Dave Smith critiques government overreach and Dr. Lena Wen's admitted data errors regarding inflated COVID death counts, arguing CNN's refusal to fully retract propaganda stems from a fear of losing narrative control. He contends that elites view pluralism as a threat, advocating for state regulation to suppress alternative voices like Joe Rogan despite their smaller audiences compared to CNN's massive $500 million to $1 billion budget. Ultimately, the episode suggests modern cynicism and a craving for authenticity have eroded trust in traditional media, rendering old-style government messaging ineffective while highlighting the decline of honest journalism in favor of disinformation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Skeptical Officials and Evidence00:14:19
Fill her up.
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What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
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All right.
So let's start off today's show right with a nice little moment over at CNN.
This was something I know you had said.
I saw Tom Elliott had posted these some of the clips from this show.
Tom Elliott, by the way, I've mentioned him several times on the show before.
Great Twitter follow.
One of the best Twitter follows out there.
He is essentially, I mean, he adds, he's kind of like the libs of TikTok version of the corporate press, whereas Libs of TikTok kind of focuses on, you know, insane, like public school wokeness.
He's, he's, for the most part, like he makes some commentary sometimes, but for the most part, he just shows you what the corporate press is saying.
And then he makes these great like montages, like super cuts.
And it'll be like, hey, throwback.
Remember, this is what they said about the lockdowns.
This is what they said about the vaccines.
And it's almost like there's no comment even needed.
You know what I mean?
You're just like, hmm, here we go.
Look, this is what they were saying.
This is indefensible.
So anyway, I saw he posted some clips of this.
So Dr. Lena Wen was on CNN recently to discuss an article that she wrote on the Washington Post there.
A couple of things I want to say before we start this.
Number one, just to be clear, so no one is mistaken here.
Lena Wen is one of the bad guys.
She is not one of the good guys.
However, she has somewhat taken a turn.
And this is how a lot of these things happen.
I'm not saying it's like a conspiracy theory or that she's controlled opposition or something like that.
But usually this is how these things happen, whether it's by design or not, is that some of the bad guys who were awful, they start kind of playing the role of, hey, I think we've gone a little bit too far.
And then they try to kind of draw some of the anti-establishment support behind them while never actually going all the way, you know, and taking the correct position.
So they kind of control the dissident energy.
If you guys don't remember, Lena Wen was famously, there's a video that We played on the show that this was back in 2021, right as the vaccines were coming out, where she was saying, We really can't end all of these restrictions right now, because then we won't have anything to incentivize people to take the vaccine with.
So we can't give them their freedom.
We have to say, we'll give you your freedom contingent on you taking the vaccine.
No exaggeration.
This is what this woman was arguing.
So keep in mind, she's one of the bad guys, but she's starting to tell the truth a little bit now.
Okay.
Oh, I should mention also before we play the clip that the article that they're talking about is that she wrote an article basically just saying that we are overcounting COVID deaths and COVID hospitalizations.
Okay, let's play a little bit and then me and you can discuss.
Doctor, these are two separate things here: over counting deaths and over counting hospitalizations.
As you know, I covered this closely being in the Trump White House when this happened.
I talked to a lot of health officials about this who are actually kind of skeptical of this claim that you're making.
And I think one big thing has been: what is the evidence that these COVID deaths are actually being overcounted?
Well, this is the reason why this kind of transparent reporting is going to be so important.
There is a way for us to look at death certificates and also to look at the medical records of individuals prior to the death.
And I think this needs to be separated into three categories.
One is the COVID as a direct contributor, the primary cause of death.
The second is, could it be a secondary contributing cause?
So, for example, somebody with kidney disease, COVID then pushes them over the edge to have kidney failure.
That's COVID as a contributing cause.
And then the third is COVID as an incidental finding.
So somebody coming in with a gunshot wound or a heart attack and they happen to test positive.
I think that we need to separate out and look at the percentages of each.
That percentage would have shifted over time as well.
In the beginning, probably a lot more people were dying with the primary cause of COVID.
That probably has shifted.
And I think, again, we need to understand this.
Another reason to understand this too is a lot of people are wondering when they should get a booster next.
When do we need a second booster or another booster?
And the only way we can know for sure is to understand who is getting severely ill and when.
But doesn't that change who?
Okay, so that's the first clip.
We're going to play another clip in a second.
I just find it like fascinating to see these three uncomfortable CNN, you know, talking heads sitting there as she, they go, well, what evidence do we have for this?
And it's like, well, no, we're saying this is the way they're counting the deaths and this is a crazy way to count it.
We should obviously be distinguished.
I mean, this is so obvious.
Obviously, we should, we should separate at least into these three categories that she mentions here.
But it really is something about time, the effect that time has on the narrative and on the kind of controlled discourse and the outrage about these things.
It's just something, right?
For people who, and again, it's not like I'm saying like, oh, this is the way things were in the 1920s.
And now this is how things are today.
I'm talking about 2020 and 2021 to today.
It's not that long ago.
But you go, they're just sitting there almost as if like, it's almost as if this was her original idea that no one had.
This is what everyone who opposed the COVID regime was screaming for all of that time and was labeled like this evil, crazy conspiracy theory would never have you.
And now all three of those CNN hacks just have to sit up there and take it as their own, you know, like person who is advocating all of their policies.
