James Smith and Michael Malice dissect Portland's federal raids versus local inaction, debating whether libertarians should defend rioters despite their ideological inconsistencies. They condemn sucker-punching enemies like Richard Spencer while analyzing the Anwar al-Awlaki drone strike case to highlight due process failures. The discussion critiques the New York Times' handling of Tucker Carlson's address and his sexual harassment lawsuit, arguing media often sensationalizes consensual acts. Ultimately, they conclude that mob violence blurs lines between aggressors and bystanders, necessitating a firm stance against tribal escalation even when opposing state overreach. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Big Government vs. The People00:13:07
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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 gas digital network.
Here's your host, James Smith.
Hello, hello.
What's going on, everybody?
Let this be y'all's howdy for a brand new crossover between me and the great Michael Malice.
What's up, my brother?
I was just thinking about how interesting it is that neither of us like give each other the heads up about what we're going to talk about, yet it's never a problem.
And I realized that's not normal.
Do you know what I mean?
Is this your first clue that we're not normal people?
No, but like to the extent that like if you tell a regular like a normie, like I'm going to have you on this show and you're going to talk about literally possibly any political or social issue and they would crap their pants.
Yes.
And like we, yeah, we not once through this entire crossover thing have either of us asked the other one what we're going to talk about when we're on the other one's show, discussed it, had any indication.
Although there have been a couple times where I was like, I could kind of guess.
Like I was like, I bet Michael's going to want to talk about this this week.
But then oftentimes, no clue.
Yeah.
I like that.
Yeah, but it's, it's, I'm realizing that we're not as pathetic as I thought.
Look at that.
Slightly less pathetic.
Slightly less failed than when we started.
That's the new LP slogan.
By the way, I would gladly settle for slightly less failed out of the LP if we could just get slightly, slightly ever instead of very failed political party, largely failed.
Largely failed.
Pretty failed.
Yeah.
That's what we're shooting for.
We're a decade away from pretty failed.
Actually, I will say, just a quick aside, that I saw someone posted in my private Facebook group a campaign ad for Jorgensen Cohen, and I thought it was great.
Oh, they want the video with the war, bring the hope.
It was great.
I actually thought it was really, really good.
And that's exactly what they should be doing.
The role, as far as I'm concerned, of like the libertarian presidential nominee, don't even jump into the culture wars.
Don't get caught up in these silly things.
Stand 10 feet above all of that and go, look, this is all silly.
Here's what we're going to do.
We're going to end all of these wars.
We're not an empire.
We're a republic.
We believe in the Bill of Rights.
We don't want to prosecute people for nonviolent crimes.
The debt is out of control.
Just focus on these issues that nobody else is serious about that are really, really important issues.
And that's my advice.
And what you would say is they yell at each other in front of your face and then they laugh at you behind your back.
Yes, exactly.
And you put it in any go budgets.
We were prompt, and you have clips, Bush, we're going to cut the budget.
Bush one, Bush two, accountability.
And every year the budgets go up.
They lie to you and then they laugh about it.
Yeah, like show a nice little picture of like Michelle Obama giving George W a hug or any of this stuff.
And it's just like, yeah, they're all, this is, you know, the old George Carlin line.
It's a, it's a big club and you ain't in it.
There was this, one of the most devastating political ads I've ever seen, which was entirely out of character, was Ron Paul's hit ad on Newt Gingrich.
And it's like 90 seconds long.
There's two versions of it.
And you watch it and it's, I've never seen such an ass blasting in my life.
And he just goes, like, he goes, how it starts, it's framed beautifully structurally, like speaking as a writer.
Like Newt Gingrich starts off with the quote from him saying, like, a president needs to have A, B, C, and D.
And then it goes A, and it just goes through how he contradicts that.
B, and it goes through all that.
C, him hugging Nancy Pelosi.
D, blah, blah, blah.
And it's just like, holy shit.
It was like a legal brief.
I would encourage everyone to look for this ad.
You'll watch it and you'll be like, oh my God.
Yeah, I remember it.
I remember like cheering when I saw the ad.
Ah, 2012.
I was like wincing because it was so brutal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he would, I mean, you know, it's funny too, because Ron Paul was such a like kind, older gentleman.
But so when he attacked it, it almost, and obviously someone else made the ad, you know, it was his campaign, but it still just felt like that much more powerful.
It was kind of like when your really cool teacher was upset with you, it would hurt a lot more than just like a dickhead teacher, you know, like it was, it had that type of, that type of energy, which was great.
Okay, so what I wanted to discuss today that I didn't brief you on was what's going on in Portland, which has been a really interesting situation on many different levels.
And for people who don't know, there's been some videos that have come out of federal agents.
It started with just some videos of federal agents in unmarked cars walking up and kind of snatching people who are involved in the mayhem of what's going on there.
I feel weird calling it protesting because it's really kind of a different level than protesting.
And the media jumped on this as, you know, Trump's a Nazi type angle, pretty predictably.
And of course, the media isn't really talking about how there's been chaotic violence for like a month now in Portland, and they kind of leave you with this little clip.
It took a little bit of reporters digging into it to figure out exactly what's going on.
It's now been confirmed that it was Department of Homeland Security's border patrol, kind of the equivalent of their SWAT team coming in and grabbing people.
They say that this is legal under federal law because they were vandalizing federal buildings.
And then there were a few people on Twitter, a few blue check marks who were criticizing libertarians, saying, oh, where are the libertarians who should be outraged over this stuff?
You know, you're supposed to be the guys who fight for this, which bothers me on so many levels.
They're at the George Floyd Vigil.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, probably not completely untrue.
No, that was the picture.
Don't you remember?
She was there.
Yeah.
No, I remember.
And there's probably plenty more.
So there were a lot of things that I thought were interesting about this situation.
Number one, I've noticed this before, and I'm sure you have too, that oftentimes when a leftist or a right-winger, they will play on libertarians' desires to be consistent.
Even though they are wildly inconsistent themselves, there's still this expectation that you have to be really consistent.
So a whole bunch of like big government liberals feeling the wrath of big government, like that, that's just completely put aside.
But you, Mr. Libertarian, it's almost like a soft admission that we know you're the only ones who care about being intellectually consistent, but it still digs at libertarians because it really does pain them to be intellectually consistent.
