Dave Smith critiques the Department of Homeland Security's new Committee on Misinformation, arguing it mirrors Orwell's Ministry of Truth by weaponizing labels like racism to silence dissent. He exposes elite fears that Elon Musk buying Twitter could restore Donald Trump, revealing a hatred for democracy rather than concern over misinformation. While CNN's Brian Stelter defends the committee as standard bureaucracy, Smith highlights its history of spreading harmful COVID-19 lies and notes how MSNBC frames the far right as neo-Nazis to protect power. Ultimately, the episode suggests that true journalism challenges authority, contrasting the safety of American reporters with the risks faced by those under a state-controlled truth apparatus. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Is Lying To Us00:15:14
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 Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is the fire, Robbie Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
COVID, Jesus.
It's good to be back.
I apologize for the mess up in schedule over the last week, but what's up?
A lot of stuff to talk about.
I was indeed.
Yeah.
Thank you to everybody who came out to, I was about to say Rochester.
That was quite a while ago.
Everyone who came out to Providence, Rhode Island over this last weekend.
Yeah, it was awesome.
Great shows.
I added the shows like two days before the weekend and we filled them all up.
So that was fucking awesome.
Really appreciate everybody who came out.
A lot of fun out there.
Comedy Connections, a great club.
Go check that out.
Luce Jay Gomez will be there this weekend.
And then, of course, me and you, there's still some tickets available for the extra late show that we added in Reno.
That's on Thursday, May 26th.
Chairs included with every ticket.
Chairs, every single ticket.
A lot of places won't make this guarantee, but you get a chair to sit in if you come in there.
And we had to work to make that happen, but our chair guy came through.
If you come to the third show, your chair will have been used twice before.
But don't worry.
I didn't spring for the cushioning, so it won't be absorbed.
Cushioning blows our whole profit margin on this one.
And then June 18th, we'll be out in Chicago.
The tickets are moving fast for that one.
So if you want to come out, we got two stand-up shows and a live part of the problem podcast.
There's still some tickets available, but they're moving very fast.
I have a feeling they're going to sell out in the next week or so.
So go grab those now.
And to clarify, there will not be a vax requirement for our shows.
I think that's the only reason we're not sold out is people are going to the website and been feared.
But listen, I'm making good arrangements.
I'm not finding us places that are, you know, part of this COVID regime racket.
It's there to scare people.
You're good.
Obviously, our audience skews unvaccinated.
So probably more than the general population, I would guess.
So yeah, don't worry about that.
They've assured us they're not checking anything.
You can come on into the show.
We wouldn't be setting gigs up if that were the case.
Although when a lot of people started tweeting that at us, we did call to make sure because I was like, wait, what?
Anyway, but it's confirmed.
You don't need to be vaccinated to come in there.
And then Top Lobsters Ranch, you got to be triple boosted.
That's the new policy.
If you're going to come out to the middle of Florida and hang out with the Gators, shoot guns in the backyard and get AIDS.
You better be vaccinated.
There you go.
There you go.
But we're talking a different vaccine.
It's the AIDS vaccine.
Very exclusive.
Most people don't even know about it, but you could get it.
Get all three of them.
Same companies, by the way, Pfizer Moderna and Johnson and John.
Just this weekend.
No one can take part in the Toad Orgy unless they've been vaccinated for AIDS.
There you go.
Oh, that should be a lot of fun.
Yeah, definitely go check out Rob if you can.
Okay.
All right.
So there's a lot of stuff to talk about this week.
I've got like a few different topics that I think all kind of overlap and have to do with each other.
Of course, there's the Biden Ministry of Truth.
We'll talk about that a bunch.
More fallout of the Elon Musk Twitter situation.
There was the White House correspondence dinner for the first time in like three or four years.
They did that thing again.
I want to talk about all of this.
I think they're all, you know, very related to one another.
But before I get into that, I got into a little bit of a Twitter disagreement earlier today.
Yeah, well, it wasn't at all like, like it wasn't like a nasty, you know, like what Twitter usually is, like fucking just toxic and shit like that.
It wasn't like that at all.
It was just, it was something that I found kind of interesting.
So it's this guy, David Reboy.
I might really be pronouncing that wrong.
I apologize, David, if I am pronouncing your name all wrong.
Strong first name, though.
I like it very much.
But he's a blue check mark guy and he's national security and political warfare at the Claremont Institute, a senior fellow over there at the Claremont Institute.
I don't know what any of that is, but he's a thing that he has a right-wing Twitter guy.
Okay.
Anyway, so me and him got into, so let me see if I could find where this started because I wanted, I thought the ideas about it were kind of interesting.
So I tweeted by using woke language and hyper-focusing on a few insane cultural issues, giant corporations have convinced much of the left that they represent them.
And they've convinced the right that they are the left.
None of this is true.
They're simply the powerful distracting us all.
That's which is something I've talked about this theme, this general theme a lot on the show, but like that all of this woke shit is a deliberate ploy.
And just to be clear about that, to kind of, I don't know, maybe give the people who disagree with me on this their due, I'm not claiming that no one at any of these corporations believes in this nonsense.
I'm just saying that overall, and the people at the very top and the people making the decisions that they will be pushing all this shit are for the most part not true believers.
That's not what this is.
That it's it's a very um carefully constructed tactic to push this stuff.
And so uh this guy David responded to me and he said, nah, the giant corporations are made up of people, most of whom follow the elite cultural tide, which would have been understood 15 years ago to be far left.
Why do people insist that unlike anyone else, the wealthy and powerful don't believe in things?
To which I responded back.
I said, no one said they don't believe in things.
I'm saying that they are lying.
If you think Bank of America actually believes in equity, you're missing something.
So you know what I'm saying?
Like you get, my point is not that they don't believe in anything.
My point is that they don't believe in what they say they believe in.
To which he responded, of course they believe in it.
You think they're laughing at Kendi as they pay him to give 20 minute lectures.
They're not CRT PhDs, but they certainly believe enough to glean from the New York Times, which is to say enough to be dangerous.
Now, I don't know who the Kendi guy is, but the idea that they paid someone to give a 20-minute lecture doesn't really prove anything.
It proves that they want to appear this way.
But he, I literally said, if you actually believe Bank of America believes in equity, equity being like, you know, that everyone should have equal outcomes, that everyone should have equal wealth.
