Woke Media Hit With MORE Layoffs, Gawker Relaunch CANCELED, Leftist Media Faces Collapse
Woke Media Hit With MORE Layoffs, Gawker CANCELED, Companies Facing Collapse. Many of these news outlets chased after the algorithm and used woke identity politics and far left social justice rhetoric to make money. They hired people who eschew standard journalist ethics and push mission driven storytelling as they call it. These people are basically activists not journalists and at Vox, Carlso Maza has even advocated throwing milkshakes at people.This plan worked in the short term but led to long term losses as these companies struggle to stay relevant. Total media layoffs this year are around 3,200 and that is not just in digital.I believe the goal of the news should be to present facts and let the people form their own opinions but most sites inject opinion either because they have no standards, don't care, and are just trying to get clicks they can sell.They write endlessly about the short comings of republicans and Trump and often run defense for far left democrats. In one story from Vox they took a quote from Trump and then claimed he said the exact opposite. Many of these activists in media know people will only glance at the news and not dive in.In what may be the biggest Get Woke Go Broke to date, digital media companies that brought in hundreds of millions or more in investment are continuing to fail. Woke News Goes Broke
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I believe that the goal of the news should be to present information to you so that you can decide the best way to live your life, who to vote for, and your own opinions.
But over the past several years, maybe 10 years, we've seen the rise of what's called mission-driven storytelling.
I experienced this firsthand.
They found a path towards money, that's my opinion, that by pushing ideology and outrage content, They could get clicks, shares, and profit.
Because of this, they had to give an excuse as to why a news company was pushing an opinion and calling for action.
They call this mission-driven storytelling, saying, there's no such thing as objective journalism.
And because of it, we are worse off.
I believe it's plaguing the media and resulting in people losing their minds.
But it's not without consequences to those who are addicted to the drug that is woke outrage.
Many of these companies started bringing on woke activists because they cost less money because they're ideologically driven, and because they can just naturally write this outrage content that hits all the keywords and gets all the shares.
But then, eventually, people get tired of it.
Your company loses money, you can't maintain growth, you lay people off, and you collapse.
For Gawker, that story's a bit different.
See, Gawker got sued by Hulk Hogan, funded by Peter Thiel, and that's this whole other story.
But in the end, Gawker had to sell.
They sold to Univision for a decent amount of money, not as much as maybe they were worth, and Univision thought they were going to have something here with the Gawker network.
All of these different websites, like, I believe it was Gizmodo, Deadspin, Jezebel, etc.
Many woke brands.
However, it turns out they lost a ton of money doing so.
Not only did the websites not make money, although I believe a lot of people claimed they did.
I have some report that says they were losing money.
They sold at a huge loss.
Now here's the interesting thing.
Gawker.com was sold somewhere else.
It wasn't included.
That's my understanding.
It was sold to Bustle Digital Group.
Here's the big update.
They are no longer going to relaunch Gawker.
Now, you might not be familiar with Gawker, but let me just tell you, it was a woke media brand.
It was the parent.
It was the start of many of these outrage clickbait websites.
Bustle was going to relaunch Gawker.
They faced a ton of problems.
The staff was upset.
They complained about People who weren't woke enough running the company who are, I don't know, had bad opinions.
So one of the staff members apparently was not woke.
This caused some kind of controversy and now for whatever reason, they've announced, they will not be relaunching.
Get woke, go broke, as it were.
Many of these digital media companies were addicted to the outrage because it was a short-term gain, but in the end, it was a long-term loss.
And now not only are we seeing that Gawker won't be relaunched, the number of layoffs this year is up to 3,200 in media.
We're hearing that Vice may have to acquire Refinery29.
They're trying to consolidate as they bleed viewers and struggle to survive.
But this, they warn, will result in more layoffs.
And we're also hearing that other Gawker properties, which merged with the Gizmodo network and other Univision properties, are now facing heat.
Reporters are upset with their senior staff.
So here's what I want to do.
I want to look through these particular stories, talk about how Leftist digital media is failing and it's just not working out.
But I also want to talk about certain instances today where we can see exactly why the news media has failed.
So before we get started, I'm going to make a very short announcement and keep this very brief.
Subverse, which is my media company, has officially opened up crowd investment to the public.
Currently, as of the filming of this video, we are at $647,354 of our $1,070,000 goal, so more than halfway there, quite a bit.
to break a record for the fastest growing economy in the world.
track I'm told to break a record for the fastest.
crowd investment in US history.
This is relatively new, so it's not like it's the big deal.
But you can find out more at wefundr.com slash subverse, where it is now available to the
public to become a part owner in a new media venture.
But let's get to the news.
Gawker will not be relaunched, they say.
Gawker will remain in limbo.
The reboot of the news and gossip site, now three years dormant, will not be going forward as planned, at least for now.
Bustle Digital Group, whose founder and CEO Brian Goldberg bought the assets of Gawker in a bankruptcy auction last year, said it has cancelled the planned September relaunch of the notoriously snarky property and laid off the staff that was hired to run it.
We are postponing the Gawker relaunch.
For now, we are focusing company resources and efforts on our most recent acquisitions, Mike, the Outline, Nylon, and Inverse.
Interestingly, Mike is also the subject of controversy because there was a big piece in Huffington Post recently talking about how Mike was chasing outrage for money and eventually it couldn't be sustained.
They didn't know what they were doing.
To me, this woke outrage is a drug.
It is an addiction.
You get those clicks, it feels good, but it doesn't build an audience.
Traffic is not an audience.
There was no loyalty.
Just intermediary, you know, just varying degrees of outrage.
People would click a story because they were outraged by it, but they wouldn't come back.
And so in the end, you just fail.
The drug is killing these companies.
Here's the interesting thing.
They mention they laid off the Gawker staff, and they want to focus on Mike, but they also want to focus on Inverse and Nylon.
Well, there are some more stories here.
For one, over here, Vice's planned takeover of Refinery 29 may result in culture clash and layoffs.
In one of these stories, we can see right here, look.
Nylon editor Gabrielle Korn exits after Bustle acquisition.
So we heard about how they want to focus on Nylon, okay?
Well, they just lost their editor.
We're also hearing that there's going to be layoffs at Inverse as well.
In this story from Business Insider, 3,200 people have lost their jobs so far this year in media landslide.
They mention In the last month, layoffs have hit CTV, Mad Magazine, Inverse, and Entrepreneur, bringing the total number of media layoffs in 2019 to over 3,200, according to Business Insider's Tally.
So, I'm not going to read through all of these.
I just want to talk about why I think this is happening.
Gawker is not being relaunched.
He wants to focus on Inverse and Nylon.
They just lost key staff members.
They're laying people off at Inverse.
Here's the thing.
Trust in media is at a ridiculous low.
In this story from Washington Examiner, we can see trust in media hits bottom as 60% say sources pay for stories.
We can see that of these institutions—military, law enforcement, university, supreme court, executive branch, the press, and congress—the press has the highest rating of hardly any confidence at all.
Then, according to the Knight Foundation, they say most U.S.
adults, including more than 9 in 10 Republicans, say they personally have lost trust in the news media in recent years.
At the same time, 69% of those who have lost trust say That can be restored.
So there's good news.
Perhaps what should be done is these companies should avoid pushing their agendas to make money.
So let's talk about pushing an agenda.
The first thing I want to highlight is this funny story.
From Vox.com, Aaron Rupar.
Trump commemorates 9-11 first responders by making it all about him.
The story's rather interesting because they highlight this tweet and they make some insinuations.
First, Kyle Griffin tweeted, Trump claims, without evidence, to an audience that includes 9-11 first responders, I was down there at Ground Zero also, but I'm not considering myself a first responder, but I was down there.
I spent a lot of time down there with you.
Now why did Kyle Griffin say without evidence?
Why did he add that those two words, Trump's claims without evidence, claims?
It's really, really interesting that Vox would highlight this tweet.
How hard would it be to do a quick Google search to see if Donald Trump was actually down on the ground following 9-11?
Why it would take you but 15 seconds, I would imagine.
Yet for some reason, this guy didn't do that and then wonders why Trump didn't cite evidence.
What do you mean without evidence?
What is Trump supposed to do?
Pull up a picture of himself down on the ground in New York City during 9-11?
He's telling people he was there.
What evidence do you expect someone to present when they're saying they did a thing?
I mean, how hard would...
For those listening on the podcast, I stopped talking because I clicked over to an image of Donald Trump on the ground just after 9-11.
Do these people think that 9-11 happened and a day later nothing, it was over?
Trump was down there on the ground.
Now, what he was doing, I don't know, but he was there.
There's a photo of him.
There's more than one photo.
There's interviews of him down there, memes going around showing that Trump, a New Yorker who owns property and is a real estate developer, had an interest in being there as an American, as a New Yorker, and as someone who runs construction companies, or contracts them at least.
He was there.
How hard is it to pull up Snopes.com to see there is a photo of him there?
Why would Kyle Griffin claim without evidence?
Why would Vox highlight this?
