo-Nazi murderer of innocent children.
	He added, To think a handful of these really respectable programs decided to run with this.
	I mean, Steven Crowder, he wasn't on that list of people, was he?
	Oh, yeah, he most certainly was, yes.
	I guess it wasn't implied.
	I don't even know if you said that or not.
	Yeah, yeah, it was him and Tim Poole and all the boys doing really cool, good work.
	Just great journalistic work.
	So I am going to dip in and out of the...
	I'm glad you see it that way, too, man, because I've been thinking for a while that we haven't been giving them enough, especially...
	Especially Tim Pool.
	Not enough flowers.
	Dude, well the fake news media won't tell you the truth.
	Piece of shit.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And I was saying the same thing, you guys.
	This is...
	Yeah.
	I think we're gonna blow the lid off of it.
	Sure.
	I hope so.
	So I am going to dip in and out of the May 8th, 2023 episode of Louder with Crowder.
	Allen, Texas mass shooting media lies in the truth about the killer.
	Bold claims.
	The day after the shooting.
	Jesus, man.
	Yeah, things like this clip that really sets the tone of seriousness that we've come to expect from the show.
	Of course, yeah, the comedy show.
	It's Gerald A., number two, CEO. How are you, sir?
	I'm doing well.
	It's a rough weekend, obviously, with a lot of stuff going on.
	There was actually another thing that we'll talk about in a minute, like a scare in the area of a potential shooting.
	Just hours after that.
	Right.
	Stuff that happened in Brownsville.
	So heavy, heavy weekend.
	You bought your shoes at the Allen outlet.
	I didn't realize that.
	Show everyone your crappy shoes.
	They're not crappy.
	Show everyone your embarrassingly bad shoes.
	Yeah.
	There you go.
	There you go.
	Wow.
	What are you doing?
	You're doing the Rockettes?
	You didn't have to do that.
	He showed his bad shoes in a bad way.
	You said to add comedy to the segment.
	I did not.
	Not from you.
	Comedy, not cringe.
	And now they have a new theme song.
	You know and we love them.
	But when you hear this...
	That means that they're in third chair.
	You can follow them at conservative twins.
	He doesn't know.
	The Hodge twins, Keith and Kevin, how are you guys doing?
	We're hanging in.
	Life's tough.
	I told the guy I like Queen a lot better than that.
	Yeah, but they'll sue us.
	We wouldn't get a strike for that.
	Oh, okay, yeah.
	Oh, I see.
	There's a subtext.
	Great, the Hodge twins are there.
	Awesome.
	Are they still friends?
	I mean, this is back in 2023. I don't know what their current affiliation is.
	I know that they all work with the Bigly boy, the guy who runs all their truck.
	The truck.
	Yeah, the truck boy.
	Yeah, the Hodge twins.
	I don't think that they would care, but it does appear that Stephen forced them to use the Kanye Jay-Z song off Watch the Throne instead of the song that they requested.
	Queen.
	As their entry music.
	Oh, they requested Queen.
	Yeah.
	And he's like, how about that?
	This song that uses words, I'm not allowed to say.
	Yeah.
	Very cool.
	Cool.
	Just to add to the Kanye thing, this is like right during his Kanye's a Nazi moment too, isn't it?
	Like 2023?
	I mean, he was definitely wearing the red hat, right?
	That was 22. It was red hat and then it was Nazi, which I think Nazi was last year.
	Kanye praises Hitler and embarrasses...
	It was summer of 22 or fall of 22. Really?
	Praises Hitler and embarrasses the Republican Party.
	In 2020?
	It's been that long?
	December 1st, 2022. Oh, wow.
	Yeah, this is when he was on Alex Jones' podcast wearing the black mask.
	That was not 2022, was it?
	December 1st, 2022. We asked Nick Fuentes about it in October of 2022. God, wow.
	Time really does fly, huh?
	Sure does.
	What a fucking crazy sentence to say.
	Yeah, I know.
	So, yeah, we're going to return to the deposition, but I do want to paint the picture of what's going on here.
	There's no way Steven has a MacBook, right?
	I mean, he probably does.
	You think he's a Mac guy?
	I think he is.
	All right.
	He's not like a Dalek dude or Alienware guy?
	No, I think he's probably a MacBook guy.
	Well, either way.
	Lenovo, Lamer.
	He's got that new one that, like, you can push the button and the screen extends upward.
	I've never seen that.
	That sounds cool.
	The screen physically gets larger.
	I literally bought a new MacBook Pro today.
	I might return and get that.
	You should, yeah.
	So Stephen's got a low-quality webcam and a big, gross beard.
	Behind him is a white-painted cinder block wall as if he's in a prison.
	Well, it feels more like...
	School gymnasium?
	Yeah, school gym is definitely the vibe that I got.
	Maybe it's the church gym.
	But the painting makes it feel not so church school.
	I love this.
	There's one odd painting of cowboys on the wall behind him.
	Yeah, it's like one of those...
	Intentional.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	It definitely feels kind of like, we're just a band of brothers here.
	Yeah.
	Well, him and his brother were talked to as part of this deposition, which I will say...
	Wear headphones next time because we can definitely hear the questions from Mark Banks and echoing in response.
	When I was watching this, I thought about wherever they are, I would not want to do a deposition in a place important to me.
	Sure.
	I would be like, I'm going to go to a park or something that I never want to return to because I would not want to go back to the trauma of a deposition.
	It'd be traumatic.
	Yeah, I get it.
	I mean, if you're a person with a soul or something.
	Yeah, or anxiety.
	Empathy or anxiety, yeah.
	Where would you want to do a deposition, Jared?
	If you could do a deposition anywhere.
	If you could do a deposition anywhere.
	Yeah, I think Stephen's got it right.
	Doing it in the toilet at work is probably, like, the...
	Maybe the best spot.
	Maybe the best spot.
	If you're defending some amount of money, you know?
	Motels, the seedier, the better.
	Like, you need to, you know, it needs to be, there's a Zenith television plugged in.
	A CRT. A CRT, exactly.
	A tube.
	You know, I stayed at a Motel 6 that I got bed bug bites from, so I would go there.
	I'd go back there.
	You gotta go back there, yeah.
	And you gotta do it from in the bed.
	And I do it from the lobby.
	I do it from in the bed.
	With no shirt.
	Lights off.
	Yeah, that's cool.
	Come and get it, boys!
	Oh, you should also mention at the lobby, he picked up a Waterloo lemon-lime seltzer, which is in his hand, which is gross.
	Outwardly, he does seem to be relaxing quite a bit, but inside, I feel like he's got to be like, Oh!
	Oh no!
	Whoa, what a fucking nightmare!
	Feeling like that.
	Yeah, probably.
	I'm not going to do this all the time, just so everyone knows.
	We'll get more clips.
	I don't think I should be running a soundboard at the same time.
	We'll do more, don't worry.
	Mark inquires a bit about Louder with Crowder's operation.
	And it kind of comes off in a minimizing way, which I do appreciate.
	Sure.
	What else do you do that you would say that your media company does?
	Well, it's a general media company.
	They sell CDs.
	There's a daily program.
	There's a separate reporting and investigative reporting unit, and the website operates separately where someone writes articles.
	So social media, you know, kind of all-encompassing media.
	Okay, so I've got...
	Internet, there's a daily show.
	Let's start there.
	All right, that's a video show, correct?
	Yes, sir.
	And I know that it's also, you can get it in pure audio format, too, over podcast, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	As far as those videos, where would I see an episode of Ladder Wave Crowder?
	Well, it depends, you know, at what point in time.
	So usually YouTube...
	You don't really see it.
	You kind of experience it.
	And then Mug Club, which is, you know, operated under Locals, but for a period of time it would have been...
	And pardon me, I'm sick today, so if I cough...
	Oh, fuck.
	I'm going to be distracted.
	It would have been under Blaze.
	So Mug Club was operating under Blaze at one point.
	Sick as a dog.
	That's my way.
	How far are we into this episode?
	Only about two minutes into the depth.
	Nice.
	Yeah, wonderful.
	So standard, then.
	Yeah, I mean, he's just kind of doing his show at this point.
	Did he take a sip of the water and be like...
	No, I wish he did.
	That would have been so sick if he did a sip at the beginning.
	He should have even brought a mug!
	He should have.
	If he was a true badass, he would have.
	Missed up.
	But he's maybe scared.
	Having established primarily that it's a streaming show, he further confirms this.
	You're not carried on any cable stations?
	No.
	You're not carried on over-the-air broadcast television?
	Not today, no.
	Do you have any licenses with radio stations, anything like that, to broadcast your show?
	Not today, no.
	Are all those answers same truth in May 2023?
	I believe so.
	So you're just a YouTuber, is kind of what Mark is establishing here.
	He jumps really quickly into a question that starts off any good deposition.
	Did you do anything to prepare for this deposition?
	No.
	I had read the files that were sent over from your attorneys.
	Well, yourself, I guess.
	The files.
	Can you tell me what you mean by that?
	The documents.
	The complaints.
	Okay, in other words, the lawsuit that was filed.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Good.
	He read the documents, at least.
	Yep.
	So it's good.
	I mean, that's more than what the corporate representative for Infowars did in a deposition.
	I didn't watch that.
	Completely unprepared.
	It was actually really great.
	Rob Dew.
	Oh, great.
	We then explore a bit about the work that Stephen put into being a professional news commentator.
	As far as educational background, it's my understanding you attended a couple semesters of college.
	Correct.
