Democratic Staffer Sentenced To Four Years In Prison For Doxxing Republicans
Democratic Staffer Sentenced To Four Years In Prison For Doxxing Republicans. An Ex Democratic aide was sentenced to 4 years in prison after pleading guilty in April. The Democrat had hacked into Senate computer systems to steal and publish the private information of five Republicans.He did this in part due to the response Republicans had toward defending Brett Kavanaugh. This person mayb have been financially motivated or ideologically motivated.These actions show how dramatic escalation has been over the past few years with even the judge in the case saying the country is polarized quite severely. Chuck Todd called out Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and was immediately slammed by the far left social justice activists online. As we see far left rhetoric seep into the mainstream and displace true liberals there is a concern that escalation will soon reach a tipping point.
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You know, I talk a lot about escalation, about the tactics, about the perception, about a potential for a coming civil conflict of some sort.
I don't know necessarily what that would look like.
But we have this story today from Politico.
A former aide to a Democratic senator has just been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to five different felonies.
Apparently, this aide hacked into computer systems and then released private information on five Republicans because of their response to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
So think about where we're at now.
You have somebody who believes the fake news.
They smeared Brett Kavanaugh with a bunch of stuff that was just not true, or even if it was 30 years ago, uncorroborated.
We have no way to act upon any of this.
No one knew what was going on, and several people recanted.
And this person then breaks into a computer system and releases the private information of Republicans.
Committing five felonies and pleading guilty.
To me, that's a terrifying escalation in the tactics and the perception.
Whether or not Brett Kavanaugh did anything wrong, this person truly believes the other is evil.
And as we see people like Ocasio-Cortez escalate their rhetoric, now it reaches a national level conversation where they're repeatedly using the language of war.
Interestingly, this leads me to finally An article I've pulled up from the Southern Poverty Law Center that accuses conservatives of doing quite literally what the Southern Poverty Law Center is doing.
So in this video, we're going to start with looking at what happened with this aid, why they committed this crime, why they targeted Republicans, but I want to talk about what I see as a continued escalation.
When it comes to any kind of conflict, you need to have demons, monsters on one side.
And if either faction or tribe views the other truly as a monster that is irredeemable, That's when you get to the point of no return.
For someone to break the law in this way and release private information, and one of the people affected was Rand Paul, who was physically attacked, you have to understand, this is where it gets scary.
We see people at Vox, like Carlos Maza, call for milkshaking.
Sure, it's low-level now, but there truly has to be a break.
This idea that the other is irredeemable before we escalate into something truly dangerous.
So, let's get started from the first story from Politico.
Ex-Hassan Aide sentenced to four years for doxing senators.
A former aide to Senator Maggie Hassan was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday for hacking Senate computers and releasing personal information online about five Republican senators out of anger spurred by their roles in the confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan said the sentence for Jackson-Costco, 27,
was needed to send a signal that criminal harassment driven by political motives
would be punished severely in an era marked by extreme political polarization.
And this is why I felt like this was a good entry into, you know,
the updates on the Ocasio-Cortez thing, because the judge said it.
Quote, we have a society that has become very vicious.
It's very concerning to the court and unfortunate that you played into that.
So the thing I want to stress here is that we're looking at right here in the story to say five felonies
after admitting that after being fired from last year from his work as a sysadmin for Hasan's staff,
he repeatedly used colleagues keys to enter the office, install keylogging equipment that stole work and personal
emails and downloaded a massive trove of data from Senate systems.
We're at the point now.
Well, look, we've seen low-level stuff.
We've seen milkshakes.
We've seen street violence.
But now what are we seeing?
Felonies, criminal hacking, and publishing of private data.
A government system.
This is an individual who felt they were morally justified not just to go after the Republicans, but to break into government Senate systems.
To use keyloggers that impacted more than the Republicans.
This is somebody who's willing to break, hack into the U.S.
government.
You see why this is so disconcerting?
Costco also acknowledged that after growing angry about the GOP's handling of the Supreme Court nomination, he released home addresses and phone numbers of Senator Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, and Mike Lee on Wikipedia.
After initial press coverage of that doxing, Costco released information about Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul.
We have this photo here of Rand Paul.
It says he gave a victim impact statement and that it caused him to fear for his family.
Yes, when people publish your address, and look, you've got to recognize these politicians probably have serious security details because they get death threats.
Then you have someone publish your address.
In the past few weeks, I don't bring this kind of stuff up.
You know, you don't hear this from me very often, but I get these threats a lot.
I do.
In the past few weeks, they've escalated, particularly following what happened with Vox Adpocalypse and Carlos Maza.
What you see from the people on the left is they'll rant and rave, they'll write article after article.
You know, they've written a bunch of articles about how after this doctor wrote a story about journalists connected to Antifa, they received threats.
I don't do that, but I get the exact same thing.
They don't care anyway.
It's all about playing the victim.
They view the other as this evil entity, and I want to stress here, it's paradoxical in a sense, it's ironic, it is, that I'm talking about this group of people in the same way they talk about me, and therein lies the great problem that I can even recognize.
I see a group of people It's not a very large group, it's a small fringe faction.
But they're doing things that are deplorable and detestable.
And I don't know what can be done to stop them.
This is an individual who committed five felonies over his personal morality.
When you see that, what do you do?
They say the exact same thing about us.
And so no matter what happens, when we want to point this out, it feeds into the same narrative.
We'll get to that story in a second though, so let's move on and get more into this, what's going on with Rand Paul.
Costco said he received a victim impact statement only from Paul, who said the event caused him to fear for him and his family.
It was a rather vicious offense, Hogan said.
That was totally unjustified.
We need to send a message out there.
We need to have some deterrent and community understanding.
Shortly before the sentence was handed down, Costco stood at a courtroom lectern and apologized.
I take full and complete responsibility for my actions.
I am embarrassed and ashamed for what I did.
Costco said that he'd been struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues, and that the judge's decision earlier this year to let him enter a treatment program was pivotal.
I firmly believe that it saved my life, he said.
This kind of reminds me of The Dark Knight, the Batman movie.
Where they talk about how the Joker preys on people who are mentally unstable.
And the reason that's important, like the reason I think of this, is that you're not going to see, for the most part, regular, run-of-the-mill, middle Americans engaging in this kind of behavior.
It really is going to be those who are truly unwell, who spark the... who ignite the flames of whatever conflict we're seeing.
There are a lot of people... I mean, look, you've been on Twitter, you've seen it.
They're unwell.
And they're extreme in their positions.
But because they play the victim, people on the left will give them sympathy.
Sympathy they don't deserve.
So, um, we'll read a little bit more.
I want to carry on to talking about this sympathy for tribes.
Prosecutors had sought a 57-month sentence while lawyers for Costco asked for a two-year prison term.
Hogan said Costco's actions put senators, their families, and others at risk.
You exposed them.
People may want to harm them in our polarized society.
Even the judge can recognize that we're in this dangerous space.
Prosecutor Demian Ahn said Costco's actions amounted to the largest data breach in Senate history.
These are deliberate and malicious crimes the defendant engaged in.
In his two-minute statement to the court, Costco said that he'd been struggling with substance abuse and we- and why do they repeat that in this story?
Anyway, let's move on.
Sorry, Politico repeated that.
The probation officer indicated he's lucky he wasn't dead, the judge said.
Defense attorney Brian Stolarz stressed that Costco had changed his life dramatically since his arrest in last October and cooperated with investigators, leading them to hidden evidence like computer equipment he stashed in an oven.
So I think we get the point, the point that I wanted to make in talking about the story, because there's a lot more that I want to get into that I think is extremely important in terms of tribal defense and escalation.
One thing that I thought was truly respectable was MSNBC's Chuck Todd.
He started trending on Twitter after saying Ocasio-Cortez's concentration camp comparison distracts from migrants' plight.
He called her out, said she was wrong, and he expressly criticized words and phrases she used, like saying, never again, which is a direct call to World War II Germany.
We know what it means, and she said it.
But now she's trying to act like she didn't.
In this story from Newsweek, they say, NBC News' Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd has taken flak on social media over a segment criticizing rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
He took issue with AOC's use of the term concentration camps to describe detention centers at America's southern border.
Good on him.
I don't want to accuse him of being a Democrat or on the left, but he is perceived that way.
And he talks about how people don't want to call her out.
People are so entrenched in tribalism that instead of saying, hey, you're wrong, don't do this, they just find some ridiculous way to defend her.
They say, oh, no, she wasn't really talking about this.
Some people say, oh, but the camps like this have existed from in the Boer Wars.
And you want to refer to all these past instances, but no, that's not what the phrase is referred to in today's nomenclature.
The connotation is specific.
We know what it means.
I know I talked about this quite a bit, but I want to stress this because you see someone like Chuck Todd standing up and pushing back against her, but I'll tell you what happens, right?
Amid the press, they say, Ocasio-Cortez's comparison to ICE detentions to
concentration camps did border detainees a tremendous disservice.
She said she didn't use those words lightly, Chuck Todd said.
Well, neither did I.
Chuck Todd said, That makes no sense in one breath.
He, uh, I believe that's what it says, quote, That makes no sense in one breath.
Chuck Todd- oh, I'm sorry, this is somebody else.
Todd faced a backlash on Twitter over the segment, and this is the point I wanted to get to, that even though we have mainstream principled individuals on the left saying, we gotta chill out on this, it's not okay to say this, people refuse, and they will come after you, and this is why people fall in line with their tribe.
And if you truly believe there are these concentration camps on the border, then what do you think is going to happen?
What do you think the next thing is?
We've seen somebody break into Senate systems and publish private home addresses of Senators, putting them in fear for their lives.
We've seen an escalated call for violence.
We've seen violence.
And now we see national-level Democrat rhetoric, Ocasio-Cortez, saying this is something, you know, concentration camps, never again.
You will get people who are unwell, as I stressed, who are going to step up and say, you're right, they really do believe they are in this World War II era.
They're not.
They are just stuck in an internet bubble of extremism, and they don't realize it.
Of course, Ocasio-Cortez then comes out and lies about what she was trying to say, and straight up, it was a lie.
Ocasio-Cortez said, never again.
She did.
We know what that means.
From the Daily Wire, they say, Ocasio-Cortez was angered by Todd calling her out and responded to him on Twitter saying, well Chuck Todd, the fact that you slipped in, I'll just call it the double N word from World War II, When I never said that is pretty unfortunate.