Well, it's actually a bit funnier, because then Aaron Rupar goes on to claim...
In this story from Daily Wire, Trump suggests he was a 9-11 first responder.
I'm sorry, what was that quote we read from that other guy who's framing the narrative?
Trump said, I am not considering myself a first responder.
You wonder why trust in media is down.
You wonder why these companies are laying people off.
It's because they lie.
It's because they are lazy.
It's because they won't do their jobs.
Kyle Griffin, let me introduce you to Google, okay?
Go to Google, type in Trump 9-11 on the ground, and what do you find?
Snopes with an image of Trump in New York after 9-11.
What evidence should Trump present?
Should he carry this picture in his pocket so he can hold it up when he says he was there?
That's insane!
If I said I went to the skate park yesterday, would you say Tim Pool claims without evidence he was at the skate park yesterday?
That's insane!
It's insane!
What has the media become?
I honestly, I think it's just become, look, these companies are laying people off.
It's a combination of desperation, greed, and laziness.
That's really what I see.
And the scary thing is, when you look at this Vox story, which is just completely insane if you ask me, how about this?
NBCUniversal invests $200 million in Vox Media from 2015.
$200 million in Vox Media so that they can not even look at Google and put up this ridiculous tweet.
And then claim the exact opposite.
Aaron Ruppar, who tweeted this, Trump suggests he was a 9-11 first responder, he's the person who wrote this story.
He took a clip of Donald Trump saying, I'm not considering myself a first responder, and then claimed the exact opposite.
And you know why?
Because many people won't watch the clip, and these people know it.
So either they're completely inept, don't understand how to do basic journalism, don't know how to truly understand and dissect information and present it responsibly, But you know what?
Even after all this, I'll tell you what.
NewsGuard gives Vox a green checkmark saying, hey, good to go.
Vox is trash, if you were to ask me.
Now, they do say that Vox does not handle the difference between news and opinion responsibly, so I can accept that.
But this is outright fake news.
They use framing devices to mislead you and manipulate you.
And that's why I feel like media, that's why I think media is collapsing.
It's why I think we will continue to see stories about conflict between the business side of things and the staff side.
These people, I don't know what's going on with them, but I'll tell you this.
For the Gawker relaunch, my advice?
Do not hire any of these woke activists to do journalists.
They're not journalists.
They will clash with you, they will complain, and they will demand to write woke nonsense that won't make any money and will cause the business to fail.
Now look, journalism shouldn't be about necessarily making money, but news outlets need to be able to survive.
There's the non-profit route where you can take donations.
But in the end, there needs to be a blend of responsible reporting and information that is valuable to the public that they are willing to read.
When you go woke, chasing outrage for money, you will fail.
If you only produce strange, esoteric facts and information that has no bearing on the American people, you will fail too.
The reality is, let's talk about things that are important to the American people, which often does involve outrageous stories.
Some, you know, very much so.
Because people need to be informed about things that may actually make them angry.
But you don't want to always do that.
And more importantly, you don't have to frame the narrative to squeeze out those extra little clicks.
Here's what we do over at Subverse, okay?
It's editorially independent from what I'm producing here.
But I'll show you this.
We cover the stories that we think are the most important for the day.
That may be Trump addressing the social media censorship and bias issue at the Social Media Summit, of which I was an attendee.
Or it may have to do with something like Uyghur protests and Chinese oppression, or even Sudan.
Sudan internet blackouts.
You can see these videos didn't get a ton of traffic, but they were important, talking about freedom, liberty, and international conflict.
The goal is presenting information that we think is particularly important, but also bringing you stories that sometimes actually do well.
U.S.
Air Force does not want you to storm Area 51, a video that Subverse produced six days ago.
Admittedly, I'm not running the editorial of this.
It's separate from this content.
45,000 views.
I think that's pretty good in my opinion.
But you can look over at the video just below at 10,000 views, because the reality is sometimes the news, it's not going to do that well, and there's nothing you can do about it.
But when you play the game that these companies play, when you chase after that...
It's that drug.
Eventually, you will find you'll collapse.
And that's what we know about Mike.com.
Huffington Post wrote about this.
I believe Tablet wrote about this.
I believe it was Tablet.
Where Mike was chasing outrage endlessly.
Just sensational, outrageous content, whether it mattered to people or not.
Here's what I try to do on these channels.
These are political commentary channels, Tim Pool and Tim Kest.
On the main channel, I try to present the most pressing story of the day.
So, you will find a lot of similar stories.
It's the big news, it's politics, it's Trump, it's the Democrats, it's the media, it's layoffs.
The second channel that I have is mostly smaller stories, individual instances that aren't really that important, but I feel like talking about, so I do.
Now think about what these big media companies do.
They will produce nonsensical stories.
Stories that have no bearing on the world because they know it'll generate outrage and get clicks.
They'll write about a cop, you know, arresting one guy in a small town in the middle of nowhere because they want that police brutality story.
Well, I think those stories are important for sure.
We have to focus on what is really having an impact on the world and we have to prioritize.
In my opinion, many of these companies prioritize Well, they prioritize small stories that don't have a big impact but that will make you angry.
Sometimes we gotta talk about Sudan because there was an internet blackout and internet freedoms are important when we see how other countries are dealing with Facebook, Twitter, or otherwise.
Sometimes we have to make sure we're talking about things that are important, otherwise we'll just fizzle out.
We can't only talk about, you know, small foreign conflict.
But that's the point.
When you target people to make that money, eventually It hurts you.
And then we can see what Vox did, saying the exact opposite of what Trump did.
Why would anyone then be surprised to find out most U.S.
adults, including 9 in 10 Republicans, have lost trust in news media?
Who's going to trust the media when they keep hiring people like this?
I know I certainly won't.
There is a website that talks about the society—it's the SPJ, Society of Professional Journalists, and they have a code of ethics.
And I'll tell you something.
When I talked about what Subversive's goals were, people started insulting me, saying I was biased or whatever, and I said, don't worry about that.
It's editorially independent from me as a person.
There are other journalists who run that show who do believe in the SPJ Code of Ethics.
And when I said that, they laughed, and they eschewed the Code of Ethics.
People on Twitter were laughing, saying, oh please, Code of Ethics.
And there you have it.
These are people who are biased, manipulative, who have a political agenda, and then we can come to this story.
Vox.com has an employee who advocates political violence.
How can you trust in a news media when they are saying that someone should get violent towards you to humiliate you?
That's Carlos Maza of Vox who tweeted out that you should throw milkshakes at people.
That's wrong.
It's illegal.
It's a crime.
How, in my opinion, a news organization or someone that claims to be a news organization that's funded to the tune of $200 million can have staff members advocating violence is beyond me.
It really is.
But why in the hell would anybody trust you when your own staff advocate political violence?
When your own staff write stories claiming without Trump's claims without evidence to an audience that I was on the ground?
Did you even bother to do any work at all?
They didn't.
It's no surprise to me that we can see stories like this from Forbes.
U.S.
media among the most polarized in the world.
Because they're continually hiring Woke outrage writers, activists.
They're justifying it.
I was at an event, VidCon, a couple years ago, where the president of NowThis News said they are working with, I don't know if hiring into the company, but they were working with Trump, anti-Trump activists at the highest levels.
Why would anyone trust you?
So we can see where this leads.
For one, eventually your content fizzles out, nobody wants to watch it.
But then you can see that, well, yeah, so this is a story about how layoffs are impending.
But then you can see that your woke staff will continue to fight with you.
Because you can come and say, listen, I get that you're upset that, you know, this person did this thing, but it's not the biggest story in the world, and we need to make sure we're talking about issues that have a big impact that people need to know about, and they'll get mad at you.
You will face heat from your own reporters, in this instance, mostly about hiring older white guys.
You will then end up with a racist staff.
That is angry at the color of the skin.
They'll be angry that you hired people not based on what those people can do, but because of the color of their skin.
Congratulations.
You're hiring racists.
They'll make it impossible for you to run your business, they'll drive it to the ground, they'll quit, they'll smear you, and then you'll have to do what Gawker did.
Cancel the relaunch.
Now I'll end by saying I don't know if Gawker canceled the relaunch because of this, but I do know there was a big controversy over one of the staff members being insensitive and posting outrageous things.
Then there were other staff members who were upset, and there was a culture clash.
And that's what we can see here.
Vice plan takeover of Refinery29 may result in a culture clash.
Yup.
You're going to see people complaining about old white men and all that stuff.
Here we go.
Let's read this.
They say, One rival digital executive said, The cultures are oil and water.
Misogyny meets feminism.
When they merge, there will be very deep cuts on the refinery side.
Vice will gut them.
Yep.
So the collapse continues.
I don't know.
This was kind of all over the place.
Admittedly, I've been rather frustrated by media.
There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes, and I am exhausted.
I was up late watching the silly debates.
Oh, man.
But here's the important takeaway.
Gawker Media is done.
The media is collapsing.
They're not recovering.
I don't know what to say.
You know, these are companies that were funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars or more, and they can't quite figure it out.
I'm not saying I have all the answers.