So I want to get your thoughts on this, but I wanted to mention quickly that, so Eric July did a long stream about this the other day.
By the way, Eric July is just, that guy's a fucking legend.
I just, I love that guy.
And his take, which I don't think I completely agree with, but I certainly get his point.
His take was basically that he says to these calls for libertarians to defend these rioters, protesters, many of whom are communists.
He's like, they would never defend me in a million years.
And so I just look at it like two competing gangs and I'm staying out of it.
And I have no obligation to defend anybody involved, which is like largely a fair point.
But I just wonder, what do you think, Michael Malice, when you see federal agents in unmarked cars kind of snatching people, claiming that, you know, well, this person was about to vandalize a government building or something, but you know, I really love taking the government's word for these things.
But how does that like, how do you feel about that situation?
There's a meme that I was just looking up while you were talking, which something you said reminded me of, and it's a pajama boy drawing a pajama boy.
And he says, you should let in more refugees because Jesus said to be compassionate in the Bible somewhere.
No, I'm not a Christian and I have nothing but contempt for your backward religious beliefs.
So yeah, this argument wouldn't work on me, but maybe if I use it on you, you'll do what I want.
So yeah, it's a very disingenuous argument.
First of all, if you are going to accept the premise, which I think even I would, that the government has the right to protect its buildings, there is no way that that happens where it visually looks nice and relaxing.
I don't see a scenario where it's like, you know, like, go home.
Oh, okay, officer, like, that's not a thing.
So then the question is, and people hate trade-offs because as soon as you bring up trade-offs, they lose their minds and release the squitting.
How do you do this to minimize damage, conflict, de-escalate as much as possible?
One of my favorite fish, if I was going to get a tattoo, this is going to be one of my tattoos, is an anglerfish.
And the anglerfish doesn't move.
It looks like a sponge.
And its strike, it inhales fish hole, it shoots out its mouth, is the fastest motion in the animal kingdom.
And it strikes so quickly, you can't even see it on slow motion.
And it could take fish out of a school and the other fish won't even notice like that quickly.
The point being, if you have a group of 100 people, right?
You want to go 100 cops, 200 cops, there's 100 people.
That's not going to be nice.
That is going to be a horrible nightmare scenario.
But something that the Soviet, this is my Soviet brain is going to kick in now.
Something the Soviet Union realized very well is if you take out, and they did this at some university.
My friend told me about it 20 years ago.
I don't remember what the circumstances was, but basically there was a university where all the students went on strike.
And this is what they did.
Instead of taking out like the ringleader and like his lieutenants, they randomly expelled people.
And then everyone's living in fear because the bottom-tier people, the people at the top, the leaders, are like, I'm going to be the one, the front line.
I'm the one taking the bullets.
I'm the brave one.
Then everyone else can jump in the bandwagon because they're not scared.
And they get to, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're against it.
But now when the people who are the followers have to face consequences, they scatter really fast because then it's like, whoa, I didn't sign up for this.
So it's a very effective tactic to pull out people at seemingly random because that serves to instill fear, an irrational fear in the larger population while using a minimum amount of force.
Now, obviously, I am not a fan of the state grabbing people and banishing them somewhere.
I don't think, on the other hand, I would have felt much differently if it's a cop car with sirens and they're dressed in blue.
I don't see how that is the distinction.
There's no dispute that these were, you know, whatever you want to dually whatever agents of the state.
So they're either as legitimate as the cops or as illegitimate as the cops.
The point being, you know, the premise that this is a state's rights issue or the local police have to be the ones to doing it.
Toilet Paper and State Power00:02:51
Okay.
Well, the local police aren't doing it.
Right.
So when they don't do it, I mean, this was the issue.
A lot of people constantly talk about not incorrectly lynch law, which is when the local police and the local juries and the local judges sat on their hands while black people and white people were murdered, publicly murdered.
And then they were arrested or forced to be arrested.
And the jury's like, I don't see anything wrong here.
And then you had to have on some level, are you going to make this call?
The federal government come in and be like, these have to be federal crimes because these people are not facing consequences on the local level.
There's a very, very broad analogy here where it's like, all right, if you have the people who are being told to stand down or at the very least are powerless to put a stop to this, at some point, either there's two choices.
Either you send in the feds or you sit on your hands and hope things either fizzle out or more likely, things are going to escalate and spread to other areas.
Yeah.
All right, let's take a quick second.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
It's, as you said, it's the, it makes binary thinkers' heads explode when you start going down these paths.
And there's a lot of people, even like some real good ANCAPs, who they kind of master the kind of the ANCAP basic principle of like non-aggression, private property rights, and all of that.
But they have a lot of trouble when you start getting into these more nuanced conversations about like what the one that I use a lot that I love just like makes their head explode.
And they end up calling you a statist or something like that.
Punching Enemies in Public Schools00:15:11
But you'll be like, okay, well, look, I think the government should, I think we should abolish public schools.
I don't think there should be such thing as a public school.
However, would you prefer a public school that teaches kids two plus two equals five or two plus two equals four?
Now, you can, you know, you can say, well, I just want them out of school.
It's like, well, you're right, but that's not an option.
I'm saying if we were given these two, you know, would you prefer public schools teach kids that socialism is really great or that capitalism is really great?
Now, I know we don't want public schools.
I'm with you.
They can't handle it.
I just said that.
They can't handle it.
But given this situation.
So given, I think it's reasonable to say.
Can I say one more thing also?
This is also my big argument for Hamilton.
Because the ANCAP's big argument against Hamilton is we need to have Ankapistan.
And my point is that's not on the table.
So given that that's not on the table, do you want a minimalist, effective government or do you want 13 little dictatorships and things getting, and we become basically like Central America?
And they cannot wrap their heads around this issue.
The reason the central bank was, Hamilton called it a blessing is because it was asymmetric.
Once you have a central bank and one currency, you are locked into viewing America as a nation.
Now, if you think that the existence of America is a bad thing, then Hamilton is your villain.
If you think it's a good thing that America existed as America, as I very much do, then yeah, he's the greatest person ever.
Yeah, I remember thinking that was a really compelling argument.
I remember going into the Hamilton debate and just being like, there's no way Malice can even convince me that there's like anything that I should like about Hamilton and leaving it being like, oh man, I got to fucking think about this more, which is very rude of you.
