Democrats Accused Of Exploiting Campaign Staff, Hypocrisy Over Low And Even NO Pay For Staff
Trump Has Won The Supreme Court Ruling On Border Wall Construction. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the groups suing President Trump over the border wall lacked proper standing and have removed a block allowing the wall to continue during further litigation.This is a major victory for the Trump administration and a defeat for Democrats and the organizations that filed the initial suit. While Trump and republicans may have won this round, the ruling on standing will not prevent others from suing and winning.20 states have filed suit and the House has a suit currently awaiting appeal. The wall may start soon but the battle is far from over.Additionally Trump has signed an agreement with Guatemala to restrict asylum seekers from coming to the US.IN a rather convenient turn however Trump tweeted something that made the left and Democrats angry resulting in coverage of Trump's tweets instead of his latest policy moves.Like clockwork Trump has the democrats and far left marching to his drum and focusing on his character, something they can't change.
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We got a couple big breaking stories in the past 12 or so hours.
The first, the Supreme Court has sided with Donald Trump, removing a block, allowing Trump to appropriate military funding to build the border wall.
This is huge news.
Now the war isn't over.
He's won this battle, but other organizations may still be able to sue, notably governmental.
The Supreme Court ruling basically falls on the people filing the lawsuit, nonprofits.
They don't have standing to file the lawsuit.
So Trump is winning for now, which may allow construction to begin, but we'll see what happens.
The next big breaking story we have, the U.S.
and Guatemala have signed an agreement to restrict asylum cases.
This is huge, a huge, huge win for Trump.
The asylum deal is going to help Trump keep Central American migrants out of Mexico and the U.S., and the Supreme Court is allowing him to essentially begin construction on the border wall.
But here is the great kicker.
What's the media talking about?
Trump has just got a Supreme Court ruling on his side.
You'd imagine the media would be rushing, saying, this is big, we've got to talk about this.
And while, of course, I don't want to be overly hyperbolic, we do see many news organizations talking about the issue.
I mean, look, you know what they're talking about.
Do I even need to say it?
Donald Trump tweeted.
I'm being serious.
Donald Trump tweeted.
That's the big trending story right now.
And I'm sitting here wondering, should I condemn Trump's tweets as being insensitive, racist, like many people are, or should I talk about the important news dealing with the southern border?
Which I do a lot.
I've made a bunch of videos and segments about immigration, and here we are once again, and I know I'm going to be criticized because I'm not dedicating or leading this video with the big breaking news about Victor Blackwell.
Victor Blackwell being a CNN anchor who was nearly brought to tears over Donald Trump's tweets.
And this is what I'm seeing all of the high-profile journalists talk about.
This is the big story that's trending.
West Baltimore.
Victor Blackwell.
Now, of course, Caturday is trending, and get me naked in five words, but sure, people talk about this stuff.
That's the real world.
But I can't say I'm surprised to see that with all of this massive breaking news of victory for Trump, the narrative has shifted to Trump is a bad person.
He has successfully got them talking about his character again.
Now, let me just explain really quickly before we get into the real news why this is important.
When big news breaks about the border, Trump winning with SCOTUS, if the activists on the left focus on that, they will rally a defense and go after him and try and stop this.
By successfully distracting them once again, they are focused now on him being a bad person, but all they're really going to do is insult him and attack him for these statements.
They're not going to file any paperwork.
They're not going to sue him.
If the fight was kept on the border, If Trump didn't distract them, we'd see more lawsuits.
We'd see more challenges.
So Trump wants to make sure they're watching his right hand while his left is signing policy.
So I'll get into a little bit about this because I do have Trump's tweets pulled up.
I do want to talk a bit about the Victor Blackwell stuff, but we'll start with the real news.
What's going on with the border?
Now before we do that, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you want to support my work.
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So let's see what's going on from Politico.
Supreme Court gives Trump go-ahead on border wall.
I can't stress how huge this is.
Think about last week.
I'm sorry to deviate again.
But Trump effectively ended asylum for most asylees coming through Mexico.
And he distracted the media by railing against the far-left Democrats.
Political reports, President Donald Trump scored a major victory at the Supreme Court on Friday as the justices lifted a lower court order blocking a key part of his plan to expand the border wall with Mexico.
The Justice Department had asked the justices to stay a pair of rulings an Oakland-based federal judge issued in May and June blocking Trump's plan to use about $2.5 billion in unspent military funds for wall projects in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
All the Republican-appointed justices voted in favor of allowing Trump to proceed with the aspect of his plan while litigation over the issue continues.
This is huge!
All the Democratic-appointed justices dissented, except for Stephen Breyer, who said he would have allowed the contracting process to move forward but blocked actual construction.
Now, I want to make sure I'm fair.
Listen, in my view, I believe Trump is trying to distract the press, and he's doing it very, very well.
That isn't to say he doesn't really believe what he's saying.
big win for border security and the rule of law. Now I want to make sure I'm fair.
Listen, in my view I believe Trump is trying to distract the press and he's
doing it very very well. That isn't to say he doesn't really believe
what he's saying. No, I think he knows he wants to keep the media shifted. I will
also stress there is an argument against my view, though I lean towards that
initial opinion.
With Trump tweeting about the wall, he is signaling to the left, here we go, you know, he's publicizing it.
So it would be fair to say that Trump isn't trying to distract the media.
Although I do think that is the case.
I think, again, just in my opinion, how I view this, Trump wants to make sure his supporters know he won.
He then tweets something he knows his supporters don't care about.
So now he gets, again, I think it's a little bit weak, I will admit that, I do, but I do think this is the more likely of the two outcomes.
Trump signals to his base, we won, and then immediately dangles some, you know, offensive tweet to distract the left so he can get the best of both worlds.
Trump isn't necessarily trying to get the left to fight him.
He's trying to distract them but still maintain his advantage.
But let's read on.
I don't want to prattle on that.
That was a jump cut for that reason.
They say, however, the ruling may not signal that all challenges to the border wall funding in dispute are certain to fail.
The Supreme Court rarely explains its reasons for granting or denying a stay, but the Order of Friday declared that the government has made a sufficient showing, at this stage the plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review of the decision to transfer the funds from a Pentagon account.
The statement suggests that the five justices in the majority agreed with the Trump administration's arguments that the groups who obtained the injunction, the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, lacked a valid legal mechanism to enforce the budget rider Trump officials were allegedly violating.
That may not rule out the possibility that others who have sued over the same policy, including 20 states and the House of Representatives, might have stronger claims.
The state's suit was essentially set aside due to the injunction granted to the private groups.
A judge dismissed the House's suit last month, but that ruling is on appeal.
Nancy Pelosi tweeted later Friday, This evening's Supreme Court ruling allowed Donald Trump to
steal military funds to spend on a wasteful, ineffective border wall rejected by Congress is
deeply flawed. Our founders designed a democracy governed by the people, not a monarchy. Now
look, the issue here is it's going to the courts.
Nancy Pelosi obviously is fighting Trump, but so far we are within legal precedence.
Trump is allowed to appropriate funds as he fits, they're allowed to challenge him, and the courts will decide.
As it stands right now, the people who got the injunction may have actually hurt the left.
Because, I think it's a fair argument, the Sierra Club has no legal standing to argue for government funds.
If the House of Representatives want to file a suit, well, they've lost, so they're on appeal.
If these other states want to file a suit, this all makes sense.
These are governmental agencies who are arguing over how Trump is spending money of the government and whether or not it's constitutional.
Trump may still lose this one.
But for now, I think the important takeaway, to go back to the issue of why I think Trump is trying to make sure they're distracted and off base and off message, is that Trump is in a vulnerable position.
It was five judges, justices, sided with Trump, meaning it was a very close call.
And they've only agreed, they didn't agree that he was allowed to do it, just that those who sued didn't have a legal standing, which means it was barely a victory for Trump.
But it is a huge victory, okay?
So what I mean to say is he almost lost this one.
But because he did win, it's going to set major things in motion.
Building the wall.
A lot of Trump supporters have been complaining that no new wall has been built.
Now, they've built new walls where old walls used to be.
That's the complaint.
That Trump needs to start actually expanding the walls.
There have been some private walls, and I don't know the full details of what's going on and how much has been expanded.
But this is going to allow Trump to signal to his base that they're winning.
Even if only a little bit.
And he's running a huge risk that the left might step in and file more lawsuits or push this and he could lose in the long run.
So any distraction is a welcome distraction.
But you know what?
Throw the distraction argument out entirely.
Throw it out entirely.
It's just my opinion, which I feel is, it's kind of a weak prediction.
It's kind of a weak view.
I have to admit that.
I don't know exactly what Trump's trying to do.
All I really want to say is regardless of his intent, he has distracted the media.
Period.
Because when you look at the trends, this is a screenshot from just around the time of filming this, why aren't people making this story go viral?
Why aren't they saying, we've got to fight back?
Why aren't they saying Trump is wrong?
Oh no, SCOTUS.
Oh no, this is what Trump wanted with Brett Kavanaugh.
Why aren't they saying it?
They just don't care.
And I'll tell you why.
In this video of Victor Blackwell, I'll say this.
I sympathize with the man.
Victor Blackwell is brought to near tears and has to pause because Trump said no human being would want to live in Baltimore, or an area of Baltimore, because of crime and things like that.
And Victor Blackwell is from Baltimore, so he took personal offense and was very emotional about it.
I can respect him on a human level and say, man, I don't like it when things devolve to this, but I also have to say something more important.
For one, you're an adult.
People say mean things, okay?
I don't think you should be crying or being brought to tears by this, but you know what?
Sometimes people are, and I can respect that.
But more importantly, I will be critical.
While I can respect that he offended you, that it was mean-spirited, and you are pushing back with great emotion, that's great.
CNN needs to be a professional news broadcaster, okay?
You are presenting the news, you are talking about what Trump said, and you are challenging him over the past things he said.
Fine.
The segment Victor Blackwell brings up is how Trump uses the word infested all the time and he believes it's racist.
If that's your opinion, by all means have it.
But CNN needs to retain an air of professionality.
Professionalism!
Let's speak English here.
What I'm trying to get to is, you know, when I saw this, and I see all these journalists tweeting about it, I'm just like, for one, Trump is distracting you again.
It's working.
And the reality TV that is our political sphere is playing right into it.
You know, and upon seeing this thing with Victor Blackwell, I really wanted to just be like, wow.
