Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - The Press V.S. POTP 2019 Year In Review

Dec. 31, 2019 - Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith

01:29:33

The Press V.S. POTP 2019 Year In Review

# washington post tucker carlson social media moderation afghanistan papers chuck todd corporate journalism covington catholic kids daniel mcadams james smith media censorship meet the press milo yiannopoulos mueller report new york times opcw whistleblower post truth narrative religious freedom robbie the fire bernstein sean hannity

James Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein critique the 2019 mainstream media landscape, contrasting their findings with a "fake news" edition of Meet the Press hosted by Chuck Todd. They highlight failures like the Mueller report's lack of conspiracy findings, the Afghanistan Papers exposing wartime lies, and the OPCW whistleblower confirming no chemical weapons in Syria. Smith argues corporate journalism ignores critical economic issues while weaponizing misinformation, citing Twitter's selective suspensions and the media's hostility toward religious voters. Ultimately, the hosts conclude that declining institutional trust stems from a refusal to address factual realities, leaving citizens to verify truth independently rather than relying on biased narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
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Fresh Reactions to Meet the Press 00:14:29
	Fill her up!
	You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
	We need to roll back the state.
	We spy on all of our own citizens.
	Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
	If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
	Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
	You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
	Here's your host, James Smith.
	What's up, everybody?
	Happy New Year.
	Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem, our last episode of 2019.
	I am the most consistent motherfucker you know.
	He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
	How are you, sir?
	Junior inconsistency.
	You know, I'm trying to work my way up.
	Yeah, I think so.
	But you're the king of the cocks.
	And I show up like two out of three episodes a week.
	So that's pretty good.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's true.
	Probably like 1.9.
	You know, those AIDS-related illnesses have kept you out of a few episodes, but you've been doing good.
	Now, and then you come through for some Wednesday episodes.
	I'll give you the two.
	I'll give you the two.
	Well, this is, as I said, our final episode.
	We're recording a little bit earlier.
	I'm recording this one on Sunday because I'm headed out to Los Angeles to go do the Legion of Skanks New Year's bash at the comedy store, which I'm looking forward to.
	We always have a lot of fun when we're out there.
	And so we wanted to come in here and get this episode out.
	My plan was seeing as how it's the last episode of the year.
	And this was a really just crazy year news-wise.
	And just for me personally, just a great year.
	I mean, really, you know, I think I said this last year, but this was like the best year of my life.
	And in every way, every way possible.
	Personally, professionally.
	And I'm really grateful to everyone who listens to the show.
	So my plan was to do like a year in review episode.
	And as I was thinking through that, I was almost like blown away just by how crazy a year this was, how many just remarkable stories there were and the biggest stories of the year and how crazy they all were.
	But then we're still going to do that.
	But this morning, it's Sunday night as we're recording this now.
	And this morning I watched Meet the Press on NBC.
	And if you remember on the last episode, excuse me, on the last episode, we read that piece by Chuck Todd, and he was kind of previewing what they were going to do on Meet the Press for their last episode of the year.
	And they did kind of like a special Meet the Press episode on, well, I'll let them explain it in a second because we're going to get to some of the clips, but they did a special on fake news, basically.
	And I was watching it and I was blown away.
	Just blown away by it.
	Like, I actually really recommend people go watch this if they haven't already.
	Go watch the final episode of Meet the Press of 2019.
	And you know how rarely I recommend going and watching mainstream media.
	But this one is hilarious.
	It was just perfect.
	And I was like, you know what?
	This is actually a better show, I think, if we break down the Meet the Press episode and give our year in review all at once and kind of just contrast the difference between how we look at things and how the biggest, longest running show on television looks at things.
	And it was just, I mean, I guess I should have known from the Rolling Stone article.
	But man, whew.
	The way they see things or the way they try to present things versus the way we see things, pretty interesting.
	Pretty interesting, the gap.
	The fake news special on fake news reporting.
	Yes, that's right.
	That's right.
	And it was incredible.
	Now, you have not seen any of this, correct?
	Which sometimes I like that.
	I like when you, and I'm not just giving you an excuse to do no homework.
	But I like that you are.
	Sometimes it's interesting to get your reaction to it like fresh.
	And you're also, you know something?
	And by the way, Rob, and you're a great co-host of this show.
	And the people love you.
	The problem children, they love Robbie the Fire Barnes name.
	They complain when you're not on shows.
	But one of the reasons why it's great is because you have this fantastic, like libertarian, on the spectrum, you know, like quality to you where you're like, I don't even know.
	Like, I'll bring up a thing where I'll be like, oh, did you see Nick Fuentes and the fucking, you know, Charlie Kirk are getting into it?
	And you're like, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.
	But I just read six articles on the debt and like, let's talk about it.
	And that's just a great, it's a wonderful perspective to have.
	You just kind of zone out all this bullshit and focus in on what actually matters.
	But then when I show you the bullshit, it's great to get your reaction because you can see through it.
	You know, there's something about, I've always said I thought libertarianism, like one of the reasons why I'm able to go on these cable news shows and have these kind of cool moments is because I have these libertarian superpowers that other people don't have.
	And when you actually get introduced to the right people and you look at things the right way, like if you just read anatomy of the state, you will look at things in a different way than everybody in the corporate press looks at things.
	And then they're like, they're struggling to figure something out.
	And you're like, oh, but it's so obvious.
	It's right here in front of you.
	It's not that like I'm so smart or that's certainly not it.
	I'm fucking, there's people with way higher IQs than me who I embarrass on some of these cable news shows because they just don't have this.
	I've made the comparison before, but it's like there's a magician doing a trick because that's what the whole state is.
	That's what this whole system is.
	It's a trick.
	And you know how sometimes like if you were looking directly on to a magic trick, it looks like magic.
	But if you move three feet over here, you can just see what the magician is doing.
	You're like, oh no, he dropped it on the floor.
	He put it behind his back.
	He did, you know, and like, I'm just looking at it from that perspective.
	It's nothing special about me.
	I just happen to be lucky enough to have been introduced to the right people and read the right stuff.
	And then you're like, oh, I can just, I can see through this.
	So that's my, there's my humble brag to open the show with.
	But anyway, let's jump right into it because there's a lot here, a lot here.
	So let's open, let's just play from the beginning this week's episode of Meet the Press.
	This is going to be the Meet the Press year in review versus the part of the problem year in review.
	Let's see which one is better.
	Alternative facts, the assault on truth.
	Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.
	But the point you're getting.
	Look, alternative facts are not facts.
	They're falsehoods.
	We're living in an era where we can't even agree on what the facts are.
	Ukraine was not aware of the aid.
	They knew it on July the 25th on what truth is.
	Truth is truth.
	I don't mean to go like, I know it isn't truth.
	Truth isn't truth.
	Who the truth tellers are.
	Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happened.
	Or even the meaning of the simplest idea.
	It depends upon what the word is.
	This morning, Meet the Press takes an in-depth look at our post-truth society and how a changing media landscape has created chaos.
	Out of order.
	All right, let's pause.
	Pause right.
	I like to pump up music, dude.
	Oh, Meet the Press has great music.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, they have great music.
	And it just lets you know right away that this is the serious news.
	This is Meet the Press.
	You hear those horns playing.
	You're like, okay, let's go.
	This is the real deal.
	This isn't, you know, opinion news at 8 p.m.
	Sean Hannity's nice.
	Rachel Maddow's nice, but this is Meet the Press.
	If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.
	And this is their final show of the year.
	So you know, they want to talk about something really important, and what they want to talk about is alternative facts.
	And right away, from the very beginning, they take two clips that are not from this year.
	Or one is the Giuliani thing is from this year.
	The Kellyanne Conway thing is from like 2017.
	But they're just obviously taken out of context.
	I mean, I don't see how anyone with a skeptical eye couldn't look at that and realize.
	And I've watched the full interviews of both.
	But what, like they were saying to Kellyanne Conway, well, you know, Sean Spicer ignored the facts.
	And he was like, well, you've given some facts, but he was giving alternative facts.
	And she was just saying he's presenting an alternative narrative.
	Because what the media does, obviously, what we do here too, not that we're the media, but whatever you want to call us, what we do, what everyone does, is not just giving facts.
	It's not just dates and times and places.
	You're telling stories.
	You're creating narratives.
	And somebody, she was saying somebody's, he's giving an alternative take on what happened here.
	Okay, they're harping on the fact that she said alternative facts.
	Rudy Giuliani got flustered in that moment and he goes, well, this is the truth.
	The truth is the truth.
	And he's like, no, it's not.
	The truth is not the truth.
	He was saying what you're saying is bullshit.
	And God, God damn this crazy world that you're making me defend Rudy Giuliani.
	Something I never want to do.
	But he wasn't saying literally, facts aren't facts.
	He was clearly saying, no, what you're saying isn't the facts are the facts.
	Anyway, the focus of this is post-fact America.
	People are being lied to.
	There's lies in the media.
	Let's keep playing.
	The top editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post about the assault on truth from social media, Russian actors, and government officials.
	We'll look at the anatomy of a lie: how a story with just a kerdel of truth can metastasize into a politically potent conspiracy theory.
	We'll examine the fog of unknowability, Russian techniques for confusing the public with countless versions of the truth.
	And we'll discuss all of these issues with a panel of experts on media, journalism, and technology.
	Welcome to Sunday and Alternative Facts.
	I don't even know what an apple is anymore.
	Okay, so by the way, let's pause it.
	So he said, Welcome to Sunday and Alternative Facts.
	And you're just kind of like, oh, okay, so basically you're doing the same thing.
