New Law Would End Social Media Censorship, Big Tech Is Outraged
New Law Would End Social Media Censorship, Leaves Big Tech Is Outraged. Josh Hawley, a republican, has proposed a new law that would remove section 230 protections from big tech giants under certain circumstances.Naturally many of these companies are outraged and demand to have it both ways. They want to have the right to control who gets to say what but also not be liable for speech that violates certain laws of presents civil liability.Many of the people at these tech companies hold social justice and far left views which creates a fear of political bias down the root of their rules. Conservatives do not agree with most of the policies these companies have while progressives tend to feel the companies need to enforce stricter rules. As we recently saw with the Project Veritas Pinterest story social media bias is very real and has serious political consequences.If this new law comes into place these companies will lose liability protection unless they submit to an audit and prove that they are politically neutral. In any event big tech regulation is coming and its moving faster everyday.
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From CNBC, a senator is introducing a bill that would blow up the business models for Facebook, YouTube, and other tech giants, and that is a terrible headline because that is absolutely not what is happening.
We can see for some reason there are many people in media who want to run to the defense of these big tech companies.
Don't ask me why.
In my opinion, they're out of control, stealing our private data, doing really bad things behind closed doors, all for profit.
It's causing massive damage to public discourse, yet time and time again, we see people in media rushing to their defense, even though the New York Times has complained that Google has destroyed local journalism and has made billions off of their backs.
The story we have today, Senator Josh Hawley is introducing legislation That will put restrictions on Section 230 protections.
For those that aren't familiar, Section 230 essentially provides immunity to an online platform from liability based on what someone says on their site.
Though it is really complicated, but it basically works like this.
If I own, say, the Wall Street Journal, and I publish something on the front page, you can sue the Wall Street Journal for that.
They've chosen to make a statement.
However, in their comments section, they're not responsible.
So when it comes to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., you can't sue YouTube because I say something.
You have to come to me.
They're not liable for those issues.
A lot of people are confusing Section 230 with a First Amendment defense.
Admittedly, I've done something similar in the past, but there is an interesting argument.
Section 230 grants immunity to these companies under the premise that they are platforms.
That's the rhetoric, I'm not sure if that's legally what they're saying, but the idea is, if AT&T, a phone company, were to remove people based on what they were saying, that's a serious violation and they're not a platform, they're a publisher.
They're taking an editorial stance.
So, a lot of people view Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Google, whatever, as a phone company.
But these companies like to have it both ways.
They like to simultaneously argue that they are not the speaker.
And this is where it gets important.
We'll go to the law in a second.
Section 230 says that a website will not be deemed to be the speaker of that content.
If they're legally removed from that, why are these companies using a First Amendment argument to take down content?
Their argument is that they can remove anything they want because they have no legal obligation to speak.
And that's a First Amendment argument.
I agree.
But I also think regulation exists for a reason, and that when companies grow too large, something needs to be done about it.
So here's what we're going to do.
Let's read through this story and figure out what the hell's going on.
And I've got some really interesting quotes, because I'll tell you what.
These tech giants have flat-out said they refute protected First Amendment speech.
And this is a mind-blowing comment they've given in response to this story.
I'll tell you what, man.
I warned the Twitter people on the Joe Rogan podcast, regulation will come.
And they were like, well, you know, we know what they like and we know what we can do.
No, you don't.
I was right.
And this is not the first time, nor will it be the last time.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash Dunnit if you'd like to support my work, because once again, we're talking about censorship, and of course, I'm directly criticizing the companies on which platform, on whose platform I am using, so, you know, as a PayPal option, as a crypto option, a physical address, but of course, so long as they don't, you know, I guess, remove me at some point, like, comment, share, and subscribe, because for the time being, I'm producing content here.
From CNBC they say, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican, is turning up the heat on an issue that is sure to spark outrage in Silicon Valley.
He's a well-known tech critic and he introduced legislation on Wednesday that would remove the immunity big technology companies receive under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
The CDA protects online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google's YouTube from liability for the content users post.
However, Companies will be able to earn immunity from the crackdown if they submit to biannual audits to prove their algorithms and content removal practices are politically neutral, which they absolutely will not be able to do because hate speech rules are not politically neutral.
It would mean they'd have to remove those.
But wait until you see the statement they issued where they said they do not want protected First Amendment speech on their platforms, which we'll get to in just a second.
The idea of limiting Section 230 immunity has earned bipartisan support in recent years as the companies have struggled to keep offensive and illegal content ranging from propaganda to foreign-influenced election meddling off their platforms.
Repealing the immunity provision could force these companies to use an editorial system where every piece of user-posted content would have to be vetted for illegal or libelous material before it's posted, instead relying on algorithms and human checkers to scan it after it was already online and had a chance to spread to millions of people.
This is a terrible article, I want to say.
No, it won't do this.
This would fundamentally alter the business models of companies that depend on huge volumes of user-generated content, including all the big social networks.
What the law would do is one of two things.
The argument being put forward is that either you are neutral in your enforcement of certain rules, or you are liable for what people say, as it should already be.
Repealing the immunity provision could force that.
Sure.
What this could also do, this law specifically, is force these companies to recognize legally protected speech.
Things they personally don't like.
But who elected them to determine what we're allowed to talk about anyway?
The law would put a restriction based on the size and revenue of the company, so it wouldn't affect smaller networks, which is a good idea.
You don't want to put constraints on smaller businesses, but these big tech giants have a disproportionate amount of influence over public discourse and, yes, the economy.
So it's about time the public reclaimed that portion of the commons to a certain degree, I would argue.
And it's going to happen.
Listen, it's not about left, right, top, down.
They mention in the story it's got bipartisan support.
There are people on the left who are outraged at the censorship.
They're waking up to it.
They're late to the party, I gotta say.
But the Electronic Frontier Foundation recently launched something called Tossed Out, which is a reference to TOS, Terms of Service, where they said these rules are arbitrarily taking out activists.
They are.
Plain and simple.
Legally protected speech, regardless of left, right, center, top, down, whatever, should be allowed.
How you enforce it, we're gonna have to figure it out, but it needs to be protected.
Let me read a little bit more.
They say Hawley's Bill, the ending support for Internet Censorship Act, would maintain immunity for small and medium-sized companies.
Only companies with more than 30 million active monthly users in the U.S., more than 300 million active monthly users worldwide, and more than $500 million in global annual revenue would have to comply.
However, these companies could earn immunity through external audits wherein they would have to prove to the Federal Trade Commission that their algorithms and content removal practices are politically neutral.
Immunity certification would require a supermajority vote by the FTC.
Companies would have to reapply every two years.
Listen.
I don't see how you could actually prove you're politically neutral.
That seems to be absurdly complicated.
They would have to basically just revert the sites to legal speech, period.
You can't argue they're politically biased if they allow anything that's legal.
But guess what?
That will result in a lot of awful things people would be saying.
But hey, welcome to the real world.
The story says proponents of maintaining Section 230 immunity argue that it does not only protect tech companies.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has argued that it also protects traditional media companies for liability for comments that users post on their websites, for instance.
Yes.
But the comments section of, say, CNN.com are not going to exceed 300 million monthly global users or whatever.
I really, really doubt it.
Unique users.
So, they go on to say that in April, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Recode's Kara Swisher that Section 230 is a gift to them, and I don't think they are treating it with the respect that they should, and so I think that could be a question mark in jeopardy.
These comments came before outrage over videos of Pelosi giving a speech in May were doctored to make her seem intoxicated, videos that Facebook and Twitter refused to remove.
Now, I assure you, under any regulation, which can only ratchet in one direction because of the First Amendment, They would absolutely allow more videos like that, Nancy Pelosi.
Interestingly, a lot of people on the left are arguing for regulation to prevent speech, but the government can't do that.
What do you think the tech giants had to say in this quote?
Michael Beckerman, this is the Internet Association president, said, CDA 230 is the law that allows online companies to moderate and remove content that no reasonable person wants online, including content that could have a, quote, political viewpoint.
The bill forces platforms to make an impossible choice.
Either host reprehensible but First Amendment protected speech or lose legal protections that allow them to moderate illegal content like human trafficking and violent extremism.
That shouldn't be a trade-off.
And guess what?
That wouldn't be allowed, you duplicitous liar.
I can't stand how these people lie and tug at your heartstrings about illegal activity which is not protected and would be removed.
You can't threaten someone or admit to a crime or commit a crime.
There are laws about transmitting malicious messages, threatening people, etc.
This is a duplicitous manipulation to try and give them personal political protections.
No.
Internet companies share Senator Hawley's goal of ensuring online platforms are somewhere individuals can freely and safely share their views.
Not true.
We've heard it from Jack Dorsey.
He wants his personal view of healthy conversations.
I can respect that, but I don't agree with your opinions.
So why should you, an unelected billionaire, have the right to restrict what citizens have a right to say in this country?
You have a disproportionate amount of control on what we're allowed to do and say in the economy, and it's time for some regulation.
Notice how they always try to claim that someone presenting First Amendment speech is reprehensible and then immediately jumps to the most extreme of human trafficking.
Is that a joke?
That's a joke, isn't it?
Because that is not what anyone is arguing.
We're arguing that someone has a right to their opinion to say something like, I dislike X. There have been people like Megan Murphy banned.
She was first suspended from Twitter for saying men aren't women, though.
That's the kind of thing that's being removed.
That's arguably reprehensible to some people and not to others.
To others, it's considered true.
Why should you have the right?
Who elected you?
No one.
And no, that statement from Megan Murphy is in no way similar to trafficking.
So interestingly, there's another statement made by General Counsel for Net Choice, and they try to play the same exact game.
Carl Szabo, general counsel for NetChoice, another tech industry group, said the bill would turn popular sites into hubs for extremism.
I don't entirely disagree.
This is from KansasCity.com.
It wouldn't turn them into hubs necessarily, but it absolutely would protect pretty ridiculous speech.
Senator Hawley's bill creates an internet where content from the Klan would display alongside our family photos and cat videos.
Full stop.
Once again, these companies are hell-bent on lying to you.