What's the point?
CNN.
The most trusted name in news, they say.
It's reality television, man.
It's a guy crying, the president is racist, and then... I'm like, this is not news.
We're watching people say like, ooh, that president said mean things and almost crying
and people going, oh no, he's crying.
And I'm like, dude, I get it, but CNN is supposed to be news, okay?
I'm not gonna cry here.
I'm not gonna cry and break down and say, oh, I can't believe it.
No, I'm going to try and assess the situation to the best of my abilities.
Now look, in the end, CNN can do what they want.
Fine.
People can be interested in what they want.
West Baltimore, Victor Blackwell are still trending.
Fine.
Caturday is trending above that.
Even better.
Okay?
But when it comes to politics, you think people would care about the real news?
U.S., Guatemala sign agreement to restrict asylum cases.
Trump is winning on this front.
Now here's the thing, I'm a moderate, you guys know that, so I'm not looking at Trump's winning as like a bad thing, okay?
I will criticize the man for all the things he needs to be criticized for, you know I will.
And the immigration thing is, you know, we need border security.
I agree with Barack Obama.
I'm gonna say that I don't agree with Trump.
I agree with Obama, okay?
I don't know exactly what's different about their positions, but I agree with Obama on a lot of these issues.
And actually, I take that back.
Obama kind of went too far.
He did.
And Trump is now, there was a report recently that Trump ended family separation, or I should say has reunited something like 95% of children with their legal guardians or their parents.
So that's ending on Trump's watch.
But for the most part, I'll say this.
Obama had very similar policies.
So I don't know where that leaves me as someone who voted for the guy.
Not a fan of him after he left, but have good things to say about him in terms of charisma and leadership.
I think Obama had better Well, I was gonna say I felt like Obama had more charisma, was a better leader.
But I will stress, they're playing to two different audiences.
And the conservatives felt this, like, I'll say this too, I would imagine that conservatives today have a similar feeling about Obama that Obama supporters had about Trump.
But I will say the left takes it way too far, right?
You know, people on the right thought Obama was a dangerous guy, that he was socialist and bad.
And there were some people that were, you know, calling him the worst of the worst,
the worst thing you could possibly call him.
But I think most conservatives just felt like they lost and Obama was a bad guy with bad policies.
Whereas a lot of what we hear from the left tends to be, I'm not even going to say it, but you know.
Orange man bad.
Just like the orange man bad stuff.
So, personally, from where I come from, I'm not a fan of Trump's demeanor.
But I can recognize why people would support that I would.
So anyway, let's read this story because I think the news is more important.
Though, I also think it's important to point out how easily distracted the political sphere and the media is.
This one's from the Seattle Times, reported by the Associated Press.
The Trump administration signed an agreement with Guatemala Friday that will restrict asylum applications to the U.S.
from Central America.
The so-called safe third-country agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the U.S.
to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the U.S.
border.
It would potentially ease the crush of migrants overwhelming the U.S.
immigration system, although many questions remain about how the agreement will be executed.
President Donald Trump heralded the concession as a win as he struggles to live up to his campaign promises on immigration.
This is a very big day.
We have long been working with Guatemala, and now we can do it the right way.
This landmark agreement will put the coyotes and smugglers out of business.
The announcement comes after a court in California blocked Trump's most restrictive asylum effort to date, one that would effectively end protections at the southern border.
The two countries had been negotiating such an agreement for months, and Trump threatened Wednesday to place tariffs or other consequences on Guatemala if it didn't reach a deal.
We'll either do tariffs or we'll do something.
We're looking at something very severe with respect to Guatemala, so travel restrictions potentially.
On Friday, Trump praised the Guatemalan government, saying now it has a friend in the United States instead of an enemy in the United States.
So the interesting point here, though, is that Guatemala had been blocked by their own courts from engaging in this, and so we're not entirely sure how this will move forward.
I don't know if they get into greater detail about what's going on with the internal workings, but I want to keep this focused on America, and I want to loop these things back together.
So let me make a couple points.
The safe third country agreement allows Trump to disallow anyone from declaring asylum if they've passed through Guatemala.
Now you've got people in Africa who are flying to Brazil and making their way up.
You have people coming from South America making their way up.
If they go through Guatemala, they will legally be required to apply in Guatemala And if they don't, they will not be eligible in the U.S.
Now, his asylum ruling is being challenged in court by the ACLU, but I believe this is the bigger story that Trump doesn't want anyone to hear about.
This is the bigger play.
Now look, U.S.
courts and lawsuits can stop Trump all day of the week, but Trump signed a safe third country agreement.
I don't think they can actually challenge that.
They don't have a great standing to challenge because it's something that would be happening in a different country.
So, I'm not going to sit here and make this argument about Trump's a master of 4D chess, but CNN said it, and I highlighted this in a video the other day, Trump is a dangerous media mastermind.
That's why, even though I'm like, Is Trump really trying to distract the Democrats in this regard?
He did tweet about the wall.
I lean towards he is, because, look, if even CNN can concede Trump knows what he's doing when it comes to media, that's his biggest strength, I think it's extremely likely.
And this is the underplayed story with an update from today, which says to me, Trump probably cares about the wall getting built.
It's a big campaign promise, and now he can move forward, but he knows the lawsuits are already there.
So by tweeting about that, they see that, okay, the lawsuits are already there going to the appellate courts.
But he then makes this tweet about Elijah Cummings, about Baltimore, and wears the conversation about the next big news.
Now listen.
You can argue the Guatemala stuff isn't the biggest news in the world.
I think it's decently large.
The bigger issue is that Trump's real fight is on the southern border.
It's been his biggest campaign promise.
They even say it in these articles.
Trump is desperately trying to get this win.
The big criticism from his own base is not that he's a racist.
It's that he's not getting the wall done.
So think about Trump's strategy.
Fine.
If his base doesn't care that he's racist, he'll say these things all day and night.
Now, of course, his base is saying, the tweet he sent out about Baltimore isn't racist.
Baltimore is a, you know, a crime-ridden place.
Sure.
But he knows the left always will.
And he knows his base won't care.
Which means he can very easily play the line where he doesn't go too far to where even conservatives are criticizing him, which he did last week.
He can get the left on his case and ignoring the real victories he's pulling off when it comes to immigration because he knows that's what his base wants.
His base.
Think about this.
What can the left do about Trump's tweets?
Condemn them?
That's it.
And then Trump can keep tweeting all day and night.
But the left and the Democrats really could take action against his policies.
Trump needs to keep them off base and off message.
Because aside from the immigration debate, he's got another victory on this front.
The Democrats aren't talking about what we as Americans need.
They're complaining about the President's character.
And so long as he keeps getting them to do that, the Democrats aren't offering anything substantive to the American people.
Now, I will concede.
According to Gallup, leadership issues is one of the top, most pressing issues for Americans.
In a poll from Gallup, around 27% of people said they felt leadership problems was the most pressing issue.
But it's only around 27%.
I could have the number wrong, so forgive me, but it was, though one of the biggest, it was still relatively low.
That means Trump knows he might lose people by looking like he's, you know, I typically say boorish, bad-mannered, and offensive.
But he also knows his base is bigger than that.
He also knows a lot of Americans don't care about how he sounds so long as he gets the job done.
It's one of the common things I've heard from many people when talking about the President and how they support him.
Like I mentioned, I was recently in Dallas.
I'm in an Uber.
The Uber driver said he was a conservative, he really didn't like Trump's attitude, but Trump was getting the job done, and at least Trump was strong.
Trump knows this.
He plays to this.
So he's keeping them all riled up over things they can do nothing about.
Meanwhile, he's actually fulfilling his promises and taking action that will help secure his re-election.
You know what, man?
There are people who just don't like the fact that I point this out.
They don't like the fact that I'm saying the Democrats aren't offering us anything.
But let me just stress, it's from where I view the world.
It's from where I come from.
As a moderate saying, I would like the Democrats to present me with a real policy position that I can get behind.
And I've routinely praised the policy positions and the actions they've done that have been good.
I am not here to hate them for simply being Democrats.
Not at all.
I want to find a good principled Democrat with real policy positions.
But what do we end up seeing is the Green New Deal?
We end up seeing bickering about Trump's words?
Condemnation?
Nothing got done on the House floor.
And that was actually a Democrat who said that storming out when Nancy Pelosi called Trump a racist.
I don't care!
Okay?
I get it.
Give me something to vote for.
Stop complaining about the attitudes of this man and prove why you're better leaders.
They're not doing it.
They don't have the charisma.
They don't have the strength.
Okay?
I will stress.
I much respect Warren and Ocasio-Cortez when they challenge big tech.
I can criticize some of the other things they've done, for sure.
Campaign issues related to their staff and pay.
Fine.
But do something good, and I am here for you, okay?
Elizabeth Warren, I saw one of her policy proposals on big tech, and I said, hey, you know what?
Good on you.
That's something substantive.
Stop spending time talking about the orange man, and do something.
But in the end, I'll leave you with this.
Trump knows the game better than they do, and he has outclassed the Democrats.
The Democrats are so outclassed when it comes to the media, I just don't see them being able to win.
Trump's entire life has been about perception, and media, and marketing, and he is one of the best in the world, ever.
And only a fool would think otherwise.
I can't remember what I was watching, but it was like a fantasy movie where they said, you know, they said the villain was a great and powerful man and only a fool would reject that.
It doesn't mean the person is good.
I'm not saying you have to like Trump, but I'm saying if you underestimate his ability to dominate and control the narrative, You're gonna lose.
You're gonna lose.
And as much as the media has been negative about Trump, and it is frustrating, Trump still knows how to game that to his advantage.
Case in point, when Trump gets them to talk about his character, he knows the media will go bad.
He knows they don't like him, so he gives them something to latch on to.
And they take the bait every single time.
How is it a week has gone by and we're seeing the exact same thing?
Journalists, do your jobs.
So yes, I will absolutely make sure I cover the big stories on the border.
It was really funny, I gotta say.
This NBC journalist tweeted, why isn't anyone talking about Trump ending the new asylum rule?
I had a video up that day talking about it.
Major breaking, it's got half a million views.
You know what that says to me?
Look, I know I do political commentary on this channel, but I'm trying to address serious issues that matter, that are going to affect the world, affect our politics, that need to be talked about.
And that means if Trump makes a major move, that's what I'm talking about.