Something tells me the big banks, like, I don't think they're executives who take billion dollar fucking, you know, in billions and bonuses actually believe that, right?
That seems like their actions would indicate that they don't.
But he says, of course they do because they gave this guy a 20-minute lecture.
Why would they do that if they didn't really believe in it?
And so, you know, I don't know.
I just think on the face of it, you'd go, yeah, no, they, it seems like if they really believed in that, they might act a little bit differently.
So I responded to him and I said, yeah, the big banks really care about income inequality while they rape the country through a central bank scheme.
Or maybe they're buying off the left by sponsoring a float at the gay pride parade while demonizing right-wing populists, taking out their two biggest threats.
So that's.
Doesn't that just seem more plausible?
Like, doesn't it seem more plausible that what they're actually doing here is neutralizing their enemies?
You know, because it's like, who are the threats to the like big banks, to the giant corporations?
Well, it's basically it's the left-wing populists and the right-wing populists.
So here, they, you know, sedate the left-wing populists by gabbing a bunch about woke causes and get them to go, you know, they're kind of on our side.
We'll focus on this stuff.
And then they demonize the right-wing populists by being like, look, they're so horrible and racist and all this shit.
Okay.
Go ahead.
No, I was going to say, I think you've explained it the best, which is you look at Occupy Wall Street and they pivoted to, hey, there's this other villain, which is people that aren't, I don't know, promoting gay causes enough.
I don't even really quite understand what that other villain is, but they got really behind it and then got really into tech censorship.
Like they're just moving a little bit towards socialism and more government control over critical industries to make sure that they're protected.
They don't care about anybody or anything.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, look, it's, and you can see, well, here, he tweeted one more thing back at me, which I didn't respond to.
This is just an hour ago, and I'm just seeing this now.
But he said, you're confusing an analysis of the effect, which is true, with a deliberate strategy for which there's no evidence.
Woke emphasis on race/slash gender justice has displaced income inequality as a concern, but the change wasn't driven by big corporations.
So it was.
Yeah, I mean, this to me is like what's so he's saying that he agrees with my analysis that they're raping the country through a central bank scheme and whatever, right?
But then he goes, there's no evidence.
You have no evidence that this is why they're doing it.
And he says the woke emphasis on racial gender justice has displaced income inequality as a concern.
And it's like, yeah, that's my point.
Who is that convenient for?
Like, who is that?
I mean, okay.
So now he can say there's no evidence, but you, I mean, I don't think you really have a lot of evidence in the other direction why it is that all these giant corporations are pushing this woke shit.
And if you're going to say that you think what happened is that these ideas in academia, which had been there for decades, that it's just a coincidence that all of the sudden after Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, like right after that, that they, those people from academia just really went and persuaded the giant corporate leaders that wokeism is correct.
That's really what happened.
They just went there and they said, and okay, so that's your position, that they persuaded them and that they're now true believers.
Now, that seems a lot more far-fetched than my position.
And look, the idea that this isn't driven by big corporations, it just happens to work out in their favor, very much so, right?
It just happens to work out that there's not an Occupy movement protesting the big banks anymore.
And instead, we're focused on all this other nonsense.
And it happens to be that those big banks are pushing that same ideology, but it's a genuine conversion.
Okay, keep that in mind.
And that's not just for, it's all giant corporations, right?
Coca-Cola and McDonald's and Disney and all these other giant corporations, right?
This was a genuine conversion.
Now, the counter to that might be, what evidence do you have of that?
But anyway, I'd say this.
So here's what I tweeted and not in the thread with this guy.
But I did say, so some people think I'm wrong when I say that giant corporations don't actually believe in the woke nonsense that they preach.
I guess they are really committed to LGBTQ issues.
I'm curious, how many of them push that shit in Saudi Arabia?
Because, you know, so many of these big corporations, they're over there too.
You know, whether it's fucking BMW or McDonald's or Coca-Cola, they got, they sell shit in Saudi Arabia too.
They all sell shit in China too, right?
They got any rainbow flags up on their on their Twitter profiles over there?
They doing any of that?
They pushing any of that stuff?
Because if they were true believers, wouldn't you think they'd be doing that over there as well?
And if they'd be pulling out, they'd be shutting down their businesses in those countries and saying something.
We stand for this really important thing.
And obviously, you guys don't respect women.
You're chopping off their heads.
You're throwing them into fire.
I don't know if they throw them into fires, but they kill them.
Well, so now you'd have to be in a situation where you're saying, okay, they are true believers, but they don't believe it should be over there.
So then, okay, what's your reasoning for that?
Now, there's that, that doesn't leave you with the only conclusion being mine.
There could be other reasons for that.
But I'm just saying that it seems to me, you know, to say that this wasn't led by corporations, I would encourage people, go check out those Nexus charts that I always bring up.
And when you can measure how much the New York Times and the Washington Post and Time Magazine and all these different publications, how much when they just started talking about the woke shit, like out of nowhere, then it wasn't like an organic bottom-up demand for it.
They started pushing this on people.
Now, again, I'm not saying that the universities aren't pumping out people who believe in this shit.
I'm not saying these corporations don't have some people who work for them who believe in this shit.
But I refuse to believe that when you're saying like, oh, well, why is it?
Do the people at the top really believe this shit, but they won't push that shit in Saudi Arabia?
You know why that is?
Because they know it'd be a fucking disaster if they pushed it over there.
They know it'd be bad for their bottom line.
And that's kind of how they're thinking.
But that doesn't mean that they're thinking strictly about their bottom line in the sense of how do we sell the most today or what does our customer base want?
I think that it's kind of like you're talking about something that is literally being pushed by the CIA and the military and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America and all of these people.
I don't think it's that unreasonable to say, well, look, here's the effect of it.
Here's when it started happening.
It seems pretty obvious that this was intentional.
In fact, I think it's much more reasonable to err on the side of that than to err on the side of like, nope, they're true believers, the true believers who were just persuaded to this shit.
Even though in many of those companies, it's the same people.
Many of them are like the same fucking guy as the CEO now who was before they were pushing this woke shit.
I guess he was just convinced.
Right around the time they were outside his bank screaming, we are the 99%.
He happened to get convinced that transgender issues are what really matters.
The Sheath Underwear Promo00:02:57
And the idea that this is just the college kids coming out of colleges and like they've been so ingrained for woke culture that if you want to get them to work there, you're going to have to, it's like, you know what I mean?