Almost as fortunate as the fact that you spent this whole time without discussing DHS freezers, dog pounds, missing children, and human rights abuses that uphold use of this term.
And they go on to say that it's a lie.
Ocasio-Cortez in her video specifically said, quote, never again.
That is a direct reference.
A direct reference.
We know what she's doing.
And so, I think the big issue here, as I mentioned earlier, tribalism, right?
You have people who refuse to back down, refuse to concede ever getting anything wrong, and because of that, and because it's tribal, we are entering dangerous territory in terms of escalating conflict.
So I'm now going to throw it over to the Southern Poverty Law Center, because they bring up really interesting points.
In this article from them, where they say that the radical right is blaming the left, they have a section called Preparing for Civil War.
They say, what makes the myth of the violent left so dangerous is that it not only creates a common enemy for those from the mainstream to the extreme right, but also justifies violence against those perceived enemies by providing a cover of self-defense.
It should be put plainly, what the radical right wants is violence.
So here's the important thing.
That paragraph right there should be enough.
They talk about, there's a series of YouTube videos talking about potential for civil conflict, of which I've made several, of which this is one.
And this is the fear I have, is that everyone feels as though they're the firetruck.
The Southern Poverty Law Center claims to be the firetruck to put out the fires of extremism.
But in fact, these statements, telling people on the left, the radical right wants one thing, violence, is quite literally a firetruck spraying fire.
When they talk about the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer and other people on the right saying there's a potential for a civil war, they're doing literally the exact same thing.
I don't know what the solution is.
Maybe it's pointing out the paradox.
It's pointing out the irony that quite literally you... I'll put it this way.
I think this may be the best way to deal with this.
There are absolutely elements on the fringe right who are extremely dangerous and have used excessive, you know, extreme force to end life and it's terrifying.
But then you absolutely have low-level, blunt-force attacks from the left, right?
So compare it to the use of Death by a Thousand Cuts versus one single act that, you know, is particularly, you know, extreme.
They both exist.
There's threats from both.
But you have the few and far between on the right and the many, many on the left.
The left is a collective.
Each individual is weaker.
But together, they are creating serious problems.
On the fringe right, we have these problems.
So my perspective is that I'm not super concerned with the fringe element of the right because there's so few of them.
If we have a decent security apparatus and law enforcement, We can catch these people and stop them, and we often do.
We look for these, you know, more, you know, extreme actors.
On the left, however, we have growing rhetoric from digital media.
We have growing rhetoric from individuals, activists, and celebrities to start committing these acts, to throw milkshakes.
It starts with milkshakes, but then you end up with someone breaking into Senate systems.
It wasn't a Republican who did that.
When you have these low-level, you know, skirmishes and low-level acts on the left, but over and over and over again, That is going to escalate things dramatically and much more quickly than these fringe elements on the right.
I look at this story from the Southern Poverty Law Center and I feel like they're just so... It's like I mentioned in the video I did before this on my second channel, that they live in an alternate reality.
Why, absolutely, you could criticize the fringe elements of the right for, you know, saying they live in an alternate reality.
Absolutely, there's just not that many of them and they don't really do anything.
The few that do exist are dangerous.
Absolutely.
We rely on law enforcement to stop this.
The low-level stuff is also terrifying in its volume.
Breitbart for a while maintained a list of all of the instances of harassment and assault on Trump supporters.
Since Trump started campaigning.
And I think at last count, like 6-7 months ago, there was over 800.
Which means, what, like 2 per day?
Or maybe 1-1.5 per day if we want to go back further.
I don't know exactly when they started keeping track, so if we're gonna assume 2016, then we're looking at almost one per day.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of low-level stuff.
How many major instances of, you know, violence have we seen from the fringe right?
We've had a couple, we did.
And they're particularly more dangerous.
So I think there's absolutely, you know, a reason to track those groups and make sure none of that stuff, you know, happens.
But that's true for anyone.
That's true for any crime.
I don't care why you're motivated to end someone's life.
We want to stop you from doing it.
It doesn't matter if it's political.
It doesn't matter if it's, you know, two guys who just, you know, cheating on a girlfriend or something.
We try and stop these.
But you also have religious acts.
They're not political, as Maajid Nawaz says, you've got the extreme left, right, and then from the heavens above, because you can't really define what the religious stuff is.
We want to stop all of it, for sure.
And so the left falls back on this, saying, aha, we can point to these one particular moments in time that were really, really bad.
But because the individual actions of the, you know, the left aren't as newsworthy, There's more of them.
They're also very bad and, you know, two things can be true at the same time.
They don't get the same coverage.
You know, I ask my friends, do you know about the bike lock basher in Berkeley?
They say no.
Do you know about the guy in Portland with a club with the Bernie supporter?
They don't.
Do you know about in Boston when they dragged the woman across the ground trying to rip the flag away from an old lady who was being dragged on the ground?
They don't know about this.
There's a bunch of other events that are a bit more extreme I could talk about, but I don't want to get too hardcore in that kind of conversation, especially because I think we're deviating from the original point.
So I wanted to highlight this, but let's get back to the main story and kind of wrap this up.
So that is not the main story.
We'll read the final conclusion here from Politico on the aide, Costco, who is now going to prison.
They say, asked about new charges.
So I guess they're talking about something else here.
Prosecutors say that Costco also threatened to release health information on Senators' children and appeared to engage in an extortion effort by declaring in one post on Paul's Wikipedia page, Send Us Bitcoins.
A spokesman for Hassan, Aaron Jacobs praised law enforcement for investigating and prosecuting Costco.
Senator Hassan is very grateful to Capitol Police and the U.S.
Attorney's Office for their work to bring this individual to justice for the crimes he committed.
Asked about the new charges against DeForest Davis Jacobs and Hassan appreciates the work of Capitol Police and U.S.
Attorney's Office in pursuing justice in this case.
So I guess there's a lot more... So it looks like what they're referring to is that DeForest Davis's keys were repeatedly used under the office, so there's potential something else there too.
I don't want to get into all that.
That's why I kind of stopped halfway, but...
Without making this video too long, the point I want to end with and just leave you with is that so long as people view each other as monsters, that creates the conditions for true civil conflict.
So long as people only focus on one group, that creates the conditions for civil conflict.
I understand why there are people on the right who are concerned with the left.
The left tends to go after run-of-the-mill conservatives.
I understand why the left is concerned with the fringe elements of the right.
They're extremely dangerous.
Both can be true at the same time, and we need to have an honest discussion about how we deal with it.
But in the end, what really scares me?
There's no mainstream media apparatus for the fringe right.
There isn't.
They've been pushed aside, and they're considered just gone.
But on the left, you have Ocasio-Cortez in Congress pushing this rhetoric.
They are truly in the mainstream.
Even right now, the Democrats want to pass border funding, and the far left is obstructing this.
This is what worries me.
This is why my politics lie where they lie.
We need to make sure, no matter what your ideology is, it is not acceptable.
Don Lemon goes on TV and says, talking about Trump, it starts with small lies and becomes something more dangerous and extreme.
Fringe far right.
But the same is true for the left.
The problem is, the left is tolerating the insanity.
Ocasio-Cortez should be shunned and called out, as Chuck Todd did.
But of course, for tribal reasons, they push back on Chuck Todd, the few, you know, one of the few principled individuals who's going to tell Cortez, no, you cannot say these things.
Of course there's people like me, of course there's YouTubers, but Chuck Todd is on the mainstream news, and he's pushing back, and they come for him.
That's going to disincentivize anyone else who would dare challenge the tribe.
And that's why I think these elements of the left are getting dangerous.
They're growing.
But it is what it is.
I'll leave it there.
I think you get the point.
Comment below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
Stick around.
More videos to come on my second channel, youtube.com slash timcastnews, starting at 6 p.m.
Further on the podcast, this is probably the first one, so you're gonna have, you know, five more or whatever, but thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all next time.
There's a very real possibility this YouTube channel will be shut down at some point, and potentially soon.
I think my main channel, which is YouTube.com slash TimCast, that it's not this channel, you are on TimCast News.
I think, you know, because YouTube puts the name TimCast in this, people get confused, but yes, there's a different channel, my main channel, with more subscribers, and people don't know that.
YouTube.com slash Timcast.
Subscribe there if you haven't.
There's a very real possibility this channel gets deleted.
Since the Vox Adpocalypse, and actually well before this, we have seen channels being purged, losing monetization, being kicked out of the partner program entirely, meaning you can no longer make ads, period, and some channels being outright deleted.
Recently the channel Black Pigeon Speaks Just deleted.
Channel in good standing.
Admittedly, I'm not familiar with Black Pigeon other than seeing the logo sometimes on YouTube, so I wasn't really familiar with what was going on.
But...
Community outcry channel got restored, and now I have a better understanding because in the wake, people have kind of reported what's happened.
So my understanding is that, you know, people say that Black Pigeon is kind of just like a conservative... I'm not really sure.
I don't want to, you know, falsely label somebody, but this is a channel that did nothing wrong.
Monetized.
In good standing.
Thanos-ed.
Just YouTube said, purge.
Steven Crowder said during the Vox Adpocalypse that We are facing a new apocalypse, that YouTube is going to start purging channels, and they are.
About a year ago, we saw a wave of mass demonetization.
What that meant was, full channels were switched from the green money icon, meaning all ads, to the yellow icon, only some ads.
You still make money when you are demonetized, right?
So we got to draw this distinction.
When I make a video, I make six videos per day, five on this channel and one on my other channel, which is, you know, it's labeled Tim Pool and this one's labeled Timcast.
Don't ask me.
It's on the right side of this channel.
If you click the name, you'll see it.
There's a bunch of channels.
But I faced a mass wave where they turned the green icons to yellow icons.
So you'll end up making 80% less than you normally would because now you only get beer commercials.
People who are willing to advertise on edgy content.
I don't know how the system figures out what should or shouldn't be monetized.
But this was what people were saying was demonetization.
They were like, oh, you know, so-and-so got demonetized.
And when they say that, we were referring to YouTube just going through, like, and every single one of your videos was now considered too edgy.
But you could still make money.
When you were demonetized in this capacity, you could still make money through YouTube Red.
