Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein critique Brian Stelter's CNN dismissal of Tucker Carlson's January 6th false flag claims, arguing Stelter ignored FBI entrapment patterns while using fear appeals to trigger cortisol-driven reactions. They condemn CNN for labeling sources as right-wing to discredit them, contrasting Carlson's autonomy with alleged corporate propaganda at CNN. Ultimately, the hosts suggest the market validates Carlson's larger audience over Stelter's smears, exposing a hypocrisy where critics deny legitimate questions about high-level organizer prosecutions while rooting for Vladimir Putin. [Automatically generated summary]
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Overstated Government Claims00:14:54
Fill her up!
You're 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 Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He's Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
Let's get going.
How are you, my brother?
I'm good.
How are you, Davey Smith?
Very good.
Very good.
Had a fun night the other night up in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Thank you to everybody who came out.
Fun times, fun times.
And then we got the big one, Porkfest coming up in just a couple days.
Looking forward to that.
But aside from that, having fun, living the dream.
Dude, Porkfest is going to be a party.
Porkfest is going to be a lot of fun, man.
I was just texting the other night with Tom Woods is going to be up there.
Reed Coverdale is going to be up there.
Gene Epstein is going to be there.
We're going to have a lot of our people rolling up there.
Should be fun.
We're doing a live podcast and a live stand-up show and hope to see a bunch of you listeners of the podcast up there.
So for today's show, you, Rob, sent me a video that I just loved.
It was Brian at his piggiest.
Brian, ooh, our favorite little piggy at his most favorite, most piggiest you could possibly imagine.
It was, you know, I just want to start by saying, because I know we do these a lot, but the reason I love doing these is because not only is I think it really, it's important to break down the incredible propaganda machine that we live under.
Like, to me, that's like the most important thing.
You know, if like, I feel like the reason that the state uses this giant propaganda machine is because they need to.
Otherwise, they wouldn't.
You know, it's a lot of effort.
So they wouldn't do it if they didn't need to.
They are the state's security apparatus in a sense.
Like they really do the cover work for them.
And I think that if you take apart the propaganda, the state is completely toothless.
Like they, I don't think they could get away with what they do without this.
And that's one of the biggest white pills, as Michael Malis would say, about the whole moment we're living in, is that the propaganda seems to be unraveling quite a bit.
But so this was fascinating on a lot of different levels.
And I like to go through these things because not just to display how full of shit these guys are, but to help, you know, make our side better at understanding how this works, how they operate, how to see through it, how to explain to others, you know, in a way that they can see through it.
But so we did a show last week and we talked a lot about that Tucker Carlson clip where he was talking about the January 6th insurrection and some of the unanswered questions about it.
And it was a really interesting segment, I thought, and raised a lot of, you know, very legitimate questions.
And then in the second half of the segment, really broke down the pattern of abuse and entrapment by the FBI and other, you know, three-letter federal agencies, but particularly by the FBI.
So it's interesting that we see this clip and we have, you know, like, ooh, wow, there's a lot of really interesting points being raised here.
And this is how CNN sees the clip.
It's slightly different.
So it's just really interesting to note how they attack it and what their takeaways are and all of that stuff.
So let's get into this.
Let's start the clip.
Here he is, our favorite little piggy, Brian Stelter.
Let's roll.
Tucker Carlson was not just asking questions when he advanced his theory about a false flag attack the other day.
Look, you pause it already.
Why is Brian Stelter so weird that even his air quotes are really weird?
Like, did you see those little piggy air quotes that he threw up at the beginning?
I'm sorry, Brian.
You got to bring this back to the beginning of this video.
Look at his, look at the air quotes.
Like his fingers don't bend the right way.
Tucker Carlson was not just asking questions when he advanced his theory about a false flag attack the other day.
He stated as fact that FBI operatives helped organize the attack on the Capitol.
FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, according to government documents.
He said it as fact.
He said there are documents to prove it.
And all of that was inspired by a headline from a pro-Trump right-wing website that most folks haven't heard of.
It was there on Monday.
It was on Tucker's show on Tuesday.
Tucker repeated it all week long.
He said, well, hey, how can you disprove this?
Right?
He said, go and prove it.
Like he was challenging the media to go do his work for him.
And now it's everywhere.
This is everywhere now.
I mean, everybody's heard about it at this point.
GOP lawmakers are parroting this completely.
Let's pause it right there.
So I just want to point something out here that I think is fairly interesting, right?
If you remember, Rob, when we did our episode where we talked about this video, I commented on that exact line that Tucker Carlson said.
And I said, to be fair, he's overstating his case here.
He was not perfect in one sentence out of the nine-minute segment that he did on this thing.
It might have been more.
It might have been like 12 minutes.
And so there was one line there where I go, you know what?
He overstated the case a little bit there.
The government documents do not clearly say that FBI agents organized this.
What they say is that there were law enforcement agents amongst the people who were rioting and that there are certain organizers who are still remaining anonymous and have not been prosecuted.
It's a jump, not that long of a leap, but it is a jump to say that those people were FBI agents.
So I criticize Tucker for being a little bit sloppy in one sentence in this 12-minute segment.
So what does CNN do right away?
They play that one sentence and nothing else.
They give you nothing else of the argument that he's making, no other nuance of the point, the context, the whole segment, what it was about.
They're just going to focus on that one line and be like, look, BS.
He said this and it's not factually true.
So it's just a little insight into the tactics that they use.
I actually want to agree with Brian a little bit because he references a problem with the media where you can make up a claim and then repeat it a whole bunch and then all of a sudden it catches on and people think it's a part of their reality.
And I do.