	Alternative facts.
	I thought there's no such thing as alternative facts.
	Well, he's going to give his version of the facts.
	Well, that's right.
	All right, let's keep playing.
	The longest running show in television history.
	This is a special edition of Meet the Press with Chuck Tubb.
	It's the All State Guy.
	It's Sunday morning.
	I hope you're having a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and are enjoying this holiday week.
	You've probably never heard of a town in Macedonia called Vales.
	This is the town where BuzzFeed discovered what was essentially a fake news farm.
	Some 140 websites pushing out made-up pro-Trump quote news stories written for Americans, not to help to elect Trump the candidate, but simply to make money on Facebook.
	Well, since then, the idea of fake news has become a growth industry, morphing from simply a get-rich-quick scheme in a former Yugoslav republic to a political weapon in our nationalized politics.
	The terms alternative facts and truth isn't truth debuted here on Meet the Press over the last couple of years, but these ideas are not new.
	Russia's government, for instance, now disorients its populace with so many versions of the truth, it creates what one former Russian TV producer called the fog of unknowability.
	Well, this morning we're going to hear from top players in journalism, diplomacy, and technology about combating truth manipulation and how Russian tactics have migrated right here to the United States.
	Please pause for one second.
	Citizens, of course, are complicit.
	The theme here is, hey, guys, I want you to stop thinking.
	Thinking's bad for you.
	And what you should be doing is just tuning into this and taking this as 100% fact.
	And that's authoritarian.
	Like, this is not, if anything, you should be like, we're presenting to you what we believe to be the information, but debate is great.
	And thinking about things are great or knowing that there might be incentives for the way we approach media is great.
	Dude, it's incredible through the whole show.
	And obviously, we're not going to play the whole show, but we'll play several clips of it.
	They never at any point go, well, let me demonstrate why we're doing a better job of getting things right than these guys are.
	There's never, he said at one point in that opening that we just heard that this has brought in chaos instead of order.
	But if you were to really say that, like in our society, do we now live under chaos rather than order?
	I mean, what does he mean by that?
	Like, are people just running chaotically through the streets as crime through the roof?
	Well, crime's way down since like I was a kid in the 90s.
	I mean, what he means is that people don't trust Chuck Todd anymore.
	That's the chaos.
	He means it's harder to just create propaganda.
	I'm in the business.
	I'm supposed to just be able to say propaganda and everyone goes, oh, look, that's the information.
	And I can't do that anymore.
	And so now they're going, well, that's chaos.
	And listen, I need you guys to just listen and take what I say as truth.
	There are so many ironies and contradictions and hilarious hypocrisies throughout this episode.
	It was even to me, somebody who I humbly say specializes in calling out media hypocrisy.
	I was flabbergasted.
	But the undertone here is I need you guys to stop thinking and don't do your own research.
	Yes.
	Well, that's right.
	And the undertone is it's a given that we're the true news and this is the fake news.
	I don't have to demonstrate that.
	This is just this is obvious.
	This is a starting point.
	It's a given.
	Okay.
	So that's that.
	And if you if you accept that given, I suppose the rest of it kind of follows.
	Look, let's just contrast right now.
	This is Chuck Todd, moderator of Meet the Press, the longest running show on television.
	Real serious news.
	In case you didn't hear those horns playing, real serious news.
	This is his final show of the year, and this is what he wants to talk about.
	Alternative facts.
	AKA fake news.
	Bullshit in news.
	People who are lying, right?
The Attempted Deep State Coup 00:04:36
	Okay.
	So these are the big stories.
	I mean, this is what we're opening with.
	Giuliani saying facts aren't facts.
	Sean Spicer saying Trump had the biggest crowd sizes.
	Kellyanne Conaway saying alternative facts.
	You know, all this stuff.
	These are the big stories.
	Let's shift into our year in review briefly before we get to the next clip.
	What were the biggest stories of 2019?
	Now, I'm going to throw out a few.
	And I don't think this is highly debatable.
	I think these are without a doubt the biggest stories of 2019.
	This is not from my libertarian anarcho-capitalist perspective.
	This isn't from, you know, I just think fairly objectively, if you're looking at the world of politics, the world of news, these were the biggest stories of 2019, okay?
	The Mueller report, the IG report, and the Afghanistan papers.
	To me, I don't know how you could get around these being the big stories of the year.
	There was the Mueller report after years of Donald Trump, the sitting president of the United States, being investigated for being in a conspiracy with a hostile foreign power and his campaign being in a conspiracy.
	And this dominating the media landscape, a 400-page report was delivered that showed that not one member of Donald Trump's campaign, nor Donald Trump, was charged with anything having to do with a conspiracy with the Russians.
	That is the I don't know how you could say that's not the biggest story of the year.
	Then there's the IG report, which is the report about how this investigation got started into thinking that Donald Trump could be conspiring with the Russians, which, okay, so the Mueller report finds there's no conspiracy with the Russians.
	The IG report finds, well, okay, it didn't exactly say everything we want.
	They didn't say, obviously, this was an attempted deep state coup.
	They basically went on a range of attempted deep state coup to gross incompetence.
	I don't know.
	It's somewhere in there.
	Because he said, I mean, what he actually said testifying to Congress was that he couldn't rule out whether it was gross negligence or intentionality.
	But what would intentionality be?
	I mean, intentionality is just another term for attempted coup, right?
	If you were intentionally trying to sabotage a president of the United States, that is kind of the same thing as a deep state coup.
	So that's what they found.
	That's the story there.
	So the entire mainstream media has been telling you Trump-Russia collusion for years.
	That turned out to be complete bullshit.
	And now it's maybe an attempted deep state coup, or maybe your organizations that you guys, the entire media, put all of this trust in have turned out to be just grossly negligent.
	I mean, like, just so negligent that it's fucking scary.
	Even if it's not intentionality, which it obviously is, but even if it's not, that's like one of the biggest stories of the year, okay?
	The other one would be the Afghanistan papers, which basically determined that, you know, that the most egregious lies have been told to the American people about the longest war in American history, that they were right from the start, all the facts on the ground have been, you know, you've been lied to about everything.
	And these are lies that have cost Americans, military members their lives and lots more Afghanistan, you know, Afghan citizens.
	Okay, so that's a pretty big story.
	And by the way, for years when this was all going on, now, to give credit where credit is due, it was a mainstream corporate media outlet, the Washington Post, who broke this story.
	But if you had been reading the Washington Post for the last 15 years, you certainly wouldn't have known that.
	And if you were watching NBC News or CNN or reading the New York Times, you would have thought that all of the lies that they were telling were the truth because they basically just report what government sources are telling them and present it as if it's fact.
	So all of these huge, huge stories with major ramifications, and they all involve media disinformation, alternative facts, fake news.
	But what's the big story?
Heshisocks: Solving Foot Problems 00:02:29
	What's your big closing episode of the year?
	It's this fucking it's what?
	There's a Twitter farm of people making money off fake stories.
	Oh yeah, you guys, have you ever read one of those articles online?
	And then you scroll down to the bottom and there's like different pictures.
	There's like one chick in a bikini and like some other things and there's all these links that you never fucking click on, but there's stories down there.
	They're sticking out in a squid.
	Turns out they're lies.
	Oh my God, shocking.
	Hey guys, do you remember when you were a kid and you would go to the fucking supermarket and right before you check out, you would see the Inquirer and all these other things?
	Yeah, and they'd be like, Yeah, the alien comes down and tells you what the future is going to be.
	Turns out that wasn't true.
	Did you know that?
	Well, meet the press.
	You got to bust this story wide open.
	First off, I would say, just guessing, I think 80 to 90% of people who consume that stuff already know it's lies and they're just having fun.
	It's just like fucking mentally jerking off.
	And for anyone who believes that, they were so gullible and stupid that they were never going to be, you know, there was nothing consequential coming out of them anyway.
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	I want to add one more important story.
	Oh, yeah, sure, absolutely.
	I got to go.
Walls Closing and Source Verification 00:15:43
	Yeah, well, that is a big story.
	I'll give you the short version right here, right now.
	The federal government, firstly, they're bailing out the banks without us voting on it in any capacity.
	And that's the ultimate of what's fraud in the Fed.
	But also, they cannot run in a trillion-dollar deficit and finance our budget while both pretending like there's enough money in the system for fractional reserve banking to work.
	And this is also just a way of manipulating interest rates.
	But be warned.
	I think it's going to get worse and you're only seeing the first major signs of our banking system falling apart.
	Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.
	Me and you were talking about it the other day out there.
	I'm going to reach out to Bob Murphy, try to get him on a show so the three of us can do like a whole episode on this.
	But yeah, no, that's absolutely right.
	That's a huge story.
	But you're almost giving the media like too much credit.
	The idea that they're ever going to jump into that as a story.
	I mean, you think Chuck Todd is going to do a fucking special on repo rates at the fucking repo market?
	Probably not.
	But I don't see how you can deny, even for Chuck Todd, how you can deny the Mueller report, the IG report, the Afghanistan papers.
	Here's one more that's a really fucking big story of the year is the fucking OPCW whistleblower that's basically come out and confirmed that these, the fucking chemical weapons slam dunk.
	Now, the stories from last year, not this year, but the whistleblower story came out this year, but that they were trying to lie us into yet another war.
	And it turned out to all be bullshit.
	And like, that is huge.
	That is a humongous story.
	But, but, oh no, the real problem is the fake news.
	When you're funded by the war machine, you can't follow that story.
	It is.
	Meet the press, which, by the way, is brought to you by Boeing.
	What a convenient relationship.