YouTube Red is the subscription service, or they call it premium now, I guess.
So you'll still make a little bit of money.
However, now what we're seeing is channels are being outright removed from the partner program.
This is really worrisome.
You know, we're launching a new... You know, I'm expanding into a new news company.
I've got now four channels.
We're about to activate the fourth channel, which is going to be involving... Oh, I'm in the van, by the way, for those who haven't realized.
Yeah, it's up and running, so we're 99.9% done.
I'm really concerned, it's disconcerting I should say, that YouTube is doing this review process.
So I have this article that brings up some interesting points, and I should probably go through this to talk about what's going on, but there's a lot to talk about.
So I'll say this.
Many of you may not know this, but a year ago, YouTube started, at some point a year ago, started doing a manual review of all of these different channels.
They were stripping people from the Partner Program, but they were smaller channels, and so a lot of people didn't really notice or care.
Some people would tweet and say, you know, it's not fair, I've got, you know, 8,000 subscribers, I'd meet the threshold, why was my channel removed from the Partner Program?
And they would say, oh, you know, we'll review it, just let us know.
We're now at the point where channels with millions, Steven Crowder for instance, are removed from the Partner Program.
He'll be okay, he can sell his own ads, he has his own sponsors.
We're also now seeing mid-level channels.
I don't know how you describe the size of my channels.
This channel has 430k subs.
My main channel has 520.
But medium, not small.
You know, I've been working a lot.
Things have been growing.
But these are the channels that are now getting purged.
I think there's a very real possibility this could be one of them.
I think my main channel might be okay because I... Well, I'll just leave it there.
I don't want to get into too much nitty-gritty of, you know, backend and stuff like that.
But suffice it to say, this is essentially an apocalypse where they're going to be purging a ton of channels, and I think the reason for it is described very well in this video, which we'll read later.
This is from Tablet Magazine, The Coming Gentrification of YouTube.
David Auerbach writes, So he brings up some really good points.
of all the extremist content, just the stuff that doesn't make money.
So he brings up some really good points.
So, uh, let's just, let's just read some of it and we'll come and I'll,
and I'll, we'll talk more.
He writes Marshall McLuhan was wrong.
The moderation is the message that at least is the message one gets from reading
the New York times story about the phenomenon of YouTube radicalization,
of which there isn't really one.
The piece chronicles how YouTube sent a young man down a rabbit hole of
increasingly extremist right-wing videos, all the better for YouTube,
which kept him clicking all the worst for society.
In the end on the equivocal note that the man has successfully climbed out of a
right-wing YouTube rabbit hole only to jump into a left-wing YouTube rabbit hole.
Yes, that's true, because social media pushes people to the far left and the far right.
The moderate voices do really, really poorly.
Admittedly, maybe that's why YouTube likes me, and I think my main channel might be okay.
I don't think they know about this channel.
If they review it, it might just get knocked out.
They've already deleted one of my videos over what is presumably a legal complaint from Pinterest, which is terrifying.
Let's read on.
Fears around such radicalization have led many to insist that YouTube should go beyond its current policy of only removing extreme content that crosses hard lines of malicious harassment, hate speech, and child endangerment.
Felix Salmon in Axios argues for principles-based moderation, which would allow for ad hoc and non-precedential takedowns whenever it decides that a particular video is causing significant harm.
Let me rephrase that.
He's arguing for arbitrary enforcement.
Meaning, you'll have one person who says, I think you are harmful.
That's called bias.
We need free expression and free speech.
But, that's... Look, I know Felix somewhat, and I'm not surprised that people working in media have the opinion that there should be moral arbiters determining what you should or shouldn't be allowed to hear.
That's terrifying.
However, he goes on to say, granting YouTube such wide latitude to police content would fail to address the underlying problem.
No matter how much YouTube cracks down, it will still consider Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and even Steve Bannon to be uncensorable, authoritative sources, because like it or not, society considers them to be authoritative sources.
What many are asking of YouTube amounts to, please remove some of your harmful content, but only the unimportant stuff.
But lest we forget, YouTube is a profit-maximizing corporation, not an organ of representative democracy or the public trust.
Insofar as YouTube responds to public concerns about its content, the company will be guided not by the political conscience of its critics, but rather by a desire to limit liability while protecting its bottom line.
Period.
This explains exactly what we've seen.
Smaller channels getting purged, bigger channels being kind of left alone.
Crowder was the subject of a massive...
You know, um, media campaign.
So, there was really no- it was bad PR.
They came after him.
But Crowder also shows exactly what they're saying does make sense, uh, what David is saying is spot on.
Because, according to YouTube, Crowder broke no rules.
And Crowder gave several examples, like Trevor Noah making offensive racist stereotypes, and you have John Oliver and you have Samantha Bee, all using hor- you know, terrible insults and slurs, And if what Crowder did was against the rules, they'd have to ban everyone else too.
But YouTube still took his partner program, you know, kicked him out of the partner program, which shows it doesn't matter.
Even if you don't break the rules, YouTube will try to limit its liability and will cause you harm, even though removing Crowder from the partner program did nothing to satiate the thirst of the outrage mob.
So this is what I think is going to happen.
YouTube for the longest time has wanted to be Netflix.
I know this for a fact, because I know people at Google and YouTube, who told me straight up years ago, our biggest competition is Netflix.
And that's true in a certain way.
In the early days of YouTube, Vice was getting tens of millions of views.
Why?
There was nowhere to watch a digital documentary.
Netflix launched its digital arm, and all of a sudden you had premium content you could watch online, and YouTube saw that pain.
Vice videos started doing substantially less well, getting way less views, averaging down to hundreds of thousands to the low millions, as opposed to the 10 or 12 they were getting before.
Some even got 20 or 26 million.
There was a doc I did for Vice that got 5 or 6, which was great, but this was around the era that Netflix was starting to take over, and then all of a sudden we saw video views going down.
It helped Vice that they launched Vice News, and then all of a sudden you had big PR pushes for this content that existed on the internet.
But YouTube has been trying to make YouTube Netflix.
Here's what I think's going to happen.
I think the Partner Program is going to be stripped down to probably only a few thousand channels.
I don't know which channels, but I do know I'm probably not going to be one of them.
My channels rank around 30,000 to 38,000 of the top channels in terms of subscribers.
In terms of video views, I really have no idea.
Social Blade doesn't track monthly views, but I'm getting around 33 million views per month as of the past 30 days.
Which is fantastic, it's better than I've ever done.
So that may be good for something, I don't know.
But I know that YouTube wants... I mean, look.
What works on YouTube versus what YouTube wants to work are very, very different things.
Initially, I was making videos that were edited and you'd actually, you know, right now my face is cropped and you see the screen and I just, this is the thing that works for YouTube.
It's the same with Let's Play videos.
For those that aren't familiar, those Let's Play videos are basically Someone's face in the corner while the video game is playing.
I'm essentially doing something very, very similar, in that you see the news story, and then you see me talking in the corner.
This works for YouTube.
But this isn't John Oliver.
This isn't The Daily Show, where you have, you know, a host at a desk, and YouTube wants content like that, not content like this, but this is the content people want.
So we're experiencing an artificial gentrification.
I think YouTube is going to say, let's make everything more like TV.
I think the reason you see channels like Black Pigeon Speaks get deleted is because he doesn't show his face, he has a cartoon avatar, and a lot of successful political commentary channels hide their identities on purpose because of a fear of retaliation.
But that is not premium or mainstream.
These channels with cartoon avatars are not going to be on TV.
The regular people in America, it is assumed, this is outside of the mainstream.
They want to bring things back to the way they used to be.
They want that at-the-desk host.
So we're doing that a bit with Subverse, admittedly.
Possibly to our detriment, but there's a reason why I'm differentiating and doing different channels.
Uh, right now I'm in the van, and the goal is to do more on-the-ground, real conversation interview things, like man-on-the-street kind of stuff.
Because different formats, I'm trying to basically protect my ability to keep doing the work I want to do.
But I think what we've seen with, you know, all of these channels getting demonetized is that there is an escalating review process where the snowball rolling down the hill faster and faster results in channels just getting snapped, just getting removed.
I think the only reason you'll see a channel like Black Pigeon Speaks restored is because of community outcry.
But there are a lot of channels that were smaller, that nobody cried out for, because they were small.
And that's exactly what this Tablet article is basically saying.
He says that Tucker Carlson and Hannity, if you do the same content as them in the same way, you will probably get demonetized.
I kid you not.
Tucker Carlson called Brian Stelter of CNN a eunuch.
I really don't think, you know, that would get demonetized.
Outright.
But on Fox News, I mean actually I'll say this, Fox News Tucker's show got demonetized too because of political comments he made about immigrants.
That's a different issue.
The point is, YouTube determines what they think isn't advertiser safe regardless of what the advertisers are actually saying.
Advertisers say we don't want to be on controversial content, but controversial is changing every day because of the outrage mob.
So I think YouTube has decided just to get rid of everybody.
But here's the thing.
There's always some, I don't know, pros and cons for people on YouTube.
If this channel gets demonetized, that's, you know, the ad revenue from this and my main channel, it's a significant portion of my income.
I'll be okay.
But if this channel, you know, I don't know if I could continue the workload that I'm doing now if this channel was removed from the partner program or something like that.
It's possible.
I'd probably shift to a different style of content and try and figure something else out.
I think YouTube knows this.
I think YouTube doesn't like this content.
So I really have no idea.
I really don't.
So, instead of continuing this rant, I know I may have just dropped a point, but I want to read a little bit more because they talk about the New York Times piece, and they make a really important point about the mainstream's shield versus YouTube's willingness to just wipe you out.
So let's get this out.
So, uh, he makes reference to a video he was watching on artificial intelligence and how he got recommended David Icke, the conspiracy theorist.
He says, ironically, the New York Times boosted Icke's profile last year while interviewing author Alice Walker.
Walker raved about one of Icke's books, saying that in his books there is a whole of existence on this planet and several others to think about.
The Times defended the piece by saying that Walker was worthy of interviewing.
He says, it's dismaying to see Ike's ignorance and bigotry promoted anywhere, and yet an open
liberal society requires that we have the civic right to express, that he have the civic right
to express himself. The question is what responsibilities do platforms like YouTube
and the New York Times have to limit his exposure? Unlike the Times, YouTube has a softer method of
moderation.