That means when Trump wins in SCOTUS, that's what I'm talking about.
But what would they prefer I talk about?
Why are they mad at my channel?
Because I don't have a video titled, Trump is the bad man who insulted Victor Blackwell.
I didn't make a video with blue instead of red where I say, Victor Blackwell upset over Trump racist tweet.
That's what they want me to talk about.
They say, talk about that, Tim.
That's what liberals talk about.
No.
I'm going to talk about what's important, what needs to get done to help bring this country together, and what's having the biggest impact on the country.
And it's Trump's manipulation of the press and the Democrats, and it's the SCOTUS ruling and Trump's new rules.
These are the most important stories we have today, and that's what I'm bringing you.
I appreciate everybody who watches this and understands that and respects it, and I'm doing the best I can.
We've got a ton of really awesome projects coming up, and I'm going to have more solid journalistic endeavors on Subverse coming up.
So Subverse is doing its thing, but I'm preparing bigger long-form projects that will be a more journalistic capacity.
So the stuff I, you know, will present in the news-related stuff, I will promote here.
You'll see it.
Stick around!
Next segments are coming up, YouTube.com slash TimCastNews.
These are all political commentary and news stuff, but you understand that.
But I will have some more harder-hitting investigative pieces.
We're working on a big analysis report addressing algorithms and politics and how media has been influenced.
It's gonna be really great.
So stick around.
I will see you all in the next segment at 6 p.m.
The $250 million lawsuit against The Washington Post has been dismissed by a federal judge.
And I have to say, it's actually kind of creepy.
But this whole thing is extremely complicated because, essentially, the judge ruled on First Amendment grounds protecting the opinions of the Washington Post.
Yes, this is the state of journalism today.
Essentially, what was ruled was that words used by the Washington Post were essentially rhetorical devices and opinions, not discernible facts.
I kid you not.
The scariest thing about this, and we'll get into the story, well first let me say this.
The war is not over.
Nicholas Amon has lost this battle, but I believe they are going to appeal and there are still several other lawsuits.
But we can see here now the attack vector that can be used by the media to get away with publishing lies about people.
A couple of things they did were, by not naming him and just showing his picture, well, they weren't really saying it was about him personally, so he can't sue.
I kid you not.
Which means, you can take a picture of a person and say, you know, some people are known to do this thing, and as long as the word you used is interpretable, and you don't say the person's name, you can show a picture of them and claim that they do something very, very awful.
I would get specific and make specific examples, but I'd probably get the video banned if I tried to go extreme with it.
But here, let's read the story.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
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YouTube deranks independent political commentary.
You guys probably know the drill by now, but let's read on.
This is from Cincinnati.com, USA Today Network, which reads, The $250 million lawsuit filed by Nick Sandman against the Washington Post has been dismissed by a federal judge.
U.S.
District Judge William Bertelsman, who heard oral arguments earlier this month, issued the ruling on Friday in the case that garnered national attention.
Nick became embroiled in a divisive response to an encounter between him, his Covington Catholic High classmates, and Native Americans on the National Mall.
The Washington Post, in a statement, said it was pleased by the dismissal.
From our first story on this incident to our last, we sought to report fairly and accurately the facts that could be established from available evidence, the perspectives of all of the participants, and the comments of the responsible church and school officials, the Post said through a spokesman.
Full stop.
No, that wasn't the facts.
That was opinions.
You got a dismissal because you wrote an opinion piece with no facts in it.
Of course, people thought it was a fact, but here we are today, right?
The Sandman family plans to appeal Bertelsmann's ruling, according to a statement sent to the Enquirer by Nick's attorney Todd McMurtry and L. Lynn Wood.
The January encounter led to threats lobbed at Nick, who would later appear on national television to say he felt he'd done nothing wrong.
I believe fighting for justice for my son and family is of vital national importance, said Nick's father, Ted Sandman, in a statement.
If what was done to Nicholas is not legally actionable, then no one is safe.
And that is the important point.
No one is safe.
And the conundrum here is, should the press have as much protection as possible?
I think, you know, I kind of lean towards they should, but what do you do when the media is pumping out lies all the time?
And they are.
And you know, it's really funny when I talk to people who are uninitiated, you know, not politically active, and they're like, oh, Trump calling the press the fake news.
Because when you do, you start to realize something doesn't make sense.
Covington, Jussie Smollett, Erica Thomas, how many stories do we have to have?
And it's not just the, those are just the three big stories in recent time.
There's something... I'll get into talking about the press in a second.
Let's read through the story.
I want to go over what the Gell-Man amnesia effect is for anyone who's not familiar.
They say, David Marburger, a Cleveland-based attorney who spent decades representing various media outlets, agreed with the ruling, saying he questioned the validity of Nick's claim from the outset.
As a libel lawyer, I thought his claims were quite weak, Marburger said, so it's renewed confidence in the judiciary that a judge would dismiss this case by applying the settled law to the allegedly libelous publication and rule in favor of the press.
Nick and his attorneys had alleged the gist of the Washington Post's first article conveyed that Nick had assaulted or physically intimidated Nathan Phillips and engaged in racist conduct.
But wait till you see how they get away with lies.
It is amazing.
Bertelsmann ruled such claims were not supported by the plain language in the article, which states none of these things.
Bertelsmann accepted Nick's assertion that he was only standing motionless across from Phillips without ill intent.
But the Eastern District of Kentucky judge ruled that Phillips, who told the media he felt threatened, had a First Amendment right to express his opinion.
Yes, by reporting the opinion of anybody, you are protected.
He, Phillips, concluded that he was being blocked and not allowed to retreat, Bertelsmann wrote.
He passed these conclusions on to the Post.
They may have been erroneous, but as discussed above, they are opinion, protected by the First Amendment.
In an earlier motion, the Post wrote that Phillips was entitled to offer his subjective point of view, and the Post had a right to report it.
Welcome to the press in 2019.
Marburger said the opinion issue was at the crux of the suit.
When we're looking at the same facts, we're all free to say what we think those facts show without being fearful of a libel judgment against us, Marburger said.
And that's what you have here.
Wood, Nick's attorney, said in a statement that many strong appellate issues could return the case to federal court for trial.
Both parties to the case had earlier cited a U.S.
Supreme Court decision in support of their respected claims.
In his ruling, Bertelsmann also cited the case Milkovich v. Lorraine, Journal Co., writing that statements that are loose, figurative, or rhetorical hyperbole are protected by the First Amendment because they can't be proved true or false.
Bertelsmann identified words used by the post to describe the students as falling under the protected establishment in Milkovich.
Swarmed.
Taunting.
Disrespect.
Aggressive.
And rambunctious, among others.
Those are rhetorical, loose, and figurative.
Essentially, opinions.
They weren't definitive statements of fact.
Think about that.
You could say, That, you know, so-and-so activist swarmed, berated, and taunted, and disrespected in an aggressive and rambunctious manner.
And it could literally just be some activist standing there holding a sign.
And it's rhetorical hyperbole.
Of course, when people read it without seeing the picture, they're gonna get an image in their head.
You can convey an image of what's going on.
Man, this is all really... It's kind of terrifying.
But I guess...
I guess ultimately the problem is, you've got people who are trying to be intellectually honest, and people who are trying to be dishonest, and that gives the dishonest people the advantage.
Although we're all going to be playing by the same rules, the honest people don't want to misconstrue what's going on.
I'm not going to try and lie and claim, or stretch the truth to make a claim, because I don't believe the ends justify the means.
But they will.
And they'll get away with it.
And what do you do?
If we didn't have these protections, I'd be sued for every single video I made, probably.
Let's read on.
They say, Philip's statement to the Post that he felt the guy in the hat had blocked my way and wouldn't allow me to treat did not convey objectively verifiable facts.
And not only that, they're saying I can report the opinion of someone else, which means I can get a quote from someone who overtly lies and it's not my fault.
Because people have a right to express themselves, and it's on that person.
Well, there you have it.
As for Nick's claims the Post reporting conveyed he had assaulted Phillips, Bertelsmann's wrote, the interpretation could not be reasonably read from the articles.
Phillips initially said the students chanted Build That Wall despite a lack of such chants appearing on video.
But the claim isn't libelous, even if false, Bertelsmann's wrote, because precedent protects political party membership.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on.
This makes no sense to me.
They said that the students chanted Build That Wall.
That is a statement of fact.
They said they did a thing they did not do.
What does political party membership have to do with anything?
Taken together, the post reporting did not subject Nick to disgrace— Oh, I see what they're saying.
They're saying because even if he did chant Build That Wall, it's not libelous.
But that makes no sense to me.
I don't— I— I— Look, I could be wrong.
I guess I am.
But they're gonna appeal, and I have to question.
If somebody— If a news outlet reported I did a thing I didn't do, I guess they're arguing that it's not defamation because whether or not you chanted a political statement, I don't know.
So that means you can literally say that you saw, you know, Choose Journalist chanting, build the wall.
You can literally say it.
According to this, you can report straight up, this journalist did this.
And they'll say, it's not libelous.
Even though you're lying.
That's what's crazy.
I guess the issue is, I find it funny when people say Tim Poole is right-wing, and I really don't care.
I don't even know what they're right-wing mean anymore because the left thinks the left is right.
Everything's crazy.
The point is, I know why they're trying to do it.
They're trying to divide people on tribal lines, and they don't want someone listening to me who might be on the left and might be convinced by my arguments or presented with information that could shock them out of the bubble.
So they have to say I'm right-wing so that people say, oh, but the right are liars.
And I think that's actually the fair way to put it.
I don't fit into any one of these bubbles.
But, you know, certain individuals on the left are trying to taint... Actually, I'll say this.
Why is it That I've been critical of, you know, Jared Holt and Right-Wing Watch, but why is it that he's actually given me more of a fair shake than people in media who are supposed to be nonpartisan?
It's Right-Wing Watch that calls me an independent, because I am quite literally an independent.
I'm in favor of some Democratic politicians and their policies, but I'm extremely critical of the current Democratic establishment and the far left.
Makes me not really fit any specific bubble.
So why, you know, and that's, anyway, long story short, You can, according to this, claim that someone said something.
What if you claimed that a journalist said they supported Donald Trump?
You're allowed to do that?
That's crazy.
That, to me, is crazy.
Because that can get someone fired.
Journalists, you know, can't espouse public support.
