Illegal Immigrants Arrested In Largest ICE Raid In A Decade, Nearly 700 Arrested
Illegal Immigrants Arrested In Largest ICE Raid In A Decade, Nearly 700 Arrested. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted massive raids in Mississippi targeting 7 food processing companies. Trump has repeatedly talked about impending raids and we have seen increasing rhetoric in the cultural debate over the issue of impending ICE Raids. In another story we learned that ICE tried to search a shelter and was turned away without a warrant.While the twitterverse sees the conversation focus on the timing, far left accusations of Trump targeting all immigrants and not just illegal immigrants takes center stage meanwhile the real controversy brewing is how to assist the young children of the illegal immigrants.Following the raids many children were unaware their parents would not be coming to pick them up and were left stranded. Journalists filmed the children crying and begging for their parents.Democrats have increasingly embraced open borders rhetoric and called for the decriminalization of undocumented border crossings but most Americans oppose these ideas. Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who recently called for open borders, but if most Americans oppose this how do we help the kids?While leaving the children unattended is not the appropriate response, neither is open borders.
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From NPR, Mississippi immigration raids lead to arrests of hundreds of workers, 680 to be exact.
Seven different food processing plants were targeted, nearly 100 illegal immigrants were arrested per plant, and this may be the largest ICE raid in nearly a decade.
Now in the culture war sense, the conversation is around the targeting of immigrants, Trump's bigotry, and the timing of the raid, saying it was insensitive and wrong to do this just after what happened in El Paso.
Never mind the fact that the APS reported these raids were planned months in advance, and Trump has been tweeting about ICE raids for a long time.
We know Trump has been targeting people for deportation and working on border security.
But many people are questioning why Trump would do it now.
And another story from Politico suggests the Trump administration is focused on immigration as a whole, and not just illegal immigration.
Except it's kind of what we've been hearing for a long time.
Even though Trump can say illegal immigrant over and over again, many people on the left remove the word illegal and blend illegal immigrants with immigrants, and it makes the whole issue very, very confusing.
But let's set aside the complete nonsense that is the political bickering and look at the actual problem that we're facing now following these raids.
Many of these illegal immigrants had children in the U.S.
They came out of school and their parents were nowhere to be seen.
Whatever your opinion is, this is a problem.
Some of these kids, I believe most of them are American citizens because they were born here.
So what do you do?
There are now sympathetic stories of these kids crying, begging for their parents to be returned, but their parents are being detained and will likely be deported.
I don't know what the solution is.
It seems like when you ask the left, they only ever say some kind of open border or amnesty policy, but many people in America, most of them, either disagree or, for the most part, they disagree.
They don't think we should have open border policies.
Not literally... I don't mean to say, like, Specifically, 100% open borders, but things related to that.
Most Americans disagree with the idea of decriminalizing border crossings.
Most Americans support the idea of deportation.
So, what is the solution?
I don't know.
Certainly, this is a problem presented for these children, of which you will hear the right say, it's the parents' fault for creating the circumstance, and the left will say, ICE and Trump are evil.
So let's actually read through what's happening, and we'll start with a story from NPR to go through the facts of the raids.
Before we get started, go to irl.minds.com, irl.minds.com, because we're putting on an event at the end of August.
August 31st, it is coming up.
We are doing one last big push.
It is a speaking event.
I will be there.
There will be many other people there.
We've got progressives, we've got conservatives, we've got people in the middle.
And we're gonna have a conversation about a bunch of different issues related to authoritarianism, violence, censorship, etc.
And you can get your tickets now.
I believe the VIP tickets are sold out, but go to irl.minds.com.
Get your tickets.
I hope to see you there.
It's in the Philadelphia area, but let's get back to the news.
NPR reports Federal immigration officials raided several food processing plants in Mississippi on Wednesday and arrested approximately 680 people believed to be working in the U.S.
without authorization.
The coordinated raids were conducted by the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations at seven agricultural processing plants across Mississippi, according to an ICE statement.
In addition to the arrests, agents seized company business records.
More than 600 ICE agents were involved in the raids surrounding the perimeters of the targeted plants to prevent workers, mainly Latino immigrants, I'm sorry, illegal immigrants, they didn't include that, I will clarify, from escaping.
The actions were centered on plants near Jackson owned by five companies, according to the Associated Press.
One of the plants is owned by Coke Foods Inc., which bills itself as one of the largest poultry processors in the U.S.
with more than 13,000 employees.
Forbes ranks it as the 135th largest privately held company in the country, with an estimated $3.2 billion in annual revenue, according to Fortune.
I want to stop here and clarify.
A lot of people don't seem to understand this.
Or they make the assumption, Coke Foods is not in any way associated with the Coke Brothers.
That's my understanding.
I looked it up.
Many people have pointed this out.
But because of the name, a lot of people are jumping the gun and saying this is a Coke Brothers plant.
My understanding, it's not.
At least, that's what I've found.
Let's read on.
Another plant rated Wednesday in Canton, Mississippi, and is owned by Pico Foods, Inc., based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
It is the eighth largest poultry producer in the U.S., according to the company's website.
No representatives for either company responded to an email request or telephone call for comment.
The arrested workers were bused to a local Mississippi National Guard hangar, where they were interviewed about their immigration status, including whether they already had deportation orders.
Today's raids are part of the ongoing war against immigrant families and the communities in which they live, Julia Solorzano, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in an emailed statement.
It is especially sickening that days after immigrants were targeted in El Paso, workers at plants across Mississippi witnessed armed agents descending on their workplace.
It's also worth noting that immigration agencies that have repeatedly blamed overcapacity detention
facilities for the horrific treatment of those imprisoned nevertheless detained more than
600 people today.
The size of the raid operation harks back to 2008, when under George W. Bush's administration,
more than 400 unauthorized workers were arrested in a meatpacking facility in Iowa.
I think there's one important thing that needs to be highlighted before we move on to the
next story, and it's that business records were seized.
What a lot of people aren't bringing up in these stories, and perhaps because we've got
a human component here, is that these businesses presumably knew they were hiring people who
were not legally authorized to be working in the U.S.
I wonder what the Trump administration will do in response to this.
Certainly, there's got to be some kind of fine or legal action against these companies for consistently hiring illegal immigrants.
And I also want to stress too, as much as it's kind of an aside, if these businesses, and it's an important point, weren't hiring over nearly a hundred people per factory, there would be Americans working at these jobs.
Whatever your opinion on immigration, that's an important point.
Andrew Yang says that immigrants are being scapegoated for the problem of automation.
At least in this instance, these are human beings working these jobs.
It's not being automated.
But let's move on, because I think the human component is the more pressing issue.
And whatever your opinion is on illegal immigration, this needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed in a sympathetic and empathetic manner.
These kids aren't the ones at fault for whatever is going on, but they are now facing the brunt of what has happened.