Section 230 would not prevent Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube from restricting algorithmic promotion.
Period.
On Twitter's timeline mode, if you choose to follow someone, if someone chooses to retweet, yes, you will see that content.
But you can choose to block it.
On Facebook, there is no obligation of Facebook to promote algorithmically this content.
They are conflating or just completely ignorant to what is actually going on on these platforms and what these regulations will do.
On YouTube, there is no right to algorithmic recommendation or monetization.
But there is a principle that if they're going to welcome the public to speak, your legally protected speech should remain without suppression or removal.
YouTube engages in what's called a limited state restriction.
They find legal speech that is borderline, as they call it.
This is content that doesn't violate their rules, and they remove all ability to share, search, comment, etc.
That is suppression.
No one is asking YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook to promote to their front page.
That is absurd.
This content would never appear next to your family photos unless you elect for it to appear.
We're talking about the right for American citizens, and to a certain extent, other citizens of the world, to engage in legally protected speech.
Yes, that can be hateful.
I don't like that either.
But I don't like you being the arbiter of fact, truth, and health in the conversation.
So, I'm not the only one who thinks so.
Congressman Paul Gassar and Matt Gaetz have called for removing Article 1917 from the USMCA.
This is essentially an international version of Section 230, which is part of the new trade agreement that Trump proposed.
This article from Forbes just last week says to protect free speech, reform Section 230, don't put it into the USMCA.
Matt Gaetz has been a strong critic of Section 230 and how these tech companies manipulate and flaunt the use of this immunity, this protection.
I did a story a while ago, and I don't have the sources pulled up, so I'm going to say it's my understanding.
I don't want to say—without the sources pulled up, I don't want to act like it's definitive.
But I've covered various stories where Facebook simultaneously argues it is a publisher, akin to the New York Times, and other times it argues it's a platform.
When they argue they're a platform, they're doing it to say, you can't hold us responsible because we just platform.
We don't choose.
However, they refused access to certain companies, which is essentially monopolistic in a sense.
This is my understanding.
I could be wrong.
However, I remember the story.
They refused access to certain companies and claimed, well, we're a publisher.
We can choose who appears on our platform.
You can't do both.
I'm not sure if there's a legal distinction between the two, but we can see what they're trying to do.
They're trying to flaunt the law to get it both ways.
Pick one.
You're like the phone company, or you're like a newspaper.
In reality, they're like the phone company.
But they don't want to play these games.
Unfortunately, these are the rules, and it's about time we got some enforcement.
This writer, Adam Kandub, a contributor for Forbes, says...
In an effort to justify the giveaway, which is Section 230, Big Tech's defenders claim that Article 1917 and Section 230 itself protect free speech.
This claim could not be further from the truth.
In reality, Section 230 protects Big Tech censorship.
In the U.S., reforming the law is the first step to restoring the free flow of ideas online and expanding the reach of its principles through the U.S.
EMCA.
Yes, expanding its reach to the MCAs is pure folly.
Congress passed Section 230 with two main provisions, each with a different purpose.
First, online platforms cannot be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another.
In other words, Facebook cannot be held liable for defamatory, tortious, or otherwise illegal content which its users post.
Here.
Congress wanted to protect upstart internet companies by limiting their potential huge liability for every statement posted on their platforms.
By relieving them of liability resulting from user-generated content, Congress gave the early internet firms the same protections as a newsstand, library, and other distributors received under common law for the content they distributed via print.
Second, a Good Samaritan provision immunizes platforms for restricting content that they believe in good faith to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.
This provision aims to remove disincentives from filtering out obscene and violent content.
Congress passed this provision in reaction to previous judicial rulings.
Some courts had ruled that efforts by internet platforms to censor and remove obscene content rendered them liable for all user-generated content.
Thus, the Good Samaritan exception allows such limited censorship while still giving the platforms immunity for all other types of user-generated content.
However, he goes on to say, Over the last two decades, some courts have broadly
interpreted Section 230 to give platforms total immunity for any tortious or illegal content,
and even allow them to disobey takedown orders issued by courts after formal legal judgments.
Silicon Valley has had less luck in using the Good Samaritan provision
to grant themselves an unrestricted right to censor.
Courts have generally held that it only grants immunity for removals made in good faith,
and have declined to broadly interpret otherwise objectionable material
to include any or all information or content, as the Southern District of California held in Sherman v.
Yahoo! 2014.
2014.
As Google and Facebook have become indispensable intermediaries for online speech, they have also increasingly, excuse me, used their power to censor views they disagree with.
While they start off with obnoxious trolls and the fringe right, they have gradually gone after more and more mainstream conservative voices, and even some liberals and moderates who offend their sensibilities.
In this, they eviscerate their public promises to be free platforms open to all ideas, and they often use Section 230 to defend themselves against suits challenging their failure to live up to their promises.
He goes on.
But I don't want to necessarily just read the argument from Forbes here.
I want to end with two very important points.
This is a story from RealClearPolitics, which apparently, there we go, rep Matt Gaetz to Twitter.
This is from July of last year.
year. You tell Congress one thing, but in court your lawyer says something different.
In his testimony he says, what I want to understand is, if you say I enjoy rights under the first
amendment and I'm covered by section 230, and section 230 itself says, quote, no provider
shall be considered the speaker, do you see the tension that creates?
The issue here is that Twitter has argued under the First Amendment they cannot be compelled to host the speech of someone they don't like.
But if Twitter itself considers itself to be the speaker under the First Amendment argument, but Section 230 only protects them insofar as they're not the speaker, they're taking it both ways.
You can't do that.
I'll say this.
It's an extremely complicated problem.
I don't know what the right regulation is.
I don't know what we should or shouldn't do.
But I'll tell you this.
These companies have regulation coming.
We need something.
We cannot let them control public discourse through some international norm they arbitrarily decide and then remove the legal speech of American citizens from public discourse.
We are in a world right now where Twitter, Facebook, and Google recognize Russian interference played a role in the 2016 election.
That means foreign citizens know how to manipulate our platforms to cause division in our country, yet the legally protected speech of our own citizens is restricted under their rules.
Why should we allow foreign actors to lie, cheat, and steal, but then some conservative in, I don't know, the panhandle of Oklahoma can't send out a tweet about how they feel about what the president is doing because it runs afoul of arbitrary rules?
We cannot have that as a standard, at least in my opinion.
And that brings me to a political example from just the other day.
Vox.
V-O-X.
It's considered a far-right party in Spain.
I'm not super familiar with who they are or what they want, nor do I particularly care in this context.
It's probably important to know who they are and what they want in other contexts.
The point here is, Vox is a growing and prominent political faction.
You may not like them.
Fine.
They said in a tweet, YouTube removes the Vox channel without explanation.
The decision to remove the channel is a serious attack on the freedom of expression and dissemination of a political party.
YouTube Español, we require an explanation and that the account be enabled as soon as possible.
Apparently had to do with copyright, I'm not entirely sure, but I'll say this.
Would you want to live in a world where corporations can arbitrarily excise public speech?
Let me make one thing clear for all the people on the left, especially those who oppose the Citizens United ruling.
There is an anger among many people on the left that super PACs were essentially brought into existence under the Citizens United ruling, which says individuals can donate effectively endless amounts of money to super PACs, unrelated political action committees, that don't coordinate with the politicians because essentially the money is speech, Corporations are people, etc, etc, etc.
It's complicated.
Let me ask you this.
If you don't like the idea of corporations being people, if you don't like the idea of massive international corporations with billions of dollars putting a disproportionate amount of weight on public discourse to shut down legal speech, why would you stand by and watch YouTube, Google, Twitter, Facebook do just that?
It's confusing to me.
I don't know.
But I'll end with bringing it back to the main point.
Regulation is coming.
There is bipartisan support.
And Josh Hawley's bill is just the latest.
There have been several state-level bills that have been presented.
My understanding is they're in flux right now.
Some have failed.
Some are still going through the process.
But I assure you, regulation is coming.
Facebook knows it.
They've been hiring antitrust lawyers.
There's been antitrust regulation looming for Google.
Whether or not this will impact speech is yet to be seen.
But, in terms of legislation, you better damn well believe Republicans are seeing what's happening.
The story with Pinterest.
James O'Keefe's expose, a whistleblower from Pinterest, came out and said they are censoring certain voices.
It is political.
Entirely political.
And in response to that video, my comment on it, on YouTube, was taken down.
Now that is some dangerous precedent for journalism and our culture and our country.
That YouTube would remove my commentary on public information because it offended the sensibilities of Pinterest.
Who gave Pinterest that right?
Regulation is coming and they better damn well believe it.
And naturally, they're outraged.
Thanks for hanging out.
Stick around.
I got more videos coming up.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews starting at 6 p.m.
And for those on the podcast, this all will be up around 6.30 every day.
Thanks for hanging out.
I will see you in the next story.
So Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the other day compares what's going on on the southern border to concentration camps.
She even goes as far as to say never again.
I made a comment on this.
I made a video talking about it where I said she's jumping the shark.
This is her getting quite crazy.
And then following all of this, right?
Look, I made my point.
I think she's nuts.
But something interesting happened.
It became a much bigger story.
And for some reason, the left jumped on board to defend her comments.
Let me make one thing absolutely clear.
These are not, by any definition, I should say by some definitions, they are concentration camps, sure.
But by any modern connotation, And explicit encyclopedic definition.
They are not.
And don't take my word for it.
How about Encyclopedia Britannica, which refers to an internment center for political prisoners, members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order.
Now, you may be saying, Tim, Well, it does kind of sound like what's happening on the border.
Except, they are also to be distinguished from refugee camps or detention and relocation centers for the temporary accommodation of large numbers of displaced persons.
They are not concentration camps.
That's absurd.
More importantly, when you do a Google search, you very clearly get one specific definition.
The first thing that comes up is Britannica, which I just read you.
And you also get all of this stuff about World War II Germany.
So yes, you're incorrect.
And let me just also add to this.