I agree with Brian that that is a real issue from the media and that is a tactic that should be further explored and combated because it's not good.
It's not good for humanity.
It's amazing how much this is a tactic of dishonest people all over the political spectrum.
This is true for the corporate press.
It's true for just like dishonest woke people online with little, you know, like tiny Twitter accounts.
They all do this thing where they hold their opponents to a standard that they could never themselves pass.
You know what I mean?
Like, if you just took a 10-minute CNN segment and took the most dishonest sentence out of it, you could eviscerate every 10 minutes on CNN.
There's, I mean, my God, they're a whole years of Russia collusion story or how many other stories.
In the Russia collusion, like the worst offenses of it, they had a whole segment on whether Donald Trump had been a Russian spy since 1987.
This was a...
They pondered this question.
They were just asking questions, though, right?
Like, that's, it's okay when they're just asking questions, right?
But Tucker Carlson wasn't just asking questions because of this one little sentence that he said, which granted was sloppy.
Granted, the sentence was he overstated his case and he shouldn't have done that because in a weird way, you got to play in this game that they're in and you got to realize like, okay, that's what they're going to jump on.
But that's it.
And then he's, you know, he's complaining that, oh my God, you know, Tucker Carlson's able to say this thing.
And then it goes to lawmakers.
And it's funny that he goes, just the tactics that they use, right?
Like, I love that Michael Malice pointed this out.
He's like, you know, when you talk about like journalists in the corporate press, you should always give them the same type of introduction that they give others.
You know, it'd be like Brian Stelter, who was instrumental in selling the Russia hoax for three years, recently commented that blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, like, and that's how you, because this is the tactic they use.
But right away, it goes, so I'm sorry, what he gets there were three descriptors to the website that Tucker Carlson got the story from.
It was right-wing Trump supporting website who none of you have probably ever heard of.
So that's the three things, right?
So they're just letting you know right away, just discredit this website.
That's the message, right?
Like they're not saying that, but just with three descriptors that sound almost like they're just objective descriptors.
And that's the language.
We got a quote from this fat, stupid bitch over here.
Yeah.
In a slightly more artful way, that's what they're doing, right?
Just these kind of things like, and they crap, they couch it in this language where it's like as if you were just describing what someone is.
Like as if I was just like Rob Bernstein, who currently resides in Connecticut, blah, Like it's almost as if it's just an objective thing.
But what are they doing right here?
Well, first off, just so you guys know, this is right-wingers, bad, Trump supporters, bad, and you've probably never even heard of them.
Irrelevant.
You know, now, whether, you know, the fact that, say, Joe Rogan, if they're criticizing Joe Rogan, they wouldn't.
Why should this guy have any pull?
Brian Stelter wouldn't go, you know, Joe Rogan, who has millions of more views than any show on CNN, right?
He would never lead it like that.
That would never, but all of a sudden, when it's a small website, that becomes a really important point to make right away.
Nothing to be said about their reporting, about the arguments that they're making.
None of that.
It's just they're tiny.
So who cares, right?
It's a really interesting tactic that's used here.
Okay, let's keep playing.
Bogus conspiracy theory.
And it's all because of that pipeline.
From one of the things that we're talking about to his top-rated show.
Conspiracy.
Everywhere now.
I mean, everybody's heard about it at this point.
GOP lawmakers are parroting this completely bogus conspiracy theory.
And it's all because of that pipeline from one random website that Tucker likes to his top-rated show, like a domino effect all across the right-wing web.
So that inspired me to send some questions to Fox News.
You know, this is just Reporting 101.
This is presumably what Tucker did, right?
Presumably, he asked questions to the FBI and to prosecutors and to sources.
So I asked Fox News PR executives, did anyone vet Carlson's reporting?
Did the Fox Newsroom go through his reporting?
Did they examine it ahead of time?
All right, let's pause.
Why aren't they followed up on it?
Firstly, those ear quotes, it's like a kindergarten teacher singing the little bunny foofoo song.
Yeah, yeah, they kind of go like, it's like that kind of like, why don't they bend?
I don't know.
This was my favorite part of it because, yeah, does CNN take the calls from Fox News when they're asking them for their sources?
Like, yes, it's pretty easy to go, I called my competitor, the people that I trash all the time, and I asked them what, like, yeah, of course.
I can't imagine that that is professional courtesy to answer those questions ever.
Yeah.
Well, one of the things that's also very interesting, right, is that it is, you could say, like, look, what we know here in this case, right, which is, of course, Brian Stelter just will not even touch, will not even touch what the actual argument or the underlying story here is.
But what we know here is what I just said, right?
That what we said on the last episode, that the FBI has a pattern of doing these type of things, that they do infiltrate organizations, get involved in the planning of illegal activities, and then bust the people who were involved in the illegal activities.
What many of us consider entrapment.
This isn't like they've done it once.
This is like they do it over and over again.
There's a long established pattern of this.
And what we know is that according to government documents, there were law enforcement agents amongst the rioters.
And what we know from government documents is that some of the organizers of the riots have remained anonymous and have not been charged.
Now, that raises questions, like very, very important questions, like why?
Why is it that you're throwing the book at all of these other people, right?
And using every tool at your disposal to get these other people prosecuted, many of whom still being held in solitary confinement.
And yet these people who played larger roles in it are off the hook.
Now, perhaps there's an answer to that that is not these were FBI agents who were doing what the FBI always does.
I'm open to that possibility.
Maybe these people are cooperating.
Maybe there's some other answer for it.
But it's a fair question.
Now, I'll say that Tucker Carlson, to be fair here, because that's what I do, I'll say he overstated his case.
It's not conclusive that the FBI, that those were FBI agents who were organizing this.