I very seldom enjoy thinking.
But no, I know.
And I think that, so from like, like you said, I don't think whether the car is unmarked or marked or whether they're federal or state agents really is a different moral question.
I would prefer things be handled more at the local level.
But as you said, the issue here is that they're not being handled at all.
One of the other things that come that...
Can I say one thing?
It's also, because Seattle tried doing things at the local level and people got killed.
So I don't think it's really surprising that they were like, you know what?
We're not going to have another Chad where there's people who are murdered.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, and the situation, of course, and there's plenty for like anarchists to hate about the state, both the local and federal.
You know, it's like, to me, what's so outrageous about all of this is that you have local police all around the country.
I mean, the two biggest examples probably are Seattle and Portland, but all around the country who stand back, allow, they don't protect people or property.
They allow businesses to be destroyed, people to be assaulted, cities to quite literally be set on fire.
They stand back and do nothing.
Then they turn around and prosecute the people who are defending their own property, who are standing up to the mob for them.
And then the feds come in to protect government buildings.
Like that's the big line where it's like, wow, we can't allow this federal courthouse to be desecrated.
Like, oh, okay.
But like, you know, cathedrals and businesses and homes, that's, hey, well, we can't do anything about that.
So all around, it's just awful.
And my best case, you know, solution would be to like institute the CASEL doctrine all around the country, let people defend their property.
I think that would do the best to handle the situation.
Second best from that would be local police officers protecting people and property.
And this is Just a bad scenario all around.
But it seems like we're already in the area of bad scenarios.
Like, there's probably no great solution.
Yeah, people can, yeah, that's the other thing.
They cannot wrap their head around the Sophie's choice situation where it's like you have two bad choices.
Well, I don't want to choose either.
Well, you're here, right?
You're either going to have diarrhea from this food that you already swallowed, or it could give you a medicine that's going to make you throw up violently.
These are your choices.
If you do nothing, you're getting the diarrhea.
Yes.
And right.
And just to add a little bit more nuance into it, I do think that there's a fair criticism.
Like with my example of where I said I'd rather public schools be promoting capitalism than socialism, if those are the choices.
But I do think the role of anarchists is to constantly, you know, point out the end goal.
Like there are some people who then get lost and spend a whole career advocating public schools defend capitalism.
And you're like, wait, but what's like, don't we want to get rid of it?
So there is a criticism to that, but this is all nuanced.
You can also say within these bad situations, one is better than the other.
And to just say, well, it's all statism is to me kind of childish and silly.
But I would say that I would, I'm all, I'm not against standing up for the rights of people who are my enemy.
I actually think that's one of the things that separates us from other groups.
And I'm happy to be better than other groups.
I remember Anwar Alaki was a Muslim American citizen who Barack Obama murdered with a drone strike.
And this is not up for dispute.
The White House confirmed that he was the target of the drone strike.
He wasn't incidental.
No, he was not incidental.
His son, who's like 15, was killed a few weeks later.
And that they claimed was incidental, but no one really bought it.
And that's, and he was also an American citizen and just outrageous.
Like there's no defending that one.
So they even had to claim it wasn't, he wasn't the target.
But let's take the tougher example, which is Anwar Alaki, who he was actually like a peace advocate for a while, but he became radicalized and he swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
And he was out of the country at the time.
He was in Yemen, I believe, when he was killed.
And he had sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
And I, with a lot of other libertarians, said, I don't care.
He's an American citizen.
He gets to be charged.
He has the right to a trial.
He has the right to a lawyer and a judge and a jury of his peers.
Now, you can try someone with them overseas.
There are like precedents for all of these things, but rights to me are non-negotiable.
And now, this is a guy who swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda, the butchers of New York City, and is my enemy.
And he certainly would not stand up for me.
But I don't care.
And I don't care for a few reasons.
Number one, I think rights are non-negotiable and I don't care.
And number two, the obvious answer is that this is a horrifically dangerous precedent to set.
That there's a secret kill list that the president has and he can kill American citizens with no charges against them because they Said that he said something.
They said that he uttered the words, I'm loyal to al-Qaeda.
That's not enough for me.
So I don't have a problem with standing up for people who are my enemies and their rights.
Now, it's a little bit different than this situation, but just in general, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that.
And I think that's what separates us.
Yeah, I have no problem with it.
I don't think that someone's citizenship should determine whether they have the rights to due process and a lawyer and things like that.
And nor should someone's citizenship preclude them from if they, I think it's not hard to make the case that if someone, I don't know, I'm not as familiar with this case as you are, so I could be talking out of my ass.
And in fact, I'm sure I am.
If someone has officially or to some degree of certainty declared allegiance to an organization dedicated to destroying America, at that point, the concept of citizenship becomes kind of a legal fiction and of no little relevance.
And if this is someone engaged in some capacity in actively plotting to murder U.S. citizens, I don't think a trial and getting him here is my priority.
I don't think this is a slippery slope because the slope's here.
The government has no problem killing Americans on American soil for things that are much less nefarious than what he's been accused of doing.
So I think the concern is to, first of all, just to eliminate the death penalty on American soil because there's something called the Innocence Project and they use DNA to show that lots of people who have been sentenced to death are innocent.
And it's, it's, I mean, that is a penalty that, you know, my great hero Albert Camus had a book called Reflections on the Guillotine.
And that is really, I think, would be far more my priority than worrying about someone who is overseas, declared himself an enemy of the country, and is plotting to kill American citizens.
Well, I would agree with you about the priority of that for sure.
But I do think, listen, I also agree that I don't think citizenship, which is a legal fiction, no matter whether it's in any situation, I don't think that should determine natural rights either.
I think all human beings have natural rights, but I think he's there too.
And I think there should be some process of evidence being presented, a neutral body looking over it.
I think it's a very dangerous precedent to set.
And we will still see in the future.
I mean, there have been a couple other American citizens who have been killed.
But I'm going to say that.
I think that's, I don't know if naive is the word, but you know, there's the argument like before you do X, you have to get a warrant from a judge.
It's a rubber stamp.
Like that is not really a thing.
Like what are these warrants that don't tell the person?
There's these like wireless.
Yeah, there's these warrants where the person isn't informed and they're gotten in the middle of the night.
