Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - The BBC Trump Edit Scandal

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Nov. 11, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

55:13

The BBC Trump Edit Scandal

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	All right.
	Good afternoon, everybody.
	Thursday the 11th.
	Happy SAD Remembrance Day.
	For everyone, we publish a remastered version of the 2010 speech that I gave about that, which you can check out, of course, at fdrpodcast.com.
	And I feel very strongly about this.
	And, you know, for those of you who don't know, the BBC, of course, is the British Broadcasting Corporation, which is a taxpayer-forced-funded British institution.
	And if you don't pay the licensing fee, well, like all things that are taxpayer-forced and funded, you go to jail.
	You can go to jail, or at least you can be prosecuted.
	And of course, all of the fines increase and things just get worse and worse, all of this kind of stuff, right?
	So the fact that it is a forced institution is pretty terrible.
	And the fee is £169 a year.
	Mandatory payment.
	It is just wretched.
	The licensee model was established under the Royal Charter, renewed every 10 to 11 years.
	The current runs until 2027.
	Ensuring editorial independence from government or commercial interests, which means it's pure propaganda.
	It's pure propaganda.
	So how is it enforced?
	How is it that it is collected?
	Well, there are these sinister notices you see in England about: we know you've got a TV.
	We can scan.
	We can tell.
	You better pay.
	You better pay.
	So watching, recording or streaming live TV, including the iPlayer without a vada license, is a criminal offense punishable by prosecution.
	So evasion hit record rates of 12.52% in 2025, prompting around 2 million enforcement visits, though prosecutions only affect about 0.18% of suspected cases.
	So how did they figure it out?
	So TV licensing uses data-driven and on-the-ground approaches to identify potential evaders, focusing on the about 31 million UK addresses in the national database.
	Addresses without a recorded license receive automated reminders via letters, email, or texts.
	Unannounced home visits to verify status, especially for high-risk addresses, those ignoring reminders.
	Officers carry ID and must explain their purposes.
	Mobile vans equipped to scan for TV signals at targeted locations, detecting unlicensed equipment in minutes.
	They're not random.
	They prioritize these visits based on data like the recent moves or subscription patterns from cable and satellite providers and so on.
	So what can happen?
	What can happen?
	Well, initial contacts, escalation letters, offers a visit, compliance opportunity, prosecution referral, and what happens.
	Single justice procedures handles about 96% of cases as a paper process.
	No court appearance needed if you plead guilty and pay promptly.
	Full court hearing if you plead not guilty or request one, it goes to magistrates' court.
	Evidence includes your statement, officer notes, and any admissions.
	Defenses, oh, a genuine mistake.
	A license was purchased after the visit.
	Oh, no live TV use.
	Gender disparity is important.
	72 to 74% of prosecutions are against women, but no discrimination found.
	What are the fines?
	Fined up to £1,000, plus legal costs of £150,000 to £200 and victim surcharge or compensation.
	In Guernsey, that's up to £2,000.
	Criminal record, yes, for evasion convictions.
	Non-payment of fines, civil enforcement, or short jail terms, maximum seven days.
	It's rare.
	There were 178,000 prosecutions in 2013, but only some of them led to imprisonment.
	2025 updates.
	No decriminalization.
	Focus on fairness for vulnerable groups.
	Enforcement costs about 5 million pounds per year, offset by some fine revenue.
	Can you imagine?
	Mr. Shakedown.
	Imagine me as a podcaster.
	Just imagine.
	Imagine a nice piece of liberty you've got there.
	Be a shame something happened to it and you were sent to jail for not paying.
	I got to do freedomain.com/slash donate, freedomain.com dash slash donate.
	I rely on donations because I'm not an a-hole.
	A Burke, a Git in British parlance.
	And of course, I remember I grew up with BBC One, BBC Two, and then there was ITV.
	And once a year, the entire country would shut down because they were showing a Bond movie.
	And imagine if you had to pay me, or I could send people in costume round to drag you away.
	What a wretched, horrendous, horrible situation that would be.
	I would never in a zillion years ever join an organization where people were forced at gunpoint to pay me.
	That's like calling it a marriage because you chloroformed someone and locked them in your basement.
	If it's not voluntary, it's violent.
	And if it's violent, it's corrupt beyond measure.
	And it's pretty funny.
	We'll get into the details of the case in a sec.
	And I'm, of course, happy to hear your thoughts on this or any other subject, it being an essential conversation for the world, for the future as a whole.
	But what has happened recently?
	So Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for defamation over an edited clip of his January the 6th, 2021 speech, featured in a Panorama documentary entitled Trump a Second Chance.
	Question mark.
	This program aired on October 28th, 2024, just days before the U.S. presidential election.
	It sparked controversy because of allegations of misleading editing that portrayed Trump as directly inciting violence at the Capitol.
	As of November 10th, 2025, this remains a threat rather than a filed lawsuit with Trump's legal team, giving the BBC until November 14, 2025 at 5 p.m. Eastern to retract, apologize, and compensate him or face a claim for at least a billion dollars in damages.