You're going to have to show, hey, look at the rainbow flags we've got in the office and that we're marching the gay pride parade and that's what's getting kids to come work at your company.
Like it's not that.
I mean, people will mold themselves to what they think is socially acceptable.
And so if HR department said, hey, there's no politics in this office and they wouldn't hire you if you were trying to push politics in the office, guess what?
People wouldn't be that invested in the politics.
People want to work for a living.
If you graduate college, you want to have a job.
If you got to show up somewhere and pretend like you're some PC, whatever, then that's what you'll do to get a job.
It's not the reason why people is the reason why conservatives and right-wingers still work for a lot of these corporations.
It's not because they agree with the HR thing.
It's just like, I don't know, this is what I got to do to keep my job.
So I'll fucking go along with it.
And it's talk to, there's tons of people who don't buy into this shit who work at these corporations.
Now, there isn't, again, it's not like these.
These are complex things with a lot of moving parts.
So it's not that there aren't any people like that who fit the bill who are getting other people in trouble and the company doesn't want the hassle of dealing with them.
That exists too.
But I'm sorry.
Like, I just don't believe that like Gina Haspell, like, or like, you know what I mean?
Like our fucking torturers who are like running the CIA were all of a sudden converted about like how horrible like, you know, transgender issues are.
I don't buy that for a fucking second.
It's just not plausible.
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Tucker Carlson And Truth Bureaus00:15:10
Anyway, I thought that was interesting just to kind of talk about before we get started today, because it does, I think, kind of play into a lot of this other stuff, which is all, you know, one of the reasons why the woke shit is so loved by the ruling elite is because it's this ultimate, like, it's this foundation that you can lay down where then it's very easy to silence your opponents.
And that's always what this shit has been about, is that there's a way that if anyone is a problem for you, you can now label them one of these names and therefore chip away at their credibility.
Or in the case of like with big tech censorship, maybe even get them silenced, kicked off.
You know, they're racist, hate speech, transphobia, blah, blah, blah.
You know, if you think about this, like there was just this big article.
I don't know if you saw this, Rob, but there was just a big article on Tucker Carlson, right?
Now, when they go after Tucker Carlson, the New York Times wrote this big piece about Tucker Carlson.
What was it called?
Hold on.
I think I have it here somewhere up on my phone.
How Tucker Carlson stoked white fear to conquer cable news or to conquer cable.
Sorry.
So Tucker Carlson, that's what he stoked white fear to conquer cable.
Now, of course, no one.
Maybe he was just a little more truthful.
Right.
Maybe he was just a little bit more truthful than you were.
Yeah, maybe he was kind of interesting, you know, like a little bit interesting and thoughtful.
But it's it.
He stoked white fear.
Now, of course, there was no one, let's say in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd being killed by that cop, no one could be accused of stoking black fear.
You'll never hear anything about that, right?
There's no, that was pure fear.
Yeah, I mean, COVID, right?
No one could be accused of that.
And Trump's Russian acid.
How much white fear was ingrained in that?
Yeah, but it's like, so from their like ridiculous worldview, it's like, well, that's just the truth.
What you're talking about is stoking fear.
You know what I mean?
It's like, anyway, but so that's, but the point is this, right?
It's not just that they say he's stoking fear.
What's he stoking?
White fear.
So you have someone like Tucker Carlson, who is the loudest, most passionate, and most informed anti-war voice in cable news with the biggest audience.
I mean, he's that Tucker Carlson isn't like, he's not just like anti-war like, you know, he's not one of these conservatives who goes, you know, I got to admit now, 20 years later that the war in Iraq was a mistake.
You know, you can find a lot of those these days.
Tucker Carlson's like the guy the night that they're reporting there was an Assad gas attack.
He's like, nope, I don't buy it.
Doesn't seem like it really happened.
This is all a pretense for war.
He's like the day that they're trying to, you know, they're starting the Ukraine Russia, like beating the war drums.
He's like, nope, how is it in our national interest?
How is it in our national interest to pick a side in the middle of this conflict?
Why are we stoking tensions with Russia?
Like he's day one.
He's like that guy and he's on the biggest show.
But when they take him on, they don't go, hey, we think he's wrong about these wars.
Here's why the war in Syria was really necessary and great.
Here's why, you know, it is in our national interest to defend Ukraine.
He was the guy celebrating Elon Musk buying Twitter.
But they don't take him on and go, no, here's how this is, Tucker's really wrong about this.
Here's that.
What do they do?
He's a racist.
That's it.
So that's like part of the reason why this woke thing is so good for them, because when you are losing the country and when you are, when every mainstream institution is completely discredited and the entire system is working against the American people and they see that, you're probably not going to win the argument on the merits of the argument.
And so this is a great, like, like, it's like a great card to have in your utility belt to always be able to pull out.
Now, luckily for us, you know, these terms are becoming much, much less powerful than they once were because the more times you draw that weapon from your belt, the less effective it becomes.
But that's part of it.
And so that's, you know, that's something to just like keep in mind in the background.
Like this is that these are the tactics that they use.
And in fact, right now, you see Elon Musk being called racist everywhere, all over the place.
They're calling him racist.
And what he's doing with Twitter is all about white privilege and letting white men speak and blah, blah, blah.
You know, Elon Musk has been a pretty big figure, Rob, for quite a while now, right?
What's Elon Musk's story?
I think he made his money off of PayPal, I think, right?
With Peter Thiel.
I think they owned PayPal and then sold that, made a ton of money.
Then he bought Tesla.
He was beloved by the left for a while because he was like, oh, I'm going to make, you know, electric cars.
And they all love electric cars.
And black people can't afford electric cars.
And so it's racist that he forces them to continue to ruin the environment while white people can feel good about themselves.
And they do, and they do disproportionately suffer from climate change.
You're on to something here, Rob.
No, but look, my point is just Elon Musk has been around for quite a while.
He was the richest man in the world off and on.
You know, I think he went, him and Bezos go back and forth between who's having a good stock day or whatever.
But never heard accusations of Elon Musk being racist until he bought Twitter.
Right.
That's all of a sudden, though, now he is.
So, this is the only reason why someone would buy Twitter is because he's racist and he's sick of having to open up Twitter every day and not seeing all of his friends.
You know, that's right.
He doesn't get any racist thoughts.