Certainly not.
I mentioned Subverse.
You can go to wefunder.com slash Subverse if you think we do.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
Let me know what you think.
Comment below.
Uh, next segment will be at youtube.com slash timcastnews starting at 6 p.m.
Thanks for hanging out.
I'll see you then.
Get woke, go broke.
Such a funny concept.
For those that aren't familiar, it basically means companies try to embrace woke ideology, left-wing identitarianism, in an effort to make money and capitalize off of social justice.
And when it doesn't work, people will say, get woke, go broke.
There are many, many examples of companies trying to embrace wokeness and then losing money.
Because in many instances, in many of these circumstances, there are certain products that just, it doesn't make sense to be woke for.
Notably, Gillette.
Shaving products for men.
Now, you may remember they made a commercial where they told, it was about toxic masculinity, and they were talking about how men can be better, and it was a meme factory.
Just so much came out of this terrible ad.
Now, here's the thing.
A lot of people are saying, this is another get woke, go broke.
Stop.
I assure you, it is actually… well, I don't want to say it's completely not true.
For the most part, it is not a get what go broke.
It's not.
Let me show you a couple examples first.
And let me explain.
Now, hear me out.
I saw this article being shared on Twitter.
I'm not sure what the people's ledger is, but they said, Most expensive ad campaign ever.
Procter & Gamble writes off $8 billion from Gillette Business.
I saw this post from Ben Garrison, where he said, you know, Gillette parent company, Procter & Gamble, writes down 8 billion, get woke, go broke.
You can see the Gillette razor blade here saying, you toxic male.
Here's the thing, though.
What this story actually is, it's going broke, try to get woke, to stay afloat.
What that means, Gillette was failing.
They're facing massive competition, and people are shaving less.
Look, hipsters have mustaches and beards, and they recognize this.
So what this actually was, in my opinion, was, it's fair to say, it was potentially a very expensive ad campaign, and the Toxic Masculinity ad that Gillette did was a complete failure.
Keep in mind, they tried doing some, like, military family ad afterwards.
But in the end, it didn't work.
And they've written off $8 billion.
Massive loss for Gillette.
But I wanna stress, a lot of people are acting like it's because they got woke, when in reality, this precipitated the wokeness.
So keep that in mind when you think about other stories and other brands.
Are they getting woke because you're trying to capitalize, or is it because they already are going broke and it's an act of desperation?
And that's an important consideration because many of these Get Woke, Grow Broke stories Look, when they make a product that's like a woke video game or movie and then no one wants to buy it, that I get.
But when a company changes to wokeness, it may be because of desperation.
Now, before I read this, and I've got some really great examples of how companies embrace wokeness and save products, and you're gonna love this, trust me.
I have a good example, and you're gonna laugh when you see it.
But I can't explain it until I actually get to it.
But I have to do something first.
I have a huge announcement.
Subverse has officially launched a revolutionary crowdfunding...
Crowdfunding!
Over at WeFunder.com slash Subverse.
So if you want to be a part owner of Subverse, which is the new media brand that I'm launching that's being run independently of this content, you can go to WeFunder.com slash Subverse and invest.
And I'm just going to say this because I'm not going to be super long.
We've already raised around $550,000 of a $1,070,000 goal.
Listen, news companies are expensive.
These other players like Vox, BuzzFeed, etc., they have hundreds of millions of dollars.
They have NBC backing them.
We don't.
We have the community.
Here's the big thing before I go back to the Get Well, Go Broke story.
If we can raise We've already raised half of our goal and it's been 13 hours.
We have another 35 hours to finish this fundraiser and we will break a world record.
That's my understanding, okay?
I could be wrong.
It would be the fastest in crowd investment ever.
Crowd investing is rather new, so we're on track for a world record or something.
That's my understanding.
I could be wrong, but that's what they're telling me.
Like, guys, if you can finish this within two days of launch, you will shatter records.
And I would really love for you guys to get involved, invest in Subverse, be a co-owner
in a crowd community-owned news organization.
And I wanna send a message to these big media companies.
We broke a record.
We broke a record for a reason, because people are tired of being told what to think, instead of being told, here's the facts.
With Subverse, it's not going to be like this.
Subverse is going to be straight up, here's what happened.
You think about it, you figure it out.
That's what we want to do.
Wefunder.com slash Subverse, link will be in the description below.
Let's get back to the news.
So, I'm not going to stress too much on the Procter & Gamble thing because I want to show you some really funny examples of how getting woke actually helps business.
Reuters reports P&G reported a net loss of $5.24 billion or $2.12 per share for the quarter ended June 30th due to an $8 billion non-cash write-down for Gillette.
For the same period last year, P&G's net income was $1.89 billion or $0.72 per share.
So that's the big main point.
I want to stress something very important here.
When a big business writes down something, I could be wrong.
My understanding is that's them saying we've lost this valuation.
It's less to do with actually losing money and more about, hey, how much money can we save in taxes by saying we're taking a loss per share on this particular brand or for this reason.
But let's read.
They say, P&G, which operates in 80 countries, sells Gillette razors, gels, and foams worldwide, and said the write-down was due primarily to currency fluctuations and enduring strength in the U.S.
economy in recent years has strengthened the dollar.
The charge was also driven by more competition over the past three years and a shrinking market for blades and razors as consumers in developed markets shave less frequently.
Net sales in the grooming business, which includes Gillette, have declined in 11 out of the last 12 quarters.
11 out of the last 12 quarters is the nail.
It's, it's, it's, that's the evidence.
That's the proof.
Okay?
The Gillette Get What Broke ad was only a couple quarters ago.
It was like, what, two?
It was the beginning?
It was the first quarter of this year?
Gillette's been failing for 11 out of 12 quarters.
I wonder what that one quarter was where they actually did well.
What this says to me is that Gillette's been failing for a long time.
And in their sheer desperation, they made two ads.
Toxic masculinity, white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed military family.
That was weird.
That was a really weird thing they did.
I got to admit, for those that don't know, they did their toxic masculinity thing.
And then it was like, well, like a month later, they had this like blonde-haired,
blue-eyed guy in like a white family.
And I'm not trying to, like there's nothing wrong with that.
The point I'm making is, they very clearly are paying attention to
the culture war when they made their ads.
It was like, I kind of felt like the white military guy with blonde hair and
blue eyes was a, I found it weird.
Not, again, not because there's anything wrong with being like blonde-haired,
blue-eyed, or white in the United States.
It was immediately following the toxic masculinity thing.
And I'm like, do they understand that it's like a weird contrast to do that
the exact same time to show like.
Something the alt-right would appreciate?
Again, I'm not trying to be over-the-top and claim it was alt-right.
I'm just saying they were very clearly playing to the culture or trying to and it was weird.
Maybe!
Gillette didn't know which route to take, and they were desperate, and they were like, they went to the extremes.
But, you know, I will say this.
Toxic masculinity was really, really stupid, and just because one family happened to have been white isn't really a message at all.
But it was a military family thing, so it did feel like they were targeting like a conservative kind of family.
But let me show you something really, really fun and funny.
Let me ask you a question.
Fat shaming.
That's been a big part of wokeness, right?
Fat phobia, fat shaming, body positivity.
I wonder why.
Can you think about why that might be?
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
People in the United States are fat.
They are.
Americans are overweight, they eat too much, and I think this has a lot to do with portions.
Seriously, man.
I've been to Europe.
You order a meal in Europe, and it's really small.
You order a meal in the U.S., and it's, like, massive.
I went to a diner once, and they gave me, like, a bucket of french fries.
Okay, I'm being hyperbolic.
But no, it's like American portions are massive, so Americans get fat.
Americans also love eating ice cream.
They love eating their Ben & Jerry's.
You know, Ben & Jerry's is a really great brand.
Delicious flavors of ice cream.
So here's what I want to show you.
Here's an old article from 2014, Dove Real Beauty Campaign Turns 10.
How a brand tried to change the conversation about female beauty.
And here we can see there are many women of various body types, and they say, real beauty.
Real beauty, yes.
That was the big campaign.
You may be asking yourself, Tim, I'm not quite sure why you just brought up Ben and Jerry's.
That's ice cream.
It has nothing to do with real beauty.
Perhaps I'm making a point about how people love eating ice cream, and then they get fat.
So Dove then launches the Real Beauty campaign, embracing the wokeness of body positivity, because they know Americans are overweight.
Get it?
As Americans get fatter, the marketing targets the Americans.
But here, it's one better.
Because then you may ask yourself, what about toxic masculinity?
Guys don't embrace that.
That was bad.
People were offended by that.
It was controversial.
You're right.
But let me make one important point.
There's a reason I pulled up the Ben and Jerry's Wikipedia page.
And I guess you actually can't see it yet.
But you may notice over here where it says parent.
What does that say?
Unilever.
That's right.
Unilever owns Ben & Jerry's.
Let me now bring up Dove Toiletries.
Oh, you may have noticed already who their owner is.
Also, Unilever.