Their own medical expert is going, oh, yeah, no, this is all real.
This is all happening.
It's been happening the whole time.
And she's like, okay.
All right.
Like it's just it's unbelievable how you can go from having a position that makes you like some type of toxic, awful human being.
And then they can go, huh?
So that position's correct.
Interesting.
I don't know.
What are your thoughts, Rob?
It's, it's really infuriating because these people understand science.
They understand how the data should be processed.
And two years ago, when we said, hey, shouldn't we really take a look at the numbers and know who's dying?
And no, you're not supposed to look at that.
That's irrelevant.
And now they're saying, no, no, no, that's highly relevant for who we would make.
It wasn't just a recommendation for the boosters.
That was relevant information to analyze this from the outset.
And if you had said that people were dying with COVID and not from COVID, that was conspiracy.
That switched when Anthony Fauci admitted to it, when people criticized the fact that the death numbers were up in kids.
And they're like, what's going on here?
Your COVID policy is not working.
And he said, no, it's working.
You guys are miscalculating because people are actually dying with COVID, not from COVID.
And all of a sudden, what had been absolute conspiracy was now just fat because he needed to cover his own ass failed policy.
Well, what happened was, is after, you know, if you like the booster campaign has been largely a failure in America.
There's a lot of the coercive pressure to get it was taken off.
A lot of the same jobs that were requiring you get vaxxed initially are not requiring that you get boosted.
And people just, you know, for obvious reasons, there were a certain amount of people who were like, all right, I'll take two shots and be done with it.
Are not so like, no, I'm not taking a shot every six months for the rest of my life.
Like I'm not doing that.
So they've had, there's something like, I think it's less than half of the people who got double vaccinated originally got the booster.
So they have not convinced nearly as many people, but they did convince like something like 70% of adults to get vaccinated originally, convinced slash coerced.
Okay.
But so this was this was right around the time where we had hit those numbers.
This was before the big booster push.
And so we had gotten up to the point where about 70% of the population was vaccinated.
And then Omicron came out and was very clearly at this point.
I think up to that point, very clearly we can say now, was the most contagious and least deadly strand of COVID.
So the numbers of people who have it was like through the roof.
Like everyone was getting Omicron.
And so all of a sudden now you had these numbers that by their real numbers like, oh my God, hospitalization amongst children is through the roof.
But of course, actually what was going on here was just like, yeah, it was like a very contagious cold.
And so a lot of kids who were in the hospital for a broken arm, they swabbed them and they go, oh, look, they have Omicron.
So all of a sudden, up until that point, every type of elevated number of hospitalized people for COVID was helping sell the COVID regime.
If there were a lot of people hospitalized with COVID, C, that's why we need lockdowns to slow the spread.
If there's a lot of people hospitalized with COVID, C, that's why we need vaccines.
So there's not so many people hospitalized.
But now a huge portion of people got the vaccines and the numbers are higher than ever.
So it was this point where for the first time in this march of COVID tyranny, that number no longer helped the policy that Fauci was trying to sell.
So what was his response to it?
To finally tell the truth.
Oh, well, you see, it's the way they count hospitalizations.
They're wrong.
And so it seems like it's, it's like, yes, this Lena Wen lady is kind of telling the truth, at least partially here.
But yeah, it's just so frustrating that you're like, dude, we've all been saying this forever.
And then you come around to admit it and act like it's not an admission, act like you're not even admitting that you were, oh my God, we demonized all the people who said this the whole time.
But it's interesting because you do see that they're uncomfortable and they're uncomfortable because that's there somewhere.
Like that feeling that they know that like, oh, but you're saying the thing we all decided you're not allowed to say.
And now you're allowed to say it, I guess.
It's really amazing.
It's like amazing to watch.
It's dark, but it's hilarious in a weird way.
Today's Lena Wen should have to debate two years ago, Lena Wen, who said we have to remove people's freedoms.
Yeah.
There's an incentive to get vaccinated, even if that means that we're removing people's freedoms.
Well, there's a weird like game that all of them play.
So like the Lena Wen types, I mean, I don't actually know that she'd say this herself, but I bet she would.
The people who occupy that space, the way they'll defend it is they wear like a badge of honor where they're like, look, I'm pissing off all the people who are pro-COVID regime and all the people who are anti-COVID regime.
Cause I always, I just tell the truth, you know, and like I, hey, when the evidence was this way, I took this position when the evidence is that way.
Yeah, but this is inconsistent with any earlier evidence.
Right, but play it as if I'm not on either team.
I'll just always tell you what I'm thinking.
But it's like, no, you were just wrong before and now you're trying to backtrack.
No, you weren't.
It's not that you were wrong before.
You were lying before.
And now enough of the market has caught up with you that in order to keep in this post, you're going to pretend like the information has changed, your style of analysis has changed.
And so now you're going to come forward and pretend like, oh, well, now we're acknowledging these things we didn't know.
You knew this.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm actually calling her out as being a liar.
If what she's putting forward now is, yeah, this is the way that science would work.
The way science would work is we look at the risk categories and who is and who isn't and what's the rate, whatever the fuck she just said now.
And also, hey, we got to keep in mind that we don't actually have good data here.
That was all true and relevant two years ago and she knew it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I agree with you.