It's like opening up the newspaper.
It's not covering any of the topics you're interested in.
But it's, it's a weird thing because it's almost like, you know, like, you know, how a lie turns into a bigger lie, turns into a bigger lie because you have to keep lying to keep up with the first lie.
I heard Hitler when you said, right?
When you say that the reason we have tech censorship, because this is what justifies it, right?
Is because of all the racism.
And then he's like, well, I don't think we should have tech censorship anymore.
Then it's like you almost have to be like, he just wants all the racists to be allowed to be there.
Right.
But it's, of course, you know, I mean, by the way, not to say some racists haven't been kicked off of social media, but the truth is, if that's all it was, it really wouldn't be the issue that everyone's upset about.
It's like, what's more concerning is that like people like Alex Berenson get kicked off Twitter.
People who, you know, I don't like the idea of kicking anyone off Twitter short of them like inciting violence or breaking the law or something like that.
But, you know, because it's a slippery slope.
But the issue is that people were booted off Twitter for saying that like lockdowns don't work and that like, you know, that the vaccine wasn't what it was sold to be or that like those people were like kicked off Twitter.
That's kind of the real issue has nothing to do with race at all.
But somehow they'll make it about that because that's, you know, how they have to fit everything in.
So anyway, I guess one of the big things that everybody's been talking about is the, what's been dubbed the Ministry of Truth.
But that it was announced last week that the Department of Homeland Security has created a, what do they call it?
The Committee on Miss and Disinformation.
I still have not yet been like, no one's explained to me the difference between the two.
The chick who they put in charge of this is like the goofiest, like, she's like in her mid-20s, I think or something.
And she's just like a clear partisan hack.
Like, you know, she gives examples of miss and disinformation and they're all, they all happen to be on one side, obviously.
And not even true.
I mean, she like, she already got the biggest stories wrong of the last year.
She was wrong on the Hunter Biden laptop.
And once you're wrong on the Hunter Biden laptop, you should be excluded from this job.
That is exactly the reason the most profound argument for why we can't have the censorship is because the biggest stories of truth have been censored.
So the censorship's not working.
So if you have a person who accidentally filtered what was the biggest and most important story, then how are they possibly qualified for this job?
They're already 0 for one on the exact case against why you can't have tech censorship.
Well, that's that's right.
And then, of course, the fact that, you know, if you looked at that story, you know, it'd be one thing if they got that story wrong and then at least acknowledged it and like had a different take on it.
You know, like if you, because it's not as if like it's just me and you, you know, like there's some of these things that are so obvious at this point, but like there, there will still be like Democratic, you know, strategists or Democratic commentators who will still like, you know, just the other day, Juan Williams was on.
I was watching because Scott Horton was on Kennedy.
And Juan Williams, who's a Democrat, you know, guy, he was saying he was still talking about, you know, Russian interference in the 2016 election.
And I think Scott at some point just said, he goes, I guess Juan still believes some of this stuff, but like, who else really believes?
You know, there's things where they won't admit that ever that they were wrong, no matter how clear the evidence is.
But that's not true for the Hunter Biden laptop.
In fact, the New York Times and the Washington Post, they've all come around and admitted, oh, yeah, that was real.
And so, if even if you got that wrong at the time and your job was like really caring about misinformation, you'd think you'd go, wow, this was misinformation.
So, looking back at that, like, I believed this misinformation.
And hey, look, who did that come from?
Oh, wow, there were four former heads of the CIA and 50 intelligence people who all said it was Russian disinformation, but they were putting out disinformation.
So maybe we should look into the CIA and all these other, you know, like, which by the way, shockingly, not their first lie, not the first misinformation that's come out of the Central Intelligence Agency.
But that also might lead you to think, like, yeah, maybe the federal government shouldn't be the ones who are in charge of this.
Now, anyway, a lot of people have been, you know, freaking out about this.
And I would say rightfully so, because, you know, a government department of truth is, you know, it has been tried several times before, and usually by incredibly dangerous authoritarian regimes.
So people are going nuts about this.
I'm glad to see that there's a lot of pushback.
However, the media watchdog, journalist extraordinaire, our favorite little piggy, he has a different take on this.
Let's, who knows, right?
It's totally unpredictable.
You never know where Brian Stelter is going to go with one of these things.
But here's Brian Stelter's take.
Here in the U.S., there's been an uproar in recent days about the Department of Homeland Security setting up what they call a disinformation governance board.
This has been mostly a Fox World story.
It could come up earlier today on CNN State of the Union, but I don't think people know what it is and what it isn't.
And there's just been a lot of right-wing uproar without knowing what it is.
So are you aware of this at all?
What is this all about?
Aware of it.
And I think the first thing is that it's abort, exactly as we say.
It is meant to bring together people to coordinate a lot of the efforts inside of DHS.
That means law enforcement.
That means emergency services like FEMA.
They've all been doing counter-disinformation efforts for a while to give us accurate information about human rights abuses, but also about disasters and where people can get assistance.
So coordinating that activity, making it speak with one voice, and being a stronger advocate to tech companies and engaging the public and academia, that's really what they're after.
That sounds like common sense.
But when I Google this, all I see is like Joe Biden's Ministry of Truth, and they're going to steal, you know, like it's that there's this incredible backlash to something that sounds like basic government bureaucracy.
It is basic government bureaucracy.
And around the world, what we're asking for governments to do is to step up more and to play a bigger role in advocating for people.
The big litmus test is: is civil society included?
Is the media included?
And so far, everything we've heard about the board, which is new and just started, shows us that that is the intention: to be fully transparent and to demand more from our government in terms of how they protect us from disinformation and enable us to have information that protects our country and advances our ability to survive in a major incident, for instance.
There's any of that make any sense.
Not much.
You know, what is she even claiming is like she's trying to sell us on it, but what is her value proposition for why it's important?
I'm not even understanding her claim.
Well, you know, in a big incident, this could help us survive.
You know, so there's not misinformation out there.
How?
What is she trying to say?
Like, if there were, I guess, if my neighborhood was on fire and someone was telling me it wasn't, so government would step in and get rid of that guy.
So, like, I'm saying, like, what specifically is she saying the government is going to do that's going to prevent?
She doesn't, she does not give specifics, Rob, but Brian Stelter is.
Here's one of the reasons, by the way, one of one of several.