Good news outlets wouldn't allow this.
Certain journalists, if they came out and declared their support, would get in trouble.
And you can claim they did, and they'll deny it.
Doesn't matter.
Apparently, that's protected.
They say, A precedent protects political party membership.
What does that mean?
You still said someone did something they didn't do.
Taken together, the post reporting did not subject Nick to disgrace or ridicule.
But Nick's lawsuit, Bertelsmann added, employed precisely the type of explanation or innuendo that cannot enlarge or add to the sense or effect of the words charged to be libelous.
Bertelsmann's also ruled it irrelevant to the defamation case that Sandman was scorned on social media.
That I agree with.
Like, look, you know what the Washington Post activists want to get out of this.
In this instance, I think the Washington Post was just really lazy and they live in a bubble.
I'm working on a bigger report about the persistent delusional state created by social media algorithms that people like the Washington Post live in.
And I don't mean to call them out specifically.
I mean, like, Long story short, because I don't want to get into it, but I've mentioned it quite a bit.
The left, according to Jonathan Haidt's research, and this is just my opinion based on these precedents and research, the left functions based on two moral foundations, like care and fairness, whereas moderates and the right focus on five moral foundations.
That means if you produce content chasing an algorithm, You are going to primarily, it's going to work on the left.
Because you make something outrageous and emotional and the left reacts to that.
Whereas moderates and conservatives are going to respond based on any one of the five moral foundations and might resist outrage content to a certain degree.
Take in the fact, then, that intersectionality pumps all of the different keywords into one article, right?
You have one article about racism, but then you have one article about how racism intersects with sexism and all these other things, and now you have an article with all of the keywords which will be favored by the algorithm and affect the left.
So, basically, that's what I'm, you know, getting to.
In a bigger report.
There's going to be a ton of data.
I've already got tons of sources talking to some people.
But the long story short, the reason I bring it up here is people at the Washington Post, people at CNN and all these other outlets are being impacted by algorithmic manipulation.
They're in a circle where they're essentially feeding themselves their own information back and forth and now they can't get out of this circle so they're not getting information from the outside world.
They are effectively in a bubble.
So when this story broke, it's a really good example of this phenomenon.
They saw a tweet.
They only saw the outrage clickbait, and that's what they reported on.
Whereas actual reporters and those who function on five moral foundations were skeptical and willing to challenge the notion.
Now look, I'm not saying the right is invincible, I'm just saying in this particular instance, it didn't work.
I will also add in this instance too, it was targeting people wearing Trump hats, so naturally Trump supporters will be skeptical.
But the reason I was able to come out and tell the truth about what happened almost immediately, got like half a million views in like 10 hours, I was one of the first people to report, here's what literally happened, here's the footage, here's the raw, because I am not manipulated by emotional outrage.
I challenged it and did research.
Here's the thing.
I don't work in these newsrooms where I'm stuck in this cycle.
These people who live in New York are surrounded by the same people who know the same things, and they can't see outside of their ivory tower.
And that means they're susceptible to publishing fake news.
Fortunately for them, they're protected.
They go on to say that the cases against CNN and NBC remain pending as of Friday afternoon.
They all published different things.
Just because this was dismissed doesn't mean that CNN and NBC are off the hook.
They've reported different things.
I will say I am completely shocked that they were able to win on falsely reporting that the students chanted Build That Wall.
Oh, I see, I see, I see.
It's because Phillips said it.
So they can, yup, yup, so then there you go.
Phillips said they were chanting build that wall.
And you're allowed to report it.
So here, so get this.
And I've said this before, but you're gonna love it.
I can go outside, find any random homeless person, Just have them say whatever they want, and there you go, I can report it.
And it'll be carried by a major publication.
At the very least, the Washington Post should be ashamed of themselves.
Because even though they won, they've proven something incredible.
They had no facts, and the statements they made were opinions.
The only reason they won was because they didn't report any facts.
That's what the court determined.
Washington Post is a trash rack who didn't report any facts.
Why write a story if you don't know what happened?
They didn't fact check, they didn't get any facts, and here you go, congratulations, you've won!
Please enjoy your court precedent of not doing your jobs.
Stick around, the next segment will be at 1pm, and I'll be following the story with any updates.
Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you 1pm on this channel.
And another one bites the dust.
In a series of Me Too allegations levied against Neil deGrasse Tyson, he has come out on top
of all of them and is keeping his TV shows and his job at the Hayden Planetarium.
For those that aren't familiar, I believe it was four women, maybe more, who accused
him of impropriety.
The reason this story is so notorious is, well, for one.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a famous, albeit kind of weird, Twitter annoying guy, but he's very famous.
And people like him as kind of a science dude, right?
But one of the stories, and we'll dive deeper into this, was about how he touched a woman's arm to look at her tattoo, and that was what he did wrong.
The breaking news today is that he is keeping his job.
He is effectively cleared, I would imagine.
Now here's the thing, they're not getting into detail, but I would argue this.
If four women accused him, They investigated it, and they said he can keep his job.
It sounds like it is BS, for the most part, or at least unsubstantiated.
And this is the big problem with the Me Too era.
Now listen, I always do this, I always preface these stories by saying, of course, Me Too has done good things.
I'm not trying to belittle the good they've done, and I think the good outweighs the bad.
But if you don't weed out the bad, the whole thing turns sour.
You cannot have people like, was it Chris Hardwick?
Falsely accused.
You have Neil deGrasse Tyson now keeping his job, like, no problem.
Aziz Ansari, yes, there are bad things in the MeToo movement that we must call out while recognizing a lot of really disgusting and horrible people have found their comeuppance.
And there's been some kind of, I don't know, justice.
Although I will point out all these celebrities jumping on the bandwagon who knew exactly what some of these monsters were doing.
Where were you?
You know, they're fair-weather friends.
They only come out and complain when it's convenient and they want to generate buzz around themselves.
But what about those who had been calling this stuff out for a long time?
And I'm going to avoid naming a lot of celebrities because there are some good ones who have been fighting forever to call out these sickos, and then there's all the fair-weather celebrities who act like they're all about social justice now that it's popular.
But then things get taken too far, like with this Neil deGrasse Tyson story.
So let's see what's happening with Mr. Tyson.
I want to talk about this a little bit.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash Donate if you'd like to support my work.
There's PayPal, crypto, and a physical address.
You can choose what you want to do.
But of course, share this video if you like it, because YouTube is deranking independent political commentary.
So if you think it's important, You have to share it.
Otherwise, there's just no way for this to get out.
I mean, it's not like a complete loss, but YouTube is on the track to seriously harm and end independent commentary.
We've all seen the hit in our analytics, but let's read the story.
They say, After investigation, Neil deGrasse Tyson will keep his job.
Dr. Tyson was accused of sexual misconduct.
The American Museum of Natural History said he would remain director of the Hayden Planetarium.
This is a win across the board.
He's keeping his TV shows and his job.
They say the astrophysicist who leads the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History will keep his job, the institution said on Thursday.
The museum has closed an investigation into sexual misconduct accusations against him.
The museum's investigation into allegations concerning Neil deGrasse Tyson is complete, a museum spokeswoman said in a brief statement.
Based on the results of the investigation, Dr. Tyson remains an employee and director of the Hayden Planetarium.
Because this is a confidential personnel matter, there will be no further statements by the museum.
Dr. Tyson was accused of behaving inappropriately with two women in an article published in November on the website Patheos.
But, um, I believe the story I have here from BuzzFeed says four.
I could be wrong.
Um... Okay.
I don't know.
I don't know what the exact number is, but I believe it's four different women that are listed in this.
And the one that I really want to focus on, which we'll jump back to the New York Times story, is the woman who claimed that because he looked at her tattoo, that was essentially, you know, impropri- Like, there's a photo of it!
Come on!
I can't believe this stuff, but let's read.
They say, in one instance, Caitlin N. Allers, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said she met Tyson in 2009 at a party after a gathering of the American Astronomical Society.
He was examining her tattoo of the solar system, which stretches along her arm to her collarbone, and she said he followed the tattoo with his hand, putting it into her dress.
He said he was looking for Pluto, she said.
Now, here's the thing.
Okay, they brought it up.
Let's jump over.
There's a photo of this.
Maybe he lifted up her dress a little bit, like on her shoulder, to see where the tattoo went.
But this just seems more like a doting fool, more than a serious act of sexual impropriety.
So, look.
What's interesting about this, too, is that this happened in 2009.
It seems to be nothing.
She maybe was upset by it, sure, but seriously?
Someone was looking at your tattoo and grabbed your arm?
She didn't complain about it for a decade?
That makes me wonder.
When this photo was taken, Neil deGrasse Tyson wasn't that famous.
He was moderately well-known, so they took a photo together.
He looked at her tattoo, and I'm gonna say, the only evidence we have is that he did look at her tattoo.
Now, of course, she describes it as him lifting up her dress to look inside.
We don't see that happening, but maybe this does provide evidence he did grab her arm.
But, based on that alone, is that really enough?
I'd have to say, when we see a lot of these stories wait 10 years, I always wonder why they wait so long.
Why do they wait until an opportune moment?
Now perhaps, we could be fair and say, she was upset about it for a decade, but felt like she couldn't speak up until other women did, and now with group, you know, now that she feels like she's got a group, she can do it.
It's just an opportunity to get your name out there and pretend like everything, you know, was worse than it really was.
We see these stories about, you know, like Brett Kavanaugh 30 years ago.
30 years!
And all of a sudden now, she didn't care.
Christine Bozzi Ford never brought this up when he was being appointed to be a federal judge.
You let... Okay.
Let's read some more of the New York Times.
They say Ashley Watson, who has been assistant on the television series Cosmos, made another accusation.
She said that during a visit to his apartment, which she thought was for work purposes, he held her hand and stared into her eyes, in what he called a Native American handshake for about 10 seconds, until she pulled away.
Ms.
Watson said that as she was leaving, he told her, I want you to know that I want to hug you so bad right now, but I know that if I do, I'll just want more.
She subsequently quit her job.
Now, we gotta talk about this.
Listen.
Human beings are allowed to flirt.
Even in work circumstances.
That's a fact.
The way it's supposed to work, and I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure, you can work with someone and make a pass at them.
And if they say no, and please don't do it again, they have to stop.
What this story is always really blew my mind.
Neil deGrasse Tyson held her hand too long and looked into her eyes and says, I want to hug you.