Now, I'm not saying it's a direct correlation, but I do find it quite entertaining that the same company that owns an ice cream brand is encouraging women to embrace their fat bodies.
Real beauty.
And this is the point.
The reason I bring this up, sometimes getting woke is about averting going broke.
And in this circumstance, I'd have to bet, it actually kind of helped.
Look, for a long time, people really embraced fitness, okay?
It's a huge industry, people want to lose weight.
If you own ice cream, like if you own an ice cream company, and you're seeing sales slump, I'm not saying they did, I'm just saying, think about it, people don't want to eat ice cream because it makes you fat.
Then what can you do?
Now, you've got all these fat women who need soap and you're like, oh no.
I got it.
Real beauty.
It helps our ice cream brand if women are fat and happy.
And they'll eat more ice cream, right?
We then start seeing morbidly obese women in advertisements as models because companies pay for it.
Seriously.
When you see, like, what do models do?
Models sell products.
So when you see a big, fat, morbidly obese model who's probably got some heart problems, and I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm being actually, like, this is a serious health concern.
Obesity is one of the leading causes of cancer.
Well, it's because a company paid for the shoot, hired the model, and why would they do it?
Because Americans are fat.
And if you own a company that sells soap and ice cream, how do you continue to work?
Ben and Jerry's couldn't do a body positivity commercial because people would laugh at it.
But Dove can.
Dove can dump a ton of money into telling women, it's okay that you're fat.
It's fine.
They can hire fat models.
They can promote the culture.
Spread the ideology, which is part, it's a bit part of wokeness.
And their ice cream sales do well.
The parent company has interest in making sure people are fat and happy.
And don't care that they're fat, most importantly.
So anyway.
The main point of this, to go back to the original story, is while Gillette has lost a lot of money for Procter & Gamble, I believe what we're really seeing is they've been losing money for a long time.
Their sales are slumping due to Dollar Shave Club and Harry's or whatever it's called and these other companies, and so they decided to try Wokeness.
Didn't work, did it?
So, the marketing campaign seems to have been a massive failure.
That's the takeaway.
Did they get broke because of it?
No, something precipitated the wokeness.
Desperation.
Stick around, the next segment will be coming up at 1pm on this channel, and I will see you all then.
Mario Lopez is under fire because he said it's dangerous to let your three-year-old, I think he was talking about three-year-olds, decide what gender they are and then give them drugs to change their body.
He made these comments over a month ago, but now we have one of the top trending stories in the US.
Yes, it was briefly number two on Twitter, I saw.
But what I want to, I want to go over this and talk about the insanity that is politics today, but I also want to point out something very funny.
It appears this story was broken, I guess, even though it was public podcast, but it was first written about by Yahoo, who then goes on to write this story about 18 hours later.
Well, I should have scrolled up.
Mario Lopez is drawing backlash for his comments about transgender children.
Yahoo, you wrote the story from a month-old comment he made.
Then when everyone gets angry, they write another story about how everyone's angry.
Good job, media.
Here's the thing.
You know, and we'll talk about this.
He's talking about like three-year-olds, but regardless, kids, I mean, where do we draw the line on what a kid
should or should not be allowed to decide?
Why should a child decide they, you know, should take drugs and permanently change their bodies and they've barely
experienced the world?
And we can talk about any other argument pertaining to children making choices about their bodies or whatever.
Like, if a kid said they wanted to shave their head, should the parents say yes or no?
I mean, that's a much simpler thing to do, but yeah, a lot of parents are like, I'm not letting you do that.
What if a kid wanted to get a tattoo?
What if a four-year-old said, I want a tattoo?
And the parents are going to say no, and there are laws preventing kids from getting tattoos.
But taking drugs to change your body?
Well, that's where things get kind of murky.
So here's what we're going to do.
Let's dive into the story, but before we do, I'm going to just briefly mention there is a crowd investment running for Subverse, a company for which I am the principal of, one of them.
And so far has raised $560,000.
This is for the news venture Subverse.
You can find out more at WeFunder.com slash Subverse.
It's a news media company aiming to cut through the spin and present facts.
And you can find out more there.
I'm trying to be very light, but I believe the WeFunder is on track for at least a US record.
It might be more, we're not sure, but if this Wii Funder finishes within the next 35 hours, it will set a record.
So, let's get back to the news.
Mario Lopez says it's dangerous.
So, I will just point this out too, right?
We have a story, I did mention it, I want to show the video.
It's the PragerU podcast, the Candace Owens show, from June 23rd, more than one month ago Mario Lopez was on.
So, I guess somebody found it and wrote about it?
Yahoo!
writes, Mario Lopez claims that parents who allow their children to live according to their self-identified genders are setting a dangerous example.
Actually, I think that might be factually incorrect.
I think he was talking specifically about drugs.
Lopez, a father of three, shared his opinions during a June interview on The Candace Owens Show, a PragerU video series hosted by the 30-year-old conservative figure, but the clips have only recently caught Twitter's attention, so perhaps that's why they wrote about it.
They say during the 40-minute interview, Owens brought up the weird trend in Hollywood that have celebrities like Charlize Theron taking cues from their children as to how they identify.
In April, the long-shot actress revealed that her seven-year-old child, Jackson, did not identify as a boy.
Yes, I thought she was a boy too, Theron told the Daily Mail, until she looked at me when she was three years old and said, I am not a boy.
There's the context.
I'm sorry, three-year-olds don't have a lot of understanding of what a boy even is, to be honest.
Owens told the New Access Hollywood host, a lot of weird trends come out of Hollywood, and one of the weirder ones for me is this new trend where celebrities are coming out, and I know Charlize Theron did this a few weeks ago, is saying that their child is picking their gender.
And this is strange to me, and they say, oh, I looked at my child and my child was swimming in a bathtub and looked at me and said, mommy, I'm a boy, and that's weird.
Owens added that her experience as a nanny has convinced her that children don't always mean what they say,
explaining, I am trying to understand this new Hollywood mentality
where they just think their children now have the mental authority.
Parents are supposed to tell their kids what to do.
Kids don't know.
They have poor judgment.
And it's not until I think like 24 that we actually stop taking as many risks, but young kids are trying to understand the world.
And they say a lot of crazy things.
They claim to be inanimate objects.
They play make-believe where they pretend to be dinosaurs and robots.
What's worrying to me now is, what if there's a kid, like, but seriously, think about this, and I'm not trying, look, I understand that some kids absolutely, you know, are trans, but let's think about this.
What if a kid one day goes, I'm a fireman, actually, no, no, no, where did they do this joke?
They did this joke on some show where they were claiming a kid was delus— Oh, South Park!
The psychologists were saying that Butters had multiple personality disorder because he was pretending to be a fireman.
And he was like, oh, I'm Fireman Butters now!
And they're like, oh no, now he thinks he's a fireman.
And so the video wasn't really about this, but think about this.
What if a kid one day is just playing make-believe?
They're pretending to be like, you know, I'm this, I'm that.
What's the difference between saying, I'm a policeman, and then he says, I'm going to be a nurse, or a doctor, or a mom, and then go, oh my god.
What do we have here?
Granted, that's very different from a kid expressly saying, you know, they experience these things.
But one of the challenges that arises with this conversation, when we saw the story in the UK where one researcher said that a certain institution was hiding information about how these drugs, these puberty blockers, were affecting kids, or how politicized trans lobbies are creating risks for children Um, because of these things.
So now if you have a kid who doesn't know what they're talking about, and a political group, you know, whatever, wants to impose their ideology, for whatever reason, you now have parents giving kids, or giving into the kid's make-believe, or...
Incorrect assumptions or just a lack of knowledge, ignorance, just giving in.
But we can use the tattoo example.
Now, tattoos are very different from being trans.
I understand that.
But they're both permanent decisions, okay?
They affect you.
Puberty blockers do have a massive effect on the kids.
What if a three-year-old said, I want a tattoo of a leopard on my chest?
The parent's gonna be like, no, of course not.
Because parents are supposed to tell kids what to do.
Kids don't know better.
And if you don't act like parents, they will grow up being just...
I don't know, chaotic?
Random?
Disorderly?
Let's read on.
I'm trying to understand it myself and please don't lump me into that whole group, Lopez responded.
I'm kind of blown away too.
Look, I'm never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids, obviously, and I think if you come from a place of love you really can't go wrong, but at the same time, my god, if you're three years old and you're saying you're feeling a certain way or you think you're a boy or a girl or whatever, the case may be, I just think it's dangerous as a parent to make this determination then.
Well, okay.
Then you're going to a boy or girl, whatever the case may be.
It's sort of alarming, and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on.
He added, when you're a kid, you don't know anything about sexuality, yet you're just a kid.
After Owen said that parents who support their children in this way are narcissists, showing off their tolerance, Lopez responded, I think parents need to allow their kids to be kids, but at the same time, you gotta be the adult in the situation.
Pause with that, and I think the formative years is where you start having those discussions and really start making these declarations.
The commentary didn't earn Lopez any new fans on Twitter.
Well, who cares about what people think on Twitter?
This is why it gets so funny.