I did a story yesterday about, or two days ago, people from the Congo who travel to Angola, who fly to Brazil, who then make the journey up through Colombia and several South American and Central American countries to finally make it through Mexico to come to our southern border, and then I guess, according to Gortez, to get in line for a concentration camp.
That's insane.
It's absurd.
Now, I certainly detest the conditions at these concentration camps.
If you haven't read about them, you should.
They call one place the freezer.
These are really dangerous and gross places.
The problem?
We don't have the funding for them.
And according to the New York Times, they said Congress needs to give Trump the money he needs.
Now, let's get to the main point.
What do you think comes next?
When Ocasio-Cortez says, never again, these are concentration camps, what do you think comes next?
Do you think people just sit on their hands?
When someone with over 4 million followers on Twitter, yes, a very prominent, one of the most prominent politicians now, whether you like it or not, she is, goes on a livestream, I think she had like 7,000 live viewers, creates a national story where you now have two sides arguing whether it is or isn't.
Many people might say, Tim, nothing will come of this, right?
It's just more political posturing.
They're trying to smear Trump for 2020, sure.
But it only takes one crazy person who says, first they came for you, then they came for me, never again.
She said, never again.
So I assure you, we are walking towards this point where you will end up with these resistance types who watch Rachel Maddow every day, who believe Russiagate and all this other nonsense, and the fascists are coming, and they're going to be whipped into a frenzy, and they genuinely believe they're fighting against World War II Germany.
This is the rhetoric we are seeing, and it's being defended.
So here's what I want to do.
I personally disagree with what she said.
I believe she needs to absolutely walk it back and present some rationality.
Listen, my opinion is not rooted in any kind of support for conservatives or Trump.
I think we've got serious problems on the border.
My opinion is closer to that of the New York Times.
Give the funding to help border security and provide for these facilities.
But can I just stress?
My opinion falls in line with Encyclopedia Britannica.
It is not a fringe position.
It is not left or right.
It is literally just an academic approach that concentration camps are distinguished from refugee camps, detention centers, or relocation centers for temporary accommodation for large numbers of displaced persons, which is quite literally what is happening.
Are the conditions good?
They're not.
They're really bad.
I'm appalled by that.
My response?
Vote for funding.
Allocate more money.
Is that wrong?
Wanting to provide food and shelter?
Let's do this.
Let's go through some of the things I've pulled up.
There's some really interesting comments.
CNN.
CNN even defending the semantics, which I think is very dangerous.
First, we have Julia Ioffe.
I believe I'm pronouncing her name incorrectly, but she says, Hi.
Actual Jew here who lost dozens of relatives in the Holocaust.
Concentration camps predated the Holocaust.
For example, the Soviets had them before the Nazis.
Yes.
And gulags.
She said, I would also kindly ask Liz Cheney and Meghan McCain and other self-appointed defenders of the Jewish people, who actually have no skin in the game, to stop using us as political football, or at the very least, call out your own party members.
So let me explain to you the problem with the Twitterati political posturing.
Here we have someone who is saying that she is Jewish, who lost family, and I certainly am willing to listen to your opinion, and I can respect it, you have more understanding of this than I do.
The problem is, we also have this.
Benny Johnson tweeted an actual Holocaust survivor, who said, stop saying this, you are wrong.
Who do you agree with?
The left and the right have both found Holocaust survivors who have argued it is or it isn't.
There was one video put out, I can't remember by which outlet, I wasn't able to find it, where they had some old women who survived the Holocaust saying, it is that.
Like, we are in the face of this dangerous future and fascism, etc.
The rhetoric is there.
Actual survivors said this.
Then you see the Daily Caller bring this survivor who says, no we're not, how dare you?
Whose side are you on?
It's really just semantics.
It's people arguing it is or isn't.
To the point of Julia Ioffe, we then had David Harsanyi saying, that's why she used quote, never again, right?
Because she was talking about the Boer War?
Listen, as I show you on Google in Britannica, there is a clear connotation and understanding of what concentration camp really means.
And for some reason, for political points, they're defending Ocasio-Cortez, and I've got another thread that's really interesting, but let's move on.
So maybe you don't want to trust the two survivors the left and the right have brought up.
We have this story from Esquire.
An expert on concentration camps says that's exactly what the US is running at the border.
The reason I bring this up is not to... They say things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz.
Absolutely.
The problem is, here's my thought.
If you want to make a statement about internment, detention centers, you know why they're saying concentration camp.
They're not saying it because it's the base semantic definition.
They're saying it because of the connotation for what it is.
In fact, there are many people on the left who have tweeted that.
Many of the Twitterati leftists, I have the tweets, I don't want to drag people who are
smaller channels and smaller journalists, so I'll leave that out.
These people are higher profile.
But they said effectively, let's call them what they are so everyone understands what's
And in my opinion, it's going to lead to people doing crazy things.
Before we go on, you know, the next bit I want to highlight is Dave Rubin calling out CNN because CNN Cuomo defended this.
But my question then is like, what do you think happens next?
What do you think comes next if people really believe this?
If CNN is going on TV and saying, we know what these are, we know what's happening.
They then conflate nationalism with World War II Germany as well.
What do you think happens next when you repeatedly tell the population, this large faction of resistance types, this is literally happening?
They believe it.
Will Chamberlain drags Ilhan Omar, who's concerned about the language illegal aliens, saying, imagine complaining about the language, this language, while referring to border detention centers as concentration camps.
But he goes on to highlight that this is a semantic campaign.
The goal is to change the definition of the word.
They want to redefine nationalism as bad and expand concentration camps to include detention centers.
He says it's not the first.
They wanted to change the definition of racism and white supremacy.
Conservatives sometimes mistakenly assume that words have a fixed or objective meaning.
They don't.
At most, they have a best reading.
And this is one thing I explain to people as well.
Dictionaries don't tell you what a word means.
They tell you how it's commonly used, what people are trying to convey by saying it.
So a dictionary can say something is true, but if people decide to use a word in a different way, then the word's usage becomes something entirely different.
This is the goal of many of these people, as Will defines it, a semantic campaign.
The goal is to get many people on the left to expand the definition, because then you solidify the connotation.
Is what's happening on the southern border a concentration camp?
100% no.
They are temporary detention facilities.
They have horrible conditions, but there's food, there's shelter, people are getting sick, we need more supplies and more resources, nobody is cutting off their food, nobody is trying to exterminate anybody.
In fact, many of these people are being released under asylum claims.
The problem is that we have record-breaking numbers of people coming up through South America and even from Africa.
It's a serious crisis that even the major newspapers have acknowledged.
But someone brought up an interesting, uh, as an interesting thread, maybe a bit partisan.
It's a writer for Breitbart, so take that for what it is.
But he said, the biggest idiot in Congress drove a dump truck full of flaming toxic waste off a cliff.
And most of the left leaped into the void after her yelling, Auschwitz was so bad.
And never again has, and claiming that never again has nothing to do with, you know, what actually happened in World War II Germany.
On that day, Trump launched his re-election bid.
It was the slowest pitch Democrats could have tossed over home plate when Trump stepped up to bat.
He couldn't have orchestrated a better launch if he could have hypnotized Dems into doing whatever he wanted.
The Dems played perfectly into Trump's pitch.
As the only defense Middle America has against a gang of raging left-wing kooks, the public knows the Dems are trying to erase the southern border and they don't want that.
I don't want to read into too much more of what he said, but the first point I want to absolutely highlight Um, go after that.
Ocasio-Cortez said something nonsensical and extreme.
And she drove it off a cliff.
And instead of anyone willing to say, walk it back AOC, they chased after her.
What we're seeing here is common in this current political era.
Very common.
When you have people on the left saying something extreme, and because the others say, hey, walk it back, like Republicans or Conservatives, then all of a sudden you'll see a bunch of people on the left defending it for tribal reasons.
I'm shocked that anybody would try and defend what she's saying, but it's tribalism.
They do not want to concede anything.
So even though you have the major newspaper saying there's a crisis, even though we have people from Africa flying to South America and making their way up and doing all these things, they don't want to admit it's a crisis.
They want to just argue that it's immoral, that it's wrong, that it's racist.
And then people say that the Democrats are for open borders.
Well, that's actually not true.
Bernie Sanders makes a really great point.
But the Democrats are not the woke Twitterati.
And the woke Twitterati are pushing the Democrats in ridiculous directions.
So if you refuse to fund border security, and the New York Times says Congress do this, the Wall Street Journal points out there's a crisis.
If the major papers of this country, which lean, you know, New York Times leaning left, are saying we have a problem, and the Democrats try to obstruct.
They're following in line with democratic socialists who have protested saying abolish borders.
Not hyperbole.
They've literally held up signs saying abolish borders.
Now the democratic socialists don't dictate what, you know, anyone is supposed to be doing, necessarily.
They're a small group of people, relatively small.
The Democrats, as a whole, have basically just hid from the issue, while Bernie Sanders has had no problem saying, no, no, no, no, no, there's too many poor people in this world, they'll all want to come here.
And I can respect that.
The Democrats are trying to win, and because of the woke Twitterati, and because of Cortez, they refuse to take strong positions on border security.
They refuse to fund border security.
They don't want to give Trump his victory, and they don't want to side with passive liberals.
And therein lies the big problem.
Politics today is dominated by moderates, conservatives, and far-left activists.
Passive liberals are not engaging.
You may be a passive liberal watching this video, and you're not engaging.
You're not.
I told this to one of my friends.
I was talking to her, and she said she supported Bernie, and, you know, her politics probably fall like 2008 Democrat, Obama.
And I said, the reason things are, you know, going to hell in a handbag is because The woke Twitterati left is leading the pack, and passive liberals are just being dragged in the cart, and they're not paying attention, they're not saying anything.
So then you get these politicians, you know, Pelosi.
Pelosi has done good to resist a bit, absolutely.
She's criticized Cortez.
You end up with Biden refusing to engage in a lot of ways, but also still pandering to this woke identitarianism, talking about white man's culture and stuff like that.
Because passive liberals are not engaging, there's no incentive for any of these Democratic politicians to try and play to the base.
These people, they're hoping, would just vote Democrat regardless.
What they need to do is convince the far left to stay on their side because they need those numbers.