	I'm sure.
	Scott Orton was the first one who ever pointed that out to me, but goddamn it, I was like, man, I never even thought about it like that.
	But like, they'll be like, meet the press, brought to you by Boeing.
	And you're just kind of like, are a lot of people who watch Meet the Press in the market for like a fighter jet?
	Like, why would Boeing want to advertise on Meet the Press?
	It's like, oh, maybe they just like to cut Chuck Todd a check.
	Maybe that's why.
	They just like to be like, oh, here, you know, good luck with your reporting.
	Maybe don't mention the fucking, you know, maybe don't fucking mention the fucking Syria bullshit.
	But that's another huge story.
	And if you're going to talk about like where this alternative media is popping up and why there's so much distrust in the media, I mean, like, well, here's the biggest stories of the year.
	You guys got all of them wrong.
	Every one of these stories that we just broke down were things that you guys got completely wrong.
	You want to talk about fucking alternative facts?
	Now, okay, they can say, you know, some of them were more careful than others.
	So they can say, well, we didn't actually say, like, maybe, I mean, there are facts that they get wrong, but it's not like some of them were more careful where you could technically say, I didn't get a fact wrong, but they left you with an impression.
	I mean, how many times, right, did the mainstream media had the walls are closing in on Donald Trump?
	I think we've played before on the show.
	If not, you can just go to YouTube and find it, but those hilarious like montages of the walls are closing in.
	Just everyone in the mainstream media repeating that the walls are closing and the walls are closing in.
	Going back to 2017, February 2017, the walls were already closing in.
	All the way now.
	I guess the walls, I guess it was a really big room, you know, because there's a lot of room there for the bombshell.
	If true.
	You know, that's their favorite one.
	So you could technically say we didn't get any facts wrong, but, you know, BuzzFeed just released the steel dossier.
	If true, this could be damning for the press.
	If true, this is a bombshell.
	So they just kind of leave you with this narrative, this impression that Trump is colluding with a hostile foreign power.
	And it's all bullshit.
	All bullshit.
	Now, there were other stories too that were big stories this year, like a few that I almost feel like deserve an honorable mention, but going in line with the Syria thing, right?
	And if you're doing a whole show, a whole show on how trust in the media and, oh my God, people are trusting these other news sources that are lying to you, but they need to really trust us.
	He go, well, wasn't it ABC News that while trying to push us into this war in Syria, just showed footage of a Kentucky gun range and claimed this was footage of Kurds getting slaughtered because Donald Trump had the gall to move a few hundred soldiers around in Syria?
	Remember that one?
	Yeah, that probably doesn't do much for trust in news.
	That probably doesn't help much.
	Here's another one.
	Not the thing that I focus on the most, but you know, a pretty big story, also over at ABC, was one of their female reporters being caught on a hot mic talking about how they had the Jeffrey Epstein story three years ago.
	Had it three years ago, and she was told to fucking squash that shit.
	That it was the story was killed.
	Here's a story of a fucking child rapist.
	A fucking serial pedophile that they would kill the story on and why.
	And she actually gave the reason because they didn't want to lose access to the royal family because this might make them look bad.
	And then how do we know what the prince's wife is going to wear the day before her wedding?
	So for fucking royalty, these American citizens would suck up to British royalty and not just for some trivial thing to kill a story about a billionaire, politically connected child rapist.
	So let's do a special on why people don't really trust Chuck Todd anymore.
	Well, it's here's why, because they're stupid and they're being lied to.
	And that's and none of this, none of this gets, by the way, I should say, uh, to um, to credit, because we're probably not going to play this clip, but one of the guys, the head editor at the New York Times, who was one of the more reasonable voices on the program, did mention the Afghanistan papers.
	And he kind of at one point was like, Well, you know, politicians have been lying for a while.
	Trump didn't invent it, he's just made it worse, but does kind of point that out as a big story.
	But Chuck Todd seems, you know, the big story is that, you know, Kellyanne Conaway said alternative facts in January of 2017.
	That's the big story of two.
	Not any of the stuff we just mentioned.
	Those aren't the big stories.
	The big story is Kellyanne Conaway saying the words alternative facts.
	There you go.
	That's what people really need to know.
	I can't figure out why people don't trust the corporate press.
	I don't know.
	They are so bad.
	And believe me, I know I've said this before, and I'll repeat it, but this is not, this does not speak to how good we are.
	It speaks to how bad they are.
	That you are more well informed about the big issues if you listen to this stupid podcast than if you watch Meet the Press every week.
	I don't know if this exists, but if you look at age demographics for ratings of things like Meet the Press, can you project that they got to be irrelevant within 15 years?
	I know Fox News audience is really old because I know they love Kennedy because her audience isn't old.
	And they're like, oh, what?
	You're getting 35-year-olds to watch your show?
	This is insane.
	How do you do that?
	Because young to them is like 79.
	They are old.
	But they've seemed to maintain it for a while.
	But I don't know.
	Yeah, I don't know what the numbers for like Meet the Press are, but I have to imagine there's not a whole lot of 25-year-olds who are watching Meet the Press and taking it seriously.
	I would bet that their ratings year over year is a downward trajectory.
	And that if you also look at the age demographic, it's like only up, which are basically two charts for death.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, I think that's an assumption.
	My guess is that you're probably right, but I don't have the numbers to back that up either.
	So let's, when you get a chance, move to the second cut, the second time stamp that I gave you, and keep playing from this because it's really, it's just the disconnect between us and them, I just find so fucking fascinating.
	So let me know.
	You ready?
	Dean, do we have to market the truth?
	And what I mean by this is, you know, he's out there a lot essentially delegitimizing our professions.
	We don't fight back like a candidate.
	We don't fight back like a campaign.
	Do we need to start campaigning around the country to say, no, no, no, here's how facts work.
	Here's what reporting is.
	Here's what journalists are.
	Oh, by the way, if I utter a fact on TV on purpose, I get fired.
	All right, pause.
	Hold on.
	Just that Chuck Todd just said, now he misspoke.
	So I'm not going to do what he's doing to Kellyanne Conaway and Rudy Giuliani.
	But it is pretty funny that he said, if I utter a fact on television intentionally, I get fired.
	What he meant was if I utter a falsehood, but it's a nice Freudian slip there.
	I mean, if I say one fact, I get fired.
	All right.
	Anyway, I'm not going to do what he's fucking doing to these other people.
	But, oh my God, where do you even want to start there?
	Well, he's basically saying, how do we do a better job of selling our version of the truth?
	It used to be that we could get on the news and we could report whatever we wanted as fact, and that was taken as fact.
	And that's no longer the case.
	So how do we go out there and sell our version of the truth?
	Because just being on the news isn't enough.
	That's really what he's saying.
	Yes.
	No, it is.
	And of course, in his world, it's a given that we are the truth.
	We are the truth.
	But he says, now, again, I will plead to people who like, you know, who don't suffer from Trump derangement syndrome.
	It's a real, it is a real fucking thing where people will tell me because they suffer from the illness that I'm a Trump supporter.
	And I'll be like, but I'm calling for Trump to be impeached and tried for war crimes.
	So most people who support Donald Trump probably wouldn't say he should be tried and then put in prison for life or executed, right?
	Like that, that wouldn't be the typical Trump supporter.
	And they'll go, that's just a deflection.
	You know, so people, anyway, people who do not suffer from this affliction, if you suffer from it, I hope you get well soon.
	But for those of you who don't, Chuck Todd is saying, you know, the problem is that we're not really campaigning against Donald Trump.
	Like the corporate press isn't really against Donald Trump enough.
	Now, anybody who sees the world that way, God help you.
	I don't know how you got.
	But then he's entertaining the idea of maybe we should start.
	Maybe we should just jump into the political fight and campaign against the president of the United States.
	Like we're obviously in opposition to him.
	I mean, we're guardians of the truth and he's a child of the lie.
	So obviously we should go fight for team truth versus team lie.
	But as soon as you don't take it as a given that Chuck Todd represents the truth, then you go, oh, you are derelict in your duty.
	I mean, obviously now you're just an activist who's pretending to be an objective journalist.
	I thought it was a remarkable admission.
	That's what this whole show is.
	Just remarkable admissions.
	And just notice, by the way, too, that Chuck Todd, so he's got these two guys on his show.
	And Chuck Todd, you would think is moderator of Meet the Press.
	And this is how the quote objective news works, is that you put out a question as if it's almost neutral, but it's such a loaded topic that he just brings out there.
	Should we be out there campaigning on behalf of the truth?
	Now, he's not talking about demonstrating that he has the truth on his side.
	He's not saying, hey, look, we look at our track record versus the alternative media's track record.
	See, obviously, we haven't lied nearly as much as them.
	He's not saying our lies have been less consequential than their lies.
	None of that.
	It's just obviously we're beholders of the truth.
	It is a fundamentally religious perspective.
	Ironically enough, let's keep playing from that clip.
	Journalists took for granted and believed that people believed everything we said.
	They believed that if I filed a story from Afghanistan that we were there, we believed that everybody thought we were in war zones and we believed that people trusted us.
	And we went through generations of just assuming everybody believed us.
	What I think we're going to have to get very aggressive at is to be really transparent, to assume nothing, and to make sure people know where we are, how we do our work, to show our work more aggressively.
	That's a different muscle for us.
	All right, let's pause it.
	So that, and by the way, I did, I thought he was, that was the New York Times guy.
	He was like the most reasonable in the discussion.
	Sounds like Larry Sharp.
	But it is a, doesn't it?
	Yeah, a little bit.