But one of the reasons why Tucker Carlson's show is so much bigger than this show, why Rogan's so much bigger than this show.
You know what I mean?
Why, like, so many of these other shows gain popularity in CNN is a disaster, even though they have so much, so many resources behind them.
Is that you, if I had not seen this clip and you had just asked me what did Brian Stelter say about this, I could have told you exactly what he said about this.
Like, it is so boring and predictable.
It is just so like, well, I would have said the first thing he'll say is that the whole like people freaking out about this are just Fox News type people.
And then he would have said, oh, this is just nothing.
This is just what governments do.
It's no big deal.
There's no story here.
And it's like, first off, the idea, as someone who's, I really don't like government bureaucracy, but the idea that this is just standard government bureaucracy is just not true.
That's just not true.
It's not a very standard thing for governments to set up a bureau of truth.
That's not, that's not standard.
I mean, it has happened before in like the most egregious governments, but the idea that they're like, oh, this is just another example of government, like government bureaucracy.
Like, no, these aren't like housing regulations.
This is a regulation on what is truth and what is not truth.
They are going to be the arbiter of what is accurate information and what is not accurate information.
And then it does lead to the question that you were asking a second ago, which none of them want to get into.
It's like, so then what are you going to do?
Defining Accurate Information00:05:47
What are you going to do to the people who you decide are guilty of telling, of spreading misinformation?
Now, who might that apply to?
And their claim is that there's an important function that government needs to step up and prevent misinformation and disinformation.
Except if we look at government's application over that over the past two years, when every single time they've claimed, hey, we've got to prevent misinformation, they have lied to us in a harmful way.
Donald Trump taken off of Twitter for a comment about hydroxychloroquine, referenced to a study.
The study turned out to be certifiably false.
Alex Berenson off of Twitter, most of that information is probably going to turn out to be true.
Lab leak theory, gone, turned out to be true.
Rand Paul, sitting senator, taken off of YouTube for questioning COVID policy on masks, kids being in school.
He turned out to be right.
So you're essentially advocating that we need more of government preventing people from getting honest information.
In other words, we have a two-year track record of government saying there's an issue of misinformation and clearly using that as a rule, as a word for propaganda to lie to us and push agendas.
And I was trying to say that it's important to have more.
It makes no sense.
Yeah, just by the way, just because you bring this up, I just read, it was in Tom Wood's newsletter, which if you don't subscribe to is really great.
He writes constantly in there all the time.
He puts out like an article every day.
But he mentioned this.
There's, again, a brand new peer-reviewed study that was just published two weeks ago on one more.
There's been a ton of these already, but just one more said the findings indicate, quote, from the study, these findings indicate that countries with high levels of mask compliance did not perform better than those with low mask usage.
Just one more.
So just one more example of like where you're talking about, you know, the government putting out all of this information that turned out to be completely wrong.
And the people who were labeled as putting out disinformation turned out to be completely right.
Now, of course, this is, you know, look, I understand That we have our own bias and we have our own perspective.
And sure, like from my perspective, I'm like, well, look, there's nobody tells more lies than the government and nobody tells lies that are more like consequential than the government.
These are the lies that get people slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands to millions.
Like this is what, you know, whatever misinformation you could go claim that you found online, which don't get me wrong, there's plenty of misinformation out there online.
But whatever misinformation you're talking about, none of it could be more disastrous than weapons of mass destruction or moderate Syrian rebels or Gaddafi is about to go genocidal or you know what I mean?
Like all of these lies that literally wars are started off of this misinformation.
So, you know, the idea that this same organization known as the federal government is going to say, like, we've got this real problem with misinformation and it's all you citizens who are out there giving it.
Yeah, that's, that's a big issue to me.
I also, you know, recognize that the federal government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
Our federal government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
And yes, to your point, they also destroyed the lives of tens of millions, tens of millions of Americans over the last two years on the basis of pseudoscience.
So yeah, I don't exactly trust them with, you know, forgive me if I think it's warranted to expect the absolute worst from them.
If I think it's warranted to, when they say they're going to start determining what is misinformation and what's not, to say, now that's a time to freak out.
And just to be clear, this isn't the State Department that's doing this.
This isn't about foreign governments.
This isn't about foreign citizens.
This is the Department of Homeland Security.
This is aimed at American citizens.
And I guess if you conflict with what's officially misinformation from the Department of Homeland Security, that must make you a security threat to our national security.
Yes, this is an organization.
The national security is making, hey, this is the official statement that COVID is bad for your health and need to be vaccinated.
And I'm making a statement otherwise.
Well, then I'm a national security risk.
Better hope that they don't have a domestic terrorism title.
Yeah, no, that's right.
Right.
No, this is a, this is a, you know, this is a department that has, you know, tons of stockpiled weapons and is supposed to be dealing with terrorism.
I mean, it was created in the wake of 9-11, right?
Like, this is, yeah, it's anyway.
But even if you don't have like my perspective, to be, and this is what I love, I think it's really beautiful in a way is that Brian Stelter just like, he's so bad.
Like in a way, I think this is a real white pill.
I think this is something we should all be encouraged and optimistic about is that they like if he was a really talented propagandist, it'd be more concerning.
But he just gives away the game constantly because look, if he wasn't completely full of shit, he should at least be able to admit, I'd understand why people would be concerned about this, right?
I'd understand.
This is understandable that maybe people are going, hey, you know, in a professed free society, we really shouldn't have the government determining what is correct and incorrect information.
It's just not really the role of the government.
That's the role of the citizens to determine that for themselves.
Unless you got the same boss, which is CIA.
And so anyone else with diverging talking points isn't allowed to have a show or a platform.
Because when you can't compete with Rogan, it sure is nice if the CIA knocks on his door and says, hey, this is misinformation now.
Encouraging The Far Right00:17:48
You're not allowed to do this.
Yeah.
Or the Department of Homeland Security.
I suppose it wouldn't matter which one.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, so that was him.
Now, I did, by the way, what also like people have to keep in mind, of course, is that like, this is not a coincidence that this is formed right on the heels of Jack Dorsey, excuse me, of Elon Musk buying Twitter and saying he's going to make it a free speech platform.
Obviously, these things are connected.
It would be an extraordinary coincidence if this all came out, just happened to be right on the heels of that other one.
So that's really what this is all about.
And this same media class who does nothing all day long but carry water for the government.