	This incident has led to high-level resignations at the BBC, public apologies, and accusations of institutional bias, fitting into Trump's broader pattern of legal threats against media outlets like ABC and CBS over unfavorable coverage.
	Now, this is some of this from AI, of course, right?
	And of course, it's not unfavorable coverage.
	It's not unfavorable coverage.
	It's not an editorial mistake.
	It's not a whoopsie.
	Slipped a digit, fat-fingered, a copy-paste, nothing like that.
	So, the hour-long panorama special, produced by independent company October Films Limited, and broadcast as part of BBC's flagship investigative series, examined Trump's potential return to power.
	It included footage from his January 6, 2021 rally speech in Washington, D.C., where he addressed supporters before the supposed Capitol riot.
	So, what was the controversy?
	Well, the controversial edit involved splicing two segments of the speech that were originally more than 50 minutes apart.
	So the first segment, early in the speech, Trump said, We're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.
	The second segment, about 54 minutes later, and we fight, we fight like hell.
	And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
	Right?
	So these are two separate things.
	So in the documentary, these two were combined to make it appear as, we're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
	This omitted key context, including Trump's earlier call for supporters to, and I quote, peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
	The program then showed footage of flag waving marches heading to the Capitol, which critics say implied Trump's words directly inspired the riot, though some of that footage was reportedly filmed before the speech ended.
	So Trump's team argues that this fabricated depiction was defamatory, as it made him say things he never actually said and implied he incited violence, causing, and I quote, overwhelming financial and reputational harm, end quote, to him, especially given the pre-election timing and global dissemination to tens of millions of people.
	Trump used the word fight or fighting 20 times in the full speech, often in the context of contesting election results rather than physical violence.
	The documentary is not available via the BBC's iPlayer service because these programs are generally taken offline about a year after initially airing, and this is not as a response to this controversy.
	So the editing issue came to light through a leaked internal memo written by Michael Prescott, a former external advisor to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, EGSC, who left the role in summer 2025.
	First reported by The Telegraph, the memo accused the BBC of misleading viewers by editing the clip in a way that, quote, created the impression President Trump's supporters had taken up his call to arms.
	It framed this as part of broader, quote, troubling matters, including alleged anti-Trump bias, issues in Gaza coverage, one-sided transgender reporting, and anti-Israel, and an anti-Israel slant.
	The memo was circulated to the BBC board out of despair at inaction, and concerns about the edit were reportedly raised as early as January and May 2025 during a US election coverage review.
	This led to over 500 public complaints to the BBC since the leak.
	MPs and critics have called for the BBC to answer questions about the editing, emphasizing its public-funded impartiality mandate.
	This scandal prompted the resignations of two top executives November 9th, 10th, 2025, Tim Davey, BBC Director General, a salary somewhere between £540,000 and £544,999,000, who'd led the organization for five years and faced ongoing controversies over bias.
	And Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News, salary a little over £430,000, overseeing 6,000 staff in global broadcasting in over 40 languages.
	BBC chair Samir Shah issued a issue, a public apology on November 10th, 2025, acknowledging an error of judgment in the edit, which gave, quote, the impression of a direct call for violent action.
	It's an error of judgment.
	Oopsie.
	He stated the intent was to compare the speech's message and reception, but admitted that, in hindsight, more formal action should have been taken.
	Shah denied institutional bias, emphasizing that mistakes occur despite efforts for impartiality and outlined actions like disciplinary measures, guideline updates, and corrections on other stories, e.g. Gaza coverage.
	Turness echoed this, calling BBC journalists the hard-working people who strive for impartiality and rejecting claims of corruption.
	Trump celebrated the resignations on Truth Social, calling it a terrible thing for democracy and accusing the BBC of doctoring his quote very good, perfect, end quote, speech by very dishonest people from a foreign ally trying to influence the election.
	So on November 10th, 2025, Trump's Florida-based lawyer, Alejandro Brito, sent a demand letter to BBC Chair Samir Shah and lawyer Sarah Jones under Florida Statute 77.011.
	The letter accuses the BBC of quote actual malice end quote in publishing quote false defamatory malicious disparaging and inflammatory statements end quote citing Florida defamation law where statements can be actionable if they imply false facts through omission or juxtaposition.
	So the actual malice, if you're a public figure, and please understand I'm the exact opposite of a lawyer.
	I am not a lawyer, so this is just my amateur understanding.
	Irish law and other forms of defamation law, you have to prove that the statements are true or you lose or something like that.
	And again, don't take my advice.
	This is just my idiot understanding.
	But in America, if you are a public figure, you have to show reckless disregard for truth or actual malice.
	And that's, of course, a state of mind argument.
	And of course, everybody who wants to defame anybody else just knows that they don't keep.
	They don't write and say, they don't write an email to someone and say, well, I know this is false, but I hate the guy.
	They know that that's the legal standard, so they just work around it.
	And it's pretty terrible because you have to prove state of mind or reckless disregard for the truth and all of that.
	I think it's a terrible standard, but America has always.
	Well, I would say it's erred on the side of free speech, but this is just because the media wants the ability to lie about people without being held accountable.
	So the letter from Trump's lawyer demands, one, a full and fair retraction of the documentary and statements as conspicuously as originally published.