And I think the numbers to which the judges sign off on them is if not literally 100%, but is something effectively 100%.
So while I would agree that it would be great if it was some kind of independent judiciary that was really looking at these things seriously and was like, you know what, this is an American citizen.
You guys really have to prove this to me before I sign off on it.
My understanding is that is completely not in relation to reality in terms of how it plays out.
Well, I think that there's no question that there are abuses within the reality and that's all very bad.
But again, to the spirit of choosing between two bad situations.
So let's say that all a cop has to do is claim someone was coming at them and they feared for their life and then they can shoot and they're going to get off on trial every time.
That's terrible.
But it would still be far worse if we passed a law that says you don't even have to feel that your life is threatened.
I just did the numbers.
Over a 33-year period, the FISA court granted.
I mean, it was 96% or something like that?
No, more.
It granted 33,942 warrants and 12 denials, a rejection rate of 0.03%.
So if we're dealing with 0.03%, the idea that this works as any kind of stopgap is completely uncontrollable.
Yes, the FISA courts are complete rubber stamp courts.
And by the way, the FISA courts are also how the FBI had the legal authority to spy on the fine.
Yeah, the whole thing's a joke.
So I completely agree with you on that.
What do you think about, because this topic came up on Eric July's stream the other day, and the topic of like the thing where Richard Spencer got punched.
Oh, I wrote an article about that.
Yes.
Sucker punched, right?
Oh, yeah.
I actually remember that article now that you mention it.
This was a while ago.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, I will absolutely defend Richard Spencer's right to not be punched in the face in that instance.
Now, I find Richard Spencer's views to be abhorrent.
I certainly don't think he would stand up for me in the same situation, but I have no problem saying, like, yeah, you know what?
If he's having a conversation with somebody, you can't run up and sucker punch him in the side of the face.
Number one, it's just the most bitch move of all time for a man to run up and sucker punch another man who's looking the other way.
I have no respect for that.
But more importantly, look, I think within reason, he has the right to say what he's saying.
And, you know, also is the same as the argument I was making before.
It's a horrific precedent to set that it's okay to punch a Nazi, and then you get to decide who a Nazi is to you.
And you can already see evidence of that slippery slope all over the internet where everyone who disagrees with you is now called a Nazi.
But I would also say at the same time, if there was a Marxist who was talking about, you know, how you have to read Dos Capital and you have to read the Communist Manifesto and each according to their need or whatever, and someone ran up and punched them in the side of the face, I would absolutely defend them in that situation.
That is not a civilized way to act.
It's an act of aggression and it's morally wrong.
So I don't really have a problem defending the rights of people who I consider my enemy, particularly against the state.
Yeah, we have people saying with a straight face, and they mean it, that Ivanka Trump is a Nazi, Kellyanne Conway is a Nazi.
They're in a far more effective position to implement issues than Richard Spencer ever was.
Are you comfortable saying maybe it's not a good strategy, but that it's ethical and moral to go up to Ivanka Trump and punch her in the face?
That, I don't think, is a thin line.
I think that is way over the line and very disturbing.
This happened in Greece.
Their party there is called the Golden Dawn.
They are neo-fascist.
They use kind of a swastika-like symbol.
I think they were third or fourth place in the most recent parliamentary election.
And there was debate between one of the members of the Golden Dawn and a grandma, age lady, who was a member of the Communist Party.
And he got up and punched her in the face on national television.
Now, on the one hand, it's like, oh, wow, you know, he shut her up.
But then if you think about what it would be like, you know, like live in like, you know, Nazi Germany and pre-Nazi Germany, where people are getting assaulted at any moment, that's really, really deleterious to human thriving.
This is what New York was like back in the day, and it's regarded as a complete nightmare.
And especially, it's like, listen, if you're going to open this can of worms, it's not going to be Ivanka Trump.
It's going to be weak old people who are going to get hit and all sorts of other things.
And this is very, very, very bad idea.
I'm completely opposed.
And it doesn't solve anything.
It's not like you punch him and he vanishes and his ideas.
No, if anything, it probably drives more people to be sympathetic to him.
You know, I've heard some people.
Or it's going to cause him to promote violence.
Right, right.
Now, I've heard some people, both libertarians and non-libertarians, but they're kind of making a libertarian argument in a sense, whether they realize it or not.
But their argument would basically be that, well, Richard Spencer's a Nazi.
What he's calling for is essentially an incitement to violence.
Inciting Violence or Free Speech00:03:56
And so it's defense for us to go and try to kind of stop this out.
Now, the problem I have with that line of thinking, or apply it to Marxists or anything like that, the problem with that line of thinking is that basically you could use that for anyone who's not an anarchist.
Anyone who's not an anarchist, you could say, is they're inciting violence.
They're calling for a state which is going to be violence and that will lead to all of this violence.
And I have a general rule of thumb that if a theory can't be applied to reality without it being a disaster, then you have to abandon the theory.
And in the same sense that if an architect has a blueprint of a building that can't be built into an actual structure, then this blueprint is meaningless.
The whole point of a blueprint is that it's something that can be built in reality.
And the whole point of philosophy is that it's something that can be enacted in reality.
And if you have something that is unworkable, you just get rid of it because then this is just mental masturbation and there's no point in this.
The beautiful thing about liberty is that not only does it work on paper, but it does actually work in reality.
And so I just, I think that if we're going to say anybody who supports the state is initiating violence or inciting violence and therefore we can assault them, it's unworkable in today's society.
And as you said, will lead to a horrible outcome.
And so I just abandoned that.
There's also a difference, in my view, between saying that something will necessarily lead to a violent state or a violent country and someone who's actually calling for it in that moment.
Right?
Like we will say, with lots of data to our background, that someone who is a Stalinist is going to lead to genocide and starvation for the populace.
That doesn't mean, in my view, it would be okay to go to their house and take their food.
You know, which would be kind of the parallel situation here.
And I think it's inevitable.
Every communist country has had food become an issue.
We see it time and time again.
And this is often by design, because if the government has a monopoly on food distribution, very quickly, everyone needs to eat.
You're going to fall in line.
So this is both by being unable to plan, but also by it's a great mechanism to control the population.
Again, so if someone is going to be preaching as a Marxist, you don't get to go to their house and take all their food or just keep them from buying new food.