So as much as you could say absolutely, like regular old Democrats are not in favor of open borders, the problem is the woke Tutorati is leading the pack and they're following them off the cliff.
And I'll tell you what's going to happen.
If Democrats don't get strong on borders, you will see a backlash.
I mean, Trump is already that backlash.
Bernie and Trump were both strong on borders.
Bernie's not the strongest necessarily, but Bernie's been a really interesting case because when asked about ICE, abolishing ICE, he's refused to say it.
And he's just said comprehensive immigration reform.
What does that even mean?
It's clear that Bernie understands the importance of border security.
It's clear that many of these Democrats who voted in favor of border security 10 years ago know exactly what they need to do.
But they don't want to say it.
Because they're scared of Twitter.
And they're scared of these digital media outlets who believe that their ivory tower opinions represent America.
They don't.
So they're setting themselves on fire.
Ocasio-Cortez said some nonsensical things.
She is not a particularly bright individual.
I'm not trying to be mean, but she has had gaffe after gaffe after gaffe, okay?
Thinking accounting errors are literal money, thinking tax breaks are spendable cash.
She has made many misstatements, as reported by PolitiFact and the Washington Post.
There's no need to defend her.
When she says something, good, defend her.
She wants to team up with Ted Cruz to restrict lobbying for politicians?
Spot on.
I think she's got it right there.
And so does Ted Cruz.
So I appreciate that.
That bipartisan, you know, action to me is incredible.
But when she says things about farting cows in her Green New Deal thing, and then pulls it down saying, ooh, it was a mistake, it was an early draft, why would you ever write about farting cows?
Why would that ever come up?
It's because they're immature, and they don't know what they're talking about, and they made a huge mistake.
And they try to walk it back.
So yes, Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly makes mistakes.
But instead of saying, it was a mistake and we can accept that, they double down and defend her.
And now you have people on CNN, on Twitter, rushing to her defense, saying, yep, she's right.
Yep.
And now this solidifies national level rhetoric.
For a while, people on the woke left, the activists, were saying what's going on on the southern border is our concentration camps.
But it was just the woke left.
It was just this fringe group.
Well, Ocasio-Cortez has laundered that rhetoric now to the national level, and all of a sudden these journalists and high-profile individuals are rushing to her defense for the sake of tribalism.
Ocasio-Cortez does not represent America.
In fact, according to a poll, admittedly from a PAC that doesn't necessarily like her, her favorability is very low in her own district.
However, we have seen legitimate polls showing that to be the case.
Long story short, Ocasio-Cortez won through an exploit called, excuse me, called primarying.
And we know this. Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks has talked about it. That was the goal to upset,
you know, longstanding Democrats because their districts only vote blue. Nancy Pelosi said a
glass of water with a D on it would win in Pelosi's or Cortez's district, so we get it.
Cortez isn't representative of America. She may represent a certain woke, you know, activist base,
less than 8% of the country, according to Hidden Tribes, but not Americans.
And I think, you know, the reason I'm very critical of this is for one, I act on principle.
If Cortez says something nonsensical, I'll call it out.
I just did a whole video about Trump saying, you know, wanting to ban burning the American flag, and I said, absolutely not.
And Candace Owens said the same thing.
Absolutely not.
Principle comes first.
There are certain things we want to protect and live by.
I don't care which tribe you're in.
But what we can see here is that principle has been thrown out the window.
Ocasio-Cortez is going to escalate Look, I don't know what you want to call it.
We can call it a violent escalation of some capacity.
But when you have millions of people who really do believe Trump is worse than World War II Germany's leader, you know who I'm talking about, what do you think they're going to do?
People always say never again.
There's that famous poem, first they came for the unions, etc.
That was a lesson in not sitting idly by when these things start to happen.
But fortunately, they're not.
These are people who are lining up at our borders trying to come in.
Not people who are living in the country being rounded up and kicked out, although Trump is planning mass deportations.
It still is a bit different.
There's certainly an argument to be had about making sure we do everything in as humane a way as possible, and that's the side I fall on.
And I certainly fall on the side of providing funding to make sure we can take care of children and protect loss of life, ensure comfortable conditions, but we do need to disincentivize the behavior because we can't handle it.
The borders are being overrun.
CBP has said in an official statement, this is a full-blown emergency.
I don't know what the solution is.
I certainly don't like seeing people suffer, and we should solve this problem.
But simply posturing on your bed in your luxury apartment in D.C.
about how this is basically, you know, happening all over again does nothing.
Imagine being that person to think it really is happening.
So what do you do?
You sit on your bed and do nothing.
She's in politics.
Propose something.
Vote to fund this stuff.
We have to solve the problem.
Tell me what the alternatives are.
Do we just shut them down?
Let people wander out?
Some people have actually told me yes.
Okay, well then consider what happens next.
Families, children wandering through the wilderness and the desert with no food or water.
Does that make sense?
It really doesn't.
Do you want us to open the border?
Well, the Democrats say they don't.
The Democrats have repeatedly said they're not for open borders.
Okay then.
What do you want to do?
If you're not for open borders, then you agree that something should be done and law enforcement will need to, you know, detain people for a set amount of time.
Temporary detainment while we figure out where they get relocated to, right?
Apparently that's not good enough either.
It seems like no matter what happens, the Democrats just complain about it and offer no real solutions.
So I'm listening.
I'm waiting for a solution.
I'm not happy with what's going on the border.
I certainly think it's dangerous to act like we're in World War II Germany, but I want to see a solution to the border more than anybody.
And I'm asking the Democrats, please provide something.
Instead, nothing.
They just escalate the rhetoric and it's going to get bad.
So I don't, you know, this could go on for a million years.
I'll leave it here.
Stick around.
The next segment will be coming up at 1 p.m.
And yeah, comment below.
Let me know what you think.
If you're on the podcast, leave a review.
I'll see you all in the next segment.
Female athletes have filed a complaint with the federal government, I believe the Department of Education, over trans women competing in women's sports.
They claim it's a violation of sex discrimination laws, a violation of Title IX.
And this is where it all gets interesting.
I've frequently said, as you try to expand civil rights to more and more groups, you'll actually find there's a point at which some groups lose rights.
For instance, this circumstance.
Who is right?
Should trans women have a right to be recognized under, say, the Equality Act to compete in women's sports?
Or, do biological females have the protection under sex discrimination law?
Which one do you protect?
Because you can't protect both.
As much as many people will try to argue that trans women don't have an advantage, they do.
It doesn't mean they'll always win.
Well, the science is fairly clear, and that's not my opinion.
It comes from a trans woman scientist.
Forgive me, I forget your name, but she has given statement after statement saying that trans women must undergo hormone replacement therapy, otherwise they have a massive advantage.
And it is acknowledged by many people, because I've talked to the scientists about it, that even prenatal testosterone has a massive advantage in muscle development, and so it's a complicated issue, to say the least.
So the question I will posit, I won't make a determination, it's up to you, who should you protect?
Should our civil rights law protect the trans women who want to compete as women, or protect biological females under sex discrimination law?
We have this from ADFmedia.org.
This is for the Alliance for Defending Freedom, for Faith, and for Justice.
They say, female athletes challenge Connecticut policy that abolishes girls-only sports.
ADF complaint asks DOE to investigate discrimination and enforce Title IX protections.
They say, Boston Alliance for Defending Freedom attorneys representing teen track athletes Selena
a soul and two other minor girls submitted a complaint Monday to the US.
Department of Education Office for Civil Rights asking it to investigate illegal discrimination against the Connecticut athletes.
Ever since the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference adopted a policy that allows biological males who claim a female identity to compete in girls' athletic events, Boys have consistently deprived Seoul and the other female athletes of honors and opportunities to compete at elite levels.
So this, um, there's a story that's a breakdown from the Daily Wire, which gets more to the core, and then I'll, we'll take a look at the actual complaint, but you may remember, uh, this woman.
My understanding is that she came in a position in the race displaced.
She would have come in, like, eighth place or something, which would have qualified her for, you know, like, next-level athletics and potentially a scholarship.
Actually, let's just read it.
I don't wanna get the details wrong.
From the Daily Wire.
On Monday, the ADF attorneys representing Selena Soule and two other minor female track athletes submitted a complaint to the U.S.
Department of Education.
We read that.
Per the CIAC policy, Sol was forced to compete against female-identifying biological males in a high-stakes track competition where two transgender sprinters beat the field, taking first and second place by significant margins.
Sol landed in eighth place, missing an opportunity to compete in front of college coaches by two places.
And that means, if these two transwomen didn't compete, she would have succeeded.
Quote, I am very happy for these athletes and I fully support them for being true to themselves and having the courage to do what they believe in, soul-told Fox News host Laura Ingraham in February.
But in athletics, it's an entirely different situation.
It's scientifically proven that males are built to be physically stronger than females.
It's unfair to put someone who is biologically male who has not undergone anything in terms of hormone therapy against cisgender girls.
This is true.
And there is an actual physicist, a scientist who is a trans woman who agrees that far.
There are people who would argue it doesn't matter even if they do undergo hormone replacement therapy.
I don't want to misquote Joe Rogan, but there was a segment he did where he talked about bigger hands, bigger joints, more striking power, on average taller.
So, what I try to explain to people when it comes to this issue, because I see a lot of, you know, Twitterati leftists saying, oh, there's no advantages, and there was one thread by a trans writer saying that one of these trans athletes didn't even win, got 6th place, and no one ever highlights the fact that these trans athletes don't often win.
And that's a good point.
And I mention, I will say, you're absolutely right, but it misses the actual argument.
The argument isn't necessarily that we expect trans women to win every competition.
It means that if you have 100 women, only six of them will be considered the cream of the crop,
the best of the best. If you take 100 men, and even with hormone replacement therapy, whatever,
they compete against women, you'll have a disproportionate amount of those men
competing at higher levels against the women.
You see what I'm trying to say?
It's about averages.
It's about the amount of work being done.
There's one viral meme where it says, you know, one particular individual was ranked to 200, then 390, then transitioned, and became national record-breaking champion.