	Okay.
	I think it's fair to say you have no educational background in journalism?
	No, I wouldn't agree.
	Okay.
	Can you explain to me what your educational background in journalism is?
	Years of experience.
	I'm asking specifically, we'll move on to your work experience.
	I'm talking about your education at this point, if you have any educational background in journalism.
	Well, I did study media for, as you said, two semesters in college.
	Okay, so when you were in college for those semesters, part of that included journalism courses?
	Part of it included, yes.
	Broadcast.
	Okay.
	So not journalism at all.
	Broadcast, which is very different.
	I think he implied broadcast journalism, but it wasn't very clear.
	I don't know.
	I think he's just learning how to use a camera.
	Yeah, it is funny with the user experience.
	That's not education.
	Experience is not education.
	You do learn in experience.
	It felt very funny.
	It felt like...
	Someone justifying to their friends why they should apply for a job they're totally not qualified for.
	Sure.
	There was a period of time where I submitted to be an editor for local news.
	Oh, yeah.
	I have no experience in that at all.
	Dude, you're educated, though.
	Well, I actually kind of am, but just use whatever Final Cut Pro and Premiere on my Mac.
	Just do the opposite.
	Either way, Stephen, also the kind of guy who wants to fully defund the Department of Education, so I don't think he has much value in education.
	In a formal sense, anyway.
	I'm surprised he didn't be like, oh, you mean woke?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	You ever gone to street college?
	You've heard of the School of Hard Knocks, but have you heard of the School of Hard Fox?
	You worked for Fox back in the 2009-2013 time period?
	I believe so.
	Time period sounds correct.
	Did they provide you any training in journalism?
	Experience.
	I understand that you did the job for many years.
	I'm sure you picked up some things, right?
	But what I'm wondering actually is, as part of your employment, did Fox provide you with formal training in journalism?
	They did not send me to journalism school, no.
	Okay.
	That's not the same question.
	Listen up, bub.
	You're not like me.
	I went through the back alleys of YouTube and I really grinded it out.
	Sure.
	You know what I found myself in back there, bub, huh?
	A rumble!
	Okay?
	He always talks about...
	Subscribe today.
	Of course.
	You gotta slam that like button.
	Give me the subscribe.
	Oh, Jared has to go turn his car off.
	I gotta go turn my car off and turn it back on and then we'll see if we have a car for getting to work in the morning.
	How about that?
	Alright, we'll be right back.
	I'll be right back.
	My goddamn car don't work.
	Oh, no.
	It just won't turn back on.
	Uh-oh.
	It's funny that he goes on this talk because it's like he's...
	Are you talking about Mark or Stephen in terms of talking about journalism school?
	Yeah, Stephen.
	The way he talks about it is he talks like he's trying...
	It's like a job application.
	The guy's just saying, did you have education in journalism?
	No, you did not.
	I'm just saying no, but we all know that citizen journalism is the thing that truly matters.
	Sure.
	I mean, it's okay that you haven't had education.
	Yeah, I don't have formal broadcast education, right?
	Yeah, that's why this podcast...
	We did take a maybe three-hour class at a local...
	TV network, right?
	I usually go to the local adult learning center and I learn how to cook pasta and master vocals.
	I drank some wine at a local wine club and now I'm a sommelier.
	Oh, that's kind of cool.
	Was it buen vino?
	It was.
	It wasn't.
	Not true wine.
	So this is where I disagree with Mark a bit.
	At that time, I think it's fair to say that you're...
	What you were doing for Fox was primarily concentrated on more comedic type presentations.
	Is that fair?
	No.
	So back during the time period when you were working at Fox, would you say you were covering hard news at that point too?
	Injection form.
	Sometimes.
	Okay.
	First, I don't think Steven is funny whatsoever anyway.
	No.
	Sorry this guy's calling me one second.
	You're fine, Jared.
	That's fine.
	When he comes back, I'm hitting with the shrug.
	He's saying 15 minutes, so I'm going to have to fucking do it again.
	What was that?
	They're going to come change my battery in 15 minutes.
	Sorry, one second.
	second I gotta do this dance.
	You doing it, Sharon?
	Are you doing the shrug?
	Oh, I'm shrugging out.
	All right.
	I got a needle in my arm, even.
	Jesus.
	So, first, I don't think Stephen's funny at all.
	Personally, I don't, yeah.
	Period.
	He's not funny.
	I also dug back, and it seems like all the clips of his time at Fox News, even though he is credited as a comedian in the Chiron, He's fairly serious.
	Is he?
	Even though the topics, it's not hard news.
	Yeah.
	They don't bring him in to give, like, thoughts on anything beyond politics.
	Sure, yeah.
	And I'll say this.
	I'm not the person who thinks, like, comedians can't be political.
	Sure.
	But if your primary focus is not comedy, you're not a comedian, and that's okay.
	Yeah, I mean, that's where people, like, you start thinking John Oliver or Jon Stewart.
	Things have shifted for them in their careers, but Jon Stewart was a stand-up comedian, or Bill Maher was a stand-up comedian.
	Yeah, and he still is a stand-up comedian, but he's more of a...
	Yeah, it's like Joe Rogan's a stand-up comedian too, but...
	Yeah.
	If he's not performing actively...
	It's in shades.
	Regardless, regardless.
	There's levels to this shit.
	Steven was never established as a stand-up comedian.
	No, no, of course not.
	Did he have a special?
	Did he have a special?
	I don't think he's ever had a special.
	He had a special time with Amy Schumer who let him know also that he didn't have a career at all.
	Sad that Greg Gutfeld didn't come to his defense.
	So I did find one moment in these clips where Stephen, I think he tried an Obama impression and then realized it was bad.
	In the deposition?
	No, no, no.
	In a Fox News clip.
	I really just picture Stephen trying a racist accent with the attorney.
	Stephen, you could see in real time, realized that his impression was bad.
	And then he pretended that that was his voice.
	Just kept it low and then slowly slid out of it.
	Are you serious?
	It's like when you try and start a conversation with somebody and they don't bite.
	You just have to slowly talk to a wall.
	Yeah, you slowly rotate.
	Talk to somebody else.
	Yeah, it's high fives, but then you were actually stretching or touching a spider web or something.
	That's so funny.
	We've all been there, man.
	It sucks.
	Of course.
	Yeah, not all of us on broadcast cable news, but time to talk numbers and magnitude.
	Now, ever since leaving Fox, say, the past 10 years, it's fair to say that you've begun to amass a rather sizable audience.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	You understand that as the size of your audience increased, the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by publishing a false statement about someone also increased?
	Yes.
	And would you agree with me that as that potential magnitude for harm increased and your audience increased, your responsibility as a journalist also increased?
	Objection form?
	Well, I've never labeled myself a journalist, but yes.
	I mean, well, you cover hard news.
	We can agree with that.
	Sure.
	So does Jon Stewart.
	Sure.
	Absolutely.
	Right.
	And let's make it clear, even today, on your show, in which you cover hard news, you also do things that are comedic.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Now, you would agree with me, for instance, that the sort of care that a person like you needs to show might be different if you're just, say, talking with a friend at a bar versus making an announcement over a baseball stadium public address system.
	You understand what I mean?
	I understand.
	Making decisions about how you run your business, I take it one of the things you do consider is the responsibility you have given the size of your audience.
	Is that right?
	Well, take responsibility regardless of the size of the audience.
	Sure.
	I understand that perhaps even when just talking to a neighbor or a friend at a bar, you might be careful about what you say.
	But what I'm asking is when you do your job.
	Part of what you consider in how you create your policies, your requirements, etc., is you understand you're going to be talking to a very large audience and that the magnitude of harm from false information could be very great.
	Is that correct?
	There's a lot in that statement.
	We take care to be as responsible as possible, regardless of the size of the audience.
	Okay.
	Assuming that...
	Louder with Crowder has policies in place to ensure that they're accurately...
	I don't know if he would argue if they're delivering news, but they have nothing in place.
	Yeah, they don't.
	And if they do, it probably has some like...
	The name of it spells penis as an acronym or something.
	Oh, that's kind of cool.
	That's really fun.
	That's the standard, sir.
	Did you check a penis?
	I mean, we do know, and we will get into it.
	That would be great.
	They do have a couple rules, but yeah, I think Mark is being very generous in his assumptions.
	He is, and I don't know anything about the legal process here, but I feel like Stephen is smartly not...
	I do need to be responsible because I could really mess up somebody's life.
	I think Stephen is severely aware this is the part of the deposition or this line of questioning is important.
	Whoever coached him or whatever lawyer discussed this with him ahead of time.
	I don't think you need much coaching to know that this is the stuff they're trying to get you to say bad things about.
	Just give yes or no's or I don't know's and say that you care.
	Even though that clip was kind of long, Mark continues and dials into the details, and Stephen has no idea.
	Last year, when doing an episode of Louder of Crowder, how many people could you reasonably expect to view it?
	I don't know.
	So, for instance, on YouTube, YouTube tracks the number of views your videos get, right?
	To a degree, yes.
	Okay.
	Rumble does the same thing.
	You can see how many people viewed your videos?
	To a degree, yes.
	Okay.
	And so...
	Lesser degree.
	That should give you...
	The number of views on Rumble and YouTube will at least give you a minimum baseline of who saw the video.
	Is that right?
	Sounds right.
	And then you also know that your materials will quite foreseeably spread via social media, right?
	Sure.
	You're aware people share your videos?
	Sure, yes.