And of course, she even says it like in a way that's, there's almost this weird omission where she goes, and we need to know this data.
So we, when people are thinking about boosters, we can know who's at the highest risk.
It's like, right.
And we can know who's not at risk.
It's almost like, and then the thing that she's kind of omitting is that, and then we might say there's some people who maybe don't need to take a booster.
Kind of like the original vaccine.
Yes, right.
Kind of like kids.
Well, this is adjusted for the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths with or from COVID.
Well, look, this is the thing.
Admitting They Were Right00:02:47
And it's such a weird thing then when the other ones like there's this style.
It's really like something to watch, but there's this style, this like propaganda style that a lot of them use where like, so it's almost like you go.
So you demonize the people who stand up to the propaganda and are telling the truth as the most evil people spreading misinformation.
They're dangerous.
These are just vile Nazis, you know?
And then it casually gets admitted that they were right.
You don't really, it's like, no big deal.
It's like, oh, look at this, things changed.
Oh, okay.
Here's that or that.
And then when you keep going, you never like acknowledge the fact that you got it completely wrong and they got it completely right.
And then when convenient, you'll still reflect back on it as if you were right.
You know, like they'll still, they'll still, so it's like the thing we were talking about with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It's still like, it's like, oh, all those people who said that the vaccine would prevent transmission, they weren't wrong.
They were, they were right at the time.
Later, things changed and then they became wrong.
And then, so, so you kind of half admit that they were at least in effect wrong now, but then he'll also still later be like, you know, you get the vaccine, so you don't give it to anyone else.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, it's, it's like, and like he'll still are, it's kind of the way that like people will still say something about Trump and Russia.
Like they'll almost just like they still kind of assert that like, oh, yeah, yeah, no, we weren't completely wrong about that whole thing when convenient.
It's just, it's, it's, it's, it's a bizarre way that human beings act.
It's, it's, it's a way that propaganda like is dispensed.
It's really creepy.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, let's play the second clip from this, which is also interesting.
How at risk pregnant women and their babies are from COVID-19.
I'm sure you saw it.
And I mean, they tracked up 13,000 pregnant women.
And I just wonder if you're concerned for people at risk like that or other vulnerable groups that this can give fodder to conspiracy theorists, to those who downplay COVID, to anti-vaxxers.
I'm sure you thought about that, right?
As you were, as you were writing this.
Are you worried about that?
It's interesting that I have had criticism on both sides.
There are people who have said, well, why are you saying that we're overcounting COVID deaths now?
You should have said this two and a half years ago.
There are others who have said, well, we're not over counting them.
And they give various reasons as to why.
I think at the end of the day, we just need the truth.
And part of that truth is what you mentioned, Poppy, which is that vaccines are highly protective, that vaccines are very effective.
They're very safe.
I've just, I've never been so angry while watching a segment.
It's not about whether or not I lied.
It's at this moment that we need the truth.
I mean, you could say that about any mistake that's ever been made ever.
Hey, it's not about if I raped before.
It's about that women are safe now.
Yeah.
It's it.
Yeah.
I mean, look, if you want to tell the truth, the truth is that you are a tyrant for advocating that people not have their freedom until they consume this pharmaceutical product.
And you should probably, you should be ashamed of yourself and no one should ever allow you to have public, you know, to comment on anything publicly on television again.
The thing that I found that I think is so funny is like, again, there's just the question there from this CNN anchor who's, you can just feel how uncomfortable she is already with this.
So she brings up some new, well, you know, they're saying now that there might be a risk to pregnant women.
Like, we found something.
We have something to grasp too, that COVID is a problem.
What does that have to do with her saying they're overcounting the deaths and hospitalizations?
Nothing.
She just brings it up.
Well, I read something the other day about COVID being really scary.
Aren't you worried that you talking about this stuff could give like credibility to conspiracy theorists and all?
So she's basically just going, really, if you think about what the question is here, she goes, isn't this making us look bad and the side criticizing us look good?
And why is that?
Because you're confirming that the thing they were saying from the very beginning was always correct.
That there's not none of those numbers.
You read CNN for a year and a half ran a tally on every single show.
There was a tally at the bottom of the screen telling you how many people were hospitalized and how many people died.
Do you remember that?
They only took it off once Trump was out of office, I think.
But they were literally, when you used to watch CNN throughout the pandemic, it would be like a big, you know, like graph around them with numbers that were constantly changing of the hospitalized and the dead.
And you would always see those numbers up there.
And she's here telling you you were doing propaganda that whole time.
You were giving BS numbers the whole time you were doing that.
And they're like, well, you know, this might make the conspiracy theorists look good.
That's your concern when someone comes to you and tells you that you guys were full of shit for the entire time in the most important time, the biggest crisis in modern American history.
And you guys were doing nothing but running propaganda.
And your response is like, yeah, but that might make the people who don't like us sound right.
Like, yeah, it might.
Maybe you should be concerned with what you were a part of.
It's just insane.
Insane.
All right, let's finish this clip off.
Dave, and vulnerable groups, including pregnant women, pregnant individuals, should be getting vaccinated.
At the same time, we should also be honest about who was dying from COVID during the early parts of the pandemic versus who is dying from COVID now.
I think that type of honest, transparent reporting is really important, including for fostering trust in public health.