However, what Brian Stelter just did here is the exact same crime, if you want to put it that way, that Tucker committed.
He goes, these are bogus conspiracy theories.
So he just overstated his case in the exact opposite direction.
He just said they're not FBI agents.
This is not true.
Tucker's False Certainty00:02:34
It's like, well, okay, there's something.
Now, this isn't just me saying it's on him to disprove a negative.
I'm saying that there's enough circumstantial evidence and questions to be asked here that it is overstating your case either way.
It's overstating his case forstating the case for Tucker to say we know this for a fact.
And it's absolutely overstating the case for Brian Stelter to say we know for a fact that it's not true.
Neither of you know.
At least Tucker seems interested.
Brian Stelter has no interest in even entertaining the possibility that the FBI could have done something that we know that it's done many times before.
What does that tell you?
So the other thing that's really interesting about this is you see how outraged Brian Stelter is that this can even happen.
That Tucker Carlson's allowed to read some website that is not approved.
You know, we didn't get, we didn't approve this website, and he's able to read this, and then he can tell his huge audience this, and now everyone knows it.
It's really something, right?
That they're furious about what they call fake news on the internet, right?
They're furious about like, you know, Alex Jones or whoever else might be able to get out there and give alternative, you know, views.
And they're also furious about Fox News.
They're furious about this website.
Like, if Brian Stelter, whose job here is to be the media analyst, could have it his way, the only media you could see would be everyone saying the exact same thing that CNN is saying.
Which would be one thing if they had a track record of getting like 10% of the big stories right.
They get zero.
I mean, it's really just, it's unbelievable that he can be in this world and he knows.
I mean, this guy knows how dishonest he is because he's heard all of the critics.
I mean, maybe he can really do some crazy rationalizing and just convince himself that all of his critics are these hateful, awful people.
But it's like, dude, you're the media critic and you're sitting here saying we can't have these other views out.
Like, here's how an honest person, an honest journalist, media critic, would respond to something like this.
They'd go, I'm going to take your claim that there were FBI agents involved in this.
I'm going to own it and I'm going to disprove it.
That's how someone honest attacks a false claim.
Honest Attacks on Lies00:03:04
You say, okay, let me take this claim.
Let me treat it as if it's true.
And let me show you how this doesn't work with reality.
If this was true, then this can't be explained.
This can't be explained.
That can't be explained.
Here's all the evidence we have to believe that it's not true, that the FBI would never do something like this.
None of that.
None of that.
Not even interested.
Or it would be fair to do what we did and say, you know, I think he's overstating his case here.
Tucker doesn't actually have proof of this, but he did raise some other fair questions.
That would be fair too.
But this is just, this is pure propaganda.
And as we'll see, a lot of projection as well.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So let's keep playing.
Follow it up on it since.
Carlson alleged this explosive story.
He's claiming this is an incredible bombshell.
Where's the Fox Newsroom?
Why isn't Special Report with Brett Baer covering this story every day?
Why isn't Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace covering this incredible claim right now?
We know why, right?
The Propaganda Business00:11:26
Because Carlson's out there on his own.
Carlson Island.
I mean, he does own an island.
He's out there on his own, claiming to be telling the truth to his viewers.
And the defense from Fox is that it's an opinion show, and everyone knows it's an opinion show.
But it looks like news, and it smells like news, and his fans think it's news.
They trust Tucker more than they trust real reporters.
So what was the betting?
Oh, God.
Every inch of this is just delicious.
Just delicious.
So I've made this point, you know, in the past.
I made this when we were talking about the state of the Libertarian Party the other day.
But it's really something, and it shows a true character flaw in somebody who will look at Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson has, I mean, maybe five, six times the audience that Brian Stelter has.
And he'll say, you know, but people actually trust Tucker Carlson and they trust him more than they trust, quote, real journalists, right?
But at no point do you look at that and go, huh, that's kind of a reflection on us.
I mean, why did we, how did we allow ourselves to get to a point where this guy who, as you see it, is clearly full of it, is trusted more than you?
And of course, after thinking about that, you find that you have no responsibility in that.
It's nothing that you got wrong.
Dave, I think it's tough when you're out there every day and you're just calling apples apples and people are trying to categorize them as other things.
You'd lose your hair.
You'd go nuts.
But that's what it is, right?
Like it's unbelievable that you, I mean, I just couldn't imagine ever having this attitude.
I mean, like, even like I'd have to say, look, for people who like believe in freedom and limiting or eliminating government, we'd have to look in the mirror and say, oh, we have not done a good job.
We have failed to convince enough people of our message.
What can we do to improve?
Where were our failures?
You have to look in the mirror at some point and go, yeah, could have gone better, right?
I mean, but for CNN to look around and be like, oh, my God, all these people believe, like, well, what did we do?
How did we lose trust with such a huge portion of the country?
There's a few other really interesting things in there, right?
So first off, Brian Stelter poses this question and then says, well, the answer is obvious, basically, right?
He goes, why is this?
We all know.
We all know.
There's only one possible answer.
Except there's two possible answers.
And he doesn't consider the other one.
You know, why is this?
Why isn't Chris Wallace and Brett Baer talking about this?
Hmm?
If there's any truth to this, if this is a really interesting story and there are really important questions to be asked here, then why wouldn't these other shows be talking about this?
We all know why.
And that's because they're the real great journalists.
And Tucker Carlson is just out on an island.
And that's why they are not, that's all right, they're not reporting on it.
Or there's another option.
And the other option involves Brett Baer and Chris Wallace not being interested in reporting on the FBI's long-standing pattern of entrapment.
Now, you can figure out the reasons for why that might be.