	For instance, when getting a video in this case, when I asked for a copy of the video in this case, I was directed to a website that publishes your videos without any of your input, right?
	That's my understanding.
	Okay.
	Which is actually where I found the audio of that as well, because they pulled it down.
	Did they?
	Yeah.
	Which was a good move.
	They only pulled that episode down off YouTube, but they pull it out the whole week on Rumble, which is kind of interesting.
	I wonder why they did that.
	Also, I don't know where Steven's head is in terms of views from YouTube and Rumble.
	Do you think he thinks they're undercounting?
	I do.
	Really?
	Yeah, I do.
	You don't think he has the shame of knowing that Rumble's cooking them?
	I mean, I could see Rumble inflating numbers.
	Who says they can't, right?
	I have no idea.
	I don't know anything either way.
	But you think he thinks he's bigger than he is?
	I could see that.
	Yeah, a little bit.
	I probably do think he thinks he's a little bit bigger than he is.
	But he's just kind of doing the Audrey Graham thing here, right?
	Like Drake saying that Kendrick is inflating his numbers through bots.
	Would then indicate and also point a light at Drake for doing the same thing.
	I mean, there was a whole thing with the Spotify takeover when Drake put some stuff out.
	Whereas the post-punk hits playlist just had a picture of Drake on it.
	You know what I mean?
	Just stuff like that that's like, I don't know, same sort of situation.
	Of course they're inflating their numbers.
	They have to.
	Especially moving from YouTube to Rumble, where YouTube, a functioning platform, where they were getting plays, it seems, for...
	A while, and that's been slowly declining.
	They were going down, yeah.
	But then going to Rumble, a place that doesn't work, and then confusing their fans to a point where they're posting on our subreddit asking us if we have any clue about it.
	Sorry, I love that.
	Oh man, I tell you what!
	I think that it's entirely possible that they're sweetening that plot there.
	Here's what I'll say.
	I believe that Steven deeply cares about the true number of viewers he gets of course and and I think that the Accuracy of that probably bothers him deeply.
	I think that's true But also I wouldn't be surprised, you know, like sometimes you go to like a sketchy website and it tells you like rumble.
	Yeah But it tells you like Todd in New Hampshire just bought one of these of these things.
	Sure, yeah.
	I mean, I run online apparel.
	Sure, yeah.
	Those are things you can turn on that stagger the sales.
	Exactly, yeah.
	Or when you do a right-click inspect element and you see that it's a JavaScript random number Oh, of course.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Illustrative.
	Maybe not true.
	And I think Steven and Gerald also believe other websites like the one that Mark said that he was given.
	Those guys are siphoning views off of them, which is not the intention of these alternative online upload sites.
	Like, no one's watching those.
	Yeah.
	So, weird of them to take offense to that, but...
	True.
	Yeah.
	One of the things you offer your audience is fact-checking of the news, correct?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	In fact, let's bring up tab one.
	Alright, I want to show you something that was just posted to the website last week.
	And as I think you may remember, we had this deposition scheduled for a few days ago.
	Sorry, this guy's calling me here.
	You're fine.
	I'll be right back.
	I apologize.
	No, you're okay.
	Hello, Shrub Nation.
	Piece of shit.
	What a piece of shit.
	With Byron and Jared.
	You piece of shit.
	President Trump just now asked if he'd visit the crash site.
	Responds, what's the site?
	The water?
	You want me to go swimming?
	He sucks so much.
	I hate that guy.
	Have you spoken to any of the families of the victims of the thing crashing?
	I don't want to comment on that.
	Do you have a plan to go visit the site or meet with any of the first responders?
	I have a plan to visit, not the site, because you tell me what's the site, the order?
	Or to meet with the first responders down there?
	I don't have a plan to do that, but I will be meeting with some people that were very badly hurt with their family member, obviously, but I'll be meeting with some people.
	Everyone was dead, isn't it?
	Yeah, what the fuck is he talking about?
	What was that?
	Fucking load of fucking bullshit.
	Yeah?
	Did it start?
	No.
	They sent a fucking tow truck and I was like, I need a new battery.
	And they're like, great, we'll send you a tow truck.
	I'm like, no, no, no, no.
	So this guy's like, I can't get my truck through here.
	We'll have to give it a push and move it out of here.
	And I was like, to get a battery in it?
	What the fuck are you talking about?
	And he's like, no, I don't do the battery.
	I just tow it.
	And I was like, I called...
	For a battery replacement.
	So is it coming soon?
	No, it's not going to come at all.
	So I'm just fucked.
	I have to take an Uber to work tomorrow.
	That sucks.
	Sucks shit.
	Sorry.
	Here's this clip at the top.
	I'm sorry, bud.
	Sorry.
	One of the things you offer your audience is fact-checking of the news, correct?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	In fact, let's bring up tab one.
	All right.
	I want to show you something that was just posted to the website last week.
	And as I think you may remember, we had this deposition scheduled for a few days ago, but one of the reasons that we had rescheduled it is so that you could do fact-checking at the DNC, correct?
	Yes, a portion of it, yes.
	Okay.
	So, for instance, in this broadcast, you'd be telling your audience, hey, certain claims are going to be made at the DNC, and we are going to use our skills to tell you what is real and what is not.
	Is that fair?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	You've clearly explained my premise correctly.
	No suspicion at all.
	Even though, I mean, we've determined that any time they're fact-checking the news, they're either lacking context or fully biased with no mask about it.
	Just a little offhanded comment about this.
	One thing I really like about this is that with the delay and the weird, like, crappy filter the room he's in...
	It sounds like he's eating and then waiting to say yes.
	I kind of agree.
	It sounds like he's snacking on a PB&J and it's stuck to the roof of his mouth.
	Yes.
	Yeah, he's definitely eating.
	Eating and sipping that Waterloo.
	That nasty Waterloo.
	I don't know why you would do lemon-lime?
	Costco pack, maybe?
	Maybe it's at the end of the big pack where you already did all the berries.
	What's another decent one that would be in a pack?
	Tangerine.
	It would be like grapefruit.
	Sure.
	Grapefruit's working a lot.
	Certainly not Pomp Lamoose.
	Although we've already shown that Gerald was requested to make the story that they chose to cover on their comedy show Funny by showing off his bad dad's shoes.
	Yeah, of course.
	They like to keep that stuff separate.
	It's not going to be your position that, hey, I'm just a clown.
	I'm just a guy who plays Dress Up.
	I'm not doing news.
	That's not what your position is.
	You do hard news.
	Correct?
	It depends on the context.
	Absolutely.
	Sure.
	Like we said, there are some instances where your audience is clearly going to know that you're doing a comedic sketch, right?
	Sure.
	But your May 8th coverage of the Allen shooting, that wasn't a comedy sketch.
	I don't know if it included sketch elements.
	We often mix news with sketch elements.
	But no, not the commentary on the reporting, no.
	Okay.
	Maybe he is eating, or maybe he had his wisdom teeth out.
	He had a big beard, so maybe he was hiding his swollen face.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	Either way, I also don't think that many of the sketches are comedy.
	I know they're intending to be comedy.
	Most certainly.
	The episode in question did open with a racist segment shining a naked flight on immigration while also advertising mug club.
	I mean, this is the problem with the show to begin with.
	It's like, why is he attempting to cover hard news and call it a comedy show?
	Yeah, so I think that what he's basically trying to say, Stephen, do you understand you don't...
	Always do comedy?
	That it's not exclusively comedy?
	Yeah.
	It seems like Steven tries to use, this is a comedy show, as like a, hey, don't blame us, we're just being goofs.
	Yeah, anything I say, I was joking.
	Yeah, yeah.
	If it is bad.
	But I also want you to take me seriously.
	Show me your boobs, unless.
	I'm just joking, unless.
	Just kidding.
	But if you want to.
	He always compares himself to folks like...
	Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.
	Stephen Colbert doesn't cover news in the same way that Stephen does.
	He may start his show on a somber note in the wake of a national tragedy.
	Totally.
	But he also doesn't report on those things and fact check them.
	Yeah.
	Jon Stewart is a really interesting example because obviously he was on The Daily Show and The Daily Show was on the Comedy Network, Comedy Central.
	And they do goofs.
	And they do goofs.
	But they also talk about really important things.
	And then also...
	If you were to say, hey, Jon Stewart, do you only do comedy?
	He would say, no, I also do all these things for 9-11 victims.
	I do all these things for...
	Oh, sure.
	But Steve dresses up like Santa Claus and gives away big checks once a year.
	Yeah, well, on Cultural Appropriation Week, it's all a joke.
	That's actually not true.
	I remember he covered significantly the Iran situation during Cultural Appropriation Week.
	While dressed as a Native American or something, right?
	No, he did the Ayatollah for a little bit.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	I didn't cover that one very deeply, but it's just not the same thing.
	Yeah, and that's a clear enough question.
	I mean, and we've seen the show for...
	Over a year at this point.
	I don't ever watch it, but listen to it.
	Yeah, through us.
	Through the lens.
	I know I've always been curious about the internal structure of Louder with Grouter.
	Yeah, like what the process looks like?
	Well, just what their internal org chart.
	I mean, I know that Gerald, in an attempt to shield a bunch of the assets of the company from Stephen's wife during the divorce, became the CEO. Sure.
	Beyond that, I have been kind of in the dark until...
	Well, I'm still in the dark, actually.
	Let's talk a little bit about how things work at your business.
	First of all, you're the boss at Lauder with Crowder, right?
	Objection form?
	I guess.