Listen, to be clear though, and it says in your in your op-ed, the COVID death count turns out, if it turns out to be 30% of what is currently reported, that is still unacceptably high.
That's exactly right.
And there are still.
And there you go.
And there's Don Lemon.
It's not even a question.
It's just like, let's just say, even if we were off by a magnitude of order, you know, it's still bad.
It's still really bad.
So really in the spirit of things, it's still, it's like, yeah, well, if the actual number is 30% of the number that CNN kept on their screen every single day while the American people were scared out of their minds, while the government was taking away all of their basic rights, also, you know, robbing them blind to give, you know, give trillion dollar giveaways to giant corporations.
If it turned out that you were running a number that was actually, you know, 70% BS, yeah, that's actually pretty bad.
That's actually, that's propaganda of the worst kind.
It's like we're watching an internal meeting where you're going, hey, aren't we still supposed to lie about this stuff to try and scare everyone into just following what we say?
And she's going, no, we're turning.
We're going to be trying and be honest to rebuild credibility.
And they're like, wait, are you sure we're going to be honest about this?
And I guess at this point, it's like they did what they needed to do.
So they might as well be honest so that the next time they have to sell us something, we might actually listen.
That's really what they're doing.
And it doesn't even matter if they decide to start being honest now.
It's like, yeah, you only did that because you had to.
You'll lie to us again.
I don't buy it for one second.
And it's not as if she's being completely honest here.
I mean, she's still, like I said, she's one of the bad guys.
She's still recommending pregnant women get vaccinated.
Like, okay.
But, you know, this, yeah, this idea that like, well, we, we have to have honest reporting so that there's trust in these institutions.
It's like, well, yeah, I think these institutions have proven that they're not worthy of being trusted.
But yeah, it is, it is something to see.
Like, they go, you know, like, I guess this is like the level they think they can get away with.
It's like, okay, well, we're still going to recommend the vaccine to everyone, but we're going to admit this much.
Like, oh, yeah, that this number was tremendously inflated.
Oh, yeah, this number that you constantly are running with is not an accurate number at all.
And then, and I'm sorry, but there's just no, like, there's just no excuse.
It's not as if this was, I mean, amongst people who were critics of the COVID regime, this must have been one of the most brought up talking points, like constantly brought up that, like, yeah, this is like, it was like a running joke, like, oh, a guy gets in a motorcycle accident and dies and it's a COVID death.
Like, this was like, you know, people were constantly talking.
And there's just no excuse for why anyone who's supposed to be in the business of like keeping this data wouldn't have been able to see, oh, yeah, this is like, this isn't telling me anything.
Like, I can't count this as a COVID death.
You know what I mean?
And there's just no reason.
And same with the hospitalization numbers.
And we've talked a bunch about that.
Like, this is just ridiculous.
So anyway, there was never any excuse for them to be putting those numbers out there, except for the obvious, which is that it helped sell these tyrannical policies.
That's it.
It was the worse this thing sounded, the more likely people were to give up everything they had.
And they made it sound really bad and people did.
So there you go.
All right.
Speaking of government propaganda, let's move over to this summit that they had for the WEF, the World Economic Forum.
There was a pretty interesting panel discussion there with some journalists.
I think Brian Stelter, our favorite little piggy, he's back.
You know, he's doing great.
I think he teaches at Harvard now.
Yeah.
I mean, the brightest of minds need to know honest journalism.
And so he picked up a staffing position over there to make sure the next generation of geniuses are proper informed on how to partake in propaganda on the highest levels.
Yeah.
Isn't it something they go like, yes, sure, you were like ritualistically humiliated by every honest voice online.
And sure, your viewers were so incredibly low.
Your viewership was so incredibly low that even CNN, who is used to low viewership, couldn't keep you around anymore.
But don't worry, come.
There's a panel at the World Economic Forum that you can come host.
And we'll, well, and what's he talking about?
The same thing he's always wanted to talk about.
He's gotten a little fatter, which is great.
I love that.
Yeah, that does make me happy.
But it really is funny how much he's a one-trick pony.
Like all he can ever talk about is how there's misinformation out there.
Like that's just always the topic.
But anyway, this was, he was not alone.
He was joined by some other hack reporters.
This one guy's from the New York Times who had some interesting things to say.
Let's take a look at that.
I'm teaching students and young people how to recognize disinformation.
So there clearly are models that work.
I also think it's useful for us not to overthink the problem too much.
I mean, ultimately, what you're teaching people in those moments, as much as anything, as much as you're teaching them to recognize a lie, I suspect you're teaching them to recognize trustworthy sources, whether that's, you know, an institution like the Times or the Post or the Journal, whether that's scientists, whether that's academia.
But being discerning about trust and in some ways finding institutional proxies for trust, where there are reliable, transparent standards, for example, in an institution like mine, when we make mistakes, we acknowledge them in public and we correct them, right?
And I think that that's going to be a big part of this.
I also just think that at some point, given the central role of the platforms in disseminating, you know, bad information, I think they're going to have to do an unpopular and brave thing at some point, which is to differentiate and elevate trustworthy sources of information consistently, consistently.
And until they do, I think that we just have to assume that those environments are basically poisoned.
But doing so, I think we all know it may suppress engagement, right?
Which is a North Star metric for a lot of these institutions.
And it almost certainly will incur political backlash at a moment when these institutions are facing real regulatory pressure.