I mean, I really do think, like, particularly from like the libertarian, like anti-government point of view, that you really have to, at this point, treat the corporate press and the crony corporatists as they're all one thing.
They should oppose them all.
I mean, this would be no different if it was the Department of Propaganda or it was CNN.
It's all the same thing, and we should treat it accordingly.
But this same class is also who carries water for the government all day long.
Oh, how dare you be concerned about the Ministry of Truth?
Nothing to look at there, right?
But they also all have the same feelings about what's going on with Twitter right now.
Here was another guy, Hassan is his last name, I believe, over at MSNBC.
Here was his analysis of what's going on with Twitter.
Let's check him out.
I mean, it's easy in American discourse to talk simplistically about the far left and the far right as two equally dangerous fringe blocks.
Elon Musk has done it plenty of times just in the past week.
But here's the difference.
America's far left wants to give us free health care and free child care.
America's far right wants to give us white supremacy and no democracy.
And this asymmetrical polarization of U.S. politics would be laughable if it weren't so horrifying.
We are living through an unspeakably dangerous moment.
The pro-QAnon, pro-neo-Nazi faction of the Republican Party is poised to expand dramatically come the midterms.
We're just two years away from Donald Trump, very possibly re-seizing executive power.
If that happens, we may look back on this past week as a pivotal moment when a petulant and not-so-bright billionaire casually bought one of the world's most influential messaging machines and just handed it to the far right.
I'm joined now by Molly John Faste, contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Wave.
So that's I just thought this was fascinating on a lot of levels.
So, I mean, okay, just breaking it down here.
I mean, what like ridiculous, you know, kind of editorializing.
I don't say that as a negative thing.
Clearly, this guy's an opinion host, but I'm just saying how ridiculous the editorializing is.
So, first off, we're going to start with basically the far left is just good, common sense people, and the far right are a bunch of neo-Nazis.
So, okay, if that's like at the very least, I think anyone could grant me, and there are examples of this being done on the other side as well.
But, like, the idea that you'd say, if I were to describe the far left in America as say, well, they just want free healthcare and free housing, and the far right are a bunch of neo-Nazis.
Who can anyone look at that and not tell me that that is like you're painting the far left in the cushiest possible way to a point that's absurd, and the far right in the most demonizing way to a point that that's absurd?
Like the idea that that is what we're like, look, just for example, to say the people who believe in free health care and free housing and the neo-Nazis, who, who do you think there's more of in this country out of those two groups?
Do you honestly think that the neo-Nazi numbers are even comparable?
Like, what, how many neo-Nazis do you think there are in this country?
Not many.
Now, you could, I mean, if you wanted to like have the worst possible interpretation of the far left, like the same way that you're going to say there's neo-Nazis on the far right, what would the worst possible interpretation or representation of the far left be?
I don't know.
People that want to get rid of the police, hijack your kids, and make them force them into be the other gender.
Yeah, people who literally want to burn cities down, overthrow everything, seize all of the wealth, have a socialist revolution, who want to propagandize your five-year-olds, who want to be, I mean, you know, and there are, by the way, there are a lot more people like that than there are neo-Nazis in the country.
Now, I still would think it would be unfair to just label with such a broad brush the far left.
I know people who are far left who don't want any of those things, you know, I mean, like, okay, but to say that versus the far right.
But anyway, that's all just kind of silly.
That's just, he has to set it up like that in order to justify his whole thing.
But there's a couple things that were admissions there that I don't think this guy planned on giving out, but that he really does kind of say the quiet part out loud.
And I think there's something interesting about that.
And something, again, like I said before, really encouraging about all of this.
Like, really, this, in my opinion, all of this stuff should convince you to be very optimistic about the future.
But here are the admissions.
One is what we all kind of know.
What is the big fear of this whole Elon Musk thing from all of these people's perspective?
Because it's one thing, and we all know what it is.
And what is it?
What's the big fear?
It's that he might let Trump back.
That's really what this all boils down to is like that this guy might let Trump back on Twitter.
And what did this guy?
He said it.
He even said it in his thing.
He goes, he goes, well, Donald Trump's about to seize power again.
Like he basically just like, it's like, I mean, he doesn't say this word for word, but I'm not really reading between the lines that much.
He is basically telling you if Trump can get back on Twitter, then he's back in the White House.
Or at least there's a very good chance that he's back in the White House.
If people can hear from Trump, they will vote him in as the next president.
That is really a profound admission.
Because what it's telling you is that for all of their talk about democracy, what is it that these guys fear the most?
They actually fear democracy the most.
That's something like we should grapple with as well.
That it's like, wow, this tool of democracy is actually the thing that scares these people the most.
What scares them the most is that, holy shit, if these people can hear from Trump, they might vote for him.
In fact, I think they will.
That's kind of interesting.
You know, it's interesting that, you know, even the way he says, oh, Elon Musk is taking Twitter and handing it to the far right.
But what he really means by that is there's no, Elon Musk has never said anything that he's going to hand it to the far right.
His evidence of that is that Elon Musk says, I don't like the far left or the far right.
And then he goes, yeah, but the far left are great and the far right are awful.
So how can you say that?
That's handing it to the far right.
Basically, what he means is you won't kick them off anymore.
He might let them speak.
And it's not that he's going, oh, and if they speak, you know, like I've heard other people making the arguments that they go, well, the reason Twitter, you know, this is like the really goofy, like Lolbert fucking woke libertarian argument that they make sometimes where they'll go, well, the reason these people get kicked off is because most of the customers at Twitter don't want to be on like a right-wing racist shithole, you know, like,
and so they want these people kicked off so we can all have a nice time without these awful racists there.
But that's not what this guy is saying.
What he's saying is if you let them on there, they'll win in the popularity contest known as democracy.
That's a very different comment, right?
That's saying that like, if the country can hear from Donald Trump, this country is so goddamn awful that they'll vote him in.
And that's, number one, it shows a true fear of democracy.
Number two, it shows an incredible hatred for your own country.
Right?
Like, you must really think there's really horrible or stupid people in this country because you're saying that the far right are basically a bunch of neo-Nazis.
The neo-Nazis are about to take more control in Congress.
And if you let neo-Nazi Trump back in there, they'll vote a neo-Nazi in.
Like, God damn, if you really, you'd have to really think very low of your country to think that that's what they are.