Blame whoever you want, what can we do for these kids is the real question.
This is a story from CBS 22 WHLT.
Children of undocumented immigrants arrested in Mississippi rely on strangers for food and shelter.
They report, following a massive undocumented immigration enforcement operation resulting in more than 650 arrests, many children of those taken into custody were left temporarily homeless.
Community leaders in Forest, Mississippi brought the children to a community gym to provide care and comfort.
12 News reporter Alex Love was granted permission to talk to community leaders and the children.
Children relied on neighbors and strangers to pick them up outside their homes after school.
They drove the children to a community center where people tried to keep them calm.
But many kids could not stop crying for mom and dad.
Fighting back tears, Magdalena Gomez Gregorio, 11, expressed to us her devastation.
Government, please show some heart, Gregoria cried.
Let my parent be free.
This came after ICE agents raided several food processing plants, which we read and you understand the context.
Let's move on.
Quote, while we are a nation of immigrants, more than that, we are first and foremost a nation of laws, Southern District U.S.
Attorney Mike Hurst argued.
But those children and families who spoke to 12 News impacted by each raid stressed their parents and friends are good people.
I need my dad and mommy.
My dad didn't do anything.
He's not a criminal.
Well, listen, unfortunately, it is illegal to enter the country illegally.
I mean, to enter the country without going through a port of entry and being properly documented is in fact a crime in this country.
The parents who came here and worked illegally knew that they were doing it.
You want to argue about the callousness of ICE?
I would say this.
I believe there absolutely is culpability on the fact that ICE raids were conducted without consideration to what's going to happen to these kids.
The fact that these kids were left stranded outside of their school is deplorable, if you were to ask me.
But it has to be said that parents understood this was highly probable and likely to happen, especially with Trump's rhetoric escalating.
I don't know what the solution is.
I'm not here to assign morality for the most part, but we have a serious problem.
We can't just have kids standing outside with no idea what's happening and then strangers or neighbors or people coming and just putting them in a gym.
Okay, so whatever you want to propose, I honestly have no idea.
My understanding is that many of these kids are actually American citizens.
Let's read a little bit more.
Quote, their mom's been here for 15 years and she has no record, Christina Peralta told
us.
A lot of people here have no record.
They've been here 10 to 12 years.
And if that's true, these kids who are younger than that probably were born in this country.
Christina Peralta, the godmother of two children whose mom was arrested, told 12 News she feels
helpless as she watches the boys wonder when they'll see their mother again.
He said his mom is gone, that he's upset with Trump.
He said he just wants his mom back.
And they've been crying all day long since they've got home from school.
But with the help of Clear Creek Boot Camp owner Jordan Barnes and other community leaders,
the kids will have a place to sleep.
Good Samaritans have also donated food.
We're going to have bedding available for them, and we're going to have food available for them just to get them through the night.
And if they need transportation to school tomorrow, we'll also take care of that.
I want to stress, this is a serious problem and it needs to be addressed.
We cannot just be an open borders nation.
Now, of course, you have the left saying no one's really calling for open borders, which is just plain not true.
Ocasio-Cortez and a few others, I'm not entirely sure exactly who, I think it might be Rashida Tlaib, are members of the Democratic Socialists of America who recently passed a resolution calling for open borders, the free movement between nations.
There are people calling for this.
We are not at that point.
Look, if you're on the left and you want to argue for that, get it passed.
Get people to vote for it.
We're not there.
So when people come to this country, you know, without going through a port of entry, it's illegal.
Crossing the border without documentation and working here is a violation of many U.S.
laws.
The parents need to be responsible.
I will stress, any other crime committed would result in basically the same thing.
I want to make sure I stress, too, when I talk about the plight of these children, I am not in any way trying to say the parents aren't responsible.
I'm saying these kids need to be taken care of.
We cannot be a nation that leaves kids outside with no plan.
That just doesn't make sense.
It can't work.
Okay?
When a parent commits a crime, let's say there's an American citizen parent, commits a crime, gets arrested, Uh, Department of Child Services or something comes and picks these kids up, there's a plan for this.
It is not ideal, it is still a problem.
But when the parent commits a crime, I understand that.
The parents committed a crime, we're doing our best.
Perhaps we can do better, and that's something we should argue for, but in this circumstance, the story, many of these stories are that kids walked outside of school, and they had no idea what was happening, and their parents just weren't there.
That, to me, is unacceptable.
We need better planning for this.
It's not the fault of these kids, okay?
We need to make sure we have empathy, and we need to make sure there are lines we never cross.
You want to arrest the parents because they broke the law?
I understand that.
But you've got to have a plan for their kids.
You've got to plan ahead.
Now, I will stress, too, I want to make one more point before moving on.
It also doesn't make sense to simply just throw away our laws because kids are crying.
In no way am I saying that.
I'm just stressing, this is a really difficult situation.
It is.
Because the laws have to be enforced and if you want them changed, vote for it.
But let's move on from this and we'll get to the broader point.
BuzzFeed and many other outlets on the left are presenting a very sympathetic anti-ICE, anti, you know, border enforcement narrative.
BuzzFeed reports families, quote, are scared to death after a massive ICE operation swept up hundreds of people.
Right.
But perhaps people should be afraid of breaking the law.
You know, look, I'm not one to advocate for, you know, retribution.
In fact, to an extent, the idea of justice isn't necessarily appropriate in all circumstances.
What we need is to end crime and rehabilitate people.
Now, you may be arguing incentives.
If the US will not enforce border law, if these companies are not punished in some way
for hiring these people, it will incentivize the behavior and it will create more problems.
We have laws.
Most people in this country do not believe it should be legal to just come in the country whenever and wherever you want.
Most people believe that should be illegal.
They do not agree with the Democratic debates when they said decriminalize border crossings.
Well, that presents us with a conundrum.
It's not ICE's job to take care of the kids and plan for them.
Perhaps this should be a consideration of ICE, though.
Or maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it is their job and they screwed this one up.
I don't know.
The point is, to what level of degree should we be concerned that people are scared because they broke the law?
Well, if you broke the law, and you're facing enforcement of that law, that's something you chose to do.
If you're in the country in violation of U.S.
law, that's something you chose to do.
And these companies shouldn't be hiring these people.
It's against the law.
I will stress too, listen, I understand that laws can be broken to make a point, and sometimes breaking the laws will shine a light and allow Americans to determine whether or not the law should continue to exist.
This is notably true for things like smoking pot, or drinking beer.
Beer was made illegal at one point, everybody still did it, they broke the law, people got arrested, people died, and eventually they said, that was a bad idea.
People smoked pot, well now pot is being legalized across the board.
This is a different story.
We are not at the point now where this can or can't be justified.
It just is illegal, and it's resulting in serious problems.
And what we need to talk about is, should people be afraid after they break the law?