It's not about winning first place.
In this circumstance, if these two trans women who won even got 5th and 6th place, it means that this young woman, Sol, would have still been displaced.
So it's an issue of the best of the best in terms of women competing against average biological males who have transitioned to female, or I should say who have transitioned to woman because they're still not biologically female.
And that's another really important distinction, too.
YouTube... I believe it was YouTube India tweeted about this.
There's absolutely a distinction between gender and biological sex, at least according to academic, you know, breakdown.
Activists would have you believe that these transgender women are female.
They're not.
They are biological males who have transitioned to woman, not female.
They will never be female.
Okay?
And that's not a bigoted statement.
That's just... You know, you can call them a woman.
I'm totally down.
I understand the argument.
But we are literally dealing with, at its core, Biological male versus biological female, regardless of the hormones you're taking.
The reason that distinction is important is because civil rights law protects on the basis of sex.
So I think there's a lot of activists who want to blur the line between gender and sex on purpose so that trans women would be granted similar protections, but the law is clear as of right now.
Unless there's a change, it is not my opinion.
It's not my opinion that biological sex is real, that's what I'm saying.
But it is, in my opinion, an interesting argument to be made that trans women are biologically male, were born biologically male, and are just taking hormone therapy to have them compete against biological females would be sex discrimination, I would argue.
But we'll see what the Department of Education actually says.
There's another quote.
Throughout the 2018-19 track season, males consistently deprived the female athletes who are part of the complaint of dozens of medals, opportunities to compete at higher level, and the public recognition critical to college recruiting and scholarship opportunities, an ADF News release said.
The complaint notes that CIAC's policy and its results directly violated the requirements of Title IX, a federal regulation designed to protect equal athletic opportunities for women and girls.
Now, see, here's the interesting part.
If you want to argue women and girls, you're going to get into a debate over whether or not it's for trans women because they believe trans women are women, or whether or not it's about biological sex.
In fact, it says sex.
The law says sex.
That's the important distinction.
Girls deserve to compete on a level playing field, ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb said.
Forcing female athletes to compete against boys is grossly unfair and destroys their athletic opportunities.
Title IX was designed to eliminate discrimination against women in education and athletics, and women fought long and hard to earn the equal athletic opportunities that Title IX provides.
Allowing boys to compete in girls' sports reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women under this law.
We shouldn't force these young women to be spectators in their own sports.
Selena and her fellow female athletes train countless hours to shave mere fractions of seconds off their race times.
They put in that effort in hope of the personal satisfaction of victory, an opportunity to participate in state and regional meets, or a chance at a college scholarship.
But girls competing against boys know the outcome before the race even starts.
They can't win.
Boys will always have physical advantages over girls.
That's the reason we have women's sports.
Well that's true.
You can make an argument about hormone replacement therapy, but for the time being, in this particular instance, my understanding is that the two trans women who won were not undergoing hormone replacement therapy.
They were just completely biological males identifying as women and competing against women.
So we have this, this is the complaint, and I'll just read a little bit of it, because I don't want to, it's really, it's really, really long.
But this is actually really interesting.
They've been drafting this for a long time.
They show the best high school indoor 800 meter times in 2019.
They talk about physiological differences.
I will link this in the description.
I know I say that.
I often forget.
I'll try— I'll link this in the description below so you can read through it yourself.
But it's really, really interesting to show.
Check this out.
Table 9.
2017 CIAC Class M Women's Outdoor Track 200 Meter Results, May 30th, 2017.
First place, a male.
Andrea Yearwood's time was 0.3 of a second faster for Cromwell than Erika Michie, a female.
So, we can also see here that Andrea Yearwood, grade 9, was third place, falling behind two females.
So again, I want to make sure I stress, this position of the biological male, Andrea Yearwood, a trans woman, displaced one individual.
Because of biological males competing as women, regardless of their position, these are biological females being displaced.
So they're saying it's a civil rights violation.
And that's what I've been saying.
Look at Birmingham in the UK.
You have Muslims arguing with the LGBT community.
Which marginalized group are you going to protect?
And now they're fighting with each other.
In fact, the Muslim community was chanting actually, like, anti-LGBT things.
And it caused a controversy.
You can't protect everybody because not everybody agrees with each other.
So I don't know what the solution is.
I certainly want to make sure people are protected.
But at a certain point, these lines start to break down.
Look at these women who are denied championships or participation.
It's really, really interesting stuff.
So I'll just read the beginning of the complaint, and then we'll wrap it up.
They say, To whom it may concern, We submit this complaint on behalf of Minor Selina Sol, on behalf of Minor Second Complaintant, and Third Complaintant, a minor, because the complainants are minors and because they fear retaliation.
We respectfully request that the OCR treat their identities as confidential to the extent consistent with conducting a thorough investigation of the allegations contained in this complaint, In the attached Exhibit A discrimination complaint form.
This is where things start to get really interesting, because we're gonna have to see who the left sides with.
Now, naturally, you'll see conservatives will defend the biological females.
You will see moderate liberals absolutely defending biological females.
People like Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan's very, very... He's, like, relatively far left.
He's, like... I think he's in, like, a Bernie Sanders camp.
He's very pro-UBI.
But Joe Rogan is very much in favor of defending biological females.
You have, you know, radical feminists, gender-critical, they call themselves.
Who would side with the females?
But then you have intersectional feminists, of which majority of the mainstream would side with the trans women.
Which left is the one you agree with?
And this is why, you know, I think it's an important distinction that when you talk about the left and the right, you'll see progressives trying to insinuate, I'm not on the left.
Well, certainly not in a tribal sense.
I'm not on the right either.
I don't care for your tribes.
But look at this issue.
Which left do I fall into?
There's not just one anymore.
It's fractured.
While majority of Democrats want moderate policy, there's still a large group that wants progressive policy.
And that's according to Gallup and Pew.
I cite them very often.
I would probably fall into the defense of biological females because it is a protected category.
Women's athletics are meant to protect biologically female individuals.
I have no problem with working out a solution.
Perhaps there's like a a transgender category, I honestly don't know.
I certainly want to make sure the rights of trans individuals are protected, they don't
face discrimination, but it is particularly different.
It's not the same thing.
A trans woman is not the same thing as a biological female.
While we want to protect the civil rights of everyone, this isn't the way you do it,
because now you're infringing on the rights of the females.
So, you're gonna have- I don't know.
It's- Hey, man.
Civics, right?
We are- We are- It's kind of- It's kind of exciting, and it's kind of cool to- to- to see these conversations, because these are new conversations and new developments in- in civic policy that we're gonna see developed, and in 50 years, we'll know exactly what we will or won't do, and there will be a strong opinion in our culture on what the results of this battle was.
I don't know what it- I don't- I don't know what it'll be.
But, I'll leave it there.
Uh, I will make sure to link this in the description below so you can read it.
Stick around.
Next video will be at 4 p.m.
Eastern, youtube.com slash TimCast.
The arrangement on the podcast is usually different, so that'll, um, so thanks for hanging out.
I'll see you in the next story.
So it's about time the Democrats are starting to address the border crisis.
This story from The Hill.
Democrats make U-turn on calling border a manufactured crisis.
But I'll tell you what they are doing.
Blaming Trump.
At least some of them are.
Claiming that he's made it worse and now there's a real crisis.
Okay, please.
The president addressed illegal immigration.
The Democrats refused to fund the border wall.
Fine, there's an argument.
The issue, though, is migrant caravans started coming.
Conspiracy theories abound.
I kid you not.
There were right-wing conspiracy theories that George Soros was funding the migrant caravans.
Don't care for those conspiracy theories.
At the same time, you had Democrats calling it a manufactured crisis as migrant caravans were forming and marching to the U.S.
Who was manufacturing that?
Seriously, if you have migrant caravans, Trump didn't make that up.
So either they were completely ignorant, or they believed in some kind of weird conspiracy.
I think it's all nonsense, but I'm glad they're dealing with the issue now.
Let's read the story from the Hill.
Before we get started, TimCast.com slashed on it if you'd like to support my work, because I talk about issues that they don't want me to talk about, and so they'll probably ban me at some point, but if you want to support me, you can go there.
You know the drill.
From the Hill.
Democrats have done a U-turn on the claim from earlier this year that President Trump's concern about illegal immigration at the southern border was a manufactured crisis.
Democrats now acknowledge there is a genuine humanitarian crisis and are preparing to pass legislation that would provide as much as $4.5 billion in federal aid to address the surge of migrants from Central America.
Spot on!
Bravo!
You will never see me gloat.
Although you could call that earlier stuff gloating, fine, whatever.
But I will commend the Democrats for stepping up and doing the right thing.
You always want to give people the chance.
If they drag their feet in the beginning and we put pressure on them and they're turning around now and offering up $4.5 billion in aid, Good job.
Welcome to the fight.
Hopefully this money will be enough to help alleviate the crisis because whether you're for or against the people who are coming, whatever your position is, we can recognize the conditions are bad and we need funding to solve the problem, whatever road that may, whatever form that may take.
Good on the Democrats for finally stepping up.
Let's see what happened.
They say.
A surging number of arrests, media reports of smugglers renting children to desperate migrants to help them gain entry into the U.S., and stories of children dying in U.S.
custody have changed the narrative.
Earlier this year, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi accused Trump of exaggerating problems at the border to stoke fear among Americans and distract from the turmoil of his own administration.
After Trump issued an Oval Office address to the nation on January 8th, proclaiming the border situation a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul, Schumer and Pelosi gave a side-by-side rebuttal, which I might add was really creepy, and everybody thinks so.
Even the Democrats thought that was weird and creepy.
I don't know why they did it.
That's just strange.
This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration, Schumer said in the midst of a 35-day government shutdown sparked by a partisan disagreement over funding border barriers.
Other Democrats made similar dismissals.
The president has manufactured a humanitarian crisis.
It is solely Trump's fault, not the Democrats.
You know what really bothers me?
Well, hold on.
Let's read Bernie Sanders.
What did Bernie say?
Bernie Sanders, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, admonished Trump in a video statement.