I think we all know.
But there's this other possibility that's right in front of you that Brian Stelter doesn't even seem to be aware exists.
Like, oh, the other option is that they're kind of hack journalists too, just like you guys.
And that's why only Tucker Carlson will be reporting on stuff like this.
Now, I also, where he's going on, and he's already started to get to here, I find another very revealing criticism.
And this really seems, I've seen this many times on CNN and in the New York Times, Washington Post a lot of times when they criticize Tucker Carlson, they give away something very revealing that they don't even realize they're giving away.
And they are absolutely furious that he has autonomy.
You know, Tucker Carlson is just allowed to say what he wants to say.
How is that any way to run a network, Fox News?
Are you going to be able to do that?
I give my soul to the devil to get paid to do this propaganda and he gets to do actual journalism.
He's like, like Brian Seltzer.
That's not fair.
I get my marching orders every Monday at 8 a.m. for the week.
But this guy's just allowed to say whatever he thinks about a story.
Excuse me.
I didn't realize that Tucker Carlson should be a slave to whatever the higher ups at Fox News want, which, by the way, is how things work at CNN.
And this has been revealed many times.
And this is one of the things that's really, you know, it's very interesting to watch a supposed media critic of all the roles in journalism that he's supposed to fill.
And he's saying the real problem is that there's any diversity in news at all, that anyone's looking at stories from different angles and talking about this other stuff.
And the real problem is that they're not just taking their marching orders from the centralized corporate control.
Pretty revealing.
All right, let's keep going.
One more thing on that.
And this is definitely the weaker argument than what you just laid forward.
But when he says, why is it that he's not reporting it at all the time is a little cartoonish to state now when the first reporting on it was only a couple of days ago.
You know what I mean?
It's not like he mentioned this once and walked away from it.
And by the way, even if he were to do that, that's not indicative of the fact that it's not an actual story.
Sometimes you do an hour and a half program, you covered the topic.
You hope that other people might be able to look into it more.
You might have more information might come out, but you don't need to cover.
You don't need to talk about the same thing every single night.
That's what's boring about CNN is that they'll take a Russia collusion story.
And as opposed to just reporting on it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it because they don't actually care about ratings or coverage or anything.
They're just, they're actually in the propaganda game.
So if anything, they're almost like, hey, if you don't really have this narrative, why aren't you repeating it every 20 seconds?
You clearly don't.
No, that's because you guys are in the propaganda business and you repeat shit all the time for that exact reason.
Other people aren't doing that because they're actually reporting on things.
That's not, you know what I mean?
Most people, when they write a news story, like if you do, if you're a journalist and you have some breaking story, that's it.
You write the story and then that's it.
You broke it.
And I think you hope that, you know, maybe it influences some change, but you don't, you know what I mean?
You don't keep rewriting the story.
Yeah.
And I think, yeah, I think you're hitting on something really important there is that oftentimes the endless, tireless repetition of these stories, even when they're not very big stories, is a clear propaganda tactic that you say this over and over and over again and you use the same exact phraseology all the time.
You ever see those like compilation videos where it's like every Democratic like senior member and everyone in the corporate press, and they're all saying the exact same phrase.
Like every one of them thinks climate change is an existential threat.
And that word just gets said over and over and over again.
Now, look, one of the reasons why Tucker Carlson is one of the most enjoyable shows, if not the most in cable news to watch, is precisely because he'll talk about stories that other people aren't talking about and come at them with kind of a different angle.
And it seems like, you know, he's thinking for himself.
Now, he doesn't get everything right.
He certainly gets a lot of things wrong.
But that's, first off, that's true for everyone.
And second of all, it's like, I don't know, at least it's not the same boring thing that everybody else is saying.
Again, though, it's really something like what really stands out to me about this is that they don't touch throughout this whole thing any other claims that have been made in his in his monologue there.
It's just the one line where he did overstate his case.
That one sentence.
Again, they would never in a million years treat anyone else this way.
They'd never be going to like, you know, off on a thing about how, you know, let's say the former CIA director, that John Brennan, is a propagandist because he told us that he knew information that Donald Trump and family members were going to be indicted by Robert Mueller.
I mean, like, no one's just taking that one sentence and going, we're hanging you by this one sentence, right?
It's just, do you think that was as inaccurate as Tucker's claim?
Was he overstating his case a little bit there?
Yeah, I think he was.
I think it was.
But anyway, so this is, you know, you just got it.
You got to just learn how to see through all these tactics.
All right, let's keep playing.
Prust real reporters.
So what was the vetting?
What was the process?
Why isn't Fox following up?
Why isn't the newsroom digging into his claims?
Why isn't the newsroom of Fox trying to prove Tucker's theory?
Those were my questions.
Let me just check my email and see if there's been a.
Yeah, no.
Still no response from France.
Or in the acting chops.
To those basic questions about journalism, just about just big basic news gathering.
What do you think?
Are there any answers?
With me now is David Zerwick, media credit for the Baltimore Sun.
And Jennifer Murcia.
She teaches rhetoric at Texas A ⁇ M University.
She's the author of Demagogue for President.
And I know you both have a lot to say on this.
I'm going to just keep checking my email to see if I can get answers to those questions.
What was the vetting process?
Why isn't the newsroom film?
This can be my newest favorite trick: anytime I don't like something that someone's doing, I'll write them letters and just be like, well, why aren't they that they respond?
It's my letters.
Clearly guilty.
I wrote a nice letter and there was zero response.
You know why they didn't respond?
Because they have no response.
No, because you wrote them a letter.
No one's got to write.
There's no obligation.
When did there become a court system that if someone doesn't respond to your caller letter, they must be guilty.