	Two, an apology.
	Three, compensation for harm.
	Additionally, it requires the BBC to preserve all evidence, including communications, sources, documents, and electronic data with metadata, warning against destruction.
	Failure to comply by the deadline would lead to a lawsuit for no less than a billion dollars.
	So what is required here?
	What is the hell that the BBC is being put through?
	Well, they have to say sorry.
	They have to retract and say this was false.
	This is misleading.
	And compensation for harm, I don't know what the demand is.
	I don't know if anyone knows what the demand is, but I don't know what the demand is.
	The BBC's response.
	The BBC concerned for confirmed receipt and stated they would respond in due course while defending their overall impartiality.
	As of 2.45 p.m. Eastern Standard on November 11th, 2025, the BBC has only partially responded with an apology, as noted above, and Samir Shah's error of judgment comment.
	No conspicuous retraction or compensation has been offered.
	Word is that the BBC is preparing to contest the demand and may enter into a lawsuit rather than settle, but without any formal reply.
	This is only speculation.
	So, yeah, the threat aligns with Trump's history of suing the media for defamation, including a $10 billion suit against CBS over an edited 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, a suit against ABC and George Stephanopoulos for statements about a rape case, threats against the Des Moines Register, Bob Woodward, and the Pulitzers.
	Critics see it as part of efforts to intimidate the media while supporters view it as holding out its accountable.
	The incident has strained US-UK media relations with Trump calling the BBC a number one ally, yet corrupt.
	No further developments have been reported beyond the threat as of the current date.
	So I think that's, I mean, obviously, I think it's interesting.
	Everything that is forced is corrupt.
	Everything that is coerced is corrupt by nature and gets worse and worse as time goes on.
	Now, I know that there are some libertarians who aren't particularly keen on defamation.
	I think it is essential because it can do absolutely real world harm, right?
	So, again, this is just legal theory, not legal advice.
	But if you own a restaurant and the restaurant owner across the street who's in competition with you writes an article or publishes something or gives you a review that says that he found a rat head in his soup when he went to dine there and this is false, well, that's going to cost you a lot of business, right?
	It's going to cost you a lot of business.
	And it's going to spread.
	Where there's smoke, there's fire.
	People don't want to take a chance of having a rat's head in their soup.
	So you lie.
	And this causes a lot of harm.
	It can destroy someone's life savings, destroy their business, causes a lot of stress.
	So don't do that.
	A reputation is, and trust me, I say this with great cheese, greater to the NADS personal experience.
	A reputation is a very important thing.
	And if people wreck their own reputation, right, it can take a lifetime to build up and 20 seconds to destroy.
	So a reputation is something that you work very hard to build up a reputation for integrity, impartiality, honesty, directness, virtue, integrity.
	It takes a lot to build up a reputation.
	And a reputation has significant economic value.
	Significant economic value.
	So in general, over the course of my business career, where possible, I have done business on a handshake because I keep my word, I pay my bills.
	So I don't need to involve battalions of lawyers every time I want to do business with someone.
	Now, again, where important, where necessary, where required.
	It's all papered over.
	But I generally do business on a handshake.
	So that's having a good reputation saves a lot of money.
	You know, I mean, I got married without a prenup.
	I don't generally try to involve lawyers where possible in things that I do.
	So if you have a reputation for honesty, integrity, and fair and plain dealing in business, it's a lot cheaper to do business with you.
	And therefore, people will want to do business with you.
	So a reputation is a very important thing.
	And attacks, false attacks upon a reputation, are staggeringly damaging.
	And again, I say this from direct personal experience.
	So as far as editing a speech, as appears to be the case, I mean, obviously, I don't know, right?
	I don't have access to any internal memos, memos.
	I can't read the minds of anyone.
	So this is all speculative because if there is a lawsuit, then it will have to go through a process of discovery and any potential bias.
	You know, it has to go through interrogatories.
	It has to go through depositions.
	It has to go through a review of evidence and all of that.
	So who knows what's going to come out.
	So in general, the media is very left-wing, that we know, at least in America.
	I don't know the degree of labor versus conservatives that are going on in England, but in America, the media is overwhelmingly left-wing.
	And left-wingers as a whole hate Trump.
	Hate Trump for reasons we can perhaps talk about another time, but that's fairly clear, right?
	The fact that this was published on the eve of an election and disseminated around the world, and again, I think that there's some geographical blocking of the BBC in various places, but it still gets written about, it still gets talked about, it still gets republished in various areas.
	So the fact that this truly horribly edited beach compilation was published right before the election, the idea that that's an accident to me strains all credibility.
	Like it's, I would not believe that for a single split second.
	Now, you can see edits, right?
	It's not a continual flow.
	You can see edits, right?
	And assembling language that is 50 minutes apart, putting one before the other, it's not an accident at all.
	It's very clear.
	And it creates a misleading impression.
	So an analogy for me would be if somebody was accused of a crime and said, I'm not guilty, and they took out the word not and said, and they published it as I'm guilty, that would be horrendous, right?