Mr. President, we don't need to create artificial crises.
We have enough real ones.
I am grossly offended.
I am seriously offended.
Right?
Not that my offense should matter to anybody.
It's a personal thing.
I'm not one who subscribes to the belief that if you're offended, you somehow earn something.
No, but I'm upset.
Because I feel like if these Democrats got off their keisters, is that the right word?
That means butt, right?
And actually did something about this problem back in January, we could have prevented the crisis as it stands today.
And that's what's really disconcerting to me.
They don't like Trump so much that they ignored a legitimate problem on our border and let it fester and to the point where Cortez is now referring to what we're seeing on the border as if it's World War II Germany.
I kid you not.
It's no one's fault but the Democrats.
Now, now, I want to make sure I'm saying this.
I'm critical of these past statements, but I have tremendous respect for them stepping up now and doing the right thing.
If they're going to step up and prose this bill, the last thing I want to do is disincentivize that behavior.
I want to incentivize that behavior.
So again, you have my respect now that you're willing to step up and do the right thing.
That's the only thing we can ask.
It reminds me of, like, If you have a kid, and your kid does something wrong, and then they lie to you because they don't want to get in trouble, if you punish them when they tell the truth, and you're really harsh on them, you're encouraging them to keep lying.
So you have to recognize when someone's truly sorry, if they've done something wrong, and help them and be there for them.
It's hard to know when you have to be tough and when you have to be accepting, but I will say, it's about damn time.
Trump subsequently backed down and agreed to reopen the government despite getting only $1.3 billion for border barriers.
Less than what Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee voted for earlier this year.
But again, Trump just declared an emergency.
Democrats again balked before the Memorial Day recess when they refused to add Trump's request for $4.5 billion in emergency border funding to a disaster relief bill that the president signed into law two weeks ago.
But the steady stream of heart-wrenching stories and eye-popping statistics has changed the political environment on Capitol Hill, and now appears a bipartisan deal on the border is imminent.
And it's a damn shame it took media pressure to make it happen.
I will say that.
And if they just agreed to this early on, even compromised, we could have avoided the strife.
People have died, okay?
Can I stress this?
Yes, children have died.
There was a trans woman who died.
They didn't need to.
The border patrol, the facilities, they needed money and Trump asked for it.
The Democrats dragged their feet and people died.
I'm not saying it's only their fault.
I'm not saying two things can't be true at the same time.
I'm just saying, while you can blame the right for other areas, we can focus on those later.
When we're talking about the border right now, it's plain and simple.
If we didn't have the stupid politicking, we could have prevented this loss of life and we could have actively solved the crisis before it got to where it is today.
Polling shows voters have grown more concerned about the migrant surge at the border since the government shut down over Trump's border wall earlier this year.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll published in late April found that more than a third of Americans saw illegal immigration as a crisis, an increase of 11 percentage points compared to January.
And you know what really scares me?
That the Democrats might only be taking this action now because of the polling.
That they're concerned about 2020 and they want to look strong on borders.
Motives be damned, I'm happy it's happening, but it is disconcerting because who knows what would happen if they use this and then win and then just ignore the problem again.
Not that I'm giving any credit to the conservatives or to Trump in this regard either.
I think Trump is definitely playing this up as a campaign issue, and he knows it plays well with Americans.
But outside of our political assumptions, we can say one thing.
Trump was right the whole time.
You're gonna like the guy, you can think he's wrong about his proposed solutions, but Trump said, hey, there's a problem on the border, right?
This spoke to voters, and there was a problem on the border.
The Democrats didn't think it mattered.
Well, they were wrong.
It did matter, and now we have a big problem.
But also, it mattered to the polls.
If you want to beat Trump, you were wrong.
You played the wrong hand.
You want to beat Trump, you needed to be on top of this issue.
We'll see what happens.
They had a Harvard-Capps-Harris poll survey published in early May found that 56% of US voters said they believe there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at the border, while 44% it was a manufactured political crisis.
Excuse me.
Schumer last week described the Democrats' plan to address the crisis in a floor speech, and two of its main elements mirrored a plan being pushed by Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Graham said Tuesday that he is in talks with Schumer to merge the proposals and expressed hope that reforms Spot on.
Bravo to Graham and Schumer.
I don't care about politicking.
asylum from their own countries or from Mexico and to provide money for more
immigration judges on the border, two ideas that Schumer has also endorsed
could be added to the border supplement bill. Spot-on.
Bravo to Graham and Schumer.
I don't care about politicking. Let's put the past behind us and say,
for whatever reason, let's get the job done. We'll get the job done and then
we'll go back to being in each other's throats over political issues, fine.
But if we can agree on something and do it, I'm happy to hear it.
The same goes for Cortez, for Ocasio-Cortez and Cruz, when they're talking about their lobbying bill.
Bipartisan action, in my opinion, is excellent, and they should both be commended for it.
There are certainly things to criticize Graham for, and Chuck Schumer for, but if they're coming together to solve the problem, you have my support.
So I do want to get to one specific issue though, down in the bottom.
Asked Tuesday if it was right to call the border situation a manufactured crisis earlier this year, Schumer blamed Trump for making conditions much worse.
The bottom line is very simple.
The border situation has been made worse and worse and worse by President Trump, he said.
Schumer argued that Trump's policy of removing young children from their parents and detention is inhumane, and called the president's varying strategies for slowing the migrant surge, such as calling for a border wall and threatening tariffs against Mexico, erratic.
Now he says, send a million immigrants back home.
Every day he has a new policy, none of which have never been followed through on.
Well, let me just say this.
If you now recognize this problem is going on for a long time, here's how I kind of see it.
Trump said we had a problem, started bailing water, and you ignored it.
Now you're mad his plan didn't work, while I'm sorry he didn't have your support in solving the problem.
Again, we can absolutely agree that Trump saw a problem, we all agree it exists now, and Trump's solutions towards it may have made it worse, right?
We'll operate under that premise.
That means we can recognize Trump has been right about there being a problem in the first place, and perhaps if people get off the politicking, you could help solve the problem.
If you are of the opinion that Trump's actions have made it worse, then you need to recognize that— Well, first, let me say this.
I find it kind of strange that Schumer is saying Trump made the problem worse, but then agreeing to give Trump the $4.5 billion he asked for initially.
If you think he's making it worse, then why would you give him more money?
But regardless, at least something is happening.
So, look, man, you know, My biggest gripe going into all these migrant crisis arguments has been the Democrats just obstructing and obstructing.
So you want to have an argument about a manufactured crisis, I think you're wrong.
Fine.
It's not just my opinion.
Again, I will cite the New York Times, Wall Street Journal.
But if the Democrats are getting on board, they have my respect.
Please solve the problem.
That's all I really care about.
When we look at the local jurisdictions that are being impacted by this, they're asking for help, and it's about damn time the Democrats stepped up.
If the Democrats have a problem with what Trump is doing, they should have stepped up sooner.
I'm glad they're stepping up now.
We can both argue over what is the right course of action, but if we can come together and
allocate some funds and just do something to get the problem solved, we're going to
be okay.
This is good news.
This is a good news story.
I hope you guys are happy hearing this.
Because as much as there's a lot of people who probably want to gloat about the Democrats
finally caving in, fine, whatever, we're going to solve these problems, hopefully.
So, you know, if we can get everybody on board and agree with this, good.
I will add the far-left progressive side of the Democrats probably won't be on board with this, and they're going to use this against the Democrats.
But I'll say this, final thought, my respect to the Democrats for stepping up, plain and simple.
Let this be a compliment to them.
Regardless of the past, we can move forward.
I want to make sure that's clear, okay?
Next video coming up in a few minutes, and I will see you shortly.
From Fox News, as Democrats debate reparations for slavery, polls suggest Americans are not convinced.
But let's be specific.
In this regard, the polls are referring to cash compensation.
I personally disagree with cash compensation, but I do agree with social programs, and I do think there's a lot to be done to offset the ramifications of historical racism.
Hear me out if you're someone who disagrees.
And we're gonna have a good conversation because I'm also going to take criticism from many people who have said, Tim, you've supported Tulsi Gabbard, but she supports reparations.
That's identity politics.
I agree with you and I want to address this.
We'll get to this.
I have this from the Tulsi Gabbard subreddit.
Where even her fans are critical of her decision to support reparations.
So let's make sure we can get specific and break this down and I can explain to you my stance on the issue.
But we'll start with the news, the reality most Americans don't agree with it.
Fox News says, As Democrats consider the idea of reparations to black Americans for slavery, polling indicates that the public is far from convinced about the idea.
House Judiciary Democrats on Wednesday were holding a hearing in the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee on H.R.
40, a proposal by Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, to set up a commission to study and develop a response to the question of reparations for slavery.
But polling suggests that such a commission would also need to change the minds of a significant number of Americans for the move to get support.
A Fox News poll in April found that 60% of Americans oppose paying cash reparations to descendants of slaves, while just 32% support it.
A Rasmussen poll in the same month found that just 21% of likely voters think taxpayers should pay reparations to black Americans who can prove they're descended from slaves.
However, in a finding that could put 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls in a bind, the Fox poll found that among Democratic primary voters, 54% said they were likely to support a candidate who backed reparations, while 33% said they were not likely.
Additionally, Data for Progress found in a poll last year that while the measure had only 26% of Americans in favor, it had net positive support among voters under 45.
A point taken Marist poll in 2016 found that while 68% of Americans were opposed to reparations, 6 in 10 black Americans said they were in favor.
A number of 2020 presidential candidates have dabbled in talk of reparations, although they have yet to really dive into the controversial waters remaining vague about the extent of their plans.
Senator Kamala Harris suggested to the GRIO in February that it could include a generic tax credit to families making under $100,000, a much less controversial proposal.
That actually doesn't sound all that bad, to be honest.
But there's a lot of caveats, so let's read on.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, but I think that's an interesting proposal instead of just giving out cash.
That would require the individuals to, for one, be working and generating income.
And so it's essentially a tax credit instead of the government actually paying anything
out.
It makes a lot more sense.
Welfare can be very, very damaging.