So that's a hard thing for them to do.
But I have a hard time seeing how we solve it, you know, just on the demand side without addressing some of the supply side.
Supply side, last 30 seconds, final thought?
Just two sentences.
Finland.
Well, isn't that a fancy way of just basically saying the quiet part out loud?
And what I love about this, I really want to hear your take on this, Rob, but what I love about this is just the way they speak.
It's as you said, you've made this point several times, that it's just saying, hey, look, we're the ones who get to control what people think.
You're not.
We have to be like, that's it.
We're the elites.
We set the agenda here, not you guys.
He constantly just refers to himself as the trustworthy institutions, the ones who are good.
But notice, like, if you just think about the difference in the way that me and you like will argue that we got things right, that the establishment got wrong, is we'll go over our track record.
We'll be like, look, we told you this.
This turned out to be right.
We told you this.
This turned out to be right.
We told you this.
Okay, well, now we're telling you this.
And they told you X, Y, and Z, and it all turned out to be wrong.
Look, we just played a clip of them admitting that the biggest metric was completely wrong, right?
Their own expert is saying it.
But he just asserts over and over again that we're the trustworthy institutions.
And so we're going to have to crack down on them.
And then, Rob, this will lead to backlash, of course.
Since, you know, the plebs may not like that we start telling them they're not allowed to think for themselves.
Really fascinating.
All of socialism, BlackRock, ESG, Davos, the whole thing, it boils down to one single argument from these people.
And what they're really saying is we can't go into the marketplace and compete with other people in providing value.
So in this case, what are they?
They're news.
They're supposed to be giving people honest information.
And they're not capable of providing honest information.
And the market acknowledges that.
So they go, well, someone needs to police the market.
Hey, I'm CNN.
I'm supposed to be the credible one here.
I can't have people just being able to turn on Joe Rogan, deciding to watch him instead.
I can't compete with that.
That's really what they're calling for is that somebody needs to police the markets and make sure that there's limited competition so that they are just granted whatever the fuck their stature is.
It should just be handed to them.
They shouldn't have to compete.
They shouldn't have to give us honest information.
They shouldn't have to do good journalism.
It's not about that.
It's about that they've been credentialed.
And so everyone else, it like just needs to be removed from the marketplace that everyone realizes, like they should just, it's an appeal to authority.
Hey, listen, I got the credentials here.
People don't seem to care about my credentials enough.
So somebody needs to come in and say, hey, you're only allowed to listen to the people with credentials.
Well, go compete.
Go win people over.
I don't know if there was a doctor down by get rid of like board licensing or whatever.
If you had some doctor down the street who was unlicensed, but managed to heal everyone in the neighborhood, God bless.
Go fucking compete with him.
Yeah, it's so, it's, it's so bizarre, especially that it's the same people who, who constantly, you know, talk about threats to our democracy and things like this.
It's like, oh yeah, we're, and, you know, the worst thing ever is like anyone who wants like voting rights are under attack.
Oh my God, they're making you show an ID or they're verifying your address.
This is right, you know, everyone has to be able to cast their ballot.
You can never question democracy.
There's constantly threats to democracy and that this is somehow a goal.
Everyone gets to vote.
These people get to choose who their representatives are.
But at the same time, then they turn around and go, but these rubes can't be like allowed to decide where they consume information.
Choosing Misinformation Over Truth00:03:12
I mean, because what?
They're so stupid that they won't even know the difference between all this fake stuff and us, the really smart news.
And if we're just competing fairly with them, they're all going to choose the conspiracy theories.
They're all going to choose misinformation.
And yet, what?
So what are you saying?
It's like, we need to propagandize these people and then they can vote.
Like then, then this is somehow, it's just, it's so bizarre.
None of it makes any sense at all.
Crappy products cannot compete without force.
It's why you can't have your fucking green windmills over gas unless the, you know, or that's why woke is broke.
You know what I mean?
Like all these companies, they get forced into putting together programming that nobody's interested in.
It doesn't work.
As long as people can go to the internet and create their own shit, it's not going to work.
So in this case, they're basically complaining, hey, we're supposed to like, we have to create propaganda.
That's our job.
Our job is to create propaganda.
And if other people can create honest news, then we don't have a business here anymore.
So somebody's going to have to come in and police it.
Yeah, it's it's it's funny because, you know, like the American system was always in many ways, a more, it's a more sophisticated form of corruption than typical like dictatorships or typical, like kind of naked tyrannical regimes.
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Keeping Misinformation Going00:14:32
It's, I, I was arguing with someone the other day who was talking about how corrupt countries are.
I think they were talking about like Ukraine and Russia and some of these countries that are so corrupt.
And I was saying, this is like an off-air, this is a conversation.
And I was like, look, America is the most corrupt country.
We're more corrupt than any of them.
And he was like, well, no, look, I mean, in Russia or something like that, or in some of these other countries, I mean, you're like bribing police officers and stuff like that.
Judges take bribes and stuff.
And I was like, yeah, because that's a very primitive form of corruption.
That's like the very basic, like low-level form of corruption.
America, America's corruption, it's like, yeah, look, you can't bribe police officers typically in America.
There might be some exceptions to this, but typically, if you get like pulled over for a DUI or something like that, you're not going to be able to like slip the cop a couple hundred bucks and get off.