	It would be like saying, oh, the Bible says that there is no God, because in the Bible, there is the statement, a fool in his heart has said there is no God.
	And if you take a fool in its heart to set and you just say there is no God, then you're creating something entirely misleading, entirely misleading.
	I don't know if you've ever been involved in conflicts with people who misinterpret, willfully misinterpret just about everything that you say, but you can't have conversations with people who lie.
	You just, you can't.
	I mean, there's no sanity.
	There's no conversation.
	Oh, so what you're really saying is, it's like, no, no, can you just deal with what I said?
	No, no, no.
	But what you mean is like, no, no, no.
	Can we just have a conversation at the level where you deal with what I've actually said for what, not for what you hallucinate, right?
	It is wretched.
	So every institution, this is sort of a well-known phenomenon.
	Every institution, not specifically, they get dedicated to right-wing causes, becomes left-wing over time.
	And there was a time, of course, when I was young that the BBC seemed to be quite keen on maintaining sort of old school or old-type British culture.
	And that's, you know, everything that you build, that you turn over to the government to protect you will be used to attack you.
	This is an iron law.
	Everything that you build that you give to the government to protect you will be used in order to attack you, to harm you, to destroy you.
	I mean, it's probably fairly well known among this is a very erudite and wise audience, but it's kind of known that the reason why education was turned over to the government was out of fear of the Catholics coming in, right?
	So America was founded in its sort of modern incarnation as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant country, right?
	And then when the Catholics came, and the Italians and the Irish and others, when the Catholics came, the Protestants were very concerned that the Catholics were going to have their own schools and not teach the same values as the Protestants, which, of course, by definition is sort of different values.
	And so they ran to the government to protect American culture.
	Quick question.
	How would you say, how would you say the American educational system is doing at the moment, at the moment, in protecting American culture?
	I think it's fairly safe to say that it has become like, you know, the immune system that attacks all the healthy cells.
	Oof, oof, right?
	Now, they don't keep records at the BBC of political affiliation.
	Are they left?
	Are they labor?
	Are they more conservative?
	And so on, right?
	So there is a 2017 investigation by the Guido Forks blog, a right-leaning political commentary site, Electoral Commission records of donations from BBC staff between 2001 and 2017.
	Three-quarters of them, it's not a huge number, right?
	So three-quarters of the donations were to the Labour Party and 19% to the Conservatives, right?
	74% Labour, 19% Conservatives, and others, Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and so on, was 7%.
	And again, it's a small number and so on.
	But there are other analyses.
	The Telegraph did one in 2014, found comparable imbalances with about 70% of BBC-linked donations going to Labour.
	The BBC has high trade union density, 80 to 90% in some departments.
	And, of course, government unions historically in the UK affiliate with the Labour Party.
	So speculations on X speculate 90% or more of BBC staff vote Labor.
	These are anecdotal and unsubstantiated.
	YouGov polls 2023 to 2025 show about 31% of the UK public view, sorry, 31% of the UK public view the BBC as left-leaning versus 19% right-leaning.
	Now, the fact is, of course, that these numbers should be published.
	And the fact that they're not is important.
	It is impossible for a government-funded institution to be neutral and factual about the government.
	Come on.
	I mean, if you were to go to some madman exec advertising agency, right?
	ABC advertising agency.
	An ABC advertising agency gets 100% of its revenues from McDonald's and Coca-Cola.
	100% of its revenues from McDonald's, two clients, McDonald's and Coca-Cola, that gets tens of millions of dollars a year in revenues, or hundreds of millions, whatever, some giant figure, right?
	Gets tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue from McDonald's and Coca-Cola.
	Now, does anyone with half a brain think that these advertising agency executives and workers can be objective and neutral about McDonald's and Coca-Cola?
	The hand that pays the piper calls the tune.
	So you get all of your money from the government.
	Can you be objective about the government?
	Let's say that there is a politician.
	This is like, again, I'm sorry, I know you guys get all of this, but just for the general audience, like this is just a thought exercise, right?
	So a politician is gaining great success as a free market politician, a Javier Malay or whatever they like.
	So a politician of the UK is gaining strong ascendancy.
	He's doing really well.
	Really raking in the votes.
	I don't know.
	He's tall and good looking.
	You know, whatever calls, whatever triggers these kinds of things in the world as a whole, right?
	So he's doing really well.
	And one of his big platforms is to eliminate the license tax that funds the BBC.
	Get rid of it.
	Let the BBC be thrown to the vagaries and exciting and tumultuous life as a free market entity.
	No more subsidies, no more monopolies, no more legal protections, no more force, no more violence, no more moat of taxpayer blood surrounding the public broadcaster.
	Does anyone alive even remotely imagine that the BBC would be completely neutral regarding a politician that was going to eliminate all their government protections and force taxpayer funding if he was doing really well?
	Anybody who says that the BBC could retain even a scrap of neutrality when dealing with a politician who threatened the very lifeblood of their blue blood privilege is crazy.
	I mean, everybody knows that the American media gets most of its, a significant portion of its revenue from the pharmaceutical companies, right?
	And you don't report stuff very critical of the pharmaceutical companies when the pharmaceutical companies are paying a good chunk of your salary, right?