I want more.
Okay, so you quit.
What's the big deal?
He didn't force himself on her.
He didn't do anything.
He was acting like a human being.
There's a really interesting dynamic that takes place with the rise of, you know, Me Too and workplace feminism and these things.
And it's that what this guy did is normal guy behavior.
An attempt at wooing a woman.
I imagine in my head you see those funny bird dances.
There's like a funny video of this weird oval-shaped bird dancing in front of a woman.
Like, yes, guys do this.
Guys will say things to women.
Now, you may say, no one should do that in the workplace.
But that's a really creepy precedent, right?
Imagining that humans have to behave like robots to each other.
And the one thing I always defer to is that there is no real way to solve for this.
So here's the example I often give in these stories, okay?
So forgive me if you've heard it, but I want to... You know, these videos are always independent, so I sometimes repeat similar points, because some people might watch this and not another video.
But here's the point.
If I walk up to a guy in my office right now, we're in an office, and I walk up to a guy and I say, I was like, oh man, damn, that suit looks fantastic.
And you must have been working out.
You're looking good.
Normal guy compliment like, wow, great suit, man.
You look great.
Wow, where can I get a suit like that?
No problem.
Can't say that to a woman.
You can't say, wow, you look great.
What a beautiful dress.
You look fantastic.
All of a sudden, now you've never known if you've crossed the line.
So that's why I think you can't have this precedent where guys literally can't hold a woman's hand and try and make a pass.
And get this.
In this story, you might say it's inappropriate, but some people might say it's not.
And why do you get to dictate what is or isn't?
Here's the thing.
Did Neil deGrasse Tyson cross the line with this woman?
From this right here, it doesn't sound like it.
It sounded like he didn't even make a direct pass at her.
It sounded like he was trying to gauge her interest, to which she had none, and he said okay, and she left.
How screwed up is it, then, that she gets angry and accuses him of impropriety simply because- Like, think about that line.
Imagine if Neil deGrasse Tyson walked up to her and said, I would like to have, uh, uh, engage in relations with you on my sofa right now.
She could then be like, whoa, no way.
That's a direct pass.
In this instance, she's literally said he held my hand too long and looked into my eyes and then said he wanted to hug me, but he'd want more.
Yeah, he got as close as he could because he's doing what guys do.
It sounds like Neil deGrasse Tyson didn't want to make her too uncomfortable, so he tried approaching the situation very slowly and got as close as he could to asking, and when she was clearly uncomfortable, she left.
Isn't that the appropriate thing to do?
Or would you recommend that no man, at any point, anywhere ever, express interest in a woman?
Now, you may.
You may say, in the workplace, no, you shouldn't.
Okay.
But the problem is, someone else would say, why not?
How many people met their significant other in the workplace?
I know a lot of people who met at work.
It's in fact how humans socialize.
So think about this.
When you have friends, when you're younger, so the trope is that as you get older, you lose friends.
And this is, it tends to be true for one simple reason.
When you're younger, you're forced into some kind of institutional environment, school, right?
And so you don't really have a lot in common with a lot of people, but you do develop commonalities
over the fact that you have to be in the same place and you socialize.
But when you graduate, you leave your friends behind, right?
You never see your friends from high school, when was the last time you see them?
You go to college, you make some new friends, and then you go into the workplace and now you have a new set of friends, people you work with.
How is someone supposed to meet someone else?
Especially if you're looking for someone you want to have some kind of like, I don't know, have something in common with.
So whether or not his assistant was right for him, it's not the point.
I imagine someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson, I don't know if he was married or whatever, so maybe it was inappropriate, but the point I'm trying to say is, if I meet someone who works in the same office as me, we must have very similar interests, which means the likelihood there will be an attraction is higher than meeting a person at a bar.
Then, what do you say?
Who gets to determine whether or not someone is or isn't allowed to lightly broach the topic of a potential relationship?
Now, some workplaces have rules saying you cannot date within the office, but typically, those rules are for management down.
So, yes, that may mean, you know, another Grace Tyson would have been in the wrong in a lot of HR scenarios.
You can't have a subordinate and a manager.
But, you know, I mean, well, and not only that, if the workplace said you can't date, sometimes people quit, and sometimes people just do it in secret.
In the end, the point I'm trying to make about this is, for one, you get the point.
Neil deGrasse Tyson's keeping his job.
He's keeping his TV shows.
This was announced back in March, that he's going to keep his shows StarTalk and Cosmos.
Their investigations were complete.
His shows would return to the air.
But in the end, we have two scenarios that I really wanted to make sure I highlighted in this.
A guy touching another human.
That's what we can see from here.
If you're uncomfortable by it, well, that's… hey, don't touch me again.
It's really that simple.
He didn't do anything other than step too far, and the adult response to be like, please, you know, that was too much.
Oh, I'm sorry about that.
End of story.
It's like everybody has become a child.
People want to live in a persistent childhood state.
That's what they want to live in.
They want to be like, he touched me, I want the authority figure to come and do something about it.
In the real world, there is no authority to come and do something about it.
And most of the time, when you even call the police, they say, we can't do anything about it.
But imagine, imagine giving the power to do it.
No, that'd be terrifying.
And then we have the story about the woman who said, he held her hand too long and looked into her eyes, and then she left and quit.
You didn't need to quit.
You could have just said, Neil, don't do that again.
And he probably would have said, fine.
We live in like a weird... We're developing a weird, overly sensitive, childlike... You know, the way I see it is like... And I'm probably getting a lot of this wrong.
When I look at the story of how dogs became dogs, right?
From wolves to dogs.
Dogs are essentially like...
Wolves are, but they're permanently baby wolves, okay?
So, like, the way dogs act is, in a lot of ways, the way wolf puppies act.
But then wolf puppies grow up and become more aggressive and tough and territorial, and dogs still have some of that, but they're still very happy and doofy and, you know, so... One of the things I read once about the development, the selection of dogs, is that They have become basically perpetual wolf babies.
They're, you know, for whatever reason, meanwhile, telling women to act more like toxic men.
But that's besides the point.
They're saying that men shouldn't be masculine.
Right?
And I want to clarify, too, because they're going to say I'm being hyperbolic.
Right, right.
We hear a lot Toxic masculinity is the bad traits.
But then that gets conflated with just general masculinity, whether it's someone's intention or not.
That's the point.
We hear things about bad behavior, but bad behavior is bad behavior.
Everyone engages in bad behavior.
Guys bully, women bully.
They bully in similar ways.
Women hit other women, men hit other men.
It's like that Gillette commercial where they're like, toxic masculinity.
And so anyway, the point is, everything we're seeing, every complaint, everyone's playing it safe.
You know what?
It's not worth the risk.
From now on, nobody can talk.
If you're a man, you can't talk to it.
Like, where do we go from here?
Jordan Peterson brings up that, should women be able to wear, you know, v-necks and, like, makeup in the workplace?
This is a Vice interview.
And I said, sure, why not?
And he says, because these things are meant, are, are, are, were developed to accentuate, you know, sexual selection.
And then everyone rolls their eyes like, oh, Jordan, but he's got a point.
If you can't even hold someone's hand without being accused of impropriety, why would anyone try to look attractive in the workplace?
So what's the result?
Do we say, from now on, there's a uniform for work?
You can do it.
You can make uniforms.
Imagine this.
Imagine if you went to an office building where they, I don't know, like a vice's office.
From now on, everyone has to wear a jumpsuit.
Because we don't want any possibility of impropriety accused for anyone, and we don't want to risk it.
That's where we're heading.
And I'm not being hyperbolic.
Every single time we see a story like this, it's everyone deciding to play it safe.
What does that mean?
It means, okay, holding someone's hand is now off limits.
Is it a joke?
Human beings hug each other.
What if I meet someone in the office, and they want to shake hands?
Oh, I'm not holding your hand.
I don't want to get sued.
What if I think it's fine, and I take your hand and I use my other hand and go like this, and they say, that was inappropriate.
And then I get in trouble and get investigated?
Things are getting crazy.
And I know for the most part, in like the real world, they'll say, these things are rare.
But trust me when I say, There's a trend.
The trend is escalating.
There is a fear of risk.
There's no reason to take risks.
So we see this more and more.
Why should a business expose themselves?
They can simply say, hey, according to the rules, you are not allowed to touch any other employee, shaking hands, hugging, or otherwise.
And if we see it, we'll let you go.
That's the safe option.
Look at this story.
He's keeping his show.
He won out on this.
She quit.
Good.
She overreacted.
She's gone.
Fine.
I don't know exactly what happened.
Maybe she was right.
I'm not trying to belittle her experience.
I'm trying to point out, as someone trying to resolve these circumstances, what do you do?
And in this instance, Neil deGrasse Tyson comes out on top.
So, I'll leave it there, you know, Tyson for obvious reasons isn't commenting, but I'm happy to hear that he's keeping his, look, I think he's an annoying weirdo on Twitter, but he shouldn't have his career and his life destroyed because he held someone's hand for too long because he was maybe interested in her.
Sure, it sounds like he wanted to hook up with this young woman.
Perhaps he was married and he shouldn't have.
But that's a whole other moral issue.
It's not, we shouldn't, like, we don't have laws There's civil disputes, sure.
But the point is, it's not illegal.
Okay?
If he wants to try and, you know, put a move on a girl, and he doesn't even come out and overtly pressure her or anything like that, or force her, he just shakes her hand too long, like, what are we talking about?
But I assure you, things will get more sensitive.
The result will be a bigger backlash.
I hope our society becomes resilient to this nonsense.
We get calloused by it and eventually say, enough!
I don't care!
Why are you coming to me over every little piece of trash you happen to find?
And maybe then we can become sane, rational adults again and move on with our lives.
Or I'll leave it there.
Stick around, the next segment will be coming up at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCast, and I will see you in the next segment.
Donald Trump wasn't supposed to win the election.
He wasn't.
By whatever metric you want to quantify it, if you're a conspiracy theorist and think the deep state was shocked, or if you think it was just by any standard political campaigning, Trump's character and everything wasn't supposed to win.
It was supposed to be your stock Democrat, your generic character, Hillary Clinton.
Why didn't she win?
Well, let me tell you one thing.
One thing that helped contribute to Donald Trump's victory.
Memes.
And you may think it's silly.
Well, actually, most of you probably get it.
But some people out there listening might be like, what do you mean?