It demonetizes videos so the creators can't profit from them.
YouTube will not place ads on videos or pay their creators for videos that don't meet a considerably higher bar of safe and offensive content.
Such videos are also penalized in rankings and not recommended.
Right-wing loudmouth Steven Crowder, subject of much controversy last week, has been demonetized.
He's been booted from the Partner Program entirely.
That Ike AI video has not.
Possibly because Ike does not talk about lizards or Jews in it.
The point I want to make is, what's dangerous about what YouTube is doing is that the mainstream is beating the hell out of YouTube and YouTubers and then hosting the exact same people they complain about.
The New York Times boosted David Ike's profile.
The New York Times puts these people on the news and they think they have the right to do it and then they run a front page story smearing YouTube and YouTube bends the knee.
Let me get back to the main point, because I don't want to make this a 40-minute video.
Not the main point, but a point I was going to make before is that there is a potential positive for those who survive if you make it.
I'll tell you this.
I think one of the reasons that YouTube is purging a lot of channels is because it was a big mistake of YouTube to open the Partner Program to everybody.
Initially, if you were on YouTube, you could get in the Partner Program as a select invite-only.
That allowed you to make money, and they did it for only select people, and it made sense because they vetted you.
They knew what kind of content you made.
Then they said, let's... anybody can do it.
Well, then you end up with really wacko videos getting ads on them, advertisers got mad.
But it did something else.
It meant that the supply of ad space became near infinite.
The demand for ad space will never, never reach the supply.
How many videos are uploaded every day, every minute?
How many minutes of content?
Well, there's not that many advertisers.
What happened was the cost of ads were driven down to a penny per view.
I kid you not.
One cent.
So you could spend a dollar and get a hundred views.
And that's pretty good for your average advertiser, especially if you're targeting by location.
There's just too much content.
But you're guaranteed the view, so supply and demand.
What YouTube is doing now is likely going to drive up CPMs for the creators that make it through the purge.
If you survive, you'll probably see your ad revenue skyrocket, which is good news for premium creators, and I think this falls back into the idea of gentrification.
I think they've planned this.
They view monetization as a privilege, not a right.
They want premium content, and it's not going to happen if people are getting one cent per view, and their CPMs are trash, and anybody can be in the partner program.
Presumably.
The amount of views I get, if they got rid of, you know, 50 million channels from the Partner Program, which they already did basically, it was like 80% last year or something, then there's no place for advertisers to spend, you know, to buy.
If there's only a thousand channels, of which I would never make the cut, Then CPMs are going to dramatically skyrocket as everyone starts competing for access to ad space.
There will still be cheap ads.
There will still be, you know, penny ads.
But for the most part, your average creator will make way, way more money, which presents the opportunity for way, way more premium content.
This is the coming gentrification of YouTube.
It's also why I believe that channels are arbitrarily being purged.
They need to cut the supply down, so the demand will stay the same, but they can artificially cut supply to drive up prices, and provide more resources towards their better creators, their premium creators, who can make money, and I think that's what's happening.
There's some other things I can't really talk about that I think lend more evidence to this.
For privacy reasons, I'm gonna avoid this, but let me just say there's some behind-the-scenes things that I know about that make me feel YouTube is doing hard audits on channels.
I'm talking about a literal handful of people in Silicon Valley sitting down, going through people's videos at a high level.
I'm not, you know, when they do these reviewers and the algorithmic stuff, they have like low-level outsourced jobs.
But I'm saying right now, I believe that they're, based on some conversations I've had, and I talk with people at Google, That there's internal Google staff at a high level that are manually going through channels.
It's not going to be a blanket sweep, because if they just snapped their fingers and purged, you know, and literally did a Thanos of all of YouTube, people would shriek in outrage.
But every day another channel is stripped, every day another channel is banned, and they're doing it with small channels every so often to avoid PR outrage.
Why was Black Pigeon Speaks restored?
Because the outrage became too much bad PR, so they had to backpedal and call it an accident.
I don't even know if they said anything, it just came back.
They've demonetized other channels, and they're trying to avoid mass public outrage.
So, you know what?
YouTube has created a system that's built an economy, and it's going to be devastating to a lot of people.
You know, I've built a career on YouTube over the past two years.
I'll be fine no matter what happens.
If my channel got deleted overnight, I would seriously, seriously be fine.
It's not like I don't have other job offers, but I probably wouldn't work in media if that's the case.
This is like the extent of my willingness to work in media at this point.
I don't want to go and work for any of these companies.
So if YouTube cuts it out, then, you know, that's probably it.
There's other jobs in certain areas that have been offered, and that would probably be what happens.
But YouTube... It's hard to say.
Does YouTube have a right to remove people from the Partner Program?
They do!
I don't think monetization is a right.
It is a privilege.
I think so long as they recommend you, then if people like your content, you can find ways to monetize.
But admittedly, YouTube's automated system for monetization is massively powerful and effective.
If YouTube strips your ads away, then they'll start recommending more of their premium content creators.
They want to be Netflix.
Look at it this way.
Final thought, this is a long video.
YouTube tried doing originals, and some of them worked.
YouTube tried paying YouTubers to make a series, right?
They gave money to people like, I think PewDiePie got something, you know, the Game Theory guys got stuff, and they're trying to make premium shows.
They want to compete with Netflix.
I think they realized, however, this artificial attempt wasn't working.
There are some YouTube originals that were smash hits.
Cobra Kai.
I haven't watched second season, but Cobra Kai first season was really, really good.
The funny thing is, Cobra Kai could never be made on YouTube by independent creators, because they would just broke all the rules.
It'd be demonetized, it'd be stripped, you know, there'd be a controversy around it.
So by getting their corporation behind it, everybody was okay with it.
So it's going to be an interesting problem, but I think YouTube's learned artificially trying to pay, you know, trying to pay YouTubers to make a new show didn't work.
You need organic growth.
You need that development over time to figure out what works.
So I think what they're going to do is they're going to purge everybody and, you know, I don't want to rehash all the same ideas.
Long story short, I think it's very, very possible this channel will get, you know, be put on the chopping block.
We'll see what happens, but the Purge is upon us, and I don't know, just a rant I felt like doing, so stick around.
Next video will come at 1pm.
Again, I'm in the van.
Spent the first night in it as a trial run.
I'm not in the wilderness or anything, I'm actually still technically at home, but I wanted to see how the airflow would be, how the lighting would be.
And this is actually a trial run before we take it on the road, so I've got to make sure I can actually do the videos.
There's actually been some issues, but for the most part, I think it's working.
And yeah, stick around.
Next video will be at 1 p.m., and I will see you all there.
Yesterday I reported on the Democratic U-turn to finally provide funding for border security, and we've got an update.
It's more just so the in-depth version of what's going on with Democrats, but I thought it'd be really important to look at because, from the hill, House Democrats are close to finalizing a border aid bill.
House Democrats on Wednesday said they will move forward next week with funding legislation that addresses the surge of migrants at the southern border.
Democratic lawmakers say they are close to an agreement, which has been stalled for weeks in response to the Trump administration's request for $4.5 billion in emergency funds to help agencies handle the influx of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Let me stop now.
I wanted to give you the gist of it, but now let's talk about why this is so important.
It's not just about finally border security being taken care of.
It's about how wrong Ocasio-Cortez is.
It's about how wrong Nadler is.
And all of these people that jumped on the bandwagon to defend Ocasio-Cortez's insane rhetoric about concentration camps.
You can eat your words.
Because now the Democrats are finally recognizing they have to do something about this.
Plain and simple.
It also shows us that they live in some kind of magical fantasy land.
Look, there are fantasy lands for various different tribes.
I know people who are flat earthers.
They live in a weird world.
And they believe ridiculous things.
There are people who live in crazy conspiracy nonsense worlds about reptiles and, you know, holes in Antarctica.
Whatever.
But there is an objective reality which we can look at to the best of our abilities.
When Ocasio-Cortez goes on the internet and says something nonsensical, and then everyone piles on because they're all about tribalism, you can recognize this group of people, they don't live in reality.
There are regular Democrats, regular Conservatives, they live in reality.
There are absolutely fringe people on the right, but there are a lot of people on the left.
And I always find it really funny.
There was a thread on a social justice Reddit where they were talking about how Conservatives live in an alternate reality.
And then they wanted to talk about weird conspiracy theories.
And I'm like, if you think Conservatives are the people who believe weird conspiracy theories, you live in an alternate reality.
And it's actually this really interesting inversion where They look at the border, and they see World War II Germany.
The Democrats, like the actual, like, regular old, like, most Democrats, are now capitulating and saying, okay, fine.
There's a problem, we'll deal with it.
But they still, like, here's the point I'm trying to make, and then we'll read more of the story.
Ocasio-Cortez clearly doesn't live in objective reality.
If she's going to double down on her comments, and she has, after being called out by even Chuck Dodd, she's doubled down, that'll be the next segment though, I got a bigger story coming up in terms of politics, but sure, Even after all this, there are people who live in a weird social media Wall-E world of some sort, where it's like everything's Skittles and rainbows, and then outside is the fringe alt-right coming to get ya.
And that's just not reality.
So let's see what the Democrats are doing.
They say the developments came as the Senate Appropriations Committee advanced bipartisan legislation Wednesday in response to the administration's request.
That measure is expected to hit the Senate floor next week.
House Democrats say they intend to advance their own bill next week before lawmakers leave town for the Independence Day recess.
Rep.
Nita Lowey, a Democrat from New York, head of the House Appropriations Committee, said she and her colleagues have concerns with the Senate bill as currently written.
I don't see what's wrong with that.
to finalize legislation to address the humanitarian crisis at the southern border
with a view to bringing a House bill to the floor next week.
A Democratic aide said there are concerns regarding protections for migrant children
and the inclusion of Defense Department funding in the Senate bill.
The measure would provide $145 million to the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army National Guard
for their involvement in the border response, including medical assistance and mobile surveillance.
I don't see what's wrong with that. Please explain it.
The House is in the process of plowing through its annual spending bills for fiscal 2020, which starts October 1st.
But Republicans have been hammering Democrats for weeks of inaction on the President's emergency request.
They argue the money is needed by early July to ensure the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, doesn't fall short on funding.
They're literally days away from running out of money to have the funding they need to take care of these young children with serious health issues, said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise.