	It's just not possible.
	Human beings respond to incentives.
	It's a foundational insight, right?
	All human desires are infinite, all resources are finite, and human beings respond to incentives.
	Or as the old saying goes, it is impossible to get a man to understand something when his salary requires him to not understand it.
	Now, there is some commercial income for the BBC.
	The license fee income is 3.843 billion pounds because the license fee has gone up.
	Commercial income, 2.155, other income 0.9.
	And so, yeah, I mean, close to 4 billion pounds coming from the license fee.
	The coverage from the BBC on a politician who was threatening their sweet bloody license fee deal would be hysterical and relentless and horrible.
	Now, of course, a lot of the Republican platform is to do with privatization.
	They're free market people, they're free will people, the free privatizing is a big thing in the Republican platform.
	Now, of course, there's all this political stuff, and I get all of that.
	And, you know, close the borders means fewer illegals into America, which means that the representation in Congress would go down.
	So it's inevitable and natural that there'd be a lot of political considerations, but there is, of course, the direct raw financial considerations as well.
	And that is nothing to be sneezed at.
	There's nothing to be taken lightly.
	It is a direct incentive.
	And this is why.
	This is why the government loves to collect money on behalf of the media.
	It happens in many places Around the world.
	Donald Trump, of course, has repeatedly threatened to defund PBS, the public broadcasting service, because the woke stuff he talks about, the left-wing bias, and so on, right?
	Now, PBS, along with National Public Radio, only gets about 15% of its funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
	So, I mean, that's $80 to $85 million annually.
	That's not a small amount of money, no matter which way you slice it.
	So, when Trump is threatening or saying we should get rid of subsidies for public broadcasters, and the subsidies in America are much smaller than the subsidies for the BBC, then yeah, of course, the BBC is they've got their friends over in PBS and NPR, and there's a wave of, you know, we don't have enough money in privatization.
	So, what they do, and it's a wild thing to see, right?
	It's a wild thing to see.
	So, what they do, and you can see this all over on X the last couple of days, it's like, oh, but the British BBC is a treasured-honored institution defending public values and integrity and loved by the British population.
	Absolute, absolute unmitigated Pratt-based bullcrap.
	I mean, just absolute, you know, if you lock your wife in your basement, don't try and tell me how much she loves you.
	Oh, the British people adore the BBC, they love the BBC.
	Okay, then maybe you stop waving prison in their face to get them to fund it.
	Maybe, maybe, because you can't chain someone to your basement and then say, oh, but they love me, they're totally here, they respect me, they wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
	It's like, okay, take the chains off then.
	Take them off.
	Come on.
	Come on, you psycho.
	Take them off.
	You say she wants to be there.
	She loves you so much.
	The best husband ever.
	Maybe take the manacles off her leg and let her stretch her get away six a little and see which way they try.
	If the British population, British public, so loves to see the BBC so loves it.
	Oh, can't get enough.
	Oh, smashing.
	Oh, glorious.
	Oh, lovely.
	Lovely.
	Okay, then write a check, assholes.
	Write a check.
	Go pay.
	Go pay on your own.
	You care about it so much because the BBC is like we can't.
	Not possible.
	Oh, no.
	Oh, monstrous.
	No, no, no, we can't.
	Because, you see, then we couldn't be objective.
	We would be beholden, beholden, I say.
	We would be beholden to the advertisers who pay our bills.
	So, of course, the abstraction of that general principle, which is easy as ABC, is to say, oh, okay, so you need government money because you don't want to be beholden to the people who pay your bills, which, of course, is a full confession that you're completely beholden to the government who's paying your bills, that you are captured by the government.
	You are a Bertolt Brecht, East Germany-based, slavish state propagandist who sings for your supper whatever tune the government wants.
	And of course, the other thing, too, and this was not lost on me on the great propaganda purge of anyone not on board with the leftist lunacy that was going on from sort of 2015 to 2020 when I got deplatformed.
	I mean, you know that the subsidized, the captured, the state broadcasters are writing about their direct competitors, right?
	If Coca-Cola is writing about Pepsi, especially if Pepsi is kicking Coca-Cola's ass, if Coca-Cola is writing about Pepsi, does anyone even remotely imagine that Coca-Cola is going to be objective about Pepsi?
	When you see these, this is this car versus this ABC car versus XYZ car.
	Well, look at all the, we've got all these checkboxes and they just don't.
	It's like, well, that's not objective, right?
	Assuming, like, if ABC car company is paying for the product comparison, they're going to choose their strengths against their competitors' weakness.
	Nobody thinks that that's objective, right?
	Because you go to XYZ car company, they've got exactly the same comparison.
	They just do their strengths against ABC company's weaknesses.
	You know, I remember many years, 2018 or whatever, I was trying to sort of explain to my daughter what I did.
	And I said, hey, Luccius, here's me on Twitter.
	And every time I post, you know, I get 10, 20, 30, 50,000 views and retweets and likes and comments and so on.
	And I said, okay, let's go over to the New York Times.
	Let's go over to CNN and see how they're doing.
	Right.