	But he's a like, I thought that was actually kind of an honest statement that he's like kind of telling Chuck Todd.
	He's like, well, we can't really just take it for granted that everyone believes us anymore.
	That's the chaos that Chuck Todd was referring to earlier.
	And you pull up the next clip whenever you go.
	You know what's so interesting about that is that almost every traditional business as the internet has come along has had to provide more value.
	Like if you're a store right now and you're just a store, you're out of business.
	You got to like be doing something better that you're offering more.
	Like you can't do what you were doing in the 80s.
	And so what he's basically saying is we're traditional news sources and for a long time people relied on us.
	But now with the amount of information that exists out there, we actually have to do more to prove the fact that we're a better news source.
	People don't realize it because they can read an article here or they can read it from us.
	So in other words, we got to actually provide more value.
	We got to like actually show our sources a little bit, do a little bit more.
	Well, here's, look, man, here, no, you're just to say, like, that's every business now in 2020 is going to have to do more than they used to in order to have the same customer.
	And so it's interesting for, you know, Chuck Dad kind of being like a crybaby about it, even though we also understand he's a propagandist and so he's trying to like control the narrative.
	But this is a more reasoned approach where he's just like, no, we have to do a little bit more to retain our customers.
	Right, right.
	And it's really something because if you think about it like this, right?
	Like if you know what's going on, if you're hip to this, this stuff.
	I mean, look, Vietnam, I mean, we could go all the way back to like World War I, World War II, the Korean War, all this stuff.
	But Vietnam was started off of a lie.
	This is just common knowledge at this point, that the war was.
	Well, it was a domino theory.
	If Vietnam fell, everything was going to fall.
	Well, right, right.
	But I mean, specifically, like the actual war itself was all, there were a bunch of like propagandist lies that like got us into that.
	But right, yes, this was the theory that this was the fucking, you know, the like.
	And Kissinger didn't lose his job after that theory turned out to be not true.
	Oh, right.
	And there's, yeah.
	And all of these things.
	And every one of them.
	And obviously everyone knows, look, the Afghanistan papers, we know how many lies that war was based around.
	The Iraq war is just common knowledge that that war was sold on lies.
	The war in Libya, I mean, there was an actual, this is not just like people like me or something like that.
	The British parliament did an investigation and determined that the war on Libya was sold based off lies, that there was no evidence that Gaddafi was about to go genocidal.
	All of this, like I just mentioned, the stuff with Syria, those lies are being exposed more and more.
	All like wars sold off lies.
	And that's the old order that they're talking about.
	They're like, no, but now we're in chaos where people aren't believing the lies as much anymore.
Lies Exposed in Libya War 00:05:28
	Look, here's the truth, right?
	Is there bullshit on the internet?
	Of course.
	Are there fake news stories that are put out there for clickbait and absolute?
	Of course.
	All of this is just the facts, right?
	Like no question.
	And I will say, look, none of them are as consequential, but are some of them more egregious, blatant lies than even the corporate press tells?
	I would also say yes to that.
	There are some minimal journalistic standards that the corporate press works within a framework of, where they're not just going to, you know, I mean, they will, right?
	Like there are examples like the ABC thing where I said they're showing a gun range in Kentucky, claiming it's Syria.
	There are examples of that, but it's, it's some sites you'll click on on the internet where it's just straight up.
	They're just making things up.
	Like this happened at this date, this, this, and it's all just false.
	Okay, that exists.
	There's also some really honest, important journalism that goes on on the internet in the alternative media.
	That exists also.
	So when something like the Afghanistan papers comes out, it's a shock in the world of Chuck Todd and New York Times head editor and all of these other people.
	That's like, oh my God, we just found out all of our sources were lying to us and this is all bullshit.
	To me, it was like, oh, they're admitting it.
	I knew all this shit.
	It's not because I'm fucking over in Afghanistan doing my own independent research.
	I just listened to the Scott Horton show.
	I've read his book.
	That's it.
	Because I was able to find people in the alternative media who are doing real journalism and telling the truth.
	So there's both.
	That's the deal with the internet.
	Now, they claim they want to clamp down on this alternative news for the fake news.
	But, you know, at least in that world, you have a shot of getting the truth.
	There are the honest people out there.
	Whereas if the corporate press has complete control, you get, well, what we've got.
	You get fucking tens of trillions of dollars in debt, fucking war after war after war, and every major story falling apart.
	By the way, even other stories, right?
	Like the ones that aren't as big, but are still outrageous, was another one of this year.
	I think it was this year.
	It was either January, was it late last year?
	Either way, I'm including it, was the Covington Catholic Kids.
	I think that was January of 2019, where the entire mainstream media just ran with this story that these kids, these racist Catholic Trump supporters, were fucking harassing some Native American.
	Turned out that guy was the instigator of the entire thing.
	They were the best group in the crowd, if you remember.
	These fucking black Israelites were fucking screaming racial epithets at them.
	Then the fucking Native Americans came over and started taunting them and they cheered and like did like nothing wrong.
	And they put their face out across the entire cable news, every cable news network.
	They were throwing their face out there in newspapers and all this shit.
	You had blue check marks, Reza Eslon fucking saying it's the most punchable face I could imagine.
	Like real, maybe not direct calls for violence, but pretty much like with a wink and a nod, like you should punch this kid if you see him, two innocent children.
	And again, that's compared to these other lies, these other stories that I mentioned, that's almost like nothing.
	But man, if that's your kid or your family, you're like, holy shit, you guys are attempting to ruin the lives of these fucking teenagers who did nothing wrong.
	And the bigger consequence from stories of that is that once the truth comes out, like these people who are paying attention to the internet, they see the unedited video.
	That's the new world we live in.
	That's the chaos Chuck Todd's referring to is now people can just go, oh, okay, well, it's an hour and a half video, but I can watch the whole fucking video.
	I don't have to take your one little freeze clip of fucking the kid with the Native American where it kind of looks like maybe he's in his face.
	You can't really tell.
	I mean, he's got a shit-eating grin on his face and he's real nose-to-nose with this Native American, so maybe he was being a dick.
	Well, let me watch the whole video.
	And once they do that, what's the effect?
	What's the effect of somebody once they watch that video?
	Let's say that theoretically they liked Chuck Todd before that.
	They go, oh, you fucking lied to me about that.
	Well, what happens?
	What happens if you're in a relationship with someone and you find out that they blatantly lie to you about that?
	What's your next thought?
	Well, what else are you lying to?
	Sleep with her mother.
	Well, it's maybe your next thought.
	That's more of an action.
	But you get what I'm saying?
	And your next thought is, well, what else are you lying to me about?
	What else is going on here?
	And every one of these fucking bullshit stories is another drop in the bucket, another drop in the bucket.
	And if the alternative media, the internet media, is so bad, you would think at some point here they would start asking themselves, why did we lose this grip on power?
	I mean, if the old system was so good and we were always doing our job well, why would all of these people have gone in this direction?
	Well, they have some ideas.
	So let's cut to the next clip.
	I want to read you guys a letter to the editor that we found in the Lexington Herald leader.
	It was a fascinating attempt at trying to explain why some people support President Trump.
	Here's what he says.
	Why do good people support Trump?
Cognitive Dissonance and Blue Chew 00:03:09
	It's because people have been trained from childhood to believe in fairy tales, to set their minds up to accept things that make them feel good.
	The more fairy tales and lies he tells, the better they feel.
	Show me a person who believes in Noah's Ark, and I will show you a Trump voter.
	Look, this gets at something, Dean, that my executive producer likes to say is, hey, voters want to be lied to sometimes.
	They don't always love being told hard truths.
	All right, pause it there.
	So let's start at the end and work our way back from that fantastic admission by Chuck Todd.
	Let's start at the end where Chuck Todd tells the world that his fucking producer tells him that voters want to be lied to.
	That is pretty interesting.
	They just want to be lied to.
	I agree.
	And that's why you don't talk about the debt ever.
	Yeah, right.
	Well, I don't.
	The creed of your network or I actually don't watch the show, but I'm willing to bet that they don't talk about the debt and they pretend like we can just finance it and it's not a problem.
	Yes.
	And so the proof is in the pudding.
	You ain't talking about this.
	Listen, it is half true that people want to be lied to.
	It's half true.
	I mean, yes, people, you know, confirmation bias is a real thing.
	Cognitive dissonance is a real thing.
	People want what they already believe to be reaffirmed to them.
	But people don't want to just find out that the people they trust are lying to them.
	And that's part of the reason why the approval ratings in the media have dropped so low.
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	All right, let's get back into the show.
	What's amazing is he goes, he opens this with, and again, this is moderator of me at the press.
	Here, let's just start a discussion.
	And he goes, well, Chuck Todd introduced it by saying, here's a really fascinating take.
	You know, that's the exact mainstream media.
	That's what they do.
	He didn't say, I believe this, but he just intros it with, here's a really fascinating take.
Christian Values vs Trump Support 00:07:28
	And the quote was, why do good people support Donald Trump?
	The quote starts with a question.
	Why do good people support Donald Trump?
	So do you want to know the answer to that question?
	Well, here's how deep we're going to think about it.
	They're stupid.
	They're religious.
	Religion is so dumb.
	I mean, I've never seen a question that had so much contempt for religious people in it.
	Okay.
	Well, they've been believing fairy tales their whole lives.
	I mean, show me a person who believes in Noah's Ark.
	I'll show you a Trump supporter.
	There's it.
	That's the extent of us digging around.
	That's the extent.
	You know, it's funny because here's the irony: your question and then following statement answers itself.
	Here, like, why do good people support Donald Trump?