I don't care what the law is.
Yes.
Like, if you want to be an activist, and you want to sit in the street, be prepared to be arrested, even if you think you're doing it for a good cause.
That's law enforcement.
If you want to change those laws, you can highlight them, and we'll get to that point.
But for now, We have a serious issue where the left is acting like simply because people are scared and crying, we should do away with the laws.
I'm sorry, that's just not how it works.
Okay?
There are people who are hungry, too, and they steal.
Should we make theft legal?
It's a complicated situation.
Well, let's move on now, because there is more news beyond what happened here.
The Daily News reports, exclusive, ICE agents try to raid Brooklyn homeless shelter without warrants, according to sources, and this happened, this was reported last night, so around the same time, these ICE raids are taking place.
New York Daily News reports, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tried to enter a Brooklyn homeless shelter Tuesday night, but were turned away after failing to produce a warrant, said Christine Quinn, the shelter's network director.
The agents came to the East New York wind shelter around 10 p.m.
and showed guards a photo of someone they were seeking to detain.
The ICE agent said they had a warrant.
When asked to display it, they balked and wind guards denied them entry.
Good.
You need a warrant.
I don't care what department you're from, you need a warrant.
We shouldn't accept, for any reason, federal agents trying to enter premises under false pretenses or without a warrant.
Show me a warrant should be something everybody is prepared to say.
But I will stress, I highlight this story because it's interesting considering what happened in Mississippi, but for the most part...
This seems to be a couple of guys.
And these kind of actions we're seeing with a couple ICE agents, it happens all the time.
It's very different from the major ICE raids we saw in Mississippi.
Now I want to talk about kind of the rhetoric we're seeing.
Races is tweeting how after what happened in El Paso, ICE agents in Mississippi are separating families.
These raids intentionally terrorize us all.
We're seeing stories where people are alleging, like on Twitter, they're saying it's not about illegal immigration, it's about immigrants, legal ones too.
We have this story, emails show Stephen Miller pressed hard to limit green cards.
Well, if that's true, then it's true.
But just because Stephen Miller wants to limit green cards doesn't mean they're trying to target all immigrants, that's an opinion.
It's a complicated problem.
But I'll give you my thoughts on the matter as kind of a wrap-up here, and I'll go back to reiterate some points.
The most important thing I think we should consider when talking about any of these policies, everything Trump says and what he's doing, is that I believe Trump is targeting a base.
I don't think Trump is necessarily anti-immigrant or immigration.
I think Trump is concerned about what most Americans want.
Take a look at this Gallup poll.
Let me zoom in just a little bit.
It says, in your view, should immigration be kept at its present level, increased or decreased?
Increased has actually gone down to 27%.
So you can see that the people who want more immigration has been steadily rising.
But in 2019, it went down a little bit.
The people who want immigration decreased has been steadily declining, but in 2019 has gone up.
And the people who want it to stay where it is, 37%, has stayed around the same level with some spikes here and there.
I highlight this to make one point.
In my opinion, Donald Trump is looking at these trends and saying, what's the best bet?
If I want votes, if I want to please the American people and serve their interests, what do I do?
Well, there are more people who want less immigration, so Trump caters to them.
As there are many people who want to catch at its present level, rather a neutral opinion, Trump doesn't seem to care what their opinion is for the most part, or he thinks maybe they're undecided.
But between those who want more or less, Trump has sided with those who want less.
I think that is the driving force, and that's why we see people like, you know, this story from the second, Stephen Miller pressed hard to limit green cards.
Yes, because there's a bigger group, a larger group of people who want less immigration than who want more.
Well, let's get to the main point.
I want to wrap everything up here.
No matter your opinion, okay?
This is the news.
Major ice raids in Mississippi.
Expect more of this.
But the important takeaway.
These were planned months in advance.
Very likely to be true.
That's what the AP is reporting.
And Obama still deported more people than any other president.
They target Trump, they blame Trump for this, but all of this happened under Obama.
I want to stress all of the points I made about these kids should be taken seriously.
These kids didn't break the law.
Their parents did.
Their parents are being arrested.
We get that.
What do we do about the kids?
We have to make sure we are not becoming, you know, you stare into the abyss too long, you become, let me actually do this right.
Be careful when fighting monsters, lest ye become one, for when you stare into the abyss too long, the abyss stares back, or when you gaze into the abyss.
Let's make sure everything is by the book, and as sympathetic and as empathetic as possible, and although these people are being arrested, we should never accept inhumane conditions for anyone, regardless of what crime they committed.
If you are someone who stole a loaf of bread, or if you're someone who is accused of running someone over with your car, we should make sure your rights are being upheld, you are innocent until proven guilty, you have a right to the speedy trial, and the conditions in which we hold you are not decrepit and horrifying.
And that is true for people crossing the border illegally.
Now, unfortunately, as I've highlighted before, you've got Democrats who just don't want to vote for it.
They finally did.
More importantly, these children are innocent.
So, please, we need to figure out a humane way to help these kids.
I'm sorry.
Your parents are being arrested.
They broke the law.
That's the way things are.
Does it mean it's the right thing to do?
No.
Just because laws exist doesn't mean they're just.
But the solution isn't just throw away our laws and burn our code, our Constitution.
That makes no sense.
I want empathy.
I want these kids to be helped and taken care of, to be able to be with their parents, to visit their parents, to figure this out, but I don't know the solution.
I know the answer isn't open borders, let everybody go.
And I know the solution isn't to hell with the kids.
Absolutely not.
I will not stand for depravity and a callous law enforcement that ignores the plight of kids who had nothing to do with this.
I don't know what the solution is though, so...
Unfortunately, I will continue to be called the milquetoast fence-sitter.
I will be insulted and attacked by the left for not calling for more justice for these kids.
I don't know what to tell you, man.
This is a tough situation.
I don't have all the answers.
I know I feel for these kids, and this is a heart-wrecking circumstance that we cannot stand for.
At the same time, we can't just burn our book of laws because kids are crying.
When someone smokes drugs, or sells them, they get taken away from their kids too.
And those kids cry as well, and beg for their parents back.
We don't just release these people back into the streets.
And yes, I can even go further and say, when someone is starving, and they have kids so they steal food, they still get arrested.
I don't know what the solution is, but this is not it.
If you are from somewhere that is bad, you can't just come to the US and break the laws, because this is what happens.
Comment below!
Look, man, I'm not here to be the arbiter of morality.
I'm just going to tell you what happens, and I'm going to say, let's figure it out.
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews, and I will see you all then.
Another story from a couple days ago, but I wanted to break this down because I've been complaining about the sea of fake news we're swimming in.
And I want to talk about the fake news, and I want to talk to you about the cycle I go through every day.
When I'm trying to source information and produce a segment and give my thoughts on it.
The story.