	Well, I mean, I'm guessing what I'm asking is, if you're doing things throughout your workday, is there somebody who can come to you and says, Stephen, no, you can't cover that.
	You're not allowed to do that.
	Papa Crowder.
	Yes.
	Okay, who would that person be?
	I'm going to be a multitude of people.
	So there are a multitude of people at Louder of Crowder who have veto power over what you can cover on your show?
	No, a multitude of people who have, you know, wise counsel.
	Sure, I have a lot of people in my life who have wise counsel.
	I listen to them and take their thoughts into consideration, but they don't have control over me.
	And I'm wondering if there's anybody at Louder of Crowder who has control over you, who says, if you do this, Stephen, you're fired.
	You don't work here anymore.
	At a ladder with Crowder?
	No, no one can fire me.
	Okay.
	And if you want to say something on your show, is there anybody who can stop you?
	On my show?
	No.
	Okay.
	He thought long and hard about throwing Gerald under the bus there.
	Yeah, he did.
	What about the captain?
	Can I throw...
	Yeah, he was looking for anybody.
	Well, because we know that they put the lake house in Gerald's name.
	Yeah.
	And Gerald was doing a huge favor for his buddy here.
	It's odd that a host would be able to, in this structure, do whatever they want with no repercussions and no...
	Like, maybe that's in the contract?
	Maybe that was part of the contract when Gerald became CEO? I don't know what that would look like, but...
	Could you imagine if Gerald fired Steven?
	And then Gerald takes over?
	Oh man, what a wild ride that would be.
	Or if Josh was at the main desk?
	Yeah, right.
	Wow.
	They did let Dave do it a couple times.
	Dave hosted the show a couple times.
	Yeah.
	Wise counsel.
	That's what you should be considering in an LLC. I don't know.
	Maybe.
	When the guy who owns my house has an opinion, and he says, maybe you shouldn't do this, and I say, well, you have gay shoes.
	Great.
	It's a cool relationship they've got over there.
	Yeah, it seems like there's absolutely no orc chart in place.
	What if he really detailed that relationship?
	There's not a guy who can fire me, per se, but there is a guy who owns my house.
	Owns my house?
	He works for me.
	I don't respect him.
	I don't respect anyone that works with me or near me.
	Can he fire me?
	No.
	Is there mutual respect?
	Also no.
	Also no.
	So yeah, we start diving a little bit deeper and more directly into the crux of the issue, why we're here.
	If you're going to share images with your audience of news events, things that depict news events, it's your usual practice to verify the accuracy of those images before you show them.
	Objection form.
	Sometimes.
	Okay.
	Let's make it more specific.
	When you're going to share an image of a purported mass murder, it would be your usual practice to verify the accuracy of that image before showing it.
	To clarify, Mark, just so for reference, are you referring to Stephen individually or Ladder with Crowder?
	Him individually.
	Me individually?
	Then, no.
	No.
	So, there are...
	In other words, let's put it this way.
	If you're going to use on May 8th an image, you're going to show your audience an image of who is purportedly the mass murderer.
	Is that something you're going to see before you go air?
	Or is this like a Ron Burgundy situation where you're seeing it for the first time?
	I appreciate the reference to Ron Burgundy.
	Based on Jim Walcott, actually, a Canadian sitcom, there's a difference between Breaking news, for example, someone's exclusive to us, where there's obviously a much more strict process of due diligence if we are the news.
	Then there's reporting on the news that is available publicly or reporting on someone else's report.
	So to answer your question, we would obviously ensure that the reporting on that person's reporting is accurate, meaning the original source would be the reporter.
	And I'll get to that in a second.
	But first, when Stephen's lawyer jumped in asking to clarify if the question was for Stephen or as louder with Crowder LLC, that's a good clarification because both of them are being sued.
	Oh, independently?
	Yeah, Stephen also was being sued, as well as Louder with Crowder LLC. Oh, interesting.
	You guys like when he put on his multicultural sweater?
	He starts speaking like a Canadian.
	When I got a bit of a TV show that maybe you Southerners haven't heard yet.
	You knuckleheads, yeah.
	I think, unfortunately, Mark left him open in that moment when he should have...
	He should have actually leaned in and gotten a more direct answer.
	Basically, do you do a run-through of the show?
	Which we clearly know he does.
	He was aware of the picture that they were going to be.
	And then he, instead of answering that question, talks about the difference between what they would consider breaking news and a source that was directly to them versus them covering the news.
	Well, I think that Stephen's trying to be like, well, my shield is that I'm reporting on the report.
	Yeah, and we will talk a little bit more about that, but that was not the question Mark asked.
	Mark does do a good job of illustrating that not all sources are equal.
	Sure.
	I believe what I'm hearing is that if it is your original reporting, you would have a higher level of care than when you are repeating someone else's reporting.
	Is that fair?
	No, what I'm saying is that there's a difference between breaking news being the subject of news and reporting on someone else's news.
	So use your example like the DNC. That's their story.
	They run images or claims.
	So we report on what they are running.
	All right, let me give you an example.
	If the DNC puts up an image of Mount Rushmore and says, this is the Washington Monument, you would be able to fairly and accurately report the DNC is saying that this picture is the Washington Monument.
	That's fine.
	Right?
	We're on the same page so far?
	Yes, and I would show them the picture.
	Alright, it would be different to say, here is a picture that the DNC is showing that they say is Mount Rushmore.
	And I'm telling you, they're right.
	That's different in your mind, right?
	No.
	That's the same thing.
	So you can, in other words, this is what I'm trying to get at.
	It is okay for you without investigating.
	To report someone else's accusation as truthful?
	To report their reporting as authentic and truthful?
	Yes.
	If I believed it was Mount Rushmore and they told me it was Mount Rushmore and showed a picture, I'd show their picture.
	And do it without any further checking?
	Myself, at that moment in time, if I believed it was Mount Rushmore, why would I not believe the DNC? That's a good question.
	DNC is an organization you might not always believe though, right?
	That's fair.
	Right?
	In your eyes, they have some credibility issues, I would take it, right?
	It depends on who they are.
	So in other words, what I'm saying is not all sources are equal, are they?
	That's fair.
	Oh!
	That's our first Bankston dunk of the night!
	That very first...
	That's fair.
	He was so defeated.
	Did you hear they're trying to get Trump on Mount Rushmore, by the way?
	I did hear that.
	That's pretty cool.
	I hope they get him on there, honestly.
	Fuck that mountain.
	It sucks already.
	It does suck.
	I know it sucks, but...
	We could start spray painting more, which would be kind of cool.
	I would lose my mind.
	I've already lost my mind this week.
	Didn't they try to do that like five years ago?
	They always say stupid fucking bullshit all the time.
	It doesn't matter.
	Piece of shit.
	I mean, there's a clear clarification.
	There's a clear distinction between the two things that Mark's talking about.
	Blindly reporting something that someone says with no question.
	Well, the question is just as simple as like, it's like, hey, listen, are you saying to your audience the DNC is reporting this?
	Or are you saying...
	We've confirmed what they're reporting.
	Yeah.
	And that's a huge distinction and difference.
	Yeah, right.
	And then, in my opinion, it's basically case closed.
	Would you agree that it's important to verify the accuracy of an image of a purported mass murderer before showing it to your audience?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Why is it important to verify the image of a mass murderer before showing it to your audience?
	Well, same reason that it would be important to verify anything.
	Why is that?
	If you are making a definitive claim, you should do your best to be accurate.
	Why?
	Because truth matters.
	Just intrinsically, or why?
	Do things happen?
	What can happen?
	Intrinsically.
	Okay.
	So, you understand, though, that if false information is...
	Post is posted about somebody.
	It's published about somebody.
	That can have effects on the people who are the subject matter of those reports.
	I would assume so.
	Is that something that you can...
	Let's put it this way.
	If you have news that you're going to report that if false could have a damaging effect on someone's reputation or cause them grief, you would agree you need to take special care with that kind of news.
	If one is making a definitive claim, they should do their best to be accurate.
	Because truth matters, boys.
	Intrinsically.
	I don't believe Stephen believes that truth really does matter.
	I also don't think he cares enough about the repercussions of getting that wrong.
	Because as an American, we are not unfamiliar with...
	Mass casualty events.
	And how many times in the first, I don't know, 12, 24 hours after something happens have you been shown an image of a shooter that is not the shooter?
	And not always Sam Hyde either.
	They're real people.
	Yeah.
	And unfortunately, it is more and more common.
	Stephen should know that.
	Stephen should know that he needs to be aware.
	You can't just run with a meme on Reddit.
	Yeah, totally.
	For a lot of this stuff, what I see is that when bad things happen, people want answers faster than they want answers truthfully.
	They'll be like, we need to get to the bottom of this immediately.
	And if someone says, well, we need to take some time to really uncover the cause of it.
	That's not good enough for a lot of people.
	And Steven, I think, in his show capitalizes on that.
	And I think that that's why...
	He probably cares about the truth broadly, but I think that it's one of those things where it's like, if this is wrong, it's no big deal because we have this...
	Whatever.
	We lie a portion of our show.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And we will just ignore the parts the next day.
	Sure, yeah.
	I do believe that when Steven says the truth matters, I think he's being honest-ish, but I think that he's...
	It's like...
	Whose truth?
	It's like, here comes an analogy.
	Uh-oh.
	Adenicism.
	Oh, man!
	I'll tell you what.
	It's like when people will talk about things that they can do legally, and they'll be like, well, technically, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, technically, da, da, da, da, da.