	Well, why?
	Ask this question, right?
	Why do you think religious people, why do you think Christians support Donald Trump?
	Okay?
	I mean, Donald Trump is obviously not a serious observing Christian.
	Okay?
	He couldn't name one fucking, you know, one verse from the Bible.
	He's had multiple wives.
	He fucks porn stars while his wife's pregnant.
	He's not a serious practicing Christian.
	So why would good Christians support Donald Trump?
	Here's the answer.
	And it's so fucking obvious.
	Because he's not you.
	He's the enemy of you.
	And you clearly hate Christians.
	And he doesn't seem to.
	And he seems to fight you.
	The person who goes, oh, I'm going to pretend like I'm actually asking a question of why good people support Trump.
	Well, here, because these fucking retards believe in fairy tales.
	There's your answer.
	That's okay.
	That's the deep dive that I'm going to do.
	Okay.
	Well, he's fight.
	Well, you just basically threw a middle finger in my face.
	So Trump is a middle finger back in your face.
	Fuck you.
	I support him.
	There's your answer.
	How does it take an idiot comedian like me to see what you supposedly professional journalists are trying to figure out?
	In his lying, he's looking to represent me, which is at least the better option than you who your lies are to represent.
	You know, I'm more talking like Clinton versus Trump.
	So Trump, I think Middle America understands, hey, he's lying to me, but he's lying because he wants me.
	The other team doesn't even want me there.
	And not even want you.
	I mean, I agree completely with what you're saying, but it's one level further than that.
	Look, look at this guy.
	Think about what this is to say to a Christian, like a religious person.
	And not just Christian, throw Jew in there too.
	I get you're talking about an Old Testament story.
	So to say, well, you've grown up your whole life believing in fairy tales.
	Show me someone who actually believes in this fucking Noah's Ark thing, and I'll show you a Trump supporter.
	Think about Hillary Clinton saying half of Donald Trump's supporters are irredeemable deplorables, okay?
	Here's why they like Trump, because he doesn't fucking hate them.
	Not just that he against you.
	Like he doesn't fucking hate you.
	That's how they feel.
	Like you guys clearly hate them.
	It's so obvious.
	How could you read that quote and not just see it right away?
	You hate them.
	Now, I got to say, personally speaking, as somebody who is an ex-militant atheist, who's not so much anymore, but I'm not like a fucking Christian fundamentalist.
	I mean, of course I am.
	But I'm not somebody, like, I don't, I believe in God.
	I don't personally believe that every story of the Bible is literally true.
	That's, that's not my take.
	I actually think that these are kind of like metaphors or like, I think there's a lot of wisdom in a lot of these stories, but I'm not somebody who believes that like the flood actually took place, you know?
	And if you want to jump into the world of being a commentator and having an opinion and being like, hey, I think a literal interpretation of the Bible is fucking stupid, then fine.
	But this is Chuck Todd, Sirius Horns, meet the press moderator, saying, oh, here's a fascinating take.
	Maybe Christians are just idiots.
	Maybe anyone who believes in the Bible is fucking stupid.
	And that's why they support Donald Trump.
	Like, okay.
	I mean, at least understand that to Christians, that's a pretty fucking serious accusation that you just made.
	So again, why is it that they would support somebody who, yes, does lie a lot, is pretty clearly interested in his own fucking ego and enriching himself and doesn't share their Christian values.
	Because he's fighting the people who hate them, who want to see them dead or destroyed or living in a world where their kids are fucking atheist transgenders.
	All right?
	That's what he represents to them.
	How hard is it to fucking figure this out?
	Isn't it amazing that Chuck Todd would put that out as just an interesting question?
	Well, this is fascinating.
	Here's a fascinating take.
	Maybe they're all stupid, idiot religious people.
	And then the craziest thing, and that's, you can queue up the next, uh, the next timestamp.
	The craziest thing about all of this, and I just, you know, like I see it from the perspective, or at least attempt to see it from the perspective of some Christian who must be watching it, is that then Chuck Todd would claim he's a Christian.
	Like everyone on that fucking network would be like, oh yeah, of course, we're all Christian.
	Then they'll go, oh, well, you can't be for separating families from, you know, children from their families because that's not Christian.
	They'll invoke the Bible like Mayor Pete is doing all the time.
	They'll, you know.
	Oh, but really, when it comes down to it, you're all a bunch of fucking idiots.
	It's like, I don't know, I've grown up around a lot of people where religion is not a central fucking theme in their life.
	They're not like, you know, I've known a lot of atheists my whole life and a lot of people who, even if they are kind of religious, don't really believe in it like that.
	But I don't think, and it's not that hard for me.
	I mean, like, I don't know, maybe it's just not that hard for me to put myself in the shoes of someone who does, especially since I've kind of, you know, moved away from my atheist tendencies.
	To just be like, man, do you, to even read that quote and not think about how profoundly offensive that is to anybody who's religious.
	And the irony of starting it by going, why do they support him?
	Because of that.
	That's why.
	You just answered your own question without even realizing it in that very quote.
	In that very quote.
	That's why they hate you.
	That's why they hate Chuck Todd.
	That's why they don't believe anything you guys fucking say.
	And also to bolster Donald Trump's argument, you guys lie all the time and you guys get stories wrong all the time.
	And it's not like you guys, maybe it's not as blatant as the article you click at the bottom of some dumb fucking, you know, some dumb clickbait ad, but you guys have gotten almost all of the most important stories completely wrong.
	So here's a group of people who hate me, who want to see me fucking dead, want to see my way of life destroyed, and get all of the major important stories wrong.
	Maybe I'll go with the guy fighting against them.
Free Speech Bias on Social Media 00:14:43
	Just a theory.
	All right, let's cut.
	We're going to cut forward into the show.
	I think this is the panel sake.
	Welcome back.
	Our panel is here.
	Joshua Johnson, he's former host now of 1A on NPR, also an NBC News contributor, and actually soon to be a bigger part of the NBC News family.
	Kara Schwisser is co-founder and editor at large of FreeCode, tech news and analysis website, also the author of a growingly popular column in the New York Times.
	Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and Matthew Continetti, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
	Good to have you all.
	Kara, I want to start in your world of tech because the one thing we haven't touched on as much is sort of social media.
	We talked about it on the sides, but sort of the role social media is playing in this misinformation campaign.
	Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey are kind of having a debate.
	First, let me play a clip from Mark Zuckerberg at Georgetown a couple months ago.
	While I certainly worry about an erosion of truth, I don't think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100% true.
	Jack Dorsey, head of Twitter, actually seemed to disagree with him.
	This isn't about free expression.
	This is about paying for reach and paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramification that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.
	Yes.
	Well, that's the two sides of it.
	And then Google sits in the middle and it's trying to figure out a way between them.
	You know, Mark's idea is he's conflating free speech with paid speech.
	And it's purposely confusing to people.
	Anybody can say anything on their platforms.
	It's on Twitter, for example.
	Donald Trump continues to tweet as you notice this people.
	Pause it right there.
	Holy shit, my disinformation and media senses just tingled.
	So, on this show about disinformation and media, here's this woman.
	And by the way, this is, of course, they do this entire episode.
	They don't think, and it doesn't even probably cross their mind that maybe we should have one voice, like one Trump supporter on, one voice from the dissident right or something like that to like give the other side, like what would they say here?
	You know, that we'll just tell you what they would say and then we'll battle against it.
	Oh, but we have someone from the American Enterprise Institute or okay.
	Um, so she says as a statement of fact that this is this isn't about free speech, this is about paid speech, uh, a distinction I was unfamiliar with.
	I'm sorry, so it's not free speech anymore if I have to buy something first.
	Okay, but she's saying it is a matter of free speech, I suppose, would be her argument, if you're not paying for it, and then lets you know that anyone can say anything on their Twitter account.
	Oh, guys, isn't that good to know?
	Anyone can say anything on their Twitter account.
	They're not going to silence you.
	You're not going to get kicked off or suspended or banned for being right-wing or a left-wing anti-war person.
	No, that's not going to happen.
	Doesn't doesn't happen.
	You can say anything you want to on your Twitter.
	Unless, of course, you violate their terms of service.
	And their terms of service just happen to have a somewhat left-leaning bias.
	Like, you know, you have your free speech unless, of course, you misgender someone or dead name someone.
	So you call Caitlin Jenner Bruce Jenner.
	Oops, you just lost your freedom of speech.
	No fucking trial, no process, nothing.
	You lost your, as she would put it, freedom of speech.
	Are you out of your fucking mind?
	It's like they're just going to pretend.
	And this is another part of the reason why they have no trust from anybody who's on the right wing, who's younger, who's outside of this fucking, you imagine just telling them it's like if you were like in Waco at that compound and someone comes on meet the press and goes, no one's shooting at you.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	And you're like, I'm literally, there's bullets whizzing past my head.
	My father's bleeding to death on the floor.
	I'm pretty sure they're shooting at us.
	No, you're not getting kicked off.
	No, nobody's getting silenced on Twitter.
	You can say whatever you want to there.
	I mean, I can't tell you.
	And her evidence, of course, is that Trump keeps tweeting.
	I mean, Trump's still tweeting.
	So no one gets kicked off because they haven't kicked off the president of the United States.
	How many people, just friends of mine, people I know who have been fucking kicked off of Twitter?
	I'll run down some of them.
	I won't get all of them.
	Okay.
	Owen Benjamin, Gavin McGinnis, fucking Anthony Cumia.
	Daniel McAdams.
	Scott Horton got suspended for a while.
	Fucking Milo Yiannopoulos, not a friend of mine, but someone I know.