So I think as someone who really doesn't have a problem with bad things happening to bad people, I do think when people are this glib about violence, they don't often realize the implications of what they're saying because it's not as if it's something that is very easily contained.
It's not as if it's something that once adrenaline and testosterone start playing and blood is in places, people are thinking rationally, logically, and coherently.
And it tends to escalate on itself when we get into that kind of primal state.
And that is when you get innocent bystanders, when you get drive-bys, you get escalation.
It loses any form of kind of debate.
We have two sides.
It becomes very tribal and like, you know, where does this end?
So it really is, I mean, it's a lot easier, in my view, to draw a strict line of principle and stay there, which is the anarchist position, than like you said, have that minarchist position.
And we're going to have the government and it's going to be exactly $1 billion a year.
We're going to maintain it a billionaire.
That is not stable.
It's going to want to either implode or it's going to want to grow.
Whereas if you say zero, zero is in many ways a more stable number.
So if you're going to say, yeah, we're going to have some violence against some people in public under certain circumstances, to be able to put a board around that and have that be something that's sustainable, it doesn't not make sense to me.
And you can actually watch it in real time grow right in front of you, right?
Like it starts with punching Richard Spencer, and then you see Antifa at like a Milo Yiannopoulos event assaulting people, and then, okay, Milo, and then it's basically any Trump supporters.
Tucker Carlson's Doxxed Address00:17:38
Ben Shapiro?
Ben Shapiro now, right?
They kill Nazis, yeah.
Right, right.
Who's basically like a John McCain supporter?
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And the other thing, too, which I remember this is one of the things that I struggled with a little bit, like during the rise of the alt-right, like in 2016, 2017, is that it's very hard to really accurately label people.
I'm not talking about the leaders in the movement who put their views out there.
You can judge their views.
But when you see people online, you know, it's like, is this a troll?
Is it really a neo-Nazi?
Is it someone who's just kind of, you know, like saying, throw the Jews in the oven?
Cause that's the most outrageous thing to say that will get a big reaction.
I guess I'm just describing a troll.
But, or is this a troubled teenager?
You know, like you just don't know what any of these things are.
And the same is true with a lot of like the Marxist types.
You know, some of these people are straight up looking for power and would put me and you up against a wall if they ever got that power.
Some of them are just misinformed.
Some of them are kids.
Some of them just don't know this history and just kind of believe in the Marxist like vision or something like that.
So it's very hard.
And it's a really bad precedent to set to start saying, you know, well, anybody who calls themselves a Marxist or anyone who calls themselves alt-right or any of these other groups are now open season for violence.
It's just like it's very imprecise.
But the situation in Portland is different.
And I think that the key distinction is that it's not really about their views.
It's not really about whether they're a Marxist or a fascist or a Democrat or a Republican or an anarchist or anything else.
The issue there is that they're a part of a violent mob.
And this is where things get a little bit trickier because, you know, justice is a very individual thing.
You know, that's why social justice is such a horrible term.
Justice is an individual, you know, thing.
It's what did you do?
Were you initiating violence?
Was this person just in the way they acted versus you?
But when you get into a mob, it becomes next to impossible to sort this out.
And if you're in a mob that's being violent and you're like, well, I was just being peaceful right there.
There's almost no reasonable way for anyone outside to parse out who was the violent one and who was the mob.
Now, if you, this is how I feel is like, I think you have to judge it within reason.
So if you are at a peaceful protest and a few people start getting violent, okay, you can have a legitimate claim to go, hey, I was just out here peacefully protesting.
These people got violent.
But if it's been violence for days and weeks and months and you're still participating in this mob, at a certain point, I do feel like you kind of lose the right to say, hey, I wasn't the one who was throwing these bricks through the wall and go, well, the only reasonable action, again, in my theory of this can't just work on paper.
It has to work in reality.
You can't just say, well, then I guess we got to let this mob tear down all of civilization because we can't tell who the aggressors are because they're all in masks and in a huge group together.
At a certain point, it's going to be like, well, no, this mob needs to be put down.
And I would advise you get yourself the fuck out of the mob.
Oh, yeah.
It's right.
It's kind of like, well, did you see how she was dressed?
If you are going to an event and wearing signals that identify you as the group that is engaging in this illegal, unlawful, violent, dangerous behavior, you made an effort to become part of this organization.
At that point, yeah, you are going to have to.
And I don't think any of them, you know, like I read that meme earlier, I don't think any of them expect to not be treated as antagonists by the police.
They'll invoke the Constitution because they think they're, you know, beyond untouchable because that's of use to them.
Right.
But deep down, I think they understand perfectly well that the cops absolutely are going to, I mean, if the cops are fascists, why are you surprised that they're carting you away?
And are like, oh, I thought this was what this is like Randy Marsh on South Park.
Oh, sorry, this is America.
Sorry, this is America.
It's like, it is America.
And America has a history of when things get out of hand.
It takes a while to get there.
Eventually, someone's like, all right, we're done here.
We're taking action.
Yeah.
And just to be fair, I mean, even in an anarchist society, if a mob of people were to storm onto your property and then you start using whatever violence is necessary to contain the situation, I don't think someone there, if the mob was violent, I don't think someone there could claim, but I wasn't violent, therefore he initiated violence against me.
It's like he had no reasonable way to know when there's other people in the mob and you're a part of this mob.
So I agree with that.
It's also, if you think Donald Trump, but back to the current situation, if you think Donald Trump is a fascist, what should surprise you is how long it's taken him and still how weak this ultimate attempt is to put this down.
I mean, fascist governments, authoritarian, totalitarian governments have a lot of problems.
But one of their major problems is not like ongoing violent protests with no response to it.
That's usually not what, like, you don't look at North Korea and be like, man, these unruly street criminals just burning things down, right?
That's true.
Right.
So, I mean, you know, it's like there's that, it's, there's this like hilarious irony that these guys are actually the proof that Donald Trump isn't what they say he is.
Uh, you know, of course, and this has been true for the corporate press as well.
I mean, the corporate press, like Donald Trump's a Nazi and literally the entire corporate press is against him.
Like that's usually not the hallmark of the fascist regime.
So I guess the headline would be this just in our leader is awesome.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And there's literally no, I mean, he can't even control Fox News any of this other stuff, which maybe we'll talk about that in a minute as well.