Yeah, I mean, like, imagine, right?
Like, it's funny because we've done so many videos where we just tear apart Brian Stelter.
Imagine if I was ever just this pathetic about it.
I go, I emailed him.
Here, let me check.
Let me check in the middle of the segment.
I'll keep checking the whole thing.
Oh, nothing yet.
Guess he's guilty.
I mean, it's just so dishonest.
And then, of course, you know, it's like this funny thing where they go, they go, when they were dissing that site, they go, the right-wing Trump supporting site.
And then they're like, here to give their comment on this is a woman who wrote a book about how terrible Trump is, right?
Like, that's fine.
That doesn't amount to any bias here.
I'm sure the woman who wrote President Demagogue would never, you know, have a biased opinion on what happened on January 6th, right?
And again, it's supposed to just be taken as a given that this was an insurrection, an attempt to overthrow democracy, all this shit.
Can't ask any interesting questions about what's going on here.
Again, I also like, even if you took the Democrat position on this stuff, even if you think January 6th is like the worst thing that's happened in this country in decades or one of.
Smarter Conversations Matter00:03:01
And even if you think, you know, Joe Biden's a better president than Trump and you just don't like Tucker Carlson and all of this, you could still sit here and go like, there's just a more interesting conversation to be had than the same dumb talking points about how this was an insurrection and they tried to overthrow democracy.
I don't know one person just be like, man, how did we get to this point where people are willing to do this?
What happened?
What's the story of what happened here?
I mean, that's more interesting, right?
Like, and I would say this on every issue, on every issue.
It'd just be more interesting to have like a thoughtful examination of what's going on here.
You know, if there's some right-winger who's just talking about how, you know, like some inner city area is crime ridden, isn't it always a more interesting conversation to be like, why is there so much crime?
What's happening here?
What's going on in the community?
Like, what, it's just, it's just a, it's just a smarter conversation.
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Cable News Is Not Journalism00:12:30
All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, let's keep playing.
Check in my email.
Let's see if I can get answers to those questions.
What was the vetting process?
Why isn't the newsroom following up?
Tucker Carlson's alleging one of the biggest stories in American history of the last 20 years.
He's alleging a false flag attack by the Fed.
Like, and obviously we know, David, why they don't reply.
We know why Fox doesn't comment.
Because Tucker is just his own guy.
He does whatever he wants.
So is there anyone in charge at Fox News, David?
So just pause it again.
I'm sorry, because it's so fascinating that they just lay it out there.
I mean, this is Brian Stelter's complaint.
Tucker is his own man.
Isn't there anyone in charge?
Think about that.
It's unbelievable the shit that they'll reveal just to you that you don't even have to pull out of them, that they'll tell you.
They don't like someone being his own man.
Why isn't someone in charge?
Tells you something about Brian Stelter, doesn't it?
He is clearly not his own man, and someone else is in charge.
And along the lines of Brian not being in charge, his show is supposed to be the media watchdog.
So if anyone should be free from their boss, it would be him to be the guy to review what they're doing.
Like the way police departments have internal affairs or whatever that department is.
You wouldn't want that guy to be in charge, be run by the police chief, because that would be a conflict of interest.
If anyone in the entire world should be working for a news station and not have the boss to be reporting to, it would be him.
That's part of the reason why Brian Stelter is such a fun caricature to make fun of, because his job is supposed to be watchdogging the media.
And his critique is that there's this one guy in the media who's his own man.
That's the problem.
Let me tell you, the problem with corporate media is not, it's not everybody who's saying the exact same thing.
It's this one guy who's allowed to say other things, who happens to, by the way, have the biggest show in cable news because of it.
As it turns out, that some people actually do respond to authenticity.
And again, this isn't coming from somebody who thinks Tucker Carlson's right about everything.
You know, I think he's wrong about a decent amount of things, but he is his own man.
The orders clearly aren't coming down from the top.
And that's what's interesting about him.
That's what makes Tucker Carlson so great is that, yeah, Tucker Carlson will have Aaron Matei on his show to expose the OPCW scandal and how Assad never gassed his own people.
And these were all just lies coming out of the international community and the CIA and all this shit.
And it was all lies to push us into another war.
Now, clearly, that's not coming from the top of Fox News.
There's nobody at the top of Fox News who's like, please go out there and expose the military-industrial complex to your 4 million viewers, right?
That's not coming from the top.
But he's his own guy.
That's what makes him worth watching.
And that is Brian Stelter's critique of him.
I just think that's incredible to actually hear him say it.
All right, let's go.
Let's keep going.
David?
Brian, I think it's worse than that.
And we've had parts of this discussion on this show.
I have said that Fox News is crooked and rotten from top to bottom.
And sometimes people have pushed back and said, oh, no, Zurwick, it's opinion shows.
What about Brett Bear?
Blah, blah, blah.
No, it is a propaganda operation.
It is not a journalistic enterprise.
As we both know well, Roger Ailes founded it as a political operation, not a journalistic enterprise.
But he was clever and smart enough to brand it as if it was mainstream journalistic cable news channel, much like CNN, but maybe leaning a little bit.
Even he says it.
He goes, but he was smart enough to brand it as if it was just a cable news channel, almost like calling it the cable news network.
That would be a smart way to brand it.
Almost like that.
I mean, he's not even wrong in that sense, right?
Like, yes, it was founded for those reasons, unlike CNN, who was founded by noted truth teller billionaire fucking, what's his name?
God damn it.
What's his name?
That's the old cowboy billionaire who founded that.
I don't know.
I'm blanking on him.
Ted Turner.
It was founded by Ted Turner, that noted, noted, you know, honest, fucking, honest Abe Lincoln.