	Milo Yiannopoulos, like so many.
	Just literally off the top of my head.
	There's so many people, right-wing voices with huge followings who get kicked off for nothing more than giving their views on things.
	Now, you can define their views on things to be hate speech or whatever, but Daniel McAdams got kicked off, I think, for calling someone a lying bitch or something like that, like some neocon he called a lying bitch.
	I see people do this all the time.
	But if you are left-leaning, you know, corporatist meet the press person, you go, oh, you can say whatever you want.
	And you know what the truth is?
	You can say whatever you want.
	You can say whatever you want, but the dissident right cannot.
	And by the way, the anti-war left cannot either.
	They get fucking booted off real quick too.
	So it's just, this is, this is, it's like, I wonder why these people don't trust them.
	All right, let's keep playing.
	But he doesn't get, but his campaign doesn't get to do paid advertising.
	And that's a very different thing.
	What's really interesting is that balkanization has been around forever.
	And early, you know, you look at George Washington, all those days, that was very partisan crowds on every bit of media.
	The issue is when you get it into the social media space, it becomes three things.
	It becomes weaponized, it becomes amplified, and it becomes anonymous.
	And then you can repeat lies, and then they take a virality and create engagement that leads to enragement.
	And then it, you know, do it again.
	Lather, rinse, repeat.
	And that's what goes on.
	This to me is, look, there was just a lot in that poem.
	Weaponized, amplified, viralize.
	That was one hell of a poem she just recited for us.
	That's right.
	And they can spread all of these fucking lies around.
	And that's their argument.
	It's like, oh, okay.
	So basically, they can compete with you guys.
	You know?
	And of course, any of these things, this is what I argued with David Cross when I was at the Paley Center on that panel.
	But when they were basically saying that lies should be censored.
	And I was like, okay, but that leads to another really important question, which is who gets to determine what the lie is.
	And David Cross, without hesitating, responded, me.
	I do.
	And I was like, well, I don't really trust you to be our overlord.
	So no, you know, that doesn't work for me.
	But that is the instinct.
	And that's exactly what they're displaying here.
	Well, lies have to be fucking shut down.
	And who gets to determine the lies?
	Well, us, obviously.
	We'll tell you what's the truth and what's the lies.
	Isn't it interesting, right?
	Like you were talking about before, where they're, as the New York Times guy admitted, and you had mentioned before that they're used to this world where they just fucking have this monopoly on news and they just feel so entitled to it, you know?
	So they're just like, well, we get to decide that.
	That's how it's supposed to be.
	We get to decide who fucking who's telling the truth and who's telling lies.
	And nowhere in this entire episode has there been an argument of here, let me demonstrate why we're telling the truth and they're telling lies.
	And nowhere in this entire episode have they talked about any of the big stories of the year that we mentioned.
	Oh, the Syrian war was all fucking bullshit.
	You were trying to get us into a war there.
	It turned out to be complete bullshit.
	The fucking fucking Russia collusion thing was bullshit.
	The origins of the investigation were fucking like, you know, absolutely bullshit.
	The fucking all this shit.
	But this Gordon Bombay bitch got poems.
	Oh, she does have poems.
	She's got poems for days.
	All right, let's keep playing.
	Let's hear some more poems.
	This is not new.
	I mean, Lyndon Johnson is always credited with saying, I don't know if it's true or not.
	Just say it and make them deny it.
	So the idea of disinformation, but social media just makes it where the space between what's first reported and the fake part almost has gotten amplified.
	You have to think of amplified and weaponization of it because it repeats and repeats itself and it's not controllable in a different way.
	Just pause for one more second.
	And there it is.
	They will fucking tell you.
	They will tell you exactly who they are and exactly what they that.
	Thank you for summing it up.
	It's not controllable.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	It's not controllable.
	Thank fucking God.
	It's not controllable the way you guys want it to be.
	That's your problem with it.
	That could have been the entire show.
	What she just said was literally, that was the essence of the entire show.
	We can't control the narrative anymore and we want to.
	And don't forget, because we've paused it a couple times in the middle, that she started this with a blatant lie.
	She started this by saying, you can say whatever you want to on your Twitter.
	No one will come after you.
	But you know what the problem is now?
	It's not controllable.
	We can't control the narrative.
	That's right.
	You can't.
	And you're not getting it back.
	And by the way, one other thing I should point out before we go into this next guy's comments, that the whole dynamic of Zuckerberg getting up there and saying fucking, you know, well, I just don't think social media companies should be determining what's what, you know, is true and false.
	Okay, fine.
	But, you know, and then they act like it's this fucking, you know, fight between Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
	That's complete bullshit.
	They're both right on the same fucking page.
	It's like, okay, so he's not determining what's true and false, but he is determining what's hate speech and what's not.
	And it's not even him determining it.
	Some fucking algorithm is determining it.
	We can't even, on Facebook, we can't even have a free speech platform in our private Facebook group because there's a fucking algorithm.
	And if someone says something that they determine to be hate speech, they're catching bans.
	People in our Facebook group are catching bans all the time.
	So, you know, it's like this idea that Zuckerberg's out there saying we don't need to censor any of this shit.
	This is all fucking bullshit.
	This is all bullshit.
	And of course, what they determine to be hate speech would be anything like, you know, if you are, you know, critical of the left-wing fucking, you know, religion.
	That's it.
	Any of that is hate speech.
	So yeah, we just ban hate speech, but hate speech is anything opposing left-wing ideology.
	All right, let's keep playing.
	About engagement and enragement, which is very true.
	Exposes part of the problem and maybe part of the solution for those of us who consider ourselves journalists.
	I think one of the issues that I have with the way we're fighting back against this is we're trying to fight back with information, but journalists are not in the information business.
	We are in the trust business.
	Trust is an emotion.
	You compete head to head.
	You connect heart to heart.
	And the enragement speaks to the fact that people are seeing information that provokes an emotional response.
	Well, trust is emotional too.
	It's like love.
	You don't remember when you fell in love necessarily.
	You don't remember when you decided to trust journalism necessarily.
	But that emotion is broken.
	And I think part of what we have to do is acknowledge that there is a heart piece of this, that people are trusting people.
	I think he wants to join rapidly.
	That's what I'm taking from this.
	That's what's coming up next.
	And that's why we got to go back out there and just start giving people hugs.
	Yeah.
	Well, they just need a warm hug from the media to remember that we love them too.
	Well, it's like 90% mushy nothing.
	Yeah.
	But then it's 10% an interesting admission.
	He goes, we're not in the information business.
	They're not.
	I mean, that's what I've been saying for a long time, but I still thought they were pretending that they were.
	But he goes, no, we're not in the information business.
	We're in the trust business.
	Okay.
	Well, why do you think people don't trust you guys?
	Because the information is not true.
	That might be part of it.
	It's an emotional connection.
	It's all this.
	Well, by the way, he's not completely wrong.
	It is an emotional connection.
	It is about trust.
	But the fact that you just admitted that you've abandoned being in the information business might have something to do with why people don't trust you.
	God bless 2020 that they found a guy with Mr. T's haircut who wants to talk about love and trust.
	Well, to be fair.
	In a high-pitched voice.
	It's still 2019.
	But yes, you're right.
	We're moving into it.
	But this is the last episode of the year.
	So 2019.
	We got it a little bit before 2020.
	All right.
	That's a very memeable picture right there.
	Misinformation and a lot of them are just damn lies.
	They work.
	They give you comfort.
	They make you feel like the world hasn't changed in ways you don't understand.
	And it doesn't mean we affirm.
	Sorry, can you just pause again for one second?
	It's like he got a message from the producer in the middle of the first speech, like, hey, you're boring people.
	And then he got all excited.
	Yeah.
	They're lies.
	They're damn lies.
	And you just don't understand the world and how the world has changed.
	It's like, okay.
	No, I mean, the funny thing.
	I pity the fool.
	It misses the internet.
	But this is the funny thing, right?
	So, and this is why I said this whole show was loaded with so much irony.
	So he's saying that there are these lies, and it's because people are uncomfortable with the way the world's changed.
	Now, that's a, I don't like to use the term dog whistle too much, but it's pretty obvious what the subcontext of what he's saying there is, is right, is that it's like white people don't have the power anymore.
	This is, it's all kind of racism, and you don't like this new world where you're not in control of everything.
	And, you know, it's just that people, we had the first black president and women have the vote and LGBT rights and people are upset with all this, right?
Propaganda and Fox News Hypocrisy 00:15:21
	Okay.
	Maybe I'm just reading that into it, but whatever he's saying, the irony is that he's going, oh, these people are just so uncomfortable with the way the world's changed.
	And yet this whole episode is about how, oh my God, there's this internet and social media and people don't trust the corporate press anymore.
	Who's really uncomfortable with the way the world's changed?
	Hmm?
	Who is it?
	Who's the one who's really freaking out with the new dynamics and can't adjust to that?
	Oh, and it's all you guys going, we don't have control of the narrative anymore and we're not trusted anymore.
	Seems like maybe you guys are the ones struggling with the way the world has changed.
	Yeah, guys, that's right.
	You lied fucking 20 too many times and fucking got everything wrong.
	And now there's an internet and people have social media and they can fact check you and you can't lie to me anymore because I just watched a fucking YouTube video that disproved everything you just fucking said.
	Sorry, get used to it.
	Get used to the new world where people don't fucking trust you anymore.
	Let's keep playing.
	But I'll speak the truth.
	But if we're ignoring the human part of this, none of what we're doing is going to work.