But so there's, you know, with the situation in Portland, again, I certainly am concerned for the precedent that's being set.
Although I don't know that this is a brand new precedent.
You know, it's not as if these people are being disappeared and not given trials or anything like that.
It just seems like federal agents are coming in.
I think it's bad that the federal government is the one doing it.
It's not the preferable situation.
And, you know, I'm sure they will end up getting some other people.
But as we were indicating before, I just don't, I don't feel like if you're a part of a violent mob, which they absolutely are.
I mean, there's tons of videos.
What do they want?
Do you want batons, tear gas, and beatings?
Yeah.
That's the alternative.
And while I will also say I'm almost a little bit neutral about attacking a government building, you know, like I don't really, you know, it's not really legitimate property there either.
You know, no government property in my mind is really legitimate property, but it's not really yours to destroy either.
You know, it's like kind of this weird gray area.
Well, it's almost like they're not going to say, we're only destroying the government buildings.
We respect these spom and pop shops.
This is about principle.
That's not the thing.
Yeah.
And it's just, it is difficult to work up a lot of sympathy for some group of people who go and start like, you know, trying to burn down a courthouse when the cops are going to come and fuck them up.
And it is, you know, what is interesting is actually how much the government is treating them with kid gloves.
And I've talked about this a bit, but like, I wonder if some of these leftists do understand that, number one, the government can squash you like a bug.
And number two, the second they decide you're not useful to them, they will.
Yes.
Like I was telling people, like, look at Waco, look at these other examples.
If they want to, they'll just fucking murder you and move right along, move on with their day.
And go on TV and accept full responsibility and have no consequences.
Oh, yeah, I killed all those kids.
I accept full responsibility.
Cool.
Moving on, it's like, wait, what?
So that's that, that they will have no consequences for their behavior.
Like Obama, there's no consequences for that drone strike.
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely not.
And look, all the people who lied us into the war in Iraq are up there lying about the Russiagate hoax.
And all of these things just get blown up.
And the response to it is like, you know, I don't know, a new million-dollar contract from some think tank or some, you know, you know, cable news show or something like that.
I mean, like, somehow, like, Max Boot has gotten every single foreign policy decision wrong for, I think, 20 years.
And he's still a foreign policy expert on, you know, it'll come on on CNN and give them, well, this is why we need to go into this new war right now.
It's like, okay, there's your consequence.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the other thing that I wanted to ask you, did you see this story with Tucker Carlson?
Which there's a couple things where the New York Times was, in fact, you did see, because I saw you tweeted about it, where the New York Times was doing a piece on his new home.
Now, Tucker Carlson claims that they were going to report on where he lives.
The New York Times is claiming they were not.
I don't really know what the answer is there, but were you following that?
I saw you tweeted about it.
Were you following the story?
What were your thoughts?
Well, Jack Posobiec had the great point that the New York Times published the address of the officer who shot Mike Brown.
And that is really a case where someone's life is going to be put in danger because he was public enemy number one.
So there's precedent there.
Now, if they're going to claim that they said that Tucker knows they weren't going to do it.
Now, what happened, it's because Tucker said he called them and kind of bitched them out and like they didn't care.
Now, it sounds like, and I don't think that they're flat out lying.
This is the New York Times PR Twitter account that the editors told him we're not going to run the address, Tucker.
I do think that the New York Times wants a lot of people dead.
I think Tucker is in many ways public enemy number one because he really understands the nature of the enemy of the people and is very effective at combating them.
That's why they always talk about him being a white supremacist and just all these horrible things.
Far more, Laura Ingram is more right-wing than him.
You don't see them going after Laura.
They're going after Tucker because he is much more aware of what he is dealing with.
Now, the other argument people were making that day is, well, he was named in a lawsuit and this was his mechanism of distracting from that lawsuit.
I believe that Tucker believes that they were perfectly happy to run his home address.
I don't think that that's much of a stretch.
Now, it could be he's delusional.
It could be they think that he think that he thinks they're the enemy and you can't put anything past your enemy.
Meanwhile, he's out of touch.
That's a possible scenario.
But I don't think he was just completely making this up.
And if there's a photographer, it's now what's possible, I'm trying to reconcile these different elements.
It's possible they hired a photographer to take a photo of his house and had no intention of printing his address.
And here's where Tucker Carlson lives.
That's possible.
I don't think that that's doxing.
And I don't think that that's outrageous because real estate pages do that all the time.
It takes a little bit more work, obviously, it's not the New York Times.
And I don't think that is at all a call toward violence.
But it also depends on the content of the story.
If the content of the story is white supremacist moves into your neighborhood, what are you going to do about it?
That's a very different issue.
If it's a real estate story, like, oh, Tucker Carlson is one of many leaving Virginia to set up shop here, that's a different angle.
The point is, I think it's very healthy that Tucker Carlson and the New York Times are both very much encouraging their respective audiences to distrust the other audience and to put nothing past them.
And this will lead, in my view, my desired goal of our national ideological self-segregation.
Because once there's no basis of trust, there really is no mechanism very much for a discussion.
Right, right.
And also just to add to, you know, if people don't know the history, Tucker Carlson was doxxed a couple years ago or a year ago about, and his address was given out.
And, you know, there was like a mob of Antifa people that gathered outside his house while his wife was home alone.
They vandalized the property, broke his door, spray painted on it, you know, like a whole thing.
And he's basically said that he's been getting death threats at his home since then.
And out of this fear, they sold their house and moved, which is just awful that that would happen to anybody.
It's like this was like the house where he raised his children and they really loved it there.
And they were basically terrorized out of their old home.
And so I could see where he would be really outraged and afraid of this happening again.
So I agree with you that I do think that there's something very healthy about the distrust between camps and the fact that they won't put anything past each other.
But there is something really unhealthy about the fact that if someone's address is leaked, that people, violent mobs will show up at their door.
And that's kind of the scary part of all of this.
It's almost like there's the two possibilities where we could go our separate ways and peacefully coexist, or where this can become really, you know, violent and bad.
I don't understand how someone as wealthy as Tucker, who has a number one show on television, is in a position where, and I know this is blaming the victim, and to some extent it is, where his front door is accessible from the street.
Like that does not make sense to me.