How did memes get Trump the victory?
I will just make it make this very simple.
I'm not gonna get into theory about ideas.
I've talked about some of these ideas, like what is a meme and how does it work.
I will just say this.
Look at the screen.
This story from Digiday.
The 2020 meme election.
How memes became a mainstream tool in politics.
This is from June 5th.
In this image, we can see Trump as the Wicked Witch and Pete Buttigieg as Dorothy.
And it's making a point about, I don't know, Trump trying to get Dorothy or something.
And not the best meme I've ever seen.
The point is, memes are fun and funny, and it's not that difficult, if you understand the general concept or internet culture, to play the game.
If you make a meme and it's bad, people aren't going to yell at you for the most part.
You don't gotta worry about rejection.
But if you make a meme and it's good, it will go viral because it's funny.
But these can be tools for spreading ideas and also recruiting people for your political faction.
The right dominates.
The left can't meme.
For the most part, they can't.
And they get all angry when people point it out, but yeah, try as you might left.
They just can't pull it off.
The funniest thing I've ever seen though, I will give credit, is Toilet Paper USA.
I found that to be hilarious.
One of the best memeing, some of the best memeing I've seen from the left.
But for the most part, the right does dominate.
They do a really good job of producing fun and funny memes.
We're not necessarily going to talk about the political memes in the breaking news today.
But let me get you to the big story.
Instagram is purging meme accounts.
And while these accounts probably aren't overly political, I will say, I do think this falls in line with actions being taken ahead of 2020.
Trump wasn't supposed to win.
The internet allowed it.
From data to memeing, just people were able to spread information and rapidly shift what was expected.
So now we can see the reaction from these big media companies, notably Facebook, banning certain people.
Facebook's actually banned some of the highest profile Trump supporters.
Call them names, call them whatever you want, but Milo, Paul Joseph Watson, Alex Jones, they were big, big Trump supporters.
Now, Facebook certainly banned other people too.
Laura Loomer, for instance.
I don't necessarily know if she's a Trump supporter.
I'm not trying to... I don't want to assign someone support, but these people were all banned.
Facebook took that action and they said it was about danger or hate.
Sure, whatever you want to call it, I'm not saying it's a conspiracy.
I'm just saying action is being taken to get rid of things that were beneficial to Trump.
These meme accounts, we're talking about 30 plus million followers across all of these accounts.
Wiped out in the past couple days.
Again, not saying it's on purpose to sway the election.
I'm just saying something changed.
Our culture deviated from what was expected.
And now it seems like these social media companies have realized this and they're taking dramatic action.
Take a look at YouTube.
Here's where the plug comes in.
You want to support my work, go to TimCast.com slash donate, or just share this video.
You may hear me say that from time to time, and I'll tell you why I say that.
YouTube has deranked my channel and many others, meaning they are less likely to suggest this video than CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, among others, ABC, etc.
CBS?
NBC?
Did I say NBC?
What's happening now is, I think Trump was a wake-up call for the big powers.
They realized the internet has given too much power to too many people.
We better do something about that.
You now have people who have grandfathered in.
What's the likelihood that, you know, I get banned?
It's probably not that high, okay?
They've done some things to my videos.
They've taken down some of my content.
They have banned a lot of people.
But I'm a fairly not-mean, kind of tepid person.
Centrist.
I use verified NewsGuard sources whenever I'm doing commentary.
I don't use conspiracy.
I refute conspiracy.
But, they still don't like the independent track.
They don't like, you know, I can probably get by.
But here's the thing.
With deranking my channel and others, it's gonna be increasingly more difficult for new channels to emerge.
So what does that mean?
In 10 years, guess what YouTube will look like?
NBC News.
Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, etc.
I mean, they'll be replaced by then, maybe.
Maybe they'll still be around, I have no idea.
But it's gonna be exactly what you'd predict.
The corporate, like, mainstream perspective.
So, is it the biggest deal in the world that we're seeing the purging of these meme accounts?
It's a grain of sand.
Now, for the people who ran the meme accounts, yeah, it's pretty bad.
It's your livelihood.
Some of these people made money doing it from sponsored posts, and Instagram has decided no more.
And I think the reason is, people are able to gain influence using this kind of technique, and they don't like that.
Now, they can never truly stop someone from getting followings and becoming prominent, but it will be dramatically harder.
You know, funny memes get shared, get liked, and it's a path towards generating a following, posting jokes and funny images.
And they got rid of that.
I can point to YouTube and say I think the reason they deranked my content is because we're overtly political and we push back on the establishment so they derank us.
I don't think they were concerned about that for the meme channels.
It's the concept of memes themselves.
It's... I think the people who got banned, they're not being banned because they posted something or broke the rules.
They're being banned for what they are.
The power of memes.
So, I'd be willing to bet there are political meme channels I got wiped out that aren't getting as noticed because they weren't as big.
But I believe they would be more likely to be the real target.
Let's read a little bit of this from ReclaimTheNet.
Now, I did mention I use third-party certified sites.
This one's not, but I will stress this story is not like the verified checkmark is mandatory, but in terms of protecting and, like, this is verified, we have Taylor Lorenz of The Atlantic confirming the same reporting, which means ReclaimTheNet is accurate on this one.
Let's read.
They say Instagram has today left several of its users devastated after it mass-deleted at least 30 meme accounts totaling over 33 million followers.
With no warning, users that were running large and popular meme accounts checked their email to find a message from Instagram telling them their account has been suspended from the platform.
Instagram told users that the reason for the suspension was not following our terms.
The notice stated, We're unable to restore accounts that are suspended for this reason, meaning that account owners have lost touch with their millions of followers and have no way to appeal to the social media giant to get their pages and livelihoods back.
Facebook owns Instagram.
Facebook is taking this dramatic action.
A teenager named Cage, whose account, Autist, with over half a million followers, was suspended in the purge, said that he had already earned more than $30,000 this year from his page, and he was using the money to save for college.
Today, his page and income source is gone.
Look at the name, Autist.
I'd be willing to bet that this individual is more likely to be politically right.
Autist is not something the left says.
Thus, my point stands.
Meme power helps Trump.
Meme power helps libertarian, independent thought.
For the first time in a hundred years, Gen Z has shifted conservative.
They're not more conservative than Gen X. But they are more conservative, to an extent, a little bit, than millennials.
This is a dramatic shift, because over the past hundred years, everything's gone closer and closer to the left for the first time.
Gen Z, the other way around.
Even if a little bit.
And I think part of this is internet culture.
The idea of, look, you're offensive, you make jokes, you can say whatever you want, you're independent, you're libertarian, that's the internet.
There's also things like, you know, these young people grew up watching PewDiePie, and the media smears them, they don't trust the media anymore.
But I think it's another reason why we're seeing a backlash.
Meme culture spreads libertarianism, independent thought, and the ability to say whatever you want and offend whoever you want, and you're hiding behind an anonymous profile with the name of Autist.
But let's read on.
They say users took to Twitter to express their frustration in the situation.
This person, Ben, said, this is the endgame and it's a Mario clown, so once again, more likely politically right.
This is the endgame.
40 million plus followers and over $600,000 in accounts lost in two days.
Instagram, Facebook, effing own up to what you did and roll back.
You can't stay silent in this.
I personally lost 600k followers for no good reason.
We then have this huge list.
This is not the biggest list.
Taylor has a much bigger list.
We can see this image of pages that got deleted.
She then links to a massive list of all the pages that got wiped out.
There may be some doubles in there, I don't know, but, you know.
She says, Meemer is trying to avoid the ban.
Now, look at this one.
This one's God's Bleach.
Bleach is a meme reference to drinking bleach, I'm assuming, which is more likely to be politically right, if anything.
I'm not saying they're all right-wing.
I'm just saying they would more likely to be in that direction.
Reclaim the Net writes, it's not clear why these meme accounts were shut down.
A Facebook spokesperson would only say that Instagram shut down accounts for violating the company's terms of use, which suggests the issue could be for one of the following reasons.
Shock humor.
Some of the meme accounts being bought and sold.
Some of the content in the memes being used without permission.
Some of the meme accounts violating Instagram policy by selling verification services.
Retrieving deactivated usernames and restoring banned accounts through a private program that is meant to be only available to the media.
Interesting.
They say in recent months the data collection image sharing platform has been cracking down on the many popular accounts and suspending them for a variety of reasons, often for so-called hate speech.
Keep in mind, Paul Joseph Watson was banned and it was just selfies of him in the sunset.
Like, I kid you not.
They banned him.
Can't have it, he's dangerous.
They say popular cosplayer Belle Delphine was recently banned after a mass flagging campaign.
I'm not gonna get into all that.
I'm just gonna stress, The purge is not going to stop here.
They don't like what happened, they don't like the shift, and they're trying to bring back the cultural narrative in one direction.
So we will fall back on the CNNs and the MSNBCs and the Fox Newses of the world, and the smaller independent voices will be silent.
So anyway, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I will end with this final thought.
Maybe it's nothing.
Maybe they're just meme accounts.
Or maybe it's a fact.
We know that memes are powerful tools in independent, liberty-based thought that predominantly helped the right.
It's now being purged.
Stick around, I got a couple more segments coming up for you in a few minutes, and I will see you then.
I saw this story, and I thought it was a fun story to read, but I didn't think it was anything worth actually doing a video about until I actually got halfway through and realized there's something profoundly insane in this story.
Now, for those looking on the screen, you see a simple story about a waitress who secretly served pregnant customers cocktails without alcohol and could lose her job.
This is not a verified story.
I have no idea why The Independence is running it.
It's based off of what I understand to be a Reddit post from a waitress who said when she realized one of the women she was serving was pregnant, she secretly put in virgin cocktails because she didn't want the baby to get fetal alcohol syndrome.
Now this is an interesting story, but you're probably wondering why it matters and what does this have to do with the title of the video.
Apparently, she says, it is an act of discrimination to tell a pregnant woman she cannot have alcohol.
How far have we come to where we've actually enshrined in law a human right for a pregnant woman to drink alcohol?
How does that make sense?
You know, I've often said it.
You're going to hear me say it again.
The more we try to expand civil rights, the more we take them away.
Okay, so, case in point, the Jessica Yenov story with the trans woman who wants female waxing services.
How does that make sense?
We're forcing women to engage in a practice to touch something they don't want to.
You look at New York City.
You have an infinite gender law.