AOC slams McConnell.
Campaigns, quote, boys will be boys defense.
Quote, boys will be held accountable for their actions.
This is the headline presented by Newsweek.
Most people will see this, and they see the quote around boys will be boys, and the quote around boys will be held accountable for their actions, and assume both are literal quotes.
Now here's the problem.
The second one is.
The first one is not.
No one ever said boys will be boys.
Now here's what happens in mainstream politics.
Somebody who supports Cortez will see this story, read the headline, and move on without investigating it.
And I kid you not, there are four steps to understanding this story.
And I'm going to tell you how I have to deal with news every day and how I produce what I do.
I use a service called NewsGuard.
NewsGuard is a third-party rating agency, which I disagree very much so with, because they give many sites green checkmarks across the board, but you know what?
NewsGuard serves as a check on my personal bias.
If anyone comes to me and claims I'm using bad sources, I'll say, defer to NewsGuard.
It's a third-party company that is respected, establishment journalists who do the work.
I don't know what else you want from me, okay?
I'm trying to use sources to check my own bias.
Ocasio-Cortez pushes a fake quote which actually came from a story which editorialized something that didn't happen.
So let me read you a little bit of the Newsweek story and then I'm going to walk you backwards and show you how I end up actually figuring these stories out.
Before we read it, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
There's a PayPal option, a crypto option, a physical address, but the best thing you can do, share this video, and I really mean it.
There are times, I don't always do this promo, I do it most of the time, but I've actually seen when I don't ask to share the video, viewership, it goes way, way down, and it's because YouTube is de-ranking independent political commentary.
I also want to stress too, because I don't stress it enough, 90 plus percent of the videos I produce on this channel are demonetized.
You may still see ads.
Demonetized just means, like, 90% of the ads are removed, and you make, like, no money off of it.
After about two days, they'll monetize it, but then nobody's watching, so... That's just how the game is played.
That's what YouTube is doing.
Uh, you know, fortunately for me, I'm in a successful enough position where I can keep working and don't have to worry about it, but this really does impact smaller creators.
And, you know, in the long run, if you wanna support my work, just share the video, do what you gotta do.
Let's read.
They say, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's campaign on Tuesday for invoking the, quote, Boys Will Be Boys defense in response to a Facebook photo of a young group of men wearing teammate shirts while choking and groping a cardboard cutout of the lawmaker.
Unfortunately, however, that's not true.
Many of these news outlets keep saying it's a boys-will-be-boys defense, but no one ever said that, nor did they actually invoke that idea.
Someone just twisted the narrative, and now they're pushing it.
Look, man, there's been fake news about the president, about Trump supporters for a long time.
We've seen, you know, the Covington thing.
And I think we're entering a new territory Where now an opinion piece becomes a fact piece, and none of them get labeled opinion nor explained to the root of the story.
Here's what AOC tweeted.
Quote, boys will be boys.
Is that also the reason why you've chosen to block the Violence Against Women Act II, Senate Majority Leader?
It prevents dating partners with abuse records of abuse, talking yaddy yaddy.
I'm not going to read her whole tweet.
So here's the thing.
They go on and say, oh, you know, blah blah blah.
Well, let's break this story down and figure out what's really happening.
On the surface, if you enter the story, you see Boys Will Be Boys in quotes over and over again.
The average person will assume someone actually said it.
Okay, let's start digging.
First, this is a Newsweek article.
Most people will only read the headline.
In it, they embed a tweet from AOC.
Let's click this tweet and see what happens.
In this tweet, we can see her quoting Boys Will Be Boys, and it's in reference to this Daily Beast article, a tweet.
Let's open this tweet now.
On to the third source.
It reads, Mitch McConnell's campaign manager essentially says boys will be boys in response to that image of teens groping and choking a cutout of AOC.
Okay, here we go.
Things are getting good.
Essentially says.
Right.
Didn't actually say.
So why did Ocasio-Cortez put it in quotes?
I don't know.
Maybe she's just not smart.
That would be my Occam's razor.
Solution.
The simple solution is that AOC is just not that smart.
Saw the tweet.
Assumed it was true.
The same as most people would do.
Listen.
You know what?
Let me not be mean to AOC on this one.
Your average person reads a headline or a tweet and doesn't actually read the story.
So we get the Daily Beast tweeting this out, essentially says boys will be boys.
Then Ocasio-Cortez, not, you know, actually reading the story, thinks they actually said it.
Then, slamming it, Newsweek now creates a fact.
You have two quotes, one of which isn't a real quote.
The Daily Beast, of which they've produced their cheat sheet, which is an opinion piece not labeled as such.
And hence, I will call out NewsGuard, because they say they handle the difference between news and opinion responsibly.
I don't believe BuzzFeed even gets that.
I could be wrong, but there are a few mainstream outlets, I think Huffington Post for instance, that don't have across the board.
The Daily Beast does.
And The Daily Beast regularly puts out fake news.
I'm not exaggerating, and I am fully willing to go on record as a statement of fact.
The Daily Beast, on numerous occasions, has published fake news and or stories that are opinions, hyperbole, and rhetorical devices that are not labeled as such.
Look at this story.
Here's the actual headline.
Gross.
McConnell campaign responds to viral photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cut out being groped.
Well, the title doesn't say boys will be boys, but they do say in the story.
Okay.
After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Mitch McConnell for a photo posted on Facebook of a group of young men wearing Team Mitch shirts, shown choking yadda yadda yadda, the Senate Majority Leader's campaign manager initially responded by saying, in essence, boys will be boys.
The campaign ultimately ended up condemning the image as demeaning.
That's an opinion.
I don't share that opinion.
My opinion doesn't matter.
They never said that.
They didn't even say it in essence, because that's your opinion.
But the opinion became a headline, which became a quote, and it's now a fact.
And it's traveled all the way down this four different sources to where the story is right now.
So let me explain something, and then I want to show you what they actually said.
This is an excellent example of what I do every single day with Newsweek, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Breitbart, I don't care, Town Hall, Daily Wire.
I will see a story and it will have a headline.
Here's what I've noticed.
Typically, and of course I'm gonna get all the left getting angry at me, when I go to Newsweek, I have to double check.
When I go to the Daily Beast, I usually don't even use the Daily Beast.
It's such trash.
I double and triple check all of the sources.
If they make a claim, I figure out what their source is.
That's why I'm also kind of skittish using the New York Times, because New York Times is original sourcing.
They'll say anonymous sources or otherwise.
You can't trust the New York Times.
Who can you trust, right?
I'm not saying they're perfect, but everyone agrees.
You're not going to fault me if the New York Times puts out fake news if they're the paper of record.
Of course, I will still criticize them for this.
When I pull up the Daily Wire, the most I usually find?
Fact-based reporting with a conservative opinion.
I get it.