Get a penthouse where you have a doorman, or get a place where there's a fence, live in a locale where there's guns.
Even if it wasn't Antifa, if it was just burglars, you're going to have a lot of valuables in that home.
And you're in Jersey because you want to be able to protect your family.
So I don't think it's too much to ask for him once you get any kind of level of fame.
I mean, every celebrity has to be ork.
Like one of her biggest fans sent her a bomb in the mail and it was a working bomb.
You know, they activated.
When you're at a certain level of success, you're going to have to deal with the crazies.
And Letterman had that stalker.
She broke into his house.
David Letterman isn't some kind of political activist at all.
He was a curmudgeon, but he was hardly some kind of political animal.
And he had to deal with it.
So this is something, unfortunately, that comes with level of fame.
And you're going to have to take steps to accommodate it.
A security guard's not that much money.
Make Fox pay for it.
Well, particularly seeing as how he moved to a new place because of this research.
But he says because of this.
Well, right.
So just taking him at his word there, who knows?
But if he did, then I'd imagine that would be the first thing on my list of going to the new place would be like, this is going to be completely secure.
This doesn't make sense, though, because here's the thing.
If you want to mail someone death threats, you can mail a Kara Fox.
You don't need his home address.
Yeah, but it's a little more intimidating to come to your home address.
Sure, sure.
It's a little more intimidating to mail a death threat where someone clearly knows your address.
Listen, the New York Times got mailed anthrax, you know, and they did move buildings as a consequence of this a few blocks away.
But yeah, I think we tend to forget how common this is for people at that level.
And I mean, how many death threats does every president have to deal with?
I mean, it's crazy.
Yeah.
No, that's true.
Yeah.
No, that is absolutely true.
Sean Hannity's Bitch Move00:12:29
And I think one other point that you made there that's really important is that it's like Tucker Carlson is the bigger enemy to them than these other guys.
Like you said, Laura Ingram, far to the right of Tucker Carlson.
Sean Hannity, probably to the right of Tucker Carlson.
But Tucker is the one that they really fear.
And it's not just that his numbers are huge because Hannity and him are, you know, they go back and forth between who is the bigger numbers, but they're both right around the same place.
But Tucker poses a threat that's unlike Hannity.
And I think a big part of it is that Tucker's show is much smarter.
It's much more precise.
It's much more thoughtful.
And so he's actually in many ways delivering a much more compelling message.
Yes.
And there's something about Hannity is a lot easier to dismiss and to put into a, yeah, of course, that's Sean Hannity.
And look, we'll get him.
This argument's dumb.
Because Tucker Carlson is not dumb.
Did you see that bitch move Sean Hannity did on Tucker when they were doing their?
And I agree with Hannity, but it was still kind of a bitch move.
Yeah.
So what was it?
It was about Bezos.
Yeah.
So Tucker had.
Tucker hates Bezos.
Yeah.
Tucker had this whole segment about, is it fair that Jeff Bezos makes $13 billion in one day?
And then it goes, and now up next, Sean Hannity.
Hey, Sean.
And Sean's like, it's a free country, and you only make money by providing the viewer, uh, your customers a service.
So, the more money you get, the better.
And that's what America is all about.
And Tucker's literally going, like, what the fuck are you like?
Why are we doing this?
And then it just stayed on Sean.
It was a really funny clip.
Well, it was the thing about it that was kind of a bitch move is you do it in a way where Tucker can't get another response.
And it's like, well, okay, so you guys could have do a five-minute segment and have this conversation.
And Tucker, Tucker just starts like overloading on Tucker face.
Like all the Tucker faces.
And it's like, oh, yeah, like all of this shit.
But it is, you know, for Tucker does.
I mean, I really love it.
I think he's really phenomenal on the anti-war stuff.
He's really great on just kind of the cultural moment that we're in, understanding why people are resentful of the establishment and things like that.
He's really great at bashing the identitarian left.
And bashing CNN by name.
Oh, and his coverage.
Yes, his coverage of the corporate press is the best in the business.
Yeah.
Even though he is a member of the corporate press.
But his economic populism stuff really just has me rolling my eyes quite a bit.
Like even the stuff where they're like, Jeff Bezos made $13 billion in one day.
Like Jeff Bezos did not withdraw $13 billion in cash and put it under his best, under his desk or his bed or something.
Jeff Bezos's stock went up.
And that's what this is a representative of.
And if he were to try to sell all of that stock, we have no idea that he would even get that money.
He would not.
Right, exactly.
It's like this is all so it's like the Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders economics where people feel like, oh, look, this guy has this net worth.
Let's tax him on that.
And you're like, do you even know what net worth means?
Like, you could very easily, you know, it's a check-in count.
Right.
Yeah.
Like, you can't just tax someone on their net worth.
It's like, how this is an unworkable situation.
Look, you could very easily make $100,000 a year and live in a house that's worth half a million dollars and then have a car that's worth $50,000 and then have, you know, another $10,000 in the bank.
So your net worth in that situation would be something, you know, like $600,000, $700,000.
But you may not, you have $10,000 in the bank.
You tax someone off that shit.
They literally have like no money.
They're like, what are you talking about?
I can't afford to go on vacation this year.
So like the idea of Jeff Bezos, where they say he has all this money, it's like, this is all what the valuation of his company is.
Valuations fluctuate.
And also, valuations don't really mean anything.
In the same sense that you could get your house appraised at a million dollars and then you put it on the market for a million dollars and it's there for six months and you sell it for $800,000.
And then that's when you figure out what the value really is because that's what someone else is willing to pay for it.
So anyway, stupid about that.
On the second, quickly, before we wrap up, on the sexual harassment stuff that they said Tucker was trying to distract from, did you have any thoughts on that one?
The Ed Henry stuff.
Did you see it?
No, I don't know.
I knew, I saw he was named in it, but I don't know any of the details.
So the bulk of the stuff was about Ed Henry, and it was very clearly like BDSM stuff taken out of context because he tells her, F, your safe word, I own you.
We're not stopping until I'm done.
I left you bruised and battered last night and begging for more.
You're my sex slave.
And they're trying, and they had all these texts, which, if you're not familiar with this whole space, sounds just creepy.
But it's like, if you are, this is just role-playing.
It's not like he, there's no literal rape here or even figurative rape here.