Oh, so now it's the Republicans who can't get on board.
He said Democrats might want to move forward with their own bill if Republicans can't get
on board.
Oh, so now it's the Republicans who can't get on board.
Sure.
There's a crisis and we need to deal with it and we want to deal with it, Hoyer said.
Wow.
After all this time, Trump requested, I believe it was $4.5 billion, a little while ago, and
the Democrats have repeatedly obstructed.
So good on them for finally now stepping up, but it's kind of funny when you see them say, Trump made the problem worse, but we're going to give Trump money anyway.
And now, going back to that point about the alternate reality, I think there's a trickle-down effect from the inability to solve problems from all politicians that trickles down to those who live in weird worlds.
When you have an influx of migrants, and then you take a lot of these migrants and refugees and just, you know, place them in a small town, you now all of a sudden have a small community seeing rapid change and a bunch of people they'd never met forced on their community, and they don't understand this.
I certainly believe that we are humans, we can all learn to get along, but I'm not surprised.
They're shocked their community has changed rapidly, and that trickles down, due to the inability to solve the problem, to more of the fringe right positions, alt-right, whatever you want to call it.
On the left, however, the Democrats don't give Trump what he asks for, resulting in children getting sick and dying, which is rather tragic and unfortunate.
And then what happens?
Ocasio-Cortez says, oh my god, Trump's a fascist and they're operating concentration camps on the border.
Well, the only reason the conditions are bad is because the Democrats didn't provide the funding that was requested.
And so here we are in this position now where you have the wackos on Twitter recycling this insane rhetoric all because the Democrats didn't want to get on board with Trump in the first place.
Look, I don't know what the problem is, but I'll tell you what.
They can blame Trump for making it worse.
That doesn't make sense because now they're going to give him the money he's asking for.
If you thought he made it worse, why would you give him more money?
I think what we're seeing here is the sad truth.
That if the Democrats stepped up in the first place, we wouldn't be facing this problem.
But I made all those points, so let's read on and just see where we're at so far.
GOP lawmakers have been shown draft text for the bill Democrats intend to put on the floor next week, according to a Democratic aide.
A major sticking point in the House stems from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, there we go, where lawmakers are concerned that the bill could end up funding the administration's deportation policies.
This is absolutely insane to me, and this is exactly what I'm talking about.
These progressive, Twitterati, fringe leftists who live in some magical reality they made up.
Appropriators are trying to assuage those concerns by ensuring the funding can't be used beyond the purposes of humanitarian aid.
We should provide the humanitarian assistance necessary to change the conditions along the border, particularly as it relates to immigrant children.
Look, I want the children to be in a better circumstance, but you can't just keep throwing money at the problem, and this is the big problem Democrats always have when it comes to government programs.
Here's how I explained it, and if you're a frequent listener to my videos, Government programs can work, right?
It makes sense when the government steps up and says, we're gonna put a band-aid on this wound.
You need something to help the wound heal.
But what happens a week later?
Do they peel the band-aid off, clean the wound, and apply a new bandage?
Or say, it's healed and we're good to go?
No.
They slap another band-aid on the festering wound and they keep doing it.
We've got a problem.
Kids are getting sick and dying.
People are getting sick.
We don't have the resources at these facilities.
Okay.
Conditions are bad.
How about you give Trump the money he asked for for these facilities?
The New York Times agrees, right?
Again, not just coming from out of my head.
It's coming from major publications, the editorial boards.
You didn't do it.
We'll do it now.
What happens?
You end up with the progressives saying, you know what?
We don't want to deport people.
We just want humanitarian aid.
Great.
Do you know what's going to happen then?
People will still be incentivized to come.
Okay?
And I get it.
America's great.
But basically what you're saying is, if you come, we will provide you with clean, safe accommodation.
So they're flying from Africa.
I kid you not.
They've got Congo, to Angola, to Brazil, and then traveling up through Brazil, through Mexico, Central America, and then coming to our border because you have rhetoric like this.
You need to have both.
We provide aid to those who are here now and figure out what to do to make sure that they're not in squalor and dangerous conditions, but we must disincentivize the people from coming here.
So you do need to send people back if they're trying to enter the country illegally.
Of course, the Democrats want their cake and they want to eat it too.
Well, I'll tell you what's going to happen, and I think most of you watching probably get this.
If the Democrats provide funding for humanitarian aid without the ability to enforce the border or deport people who are here illegally, I'll tell you what, more people will come, more people will expect that handout, and it will only make the problem worse.
Teach a man to fish or feed a man a fish, right?
As the saying goes.
If you're just saying free stuff at the border, you know, we'll take care of you.
It won't be perfect, but hey, it's not going to be so bad.
You might get into America.
Then why wouldn't they come?
The problem we have now is the Democrats need to figure out how to work with Republicans to disincentivize this behavior.
You know, Trump wants to build a wall.
I think the wall is a rudimentary solution to the problem.
Sure, people won't be able to get past the wall, but they'll go other ways and there will eventually be wall breaches.
And while, you know, we've seen borders built in Europe and other places.
Yes, they've worked.
I think we need a comprehensive package here.
We need policy.
We need border security, we need law enforcement, and we need humanitarian aid.
All of these things have to come together.
We can't just do one.
And I gotta admit, though, it sounds like what we're seeing now is the Democrats and the Republicans, for the most part, have a bipartisan bill that could do both, but it's the far-left Democrats that are going to obstruct because they don't want border enforcement.
Welcome to, you know, politics in 2019.
Like I mentioned in the beginning, these people live in some alternate reality where they don't think about the ramifications for their actions.
Should the U.S.
taxpayer be funding the humanitarian aid for these people?
The answer is a resounding YES!
But it's very simple.
You can't stop there.
Plain and simple.
I think we should help people.
I do.
I think we have a problem.
I partially blame the Democrats because they've ignored this and they refuse to fund it.
We can't leave people living in these horrifying conditions.
They're not concentration camps.
That's absurd.
They're temporary detention facilities.
Yes, parents are being separated from their kids.
I think that's detestable, but I don't know what else you do.
When people, you know, are being held, what do you do?
We know for a fact, it's been reported in the press, that there are people who have children who aren't theirs.
What do you do?
You want to stop traffickers?
Great.
We can't just assume the kids belong to the parents.
It's complicated.
But please, can we do something?
You know, this is the problem with these far-left Democrat types, right?
The position Trump has on the border is akin to... It's a bit more bold.
It's similar, but more...
I don't want to say it's worse, it's more expensive, and it's a step up from where the Democrats were in 2007 or 8.
Democrats say, we want to build a border barrier.
Trump says, I want a big beautiful 30 foot high wall made of concrete.
And then he capitulates, you know, he gives in and says, okay, we'll do a bollard fence.
Fine.
It's a very similar position to Democrats 10 years ago.
But where are the progressives going?
You wanna act like Trump is going far right and he's going crazy?
He's talking like Bill Clinton did, man!
Deporting immigrants.
Obama, they called him Deporter-in-Chief.
You know, so everyone talks about the Republicans going off the deep end, and I'm like, dude, I gotta say, man, securing our borders, it's a majority American position, and it's only the progressive Democrats who are obstructing.
Okay.
I don't wanna make this video super long.
The point is, you heard me rant about where we're at right now, and it seems like the main issue is, You know, if come 2020, a lot of these far-left types get re-elected in the Congress, coming up in the next Senate elections, if we keep seeing this far-left wave, it's going to get bad.
They don't seem to understand how economics works, and it makes sense.
They're socialists.
Not all of them, but they're, you know, Cortez is a democratic socialist.
They seem to think that a command economy can control the flow of value, and it can't.
No committee is going to have the computational power of a distributed system of people determining what is or isn't valuable.
However, a free run, a laissez-faire system of people just spending will spend things eventually in really dangerous ways, and you'll see the rise of monopolies and powerful oligopolies that restrict speech, and it's happening.
We need a happy medium.
The socialists are wrong, but guess what?
We don't really have that many laissez-faire capitalists in Congress, in the Senate.
They're mostly like moderate right-wing people, and there's moderate left-wing Democrats, but now we have this left-wing of socialist far-left types Who are just going to... You know, you look at California.
They've got a massive homeless problem.
What do they do?
Provide funding for healthcare for illegal immigrants.
You're not going to pass your housing bill to house your own citizens.
This is the problem I see with the far-left types, okay?
Democrats, the moderate ones, have finally come around to support, you know, solving the crisis.
Good on them.
They were late to the party, but at least they're here.
Now the progressives aren't.
So you know what?
Nah, I'm not surprised.
Stick around.
I got another video coming up which is gonna get, um, more, uh, the next video coming up at 4 p.m.
on my main channel.
For those on the podcast, it's probably already played.
But this is gonna be about, um, kind of the escalation and tensions rhetoric and political attacks and things like that.
And this includes, you know, a conversation about immigration and AOC.
So, uh, stick around.
YouTube.com slash Timcast at 4 p.m.
Eastern, and I will see you all there.
After those comments by Ocasio-Cortez about the camps on the border, if you know what I'm talking about.
If you don't, you just look it up.
She made a bunch of nonsensical statements.
I'm seeing a ton of people defend what she said.
We all are.
But a lot of people who are seeming, you know, I would presume to be rational saying, oh, but they're asylum seekers.
They shouldn't be detained.
They shouldn't be separate from their kids.
Okay, listen.
There's a few things that need to be made clear.
Just because someone comes to the border with children doesn't mean those children belong to that person.
In fact, it's quite possible that those kids are being trafficked.
How do you figure this out?
Do we just let the traffickers do their thing or do we try and stop the trafficking?
It's a big problem.
We have this story from Fox News.
Hundreds of migrant caravan members found to have U.S.
criminal histories.
Is that surprising to anybody?
What this means is, people have come to this country, broken the law, been sent home, and they're trying to get back in.
Of course, like I mentioned, or I think I did, you've got Democrats, you've got the far-left Democrats, who are obstructing this bipartisan bill, and they don't want people to be deported.
So what do you do?
Let's take a look at this story and talk about the issue.
And the main point that I'm trying to drive home here is that just because someone comes here doesn't mean they are an asylum seeker.
They will lie to you.
Not all of them.
But certainly there are people who will pretend to be seeking asylum so that you give them access to America.
Listen.