	As if the technically fully absolves you of everything.
	You know?
	It still can impact people.
	It still can cost you a lot of money.
	It's reckless.
	Their scale of skepticism is still way different than most people.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, it's like, hey, we found a profile.
	Is this him?
	Someone said it was.
	Send it.
	Put it on air to our millions of people.
	Yeah.
	Do you think Stephen learned about journalistic sourcing during his two semesters of broadcast classes?
	I bet he was doing it when he was doing method acting for The Big Ugly.
	Ah, yes.
	Yeah.
	I wish that that was the name of the film.
	I wish it was.
	Do you know the difference between a primary and a secondary source?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Can you help us understand that first by telling us what is a primary source?
	Objection form.
	It would depend on the context when you're discussing.
	Journalism, or if you're discussing, like I said, commenting on someone else's journalism.
	Primary source would be the primary reference point, person who's the originator of it, and a secondary source would be a corroborating resource, confirming or also covering it.
	Okay.
	I'm going to kind of give you what I believe would be the understanding that I'm operating from, just so we can talk using the same terminology, right?
	Like I was going to tell you, if I'm going to talk about a chair, I'm going to tell you what a chair is, right?
	Have you ever heard that a primary source would be information that originates from a person or entity that either has a first-hand account or is actively involved in the events being reported?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And then a newspaper, for instance, or an academic treatise or some other publication that is writing about an event that it did not have first-hand involvement in.
	That would be a secondary source.
	Does that seem fair?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	In terms of...
	Let me do it this way.
	You would agree you should not display the image of a suspected mass murderer unless the image had been confirmed by someone involved in the official investigation or by reference to some kind of primary source.
	Do you agree with that?
	No.
	Okay.
	And would you agree that you don't fulfill your responsibility in verifying the photo of a mass murderer by assuming that another news organization has verified the photo?
	No.
	Okay.
	I don't agree.
	Cool.
	I mean, we have all done our fair share of searching through social media networks, looking for profiles of...
	Nudes.
	No, I don't think that's where you would go for that.
	Luigi Mangione, Thirst Traps.
	No, I mean...
	Waluigi nudes!
	People don't hesitate to take things off of social media and assume that they've got the right guy, which is a problem.
	Yeah.
	Which is the problem that Steven is in the hot seat over.
	Yeah.
	And we are familiar with Steven's criteria for sources in the show notes.
	Two sources, one being left-leaning, even though they frequently fail to provide that source or any source on occasion.
	Yeah.
	Or the other version is the one from 1996. That he's still using.
	Excuse me?
	Like when he pulls out an example from 1996. That's an antidotal piece of evidence.
	Anecdotal?
	Anecdotal piece of evidence.
	You guys, I feel like I've done this before.
	I feel like we've done this before.
	With anecdotal, yeah.
	Ah, fuck off.
	Who cares?
	What are your requirements for publishing a photo allegedly showing a mass murder?
	Injection form.
	So the process would be similar for any stories in which we're not the primary source, to use your example, would be to find at least one source that would be viewed as legitimate.
	So usually that's why, you know, when we provide references, we often use left-leaning sources, which we make available every day for every show, and then confirm it with another source where it is available.
	That would be the process when someone else is reporting.
	Does it matter who's reporting it?
	That's why I said you try and find the initial, you know, the most credible source to use as a primary source because it's a little different when covering news.
	So to give you an example, if there is a new study conducted on, let's say, medical, a COVID intervention, primary source would be one on PubMed, right, the people who conducted the trial.
	Secondary source would be CNN covering said clinical trial.
	So, same principle, but it's a little different when covering someone else's reporting.
	So the primary source that we would look for would be as authoritative as available at that time.
	Alright, so to use that example, if you didn't have access to the PubMed article, but you did have access to a CNN report in which they reported on the PubMed article and cited that PubMed article, that's probably okay to report on.
	You would agree?
	I would report according to CNN. Right.
	What if CNN didn't have any sort of primary source?
	What if CNN just reported a fact, but it didn't have any source?
	That's why I would report it according to CNN. Okay.
	And it would be important for you to make clear that you had not been able to verify that.
	Would you agree with that?
	No.
	Okay.
	If someone I deem credible says something, regardless of their verification, I can just claim that as the truth.
	Yeah.
	Anyone using that credible source's reporting who writes another article referencing that, that's my secondary source right there.
	Yeah.
	It makes sense.
	Yeah, Mark is doing just a good job of getting Stephen to clearly identify how he feels about the importance of truth here.
	Yeah.
	He's making Stephen say it all.
	Making him say that CNN is credible.
	I do like it, yeah.
	Just making his skin crawl.
	Talking about the DNC and CNN in one go?
	Damn.
	Brutal, Mark.
	He tries to get more specific, like you said, dialing this down.
	Things are quickly derailed by...
	Deep conspiracy brain rot?
	Let's talk a little bit about this incident we're here about today.
	You understand that on May 6, 2023, a neo-Nazi mass shooter murdered several people at the Allen outlet malls?
	Projection form?
	No.
	You don't understand that right now, sitting here today?
	The way you said it, no.
	Help me understand what you mean by that.
	What is it about that?
	I don't understand a neo-Nazi mass shooter, no.
	Mass shooter, yes.
	Neo-Nazi mass shooter, no.
	Uh, this is where things take a bit of a turn.
	You know, the kind of sicko mindset.
	He's been fairly rational with his responses.
	This is where he's going to take a stand a bit.
	Give him his music.
	Give him his walk-on music so he can have a little, like, a bass groove to, like, toss down on.
	Yeah, the rot continues.
	Okay, you're aware that the shooter had tattooed Dio Nazi symbols on his body?
	Sure.
	You're aware he did it with a right-wing Def Squad vest.
	You don't contest any of that?
	I'm aware that it was reported, yeah.
	Well, I'm not asking you whether it was reported.
	I'm asking you whether you can, like, do you believe that's true?
	Do you contest that?
	No, I don't contest any of the tattoos, no.
	Okay.
	So, I guess the hang-up is, you have a shooter who's tattooed up with a Shwasaka and SS lightning bolts.
	But you're hesitant to call that a neo-Nazi masterpiece.
	Correct.
	That's my brother!
	Well, I can't say that.
	That'll get us in trouble.
	On GTA 6. There we go.
	Let's walk up to it.
	He did have swastika tattoos on his body, big one, as well as SS lightning bolts, which, you know, that's the SS. Silver surfers.
	No.
	He also had a Deus Volt tattoo.
	Deus Volt, for God wills it.
	Kind of like Pete Hegseth.
	What's a Deus Volt tattoo?
	Christian Crusaders, but it's just...
	It's just what Nazis do now.
	It's God's will.
	It's the right will swell.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	They don't actually say that, but I'm saying that.
	Well, it's Latin for God wills it.
	Gotcha.
	Also, Wolf's Angel and Othala Rune?
	Other Nazi-associated symbols were tattooed on him, as well as the City of Dallas logo.
	Like the municipality?
	I don't know.
	I don't know what that looks like.
	Like the one that comes in the upper corner of your water bill?
	Shout out to Mayor Eric Johnson!
	Sure.
	It was on his left hand.
	Nice.
	But Eric Johnson's portrait on his left shoulder played.
	Clearly consistent with neo-Nazi ideology.
	Sure.
	Yeah.
	Right-wing Death Squad patch.
	Have you ever heard of this one?
	No.
	This was a slogan popularized by some of the attendees at the 2017 Unite the Right rally, the white supremacist event in Charlottesville.
	Popular enough on Facebook that in 2019, one of these groups was monitored by the FBI due to violent anti-Semitic and white supremacist content being posted there.
	It was initially rumored, because there's still images of his dead body that went viral online from body cam footage.
	Everyone's like, that's a right-wing Death Squad patch.
	And...
	Pardon me.
	It is, but Stephen, for some reason, still refuses to believe that that is accurate.
	You can see it right there.
	Oh.
	It's like if a shield in the Apple logo...
	Got together with some Old English.
	Old English in the center.
	He also had Punisher patches.
	Did the Punisher have Mr. Trump's haircut?
	No, it is in front of a Texas flag, but I do like the Punisher with Trump's wavy hair.
	That is fun.
	If all of that evidence isn't leading you to believe that this person was a neo-Nazi, which I've heard so many arguments recently in the wake of Elon Musk's salute.
	Oh, no.
	Yeah.
	I mean, what is a neo-Nazi?
	Nazis hate Jews.
	And I'm like, that's not really all of it, guys.
	Sure, yeah.
	It's one of those things where it's like, if you want to call me a conservative because conservatives are against pedophilia, yeah, I'm a conservative.
	Yeah, yeah.
	What's so wrong with that?
	Well...
	We're arguing definitions here.
	Also, in the wake of this initial shooting, I know I did a ton of research into the digital footprints of the actual shooter.
	Yeah.
	I did recover and catalog all of the social media posts that he made on that Russian website.
	Okay.
	It was on something called OK.ru, which I've never used. It's kind of like a friendster, I guess.
	Nope.
	Very different.
	the right-wing death squad patch weeks before the attack and his online posts included references to mass shootings in as a form of sport a lot of misogynistic and racist screeds targeting Muslims Asians Jews and women he actually scouted the location they found weeks before the shooting posting photos of the mall entrance and researching peak visiting hours so There's a lot of evidence.
	Yeah, there's a lot of evidence.
	They will say that that's a conspiracy that was planted because why would a guy post on a Russian website?