I'll see a Daily Wire story and I'll say, yep, there's their conservative opinion, but they don't write about what someone actually said.
Like, they don't change the meaning of someone's phrase.
They won't say someone said something they didn't say.
Like The Daily Wire normally does, and they're not perfect, because I've definitely avoided using some articles because they have been a bit hyperbolic, but this is a tendency, right?
When I look at political stories from Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Vox, etc., it's usually trash, I gotta throw it away.
I've gotta figure out what the source material is, I've gotta go to- and this is true for Breitbart, too.
But Breitbart is not like The Daily Wire, The Daily Caller, Town Hall, Washington Examiner.
It's not like your typical conservative outlet, which is why I've said in the past I'm not a big fan of Breitbart.
I have to look at the source material to figure out the real context.
I do this all the time for mainstream news, and this is what it looks like.
I'll see a story and I'll say, whoa, that's crazy.
I'll dig into it and say, okay, well, where did this come from?
Okay, here's the tweet from AOC.
Oh, she was quoting this Daily Beast article.
Okay, the Daily Beast article says they essentially said it.
That means they didn't really say it.
What did they really say?
And then we can go into the story, and I first notice it's an opinion piece not labeled as such.
Okay, everything's out the window.
I throw it in the trash.
If I see a story that says, you know, Donald Trump went on a racist rant or something, I'll say, oh, okay, what did he say?
I'll go into the story, look for what Trump said, and then I'll look at it and say, that was an opinion piece.
It's not a source.
I will criticize the opinion piece for being an opinion piece, but I don't use it as source material.
Looking at this story, they write, In a statement, Kevin Goldin said the media is using the
image to quote, demonize, stereotype, and publicly castigate every young
person who dares to get involved with Republican politics. These young men are not campaign
staff. They are high schoolers.
In another statement, Goldin condemned the photo saying, Team Mitch in no way condones any aggressive, suggestive,
or demeaning act toward life-size cardboard cutouts of any gender in a manner similar to what
we saw from President Obama's speechwriting staff several years ago. Some of the young
men in the photo, you know, know, commented, break me off, something like that.
Listen.
You see that statement I just read?
Where they totally denounced it, and said they're trying to demonize everyone who gets involved in politics, and these are not campaign staff, they're high schoolers.
They didn't say boys will be boys.
They didn't say, ah, it's young men doing young men stuff.
No, they said they're not campaign staff.
Ocasio-Cortez asked, are you paying young men to practice groping and choking members of Congress?
The response?
These young men are not campaign staff, they're high schoolers.
They didn't condone it.
They condemned it.
Outright.
Team Mitch in no way condones any aggressive.
I do this every single day.
50 plus times.
Okay, I'm being a little hyperbolic there.
You get it.
I'm trying to make a point.
That's figurative.
It's maybe 20 to 30 times I'm going through news.
But it is frequent.
Some days, it is over 100.
Like, the other day when I made a video, two videos, about us swimming in fake news, you could see it in my face.
It's just like, oh my god.
I can't tell you how much work it is to spend hours reading the same story over and over and over again and they're all citing each other.
And then when you finally find the source, it's like Donald Trump says something like, I went to Baltimore once and got a hamburger.
And then all of a sudden you'll find this story that says Donald Trump makes racist screed about Baltimore's food service industry.
And then I travel down all of the sources to try and figure out where this comes from.
And it was a tweet from like 2015 where Donald Trump was like, I ate a cheeseburger once.
Okay, obviously I'm being hyperbolic, but that's the game they play.
People only read headlines.
So what happens?
Donald Trump insults Baltimore.
Well, actually, I shouldn't even say he insults Baltimore.
That's me being opinionated.
Donald Trump said Baltimore was rat and crime infested.
It is.
The word infested has been used by many people for many things for many reasons.
Bernie Sanders derided Baltimore on several occasions saying it's inhumane and that people have lower life expectancies than North Korea and it's a third world country.
We've heard Elijah Cummings himself.
My understanding is he said it was drug infested too.
But Trump saying it's got a rat problem, which is a reference to a PBS documentary about Baltimore's rat problem, results in them saying, article, BuzzFeed, Trump goes on a racist rant targeting black majority areas.
And I'm like, wow, where's that coming from?
Oh, it's an opinion piece not labeled as such because Donald Trump didn't bring race into any of these conversations.
Donald Trump.
And look, you want to interpret it however you want, I have no problem with that.
BuzzFeed, you want to put out your opinion saying you think it was racist?
Absolutely fine, go ahead and do it.
And put opinion, big and bold, right on top.
Please, they don't.
So here's what we get.
The Daily Beast, not labeled as an opinion.
I don't know what the cheat sheet is.
I pulled up Daily Beast.
Nowhere does it say opinion.
It actually says Reuters in reference to the photo.
So at a glance, someone who doesn't understand it's a photo reference wouldn't realize this is an opinion piece.
And in essence, boys will be boys.
And the following paragraph says, we can condemn this in no uncertain terms, blah, blah, blah.
And it actually says they're not campaign staff.
The question was, is Mitch McConnell paying them?
No, they're not campaign staff.
They're high schoolers.
You want to talk about boys will be boys.
Even if that's the reference they were making, we just saw a bunch of young people go to grocery stores and spit in food and lick things.
So yeah, high schoolers do dumb things.
Actually, I don't even think they were in high school.
I think they were a little older than that, but man.
This is the cycle of fake news I deal with every single day.
I'm trying to actually figure out what's going on and make points.
But instead, we have a fake news.
And I gotta say, I get really frustrated with NewsGuard all the time.
Now, I'll be fair.
To NewsGuard's credit, Their justification for giving a green checkmark on difference between opinion and news is that 90 plus percent of the time, the Daily Beast does handle the difference pretty well, and they overwhelmingly do fact-based stories.
That's true.
I agree with that.
In response to seeing Newsguard say the Daily Beast did a good job, I actually went through myself and found that a lot of their stories are straightforward journalism.
Journalism, for those who aren't familiar, is when a news organization rewrites a story.
That's basically, it's like, if I took this story and then just rewrote the exact same thing, that's journalism.
It's almost journalism if you're, like, combining a bunch of different sources and then, like, trying to make a bigger piece of the greater context.
That's not really journalism.
It kind of is.
Depends on who you ask.
Journalism, for the most part, would be, I see this story and I rewrite it basically verbatim, line for line, but that's being figurative.
You change it up a little bit so it's a new story, but it's literally covering the exact same beats.
NewsGuard says, for the most part, they do a good job.
Here's the problem.
I've complained to NewsGuard about this.
You, by saying, well, for the most part, it's fine, provides a mask for the writers the Daily Beast has that overwhelmingly produce hyperbolic opinion, rhetorical, and fake news.
There was one instance where the Daily Beast wrote an overtly fake story with no evidence and no sources.