It really, really can.
And there's been data to correlate the rise in poverty with the rise of welfare.
So there's a lot of caveats in social programs that I think need to be broken down.
Let's read a little bit more and then we'll get into my thoughts on the matter.
Elizabeth Warren has gone a step further and said that Native Americans should be part
of the conversation.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I think there's a lot to be said.
Cory Booker, who will testify at the hearing Wednesday, has introduced a Senate version of Lee's bill to study the question.
In his prepared testimony, he says the U.S.
has yet to truly acknowledge and grapple with the racism and white supremacy that tainted this country's founding and continues to cause persistent and deep racial disparities and inequality.
The hearing on Wednesday will include testimony from activist and actor Danny Glover and author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
who wrote an influential 2014 essay on the case for reparations for the Atlantic.
So I think we'll wrap up there, because I want to talk a little bit about it.
Maybe I'll come back, and I also want to talk about Tulsi Gabbard and other Democrats.
But let me say this.
It's been a long, long time since the era of slavery, and it's actually been a generation or two since the era of segregation.
There are still people alive today who live through segregation.
And there's a few things that are absolutely true.
When you look at national level averages, it is much more likely that immigrants and descendants of white people are more likely to have had property passed down, which conveys an advantage, a privilege, as it were.
However, there's a much bigger problem in the idea of reparations.
It's been a really long time.
As they mentioned in the article, some people have to prove if they were descendants, but more importantly, There are people who are black who emigrated here in the past 50 years.
So it can't be a blanket-sweeping reparation based on identity, based on your race.
There are real ramifications of historical racism.
And let me give you an example.
I did a documentary on St.
Louis County, of which St.
Louis, as many people don't know this, is actually like 95 different cities.
And it's got a pretty sordid past.
They launched Project Housing, I think you can call it, Pruitt-Igoe, and it found disrepair.
Government-running housing didn't work, as many of you might presume.
What this did, though, is it created a dependency, and it created poverty.
It created a slum.
The government built it, didn't maintain it, it fell apart, and then people were living in squalor, and this spread crime and poverty, and it's very, very complicated, don't get me wrong, but let me talk about the ramifications of where we're at today.
You have a lot of people who live in the St.
Louis County jurisdictions.
But because there are many small towns, one thing we see happen is that, while I don't necessarily think it's overtly race-based anymore, there still is a racial component at play.
You have certain jurisdictions that are predominantly black, right?
So, one of the things we learned about is something they call going on tour in St.
Louis.
So somebody who lives in Ferguson and has a job two towns over, which could be like five miles, seriously, not even that far, they could get an infraction for driving for the same... for one infraction could turn into five, right?
So I'll put it this way.
Let's say you live in Chicago and you have a busted taillight you don't know.
You're driving to work, you get pulled over, say, you got a busted taillight.
That's a $20 ticket.
Get it fixed.
You say, God damn it.
You get pulled over again, I got a ticket for it.
They usually will be like, okay, okay, I understand.
And you take care of it when you get home.
But let's say you live in Ferguson and you've got to drive through three or four jurisdictions to get to work.
You get pulled over, you get a ticket.
You keep driving to work because you can't ditch your job because you just found out you've got a busted taillight.
You get pulled over again, a new jurisdiction gives you a new ticket.
You keep driving, you get pulled over again, etc, etc.
The issue is, in these communities, they're the direct result of segregation in the past.
The problem I think we have today is that while we've gotten rid of segregation, there still is a racial component to the poverty, but poverty goes across racial lines.
So this is why I'm technically not in favor of reparations.
Because of the connotation of a race-based policy.
I don't like that idea.
There are certainly white people who are poor today who are facing the same problems as a black family.
You'll hear from the left that there's privilege in all of these things, and while that's true to a certain extent, I recognize the concept of privilege, I don't think it's necessarily about being white, I think it's about majority and culture.
You know, the way you act plays a huge role, and there absolutely are biases among the majority, for sure.
I don't like the idea of us drawing lines in the sand today, Based on race, because of things that happened in the past.
While I am one who absolutely recognizes the ramifications of historical racism as it persists today, I do not think we solve the problem by highlighting that specific race and then giving them money or resources.
So let's get to the point of Tulsi Gabbard.
I do not agree with her in this capacity for the most part.
You know, if somebody says they want to pass a bill to launch an exploratory committee, I really don't see the problem with that.
You know, a conversation could be had.
I think conversation is a good thing.
But it would seem, in this thread, it's from a while ago, it's from a few months ago, Tulsi for President 2020 on Reddit says, Tulsi Gabbard co-sponsors reparations legislation.
While every other presidential candidate has been talking about reparations, Tulsi Gabbard has been in the background helping to get reparations legislation pushed through.
There's only a few comments, it's not a big thread, but I thought it would be interesting to hear the opinion of actual supporters of Tulsi.
The first comment says, So let me stress, you can be a fan of Tulsi and disagree with this particular stance.
of winning the White House. These psycho leftist ideas will guarantee Trump gets another four years
and I don't want him to get another four years. I can't believe Tulsi went and did this.
So let me stress, you can be a fan of Tulsi and disagree with this particular stance. I will tell
you this for all those who are curious, there's only one real reason I put, I donated to Tulsi
Gabbard and...
Anti-war.
Anti-intervention.
And I could be getting this wrong, but I'm pretty sure she is a major in the National Guard.
I have tremendous respect for that.
She seems to be someone of great principle.
She has defended free speech.
She has rejected the divisiveness of identity politics.
Well, I understand she's not perfect and she's played into this.
I'm willing to recognize the faults because I think there's a net benefit.
Admittedly, and I mean no disrespect to Tulsi, Andrew Yang is more likely my first choice, mostly because he's a domestic policy aficionado, right?
Yang has done a tremendous amount of legwork in addressing domestic policy, and I have a lot of respect for that.
And I don't want to get into supporting the Democrats or whatever.
I want to point out that when a lot of people criticize Gabbard for supporting reparations, That criticism does not fly over my head, I hear it, and I absolutely agree with many of the criticisms pointed out, as do her own fans.
So I think there's a real challenge, and let me stress on, like, I want to reiterate my view of operations, just very clearly and quickly to the best of my abilities.
Social programs are good to alleviate certain problems.
However, in our country, we tend to see one, like Pruitt-Igoe, I could be getting my details wrong, but in general, project housing, the government doesn't take care of it.
They don't do a good job of taking care of people.
So while social programs can be beneficial, they have to be quick, and they have to expire.
So I'm a social liberal.
I believe the government absolutely plays a role in healthcare, in schooling, in welfare and things like this, but it's being done poorly, and it's corrupt.
And it may be a good argument that the government can't get over its own corruption, but I disagree.
I think it's just challenging, and we need safeguards, and it's probably one of the most difficult things to pull off.
Admittedly, the left-libertarian spectrum of the political compass is the most difficult position to be in.
It's easy to be a laissez-faire capitalist.
Let the market decide, and market forces take off.
But then we see big tech giants cause these problems.
The authoritarian spectrum, regardless of left or right, is bad.
Period.
Authoritarianism, bad, bad, bad.
Don't care.
But when you're in the, and easy, mind you, like these people who just, authoritarians, use force to subjugate people against their will, yeah, that's easier, isn't it?
In the left libertarian quadrant, you have people who believe we can implement real reforms and programs and community, cooperation-based community efforts to solve problems, you know, that exist.
The challenge is, it's not as simple as saying, hey, let's give people money.
And that tends to be the conversation.
How about, you know, we just pay people.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
That could make things worse.
So while it's easy to let the market decide when it comes to issues of reparations, I think the bigger question is social programs for the poor, and we have to make sure we're not feeding someone a fish, we're teaching them to fish to feed them for the rest of their lives.
The government can absolutely play a role in teaching people to fish.
But when the government plays a role in giving people fish, you don't actually solve any of the problems.
I hope that makes sense, right?
Basically what I'm trying to say is, Maybe people agree or disagree.
I think we should have government programs, and I think they should be ridiculously scrutinized, and they should always have an expiration date of a very short amount of time.
Maybe not always.
I don't want to be absolute.
We'll figure it out.
But this next comment, which I definitely want to highlight, says, I have three concerns.
There are many descendants of, in some cases, a single slave.
How does the actual fair amount from a single person get distributed among who knows how many descendants?
Right.
One, there could be 700 people today who are the descendants of one person.
It's difficult.
Say two, how do we undertake the task of digging through ancestry?
Completely agree, especially when even my ancestors weren't, for the most part, documented.
Like people didn't necessarily file the census and all these things.
So it's hard to know for sure.
Especially for me, on my mom's side, came from a different country.
No idea!
None, whatsoever.
Three, does the first repayment open the floodgates for legitimacy of a million and one lawsuits and litigation in the future over how whatever was decided upon as fair was not enough?
And not only that, where do we draw the line on what is or isn't just?
We can all certainly agree that our constitution has determined many things were unjust.
But the question is, if there are hundreds of descendants for single individuals, if we can't accurately track this, if some of these people have already become wealthy, I think we're just, it's been too long, and the real, the real solution for reparations is community engagement, is programs, is educational programs, is not giving money, but definitely allocating funding from wealthier neighborhoods that can afford it to poorer neighborhoods to repair infrastructure.
There is certainly a conversation to be had, but I am one who believes that if you have a city like New York, and you have a very wealthy area, excuse me, Where they have an overabundance of tax revenue, and then you have a really impoverished area falling apart with crumpling roads, you probably want to allocate some of that extra tax money from the Upper West Side to, like, Crown Heights.
Which they supposedly do, but, you know, I've lived in Brooklyn, and I've seen how these buildings are falling apart, and I understand there's no private investment for these things, and it's expensive, but maybe something needs to be done, because as a community, as a country, as America, we are only as strong as our weakest link.
While I think we've moved on from the identitarianism of the past, I do think there is a solution that is not race-based, that is class-based.
Let's get beyond the race stuff, okay?
That's near and dear to my heart because my family dealt with it.
Let's get to the point where we can say it's about your class and your education.
Because that will help many people of marginalized communities, but it will also help some poor white people.