	And we laughed at those numbers because they were doing, well, very badly, right?
	And it must, look, I get it.
	It must be frustrating as hell.
	And can you imagine?
	You go and study journalism.
	You get heavily into debt.
	You develop a fashion of substance addiction.
	And you get your spot on the coveted Woodward and Bernstein desk of some old gray lady, illustrious Watergate-busting paper of record.
	Smells like ink, sweat, and power.
	Ah, work your whole life.
	Did you dream of it?
	You watch Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford fulfilling the communist agenda of getting rid of Richard Nixon.
	And oh, I'm going to be a speak truth to power.
	I'm going to take down.
	I'm going to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
	And I'm going to be a force for moral good and glorious integrity in the world.
	And you move, you pay exorbitant rents, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, of course, and you put up with a fairly crappy standard of living.
	But it's all right.
	It's all right because you are going to be doing good in the world.
	Holding corrupt corporations' feet to the fire.
	And of course, all the writers, all the West-Wing lunatics, right?
	Oh, the people with pressed cards who are on the left are just so full of CJ style integrity.
	And then, so you do all of that.
	You go into debt.
	You have to hang out with, God help you, a bunch of other journalists all patting each other's backs while drinking too much.
	Sociopathy and substance abuse are very high in journalism.
	And then, oh, damn it.
	Oh, come on, man.
	What happens?
	Oh, the entire tech landscape changes.
	And now some guy screeching away in his car while driving to work is getting more views than you.
	Utterly untrained.
	Doesn't even have a research department.
	Doesn't have a giant building.
	Three cores of the truth, one microphone, a webcam, and the truth.
	And he's kicking your ass, boy.
	That's really frustrating.
	You know, I remember reading a short story many years ago.
	Stuck with me.
	Like burrs to an elk's ass, right?
	It really stuck with me.
	And it was a story about traveling to a distant star.
	And one of the spaceships that was traveling to said distant star was a sub-light spaceship.
	And it took like three or four generations.
	Like they all were born, they lived on the spaceship, they died on the spaceship, and then their kids went, took it over.
	And it took, you know, multiple generations to get to this distant star.
	And then, when they got to this distant star, they found a colony of humans.
	And they come down and they say, what the hell?
	How are there people here?
	You speak English?
	How are you here?
	It took us three or four generations to get here.
	How are you here?
	And of course, the people who are on the planet, on the colony, they say, maybe with a British accent, oh, Tosh, oh, so sorry, we couldn't find you in the bottomless depths of space.
	Funny story.
	About 15 years after you left on your multi-generational interplanetary interstellar journey, we figured out how to fly faster than light.
	And we got here in about 12 minutes.
	Ooh, bummer.
	Generations of people living and dying on a slow-moving spaceship.
	It turns out they FTL's faster than light did the whole thing shortly after the slow-ass spaceship left.
	Bummer.
	It's the same thing with the media, right?
	Well, you've got to work on your contacts and you have to build these giant buildings and you have to invest in a zillion dollars worth of ink, paper, distribution networks, phone systems, computer systems of the gods.
	Got to pay a thousand people a salary, 500 people a salary, to travel all over the world.
	Wait, hang on.
	What's this douchebag with the PowerPoint doing from his basement?
	Oh no.
	That sucks.
	I'd be cheesed.
	I'd be cheesed like an ass full of cheddar.
	I get it.
	Hey, it sucks.
	It sucks.
	But it became a raw meritocracy and the barrier to entry dissolved.
	And anyone can talk to the world now.
	I'm talking to you.
	Anyone can talk to the world.
	And it really just comes down to integrity, passion, charisma, whatever a sprinkling magic pixie dust of X it factor goes on and boom, you can just go faster than light and you don't have to have the three-generation trundle testicle of a giant round spaceship.
	That is the reality.
	Yeah, so it sort of sucks.
	Think of all of these people who, you know, the, what was it, Trump vaulted over in 2016, 2015, 2016, he vaulted over 17 professional politicians.
	Guy basically wandered into politics and won on three things, right?
	One on only Rosie O'Donnell, right?
	Of course, women fat pigs, only Rosie O'Donnell, beautiful.
	Funny.
	That's number one.
	Number two, we should never have gone into Iraq.
	Jeb Bush's conflict with Jeb Bush.
	And number three, well, I take the tax breaks.
	All of Hillary's friends take the tax breaks.
	She was a senator.
	She had years to close off these tax breaks.
	Why didn't she?
	Because all of her friends donate to her to not do that.
	So, you know, just that kind of stuff.
	Just the plain, frank, jaw-dropping honesty that people had given up on in politics just came roaring back because they didn't have to have backers.
	And having himself been mentored by Roy Cohn, he understood what he was up against.
	And it's got to be really frustrating.
	You know, and I have this, you know, if you want to talk about this or whatever's on your mind, I'm happy to take your questions or comments.
	You know, I see this when people, you know, get kind of petty and vicious on X towards me, right?
	Hey, disagreement's fantastic, right?
	I had a great debate this morning with a fellow about Christian forgiveness.
	We disagreed quite a bit at the beginning, but we, I think, came to a very good detente near the end.