I reached out for comment, they ignored me.
I reached out again to the writers and I said, I need a source for this claim.
They were making a bold claim about some right-wing people.
And I said, what is the source?
Because here's what I do, like I said, when I see a story, I track the source down and figure where the original, I try to find the original source for where the claim comes from.
The Daily Beast has published numerous stories with no original sourcing.
It just says something.
It'll say, like, last night, you know, on Twitter, so-and-so said X. And I'll be like, where?
There's no tweet here.
I can't find this.
Where did they see this?
There's no screenshot.
That's not a legitimate- I'm giving you a general example of what it would be like.
That's not literally what happened.
I'm trying to avoid details, for the most part, to avoid litigious behavior from this organization.
But I am willing to say straight up, if it came down to it, absolutely.
I have seen them publish numerous stories that omit information to mislead, that lie.
They're liars, cheaters, and stealers, as far as I'm concerned.
However, NewsGuard provides a safe cover because it's like, sure, you write nine articles, the tenth is fake.
Well, at least nine out of ten are real.
This is what they do.
This is the media.
So, maybe this will be a good video to help you understand how the fake news works.
There's a lot of, like, no one did any groundwork to understand what this was, to look at the question being asked, the question being answered.
Let me just wrap this up for you right now, so I can be done.
This photo went viral, and you can see these young men doing stupid things to a cutout of AOC.
Yep, they're being dumb.
High schoolers are dumb.
It's not a boys will be boys thing.
We just saw young people spitting into iced tea and licking ice cream at the grocery store and getting arrested for it.
But she asked if they were paying the men.
The response was, these are not campaign staff, they're high schoolers.
The response on the Daily Beast?
They're saying boys will be boys.
That's your opinion, and I don't agree with it.
Which results in a headline, essentially says Boys Will Be Boys, which AOC then quotes as if someone actually said it and they didn't, and then slams them for something they never said, and then Newsweek publishes a story with it in quotes as if they said it.
Perhaps that is a false statement of fact.
By putting quotes around Boys Will Be Boys, Does it imply they've actually said it?
You know what, man?
We're swimming in fake news about Trump, about Republicans, and the media is complicit.
Look at this chain of events.
It is absolutely insane that we've gotten to this point.
And now, here's the final important point.
I can slam The Daily Beast all day and night for this being an op-ed and not labeled as such, and that disgusts me.
And I can go to Newsweek No.
Newsweek wrote a fact-based story off of AOC's fake quote.
So what do you do?
Well, I will slam Newsweek for publishing fake news.
But it's not so much an opinion piece, it's just factually incorrect.
They should have actually done the work.
But you know what?
We live in a world without journalists.
And I mean that.
Like what?
You know, 1% of the people who actually work at these companies are journalists?
So I don't know what to tell ya, but let me just stress this.
When you see a headline like this, any headline, just know, you are probably being fed complete BS.
And I will stress again, much to what's gonna anger the left and they're gonna call me a liar, but no, there's a reason why the center and the right have a tacit alliance today.
Because the left has gone nuts with garbage like this.
I know that I can go to the Daily Wire, an opinionated site that mostly just... What the Daily Wire does is they, like, rewrite someone else's story, but adding the conservative opinion to it.
But I know, typically, like, way more than the Daily Beast... Like, well, here's the thing about the Daily Beast.
When they do write fake news, it is fake news.
When the Daily Wire writes opinionated content, it's opinionated content, and that's what the website is.
So I can criticize the Daily Wire for not putting op-ed in front of everything, but literally everything they write is conservative opinion.
That I understand.
It's an opinion website.
But I know that for the most part, like the overwhelming majority, 98% of the time, when I go to the Daily Wire, I'm going to find the source material, factual, and their opinion, whatever their opinion is.
Here, we can see they've twisted what was said.
I don't see that from the Daily Wire, the Daily Caller, etc.
I just see them putting their opinion on top of it.
But perhaps the Daily Beast isn't the main issue here, right?
It's the failure to source that we see from Newsweek.
So it's not so much that Daily Beast is opinionated.
Okay, fine, have your opinion, put it the way you want, please label it.
But what I can say is, we've gotten to a point where Newsweek didn't bother sourcing their facts and figuring out what's going on.
And you know, everyone's susceptible to this, but I shouldn't be dealing with this from Newsguard-certified Green Checkmark mainstream media.
Unfortunately, I do, and it's literally every single day and almost every single story from every single source.
And there you have it.
Admittedly, I'll say this, The New York Times is not that bad.
I'm wary of using a lot of their sources because, you know, you can't track things down and verify it.
But for the most part, they do have original reporting, data, graphs, etc.
And so, respect.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, I'm okay with using.
I've cancelled my subscription to the New York Times months ago because they're hiring identitarians and it's infecting their content.
The Wall Street Journal is still pretty good.
Washington Post is out the window.
I'll leave it there.
This doesn't need to be a half an hour long.
Stick around.
Next segment will be at 1 p.m.
on this channel, and I will see you all then.
This may come as a shock to many of you, so I need you to be sitting down.
This is a serious, serious breaking news update.
Apparently, Twitter is biased against conservatives.
I know.
I never thought we would have seen something like this.
Okay, here's the real news.
Twitter has locked Mitch McConnell's campaign account after posting video of protesters shouting threats and profanities.
They locked Mitch McConnell's account for calling out left-wing activists shouting threats and profanities.
Can that be any more clear?
Now, perhaps there are some people watching who are not familiar with the greater context around the social media bias story, who are sitting there saying, oh, he posted a video where people were saying threatening things.
Of course he's going to get suspended.
Of course Twitter's not really biased.
Look, let's make one thing clear.
Everyone knows you're allowed to call for the complete eradication of Trump and his supporters, at least tacitly.
No, I think this is pretty overt.
I'm showing a Reza Aslan tweet where he says, Trump and his supporters, yada yada, this evil racist scourge must be eradicated from society.
It's still up!
This tweet was posted on the 4th, where he's saying the evil racist scourge must be eradicated from society.
Reza Aslan's tweet still exists.
One of the most powerful senators in the country, if not the, he's the majority leader, had his account locked for calling out threats against him.
At what point, I don't even understand how people can pretend there's not a bias against conservatives.
It is palpable.
Reza Aslan.
Basically calling for genocide.
Sean King praising and encouraging terror.
We are reaching the, like, you know, I want to say it feels like we're getting close to the climax.
You know, the shot heard round the world moment.
That may be August 17th in Portland.
I don't know.
But man, I gotta say, when Twitter is allowing this, when Twitter's like, you know, so what?
Reza Aslan just wants to eradicate 63 million people, whatever.
Mitch McConnell, however, how dare you highlight people are threatening you?
It seems like talk is over, and that's what's scary.
Talk is over.
We can beg and plead.
Silicon Valley, guys, you gotta enforce equal rules or something.