	For the same reason that a guy would commit a mass murder.
	People do, like, insane things.
	Yeah, and he maybe felt like that was a safe, weird place to freely talk about his declining mental health and obsession with Neo-Nuff.
	Get my ya-ya's off.
	Yeah.
	Either way, like, to...
	Got a bad case of the Zoomies.
	I need to get up on the internet.
	Well, that's one way to look at it.
	The strangest thing is this is not equally considered.
	If there's a rumor online that Tim Walls yelled at a kid, they would believe that with zero evidence.
	But we have stacking images.
	My kid was an asshole.
	Here's the perfect example.
	All the pictures of Trump with Epstein.
	Ignore it.
	He was secretly spying on Epstein and trying to put him in jail because he's also FBI, CIA, too.
	He was actually leaning in to whisper, you should hang yourself when you have a prison.
	That's kind of cool.
	This is absurd.
	It's a weird hill to die on, man.
	It certainly is.
	But let's jump back to the day after the shooting.
	Yeah, I want to hear Steve with a little more pep in his talk.
	I know, right?
	So let's go through some of the claims, why they're not correct, and some actual solutions here.
	And if this seems like remedial, there's a dynamic with this story that is a little bit different.
	So the first claim is that this shooter is a Nazi white supremacist.
	We have new details about what took place yesterday when eight people were killed at an outdoor shopping mall just outside Dallas.
	We have new reporting on the suspect who allegedly interacted with neo-Nazi and white supremacist content online.
	OK, so I'm just going to keep some notes here because none of this makes sense.
	All right.
	Shooter, white supremacist.
	Okay, he's Hispanic.
	But there can be Hispanic white supremacists.
	I mean, I have two black white supremacists right here.
	Yeah.
	That's believable.
	I know we say that.
	It's increasingly rare.
	Yes.
	So they claim that he wore a patch reading Right Wing Death Squad.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And we've been looking for images of that, right?
	Right.
	See if we can see that on that kind of, you know, tactical gear.
	Yes.
	And they say he was influenced.
	That's a very broad term.
	Here's the truth.
	Okay.
	The shooters, the social media, it's not available to the public at all.
	And according to NBC, who are citing unnamed law officials, they said the preliminary review found that the Guttman social media posts...
	We're not liked or shared by other users.
	And that's basically it.
	Right.
	We're trying to find the reason that, like they say, a source is saying that they're reviewing these, but we're not finding any of these posts.
	Sunday night, the Allen police chief, Brian Harvey, he said about the potential motive, he said, we actually don't have a lot.
	Which is the correct response.
	Right.
	If the guy in charge of the investigation, Sunday night, right?
	So last night.
	A full day and sometime after the shooting says, actually, guys, hold on.
	We don't really have a lot.
	Yeah.
	Why is every media outlet running with this report and not showing you the posts?
	Right.
	Not showing you, even blurred out, posts, posts, posts, posts.
	If there really are that many, they go in the Wayback Machine.
	You should be able to find them.
	You should be able to find them.
	Yeah.
	We have not been able to find them yet.
	We have been able to find official statements from the police chief saying, we do not have a motive.
	Someone needs to slip a mirror in front of Gerald, not being able to see the posts, so why are they reporting on them?
	And then he immediately posts on a picture he thinks is correct?
	Well, it's just the same thing, where they're like, why aren't they telling us the answers?
	And the police chief's like, guys, just chill.
	Literally, we haven't slept yet.
	Give us a second.
	Yeah, we're trying to figure it out.
	You know what that means?
	That means they're taking their time to cover it up.
	Of course they are.
	Because this is Russian disinformation.
	This is wild.
	It was wild.
	There was a ton of social media videos of this guy and his mental state was rough.
	Of the defendant in the case?
	The actual shooter.
	What's interesting to me about this whole thing is that Stevens...
	But the truth was so strong.
	Yeah.
	How could you not be like...
	Back to the primary secondary source thing.
	It's so clear that it's like you loudly shouted, but the truth is you were saying you had the truth.
	And he didn't.
	Not that...
	His truth was that there wasn't much there.
	Yeah.
	I also...
	I wish that the attorney would be like, would you agree that the...
	Weird bell from the Call of Duty Zombies game that you play.
	It's weird.
	It's odd that you keep using that.
	That weird bell?
	Name a better bell.
	I'll change it if you can name a better bell.
	And it's not the ACDC one.
	Gong.
	No, I don't think so.
	I'm never back in black.
	Let's talk about the show.
	The May 8th show.
	In that show, you told the audience that the media was lying about the shooting and that you were going to show them the true information, right?
	Objection form.
	I don't know if those are my words, but okay.
	Well, let's pull up tab two.
	I love tab two.
	All right, I'm showing you now what is tab two.
	We'll be offering this as exhibit two.
	This is, every day with your show, there's also a webpage posted called the Show Notes, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And today, I'm just going to read the first paragraph here.
	There was a deadly mass shooting in Allen, Texas, and we have information on the killer, Mauricio Garcia.
	We'll be refuting the media's lies about the fact that he was a white supremacist and so much more.
	You see that?
	I do.
	Okay, so again, you had information on the shooter and you were going to refute the media's lies, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So when viewers tuned into this, they could reasonably expect that you were going to be trying to provide them with true information about the shooter.
	Yes.
	And that in providing that information...
	The information that you had, you could demonstrate that the media was lying about the shooter.
	Primarily that the media was lying about the shooter.
	Seems to be the copy written there by Brodigan, yes.
	Sure, let's change that.
	Because the shooting itself is a bigger topic than the shooter, right?
	Just one person.
	So let me ask that again.
	You had information on the shooter, and...
	You would be refuting the media's lies about the shooter.
	Well, that's a description written by Brodigan on the website, a synopsis of the show.
	I spoke on the program regarding the media lies and what they were.
	Let's take a look at that.
	Let's bring up Tab 3. This one's even better.
	Also, throwing Brodigan under the bus a bit, huh?
	Alright, I'm going to show you an excerpt that I want to ask you some questions about from your May 8th show.
	So let's play that now.
	Let's, who the shooter was first.
	Okay.
	So you're going to hear the media give you some reports.
	A lot of what they say is bullshit.
	Alright.
	Shooter was a 33-year-old Hispanic male.
	His name was Mauricio Garcia.
	Mauricio Garcia.
	Now, the reason that we are pulling this, and you're asking yourself because we make the references available, we're pulling this from Today News Africa, is because it's the only, it's the only news outfit showing you the shooter's face.
	You won't find his face in, here you go, NBC, Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS, Washington Post.
	They want to tell you That he was a white supremacist.
	Yes.
	And not see his very Hispanic-looking face.
	Right.
	And a second ago, I actually signaled you because CNN had that lower kind of chyron that said, basically, that this person was influenced by white supremacy.
	That's the headline that they're running with right now over, over, over, over.
	Yeah.
	To make sure they drill it in.
	Why would they do that?
	Yeah, it's crazy.
	Huh.
	This is the classic.
	The lack of information is the conspiracy argument.
	The reason why they aren't showing you this is because everyone's lying to you and you can only trust us, so trust us and nobody else.
	Trust us and Today News Africa.
	Yeah, yeah, right.
	To definitely cover the Allen.
	But that's a problem with a lot of people.
	I mean, broadly speaking.
	All sorts of people.
	That's a huge problem.
	Where it's like, I'm going to find the story that tells me what I want to hear.
	But I see this so much amongst conspiracy theorists that the absence of information is information proving something else.
	And that's just not true.
	Well, I mean, you could look at the aviation accident last night where the airplane hit the helicopter.
	Yeah.
	I saw a conspiracy theory before bed saying that this was a terrorist attack.
	They were covering up that the helicopter was hijacked and deliberately drove in front of the airplane.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	That's what happens in the vacuum between fax and modern social media users.
	Yeah.
	It's so fast that people jump to these crazy conclusions.
	We always see we saw, I joked earlier about it, we saw it with Trump when he said it was because of DEI in some way.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's an easy excuse.
	You can say that about everything.
	You can say my lunch is late because of DEI. Yeah, of course.
	It's people want answers.
	For the same reason people are religious.
	Sure.
	They want answers.
	They're like, I don't know, scares me.
	I'm going to say that it's God and probably a terrorist attack.
	All right, Dennis, let's not attack them right now.
	It's late.
	We've got to let them rest.
	Fair enough.
	And then we kind of explore their show prep and research ahead of broadcast.
	I find this really interesting.
	Yeah, me too.
	Okay, my first question is, in the lead-up to that show, you had been reviewing a lot of media coverage about the shooting.
	Injection form.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And that review of the media coverage showed that Today News Africa was the only news outfit purported to show a picture of the shooter's face.
	Correct?
	Can you repeat the question?
	Yeah, sure.
	That review of media coverage, that showed that Today News Africa was the only news outfit purported to show the shooter's face.
	No.
	We're pulling this from Today News Africa.
	It's because it's the only news outfit showing you the shooter's face.
	That wasn't accurate.
	Sorry, what was the last part of that question?
	That wasn't accurate.
	Sorry, you're breaking up.
	What I was saying was it was the only place currently with an article including the image of the shooter.
	Okay.
	Right.
	So when you were making that broadcast, your review of media had shown you That Today News Africa was the only news outfit doing that, showing a purported picture of the shooter's face?
	No.
	Okay.
	What?
	I'm a little confused, because I thought what you had just said was that at that time, that's why you said that, it's the only news outfit showing you the shooter's face.