You have people flying from Africa to Brazil, as I mentioned in the previous videos, those are not asylum seekers.
Criminals who have been deported are not asylum seekers, okay?
I mean, they can be, for sure.
Don't get me wrong, there's a nuance here.
It's not just black and white.
Maybe they went home and then someone said, hey, you're a criminal, and then they left, right?
The point is...
People are trying to defend Cortez by claiming that the thousands, the hundreds of thousands of people are just here for asylum.
They're not.
They're economic migrants, okay?
And I understand you want to help them.
I do too.
This is not the way.
There was a story in Vox.
V-O-X, not Fox.
Where they interviewed some of these people who said, I miss Buffalo Wild Wings.
I miss PlayStation.
That means, for one, they're not asylum seekers.
And two, they were previously deported and want to come back because they want chicken wings.
I am not being hyperbolic.
That was literally published as a quote from an interview with a migrant in the caravan on VOX.com, the left wing, the liberal site.
It's a progressive website.
Okay?
It's not, it's not, it's, it's... My mind is blown when we see stories like this.
Okay, so let's read the story.
Otherwise, I'm gonna rant like I have been.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com if you'd like to support my work because things have been pretty, I don't know, scary on YouTube.
There's a PayPal option, a crypto option, and a physical address where you can send me things.
But let's get back to the story and figure out what's going on with these migrants.
Fox News writes, Hundreds of illegal immigrants attempting to cross the southern border as part of massive migrant caravans were found to have criminal histories in the U.S.
according to newly obtained DHS documents.
The files were provided to the House Oversight Committee Republicans in May and included internal data showing more than 1,000 migrants traveling as part of caravans to the border within the past nine months had U.S.
criminal histories and hundreds of U.S.
criminal convictions, okay?
These are people who are already breaking the law.
So you know what?
I'll say this.
Trump was wrong when he said they're not sending their best.
Well, hold on.
They're not sending anybody at this point.
These are people who have already been kicked out trying to come back.
It's not about anybody sending anybody.
It's not about not sending the best.
It's about, literally, they're criminals.
And I want to clarify, too.
Some of the criminal histories could be, you know, illegally entering the country or something like that.
But I think it's fair to point out we do know for a fact there are people who break the law and get deported and come back.
The files detailed one migrant caravan of nearly 8,000 individuals that started toward the border
back in October in 2018 and arrived at this arrived south of California by December.
Excuse me.
According to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 660 of them had U.S.
criminal convictions, with 40 convicted of assault, an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and three convicted of murder.
In January 2019, U.S.
CBP tracked another caravan that left Honduras with more than 3,300 migrants.
ISIS Homeland Security Investigations team identified 860 of those individuals had U.S.
criminal histories, including more than 20 convicted of assault or aggravated assault
with a deadly weapon, nearly 30 convicted of, we'll call them, Me Too offenses,
Two convicted of violence against law enforcement, and one convicted of attempted murder.
Listen, okay?
I want to make sure that we always talk nuance, and the shades of grey, as it were.
Many of these convictions are probably just for entering the country illegally.
Let's be real.
And you're going to see the left try and defend the migrants and refute this content by saying just that.
But don't let them.
Because we're not talking about that.
If someone gets deported, of course they're going to try and come back in illegally because they've been deported.
It's going to be difficult for them to come in legally.
But we're talking specifically about those who have committed actual crimes.
Assault, theft, etc.
They get deported for those reasons.
That's who we're talking about.
While the numbers probably, you know, are more heavily those being deported, the criminal histories being for illegal entry to the country, these people exist.
So it really, it's really frustrating when, when I say, you know, there was a really funny meme or point someone made.
They said you can't call these, you know, you can't refer to these camps as though it's like World War II Germany if people have the option to just turn around and go a different direction, right?
They're choosing to come here and they're going to these camps.
But the point is, as much as I don't want anybody to be suffering at all, and I think we do need to rectify this problem and provide better resources to these facilities, everyone immediately jumps on their not-illegal immigrants and their asylum seekers.
That is the rhetorical device they use to defend people who are trying to enter the country illegally.
Where are the Democrats of 10 years ago?
Why did they drag their feet on getting this bill to the Republicans to actually solve this problem, making the problem worse, in my opinion?
Democrats of 10 years ago had no problem calling this out.
No, it is not far right to say the United States has borders, but that's what they're trying to play now.
And when you say, hey, these are illegal immigrants, they say asylum seekers.
When you say illegal immigrants, they say immigrants.
They write this story and say immigrants were detained.
Immigrant is somebody who comes to the country and files their paperwork, an illegal immigrant or an undocumented entrant.
These are people who are running through the border so that no one knows what they're doing or where they're going.
That's different.
Okay, let's read on.
The documents provided to House Oversight Republicans also revealed that CBP is currently monitoring another movement of several groups ranging in size from 1,000 to 4,000 in the Mexican states of Chiapas and Veracruz.
They're currently doing this.
There's two more caravans.
But it did not specify how many of those migrants are believed to have criminal records.
I don't think that's important.
I think what's important is the caravans haven't stopped.
The Democrats are finally now getting on board and think about how crazy it is.
When the first caravan started coming with a few thousand people, these are people who are going to be put in camps, okay?
They're going to be put... maybe camps are the right... detention centers, right?
I'm not trying to play that rhetorical game.
What do you do?
What else do you do?
Just let them wander through the desert?
You can't do that.
They get sick and they die and then the left gets mad again.
Now finally the Democrats are on board, so that's good news.
They're being obstructed by the far left, I get it.
But think about this, even after everything Trump has done, even after the tariffs and everything with Mexico, even after Democrats are coming on saying, okay, we'll put together this bill, two more caravans with thousands of people.
I don't know how you disincentivize this behavior, right?
It's bad for everyone.
But the fact is, it's not stopping.
And that's why I think it's important to bring up, talk about, In a letter to DHS Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan on Thursday, Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, requested further information about caravan members with criminal backgrounds to assist in their oversight of the crisis at the southern border and better understand the threat posed by large caravans.
Jordan requested arrest warrants, court documents, and other materials detailing the criminal histories of the migrants in the January 2019 and October 2018 caravan, an update of CBP's monitoring of the caravan movement in Mexican states, and summaries of ICE-HSI materials by July 5th.
In his letter, Jordan referred to President Trump's decision in February to declare a national emergency, and referred to his comments that the southern border is a major entry point for criminal gang members and illicit narcotics, threatening core national security interests.
The newly revealed DHS information comes amid a stunning surge across the border this year.
Last month, the number of migrants apprehended at the southern border skyrocketed to levels not seen in over a decade, with CBP reporting nearly 133,000 arrests in May.
The number surpassed 144,000 when counting migrants deemed inadmissible, more than a 30% increase from the prior month, and double the influx recorded at the beginning of the year.
The number was the highest monthly total in more than 13 years, officials says.
We are in a full-blown emergency, acting CBP Commissioner John Sanders said earlier this month.
In April, authorities recorded 99,304 arrests.
99,304 arrests.
So I will add this to the story.
I think we can point this out over and over again.
You know, I've made numerous videos talking about this issue, but I will stress right now, so long as we have the moderate Democrats on board and Republicans, I think we're not in dire straits completely.
I think this can be turned around, and I don't think the end is nigh.
We'd still have to contend with the far-left Democrats.
They're obstructing.
You know, they don't want any deportations.
But when you see the numbers like this, then, you know, it's good to know that something is happening.
So I kind of feel like we're on the downturn now, and things are going to get solved.
But I want to make one thing clear at the point of this video.
We all get it.
We all know there are criminals in these caravans.
It's been reported before.
But I'm saying this because I'm sick and tired of all of the tweets, all of the rhetoric from the left saying, asylum seekers.
No.
They're not.
They're people who came here, got Buffalo Wild Wings and video games.
Not all of them.
They're asylum seekers, for sure.
We want to protect the asylum seekers.
We want to protect the refugees and those most vulnerable.
And if people just want Buffalo Wild Wings, and that's why they're coming, they're displacing true asylum seekers.
So, I'll leave the story... I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
More segments to come in just a few minutes, and I will see you soon.
Michael Moore was 100% correct in 2016.
Hold on.
It's been a long time since I've seen the news, so I'm pretty sure he was right.
He said Trump was going to win.
And he warned people.
And he's been warning them ever since because you can see the lines being drawn.
You can see Trump's base is still here.
You can see that people are showing that he's raising, you know, what did he raise, like $24 million in a day?
Well, you don't have to like Michael Moore.
Warren's Democrats. Trump hasn't lost one inch of his fired-up insane base.
Well, you don't have to like Michael Moore. I think he's in a particularly weird situation
where he used to be a voice for the white working class.
You know, he did those documentaries about unions and he's from Michigan.
And a lot of the people that vote for Donald Trump, and even voted for Obama in the past, he spoke to them.
Their jobs were lost.
Manufacturing was lost.
And now he's just decided for tribal reasons to stay on the left.
I think none of that matters.
Principle matters.
But I'll say this.
There was a, you may remember this, there was a conversation, it was part of a play or something, or some kind of, I don't know, stage presentation that Michael Moore did, where he said, Donald Trump was going to win, and it would be the biggest F.U.
to the establishment.
And it was this really, really great speech, you know, talking about manufacturing jobs, etc.
I'm pretty sure it's been a while since I watched it.
And everyone actually cheered it on, saying it wasn't even necessarily that he was supporting Trump.
He was saying this is what's going to happen.
People are going to vote for him as an F.U.
and they're gonna do it again.
You know, it's really interesting that we're seeing the same thing start to play out.
I really do believe Trump will win, not just because of my opinion, because of, you know, economic forecast models, historical trends.
You know, Trump's the incumbent.
The economy is doing really, really well, so people think it's he's going to win.
But we're seeing these polls pop up where they're like, Biden is beating Trump, et cetera, et cetera.
And it's like, yeah, I don't know, man.
We saw the same nonsense with Hillary Clinton.
Why should I believe you this time?
Well, guess what?
Michael Moore is saying it once again.
And you know what?
I'm gonna take his word for it.
You know why?
Because as I mentioned, Michael Moore knows the white working class.
He does.
Whether or not he's gonna speak up in their defense today, I don't think so.
But I think he really does understand them.
I think he does.