	So, a great, you know, different, like everyone wants to say, oh, you just can't handle a difference of opinion, or you ban people just for disagreeing with you.
	It's like, no, I just don't ban people at my pool party for liking a different kind of drink.
	I ban people at my pool party if they're peeing in the pool.
	Then you're banned, oh, I just disagreed with them.
	It's like, yeah, but if disagreeing about whether the human urine belongs in the pool, that's a fairly significant disagreement.
	Get the F off my property.
	You exploding bladder sociopath.
	So when people on X rip into me, I mean, all I know, I don't know much about them, obviously, other than their lack of impulse control.
	But, and this is really important for your life, right?
	Because people, you know, if you do any kind of good in the world, people are going to rip on you and attack you and hound you and lie about you.
	It's the deal, right?
	I get it.
	So, you know, if I run a bad restaurant and Gordon Ramsey moves in next door, I don't like Gordon Ramsey because he's better at it than I am.
	And I'm going to lose my business.
	I get that.
	So when people rip on you, and they will, the only way to not get ripped on is to ignore evil completely, which is to collude with it, or align with it, which is to support it.
	So people rip on you, and people get really aggressive and rip on me, and you idiot, and how can you do this?
	And you're so corrupt and you're a bad guy, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And all they're telling me is that these stupid, pathetic, ridiculous tactics work, right?
	People do what works.
	And if you have shitty, manipulative tactics of abuse and manipulation, right?
	Then all you're telling me is that this works on the people around you.
	And I say this quite often on X. Like, I'm really sorry that this nonsense works on the people around you, kind of tells me the low-quality people you have around you, but it doesn't work on me.
	It doesn't work on me.
	The BBC funded, promoted, and paid Jimmy Saville, one of the most horrendous child sexual predators in human history.
	Gave him shows, prestige.
	He was best friend with Prince Charles, gave Prince Charles marriage advice.
	Jesus.
	I mean, this guy volunteered at Jimmy Saville, volunteered at hospitals so that he could rape sick children.
	Hundreds and hundreds of victims, countless victims.
	And the BBC missed that completely.
	Funded, promoted, praised.
	BBC has been actively covering up immigrant rape gangs since about the 1950s.
	That's 70 years.
	That's 70 years.
	And after that, and did this prompt any self-examination?
	Whoa, hang on.
	We paid and promoted a guy who turned out to be a prolific raper of sick children.
	Interesting.
	I wonder if there could be something a little bit off in our moral compass if we missed that little detail.
	Just a little bit.
	I mean, wouldn't that give you, you know, if you claim to be a moralist and you claim to know what's right and you claim to know what's good and you claim to know what's noble and you miss that, you miss that.
	Not only do you miss it, you praise, promote, and pay it.
	That bell-headed blonde demon in human form.
	Was there any looking in the mirror, any dark tea time of the soul, any mea culpas, at all, at all?
	Any review of how this was missed?
	Because lots of people suspected it.
	Some people whispered about it.
	So it wasn't unknown.
	The rumors about Jimmy Saville.
	And this is just one of many examples.
	It wasn't unknown.
	Was there a giant institutional we got to turn ourselves inside out?
	The fact that some people strongly suspected or perhaps even knew about Jimmy Savile and it did not make its way to the top, it was not acted upon.
	That would be an absolute catastrophe of internal lines of communication and checks and balances.
	Any big meal compass?
	When you BBC looks back and says, well, we've been covering up these rape gangs for decade after decade after decade.
	Anything?
	Anything?
	Bueller, anything?
	Any big waves of outrage?
	Nope.
	Not really.
	Not really.
	So that, you know, they seem to be, you know, relatively okay with.
	In general.
	Again, maybe I've missed something.
	I'm obviously not knowledgeable about everything.
	Maybe I've missed something, but I don't recall it.
	I don't recall the BBC saying we did an absolute savage internal tearing apart of our entire systems of communication, claustrophobia, and censorship to find out how we ended up with Jimmy Savile being central to our brand for many decades.
	So how anyone would think that these kinds of institutions think how anyone thinks that these institutions have any moral high ground at all is beyond comprehension to me.
	How is it possible?
	How is it possible?
	I think one executive resigned about Jimmy Saville.
	The Jimmy Saville sexual abuse scandal, which erupted in late 2012 after an ITV documentary revealed Saville's crimes, led to intense scrutiny of the BBC's handling, particularly the decision to shelve a news night investigation into the allegations in December 2011.
	Oh, there was chaos and confusion at the BBC, but no deliberate cover-up.
	No senior executives who were outright fired for the mishandling.
	A couple of resignations, some temporary stand downs, and so on.
	Crazy.
	No prosecutions, of course, right?
	Nobody can ever be held accountable for enabling these kinds of crimes.
	I don't know.
	I mean, to me, if you were going to somebody with all these degrees on his, well, I'm the world's best oncologist, this guy would say, right?
	Boy, I'm like a dog.
	I can sniff cancer from somebody's sweat or farts.
	I can see cancer long before anyone else can.
	I'm a stone-brilliant genius, irreplaceable, essential, the very greatest cancer detector in the world.