That's that's typically not going to work in America.
In Mexico, that might work.
Like that is, so yes, there is that low level of corruption there.
Now, by the way, it's not exactly clear to me that that is, you know, like, let's just say you're probably in a lot of situations in the United States of America where you wish you could just bribe the cop and actually might be better off for everybody if you could, but that's not the corruption in America.
The corruption in America is like the prison guard union like lobbies for mandatory minimums.
That's where the corruption is.
The corruption is like the Federal Reserve.
The corruption is like, you know, think tanks funded by weapons companies that put out pieces advocating why we need to fight the next war.
That's, it's like sophisticated, next level corruption, which is actually far more successful and far more corrupt.
So anyway, the point I'm getting at is like in a lot of other countries, they would have the more primitive form of this media control, which is just state-run media.
The state runs it.
You know, if you go to North Korea, it's like the news is going to be put out by the government.
This is the news.
In America, they had a more sophisticated form of state propaganda, which is like, oh, no, no, no.
The state doesn't run the media.
We have a free, honest press that is a check on state power, right?
The state just licenses out TV stations and we picked three, you know?
And so there's three.
You have three.
Look, you can choose anyone you want to.
They'll all be saying the same thing, but whatever.
You can choose which one you want to watch.
And then you would have, you know, papers like, say, you know, whoever, the New York Times or something like that, who basically they get in, they get access to the deep state and to the intelligence world and to politicians.
And then they'll give them little bits of information as long as they publish things that are what they want them to publish.
And then they continue to get that access.
So it's a more sophisticated version of state media.
But this has all been broken now.
And that's really what's been going on for the last, you know, few years in America, is that the internet and the way it's exploded and grown has now been like, oh, you don't have any of that system in place.
And so what you hear these guys arguing this stuff is like, well, we got to clamp down and get back to that system somehow where we're the ones that people are forced to trust.
What's interesting is you might just, as a thought experiment, ask yourself, from this guy's point of view, wouldn't it almost make sense to just start advocating for the old, more primitive system?
Wouldn't it just make sense to just advocate for state-run media?
I mean, he's basically, he's advocating for what?
government regulation to come in and make sure that they can only see us and not them.
Well, here's a solution.
So only the state, the state chooses what the people are allowed to see and what they're not.
That's Mr. This, and they'll be doing this on a summit about like, you know, journalism and misinformation and all this.
Oh yeah, that's quite a side.
Yeah, let's play one more of the, there were a bunch of clips in that thread, Brian.
You could just pick another one.
Let's let's play it.
Talk from the newsroom and the news publishing perspective, and then we'll work our way toward some of the political parts of the conversation.
How does this discussion of disinformation relate to everything else happening here today in Davos?
Well, first, thanks for having me as part of this conversation.
As you can imagine, this is something I really care deeply about.
So I think if you look at this question of disinformation, I think it maps basically to every other major challenge that we are grappling with as a society, and particularly the most existential among them.
So disinformation and the broader set of misinformation, conspiracy, propaganda, clickbait, you know, the broader mix of bad information that's corrupting the information ecosystem.
What it attacks is trust.
And once you see trust decline, what you then see is societies start to fracture.
And so you see people fracture along tribal lines and that immediately undermines pluralism.
And the undermining of pluralism is probably the most dangerous thing that can happen to a democracy.
So I really, I think, if you're spending this week thinking about the health of democracies and democratic erosion, I think it's really important to work your way back up to where this starts.
So this is basically the way they view the world.
And you kind of have to, when you listen to someone like this, you have to understand that although I think he means this, because I think they believe their own nonsense, when they talk about pluralism, what they really mean is the opposite.
What they really mean is them having control of the narrative.
And when he talks about misinformation, what he really means is voices that oppose the regime.
Because none of this is really about what's accurate information and what's inaccurate information.
No one's arguing, you know, again, this is why something like COVID, the vaccine will stop the spread is never even something they could think about as misinformation.
No, that was just, that was the narrative.
That was the regime.
Weapons of mass destruction was not misinformation, even though these, you know, pieces of misinformation had catastrophic effects beyond anything that you could argue that some conspiracy theory, even really nutty false conspiracy theories online have.
But it is to say, this is the biggest problem, Rob.
This is the biggest problem with everything.
And the point I'm making is that I think if you can kind of flip his words into what they really mean and listen to what this guy's really saying, I think he's right.
He's essentially right.
This is their biggest threat.
This is their Achilles heel.
And I think there's something for people on our side should be really encouraged by this because he is right.
This is a threat because it undermines trust.
And so they cannot get their agenda through.
If the vast majority of the population believes that they are a bunch of liars, well, then they're not going to trust them and they're not going to go along with what they believe.
So in other words, we need to keep the misinformation going.
That's our best bet.
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I don't know.
How would you define pluralism?
I don't even know that word.
I just many different groups existing, kind of not having one group.
So I think here, I'll look up a technical definition, but I believe, I'm wrong about this, but I believe it's like the idea that you have like, say, multiple religions or multiple, you know, different ethnicities, races, things like that.
A condition or system in which two or more states, groups, principles, or sources of authority exist.
So I took it to just mean that there's like, maybe I'm getting that wrong a little bit, but I took it to just mean where it's like, well, we have like all these different tribes that kind of all exist together, but we have a democracy and we come together and we're all kind of on the same page and all trust the same institutions or something like that.