At least equal rules.
Now, in the long run, what we're really saying is let people have their free speech, just don't incite violence.
Twitter then says, oh, we're gonna make sure we ban all violence, but they leave up Sean King and Reza Aslan, two of the most notorious, like, inciters of violence I've ever seen.
So it's not even about enforcing their rules fairly, it's about Twitter just straight up not enforcing their rules.
Now, of course, the left says the same thing about the right.
The difference is Reza Aslan saying, eradicate Trump supporters, or at least implying it very heavily, And Sean King calling for overt acts of terror are very different from someone saying border crossings are an invasion.
Look, I don't like the hyperbole either, but there's a- it's a big difference between someone complaining about a thing and the left saying, but it's gonna incite people because he's complaining about it!
And someone literally being like, hey guys, go do this.
And Twitter is so inverted, it's insane.
Let's read this story.
Before we get started, make sure you head over to timkes.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
There's a PayPal option, a crypto option, a physical address, but of course the best thing you can do, just share this video because we're quite literally talking about how these big tech companies are biased against anybody who doesn't espouse the, I don't know, calls for genocide, I guess?
Wow, what a world we live in.
Let's read.
Twitter locks McConnell campaign account.
We read that.
They say a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill that the Team Mitch account was locked because a tweet violated our violent threats policy, specifically threats involving physical safety.
McConnell campaign manager Kevin Golden told The Hill that the account was locked Wednesday morning for posting the video of real-world violent threats made against Mitch McConnell.
The McConnell campaign on Tuesday shared a video featuring protesters demonstrating outside the Kentucky senator's home.
The video included Black Lives Matter Louisville leader Chanel Helm repeatedly cursing and stating that she wished the GOP leader had broken his little raggedy wrinkled ass neck instead of injuring his shoulder last weekend when he fell because he's got a polio-related disability.
Helm later said, just stab the mother effer in the heart after a man made a reference to a voodoo doll.
The comment quickly went viral on social media.
McConnell was believed to be at home recovering.
His office said Sunday that the senator fractured his shoulder after tripping on his patio.
This is a problem with the speech police in America today, Golden said in response to the account suspension.
Twitter will allow the words of Massacre Mitch to trend nationally on their platform, but locks our account for posting actual threats against us.
We appealed and Twitter stood by their decision, saying our account will remain locked until we delete the video.
An aide to the McConnell campaign said the account was still locked as of Wednesday evening, and that Twitter had said it would remain that way until the post was deleted.
The aide added that Twitter had taken the video down, but the campaign was still being asked to delete the tweet officially.
Twitter guidelines say that users may not post content on the platform featuring violent threats, regardless of context.
The company also says that any glorification of violence violates its policies.
That's not true, okay?
Whatever Twitter is claiming its policies to be, we know it's not true.
Listen.
Show me a verified conservative personality calling for the eradication of any group of people.
You know what, man?
I have never been a conservative.
You all know this.
But I have been a rational person all my life, and I do research and I read.
And this is the truth.
Granted, this is one incident.
You're going to have people on the left pointing to someone saying something, like a racist tweet, and they'll say, why isn't Twitter enforcing their rules?
I have the same question.
The difference is, while I understand sometimes people post hate speech on the platform and it's against Twitter's rules and they don't delete it, Sure.
Reza Aslan is essentially— I think, look, I say essentially because he didn't say, you know, Trump supporters should be.
He said, Trump is a terrorist, his supporters are terrorists, and this evil racist scourge must be eradicated from society.
It's clever warning to where, if you're trying to be fair, he can always go, I didn't say— I was referring to racism.
Oh, but The subject of the tweet is Trump and his supporters, and he said it was an evil racist scourge.
So he's not talking about getting rid of racism.
He's talking about Trump and his supporters, and then says they need to be eradicated.
That's fine.
Sean King saying, hey everybody, go do this.
We need more of this.
Someone does it, and then he says, what a hero, what a martyr.
And I think Twitter only made him delete the one tweet.
How is he not permanently banned, period?
Because, I don't know, I think Twitter harbors sympathy for these ideas.
Like, at this point, it has become so egregious, there is, it is indefensible.
Okay, Left, you want to complain that Twitter won't ban, you know, racists?
Because, like, you know, a lot of these activists are saying, ban the person who is racist, not what they say, right?
So they're upset that there are white nationalists on Twitter, because the white nationalists are playing by the rules while still being white nationalists.
They want them banned.
Why won't they be banned, the left says?
Well, how about you come and advocate for the banning of Reza Aslan?
So long as we can see someone like Reza, so long as we can see these other people on the far left, mainstream, verified personalities, calling for and inciting acts of terror and violence, there is no argument.
Any sane, rational human presented with the news will tell you this to be the case.
And I read everything, okay?
Of course everything is being hyperbolic.
I read left, right, far left, far right, top down, religious.
I read all of these different sources.
I use centrist sources specifically to address these issues.
I show you the actual tweets.
I can say, That is beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you are someone who actually reads news from various sources, you will know what's actually happening and say straight up, Twitter is favoring calls for violence from the left, or at least letting them happen, while banning U.S.
politicians for calling out the threats.
You want to argue that McConnell shouldn't have tweeted this?
I'm all ears.
You say it's against the policies?
Okay, I agree.
100%.
How is Reza Aslan still on the platform?
How has he not received a permanent ban?
They banned Milo Yiannopoulos for being mean!
Milo was mean.
He was making fun of someone.
That's it.
He was mean.
He said mean things.
Reza Aslan says that Trump and his supporters should be eradicated.
That is... I don't even know... You know, look, man.
The talk is over.
And this is why I've been saying, you know, for the past couple years, civil war.
Here's the thing.
People don't seem to understand about this, about Civil War.
People had this idea of the first American Civil War, which was state to state.
It was the Union versus the Confederacy.
It was a fracturing of different states forming different unions, essentially.
Several states in the South formed a Confederacy in opposition to the U.S., and it wasn't necessarily a civil war.
The Confederacy wasn't fighting for control of the Union.
It was a fracturing of the Union.
So people think that, and they think that's what civil war really is.
But when you look at all of the other civil wars, and not all of them, but there are many others, you actually have regional conflict.
Not North versus South, you have pockets, cities versus urban.
Then you have certain ideologies taking space and slowly taking that territory, and eventually it becomes larger territories versus larger territories.
I think we're getting to the point where talk is over.
The left doesn't care.
No one is listening.
Reza Aslan is calling for overt eradication.
Meanwhile, the center and the right are saying everyone chill.
Tucker Carlson criticized him all day and night, begged for people to calm down on his show for the sake of the nation.
I believe Anybody who does their research and actually reads the news will end up thinking the left has gone insane.
If you just read headlines, you are swimming in fake news.
I go through this all day every day.