Fucking Ted Turner.
Anyway, but like, yeah, okay, so fine.
It has been founded as kind of a Republican, you know, news machine.
And yeah, there's been a lot of that throughout the years.
Doesn't really have anything to do with Tucker Carlson or the problem that he's not taking his orders from the top.
And it also, you know, like the idea, at least as how Roger Ailes would have put it, is that.
Yeah, well, all the media has a liberal bias.
So we wanted a news network that didn't.
Anyway, let's keep playing.
Much like CNN, but maybe leaning a little right was the way they would.
It's not leaning right.
It's falling over on its face into the right way.
It's prostate on its knees before Donald Trump.
Fox is rotten from top to bottom.
They will never investigate Tucker Carlson on this with their newsroom.
And the fact that Brett Baer and everybody who claims to be a journalist over there doesn't is proof of what they are.
It's a propaganda operation.
Now, since Donald Trump and Lachlan running it now, Lachlan Murdoch, it's the war.
I mean, if they're of the opinion that any journalists not investigating the other journalists on their network are then contributing to propaganda.
That's proof.
Yeah, there should be a lot more Cuomo coverage.
I mean, the fact that Cuomo was working with his brother, was it?
I think he was sitting down on the strategy calls for how he could cover up the rape that he committed.
Well, that's right.
And so this is fair.
That is fair.
But right.
So, but here's, and if you notice, there's this guy, it's funny because like I've done a fair amount of these cable news gigs at this point in my life, and I could never imagine just doing what this guy is doing where he has not made one argument yet.
It's all just smear.
And it's smear with this like kind of like presented with this certainty and this, but there hasn't been one real argument about it yet.
Like, look, if I wanted to criticize Fox News, I mean, just endless supply of things.
You get in to be like, look, this is what Fox News was saying during the lead up to the war in Iraq.
And this is what we all know to be true now.
They got this story completely wrong.
And this guy and this guy and this guy, you know, name all the freaking guys.
And Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and all these opinion pieces.
They completely sold all of this propaganda to the American people.
And it got hundreds of thousands of people killed.
It's an absolute disaster.
I mean, there's a million things you could criticize Fox News for.
But he just comes up, you know, it's never like, I'm always very cognizant of the fact that I go, well, I got a couple minutes here on the air.
Let me just give you my strongest argument right off the bat.
Like the thing that's going to just pound you in the head, like, damn, that was a good point.
Man, that is solid.
That's tough to refute.
And what's he?
He goes, Fox News doesn't lean right.
It's fallen on its face all the way over to the right.
And they're just a propaganda outlet.
And it's just smears.
Like, there's no points being made.
And then the nerve to project, accuse them of being propaganda.
You know, what are you doing right now?
What are you?
You're not making an argument.
Just insults.
Anyway, all right, let's keep playing.
Lachlan Murdoch, it's become much more of a propaganda operation.
Roger Ailes almost stayed between the lines, except he did.
But this is now since Trump, an operation, and it's full-blown.
Brian, you take it.
You talk about this echo chamber.
You have right-wing radio.
You have Fox Nation.
And each of those can go further to the right and a little crazier with conspiracies than Fox wants to go on the air.
But Fox News is the linchpin.
When you have an audience of 3 million like he does, once you say it on Fox News, it takes on a mainstream kind of status, at least for people on the right.
And that's why it's so dangerous.
So let's go into the rhetoric of it.
It was really bad and now it's really, really, really bad.
But that's it, right?
We're heading terribly bad territory.
Yeah.
Roger Ailes was bad.
Now it's even worse.
The radio is even worse.
Fox Nation is even worse.
And this is all just bad.
And it's more like them than us.
Yeah.
And yeah, exactly.
And it's so mainstream.
And so many more people listen to them than us.
I mean, what the heck?
It's unbelievable to watch these people go off.
They're spinning out of control, man.
They really are.
At least keep playing.
Jennifer, you study this for a living.
You teach your students about propaganda.
So what is Tucker doing when he presents this conspiracy theory?
Is he provoking a fight or flight response?
And what does that mean?
Yeah, he is.
Absolutely.
You know, we've known rhetoric scholars like me have known since Aristotle that emotions are very persuasive.
If you can tap into people's emotions, then you can get them to do, you know, what you want them to do.
Media is a very important thing.
Let's pause it for a second because I just really love, this is, by the way, one of my favorite tactics of corporate press propaganda.
So what they do is they have two propagandists and then one extremely unimpressive academic.
So they can do their propaganda.
And then they go to the academic and they're so obvious with their leading questions.
They're not even there to like be like, hey, you're an academic.
You have something to add to this conversation.
Maybe I could learn something from you.
It's just like, use science-y sounding mumbo-jumbo to back up everything we just said.
That's it.
You're just there to give the lead-in question he asks her is, and does, and this, you know, when they do this stuff, this provokes a fight or flight response, doesn't it?
She goes, yeah, it does.
You know, emotions make people have fight or flight and blah, blah, blah, blah, just this mumbo jumbo, like 101 rhetoric babble nonsense.
Like, okay, I mean, even if you're going to make this argument that, yes, obviously you can appeal to people's emotion rather than to their logic.
What do you think the guy who spoke right before you just did for his full time?
Did he say anything?
Did he make one point?
Or did he just say right-wing lie propaganda a bunch and insult everything that's not CNN?
What is that?
What was that provoking out of your viewers?
Anyway, all right, let's keep playing this.
Talk about how fear appeals work through the television.
And cognitive scientists have explained that it's actually your body's physiology.
So your fight or flight response is when there's something dangerous that's in the area.