Mario Lopez was cancelled just for appearing on her show, let alone what he actually said.
And here it goes.
All of the woke Twitter outrage.
And then, sure enough, well, they do bring in a psychologist who then criticizes Mario Lopez.
And Mario Lopez was completely correct in his assessment, saying, I'm not going to tell you what to think.
I just think 3 year olds can't make these decisions.
His opinion, that's fine.
Yahoo then gets a PhD.
But here's the kicker here, here's what I love.
Now they write the follow-up article.
Twitter is outraged.
Well, Twitter's outraged because you wrote the article!
Okay?
I'm kind of blown away too.
Oh, they go over the same basic thing.
Here we have Alexandra Hellaby.
It's unfortunate that someone who is so involved with GLAAD, like Mario Lopez Extra, would be so misinformed about trans kids.
I wish that he would reach out to this individual for some guidance on the difference between sex and gender identity.
They're not doing themselves any favors.
Holly Figueroa O'Reilly says, Of our five kids, two are queer.
They both came out in their early teens, but we knew who they were way, way before then.
Parents can tell the difference between a three-year-old who pretends to be another gender for fun and one who feels they are living in the wrong body.
No, they can't.
That's an assumption.
The assumption this person is making is the same assumption that you could say Mario Lopez is making.
Now, Mario Lopez is allowed to have his opinion where he thinks three-year-olds can't.
And if you think they can, I would disagree, but fine.
But the opinion that you think a kid knows is an opinion.
They don't.
Kids have no idea.
Like, you know what, man?
Look at this.
Look at college.
How many people change their majors?
Even at 18, 19 years old, they have no idea what they're doing or what they want to do with their lives.
Parents are supposed to give them guidance.
Light the flames of passion.
A friend of mine started skateboarding at a very young age.
And they told me how they didn't like skateboarding when they were young.
They'd said to their parents they wanted to skate.
Their parents said, fine, but if I get you this skateboard, you have to skate.
And they said, yeah.
Within a month, I don't want to skateboard anymore, they would say.
The parents said, no, absolutely not.
You made this choice, and you're going to live up to it.
And then it was 20 years later and they said to me, I'm really glad my parents made me keep skating because I have great friends, I'm happy, talented, successful.
Yup.
The parents needed to tell the kid, this is what you need to be doing.
There's a difference between being a bad parent, forcing your kids to do things they really, really hate, and being a stern parent and fostering passions and talent.
Find out what the kids like and don't like and just make them commit.
Man, I'll tell you this.
I was lucky enough to want to have played music, to want to skateboard, and work on computers.
And my parents helped foster those talents.
There are a lot of people who maybe don't like doing something, but whether or not... Like, let's say that your parents made you play violin, and maybe you didn't want to.
I'll tell you this, man.
People who learn musical instruments have massive advantages in cognitive abilities.
It's just true.
Playing music really, really helps you out.
A lot of people ask me how I'm able to just talk and talk and just have this stream of consciousness.
How do you do it?
How do you just say it?
When I was younger, I started writing music.
When I was a kid and writing songs was just about getting that,
getting to that groove of just letting that stream of consciousness come out
and expressing yourself.
And music helped me do that.
I also played Magic the Gathering, a strategy card game and chess.
And I skateboarded.
All of these things gave me peripheral talents and abilities.
Physical ability from skateboarding, which make me fit, tough, strong.
Build up my confidence, jumping off dangerous things, taking risks.
Chess was strategy, Magic the Gathering strategy.
Playing music was dexterity as well as mental acuity.
And all of these things come together because I was encouraged and supported by my family.
If you have kids who want to do something or, look, the point I'm trying to make is parents need to be that guiding force and tell their kids what they should or shouldn't be doing for the most part.
You want to foster that talent, but also when kids say they want to do dumb things like get a tattoo, you're saying no.
The challenge here is we do want to protect those who are truly trans, absolutely.
But differentiating between kids who just don't know better and someone who actually is trans is difficult.
And though they may say puberty blockers are a good solution to hold things off, those have permanent effects on you for the rest of your life.
So anyway, I'm gonna leave this here.
You get it.
The Dragon Mario Lopez.
I want to point out the faux outrage.
The comments were made a month ago.
They only care now.
Yahoo writes this story 18 hours ago, and then, sure enough, now we're seeing this one 12 minutes ago.
Drawing backlash.
Well, you wrote the story.
Then they write about the outrage.
Welcome to the media.
Stick around.
Next video will be coming up at YouTube.com slash TimCast at 4 p.m.
It is a different channel, and I will see you there.
From The Independent, U.S.
Senator Helps Pregnant Migrant with Life-Threatening Condition Apply for Asylum at U.S.-Mexico Border.
Ron Wyden Helps Woman with Preeclampsia and Her Family After Border Officials Deny Attempt to Legally Ask to Enter the Country.
Now, a lot of people are sharing this video and saying things like, a U.S.
Senator is committing a crime, he's helping an illegal immigrant get in the country, and let me just say, I'm a reasonable man.
I would like to read this story and figure out what's truly going on.
Well, I have.
Here's the thing.
The woman is not a Central American migrant.
She's Mexican, so she's exempt from a lot of these policy updates.
She does have a condition.
And the senator went down to Mexico and was looking at one of these camps, saw the woman, and was like, oh no, we gotta go.
Here's the thing.
She is entitled to, under the law, to apply for asylum.
And look, an individual case, it's easy to say, we can't leave this woman to just die or face some extreme medical circumstance.
You really put in a difficult position when you're looking at the person and you know you can help them.
I believe we should.
Here's the thing.
Why isn't Ron Wyden rushing to an American citizen's house who is in need, who has the same condition, and helping them get the medical care they need?
What can we do for her that we're not doing for our own citizens?
I'm not saying we leave her to the dust.
No.
I'm saying, like, in this circumstance, I don't know what Ron Wyden should have done.
Should he just turned around and be like, yeah, she's gonna die, I'm getting out of here?
Probably not.
Probably not.
But I do think we face a philosophical and ethical conundrum when we have US politicians, Beto O'Rourke, Cory Booker, I believe it was Cory Booker, and now Senator Ron Wyden going to another country and then being shocked to find there are poor people who need our help.
We can't do that.
So in this circumstance, fine.
But I think this should be the point where we say, maybe we should rush pregnant women with disorders to the hospital Inside our own country.
Here's the thing.
I've always been fairly reasonable.
I think universal healthcare is something to aim for.
Look, we have universal fire department.
We have universal policing.
It's the common defense.
There's a lot of challenges with universal healthcare that I don't think we can overcome in the short term.
Thus, moderate position.
Public option, perhaps.
People can buy in, creating competition between the public and the private, and we'll have to figure it out.
We do.
In the end, the only thing I can really say I'm advocating for is a conversation between the left and the right and continued negotiations, plans, strategies, moving forward, because Obamacare has been a bit of a disaster.
It's been good in some cases.
It's been bad in a lot of cases.
The website was a nightmare.
Whole other issue.
I've had a lot of problems with it, for sure.
I don't like the idea of the involuntary mandate or individual mandate where you force people to pay a fine or get healthcare.
But ultimately, the point is, we have many people in our own country.
They need to be rushed to the hospital.
Instead, we hear stories about this.
Non-citizens being rushed to the U.S.
border and offered up American resources.
So, I don't know, you know.
It's a moral and ethical dilemma.
Because they say, You must secure your own mask on the airplane before the mask of those sitting next to you.
And that's why it makes sense to take care of those Americans who are homeless, who are sick, who are in need of aid.
And when I saw this story, to me it wasn't one of these, oh no, another politician's trying to, you know, bring illegal immigrants into the country.
No, he literally brought them to port of entry where they asked for asylum.
Totally legal.
Exactly what you should do.
So, in this circumstance, I'm kind of like, yeah, okay, I mean, you know, there you go.
But then I wonder, this woman who's coming to the U.S.
for aid, like I said, as an individual, in this circumstance, we can't just let people die.
What are we supposed to do?
But then, you think about the long-term effects of this.
What's next?
Are we going to keep letting people in the U.S.
to take U.S.
resources from those in this country who are paying for it?
And that's why most Americans oppose providing healthcare to undocumented immigrants, non-citizens, illegals, whatever you want to call them, okay?
The point is, we've been trying to bring about public healthcare for a long time.
Obama promised it, couldn't deliver.
You know why Obama couldn't deliver?
Too expensive, too disruptive to the economy.
Are some of the big reasons, okay?
I think the US economy is like 20% healthcare.
There are problems there.
We've got billionaires jacking up the prices on things like insulin and other medications.
That's wrong.
We also have new treatments and experimental treatments and expensive treatments that just happen to be expensive.
When we have this conversation, we need to differentiate between the two.
But what we can't do Give healthcare to people who aren't American.
For one reason.
We can't afford it for ourselves.
I'd love to see my family and friends get taken care of because we're working hard to contribute to that.
But something strange happens when you end up with these urban ivory tower elites who don't experience hardship, or politicians who have government healthcare already, and then they start giving away our healthcare to other people.