	And this genius oncologist has a giant freaking tumor on his neck.
	Would that not just be, I mean, that would be bad comedy.
	It would be too obvious, right?
	Oh, look at me.
	I'm the cancer whisperer.
	I'm the cancer sniffer.
	I can sniff cancer at 300 paces on a dark, moonless night.
	Why do you have a giant cancerous tumor on your neck?
	Or imagine going to, you think, oh, I got a weird thing on my forehead here.
	I don't know.
	It looks kind of weird.
	It's like it's a weird mole.
	It's got hairs coming out of it.
	Just appeared recently.
	God, I wonder if it could be, could it be skin cancer?
	And then you go to the best dermatologist in the world.
	And the dermatologist lectures you about how he's just, he can spot cancer when it's three cells.
	He can spot cancer with his zoomed in.
	He says, you know, it's like how you zoom in from the earth down to a particular swimming pool and you can see the ripples on it.
	That's me with the skin.
	And he has a giant cluster of skin cancer on his forehead.
	Would you take that person very seriously?
	Would you invite him to come and lecture you and the world on how to detect cancers with this giant skin tumor hanging off his forehead like a tusk?
	Looks like the elephant man.
	No, that would be, and this is like, it's not, we don't live in countries.
	I've even moved beyond tax farms.
	Now we just live in straight-up asylums.
	If a dermatologist said he was the very greatest at discovering cancer and he had a tumor the size of a fist on his forehead or neck, you'd put him in an asylum.
	Like, what about what about this giant fist-sized, crusty skin cancer on your forehead?
	Oh, that's nothing that's been dealt with.
	No, but it's still there.
	Yes, but there was an inquiry and found it no wrongdoing, blah, blah, blah.
	But it's still there.
	The fuck is wrong with you?
	You freak.
	Oh, yes, I could examine you and determine if you have cancer.
	I'm the very best in the world.
	Bro, you got a grapefruit-sized lump hanging off your neck.
	What the fuck is that?
	Oh, no, nothing.
	Don't worry about it.
	Nonsense.
	Foolishness.
	It doesn't matter.
	It's time to examine you.
	You would never go to that doctor, right?
	You would never go to that dermatologist.
	You'd run out.
	You wouldn't pay your bill.
	You'd never go to a doctor who claimed to be an expert in diagnosing illness, who himself was half dead from the very same illness that he refused to admit.
	And places like the BBC, honestly, they put themselves forward as a moral authority.
	Oh, so virtuous.
	Nope.
	I mean, the amount of scandals that have embroiled the BBC over the decades is innumerable.
	But I mean, just focusing on Jimmy Saffell and the cover-up of the immigrant rape gangs, that's pretty substantial.
	You know, I've not been a perfect person over the course of my life, but I have not done things which lead to the mass rape of hundreds of thousands of little girls.
	And the cover-up did that.
	They did that.
	Did that.
	Oh, but the problem is Donald Trump, you see.
	Orange man, bad.
	Oh, he's so delasse.
	I mean, so bourgeois, don't you?
	I don't know.
	I mean, the cover-up of these gangs caused hundreds of thousands of kids to get raped.
	I don't know how you process that.
	I don't know how you deal with that.
	I feel bad if I slip a digit when talking about complex economic issues.
	I don't know.
	And why it's like being in this absolute gaslit dinner party from hell with brain zombies chewing on brains that they can't digest.
	It's a madhouse.
	If somebody whose lies and cover-up had been at least in part responsible for the mass rape of little girls, who then tried to come across to me as some sort of moral authority, I just, I, again, it's as crazy making as the guy with the giant tumor telling you he's an expert at knowing when tumors are.
	He can detect them at the earliest possible stages, and he's an expert.
	It's like some guy saying, oh, I'm a total expert in how to quit smoking and lose weight.
	And he's a chain-smoking guy who's 400 pounds.
	I don't know how people do it.
	Like, I genuinely don't know how people do it.
	How can they be so insane as to think that these kinds of institutions have any moral authority whatsoever?
	And of course, that's why they attack people.
	Like me, of course.
	Inevitable, right?
	The mafia wax the witnesses, right?
	And I see clearly, and perhaps through my conversation, other people see it too.
	That's the goal.
	That's the hope.
	That's the idea.
	All right.
	I'm happy to take anybody's questions or comments if you like.
	And if you don't have any, if you're just absorbing like a giant blast of sunlit vitamin D, the syllable spilling from my brain hole, I'm happy to close the show down.
	I'll just give people a moment.
	You just have to raise your hand to chat if you want to.
	And I really do appreciate your time, your support, and freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
	And I guess some, I know people are at work because it's sort of the middle of the day.
	But philosophy never rests.
	Okay, well, occasionally.
	All right.
	Well, I will stop here.
	I really do appreciate everyone's time.
	Thank you so much.
	Have yourself a glorious, lovely, wonderful day.
	Lots of love from up here.
	And don't forget, if you subscribe at freedomain.com slash donate, you get access to my recently finished new book, which is really, really, really great.
	All right.
	Lots of love.
	Talk to you tomorrow night.

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