So, Daily Wire writes leftist propagandist Michael Moore has returned to warn Democrats about the loyalty of President Trump's insane base.
In response to the president's rousing campaign announcement on Tuesday night, Michael Moore warned the 2020 hopefuls that Trump's influence has not diminished among his base of supporters.
If anything, it's gone up.
We'll talk about it in a second.
Advising that whoever takes up the sword to slay the orange dragon better be ready to face his hungry hordes of Lay's Deplorables.
That's- that's a good one, actually.
I watched the whole thing last night.
The filmmaker tweeted on Wednesday.
I know no one wants to waste that kind of, uh, wants to waste that kind of time even looking at him, but not wanting to see the enormity of the fight ahead doesn't make it go away.
He hasn't lost one inch of his fired-up insane base.
Are you ready?
If Michael Moore genuinely thinks that Democrats' only path to victory in 2020 is to directly
challenge his base with more defamatory rhetoric about their sanity, then he surely has learned
nothing since Hillary Clinton lost four years ago, which he actually predicted would happen.
Okay, so I was right. At the time, due to this, Russ spelt populist bona fides.
So, uh, let's read this.
Actually, I want to make a... No, okay, we'll just read the statement.
He said, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president.
And now I have even more awful depressing news for you.
Donald J. Trump is going to win in November.
This wretched, ignorant, dangerous, part-time clown and full-time sociopath is going to be our next president.
President Trump.
Go ahead and say those words, because you'll be saying them for the next four years, President Trump.
Michael Moore knows what he's talking about.
He really does.
He might not be happy about it, but he understands this.
And the point I made earlier, it's because I think he gets Michigan.
Michigan went Trump they shouldn't have.
He knew it.
He told them.
They didn't listen.
Hillary Clinton didn't campaign in these states because she thought she had the blue wall.
These states that would always go blue.
She was wrong.
So what are we seeing now?
Michael Moore is playing into the same follies, the same mistakes of 2016.
The same people who voted for Trump, not all of them, Also voted for Barack Obama.
Think about that.
There are people who voted for Barack Obama twice, who then voted for Donald Trump.
Why did that happen?
I don't know.
But if you then look those people in the face and call them insane, insult them, do you think they'll now come back and vote for your people?
I don't believe the answer is yes.
I don't know.
It could be a maybe.
It's not yes.
I don't think so.
You've got people who are not racists.
You've got people who just want a good economy.
You've got people who believed in hope and change for eight years.
And they chose Trump.
And what's being offered today?
Moral grandstanding.
Beto O'Rourke.
But Beto O'Rourke has no policies.
You've got Joe Biden.
What's Joe Biden's policies?
I don't even know what he's doing.
Bernie Sanders, I believe, has some principle, but he's kind of bent the knee to the social justice mobs.
You've got Tulsi and Yang, who I really do like, and I do hope for... Look, I'm not trying to be a dick, because I know a lot of people, you know, you might like Tulsi and Yang.
I don't think they're going to win.
But I think their ideas need to be up on that stage, and that's what I'm hoping for.
I think Trump will win.
But my personal weight is probably going to go behind Yang.
I don't think UBI is perfect.
I think, you know, the way he's talking about it, it's interesting.
But I really do believe that Trump and Yang both see the same problem, and they're approaching it in different ways.
So manufacturing, collapse, automation.
Trump saw this.
He said, we got to bring jobs back to this country.
So he and Bernie went a similar route.
Get rid of the free trade agreements.
Makes sense.
Trump renegotiates NAFTA, USMCA.
It worked!
I mean, I don't know what or why, all I know is the economy is doing well!
People are working again.
This is good news for people, so they look to Trump and say it's working.
That's why Trump will win.
And I gotta admit, I lean towards Andrew Yang because of his technological expertise, and because he's really a domestic policy, you know, juggernaut.
All of these things he's fleshed out, he's talked about, he has good ideas.
I really appreciate how he went on with Ben Shapiro, and I've talked about this before, his ideas challenged.
But Yang is looking at the same problem.
I think if you're being honest, you're looking at the problem of middle America and jobs, and Yang is as well.
That's why I like Yang.
He's also pro-nuclear, and there's a lot of things, you know, that I appreciate about him.
But again, I think Trump is definitely going to win.
Michael Moore is right.
But Yang is approaching the manufacturing stuff from the point of automation, right?
We can't stop automation.
You can't just regulate your way out of technology.
So something has to be done, and he approaches it from the value-added tax dividend policy, like these big tech companies are making a ridiculous amount of money, therefore charge them a tax on the products they sell, they can't escape the VAT, and Ben Shapiro actually agreed that a VAT would make sense, though they disagreed on further implementation, like Ben Shapiro wanted Completely.
I think Ben Shapiro said this, no income tax, just go straight VAT.
And what Andrew Yang actually said is, he said a minimum wage makes no sense, right?
He's not for it.
I'm sorry, he said the $15 minimum wage makes no sense.
I want to be specific.
He said it doesn't solve the problems.
And I was like, boom, here's a guy who's actually talking some sense.
So anyway, I digress.
Trump is going to win.
People make really, really good points.
People in the know.
Don't bet on the polls.
Bet on Vegas.
I'll tell you what.
The polls are meant to swing your opinion.
Someone will ask a loaded question.
They'll say something like, Ocasio-Cortez recently destroyed 25,000 jobs in New York.
Do you support her?
And then people are gonna be like, whoa, wait, what?
No, I don't support that.
So they can ask loaded questions to get an answer, because the polls will trick people into thinking they're on the side of the winner.
People will vote for the winner.
Look at Vegas, though.
Trump's odds of winning, even.
Everybody else.
Like, Trump is the favorite.
So, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Hillary Clinton was a favorite before.
I think he's gonna win.
But let's see what Michael Moore said in the past.
Because, again, he was right.
He said, This isn't an accident.
It is happening.
And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that, and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump, and nothing could stop his juggernhut.
As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen.
And in order to deal with it, I need you to first acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we're in.
Did we?
I'm sorry, did they?
No, they didn't.
They doubled down.
Every step of the way, the rhetoric has gotten more insane.
Two years later, Congress sweeps far, you know, there's a big push in Congress to the far left.
None of this is what Americans are going to vote for.
You thought it was bad when people were ragging on Trump and the media was lying and pushing this nonsense.
In the past few years, it's only been worse.
Now that everyone's seen Russiagate for what it is, what do you think they're going to say now?
They're going to say the media really is lying.
And they do.
The trust in the press is down, down, down.
All of this, not only predicted Trump, but they've doubled down every step of the way with even Michael Moore, who gets it, still resorting to insulting Trump's base as insane.
No.
I'll tell you the effective way to politic.
It's to respect the opinions, it's to listen to the people, to try and understand the problems they're going through, and be respectful of those problems.
We all have struggles in life, and everyone prioritizes the issue they think affects them the most.
We can't ask any more of them.
I have problems?
Well, it's the problems I see that affect me on the day-to-day.
I'm concerned about the rise of the regressive left in the mainstream and the oppressive tactics they use.
Not everyone agrees.
That's okay.
Just because I'm focused on this and I think it's a bigger deal doesn't mean you're wrong.
So the way we approach that problem is by sitting down and you telling me.
Before I started tracking what was going on with the Trump campaign, I didn't actually know a whole lot about the loss of these jobs in middle America.
But I listened to people and I respected them and said, I hear you, I do.
I want to make your life better too.
I want life to be better for everybody.
The Democrats don't do that, right?
At least right now, a lot of them aren't.
Michael Moore comes out and says, we got to beat Trump.
His fans are insane.
Great.
What that says is that Michael Moore doesn't see a Trump supporter as someone who could be his friend.
Someone who could support him.
Because the real response is, how do I convince Trump supporters there's another way to solve these problems?
I think Andrew Yang is spot on.
Admittedly, I'm a rational person.
If what Trump is doing is working, I don't see a reason to, you know, don't fix if it isn't broken, right?
But I still like Yang for a lot of reasons, and I think it extends outside of the economy, and even his UBI plan with the VAT tax.
It's just one thing, right?
He's got a bunch of different things he's talked about, particularly nuclear energy, and I really like... You know, the reason I decided to support him is I looked at his website, and I saw all of these things he's gone through, and it felt like he was doing a really, really good job, and he's a new type of person.
He's very much like Trump, In terms of the... They're able to see the big problem, which is jobs, manufacturing, economy.
The difference, though, is that Yang is not a negative individual, right?
A lot of people like Trump because he's, like, tough and he pushes back on people.
Yang isn't like that.
Yang fits, you know, I see more of myself in him, a calm, rational guy who's willing to reach out and talk to anybody.
So I think all of you guys who watch me, the many of you who are Trump supporters, probably get it.
It's the easiest way to explain why I like Yang.
You see how I approach talking to liberals and conservatives?
Yang is very much in a similar boat.
It's about, you know, sitting down and respecting the other and trying to solve that problem.
Not perfect.
Neither is Trump.
The reason I don't like Trump, for the most part, is, for one, foreign policy, of course.
But that's a presidential trap.
But it's also that he's a negative guy.
Right?
He's positive in some ways, but he's negative in a lot of other ways.
He's mocked body-slamming reporters.
He's mocked people.
He makes fun of them.
He insults them.
I'm not a fan of that.
And you can see that in my content.
I try not to do that.
So, there's more to being the president than just, you know, enacting policy and running the military, the armed forces.
There's also charisma and inspiring hope.
Inspiring change in people.
Sometimes you need to trump.
You do.
Sometimes you need someone to stand up and say, we're on the wrong course, you've pandered enough, and things need to change.
So I absolutely can respect the things he's done that have worked.
I'm not a crazy person, right?
I can absolutely respect that he was right on the border.
And the Democrats have finally turned around.
And that says to me, I wasn't wrong to say, okay, Trump's got a point here.
I wasn't wrong.
They want to say I'm a conservative for saying that?
I'm sorry.
The Democrats have just figured it out.
They resisted, but no.
I was right the whole time, and I was late to the party too.
So we'll leave it there.
I don't want to ramble on this video.
I just want to say one thing.
It's 2016 all over again, and then some.
Michael Moore predicted it.
He's predicting it again.
If they think they're gonna walk through this one and win, I just... They got another thing coming.
It's gonna be four more years of Trump.
Uh, I recognize the possibility I could be wrong.