So again, I'll stress, this is a unique case.
Like, I would ask you, seriously, would you leave this woman to potentially die?
Or would you say, I'm here, I have to save this person?
I don't- for me, whether or not I'm willing to save someone's life has nothing to do with where you're from.
I don't care where I'm at, if I see somebody who's sick and I can help, I'm gonna try.
And in this case, that's what Ron Wyden did.
However, I'm gonna point out one more time.
Is there a circumstance where he could have done this for an American?
Is he ignoring his own constituents?
This is the long-term problem.
This particular instance?
It's unique.
It's fine.
But what if this mentality persists where you actually have Democrats saying they want to give away health care to people who aren't citizens?
Let's read a little bit of the story.
A pregnant Mexican woman suffering complications was told by immigration officers they couldn't process her family's asylum claim at the U.S.
border on Saturday before a U.S.
senator intervened to persuade the officers to take the woman to a Texas hospital.
While visiting a migrant shelter on Saturday, Ron Wyden grew concerned about a woman who was 38 weeks pregnant and suffering from pre-eclampsia and other complications.
The senator and his staff decided to take the woman, her husband, and three-year-old son to a port of entry to make their claim.
At the Paso del Norte bridge linking Juarez and El Paso, the family approached two U.S.
CBP officers, presented their identification, and said they wanted to request asylum.
Apparently, They were then told, quote, we're full from a CBP officer.
Wyden, who had followed behind the family along with an entourage of staff members and friends from Oregon, then stepped forward and identified himself.
He told the officers that Mexicans are exempt from the metering program CBP has used to strictly control the number of people allowed to request asylum.
He also told the officers the woman was late term in her pregnancy and suffering complications.
The officers called a supervisor, and then they came and let them in.
The challenge is… well, I'll just read on.
Mr. Wyden was clearly shaken by his two-day visit to the border, which included a tour of CBP holding cells and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility.
At the Juarez shelter, he met a three-year-old boy who had stopped speaking after being held with his father by the U.S.
Border Patrol and sent back to Mexico.
So here's the problem here.
We can't leave this individual to just die.
We can't.
However, what's the outcome?
Many more people, Mexican citizens, are going to come to the border and say, I'm going to die.
And then what do we do?
At a certain point, we have to say, we can't let you in.
We cannot provide you with the care because resources are finite.
Labor is finite.
It's really interesting.
Bernie Sanders last night, he said that healthcare is a human right.
Human right.
I think it's funny the way he speaks.
Healthcare is not a human right, okay?
Because healthcare... Here's the way I put it, in another video.
If you're outside in, I don't know, a forest, and you fall down and break your leg, What human right do you have to healthcare?
When you say it's a human right, you're implying that someone is obligated to provide their labor and time to you.
Now here's the thing.
Doctors, medical professionals, nurses, whatever.
Many of them do act on, you know, doing as much good as they can and helping those who they can.
There's the Hippocratic Oath, do no harm, etc.
So you will find there are a lot of doctors who believe they are obligated to provide life-saving care to those who they're presented with.
But they choose that.
It is their choice.
It is not your right.
You can't force someone to do something.
You can't force someone to give something to you.
So what concerns me about this story is, for one, it is a one-off.
I'm not gonna blame, you know, Ron Wyden for rushing someone to try to get him to a hospital.
But what about a Mexican hospital?
Was there no hospital in Mexico he could have gone to?
Why did he come to the U.S.
border?
And that's where we end this.
It was political, in my opinion.
Because certainly there are medical professionals who live in Mexico, certainly could have taken this woman to a hospital in her own country.
Why bring them to the United States?
All this will do is send a message to other sick individuals, come to our border and we will let you in.
The problem then is, as much as I'd love to help these people, what about the people on the other side of that border?
The Americans who pay taxes, who work, who are a part of our community, who we have an obligation to protect first and foremost.
Do we tell them no?
We do!
We're at a point now where we have Bernie Sanders talking about people not being able to afford healthcare.
Where people are going bankrupt because they can't afford it.
But then we let other people in who don't pay into these systems to use our services and we incur those costs.
I don't believe that's fair to anyone.
It's only going to incentivize people to make dangerous journeys.
It's only going to tell people of America that we don't care about you and we won't take care of you.
This is a virtue signal, what Ron Wyden did.
And in the end, I think it's going to be just more bad precedent of politicians going to foreign countries to campaign.
You know, it's really weird how they criticize the phrase, America First.
I think the way I'd put it is, America First most of the time.
It's the simplest way to put it.
Because I'm not an absolutist, I recognize there are certain circumstances where we have to prioritize other countries.
And that means, like, when a war breaks out, and we're on the crux of, say, like, World War II, what happened in World War II was not America First.
Technically, you could say that Pearl Harbor brought us in.
But we were saying, you know, we need to get involved and go to Europe.
Because this is a spreading threat that could eventually get to us, so in that instance we prioritized other nations.
Admittedly, I know, I know, Pearl Harbor.
The point I'm trying to make is, any reasonable person will recognize, sometimes America won't come first, and it's probably few and far between.
But to criticize the idea that Americans should take care of Americans is insane to me.
My neighbor is pitching in for a block party, and then some random person shows up and demands free food, I'm gonna be like, dude, we all worked hard for this.
You can't just come in and take our stuff away.
I guess, if you're a socialist, however.
But I'll leave it there.
You know, I think I made my point.
A lot of people are dragging him over this particular instance, and sure, I'd be willing to bet the story is very biased, but I'll just end by saying, What would you do?
Would you leave this woman?
Um, here's what I'd do.
I'd bring her to a Mexican hospital.
I think that's the reasonable answer, isn't it?
Anyway, stick around.
I got a couple more segments coming up for you in a few minutes, and I will see you shortly.
I don't know if anyone cares about Marianne Williamson, but she is just the crystal loving,
hippie-dippie-kookie celebrity candidate, but I will warn you all.
Take a look at your screen.
Who is the clear winner of the Democratic debates?
Marianne Williamson.
It doesn't mean she will actually win.
It just means most people were curious about her.
So let's only explain.
I said she had the second lowest amount of speaking time.
She dominated search results.
Don't underestimate the Crystal Queen and the power of love.
Here we can see the most searched Democratic candidates during Detroit debate number one.
Steve Bullock in Montana, because he's the governor.
But everywhere else, Marianne Williamson, who is the kooky crystal lady talking about social justice and all this other stuff, and, well, people were really interested.
Now, here's the thing.
There's a claim that conservatives are propping her up because they really want her to win because Trump will lose to her, but hold on.
She's not a Trump.
You know, she's similar in some ways.
She's not the same as Trump.
But I really want to point out, she knows how to play to emotion better than the rest of these candidates.
And all that really matters, in my opinion, charisma.
Scott Adams tweeted something to the effect of, it was a charisma black hole.
None of those candidates were presidents.
And I have to agree.
I actually think Marianne Williamson has substantially more charisma than basically everyone else on that stage.
And that's why, be warned, There was an email, and I could be wrong about this because I haven't gone through these things, it was like a leaked email, where the DNC was talking about using Trump as a Pied Piper candidate because they thought he would never win.
And so the Democrats were like, that's who we want to let, you know, fester and grow.
I could be wrong.
It's been a while since I've read this, so I just take it with a grain of salt.
Fact check me on that one.
The point is, so many people thought Trump was like a buffoon and you'd never win.
Oh, he's a celebrity.
No, this is never gonna happen.
I remember that video from Ann Coulter, where she's on Bill Maher, and they're like, who do you think's gonna win?
Like, who has the best chance?
She goes, Donald Trump.
And they all start laughing.
That's a great video, by the way, of everyone ragging on Trump, and then he won.
Now, what's going on with Marianne Williamson?
Conservatives are laughing, saying, haha, make the hippie crystal lady number one.
Be warned.
Be warned.
Don't look.
Don't underestimate it.
Check it out.
This guy.
I don't know who this is, but I saw this tweet going around.
And here's the headline from the New York Times.
Marianne Williamson has her moment, and Republicans are gleefully trumpeting it.
Yes, promoting the other party's long-shot celebrity kook candidate is a foolproof strategy.
Oh man.
And just to be fair, I'm going to read this first critique.
Trump was a quirky candidate for sure, but Williamson is some weird hippie type that only appeals to other weird hippies, which could be significant in a Democrat primary.
Otherwise, she could be the Christine O'Donnell of the left.
And then someone said, a post-debate poll finds only around 27% of voters support their open borders for healthcare.
Okay, that's not the point.
Anyway, I wanted to read through this and see what they had to say about Marianne Williamson, who is very, very strange, to say the least.
And I gotta say, it would be… How can I say this?
I would be very happy if she did take the Democratic nomination, because it would be one of the best debates I have ever seen in my life, Trump vs. Marianne Williamson.
Although, from a realistic policy standpoint, I'd much prefer Tulsi Gabbard or Andrew Yang, but… You know, now, I will point this out.
Many people have said, yeah, but come on, Ron Paul was the same.