No wonder you're not a great representative of that country.
No wonder you're not like a trusted name and more people in this country don't want to tune into you because you hate their guts and they know that.
And by the way, the irony is that they don't realize what a huge like victory they hand to Donald Trump.
Because then this is how he won in 2016, you know, or part of how he won in 2016.
When it's so clear that you hate their guts, all Donald Trump has to do is come in and go, I don't hate you.
I like you.
And they're like, he's our guy.
You know, because fuck it.
He doesn't hate my guts.
This other guy does.
You can kind of understand why they'd go with him.
So anyway, that's kind of the admission.
But the real, I think, white pill in all of this, the thing that's really encouraging is that you go, like, look, these people are basically telling you that if we're allowed to speak, they think they're done.
You know, it's like the lady in the first segment with Brian Stelter said the same thing.
You go, this system won't survive without this.
We won't survive unless we have a ministry of truth.
We won't.
This guy's like, oh my God, this is over.
We'll lose the whole country if Elon Musk lets people speak.
I think there's something encouraging about that.
It's almost like they're revealing how weak they really are.
If you have a system and you think that people, if you have a system and you think that your citizens being able to speak to one another will crash your system, then your system was not that strong to begin with.
If that's all it takes to tear the whole thing down, then man, you did not build something very strong.
At least from their perspective, they're telling us that what they believe is that if we can find a way to communicate with each other, they can't win.
I don't know.
I see that as very encouraging.
That's a very encouraging sign to me.
I don't know about you, Rob.
Yeah, they know that with a little bit of freedom and people actually getting information, they can't just keep pushing lies upon us.
I mean, that's where we're at.
Their system is so reliant on them lying to us that if there's just freedom on Twitter, they know that they will lose their stronghold on power.
Yep.
It's really, it's really a very profound admission that they're admitting over and over again.
And what's really interesting is that it's like they don't notice that they're admitting it.
You know what I mean?
Even though the guy like literally just said it right there, like he doesn't, does he not realize that he's admitting that our only hope of beating Donald Trump is to make sure that he's silenced?
Because that's quite a profound admission.
And they know that.
And they're not completely wrong.
I mean, I understand where he's coming from.
I mean, like, holy shit, if you were a big Biden guy, let's say, go ahead.
There's just, there's no threat of misinformation.
What misinformation has come out over the last two years that has had a negative consequence?
Every time that they've used the title misinformation, it's turned out to be true.
They tried to claim that the misinformation was what, people that didn't want to get COVID vaccines.
The COVID vaccine policy at this point, it's a failure.
We're now at the fourth booster shot and doctors don't know if they can recommend it because after six weeks, it doesn't do anything.
So they don't know how to even push a policy anymore because they don't have a cohesive policy.
So like for them to pretend that there's some risk of misinformation, what risk?
What has been said over the last two years that was not truthful that has led to a bad outcome in this country?
I mean, the push of all this like online censorship and misinformation, it started like in 2016 or really in 2017, but nothing like it ramped up with COVID like crazy.
So that was like every week they're talking about the misinformation, right?
So they keep talking about this misinformation.
But to your point, if you look in hindsight and go, wait a minute, wait a minute, take me through.
What was the dangerous misinformation?
It was like questioning lockdowns.
Like, okay, so is John Hopkins now guilty of the misinformation also?
Was it questioning vaccines?
Are all of the doctors now guilty of this misinformation?
Also, was it questioning the masks?
Are all of these peer-reviewed studies also now guilty of this?
Was it the, what was it the Wuhan lab theory?
Because everyone, including Fauci, entertains that that's possible at this point.
So, right, like you said, if you look back at it, you're like, you don't have any one of these examples of misinformation that was, I guess, the one they'll hang their head on still is the Russia.
Well, I would say, you're right, January 6th, the election, and now the Russia thing, you know?
But even that, there's really not a very strong argument that there's something so damaging.
Like, what exactly is the negative consequence of people believing that that fucking, you know, January 6th wasn't an insurrection or believing that Donald Trump didn't actually get defeated by Joe Biden?
I mean, I guess they could say January 6th was the negative fucking response.
I would just argue, though, that that's a reaction to the fact that you guys created a false Russia asset story that came from the deep state and it ruined Donald Trump's standing for two full years.
And although you might not have rigged the election, and I said might not, because it's impossible for me to decipher.
I don't know these ballots.
You did ruin the election by squashing the Hunter Biden laptop story and whether or not the Biden family actually is a crime syndicate.
You squashed the story.
So it's like it wasn't a fair.
Now that might be fair game.
Well, look, even if you want to come at it from the perspective, which I genuinely generally tend to as my like starting point, which is basically that all the other stuff you said is completely true because I've me and you have demonstrated it and built this case over years on this show.
That, right, so Russia collusion was a giant hoax started by the Clinton administration and the intelligence agencies, an attempted coup against the duly elected president of the United States, that the Ukraine gate thing was all a giant hoax.
It was a big nothing burger once again attempted to overthrow the president of the United States, that the Hunter Biden laptop story was intentionally suppressed and they just lied about it being Russian disinformation, like one after the other after the other.
And that the press was throughout his entire administration working against Donald Trump.
Russia Collusion Was A Hoax00:03:10
All of that I think is accurate, but I don't think there's been enough evidence to convince me that the election was stolen.
I'm in a neutral state on that.
Like I just don't, I haven't been persuaded by the evidence.
I've seen some things that raised an eyebrow, but nothing that was like conclusive.
This is what's going on here.
But if you know all of that other stuff that I just mentioned, I mean, to think that that has nothing to do with why that next story was so believable to people.
You know what I mean?
It's almost like if you had like a girlfriend who you had caught cheating on you 25 times, and then there was an accusation of her cheating on you and someone came and went, yeah, she's cheating on you here.
And you went, I completely believe it.
And then she was like, it's not true.
There's no evidence that I was cheating on you that 26th time.
And they go, why is he believing this story?
You know, you'd be like, well, probably those other 25 times have something to do with it.
It seems to, it would seem silly to think that they were completely unrelated.
And so, yeah, I think that's completely fair that you, if you're going to blame the misinformation of Donald Trump claiming the election was stolen, well, look at all this other misinformation.
You'd have to kind of blame that too, or at least think that was a part of it.
So, yeah, I mean, that's more or less how I look at the whole thing.
I mean, no, did they steal the election from him covertly?