But regardless, his point is that the biggest threat that they face with everything can be boiled down to this disinformation and misinformation out there online.
I kind of feel like, you know, products and services die because the market no longer needs or likes them.
Like even take, I used to love Mad Magazine.
I mean, I used to, dude, Mad Magazine was my jam.
Also, respect to Mad Magazine because some of the things that they made fun of when I was a kid really brought into focus, you know, the tyranny of government.
Like I still have on my wall, there's a poster there that says, I hear you thanks to unwarranted wiretapping.
Or they did a spoof of Iraq War II, which was like Revenge of the Clones.
They did a goof on Obama for soldier suicides.
I mean, you were a kid and they were making fun of dark shit where government fucks up in a great way.
Anyways, I love Mad Magazine.
Print media is not what it used to be.
I also think they kind of, they lost their edge a little bit.
They lost their advertising dollars.
And then humor, it exists daily on the internet that I think being a monthly publication like that, where half of the humor was like memes.
It's just not as relevant as it was.
They kind of died with their dignity.
They didn't go, hey, the internet shouldn't exist because we're supposed to be the only source for humor.
We're supposed to, we're Mad Magazine.
We're a cultural icon.
We get to decide how humor works.
I mean, it's just as stupid in the world of information.
Encyclopedia Britannica, you know what I mean?
Like things evolved and your product becomes bad because you stop being honest and you stop being trustworthy.
That's all problems with you guys and the value that you provide to the marketplace to go like, I don't know.
God did not give you guys the royal authority of being the world's only news source.
There was a point in time where you guys probably did good journalism.
You actually had really good profits.
You're able to outspend all the competition to be best in the game.
And you squandered all those resources by not doing honest journalism.
So now when people want to be informed, they're not reading your newspaper.
That's on you.
I remember talking about this when I was, it was when I was on Rogan right when he was like in the week where he was the most like under fire.
And it was the week where Brian Stelter was really relentlessly going after him.
And we played, this wasn't the last time I was on.
I think it was the time before that.
And we played a Brian Stelter clip and we were breaking him down and talking about him a bunch.
But it was really amazing to me that they would go like the fact that Brian Stelter, not only that he would have no self-reflection, but that he wouldn't even feel like he had to pretend to have a little self-reflection.
You know what I mean?
Like if you were talking about like, if I was whatever it is, if I was just publicly talking about how I keep losing to you, but I'm so much better than you, there wouldn't be some point where I'd have to go like, well, I mean, and obviously I could have done this better.
So you know what I mean?
Like you wouldn't just to save face, like just to not look so bad.
So here he is.
He's talking about, you know, Joe Rogan spreads this misinformation, but here at CNN, we have a newsroom and we have all of this stuff and we have fact checkers and all this.
Then you're like, okay, so even by your own standard, you're losing.
This is just a basic rule of in life.
Like, okay, you have a newsroom, you have fact checkers, you have all this stuff and Joe Rogan can just go say whatever he wants to.
And yet, and yet, Joe Rogan has 25 times the audience that you have.
Let's think about that.
You'd be like, well, what have you done?
With all your fact checkers in your newsroom, what have you gotten wrong?
You know, and then, ooh, man, you don't want to open that door because the answer is everything.
Everything.
The market for honest information hasn't gone away.
So if CNN has an annual budget, which I'm sure dwarfs would, what do you think CNN's annual budget is, if you had to guess?
I'm talking like the entire network budget.
I don't know.
It's got to be a couple hundred million dollars at least, if not higher.
I think higher.
I think.
Yeah, I would think, I would think the range, if I had to guess, was between 500 and a million and a billion in terms of the total budget for the network.
Maybe 500 million.
I don't know.
Let's go with $500 million.
So you've got $500 million and you're in charge of the network.
You've got a lot of resources to put together.
How many shows do you even need?
What's your prime time?
You're talking 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. or something like that?
So you need five people.
You need five people who are entertaining as Rogan with a backstaff to put together.
I mean, you and I, we do a news program three times a week and we've managed to put together an audience.
It's not, there's a market for honest information.
You guys are just losing because that's not what you want to do or you're just not good at it.
You're not good at hiring people who are entertaining and then having people who are able to put together the stories.
Like you see what I'm saying?
The market for information has not gone away.
People have not decided, hey, I want to be uninformed.
And now we need the government to step in and go, nope, you guys will be informed.
Nope, you guys need to have information.
Craving Absence of Bullshit00:03:22
And there's something that's going on in our culture.
And there's a big change through the generations.
And I probably, you know, I probably won't be able to express this.
You know, I won't be able to articulate this quite right.
But there's something where what people are craving right now.
And the reason why like we're able to put this show together is that people are kind of craving this like kind of this absence of the bullshit and the gimmicky stuff.
And they like hearing people just really talk to them and really speak from the heart.
I think it's as our society has gotten faker and faker and faker, people like that.
They crave kind of like the like realness.
And the media apparatus is built off the opposite of that.
It's built off the like, good evening and welcome to tonight's news.
And I don't know the story.
We throw it over to you, Sean.
You know, and like, no, no one really talks like this.
It's like you're putting on a voice of how you think the official person is supposed to talk.