Your body's physiology floods your brain with stress hormones, with adrenaline, with cortisol.
And those take over the rational part of your brain, which hijacks your brain.
They call it amygdala hijacking.
Wait, so let me ask you a question, Jennifer.
So are you saying that first he scares his viewers by referring to the Biden regime and claiming you might be next?
So he scares them and then he presents a conspiracy theory?
You pause for a second.
That's absolutely.
So you're saying if I'm yelling at my viewers right now, they'll be able to have a calm mind while I try and preach my opinion?
You're saying as long as we're calm about it, then they'll be able to digest this information.
But and just to my point, as you see here, right, Brian Stilter, this is the tool.
This is like how they use it.
This is how they use one academic, always a very unimpressive one, just as cover.
Like you're just coming on the show.
He's not asking her a legitimate question.
He's like, agree with me here, right?
It's not like, hey, how exactly does this work?
Self-Sealing Conspiracy Logic00:02:59
It's nothing like that.
It's like, so you're saying that he can just scare his viewers and then present a conspiracy theory and that's how we'll sell it to them?
And then her role is to go, yes.
He goes, hmm, fascinating.
Fascinating.
Someone just seconded what I put forward.
It's like, this is, it's just one person.
And this is what, by the way, so much of academia has become.
Just somebody to like put their stamp of authorization on your bullshit.
Yes, I have X, Y, credential.
And I say yes.
Therefore, you know.
And then just like this bullshit, science-y talk of like, yes, well, scientists, you know, neurologists have discovered that when people get very scared, they're not as rational.
Like, yeah, obviously.
Everyone knows that.
Again, you're only the these things only work when you have double standards.
If you have one standard, then CNN is going to fail this test every bit as much as Fox News does.
Why do you shout Trump-Russia collusion and then start talking about the story?
It's like, oh yeah, because you get people scared.
Why do you label January 6th an insurrection and then start talking about the story?
Oh, yeah, that's right.
You get people scared.
Who's not in the business of scaring people in the news?
Yeah, that's right.
It's a hallmark of propaganda.
You instill fear in people.
Why do we need a professor to tell us this?
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Anyway, let's keep going.
The Logic of Fear00:11:36
It's a conspiracy theory.
That's absolutely right.
And so what he has to do is absolutely right.
Shocker.
Because those hormones have made you attend to his message.
They've also denied you of your ability to think critically.
And so he has your attention, but you don't have your reason.
And then he deploys conspiracy theory, and he's excellent at creating narratives that people will believe.
So conspiracy theory is self-sealing.
I saw you say that on Twitter yesterday.
What does that mean?
This theory about like one six was an inside job is basically what he's saying.
How is that a self-sealing conspiracy theory?
Yeah, so think of it like a tire that is designed so that if you run over a nail, instead of puncturing the tire and your tire goes flat, it seals itself up.
Conspiracy theory works on that same logic.
So if you say, you know, the plot didn't happen, they say you are denying the truth and you are against free speech and why won't you even let us talk about this or investigate?
If you deny the facts, then they say you're hiding the truth from us, right?
It's the logic of conspiracy theory.
Yes, if you deny the facts, then yes, yes, if you deny the facts, then you are engaging in whatever her secondary sentence was there.
She literally just said the words, if you deny the facts, yes, then that's an issue.
You're denying facts.
Yes, but she goes, but I love even by her like own telling of it, she goes, so here's how it self-seals, right?
If you say, no, that's not true, they'll say, we think it is.
Like, that's basically what she summed up.
It's like, they have a different opinion than you.
I don't know.
Like, she goes, if we say, no, that's not true, then they say, well, why can't we investigate it?
That's supposed to be the unreasonable person, even in your own telling, because you've just decided, right?
So this is like, it's just so obvious.
It's like, oh, they have these like blind spots or they're just being dishonest or whatever, but where they go, well, people can be emotional.
And then this person robs you of your ability to reason and all of this.
And so when we tell them they're wrong, they come right back at us and say, we think you're wrong.
And now we, I mean, what can you do with that?
It's like, yeah, but you're just taking it as a given that they're the ones that are wrong.
Maybe you are.
This is why you need an argument.
You need to have some type of argument to present to somebody.
I mean, I'm not saying like this is foolproof.
Yes, some people will not be persuaded by arguments, but you have to present one.
We're this far into this segment and nobody has even pretended that they think it's at all even appropriate to have an argument for why there couldn't have been FBI influence in this or why there's no reason to think that there has been.
Now, Tucker Carlson, I will say, I do not think he made an airtight case that this was an inside job or that there were FBI agents organizing this.
I don't think so at all.
I do think he made an airtight case as to a reason of why we should maintain that as a possibility.
Like, yeah.
I mean, like, if somebody has a pattern of doing something over and over again, and then there are signs that somebody was somewhat involved in this, sure, there's certainly no reason to dismiss that out, right?
You should, you should, at the very least, it's a pretty sound case to keep an open mind about it.
But they don't even feel the need to even think about addressing that.
Just all they're doing is smearing the people who would believe what Tucker Carlson has to say.
Oh, you're all basically idiots who have been fooled by this guy who played on your emotion.
That's it.
He's a conspiracy theorist.
He's a propagandist.
You're the sheep who fell for his thing.
That's the whole segment so far.
This bastard who's his own man.
You know?
All right, let's keep playing.
They say you're hiding the truth from us, right?
And so the logic of conspiracy theory itself cannot be punctured because the conspiracy theory will cover over, just like that nail will cover over any objection that you make.
Wow.
Deep.
So how do we get out of this mess, Jennifer?
It's a big problem.
Yeah, I mean, so what I teach my students is to pay attention to your own responses to the media that you consume.