It says it's if she's dressed as a maid in a French maid uniform, she's not at all doing cleaning.
There's nothing French about her.
So it's kind of interesting to see that his lawyers, like we have her side and she was initiating a lot of this also.
And like I want, there was this one point in the story where she talks about how she was handcuffed and then he like he like, you know, violently had sex with her.
And it's like, you're leaving out the part about how you got into the handcuffs.
Pretty big part.
Yeah, did he put a gun to your head?
If he put a gun to your head, this guy should be in jail for decades.
If he didn't, which you're not alleging that he did, and if he had done that, I would think you would imply it.
You put yourself in those handcuffs.
And you don't put yourself in handcuffs in a bedroom with a man who you've had sex before and think, you know what?
It's time to play Parcheesi.
No, you know it's going to be sexual.
And the fact that they are using safe words is telling that they're respecting these boundaries.
So it seemed a little bit like a bit of a shakedown in that regard.
And also, I think, preying on the mores of the Fox audience who would find any kind of this talk to be very disturbing.
The thing about Sean Hannity, which I couldn't wrap my head around, Kathy Aru was saying that, you know, they were on the set and he threw $100 on the table and he said, who wants to take this beautiful girl on a date to Del Frisco's, which is a steakhouse?
And she was mortifying this misogyny.
And I'm like, I read that as he's trying to get you laid and he's paying for dinner.
Like, I like, but this could be me being sexist and whatever and not appreciating the female perspective.
I just think with the, no, it was a different woman with the, what's his name?
Ed Henry.
Ed Henry.
Yeah.
But with the Kathy lady.
Yeah.
Kathy Aru.
I just, for people who don't know, she was the like cartoon of a social justice warrior who would come on and debate Tucker and literally take these positions that like we shouldn't call them babies.
We should call them babies because we don't want to define gender roles before they can pick it themselves at age two or something.
Like just these, what seemed like a cartoonish version of a social justice warrior meant to be embarrassed and paint the entire left as these, you know, jokes.
And it just, my initial thought, maybe this is me being unfair, but I just go, who would possibly sexually harass that woman when you know her whole worldview?
Like, my point is, you know, she's going to talk, right?
Like, she's not the type who would like, you know, you would make a comment to like that and would like laugh it off or be cool with it.
It's like, she would clearly love to have a Me Too story.
So that just, to me, maybe this is completely unfair for me to have that.
Amber Athey from, I think, from The Spectator had a piece breaking down that lawsuit and she tried to line up the dates.
And one of the things in there was that like, oh, on this date, Tucker asked her back to his hotel room, telling her that the wife wouldn't be there, which is inappropriate.
But it turned out this was the date of his Christmas party and that we know the wife was there.
And then she also says, and this is very valid, that after she turned him down, she was never on the show again.
Now, that would be very inappropriate.
But they looked it up and she was in the show several times after that.
So that is a big issue.
I know Kathy.
I think she's genuinely and generally a sweetheart.
So I am trying to understand her perspective here.
Yeah.
I also think that, you know, like I, even when you were talking before about the Ed Henry stuff, I just really hate, I think that unless there's like a violent crime that takes place, in which case, absolutely, you know, this should be made public.
But with the exception of that, I just really hate people's personal intimate details being out there.
It's just wrong and it's humiliating and it's nobody's business.
The truth is that whether you're talking about like hardcore, you know, handcuffing and whipping and shit like that, or you're just talking about regular, the most regular sex imaginable, sex is inherently weird.
The positions are weird.
The things that people say are weird, the activity leading up to it.
It's all if you just write it out on a transcript, everybody's like sexual moments in life.
It's like bizarre.
It's a weird thing about human beings.
And to put it out there publicly and then read it with like a serious voice and then be like, look how disturbing this is.
It's, I just don't like getting into that.
Like, I don't.
It's intimate and it's not meant for public consumption.
People don't share the details of their sex life with their close friends.
Yeah.
No, that's the reason.
And the other thing that I hate is the term sexual misconduct.
I feel like it's one of these terms that's so broad that it can basically anything within the kind of dance of hooking up with another human being can be referred to as misconduct.
Part of that lawsuit, and I don't remember if it was the girl or Kathy, I forget the girl's name, I'm sorry, was like one of them were getting like dick pics and photographs of like vaginas held together by safety pins.
We're not safety pins, like clothespins, whatever.
And I'm like, you know what?
That is not appropriate.
If you're not, yeah, and that is something where it's like, you know what?
This is something I maybe, I don't know if it's lawsuit worthy, but this isn't them just pulling stuff out of their ass.
This is them feeling generally disturbed.
And these are colleagues of theirs who have a position to put them on a show.
They are not in a position to know how to respond without fear of reprisal.
Sure.
And I will say, I guess maybe it's just hard for me to believe.
And this doesn't mean any of this stuff doesn't happen, but it's so hard for me to believe that after everything that's happened at Fox News with Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes and all of that, that anybody would be crazy enough to do this shit.
That's not, by the way, saying it didn't happen.
It's just saying like, if it did happen, the fuck is wrong with you, you idiot.
Do you really think you're above this when the two biggest people probably at the whole company got brought down?
I don't think that they would say it unless they had the receipts to some extent.
Saying he sent me this text implies you have the text.
You know what I mean?
It's very different from he hit on me and I said no, that's hearsay.
Receipts are receipts.
And you know what?
I should probably amend what I just said before, because even as I'm thinking about this kind of in real time, and I guess I'm wrong to say that unless there's a violent crime, it shouldn't be made public.
Because something like that, like sending lewd pictures or something or being really lewd in general, I think that's fine to speak out about that.
I guess it's just that this term sexual misconduct can apply to that.
And it could also apply to the Hannity thing or to Rick.
And the Hannity thing to me just really doesn't seem that bad to be like, hey, who wants to take her out?
It's on me.
You know, what was the conversation before that?
Was she like, oh, I'm single and blah, blah, blah.
Goes, oh, okay.
Well, why don't you get, you know, like that, that could be trying to set you up with someone, which seems completely fine to me.
But sending a random co-worker nude pictures, yeah, that's that's fucking wildly inappropriate.
And it's not a coworker.
They were an employee and, you know, she's a pee making appearances.
So there's a power differential and that takes it to a whole other level and that makes it even more inappropriate.