Good.
If you're poor and you're unprivileged, then I think we can do more as a society to lift you up.
But again, final thought.
Teach to fish.
Don't give a fish.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
One more segment coming up.
It's probably already up.
I'll see you in a few minutes.
Or now.
I have to say, it's a really confusing story, and I don't necessarily know if it's important or not, but it made me think... I have some questions.
I'm very... I'm confused.
This story is from CNBC.com.
MasterCard launches true name cards to make paying with credit cards easier for trans and non-binary communities.
It's very simple, actually.
They found, apparently MasterCard found, that there's no legal requirement for you to have your legal name on your credit card.
To me, that's kind of a bad idea.
So for those of you who are familiar with banking or with the DMV, you can actually use your credit and debit card as a form of identification.
It's not as valuable as your actual state ID or driver's license or passport, but it is considered a form of ID.
If we can put whatever name on our cards we want, it kind of opens the door to really weird things, which I'll bring up.
We'll get to.
So before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash donate as this is a controversial issue and I may get, you know, censored.
There's a donation option through PayPal, crypto option, and physical address.
But of course, like, comment, share, subscribe, engagement really helps.
But let's get to the story.
MasterCard announced on Monday, June 17th, its True Name Card initiative, which will allow for chosen names to appear on the front of consumers' cards.
Many members in the LGBTQ community, particularly trans and non-binary people, have run into issues purchasing items with a credit card and been faced with discrimination.
In fact, MasterCard shared research that found nearly one-third of individuals who have shown IDs with a name or gender that did not match their presentation reported negative experiences, including being harassed, denied services, and or attacked.
And those things are all really bad.
And so I'm not saying I disagree with the idea.
I just want to present some of the conundrums.
But I do want to point out at least one thing.
I recently went to Atlantic City, and I had a good time.
Last time I was in Atlantic City, didn't have much of a good time.
That's a long story, but let's just say somebody was getting mugged, and there was fights.
But I went to Atlantic City, I won.
It was great.
I have a really great story, by the way.
But anyway, you see this facial hair, glasses, and beanie?
My ID has none of those things.
I'm not wearing glasses, I'm not wearing a hat, and my face is shaven.
So I look very different.
And guess what?
I got flack from basically everyone, because when you want to play, you have to hand your ID, they check it.
And I had one lady stare at my ID, and then look at me, and then hand the ID to her boss, and he stared at it, and they just stared at it for like 20 seconds.
I guess they were trying to see if I would flinch and run for it, and I'm just like, Whenever you're ready!
The point is...
It is not an issue of being trans or non-binary.
Sometimes you people don't trust your IDs and they don't believe your name.
And it's an issue of just not looking like your ID.
So I think this is what would be called pinkwashing.
Pinkwashing is when these companies embrace LGBTQ rhetoric or ideas in an effort to pander to the mainstream for press.
They want to look virtuous.
It's a virtue signal, right?
They also sponsored apparently This street corner that says, you know, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer, etc.
And then there's a plus street as well.
Nobody believes these companies are actually sincere in their beliefs.
Well, I certainly think it's fair to point out a lot of the employees probably really are.
I think we've become a particularly liberal society.
I don't mean liberals and left.
I mean liberals and, like, welcoming of freedom.
It's unfortunate that the left has kind of co-opted the word liberal, but I guess conservatives give it to them, too, and they call them liberals.
But no, like, liberal in true sense of the word, right?
Like, classical liberalism.
The idea of live and let live and freedom.
We've done a really good job of moving away from authoritarian dogma and into a more free society.
Unfortunately, we have the rise of authoritarians on the left, and, you know, that's not a good thing.
But, you know, so MasterCard probably does have employees who feel this way, but again, it's corporate nonsense.
Well, let's read on.
I want to point out the problems, so I don't want to rant.
It first starts with their name.
That's who they are.
That's their identity.
Randall Tucker, Chief Inclusion Officer for MasterCard, tells CNBC Make It.
With MasterCard TrueName, you can choose your name on your credit card, your debit card, and your prepaid card, which is amazing.
And that's just problematic.
I mean, so here's the thing.
Let's say a woman steals my card.
She can then just claim, oh, it's a true name card.
And then people will be like, oh.
They're creating precedent that your credit card shouldn't even have a name on it.
There's a reason your name is on the card.
So you can look in the back and look at a signature.
So I understand the desire to provide people the ability to be recognized as their name or whatever.
But perhaps the issue should be to have a card or to legally change your name or something like that.
If we create an arbitrary standard where you can get a credit card or debit card with any name on it, what's to stop me from making my name Dragonslayer?
I mean, that'd be really cool.
Like, imagine you're at a restaurant and the waiter comes back up and goes, Mr. Slayer, your receipt is available.
You can sign there.
Thank you very much.
I mean, that'd be pretty cool.
Maybe they wouldn't object to it, I don't know.
But I bring this up because then you're gonna see a lot of people putting a lot of weird things, and debit cards are tied to banking, and this is where we start getting, you know, wishy-washy with legalities.
Well, let's read on, let's read on.
MasterCard is hoping this initiative will spark conversation within the industry, and is urging other businesses to apply these standards, so financial products can reflect their owners' true identity.
We're paying it forward, not because it's in vogue, but because it's who we are as an organization, Tucker says.
MasterCard plans to have TrueName cards on the market by early 2020.
MasterCard also partnered with the New York City Commission on Human Rights to create an all-inclusive version of the iconic street sign at the corner of Gay and Christopher Streets in New York City's West Village.
Adding rainbow of street signs for each letter in the LGBTQIA plus acronym, This is just in time for World Pride, which takes place in New York City this June, and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
We're going to be one of those forces for good within our industry.
I'm pretty sure this story is new, right?
Yeah, from just a few days ago.
So I'll say this.
I want to make a few important points on social justice.
I have absolutely no problem with social justice activism.
There's a difference between social justice activism and what people refer to as social justice warriors.
Usually a social justice warrior is a grifter.
Somebody who claims to be fighting for a cause, who isn't?
When you look at a business like Mastercard, and they claim to support, you know, this, that, or whatever, yeah, I don't believe it, dude.
You're a corporation with stockholders and shareholders, and you're sitting in an office thinking, how can we generate positive attention?
Well, this is massively, you know, socially acceptable.
Let's talk about this sign, however.
I think it's actually great.
Absolutely no problems.
I think it's cool they did it.
This in no way is negative towards anybody.
And this is the important distinction when we talk about issues of social justice.
Are you dragging someone down so you feel better?
Or are you creating art and being a positive force for change?
I think it's wonderful that they want to create art that represents certain people who felt like they haven't been represented or had to hide who they are out of a fear of, you know, discrimination or violence.
And I'm glad that we live in a society that allows people to live and let live.
This also means, though, you have to let others live and let live.
And the social justice warrior types are those who would actually try to remove you from the community.
There's a meme that goes around.
I know I'm kind of deviating, but I've wanted to talk about this for a while.
There's a meme that goes around called the cycle of diversity.
Where it says, first, people say, hey, your space is exclusive and it's discriminating to us.
Once they're in, they say, hey, you should change this to be more accommodating.
Then they change it to say, you're a bigot, you shouldn't be involved, so go make your own space.
And the next one is, hey, this new space is discriminating, you need to let us in.
It's something like that, but you get the point.
What the big problem is, in terms of today's social justice, is absolutely none of this.
This, to me, I think it's all great.
More importantly, I think it's corporate pinkwashing where they're trying to pretend to be in favor of these things, so, no, it's not necessarily great, but no, no, no, but fine, fine.
If MasterCard wants to make it so you can put whatever name on your card, fine, whatever.
There's other problems, I'll talk about that in a second.
But these are positive things.
You know, when you see a movie like Wonder Woman, not to rehash old issues, but you're like, it's a positive thing, you have a strong female lead, it's a good movie.
Captain Marvel takes the negative, where she's mean, she like, breaks a guy's hand or something and steals his motorcycle, like, that's just being mean.
So I certainly think... I guess the point I'm trying to drive home is positive versus negative.
You know, we can be welcoming and inclusive of everybody, or you can have people who just want to wield power.
But let's get to the point about putting whatever name you want on whatever card.
The bigger problem here, in my opinion, is the loss of legal identification.
Where do we go from here if now banking is tied to no name?
Where do we go if your card has literally no name on it?
That's a security issue.
I don't necessarily know if it would matter.
I do think you'll see a ton of people exploit this, and I do think you're gonna see a wave of people- Like, I gotta be honest, I want this card.
Because I would put Timcast on it.
I would put a bunch of weird and crazy things.
Just because it's cool.
You know, I personalized my card to put puppies on it.
I would love to put like, you know, some funny name about animals or something.
Why do we need to have this?
And why do we need these special distinctions?
Is it that difficult for an individual to go to the DMV and just legally change their name?
I mean, that's a part of the process, right?
I understand if people don't want to do that, but I kind of think maybe you should?
I don't know if we're entering a point where, like, removing I mean, it's already... Let me back up.
I will say this, and this is probably a bit more controversial.
I think it does become problematic when you allow someone to change the M and F on their ID to fit their, like, identity.
And while I certainly want to respect the individuals who want to identify in a different way, there is a dramatic difference between a biological male and a biological female, regardless of if you're trans or not.
A trans woman is not a female.
You can argue that a trans woman is a woman, but not a female.
So what's happening is, while this to me is no big deal at all, for the most part, I recognize that there could be some issues with it, I think what we're generally walking into is an erosion of basic legal standards of why we classify people in the first place.
Maybe we shouldn't, sure, have that argument, but then we just saw earlier today that there was a civil rights complaint filed because biological females are made to compete against trans women.
So, long story short, You know, I don't know.
I thought this was really interesting, and so I wanted to make a video about it.
I don't know if it warranted it, but I thought there was a conversation to be had on a few different issues, and I don't want to rant because it's a relatively short story.
But to those who finally feel happy you're getting your true name on a card, you have my respect.
I mean no disrespect.
And for the argument about financial security, I think it's a bigger issue, so I'm going to stop talking now.