	Matthew, he's getting at what I wanted you to tease out here, which is almost it's the cultural connection that the right has decided it doesn't have with mainstream media.
	So it doesn't matter what we report.
	Well, you don't understand my life, so why should I care?
	It's mispatable.
	Right.
	And that cultural disconnect is decades old.
	Sure.
	What gives us this perfect storm of alt truth is a few things.
	One is you have the technological change, which Kara mentions.
	Another is you have the institutional breakdown, which I think you showed earlier in the program.
	Confidence in these big institutions is just totally thank God for Congress or then you have President Trump, right?
	Who kind of plugs into benefits from both of those changes, but also uses it to amplify his message.
	And so what you end up with is this place where no one can really agree on the very basic material governing our democracy.
	I think the important thing is to recognize that this just didn't organize.
	I love that they have yet to actually give us the example of what are the true statements that you've put out there that people don't view as...
	Can you give me some specifics?
	Because if it's about Russia collusion, well, that turned out not to be true.
	So what exactly are the very specific facts that you guys are putting out there every night?
	And why don't we evaluate them?
	Let's bring in a fact shaker.
	Are those in fact truths?
	You haven't given me one example.
	I mean, that's sales at its best.
	They have not gone once.
	Hey, here are the things that we think it's really important for the Americans to believe and they don't believe.
	Like, hey, we believe in global warming.
	Scientists have proved it.
	We've pulled the nation and X amount of people think that we're lying.
	What exactly are these truths that you're projecting on a daily basis that people aren't agreeing with?
	And they don't want to put it up as evidence because they know that they aren't true.
	They have nothing.
	It's just, and this is why I say it's a religious belief.
	It's just like, well, obviously, we're the truth tellers.
	We're the guardians of the state.
	How did you do a full hour of, hey, guys, the American people did not agree with some basic truths.
	What truths?
	How do you not go on to go, hey, here are the five things we think are important that people are not believing?
	Like, that's it's insanity.
	And again, as I, as I opened the show with, or as I contrasted their year in review versus ours, it's like, it's just so every one of the biggest stories of the year.
	This is why they have to go back to Kellyanne Conaway's comment in fucking 2017.
	They started off, he started off by talking about Trump's lying about the crowd size at his inauguration.
	Like, okay, it was a lie, but who the fuck cares?
	Why is this a story in 2019?
	Because every one of the big stories this year, they've gotten so wrong.
	And they're wrong about the impeachment thing as well.
	That's the other big story of the fucking year, but they haven't given up on that lie yet.
	Anyway, let's keep playing.
	You know, this also comes in the context of a war on the institution of independent journalism, a war on the notion of truth that has served the political interests of institutions in the country.
	I mean, I think Fox News has waged a purposeful campaign over decades to convince people that other people's news wasn't the correct news.
	In fact, that they were the only person who was in the middle of the day.
	All right, but can you pause it?
	This is, and this is what I was saying when there's just so many delicious ironies throughout this entire thing.
	So now she's attacking Fox News for waging a war on other news networks saying that they're not real news.
	But aren't you doing the same thing to Fox News right now?
	Fox News is just completely fake news and they have the nerve to call other people out for being fake news.
	Okay, well, I mean, now you're kind of even.
	They're saying you're fake.
	You're saying they're fake.
	Like you just pointed out.
	Let's compare and contrast.
	What did they say versus what did you say?
	By the way, again, it's like the same thing I said before when I'm defending fucking Rudy Giuliani.
	I hate Rudy Giuliani.
	I think he's the fucking worst.
	Okay.
	And I'm no fan of Fox News.
	I don't give a shit if they fucking book me on their thing.
	Fox News fucking sucks.
	I mean, there's like Fox News, I will never forgive them for what they did in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
	I know we have younger like fucking listeners of this show who like were fucking 10 when the war in Iraq started.
	And it's like, I don't know if you, I was there and I remember, I mean, I was a teenager, but I fucking remember vividly they sold the George W. Bush propaganda every fucking day.
	Now, everyone did it.
	NBC News did it as well.
	The New York Times did it.
	The Washington Post did it.
	They all fucking did it.
	But no one was more enthusiastic about doing it than Fox News.
	Fox News were the first ones to tell you, you're a fucking traitor to this country if you don't want to go start bombing women and children in Iraq tomorrow.
	You're fucking, you're with the terrorists, basically, if you don't want to fucking launch a war of aggression against a nation who had nothing to do with this terrorist attack.
	So let me be clear.
	Fuck Fox News.
	I'm not defending them, but you're going to start attacking Fox News for attacking other news networks.
	Sorry if I don't see a little hypocrisy there.
	And what has Fox News done this year?
	Well, sorry.
	I mean, I'm as critical.
	I just straight up don't like Sean Hannity.
	And I've been very critical of Tucker Carlson every time I think he gets something wrong.
	People have suggested I start a Contra Carlson podcast.
	I did so many fucking segments shitting on Tucker Carlson.
	But sorry, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity got the Russia conspiracy story exactly right from day one.
	Sorry, them's the facts.
	So did some people on the fucking left.
	So did Aaron Matei, so did Jimmy Dore, so did fucking, you know, like Glenn Greenwald and a lot of good people on the left.
	But those two guys who have millions of people watching their shows every night, they got that story right.
	And you guys got it all wrong.
	So you can, yeah, I'm sorry, while they were getting it right and you were getting it wrong, they also said this is fake news, but that's that.
	It was the biggest story of the year and they got it right and you got it wrong.
	Deal with it.
	But of course, you'll just attack them.
	And then there's Fox News, this evil Fox News, this fake news channel who has the gall to call other news channels fake.
	All right, let's keep playing.
	This goes back to Alexander Hamilton, though.
	Well, it's sort of discrediting publishers.
	Yeah, but you know, look, we have the president of the United States who says that the media is the enemy of the people.
	I'm not familiar with any president who's ever spoken in this way, who has waged, as Marty pointed out in your first interview, I think importantly so, this was a political strategy.
	There is a calculated campaign going on that there's the result of what's here.
	Now, there's also new tools and a whole human nature element of this, but it's very important not to let people off the hook.
	Partially, we're seeing Russian propaganda make its way into American politics because Russia has paid money and has made that a focus of its efforts.
	Here's the thing.
	They lost the Cold War.
	They've won this one.
	And I get the emotion part.
	You're in past tense.
	Well, because they continue to do it.
	It's not a battle.
	We're not fighting against it in the proper ways by just the Ukraine thing.
	It's ridiculous.
	It's very clear.
	This is a lie.
	CrowdStrike is in California.
	I've been there.
	Trust me, they're Americans who are running it.
	And now you have the president in the UK.
	It's amplifying.
	Yes, but it's a lot of people.
	So by the way, I'll just pause it real quick, and you guys can go Google this and do your own research if you want to.
	But there you got it right there.
	It's a lie.
	CrowdStrike is an American company.
	You got that right there.
	It's not a Ukrainian company.
	It's an American company.
	Okay, fair enough.
	Let the record just show.
	Go Google that if you want to find out any more research, if you want to do any more research and find out the truth about that.
	It's not a Ukrainian company.
	That's a lie.
	Okay, let's keep playing.
	Algorithmic.
	I get the heart part, but you're being targeted, but this paid advertising is targeted.
	It is exactly right.
	And so they can whisper a thousand different lies in a million different ears.
	And so that's what the difference is.
	And so it isn't hard.
	You can't get to the heart because they amplify and algorithmically, technically get it so that you can't find the truth.
	Matthew, why don't you address what I think is an ecosystem problem, at least on the right?
	I want to put up something that my colleague Ben Collins put here.
	It's a bit of an ecosystem here.
	He'll say, you'll get something starts on 4chan.
	There's the subreddit of Trump.
	Infowars might pick it up.
	Then it starts inching into the mainstream.
	Gateway pundit might just say, oh, what's this about?
	Then it gets to Drudge might have a provocative headline link.
	Rush might say it in his fun little way.
	Then it does make its way into Fox News.
	And then, of course, your Facebook feed.
	How do you create more accountability in the conservative ecosystem?
	All right, so let's pause it right there.
	That's the conservative ecosystem that they just put up there.
	Now, do they like there's no fucking actual, I don't know, like evidence.
	Like what story started on 4chan and then went to Rush Limbaugh?
	No, well, we've got a nice little graphic for it.
	So, you know, there you go.
	Now, Ben Collins, we sorted.
	I'm trying to actually check right now on YouTube because I forgot that he dropped that he dropped that name because I know Ben Collins.
	And I fucking.
	You know what?
	I think it's a different Ben Collins.
	Okay, forget it.
	I thought it was a different guy who I've done like Fox News panels with before.
	So I didn't want to go on to say what I was going to say about that Ben Collins guy, because I think that's somebody else.
	Okay, scrap that.
	Anyway, but so what you have this nice little graphic of this is how the right-wing ecosystem works.
	Like, okay, can you give me one story to show me how it went through all of these layers?
	I don't think so.
	All right, let's keep playing.
	Basically dealing with propaganda.
	Well, it's hard work.
	I mean, I think it begins by trying to instruct young conservatives in the canons of journalism, mainly empirical verification, right?
	And this, I think, the distrust of institutions is longstanding among conservatives.
	Empirical verification, the exact thing that they're providing to us in their analysis of the news.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, great.
	Empirical verification.
	Let's see it.
	Yeah.
	Let's see some of it.
	No, you just say it.
	It's like, show me the car facts.
	Show me the empirical.
	I forgot your fucking words.
	Verification.
	All right, let's keep playing.
	This has led many of them to no longer believe in the idea that you need kind of evidence in order to forward a fact.