Our generation's like a little bit too cynical.
I don't know if it's a result of like, I think it's a result of the fact that our generation didn't really believe in things the way previous generations did.
They didn't really believe in like God, country, loyalty, chivalry, like these things.
They were just kind of like brought up under a lot of like, it grew up with a lot of nihilism and cynicism and all of these things.
I also think there was like, there was kind of this big effect that if you remember, there was like the reality TV era where that just became what everyone wanted to watch.
And then we almost like moved into the post reality TV world, but people didn't need a show as much.
They wanted more someone to just be straight with them.
And all of these things, you know, also at the same time, I think generations ago, you know, people weren't as, they didn't grow up on television and on the movies as much as like our generation did.
And then everyone kind of became like, it's almost like everyone's doing an impression of what they've seen.
Other people who were being phony by definition, you know, were acting what they do.
And people, there's almost like a response to that.
But that's what people are craving right now.
And people can just sniff it out that it's like, it's not that, say, like Joe Rogan or someone like that.
It's not that he's right about everything.
It's that he's honest about everything.
Like he might be wrong here and there, but he's like, he's not lying to you.
And people can tell that.
And they can tell that Brian Stelter is lying to them.
They just like people are better at just sniffing that out on some level now.
You know, if you think about, if you look at some of the government propaganda from the past, go watch like World War II government propaganda.
It's it's bananas.
Go, Brian, here, if you could just pull up real quick, try to find, um, look up uh Daffy Duck income tax propaganda.
Taxes, Guns, and Honesty00:05:25
I want you to find this.
My point is just that there's stuff that would never work today.
You could, you just could not imagine it ever working today.
You'd go, you'd look at it right away and go, no, no, no, our, our culture is just way too cynical for this to possibly work.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry, by the way, it's not Daffy Duck.
What's the duck?
Donald, Donald Duck.
Yes, that's right.
Donald Duck, Mickey's boy.
Donald Duck.
Here, watch this, Rob.
Brian, let me get, what's the date on this?
Just look in the description.
Is it not show?
I might show in the thing here.
Let's play it.
Yes, there is a new spirit in America.
The spirit of a free people united again in a common cause to stamp tyranny from the earth.
Our very shores have been attacked.
Your whole country is mobilizing for total war.
Your country needs you.
Are you a patriotic American?
What's wrong?
Eager to do your part.
Then there's something important you can do.
You won't get a medal for doing it.
It may mean a sacrifice on your part.
But it will be a vital help to your country in this hour of need.
Shall I tell you what it is?
Yes!
Shall I?
Your income tax.
Yes, your income tax.
It may not seem important to you, but it is important.
What?
Yes, and it's your privilege, not just your duty, but your privilege to help your government by paying your tax and paying it promptly.
Ah, what's the bomb?
What's the big hurry?
Your country is at war.
Your country needs taxes for guns, taxes for ships.
The sooner you get your taxes in, the sooner they'll get to work.
For it's your taxes, my taxes.
41.
Power taxes that run the factories.
This is in 42.
They'd be filling out for 41.
American factories.
Working day and night.
Factories making guns, machine guns, anti-tank guns, long-range guns, guns, guns, all kinds of guns.
Taxes for American factories.
Working.
Okay, we can stop it here.
I think you guys get the point that I'm going after.
Go watch the rest of it.
By the way, there's a bunch of old propaganda like that.
It's really, really fascinating to go watch.
The point I'm making here, though, is that like this was not for children.
They were not trying to convince children to pay their income tax.
This was targeted to adults.
Now, I'm just saying there's a level of cynicism in our generation now where you could never possibly think that would work.
Now, they'll still try different propaganda campaigns.
They have to make them more sophisticated.
But you think about how many of them like fall apart so quickly.
And there's just, there's something about that that you're like, yeah.
So, okay, yeah, if that could work, of course, everyone would trust Edward Murrow as like he's the straight news guy who gives everyone news.
But people aren't falling for that anymore.
By the way, a little other bit of like kind of interesting history, right?
So the withholding tax didn't come until after World War II.
So back then, they had to really rely on the fact that people would send in their taxes, pay their taxes.
And they didn't have like electronic records and shit like that that they have today.
So there's tons of like the vast majority of people just didn't pay them.
It's like, just didn't pay them.
Come get me.
You know what I mean?
And so they never were going to anyway.
But so it's, this was the thing of guilting Americans into paying your taxes because we got this big mass murder campaign we got to go on.
So make sure you pay your taxes.
And oh, I know, I know who we'll pull out to do it.
Donald Duck.
He'll get it done.
It's the cartoon character you know and trust.
Just fascinating to see, I don't know to me, like how things have changed over the years.
And the voiceover guy.
Oh, voiceover guy was on point.
It's a good voice.
Do you want to help your country?
Well, then unload your wallet.
Really pretty incredible.
All right, we're going to wrap there.
That's our show for today.
Come out and see us in St. Louis, guys.
Still some tickets available.
Come join us.
Come out for that Friday late show.
That's the one I'd recommend.
That's a real hot show, everyone.
I like Friday Late shows.
Those are fun.
You get dirty.
Me too.
Hell yeah.
All right, guys.
Yeah, Friday and Saturday this weekend.
Me and Rob will both be there doing a live part of the problem podcast as well.