If you didn't know this, it's true.
In New York City, gender is defined legally as self-expression, which could be anything.
Which means, technically, businesses can't discriminate for literally any reason at all, at any point.
Like, if you called yourself Trump gender, you know, you, like, here's the thing, right?
A lawyer told me it's called the laugh test.
If you call yourself Trump gender, they could still throw you out and a judge is gonna laugh at you.
The point is, though, where do we draw the line?
What is or isn't a gender?
And who gets to decide what is or isn't?
So, so I want to read through the story, mostly because it's an interesting story, and I want to, I want to have, like, um, bounce around the idea about Look, civil rights are important.
Expanding civil rights to marginalized groups, I believe, is also important.
But we need to be sane and have sound decision-making when it comes to this.
Otherwise, we're going to legally say, you can't deny a pregnant woman alcohol.
I'm sorry, man.
At a certain point, okay, if I'm a bartender and a pregnant lady says, give me a beer, I'm going to be like, never going to happen.
But apparently that's illegal.
Apparently that is illegal.
At least according to this.
So we'll read the story and we'll talk about the idea.
I want to make sure I stress again, it's not a verified story.
Independent is a verified outlet, but they're just reading something off Reddit, so take it with a grain of salt.
But let's read.
They say a waitress is reportedly facing the sack for deciding not to give alcohol to a pregnant woman in their cocktail because she thought it was right.
In a post on the MIVA whole Reddit, the server explained, I have waited tables for the past three years. During my
shift last night, a group of four women in their late 20s came in. They were a pleasure to serve as
customers, to have as customers.
They ordered four of our house cocktails to start with, and then went over the menu for entrees.
When I was on my way back to their booth with the drinks and a tray,
I walked by the backside and overheard one of them talking about how she was 14 weeks along.
When I rounded back, they were talking about the same topic and it was clear to me that she was
was pregnant.
I figured her having one drink wasn't a big deal.
They ordered their entrees, and I went off to handle other tables.
I want to stop here and just make one point, too.
What do you think?
I'm seriously asking you this.
What do you think?
The waitress felt she knew what was right for the pregnant woman.
And at a certain point, it's kind of like, well, should a business have the right to tell me what's right for me?
If I want to do it, shouldn't I be allowed to do it?
Isn't it my choice?
But then we get into the interesting conundrum of two lives.
The baby.
Who protects the baby?
Now, of course, I've gotten into the whole pro-choice, pro-life thing.
It's an extremely complicated problem.
I'm not going to rehash.
But I will concede, absolutely, if there is a woman who is carrying a baby and she wants to drink alcohol, you've got a problem here.
That's going to hurt the baby.
Interestingly enough, a friend of mine said, wait, but that makes sense.
Right?
The law was passed for civil rights reasons, and they don't care about the baby.
Should that be surprising to anybody?
I guess not, but I can't... I mean, there's gotta be some rule against that, right?
I mean, if a woman is pregnant and she punches herself in the gut, is that a crime?
Honestly, I have no idea.
But I gotta say, this is a deep, confusing moral question, and I defer to you.
I don't know, but let's read.
Just about five minutes later, they called me over again and asked for another round.
At this point, I started getting concerned.
But I took the order and cheerfully said I'd be right back.
This time, I went to the bartender and asked him to make one of them a virgin cocktail.
He was confused, but since he's a good friend of mine, I told him to trust me.
A few cocktails later, hers strictly virgin, they started getting rowdy, and Ms.
Pregnant Woman was also getting into it.
I figured that since she didn't notice, things were okay.
The problem came when I took them their check, and they asked to split the bill at the register.
When Ms.
Pregnant Woman got to the counter, I saw her cocktails were marked with virgin.
My bartender had edited each in the system inventory.
It was too late for me to edit them back, so I just had her pay hoping that she wouldn't look at the receipt.
They all thanked me and left, leaving a generous tip in the process.
They were talking in the parking lot for a short while, presumably waiting for an Uber.
Several minutes later, Mrs. Pregnoman came back in and asked what virgin on the receipt meant.
I fessed up that it meant non-alcoholic.
She blank stared at me for a few seconds and then asked if she had ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail.
I said no, but told her that I assumed she wanted one seeing as she was pregnant.
It was a lame lie and I'll admit it, but she looked me in the eye and asked me to return her part of the tip.
I did so.
Then she talked to my manager.
The manager took me to her office and literally shrieked at me until hoarse.
I stood my ground and told her that I'm not going to be responsible for fetal alcohol syndrome.
She told me that she was taking me off the calendar until she decided what to do with me.
She also informed that I could get the restaurant in serious trouble for discrimination.
And upon examination of my state's laws, she is correct.
And that is where I read and said, whoa.
We need to have a serious conversation about this.
Should someone have a human right to drink when pregnant?
Wow, that's tough.
And it gets close to the pro-life, pro-choice question.
The challenge here, the big challenge is, you're not just, like, killing the child.
You're slowly poisoning it and causing developmental problems that could lead to a lifetime of suffering.
This is a really interesting moral dilemma, and I think, you know, I think there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna fall on the pro-life side of this.
I think the last time I did a video about this, it fell to like 60-40.
At least 40% who are okay with my stance on it, 60% who are strongly against it, which I'm not surprised.
But I'm curious as to what you think about this.
Not to get into my opinion on pro-life, pro-choice, by all means, you can criticize me and attack me all day and night.
I'm genuinely asking for your thoughts on how this crosses the line, because it's different, but in a similar vein.
I personally... How is a business obligated to give a pregnant woman alcohol?
Can't a bartender say, you've had a bit too much?
Is the bartender allowed to say how much is too much?
And for any reason?
If a guy is drunk and the bartender says, I think you've had enough, buddy, is that discrimination?
Well, you're doing it because they've had too much and they're drunk, but what if you gave them one drink and then said, I think you've had enough?
What is the line?
And this is where I think things start to get crazy, because... Would you, as a business, be obligated to sell someone, say, a weapon if you knew they're going to use it on themselves?
Well, it's discrimination.
They were depressed.
That's a mental illness.
That's ableism.
That's discrimination against someone with a disability.
And I'm pretty sure, like, you could argue that.
So where is the line drawn?
And would a business be allowed to say, I am not going to sell a weapon to somebody who is mentally ill?
But that sounds like it's ableism, doesn't it?
It sounds like the more we try to expand civil rights, the less sense it's starting to make.
Let's read on.
She says, but then I talked to my mother and father about it tonight.
They told me they understood my position.
The entire staff at the restaurant is against me, and I think that I'm going to call in and tell my manager that I quit, but I still feel in the right here.
I would like some perspective on this, and if I'm the a-hole here.
The story says, Some weren't sure if they were on the side of the server or the pregnant woman.
She sucks for obvious reasons.
You suck.
You had no way to prove she was pregnant.
You altered her drink without informing her.
And you made a big decision about speaking to your manager.
Edit.
If she isn't pregnant, OP is the sole a-hole here.
OP won't even expand upon what he overheard.
She overheard.
Is it a guy?
He just keeps quoting himself.
Oh, it was a guy the whole time?
I thought it was a woman.
She was definitely pregnant.
And to the snarky AOL saying, is that the only way to tell if someone is pregnant and let me just carry a test around?
Obviously not.
But this also isn't about the customer trying to prove she's pregnant.
It's about OP and his choice to assume the customer is pregnant simply by overhearing a conversation.
OP could have asked the customer, but he still should have talked to his manager first before altering someone's food without telling him.
That's a good point.
That's a great point.
And you know what I would do?
I'd go to the manager and say, I overheard them talking, I believe this woman is pregnant, I won't be serving them, and that's that.
I'm gonna go serve somebody else.
And if the manager decided they will serve them because it's discrimination, well that's on the manager, but I wouldn't do it.
I think it's wrong.
If I had a pregnant woman come to me and say, let me get a beer, regardless of any context, I'm going to be like, I'm not giving you a beer, dude.
That's ridiculous.
And in the same vein, it's like, I'm not going to buy a weapon for somebody who's mentally ill.
You know what I mean?
There are limits.
We're trying to at least determine whether or not we will have a hand in someone's self-destruction.
Look, by all means, you can do what you want with your life, but don't force me to hurt you or someone else.
That's the line I'm seeing.
That it's discrimination because someone wants to harm themselves or someone else is where things get confusing.
The baby.
Does the baby have the right to not be subjected to fetal alcohol syndrome?
What an ethical conundrum!
But a really interesting story and a really interesting moral dilemma.
I want to stress one point as we end.
I've often said this.
It's very easy to have principles because when people are making assumptions about what the crime or what the principle is without context.
Okay, so let me try and clarify.
Blackstone's formulation, it is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer, is extremely easy to believe in when we're talking about shoplifters.
It is better that ten guilty shoplifters escape than one person falsely accused of shoplifting suffer.
Makes sense, right?
Let's scale it up.
Is it better, then, that ten guilty murderers escape if it means one person falsely accused of murder would be set free?
So, now, we've got the… I'm gonna get worse.
Genuinely asking you this question.
Of course, we're like, so what if we have 10 shoplifters?
But I've asked this to people, and I've had a lot of people say, you better have the murderers locked up, even if one person has to suffer.
I disagree.
I disagree.
Locking up an innocent person is the most egregious violation the state can engage in.
If you can't bring someone, you know, we have to make sure we always protect the innocent.
Now here, I'm gonna levy it on you and get even crazier.
Is it better that ten guilty murderers escape if it means one person falsely accused of shoplifting should suffer?
You see, when I add context to Blackstone's formulation, things become increasingly more complicated.
So it's very easy for me to look at the idea of choice in life from a very static approach of, I believe X.
Add some nuance.
Will you protect the life of the baby if the woman is going to drink alcohol?
So I'm not telling you what is right or what is wrong.
I certainly don't think I owe the answers, and I think choice in life is a ridiculously complicated moral and ethical dilemma.
But I will say this.
To those of you who are pro-life and pro-choice, think about that issue.
Whatever your position is, would you allow a pregnant woman to drink alcohol?
If a pregnant woman asked you for alcohol, would you say, no problem?
Or would you say, no?
And I think that's a good point to bring up to people who are pro-choice.
Ask them that.
Like, and not in a facetious way, but like literally, is there a line you think is too far, right?
If the woman is planning on keeping the baby and wants to poison it, would you stop that?