Like, after all the debates, Ron Paul was the most searched for, and everyone thought he was gonna win, and of course he didn't.
The establishment prevails, and I'm willing to bet Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee.
Think about it.
Here's my prediction.
Or here's my... I don't know.
Here's my interpretation of what's happening.
Joe Biden reeks of Obama.
Obama won twice.
Obama can't run again, but Biden has that Obama cologne still coming off him.
So a lot of people want to vote for Biden, even though they don't know what Biden stands for.
He was topping the polls before he even announced his run.
Here's what they do.
Have Biden run, but have Kamala Harris tear him down so she gets his thunder.
Joe Biden drops while Kamala goes up, and that's what we've seen so far.
I'd be willing to bet in the next debates we see the same thing, which is why Kamala and Biden are gonna be on the same stage again.
She's gonna keep trying to take away his thunder, and he's going to concede it to her.
And then, think about it.
Kamala Harris is perfect in every way.
Establishment Democrat, female, person of color.
She hits everything the Democrats have been looking for.
There have been conversations about no white men and things like that, and some even saying no white people, period.
Well, Kamala Harris is.
She is a social justice candidate.
She is perfect.
Let's read a little bit about this, though.
What do they mean to say Republicans are trumpeting it?
They say, if you ask President Trump supporters who won Tuesday night's Democratic primary debate, their first answer unequivocally was Mr. Trump.
That's true.
That is absolutely true.
There was one tweet that people were sharing around that said, I have never seen a sitting president win a debate while not being on the stage before until last night.
And I gotta say, it's a funny joke, but I think it's better said about the last debate where they all raised their hand to giving health care away to undocumented immigrants.
Yikes.
But it was really funny.
Trump tweeted something about falling asleep.
Yeah.
But they also expressed a surprising, if not always entirely sincere, admiration for Marianne Williamson, the author and self-help guru who set herself apart with warnings of dark psychic force, tearing the country apart, and an attack on wonkiness as the proper antidote to the populist president.
Look, she's qualified, man.
She's got the donors.
She's got the polls.
You would be crazy to underestimate the hippie lady.
They thought Trump wouldn't win.
They thought Americans wanted a serious politician.
No, Americans wanted someone who's going to cut through the BS and be honest about what was happening.
And that's what they felt Trump represented.
If Marianne Williamson can cut through the posturing and the politicizing and the BS, I assure you people will vote for her.
If she goes up on stage and just... Listen, here's one of the things she said in the debate.
She said, how are these people gonna criticize the NRA when they're taking money from special interests too?
And I'm like, she's right.
They all talk about money and politics, gotta get money out of politics, but then they complain about the NRA, and they are accepting money from these PACs and from these other big funding sources.
Not all of them, I understand.
It's not like they're complete hypocrites, but she made a point.
Marianne Williamson cut through the BS like a hot knife through butter.
You know what I want to hear?
Honesty.
I do.
And she does bring a little bit of that.
But she is really weird.
And her tweets are insane.
But I don't think she's a crazy person, right?
I'm hyperbolic when I say she's nuts.
I think she has an interesting perspective.
I think she's very smart and very successful.
Look, she's like a wealthy, successful public figure.
To assume that she's nuts is the same as what they said about Trump.
Oh, he's a moron.
He's so dumb.
And he won!
And he beat you!
I think it would be funny to see, you know, Marianne Williamson debate Trump because it wouldn't be conventional.
You know, you're gonna get Bernie against Trump and Trump's gonna be like, oh crazy Bernie with his crazy ideas and Bernie's gonna be talking about numbers and we have the human right and all that stuff.
Not gonna work.
Not going to work against Trump.
Trump knows TV, he knows entertainment, he knows emotion, he knows the game.
If Marianne Williamson can play that game too, People are going to think that I'm trolling, the younger Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, perhaps protesting too much about how people would read his intentions.
But compared to what else is up on the stage, I think Marianne Williamson is actually winning this thing.
This is amazing.
And you know, what's funny is they barely gave her a chance to speak.
And she still came out the second.
She wasn't the lowest.
I think Hickenlooper was.
But apparently, she had some really profound moment where she like talked about the dark underbelly of the United States and racism.
And I gotta say, she is a quirky, crazy social media individual.
I don't mean crazy literally.
Literally, I mean it figuratively.
I think she's got weird ideas, but she is of sound mind.
And you would be crazy.
Listen, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna give her the same benefit that I gave to Trump.
Trump is a media mastermind.
CNN said that.
They said he was dangerous.
I agree.
He knows what he's doing.
If Marianne Williamson even has an ounce of what Trump has, she will wipe the floor with the Democrats.
She is already the top-searched-for candidate.
Now again, again, She might play well to the audience.
She might be interesting.
But you know the establishment is going to win, right?
They say Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the former Trump antagonist who has become one of his most ardent defenders, said Tuesday night that the audience had spoken and that Ms.
Williamson had won the debate.
Two minutes later, Mr. Graham posted a caveat declaring it was another good night for President Trump.
Breitbart, the hard right website that has supported many of the president's policies, sent an editor to a Williamson watch party in Detroit, where the second round of debates is being held.
Supporters feel she is having a strong night.
And you know what's really interesting?
Is that not only, um, do I have this pulled up?
Okay, not only was Marianne Williamson the most searched for candidate, but check this out.
How many Twitter followers did all of these candidates gain?
8,500.
Marianne Williamson gained the most followers.
That, to me, was crazy.
The runner-up was Elizabeth Warren.
Underestimate these quirky, crazy TV types at your own peril.
Knowing how to play the media game is more important than anything else.
So I'm gonna end by saying this.
I agree with Donald Trump Jr.
on the issue that Marianne Williamson won this debate, but not on policy.
On emotion and on TV pizzazz.
On understanding.
I mean, let me just say something.
You know, where was the charisma on that stage?
There was only a little bit and she had it.
Beto O'Rourke is made of plastic.
I swear somebody made that guy in a factory and he's like got one setting and he talks like in a weird robotic way.
No!
I believe we as a nation must.
I'm like, oh, dude, you're coming off so fake.
Just stop.
Just stop.
You don't have it.
Beto is the product of the media trying to beat Ted Cruz.
And that's it.
So anyway, I'm not going to prattle on Marianne Williamson forever.
I just think she's interesting.
And you'd be unwise.
It would be foolish to underestimate her.
So stick around.
One more segment coming up in a few minutes.
And I will see you shortly.
You see, this is what I like to hear from moderate Democrats.
Pointing out the Green New Deal talks about healthcare and socialism and jobs.
What does that have to do with the environment?
And I was standing up just furiously clapping.
No, I'm kidding.
But that's my argument, okay?
I like the environment.
I like environmentalism.
I like conservationism or whatever, you know, like protecting the land and stopping development.
I'm all there, man.
I love the outdoors.
I love the mountains.
I love the streams.
I like to get out into the wilderness every so often, just explore and see nature and all that stuff.
And so the Green New Deal excited me.
Until you realize it's nonsense.
Until you realize the Green New Deal is not about the environment, it's about socialism.
Even Sycat Chakrabarty, AOC's Chief of Staff, said it was about changing the economy.
That's not what we're talking about, man.
That's not what we need to do.
Okay?
Let me clarify.
We don't need to change the economy.
We need to evolve our culture.
We need to develop new products.
In fact, our economy might be the greatest asset for rapidly transforming how we produce and consume and dispose of products and chemicals and everything like that.
You know, we have a problem with stripping resources out of the earth and then turning into things and then trashing it.
We produce a lot of garbage.
We make a lot of plastic.
We pollute.
Well, the best way to solve that is cultural shifts.
The Green New Deal is a governmental shift.
Now, there can be a room for the government in some kind of green policy.
In my opinion, I lean towards that being a huge net benefit.
Tax incentives and grants are a great way to do it.
Obama did it, failed.
You know, it sucks, but we gotta try, right?
Now here's the thing.
Electric cars are on the rise, self-driving cars.
There is, in the mentality of Americans, a need for environmentally conscious products.
We need to realize, though, other countries contribute the overwhelming majority of carbon and greenhouse gases.
And although the U.S.
does contribute a lot, we've done great.
The point is, AOC defends Green New Deal after Hickenlooper calls it a distraction during Dem Debate.
And of course Ocasio-Cortez is trying to manipulate our emotions and use global warming to implement socialism.
I find that extremely offensive.
As someone who believes we have a serious problem with climate change, that humans are impacting this, we need to sit down and say, what can we do together to make it better?
And market incentives and grants sound like a really great idea that everybody can get behind.
However, what does AOC say?
The Green New Deal decarbonizes our economy while ensuring we leave no community behind, including job transitions for minors, labor rights, health care, and wages.
Calling the consideration of working people and climate policy a distraction is what is truly unsustainable, unrealistic, you slimy… I hate to insult, but it is so slimy.
So slimy.
Leaving people behind.
No, it's your political agenda.
It's implementing your ideology.
Other people have a right to have their voices heard in how this country is run.