I don't know.
I'm not convinced.
But did they steal it from him in plain sight?
There's no question about it.
Just no question.
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Setting Up Ministry Of Truth00:08:06
All right, let's get back into the show.
All right.
So, how are we doing on time here?
Okay, we'll play one more thing, and then we're going to wrap up for this video.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the White House, the White House press correspondence dinner thing happened again this week.
There have been some performances on these things in the past that were really, really good.
By the way, the year Stephen Colbert was there when George W. Bush was president, Norm McDonald did one in the 90s.
That was great.
But I got to say, all, you know, all in all, I hate these things.
I find them to be just in bad taste.
And they really illustrate kind of the corruption of the whole system.
The idea of just like, if you like, if you were a journalist and you really took that job seriously because you were like a good journalist and someone was like, hey, do you want to go to like a fancy cocktail party where you mix it up with all of the politicians and you guys all joke and laugh around together?
I just, I feel like you would go, no, that's unprofessional.
I can't do that because like my job is to like objectively, very harshly scrutinize these people.
I can't just be like hanging out laughing with them.
That's not right.
But anyway, this particular line, I'm not a fan of Trevor Noah.
I didn't watch his whole fucking set or whatever.
I just, he's not my thing.
Nothing trying to like shit all over him or anything, but it's just not for me.
But there was this line that is what he closed on.
I saw this clip going around.
I just want to play it and talk about it for a minute.
So here's Trevor Noah giving the doing some like roasting fucking.
So as we sit in this room tonight, people, I really hope you all remember what the real purpose of this evening is.
Yes, it's fun.
Yes, we dress nice.
Yes, the people eat, they drink, we have fun.
But the reason we're here is to honor and celebrate the fourth estates and what you stand for.
What you stand for.
An additional check and balance that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn't have one.
And like I'm not just talking about like CNN or Fox or any of the other major organizations.
I'm talking about everyone, you know, young journalists we saw today, you know, intrepid journalists who aren't even in this room in Flint, Michigan, or that daring reporter at the Des Moines Register or the unflinching local newscaster in El Paso, Texas.
Every single one of you, whether you like it or not, is a bastion of democracy.
And if you ever begin to doubt your responsibilities, if you ever begin to doubt how meaningful it is, look no further than what's happening in Ukraine.
Look at what's happening there.
Journalists are risking and even losing their lives to show the world what's really happening.
You realize how amazing it is.
Like, in America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable.
Even if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortable.
You understand how amazing that is?
I stood here tonight and I made fun of the president of the United States, and I'm going to be fine.
I'm going to be fine, right?
Like, do you really understand what a blessing it is?
Maybe it's happened for so long that it might slip your mind.
It's a blessing.
In fact, here, ask yourself this question.
Honestly, ask yourself this question.
If Russian journalists who are losing their livelihoods, as you were talking about, Steve, and their freedom for daring to report on what their own government is doing, if they had the freedom to write any words, to show any stories, or to ask any questions, if they had basically what you have, would they be using it in the same way that you do?
Ask yourself that question every day, because you have one of the most important roles in the world.
Thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate you.
Okay.
So here's what I find so particularly infuriating about that.
It reminds me, there was this segment once after Glenn Greenwald.
You remember Glenn Greenwald when he worked over at The Guardian, he broke the Snowden case, where they found out that the government was like collecting all of the metadata of all of us on everything.
And he was on with Lawrence O'Donnell, who had a show at MSNBC at the time.
I don't know if he still has a show over there, but he used to have a show at MSNBC.
And Lawrence O'Donnell goes, You know, I got to tell you, Glenn, I just don't care.
Because if the NSA wants to look at my emails, if they want to listen to my phone calls, I just don't care.
It's fine with me.
I feel like I got nothing to hide.
I'm not a terrorist, so I don't care.
And that was his response to Glenn Greenwald.
And the thing that's so infuriating about it is that it's like, no, of course you don't care because you won't be the one screwed over by this because you don't actually do any journalism that exposes the CIA and the NSA, right?
So yeah, you're like, I don't care, read my shit.
What are they going to find?
It's like, right, no, you're right.
You'll be fine.
But the point is that other people won't be.
And to sit here and say that, like, well, what's great about this country, what's great about the role of journalists is that you can say whatever you want, even if that really pisses off people in power, and then have an entire room full of all of the people of power agree with you.
It's like, so what are you saying that's really pissing off the people in power?
Oh, that's right.
Nothing.
You're there because you don't say anything that pisses off the people in power.
But oh, you can do that.
You can do that.
No problem, right?
Isn't that wonderful?
I mean, you give a voice to the voiceless, say it says to a room full of people who all freak out that Elon Musk is threatening to literally give a voice to the voiceless.
All of a sudden, you don't, so you don't actually believe that.
Oh, but it's like, this is what's great about journalists.
They can say whatever they want, even if it pisses people off.
I'll be okay, right, Biden?
Yep, I'll be okay.
Well, okay.
Is Julian Assange okay?
See, he really pissed off the people in power by exposing their war crimes, and he's being murdered by insanity for doing it.
So, don't give me this shit.
It's like, no, you can do this because you toe the line and never say anything that actually pisses off the people.
He's literally going there and saying, Hey, we can say whatever they want.
So, what I'd like to say now is repeat the exact official talking points about Ukraine and Russia.
So, let me just use that opportunity to tell you that Ukraine is really, really innocent and Russia is really, really bad.
And that's the exact same story.
And look, Russia doesn't have the freedom that we have.
Try opposing that worldview and see how much you enjoy that freedom as they're setting up the fucking Ministry of Fucking Truth.
And as everyone's flipping out that Elon Musk is literally giving a voice to the voiceless, literally giving a voice to people whose voices have been taken away from them.
At least that's the threat.
He's up there just saying this and then has a room full of powerful people all applauding it.
I just find it infuriating.
All right, that's our show for today.
It was mostly optimistic, just infuriating at the end.
Go ahead, Rob.
And if you like freedom, one other date to plug is we are going to be back at Porkfest this year.
So go check out the Free State Project.
They're doing some cool work to take over the state of New Hampshire.
And other than that, like we plugged, we got Chicago.
More dates in the week.
I got Florida this weekend and California coming up later.
So follow me, Robbie the Fire.
Hell yeah.
We'll throw the ticket links in the episode description.