	Do you have me saying that on record?
	Well, this is really interesting.
	It gets into what he considers actual news, which I was looking for some news just a second ago trying to go to todaynewsafrica.com, which it did quickly display that the connection was not private.
	Nice, good.
	But I braved it, and I entered the website anyway, and now it seems like the domain is just parked.
	Could we way back machine it?
	Oh, I bet we could.
	But I imagine that it is because of this situation that this website no longer exists.
	Sure.
	I mean, it's possible, yeah.
	It's funny here, because it's one of those things like...
	With RFK Jr.'s hearing.
	Did you say that?
	No, I didn't.
	Here's the transcript.
	Oh.
	Now did you say that?
	It's out of context.
	It's out of context.
	No, here's the full context.
	Yeah.
	So this is really funny because it's very clear.
	He's like, are you saying that this is the only people who had that?
	And he said no, and then...
	Well, he clearly said on his show that it was.
	On his show, yeah.
	They basically are like, did you...
	When you said that, were you being honest?
	No.
	I was lying to my fans, yeah.
	Well, of course, because clearly he got this image from other places he considers news beyond just Today News Africa.
	Is that right or is that not right?
	It was the only place at that moment in time with an active article including that image.
	Of course, there are many other places that are created or social media.
	So at that moment in time, because it was a Wally House press credential reporter.
	Well, no, that's all I'm asking about is that moment in time.
	And that they're the only news outfit purporting to show the shooter's face.
	We can agree with that.
	I don't...
	Can you tell me the news outfits that at that moment in time were showing the shooter's face?
	It would be difficult to remember.
	It was everywhere on social media and different articles.
	Look, I understand it was on social media.
	Social media are not media outfits.
	Just some random person on social media is not a media outfit.
	Correct?
	No, I disagree.
	Okay.
	So, if you just came across a random account, they, um, you know, UltramagaGuy567.
	Shots fired.
	And you saw the picture there.
	You'd say, well, look, that's a media outlet publishing this photo.
	Isn't that right?
	Well, technically, Facebook is a media outlet.
	So, as far as any other news outlets that were showing you the shooter's face, right now you can't think of any.
	Right?
	I don't remember which one's not that popular.
	I remember that one because it was a credentialed reporter.
	So, what I'm really trying to get to is this line from the show.
	We're pulling this from Today News Africa.
	It's because it's the only news outfit showing you the shooter's face.
	Is that statement true or false at that moment in time?
	Could have been poorly worded.
	Yikes.
	Alright.
	He admits that, at least.
	I mean, like you said, Dennis, his attempt was to claim that this is the only accidental or brave truth-teller.
	It's Today News Africa.
	And everyone else was purposefully leaving that information.
	I love the way he was questioning that position.
	Yeah, that was great.
	Because Stephen thought he could get past it, it seemed like.
	So it's pretty wild.
	Mark is desperately trying to connect with Stephen's weird conspiracy.
	Twitter is the news.
	We're all the media now mindset.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So we don't know.
	I mean, I'm trying to figure out what reasonable basis did you have to believe that this photo was being published or was accurate?
	And so far, I'm hearing Today News Africa, and I'm not sure if I'm hearing anything else.
	Oh, no, that's not the reason I believe it was accurate.
	I believe that everything else mentioned in the clip even just showed was correct.
	As far as the age, as far as the weapons used, and most importantly, the African-American officer, the black officer who took out said shooter, which wasn't being covered, and the media coverage of it.
	And then there was the image that was incorrect.
	But all that other information was correct.
	Right, but I'm here because my client was misidentified, right?
	I don't care too much about this African-American police officer or whatever, right?
	I'm trying to figure out.
	I mean, the whole point of me having you here today is to try to figure out, did you have any basis to think this thing was real in terms of this picture?
	All right, and I'm here in today's News Africa.
	Can you tell me any other reason you had to think that it was real?
	No, what I'm saying is that all the other reporting information was correct, and a White House press credential reporter also included an image.
	Everything else reported was correct.
	The image was incorrect from the White House press credential reporter.
	All right, put a pin in that.
	We're going to come back and talk to you about that.
	I promise we're going to talk about this reporter and White House credentials and all of that, so make sure to remember that.
	All the details he said were correct, and then there's also some of the details that he admitted that were also correct, like that this person was a neo-Nazi when there was clear evidence of this, or at least a right-wing extremist.
	But he doesn't want to talk about that stuff.
	He wants to, of course, lean into the facts that he got right that are...
	I was mostly right.
	Yeah, but I'm talking to you about the part that you weren't right about, and that's all I'm talking to you about.
	Well, his claim in truth was wrong, actually.
	You know what?
	He's never going to admit that this person...
	Even last week, I think I heard him say that this person wasn't a neo-Nazi.
	Even with tattoos and social media clips.
	I'll share it.
	I have a whole doc of...
	I've ripped the entire RUOK account.
	OKRU, pardon me.
	OKRU? Is that...
	Is it Yoda?
	No.
	Is he saying some shit again?
	That's kind of funny.
	No, but I would gladly share that information with him if he thinks it's some sort of Russian, like a Manchurian candidate or something.
	I have no idea what he's thinking.
	The fuck is he talking about?
	I love that Stephen was also trying to distract with that clearly leading into the only thing that's going to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun conversation.
	Totally, yeah.
	And Mark caught him and shut it down.
	I want to ask you, though, in the video, You said you won't find his face in NBC, Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS, Washington Post.
	They want to tell you that he was a white supremacist and not see his very Hispanic-looking face.
	Do you remember seeing that in the video?
	Yes.
	Ooh, okay, ouch.
	Did you remember seeing the ding noise every time we said another news outlet?
	Uh-huh.
	I do.
	I know you remember these ones.
	Just to make it super clear, I want to play the part of his show where he said that one more time.
	Now this is an inference that we are making using your rational process.
	White supremacist?
	Here's why it doesn't really make sense.
	First off, he's not white.
	That's a big one.
	That's all you need.
	I think that's the most important one.
	I mean, you know...
	I know.
	I could be wrong.
	Like, he could be one of those non-white supremacists.
	I saw a few of them in American history.
	A self-loathing...
	He could be a self-loathing Hispanic.
	Sure, he was born in the States and he went to school here.
	He identifies as white.
	He identifies as white.
	There you go.
	It's very possible.
	Apparently that's possible.
	He's like the Rachel Dole's all of shooters.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	That could be the case.
	So let me tell you why I don't think it makes sense.
	He's not white.
	All right, hit like or smash the rumble button if that is at least a somewhat compelling case to start with.
	So that's actually not the clip I thought I pulled, but it does say a lot as well.
	Stephen thinks that, I mean, a lot of things.
	First of all, there are white Mexican people.
	Yeah, there are people who are of mixed races.
	Hi, Jared, over there.
	Is Jared a white Mexican guy?
	Well, yeah, and...
	Yeah, I got a lot.
	My 23andMe tells me...
	I don't see color, so I'm just kidding.
	Tells me I'm multicultural.
	Nice.
	There are also white supremacists who just so happen to be different races.
	Of course.
	Didn't we just see another mass shooter a week, two weeks ago?
	A black guy wearing a Burzum shirt?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Anti-hate analysts quickly identifying dozens of pages believed to have come from Henderson, filled with calls for violence and racist comments, including neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies, expressions of shame that he was black, and praise for specific people who carried expressions of shame that he was black, and praise for specific people who I also had clear evidence, a social media trail, and a manifesto that I shared with you boys.
	Super fun thing for a guy like me to be sharing with his friends.
	The assertion, I guess, that only white people can serve white supremacy is like, nah, man.
	There are, like, black cops, for instance.
	Oh, man!
	I'll tell you what.
	Thank you.
	That's just, like, a really, like, ACAB example.
	He argues this shit all the time, though.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	There's a multitude of, like, influencers out there who, like, are people of color who serve white supremacy and say white supremacist talking points and will defend them in the comments.
	This is not something that's new.
	Maybe it was more new to him back then.
	They act like people of mixed race don't have to deal with the way they identify as a race.
	It happens all the time.
	In the Asian American community, a lot of the times there's people who are like, if I say that I'm Asian, I get certain reactions.
	And if I say that I'm white, I get certain reactions.
	And people will...
	Feel ways about that.
	It's a matter of people of all races can be white supremacists.
	People of mixed races can say they're white and say they're a different race.
	There's all sorts of different crazy things.
	No, there are white Hispanic people.
	It's just a family guy meme of him holding up the skin patch thing.
	Can be a white supporter.
	Yeah, the swatch, the skin swatch.
	Stephen, similar to Infowars Rob Dew, who in his deposition with Mark had a general distrust for the government.
	Stephen has a distrust full stop of the mainstream media.
	Stop it, Khan.
	No matter who owns it.
	Alright, so we can agree that you told your viewers that mainstream media outlets were hiding the picture from the public for nefarious political reasons.
	Injection 4. Which picture?
	The picture you were displaying from Today News.
	No.
	No.
	No, I don't agree.
	Okay.
	So when you said that you won't find his face in those outlets, and they want to tell you that he was a white supremacist and not see his very Hispanic-looking face, you're saying that's a choice they made, right?
	These media outlets made a choice.
	To include no image verification, yes.
	To include no images of the shooter, right?
	Right.
	And the reason that they didn't include pictures of the shooter, the reason you had to get it from Today News Africa, is because they didn't want the public to see the shooter's face.
	That was what you were telling your audience.
	No.