I'm the smartest person in the world, but...
I really do think Michael Moore gets that base.
He understands those people in middle America.
And whatever it is he's doing, he's not speaking to them anymore.
But he still understands them.
And it's going to be Trump 2020.
I got one more video coming up in a few minutes.
Stick around.
I will see you shortly.
I'd like to explain to you very simply my gripe, the problem I have with the regressive left.
And it can be explained very simply.
Now I know there's a lot of issues.
There's street violence.
There's, you know, the obvious authoritarian behavior.
But it's also the complete inefficiency In their plan.
One of the things that bothers me the most, I'm a very analytical, you know, technical person.
I grew up building computers.
I'm an internet person.
I used to program video games back in the day.
I'm not, I've been out of that for years.
I made little crappy platformers.
And, uh, but, but I'm very, you know, I was very active in like the hacker community when I was a kid, at least my own little community.
So to me, efficiency is paramount.
If you have a plan, do it right.
I can't stand watching people do things wrong.
Look at the story.
Activists want a problematic mural of George Washington destroyed.
It will cost the high school $600,000.
The artist wanted students to learn about Washington's flaws.
How traumatizing.
Let me tell you why they're so inefficient.
Let me tell you what bothers me about them.
Now, of course, again, I'll stress.
First and foremost, it's the violence and authoritarianism.
Sure, sure, sure.
But here's the thing.
You're upset over this painting about George Washington.
Was George, you know, because George Washington had slaves.
As did many people back then.
The point of the painting is to show that, so that people don't forget our founding fathers had flaws.
Bad ones.
And as a country, we know why that was wrong.
We have made great strides in the past 200 years to expand civil liberties to many more people, many more classes, and we're not done.
Excuse me, we're not perfect.
But here's what the activists do.
They say, destroy the mural, because it's problematic.
In effect, what would they do?
Whitewash history and erase the past.
Erase our understanding of what the flaws were in the first place.
Isn't that insane?
Look what happened after the Vox Adpocalypse.
Who got banned?
Well, I'll tell you.
It was journalists like Ford Fisher.
It was historians, historical archives in the Netherlands.
They don't care, right?
Look, I don't think it's a grand conspiracy that a lot of these activists are like, I want to destroy the archives!
And this is their plan.
No, it's that they're saying that's bigoted and mean-spirited.
You got to take it down.
That painting is problematic.
And you're like, dude, the painting is there as a reminder of the bad things.
OK, George Washington was a rad dude, right?
The founding fathers were really smart people.
The bricks, the foundation they laid for this country resulted in one of the freest and most respectful nations on the planet.
It's not the- I'm not gonna call it the best in terms of, like, respecting group- marginalized groups, because people can argue about your opinion over who's better, but America certainly isn't near the top.
I think America's on, uh, I would put America on top in a lot of ways, but sure, there's arguments for other countries, you know, chill, hippie, tiny ones.
Um, maybe the Scandinavian countries, but they got- they got problems coming from their, you know, America's done a great job.
Our laws have evolved.
Our Constitution has been amended.
And we've done great things.
And this is a reminder that those great things came from a dark past.
I shouldn't call it a dark past, necessarily, but there were dark things in that past.
And we shouldn't forget that.
Because that allows us to know, today, The bad things you see around you, that you fight to change, they'll change.
Progress is possible, and we can make the world a better place.
That's what I see from this.
I say, wow, of all the good things we heard about Washington, with his face on our money, the first president of this nation, he had bad things.
He had flaws.
And you know what that means?
Even with those flaws, good can come, change can happen.
Let's read about this story a little bit.
A high school in San Francisco is considering three options for censoring a mural of George Washington deemed problematic by the local activist community.
Putting up a current price tag, $300,000, painting over it, $600,000, or hiding it behind panels, $875,000.
How can it cost that much money?
Come on, go to Home Depot and buy some slats for $20 and just nail them to the wall.
Come on.
I'm kidding.
Don't do any of that.
Leave the painting.
No doubt San Francisco United School District could hire quite a few teachers in lieu of executing even the cheapest of those plans.
But a 13-member working group asserts the mural must go.
It glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, Traumatizing students.
A painting.
SFUSD values of social justice, diversity, united, unity? I don't know what that means.
Student-centered. It also, it's also responsible for traumatizing students,
according to the activists. Traumatizing students. A painting, seriously.
The truth is that George Washington's high school mural is, is provocative by design.
It was painted in 1936 by a Russian-American artist named Victor Arnatov, who held leftist sympathies.
Arnatov did not wish to blindly celebrate Washington while ignoring the less savory aspects of American founding, and thus he depicted the first president working his slaves and sending men to confiscate Native American lands.
It was an attempt to remind students that history is a lot messier than what they read in class.
And therein lies the problem.
They don't seem to realize that they eat themselves.
This was a leftist who said, I want to make sure everybody knows these things.
As I outlined earlier, it is important to remember our past is not perfect.
In fact, we must strive every day to defend life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We've done a damn good job of it.
And that's why I've got in my van, an American flag pillow.
To which a lot of people, you know, I got comments on Instagram like, Tim, why do you have American flags in your van?
Because I respect and appreciate what America is and has done, while still being critical of the bad things it's done in the past.
You know, because as I stated, America even to this day has done bad things.
But when we look back at that picture of George Washington, we realize those bad things today we're critical of, right?
Bombing, you know, young men in foreign countries with drones when we're not at war with them, for one.
Those will go away.
We can become better.
And we have.
And that's why that mural is important.
And it's also important because regardless of what it says, it's a piece of our history.
And we should never forget our past, lest we be deemed to repeat it.
Let's read on.
He put those ghastly gray pioneers literally walking over the dead body of an Indian to demonstrate that the settlement of the West was an act of conquest that involved the slaughter of Native Americans.
Robert Cherney, a San Francisco State University professor, told the school district's board of education in 2018.
That was a very bold effort on his part to counter the kinds of textbooks that students were seeing, where they would whitewash history and say, it was all great.
Skittles and rainbows.
Everything was wonderful.
We came here, put a stake in the ground, and then poof, America appeared.
No.
There was war.
There was conquest.
Turmoil.
But there was trade.
There was development.
There was hope, faith, religion.
There was bad and good.
And we should always remember, you know, every aspect of our history.
Modern activist culture, however, is preoccupied with an ever-expanding definition of safety, which now includes emotional safety.
To walk past a mural that depicts violence against Native Americans and people of color, even if that's what actually happened, is considered trauma-inducing, and the purpose of education is to mitigate discomfort.
This is from Robbie Sove, so he mentions the theme of his book, Panic Attack, Young Radicals in the Age of Trump.
Why do we have to explain the pain caused by the visual offense that we see in the building that is supposed to be an institution of learning, asked one woman at the public meeting about the issue on Tuesday.
It's not in a museum, it's inside a school, lamented another speaker, who apparently did not understand the point of a school.
Our students, all of them, deserve better.
And this is better.
This is good.
It's a great mural.
Other speakers, several of them Native American, expressed no objection to the mural, correctly pointing out that it was depicting what actually happened.
And imagine this, if you were a Native American, you can look at that painting and say, you see what they did to my people.
And people will say, I do see that.
I do.
And I respect why you're angry.
And I'm glad we can all be reminded that the depiction of someone walking over a dead body is not a positive depiction of that person.
We can absolutely recognize the good things that George Washington and the Founding Fathers did, while showing people they did bad things too.
It was different times, and we've changed history.
Like, I don't mean like, you've literally activists trying to change history, but I mean like, we've changed the course of history.
We've made things better.
According to National Review's James Sutton, most of the students want to keep the mural or don't really care one way or another.
The controversy is the work of outside busybodies.
Naturally, it looks like they are going to get their way.
The school board is currently deciding between three different plans, all of which involve destroying the mural or covering it up.
A final decision is expected next week, reports The College Fix.
He goes on to say, by the way, if you're wondering why it would cost several hundred thousand dollars to get rid of the mural, here's your answer.
Officials are required to conduct environmental impact reports before they take any action.
Of course, this is reason, so you'll certainly hear the libertarian argument, but I think it's sad.
I I think it's really, really sad that we've come to a point where, one, as I mentioned earlier, activists have become so damn inefficient, they're attacking past activists.
Like, think about the work this guy did to make sure people never forgot the atrocities of the past, and the activists are actually destroying good left-wing activism.
It's completely inefficient, and it's why we see the circular firing squads of the left.
You know, it's really funny.
I did a video where we showed these graphs where there was ethnic political groups, and white liberals were the only group polled that have an out-group bias, meaning they hate themselves.
So it's really fascinating then, because that's why you see the left constantly talk about white privilege, these white progressives talk about white privilege, but it's also why you see this.
It's also why you see them eating themselves, because they don't like each other!
They have an out-group bias.
So when a white leftist activist says something, another white leftist activist says, no, you're wrong, I don't like you, I like them, and then they fight each other.
And then something as simple as recorded history, a depiction of the things in the past becomes offensive.
And I think this is really dangerous for other reasons too.
Whether or not it's inefficient and they're just spinning in circles and attacking each other, they're also Erasing history.
The good and the bad.
And as the saying goes, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
Some people argue, and I'm saying some people because it's not a lot, they're doing it on purpose because by erasing the past, they can then commit the same atrocities and get away with it.
So think about it.
This outgroup bias they have where they don't like white people, What do you think happens then when you erase the atrocities of the past?
When you see George Washington stepping over a body?
You get rid of all those things.
Get rid of the bad history.
Delete the archives.
Delete the journalists.
Don't let anyone know what happened.
Then they can do it, and no one will be there to remember what really happened.
That's what's scary.
They'll start enacting policies from the most repressive regimes of history, and people will say, oh, I don't know, was this ever done before?
I don't remember.
But if you walk past this mural every day, and then someone says, we want to impose identitarian law, left or right, white or non-white, you'll say, no way, dude.
I saw what happened when that was last implemented.
I see it every day on that painting.
And that's one of the reasons I think some of these people do want to get rid of this stuff.
I will stress, it's really weird how, after KarlsMas' Vox Adpocalypse, what got purged?
History.
Anyway, I'll leave it there.
There you have it.
It sounds like the mural's going away, and that's sad.
Thanks for hanging out.
Stick around.
I will see you all tomorrow at 10am on this channel.