And you, knowing you can't win on your bad and ridiculous ideas that have bankrupted several nations and destroyed them in the past, are trying to manipulate our feelings on the environment to impose your will on the rest of us.
Slimy.
Do I think Ocasio-Cortez cares about the environment?
I really don't.
I really, really don't.
You know why?
Somebody who truly cared about the environment and believed we have 12 months to get our act together before we face permanent ramifications would be saying right now the things I've said.
Hey guys, we have a serious problem.
I know you don't want to give in to the Green New Deal.
What would you be willing to do?
And what can I do in exchange?
How can we come together and find a solution to both of our problems?
Or, I've got a problem.
What can I do to incentivize you to come on board with me?
Because guess what?
Not everyone knows what you know.
Not everyone thinks what you think.
And your opinions are just that.
Your opinions.
None of us has the answer.
But you want to be the authority.
What she's doing is coercive authoritarianism, in my opinion, okay?
There are multiple ways for a dictatorship for tyranny to run.
And one of the most terrifying ways, in my opinion, is manipulation and coercion through media and through emotion.
And boy is she pulling out all the stops.
A real rational conversation may not always move forward, because I'll admit, on the political compass, I am in the left-libertarian quadrant.
I am a social liberal.
And I'll admit, True social liberalism?
Possibly one of the hardest political quadrants to occupy.
Because let's be real.
When you're center-right, when you're classical liberal, you can use market incentives to get what you want.
Meaning, if you have money, you can then use the market to get what you need and your companies can act in a way.
It's much easier.
However, the fear I have of more laissez-faire systems or more I guess closer to laissez-faire is that humans prioritize things that make no sense and just, you know, release dopamine in our brains.
We do need to make sure we are not just, you know, constantly eating chocolate cake.
You gotta eat broccoli, man.
Chocolate cake, I know it tastes better, but that's what your parents are supposed to instill in you.
Responsibility.
So for me, I believe in a mixed economy.
That's why I'm a little center-left.
I think the free market is extremely efficient and mostly does the right thing, but we need some checks and balances.
I'm sure there are a lot of classical liberals who agree.
You got the authoritarian right, and on the compass, this is more in reference to...
Like free market systems, with the government controlling what you really can or can't do, and hardcore traditionalism.
How easy is it, regardless of where you are, left, right, authoritarian, to just point a gun at somebody and say, do it, or you die?
Yeah, authoritarianism is relatively easy for a certain amount of time, before everything falls apart, because guess what?
Lo and behold, you don't have all the answers.
You're not the smartest person in the world, and when you think you are, you will fail, as every dictator has.
Now, of course, there are certain benefits, right?
We've seen warlords conquer nations and move swiftly.
Because in terms of war, dictatorship and authoritarianism, it really works.
For one person to say, here's a strategy to defeat this place, to defeat this nation, that's easy, okay?
But an economy is extremely complicated.
How much food do you need?
How much water do you need?
How many shirts do you need?
How many computers do you need?
That is more easily determined by a distributed system known as free market capitalism.
The right of the individual to own what they produce and to determine for themselves what they should produce or do.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, unfettered capitalism results in weird problems, okay?
If you've seen the Matrix, and I mean this seriously, in that movie they depicted the Matrix as a nightmare.
And there was the one character who desperately wanted to be in the Matrix.
But I will tell you this.
On a free path of human choice, we will put ourselves into the Matrix.
Why?
Who wouldn't want to live in a fantasy world where they control everything?
Where everything's perfect, where they're not suffering, where they have the best food in the world.
Well, most people would.
People love playing video games.
They love escaping from reality.
They love doing drugs.
Without some kind of, you know, check, some kind of authority, saying maybe that's too far, we go too far.
Now, here's the problem.
With socialism and communism, you end up going full authoritarian.
A full authoritarian system.
Because you can't really have a socialist system without authoritarianism.
Without authoritarianism.
Okay?
Now, because of this, people often believe socialism is inherently authoritarian.
That's not true.
Here's what I want you to realize.
Okay?
Libertarian socialism?
Libertarian socialism is a real thing.
It is a real, real thing.
Now you may be saying, that's ridiculous, it's impossible.
No, no, no, it is.
A bunch of friends on a farm.
Libertarian socialism.
It's libertarian because you can leave whenever you want.
You can grow whatever you want.
But it's socialist in that people don't have money to trade what they're doing.
When you have 10 hippies living on a farm, and one of them goes, I grew a bunch of tomatoes, man.
Do you guys want to have it for dinner?
Yeah!
And they all eat together.
There was no exchange.
It's just, I did this for you.
Then there's the chore wheel, where they're like, hey, it's your turn to do the dishes, man.
It's like, oh, OK, right on.
The chore wheel.
It's a cooperative market.
There is an exchange of labor based on just mutual aid.
It works really, really well with 10 hippies on a farm.
It doesn't work with tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people in a major nation who don't agree on their ideology, who don't see the world the same because they live in different regions.
Who don't even have the same red blood cell count because some are in the mountains and some are in the valleys.
The point is, when you try to implement socialism at a grand scale, an individual invariably tries to control the economy on their own and they don't know what everyone needs.
You bring about authoritarianism.
There is no democratic socialism.
There will never be.
At least in my opinion.
Because the ability to implement this is so difficult for one simple reason.
Everyone would have to believe the exact same thing.
So.
Let me put it this way.
You can absolutely have a democratic socialist country if it's being dominated by a cult-like fundamentalist religion, which is probably why we see the tying together of socialist policy with intersectionality, a non-theistic religion.
If everyone believes in the same moral good, they will bow to those and they won't need to be told to.
You don't gotta point a gun at somebody who believes you're their savior.
That's why I think they push, you know, intersectionality.
That's why Ocasio-Cortez is saying it's about not leaving the workers behind.
Oh, please, dude.
You're gonna leave so many people behind.
You're gonna leave people behind and in gulags!
I didn't want to say gulag, but I did.
Why do we always see the same thing?
Labor camps.
Execution.
Because people do get left behind in these systems.
So here's what I'll end on saying.
I want to fight for the environment.
I want everybody to do what they can to save a tree, to plant a tree.
I want reforestation.
I want clean water.
I want to deal with the problem of the fishery collapses, the collapsing fisheries.
The Dead Zone's in the ocean, and you know what I think the best way to do it is?
First, we need to have a conversation about it.
We need to be honest about it.
We need to approach the left and the right and just say like, no, tell me what you think.
It's like really sit down and talk and kind of, you know, break through this barrier and figure out what everyone needs to understand.
Maybe I'm wrong about a lot of things, you know?
After we do that, I think we can all agree there's an opportunity in the marketplace for better products.
We already have biodegradable plastic, like, substances.
We have spoons that are made of, you know, like, corn-starchy things that break down over time.
Congratulations!
We made plastic, eventually we realized it was bad, and now we've replaced it with plant-based plastic alternatives that can break down.
You know, I know Trump is selling plastic straws, it's funny, but the point is, The left too often gets elitist and shoves it in the face of conservatives, and then conservatives bounce back by saying, I'm going to buy a straw.
Screw you.
I'll tell you what my response is.
Don't ban the plastic straws.
Why don't we do the plant-based plastic straws?
Trump, you want to sell plastic straws?
What about the plant-based ones?
They're biodegradable.
Then you can take moral high ground saying not only can we keep plastic straws because we're not crazy, but we've actually used the free market to improve this to solve the problem that you couldn't figure out with your silly ban.
Isn't it insane they banned plastic straws?
Why didn't they just say straws should be made from biodegradable materials?
Those paper straws are trash.
Why can't they use what they use for those spoons and forks?
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it can't be done.
But here's what I think.
If you got elitists in their ivory tower saying, no, plastic straws for you, say, ah, but this isn't plastic.
It's made of plant fibers, and it will break down, and it works as good as plastic.
Sounds like a solution to me.
Anyway, I'm really offended by Ocasio-Cortez's constant fake environmentalism, because if you don't know, I've worked for I think three or four environmental non-profits.
I really do care about the environment.
And I think the best way to solve the problem is making sure we can spread the word to as many people as possible.
But you want to convince somebody who doesn't believe in climate change to fight for the environment?
You're not going to do it by being a dick and trying to implement socialism.
You're going to do it by saying, let me make sure I'm not hurting you, let me make sure I can benefit you, let me better understand how you live and what you need, and let's try and figure something out.
In reality, not everyone will agree with you.
Welcome to real life.
Sometimes people will just say you're wrong and I don't care, get off my property.
And we can only accept that.
However, the authoritarians refuse.
They believe they have a right to point a gun in your face and say, no, I won't get off your property.
And that, to me, is terrifying.
Because if you don't have a good enough argument, if you're such a bad person people won't sit down with you, and you can't figure out how to actually communicate and request aid, even if it means paying somebody, well then you've got a problem.
You've got the problem.
And it is a cheap-shot shortcut to try and implement some authoritarian policy to get your way.
That's why I'm on the Liberty Spectrum, so I'll leave it there.
Thanks for hanging out.
Next segment will be tomorrow at 10 a.m., podcast every day at 6.30 p.m.