I think it's a really interesting way to frame this and present a different context in a similar light.
There was a comedian, I think it was, what's his face?
The guy who was whacking off in front of the women.
Sorry, if you have kids.
I try to avoid certain adult contexts, but Uh, Louis C.K.
Louis C.K.
There you go.
Louis C.K.
He said, to really understand the pro-life choice argument, you have to really imagine, like, think about what they're saying.
He was like, pro-life people are saying, dude, that's a baby.
You're killing a baby.
unidentified
If I thought someone was killing a baby, I'd be really mad too!
You need to really listen to people and figure out what we can do to address the ethical dilemma.
But I'll leave it there.
I don't wanna prattle on.
I got one more video coming up for you in a few moments, so stick around.
We're gonna be talking about the minimum wage.
You know I love that.
I will see you in a few minutes.
I don't know if Bloomberg is a conservative outlet.
I don't think it is.
I think it's like middle of the road.
But they have this article from today.
The dream of $15 minimum wage gets a reality check from inflation.
And I think there's some really great points to be made, and I love talking about this concept for one simple reason.
I've had a lot of people say to me, Tim, you're against a federal minimum wage of $15.
That must mean you're a conservative.
I said, no, it doesn't.
First of all, I'm a centrist.
God, how many times do I have to say it?
Forgive me, forgive me.
The point is, just because you don't agree with this doesn't mean you're not liberal or you don't want people's wages to go up.
The difference is, you have a more right-wing approach, which is the free market will provide, and the left-wing approach, which is we must intervene in some circumstances.
Depending on how far left you get.
The reason I say left in that capacity, because that's where I'm at.
Sometimes we need intervention.
Sometimes.
I am not a laissez-faire person, because I think it results in a system where It's not so much about wages.
It's about what are we as a people doing.
Think about this.
And this is why I think there's a lot of conservatives who aren't overtly laissez-faire either.
Young people polled in the U.S.
want to be YouTubers.
Young people polled in China want to be astronauts.
The things we want, based off of rampant consumerism, are not always going to be good things.
And that's when I think we need something to say hard cultural shift.
Now, of course, there's a laissez-faire argument for non-profits.
And for the wealthy to step up, and for philanthropy, I completely agree with that.
But I do think we need a cohesive culture that can say, while we don't believe in authoritarian incentives, which would be like pointing the gun at somebody, to an extent we do, right?
But I'm not talking about authoritarianism.
Imagine if the government only ever pointed the gun at your face.
No, the government in the U.S.
will do tax incentives.
Like, okay, I'll tell you what.
You don't gotta pay as many taxes if you do X. Or grants.
Tell you what, we'll actually give you money if you do this.
So there's ways to incentivize behavior that are positive that I think work out, which puts me in, you know, kind of like a little left camp.
However, I think the federal minimum wage as it stands today makes no sense because of technology, because of automation, and because of the rapid transit of wealth and resources through digital means.
That means we need a different solution, and I don't know if we have one from a technological standpoint and from a governmental standpoint.
Perhaps the only thing we have now is supply and demand.
That doesn't mean I appreciate just runaway capitalism where people are buying just ridiculous, I don't know, Look, we're headed towards a future where instead of colonizing the universe, we colonize virtual Skyrim.
And it's fun, but should humanity just end there?
I'd hate to think it will.
I think people should have a choice, and if that's what happens to humans, it's rather sad.
But I do believe there will always be a group of people who want to strive for something better, so maybe we'll be okay.
But anyway, let's read a little bit about this and learn about the inflation of the $15 minimum wage and the reality check.
Bloomberg writes, for most of the decade, support for a $15 national minimum wage has grown among Democrats.
Once seen as a fringe idea when it was introduced in 2012, at least 19 Democrats running for president in 2020 support the increase.
They're going to lose support from every single small business in the country.
I'm not even exaggerating.
Every single one.
Last week, the U.S.
House passed a bill that would raise the minimum wage to that hourly rate by 2025, which could boost the incomes of 17 to 27 million workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
But by then, inflation could make an increase of $15 seem like too little too late.
And this is why Rashid Tlaib said we need a $20 minimum wage.
But I'll tell you what, man.
It'll never stop.
The New York Times said 33.
Well, why shouldn't everybody be a millionaire?
Right?
From now on, everybody must pay a million dollars to everybody.
Then what?
Then a box of cornflakes costs a million bucks.
Let's read on.
Over the course of the U.S.' 's 81-year history of a federal minimum wage, Congress has never introduced an automatic adjustment technique to let the minimum wage rise or fall in line with price changes.
And that's one thing they're proposing, which is interesting.
Instead, a series of irregular updates has instantly boosted the wage's purchasing power after varying periods of inflationary decline.
The current $7.25 wage, for instance, is now worth 16% less than it was enacted in July of 2009.
Proponents of a higher wage want to change all this by locking in wage increases for future years.
There are two common ways to achieve this.
Index to price inflation to guarantee the minimum wage can always afford the same theoretical basket of goods.
Or index to the increase in the median wage, which is an interesting idea.
While the first approach means a minimum wage worker's standard of living remains flat, the second makes sure they share in any gains from a growing economy.
The Raise the Wage Act passed by the House in July 18 would implement the latter strategy.
But even though that represents the more aggressive indexing approach, the starting point for the new wage floor will have effectively fallen 20% since the debate began in earnest.
By 2015, $15 an hour would be the equivalent of $11.93 in 2012.
When the Fight for $15 movement started, to truly reflect the original demand for $15, the Raise the Wage Act would need to call for $18.87 in 2025.
$15 by 2025 is a very moderate standard for the country, said Paul Son, the State Policy Program Director at the National Employment Law Project, a non-profit firm that promotes workers' rights and backs the $15 wage.
Even in the low-cost states, it's the minimum that workers will need by then to afford the basics.
In the high-cost states, it's already not enough.
Okay, before we move on.
The problem is not a minimum.
The problem is massive supply of low-skilled labor.
The reason I think this won't work is that it's not going to change the fact that automation is displacing low-skilled labor while we have an immigration crisis.
Low-skilled labor is abundant, and you can't increase the value of an hour, which means goods will stay the same.
In fact, Something bad's gonna happen when we start seeing massive unemployment through automation, and we have undocumented migrants in this country, while Trump's trying to deal with those things, which is interesting.
My opinion on Trump's strategy, though, is that he's looking backward.
Or, no, no, no.
I think backward's the wrong way to phrase it.
In some regards, he's looking backwards.
But I think he's looking for a physical response.
Andrew Yang is looking for a technological or policy-based response, so it's interesting.
I get it, Trump's enacting policy, but Trump's looking at strengthening the borders, limiting free trade agreements, tariffs, deportations, etc., stopping the migrant crisis.
Andrew Yang is looking at, like, UBI.
Now, in the end, I think Trump has it right for the short term.
But I'm still concerned that American citizens will not, you know, are not being prepared for or they're not being taken care of for the long haul.
I'm not saying Trump is wrong to be doing what he's doing by no means.
I think a lot of what he's doing will work.
I think he needs someone like Yang now to start the conversation in the future.
So one of the reasons I've supported Yang is not because I believe he'll be president.
I don't think he will.
I'm not delusional.
I would still support him, hoping he has a chance.
But in the end, I really don't think he'd make it.
And he's not my first choice.
But he is starting a conversation, even if that's all he does.
So I'm hoping to see him on the debate stage to talk about these ideas, and I'm hoping he will have influence on the next president, be it Trump or whoever else, though I think it will be Trump.
I think in the end, we need a multifaceted approach to this.
Trump is right when he talks about these free trade agreements and the loss of factories.
Full stop.
Makes a ton of sense.
Companies are not paying for health care.
They're paying trash wages in foreign countries and then shipping products here.
It's a drain on the economy.
Bring the job back and you will see wages go up.
Now we need to prepare for automation.
So Trump is taking care of the physical response.
And I can say, great, the economy is doing well.
It seems like some of the stuff he's doing makes sense.
There's definitely criticism to go around on the immigration debate for him and the Democrats, mostly on the Democrats though.
But in the end, are we gonna deal with the issue of technology?
So I tell you, you know what I would love to see?
Andrew Yang appointed like some kind of like a job in economics position for future technology and Tulsi Gabbard as like Secretary of State or something.
That'd be great.
And then you'd have a check on Trump and you'd have some principled people in the positions they should be in.
I think most people would agree, conservative or otherwise, that Tulsi would be better than—what's John Bolton?
Is John Bolton Secretary of State?
Whatever.
The point is, Tulsi Gabbard being that whisper in Trump's ear about not going to war.
Andrew Yang being that whisper in Trump's ear about making sure he's paying attention to the future and forward-thinking, you know, economies.
And then I'm fairly happy, mostly because that's a poll on Trump policy-wise and good advice that I think would work.
And I'm willing to compromise, man.
I don't think, you know, the reaction from Democrats to, like, deal with Trump is just impeach, impeach, impeach.
And I'm like, not a solution, not an argument, okay?
Get rid of the guy by voting and present me someone with some good ideas.
And those are the people I think have good ideas, but I'm willing to take compromises, put them in the positions that make sense.
But let's move on.
Basically, well, I think you get the point.
I don't want to drive this one into the ground.
The point is...
What's being brought up here is simply that by the time they enact the $15 wage, it's already worthless.
It's not worth enough.
So they're running after the clock.
There's some good ideas here, but they basically go into detail talking about this.
The reason I thought this was important to talk about is that it doesn't matter how much they increase the wage and when they do, it's not going to get them the outcome they want.
It's going to result in inflation, and this is why they keep demanding more money.
Here's the thing.
He talks about pegging the base rate to a supply of goods.
Okay, then when you increase it, and basic goods like milk, bread, and eggs go up, you've then got to increase it again, which will then make it go up.
And you'll just infinitely be increasing the price.
And that's what we see in these ridiculous countries like Venezuela, where you have garbage bags full of cash to buy a slice of bread.
So it doesn't work.
It may have made sense.
It makes sense by jurisdiction.
It makes sense by industry.
It doesn't make sense nationally as a blanket for a one-size-fits-all.
It's bad policy.
We need to consider that there's different cost of livings in different parts of the country, and we can't just make everyone do the exact same thing because it's a huge country.
So anyway, I'll leave it there.
Next segment will be tomorrow at 10 a.m., the podcast every day at 6.30 p.m.