	Or they don't believe in certain verified sources, credentialed sources of evidence or information.
	They don't trust any of it.
	One other change that I think makes all this more difficult is it used to be you can go to the supermarket and you see the tabloids and you see the weekly world news and the alien has predicted who's going to be the president this year.
	And you move past it.
	Maybe some people get a chuckle.
	Maybe some people believe it, but it's a minority of the population.
	Today, you can't ignore it because it's everywhere.
	And the second that you go on one of these platforms, social media in particular, you're confronted by it.
	I still think, though, I hear you in terms of the distrust among conservatives of institutions.
	You're right about that.
	I do, however, know a lot of conservatives who are God-fearing people and who remember that the Bible says that it's better to tie a millstone around your neck than to lead one of my little ones astray.
	They know that Bible verse that says, and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
	They've read the book of Proverbs and they know the first two chapters are all about the value of truth and wisdom.
	So I think that there's a part in conservatism that speaks to the value of truth and the necessity of personal responsibility.
	I think it is crazy that there are people who say, oh, it's just too hard.
	There's so much going on out there.
	There's so much information.
	We won a world war against the Nazis where we invented a new bomb and planted victory gardens and put women in factories.
	You mean to tell me you won't subscribe to your local paper?
	Really?
	Is this too hard?
	I like how every one of his reactions are like he's in an herbal essence commercial.
	I just love the we won the fucking war against the Nazis and put women women went to work in factories and you're telling me you can't just go back to the corporate press and believe blindly everything they say?
	And I love when he starts saying what they say.
	Like, well, here's what the dissident right is saying.
	They're saying, well, it's just too hard and we just can't remember.
	Why don't you have a member of the dissident right on and actually deal with what they're saying?
	I've never heard anyone say that.
	I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
	But again, he starts off, this is the trick that I told you they do before.
	You know, I know a lot of these good conservative Christians, they've heard this verse in the Bible.
	Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
	Oh, really?
	Well, let me tell you what Chuck Todd thinks is fascinating is the idea that you're fucking retarded if you believe that shit.
	Oh, now all of a sudden we have to learn the verses of the Bible and the Bible has to tell you to come over to our side.
	How?
	This is the problem is that you're basically like, oh, these Christians are so stupid.
	But guess what?
	They're not as stupid as you think they are.
	They're not so stupid that they forget that 20 minutes ago you just called them retards.
	Like, don't fucking quote the Bible at me, you fucking disingenuous piece of shit.
	I know you fucking look down at me.
	I know you don't believe any of this.
	They probably don't curse as much as me, but that's the essence of what they're saying.
	I mean, like, come on, man.
	Then they go right back to quoting the Bible.
	Oh, you know, they want the truth.
	And again, as you pointed out, Rob, no evidence of why we are on the side of the truth.
	It's just a given.
	It's just a given.
	We're team truth and their team lies.
	And by the way, I'm not sitting here saying Donald Trump doesn't lie.
	I think he lies all the time.
	But it's like, I get why they're like, at least this liar doesn't seem to hate us.
	Let's go with him.
	All right, let's play a little bit more.
	Maybe there's one more good moment in here.
	We'll wrap up soon.
	What is the responsibility of a citizen here?
Jobs Lost to Selling Conspiracy Theories 00:02:51
	Don't be gullible.
	Yeah.
	Don't make room for gullibility.
	It's impossible to fight it.
	It's addictive.
	It's repetitive.
	It is propaganda.
	And it is in ways.
	Amplified.
	I feel like I'm watching the head of the heart to be here.
	I hope.
	I know, but you don't need to.
	But the algorithm is strong.
	It is absolutely strong.
	You're getting, it is doing things in ways that has never been possible through a newspaper.
	By the way, nobody is reading newspapers and shouldn't be.
	This is great to be able to get this information on your phone.
	And with conservatives, you know, there's a great book by Andrew Marantz called Antisocials that showed this chain.
	You don't even need the chain anymore.
	It's just Rudy Giuliani saying, you know, they actually lie like Gurk Kennedy on your thing list.
	It's just a lie.
	There's no bothering the issue.
	There's no penalty.
	And then it gets beyond a no penalty.
	There's actually an incentive.
	I mean, this ecosystem is so well embedded now in how one party is communicating.
	You know what?
	We'll pause it and we'll stop there.
	And that's it right there.
	That's the whole thing.
	There's no penalty.
	There's no penalty and there's actually an incentive to lie.
	And it's, you know, it can't be fought.
	It's just so powerful to tell these lies.
	Do you remember earlier in the show when Chuck Todd had that Freudian slip and he misspoke and he said, I can't deliberately say a fact on air or I'll be fired?
	Well, what he meant to say was, I can't deliberately say a lie on air and I'll be fired.
	So that's what they claim.
	They get the benefit of.
	Even remember the article we read last show where Chuck Todd said, you know, we really got this war in Iraq thing wrong, but no one did it deliberately.
	So that's what they'll get.
	They get the benefit of.
	Oh, if we get something wrong, it was an honest mistake.
	Even though, by the way, we have that dissident right-wing voice, Nancy Pelosi, as we've been playing, telling you that she saw the intelligence and it was clear there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and they were in fact lying.
	That's Nancy Pelosi saying that.
	So, okay, fine.
	Maybe the intelligence officials lied, but everyone in the media just was just an honest mistake.
	None of them intentionally lied.
	How many people who sold you the war in Iraq have lost their job?
	How many people who sold you on Donald Trump conspiracy theory have lost their job?
	How many people who sold you on Qaddafi was about to go genocidal?
	How many of them lost their job?
	How many people who sold you on the fact that Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people?
	How many of them have lost their job?
	How many people who sold you on this war in Afghanistan that the Afghanistan papers now demonstrate was all built off lies?
	How many of them have lost their job?
	There is an answer.
	It is zero.
	Zero.
	By the way, Chuck Todd has the nerve to say no one can intentionally lie and keep their job.
	Brian Williams works on his network.
Thank You for a Great Year 00:03:10
	Sure.
	I mean, he lost his job and then got another job at the network.
	Okay.
	No, he just told stories, made up stories.
	I mean, just to glorify his own fucking, you know, history.
	He kept his job.
	What's the incentive there?
	What's the penalty for lying there?
	This is what they don't want to look at.
	I feel like we sure met the press.
	Yeah.
	No, we met them.
	We met them.
	They're a group I wish I never met.
	And there you go.
	There's our year in review.
	We're going to wrap it up there.
	Look, let me just say before we fucking wrap up, I love every one of you guys for listening to this show.
	I really fucking appreciate it.
	I just love doing this.
	And I've had a great year, just an amazing year, personally.
	My daughter was born in December of 2018.
	And to spend this whole year being a father.
	And I'm lucky enough to just be married to the fucking coolest chick on the planet.
	And I'm really, I've gotten way better than I deserve in this world.
	I've just got a great little family.
	I love my job.
	And that part, the loving my job part, is only possible because all you guys listen to this show.
	So I hope I keep doing a good job for you guys.
	And really, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
	Thank you for listening.
	And I hope you guys have a great new year.
	And nothing, I wish you nothing but the best in 2020.
	And let me tell you, man, as I was looking back on these stories of 2019, man, it was a crazy year.
	But I'll tell you, I think 2020 is going to be a fucking wild one.
	So I can't wait to be breaking it down with you guys for the next year.
	And Robbie the Fire, I love you.
	You're a fucking great co-host.
	And we got a lot of fun stuff planned, I think, for this next year.
	We're going to be coming around and touring and stuff.
	I look forward to that.
	Thank you, Brian, for being such a great fucking producer.
	Brian gets none of the credit and all of the shit heaped at him when things go wrong, but he does a great fucking job.
	And he's the best producer we've ever had on this show.
	And thanks to Lewis and Ralph and everybody at Gas Digital.
	And happy new year.
	Go kiss the one that you love.
	Or if you don't have anyone you love, just grab a chick and kiss her.
	I think that Me Too thing has faded into the background at this point.
	Just fucking go for it.
	Old school.
	Just grab someone and kiss them.
	And it's a risk, sure, but it might work out.
	That might be your future wife.
	If you can't grab them by the pussy, that's the way Trump likes to do it.
	And you might be president.
	And there's a built-in slot for your hands.
	You get a good grip.
	Almost like it was made to be grabbed that way.
	And also, like, women, sometimes they wear the high skirts, so it's easy to get your hand up there.
	Or sometimes they like to wear the yoga pants.
	This is getting really specific.
	Like if it was jeans, you wouldn't be able to just shove your hand right up in there.
	But the yoga pants, you know, if anything, it's more grip.
	Rob, you only have 70 episodes or so left on your contract.
	I'm going to have to reevaluate this whole thing.
	I'm just saying, I'm building off of your idea here.
	Your idea was grab a chick, and I'm thinking like, well, I'm just going to really make it enjoyable for her.
	Oh, man, you've really implicated me.
	All right, guys.
	Happy new year.
	Goodbye.

Chapters

00:00:00 Fresh Reactions to Meet the Press
00:14:30 The Attempted Deep State Coup
00:19:06 Heshisocks: Solving Foot Problems
00:21:36 Walls Closing and Source Verification
00:37:19 Lies Exposed in Libya War
00:42:48 Cognitive Dissonance and Blue Chew
00:45:58 Christian Values vs Trump Support
00:53:26 Free Speech Bias on Social Media
01:08:10 Propaganda and Fox News Hypocrisy
01:23:32 Jobs Lost to Selling Conspiracy Theories
01:26:23 Thank You for a Great Year