	Are you sure about that, Stephen?
	The reason that we are pulling this, and you're asking yourself because we make the references available, we're pulling this from Today News Africa, is because it's the only...
	It's the only news outfit showing you the shooter's face.
	You won't find his face in, here you go, NBC, Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS, Washington Post.
	They want to tell you that he was a white supremacist and not see his very Hispanic-looking face.
	Stephen, you clearly...
	There it is.
	He would argue that the verbiage of it, because the verbiage was weird, he would say, they want to tell you this and not show his face, and he would say that they want to tell you that he's a white supremacist.
	And not show his very Hispanic face?
	But then he would argue that he's not saying why they are hiding his face.
	But why is he mentioning the race, then?
	No, I get it.
	I get it.
	I'm just saying, this is what he would do.
	I'm testing Stephen's logic here.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Mark is really struggling, like us, to make sense of Stephen's mindset here.
	I'm having trouble reconciling what you're saying now with what you said in the video, because you said straight up that they don't want you to see his very Hispanic-looking face.
	So we can say the media outlets made a decision for political reasons to say that he was a white supremacist, that they did not want to show his face.
	That's what you were telling your audience.
	To show any images, sure, yeah.
	Right, and you had an image, right?
	You had one that you think they should have shown.
	Objection form.
	No, I believe they should have shown any image, including the misidentifying of the black officer.
	At that moment in time, there was a push for gun control and a white supremacist shooter.
	At the time, we were told that was the greatest domestic terror threat, and it was an editorial decision to not include a litany of information as it related to the shooting in total, including a Hispanic shooter.
	It seems like everything that he just said is correct, though.
	That domestic terror is one of the most significant threats.
	I love that he would have been fine with any picture.
	Oh, yeah.
	I think it's okay.
	Even the wrong one.
	An AI picture of Trump carrying a dog through a flood would have been better.
	Well, everyone wants to see that.
	That makes him look strong, Dennis.
	And we love a strong man in this country.
	Let's make that an NFT, please.
	Thank you.
	You're never going to convince, Stephen, that a Hispanic person could be.
	Well, I mean that, obviously, but this is just frustrating.
	It's like, did you say that?
	What did that mean, man?
	Like, what did you mean by that?
	There's no way he could legitimately argue what he meant by that.
	Of course not, of course not.
	This is bonkers.
	Yeah, it's rough.
	It is not good.
	And out of desperation, things are made super simple for Stephen.
	Let's see how he does.
	I want to talk about two possibilities.
	That existed for you on May 8th, all right?
	One possibility is that major media organizations made a decision that they were not going to show any pictures of the shooter's face.
	And they were doing that because they wanted to press a story about white supremacy.
	And a second possibility is that those news organizations were either unable to confirm the accuracy of a photo, or they had already determined that the photo that you were showing was false.
	You understand those two possibilities.
	No.
	I'm not saying you agree with them.
	I'm understanding you understand that those are two possibilities.
	No, the second one is not possible.
	It is not possible that the news organizations you were referring to were either unable to confirm the accuracy of the photo or had already determined it was false.
	You're saying that's impossible.
	You just said it had determined the image I showed was false.
	Correct.
	They would not have been able to do that because I was reporting on their reporting.
	So they wouldn't have been able to report on my image being false or confirm it because their stories were already out there.
	It wasn't your image, though.
	Right?
	Beg your pardon?
	We just talked about you didn't break the symbol.
	- Well, sorry, when you said my image, you said second possibility definitively using, that they determined my image was false. - The image you used. - So that wouldn't be possible. - Let's rephrase that, 'cause I'm just saying the image you used, all right? - Was that intentional obtution?
	Is that a word?
	I think he was just kind of like, actually...
	That was like a mind puzzle.
	Totally.
	It's late.
	What is a mind puzzle?
	Well, that's what Criss Angel does.
	Oh, shit.
	Sorry.
	We're in his territory here.
	Does he know what they're talking about?
	I mean, it's possible he just understood it dumbly.
	Maybe.
	He is kind of a dipshit.
	They weren't reporting on me.
	They were reporting on the killer.
	I do go into a bit of a fugue state when I start getting racist on the show.
	It's just like, yeah.
	Clearly, either...
	The news is a big cabal trying to shift political outlooks based on the coverage they choose and how they choose to cover it.
	I really loved when he was like, you think it's impossible that they said we can't verify that?
	You think that is impossible?
	That was incredible.
	That was a good moment.
	Impossible.
	But instead, it was just a misunderstanding, maybe?
	Do we get to hear more of this?
	Yeah, I think so.
	Because I really want to hear what happens next.
	Two possibilities.
	Now, of the two possibilities, you have one, where the media intentionally doesn't want to show the picture for political reasons.
	Or two, they've simply been unable to confirm a picture.
	The second possibility is more likely.
	You'll agree to that?
	No, I don't agree.
	Do you really think it was rational to think that the Wall Street Journal, of all places, had made a decision to not show the shooter's face so that they could push a narrative about white supremacy?
	Yes.
	The Wall Street Journal that's owned by News Corp and Rupert Murdoch, that same Wall Street Journal, was...
	Intentionally deciding not to show the shooter's face for a political reason.
	That was rational.
	That same Wall Street Journal, I believe it's rational.
	Alright.
	Is he laughing?
	Mark was...
	He seemed like he was smirking.
	Yeah, just a little bit.
	Just listening, yeah.
	And just like Mark promised when he said he'd return to the Today News Africa White House press-accredited reporter, that's where we'll pick up next episode because it's late, and that's about all I can handle for this week.
	Man.
	He gets.
	This is pretty juicy, honestly.
	It's illuminating when he does open his mouth.
	Now that we've fallen down this perspective that he has that it is more likely that the Wall Street Journal is maliciously selecting stories and how they present them.
	That's really interesting.
	It's wild that he truly is under oath saying he believes that.
	Well, I think he kind of has to, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, he obviously has to because that's the only way that it would save him, supposedly.
	I mean, I have no idea.
	I don't know how it works here.
	But Stephen's demeanor is so different.
	I understand everyone's different.
	It's going to be under a deficit.
	It's going to be different.
	It's going to be more short and whatnot.
	The entire feel of him is so different.
	Yeah, he's principal office coded at this point.
	Yeah, he's like when the bully is all being a tough guy and beats up the dude.
	He's crying in the principal's office.
	Yeah.
	Well, he's in trouble.
	Yeah, no, you guys nailed it.
	It is definitely, like, how many times did he answer through, like, biting his finger?
	He is just total, like, none of these guys can stand on business, right?
	So it's just, like, their need to obscure and, you know, what's the fun word that he used at the end there?
	obtusify.
	Byron, if you are there, come up.
	Thank you.
	I don't know.
	Processing that in your head, like on the spot where it's like, this is on the record, like this kind of does mean something, or maybe will mean something.
	How I answer it has to be in line with like, I don't know.
	It is like quick thinking to be like...
	Yeah, I'm dumb as hell, bro.
	Most people wouldn't think that immediately, I think, but that's kind of how his direction has to be that, or it doesn't work.
	You guys are absolutely right.
	It's just the Tucker Carlson argument of no reasonable person could think that I'm being honest, except Stephen could not go that far to admit that.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	That's a really good poll, actually.
	The whole, the Fox News, Fox News is entertainment TV, you know, and having to defend that, basically, to their sycophantic fucking weirdo, you know, freaks who are holding on, you know, maybe it's like less now, maybe they don't have the same press.
	Get up, come on, get down with the obtrusivity?
	Whatever.
	It's not every day that there's a mass shooting where he miscredits an image, but he certainly says false statements about situations like this on a regular basis.
	And I think we've talked about this.
	We've never heard him show a correction of any kind.
	Never.
	I mean, they do be admonished, but that's not real.
	That's not real.
	Substantial.
	It's like the pool on the roof.
	So, I mean, we're less than halfway through this depot, so a lot more to go.
	I do once again want to say thanks to Shrug Nation.
	Hell yeah, Shrug Nation.
	And I want to thank...
	Once again, Bran again.
	Piece of shit.
	Matthew B. What a piece of shit.
	You piece of shit.
	Kicker Mike as well.
	Kicked again, Mike.
	All right.
	Thank you so much for your support of us over at Shrug.club, the place where you can find all of the bonus content, VOD, live streams.
	Yeah, the juicy extras.
	All the hot stuff that we talked about.
	Too hot for TV. Too hot for main feed, I think.
	Is it a two-letter acronym for the internet?
	Too hot for TE. The Internet?
	That's great.
	Feel free to, yeah, join us there.
	Rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify.
	Two of those are the same thing.
	It's really late, and this has been kind of an emergency episode, so thanks for tolerating us and our interpretation of this.
	I'm glad to be back.
	Yeah.
	If you guys want to take off, I'll finish the episode.
	No, it's not cut up.
	You just want to listen to it and riff on it.
	Just riff tracks.
	It'd be kind of fun.
	Just, yeah, pause it.
	Folks wanting us to cover the main show, sorry next week is going to be more of this.
	You're not missing anything.
	It's all just Trump cabinet defense, and that's boring.
	No one wants any of that.
	I bet it's boring.
	But yeah, find us on X at Van Crowder.
	Also Blue Sky, same thing, Van Crowder.
	That's where I spend most of my time.
	Louderthancrowd.com, louderwithcrowder.net.
	And until next time...
	I'm Byron.
	I'm Dennis.
	I'm Jerry.
	Take care.
	You've been listening to an AudioWall original.

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