Right.
So if you feel like your adrenaline is coursing through your body, if you feel on edge, if you feel anxious when you're watching the news, then that news is designed to make you feel anxious.
And that's a problem.
And I think that's what we're doing.
Talk to our friends and family members who do watch this kind of media, you know, that we can be a little bit more empathetic with them and understand that it's not necessarily a rational response that they might actually have something like PTSD, right?
Where their body is being set on high alert so often, you know, that they're walking around constantly in this state of fight or flight.
They're mentally unwell.
By the way, I just checked my email again.
No response from Fox News.
Those basic questions about the veteran Carlson.
David, real quick, I have 30 seconds.
Did you notice some of these American TV hosts rooting for the Russian president Vladimir Putin during and after the summit this week?
They were rooting for Putin.
I did on Fox.
By the way, you know.
Just pause it right there.
Like, just no shame, no sense of irony or hypocrisy that he'll come right after what that woman just said.
We got 30 seconds left.
Did you notice that they're rooting for Putin?
Right.
Okay.
Rooting for Putin.
Yeah.
All right.
We don't need to play the rest of this segment.
It just, it's just too serious.
Because all this get in was hoping that Trump was going to be successful.
That every time he took something on, they said, listen, we don't like the guy, but he is our president.
We should support him.
And hopefully he'll be able to get these things done.
That was the rhetoric for the last four years.
So that's right.
Fair criticism.
This guy is our president and we root for him because we're patriots, right?
They would never just be attacking Donald Trump.
Certainly not when he met with Putin.
You know, I'm going to get a little flyer that says rooting for Putin.
I like that.
I'll start going in like the CNN tapings in New York City just in the background.
It does.
If you say it the right way.
I'm rooting for Putin.
Yeah.
But so her point, right, which is this is what's so like just funny about it.
Again, just like taken as a given that they're the crazy ones.
They have to be the crazy ones.
So she goes, what I would tell people is to just think about the emotions you're feeling.
Again, it's just so, it's unbelievable.
Listen, I want to be completely fair when I say this.
There are some really impressive people in academia.
And I think that sometimes...
Yes, that's correct.
I think sometimes people who are critics of modern the state of academia, we can be too, we can paint with too much of a broad brush.
There are people, if you go to almost any college or any university in the country, there are people in like the physics department.
There are people, you know, and lots of different departments who are just like crazy smart and really good for society.
Like it's great to have really, really smart people who are like specializing in their area of expertise.
But there are some just wholly unimpressive people who are there.
And this woman's one of them.
And to start going, it's like, well, what you have to do is ask yourself when you watch your news source, are you getting anxious or are you emotional?
And if you are, then that's a sign that it's propaganda.
It's like, it could be.
I suppose it also could be one of like 5,000 other things.
Like perhaps there's a story where it is rational to get anxious over it.
You could be watching, you know, news about an approaching hurricane where your house is about to get destroyed.
And that could make you like pretty nervous.
And that would not be the sign that you're watching propaganda.
That would just be a sign that you're like, shit, my house is about to destroy.
No, you got to stay put because you're going to make an irrational decision.
Yeah, no, right.
Exactly.
Don't make any decisions based on this anxiety, right?
Like, there's no reason that we have this fight or flight mechanism, right?
So, no, it's not a sign at all.
But she also, like, if you were being honest, if you just wanted to have a shred of integrity, what sentence would you attach?
As dumbass as her point is, but what sentence would you attach to that, right?
She would go, and I'd also advise it of everyone watching this show.
Just keep in mind, keep that in mind.
Try to make sure that you're not making decisions from an emotional place and you're making decisions from a rational place.
And then she could have had a fair point, you know, to say on that.
You know, even when the hurricane's coming, try to make decisions out of a rational place.
Okay, what's best?
The best thing right now is to evacuate.
That's blah, blah, blah, blah.
Whatever.
Okay?
But she won't say that.
It's just, as you pointed out, what's all this like mumbo-jumbo intellectual garbage?
And then what?
They're crazy.
Those people are crazy.
Not you.
Not you guys watching this show.
You guys feel the exact emotional response you're feeling right now, which is what?
Outrage at Fox News, superiority at the rubes who take Tucker Carlson seriously, right?
You keep feeling that because those people are crazy.
I've worked best when I work best when I'm watching Brian Stelter come down from the carbs that he's eaten and is yelling over Tucker Carlson when really he's just anxious for some more sugar.
Sure is.
Sure is.
Man, it's just unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
It's like, it's such a funny thing to watch where they're like, this is our guy that we put up there to keep the news honest.
And every single week, Brian Stelter comes back with his report card.
Everyone's doing great, except Fox News.
They just suck.
It is, I'll tell you, though, you want a white pill.
You want something to be encouraged by.
It is the fact that, yeah, Tucker Carlson has he has millions more viewers than Brian Stelter does.
His audience has to be at least six, seven times as big.
I don't have Brian Stelter's numbers in front of me, but there's no way he's anywhere close to what Tucker Carlson has.
So there you go.
There's a nice reason to be optimistic for the future.
That, yeah, all the guys who they're telling you you're not allowed to listen to it, turns out they are.
There's someone who tweeted it shit.
Someone, I probably apologize if I'm forgetting your name, but I just can't remember who it was, but they tweeted that one of the biggest white pills is that as much as people are trying to cancel Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, that they have like the biggest shows out there.
And there's something pretty great about that.
It's like, yeah, yeah, isn't that interesting that the guys who you want canceled are also the people who the market wants on.
There you go.
A little free market white pill for you there.
All right.
That's our show today.
We're going to wrap up on that.
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