It wasn't always this way, but it's getting worse every day.
A lot of people like to act like redpilling is happening and more people are being redpilled.
No!
It's the ideology is encroaching on other territories.
News media is continuing to collapse.
More companies are shutting down.
More layoffs are happening.
More trash activists are infecting the press.
When that happens, it's not that people are being woken up to it, it's that they're being dragged into it.
I have friends who don't read the news and don't pay attention, had no idea there were two incidents in less than 24 hours and that it was far left and far right.
They had no idea.
But eventually, you get dragged into it.
What do you think is going to happen when the ideology, you know, they start saying that the NBA must have equal amounts of women playing the sport?
People are being dragged into it.
When Twitter allows this tweet from Reza Aslan, people start talking, saying, did you hear about that guy calling for genocide?
And they're going to be like, whoa, that's crazy.
It's not that people are necessarily waking up, it's that it's spreading and infecting more parts of our culture.
I'm going to leave this here.
Look, the point is Mitch McConnell injured himself.
They showed up to his house.
OK, that's bad enough.
Don't go to people's private homes.
OK, let's let's keep it in the realm of politics.
They don't care.
They called.
They shouted threats at him.
They're going to Tucker Carlson.
Where do you think it goes from here?
That's a question I keep asking.
Because it's obvious.
It really is obvious.
Okay, look.
There are a lot of variables in front of us.
I can't tell you with complete certainty what is going to happen.
But I can tell you that there are only a few courses of action laid out in front of us.
I think everybody should learn how to play chess at a very young age, so they can understand the concept of something following after another.
Yes, when people say rhetoric like invasion, it does lead to a certain path.
But there's a big difference between crossing the line of saying, I don't like a thing, to go and hurt somebody.
And that's the line we recognize as a country.
Yes, rhetoric can lead to radicalizing people, but we recognize there's still a line, and we will shut you down when you cross it.
Except the left.
They don't know where that line is.
They've crossed it, and it's getting worse.
Everybody knows the fringe far right has crossed the line, and everybody's calling him out.
Reza Aslan, though, just conservatives in the center.
The left doesn't care.
They let it go.
Twitter won't ban him.
Mitch McConnell, however, heaven forbid, he tries to call out the threats.
I'll leave it there.
Otherwise, it's going to get into a longer thing.
I've got a more news-focused story coming up at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCast.
It is a different channel.
Thanks for hanging out.
I will see you all in the next segment.
I saw this article in Quillette called DSA is doomed and I thought it was kind of funny because on the surface level it seems to make sense.
Yes, we all saw this viral video of democratic socialists struggling to have a conversation because they were too busy concerned about pronouns or saying the word guys and things like that.
This is rather foolish.
The DSA is not doomed.
The DSA is growing.
These are people who can't handle regular noises like clapping.
They're becoming increasingly unhinged.
Everything to the right of where they are is fascist, and it makes sense when you look at this video, and you have to understand why it's so dangerous.
I read through this story.
I find it interesting.
For the most part, this person thinks the DSA will struggle to recruit.
Yes, the DSA will struggle to recruit middle-American working-class people in unions.
It will not struggle to recruit Fringe far-left extremists and people who have mental disabilities, of which you only need a few to actually ignite some kind of greater conflict.
In this video, which maybe some of you didn't see, it's a meeting where people are talking about, you know, enabling socialism, and one person says the whispering is triggering his anxiety and he can't focus.
He says, guys, please stop, and someone else gets mad that he said guys.
But this shows us something that easily explains why they think everyone is a fascist.
To them, if you say something like, toughen up, They think you're a fascist.
If they say, you're hurting my ears with your whispering and you say too bad, you're a fascist.
Think about the perspective from where they're at.
They believe you are a fascist.
Now you may say these people are too weak to actually do anything.
But they're unhinged, not necessarily weak.
Now, yes, they're weak in the sense they can't handle noises.
They can't handle people saying, guys.
But it's not that they can't handle it, but that they're desperate to exert authority over you.
Of course they can handle the chattering.
They'll get angry.
That's the real issue.
In this viral video, we see the guy first ask, guys, can you please keep the chatter to a minimum?
He later comes up yelling, I have already said it's triggering to my anxiety.
Unhinged.
Extremely angry.
Aggressive.
And thinking everyone is a fascist.
I have heard the conversations from these people.
They're absolutely advocating for extreme violence.
And I'm not kidding.
And you know what, man?
I've been...
Consistently, throughout my life, 10 steps ahead.
You can look like, you know, during Occupy Wall Street, I was praised by the media as being, you know, revolutionizing, you know, doing live streaming and all this stuff, helped launch, I was the founding member of Vice News.
I was always several steps ahead of where the market was.
And they praised me for it.
Well, now I'm doing something ahead of where, say, CNN is at.
Of course, YouTube is taking action against what we're doing, but I've always been one step ahead.
I worked for Vice and Fusion in 2014, and I left.
Those companies went on to lay off tons of people because I have the gift... I shouldn't say the gift, but I have the ability to actually plan.
I was gonna say the gift of strategy.
But no, it's not a gift.
It's something you can develop and you can earn and learn.
I see people mocking the DSA, and that's a terrible idea.
The group's growing.
They're not necessar- We mock them for their silliness, but what you should really take away from this is it's a bunch of people who are unwell and angry and want to exert power over other people by any means necessary.
They're so far left, they believe that moderates and the politically uninitiated are fascists who deserve extreme punishment.
And that brings me to this next story, because I don't care too much about the DSA and all that stuff.
American Greatness writes, Igniting Civil War, Angelo Codevilla.
And they bring up some interesting points.
They say, We Americans are now facing the danger of a civil war thus ignited.
We do not think of civil war this way because our civil war from 1861 to 1865 was less a conflict within society than it was a highly organized war between states.
Now, they said in this way because initially they reference other conflicts.
They say, In societies driven by mutual hate, the people who control the police and public communications make all the difference.
When they maintain impartiality, as did Germany's Weimar government, while the Nazis and Communists struggled for primacy, partisan warfare tends to be resolved politically, though the results are harsh.
When societal hatred or the partiality of authorities results in deaths, long-smoldering Cold Civil War can blaze into Holocaust.
The point they're making, which I find very interesting in this story, is that We look, as Americans, we look at the Civil War as an organized state of two groups marching towards each other.
And that's why I don't like necessarily saying Civil War, but Civil Conflict.
Because many Civil Wars, and they bring up Thucydides, I believe is how you pronounce it, I'm terrible at pronouncing ancient, what is that, Greek?
Classic civil wars, from Thucydides' accounts of the Corcyraean Revolution of 431 BC to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, tend to be far more bitterly murderous than anything that has yet happened in America.
These wars ignite when public power abets, or is perceived as having abetted, violence in long-standing social struggles, when authorities treat opponents as outside the protections of the laws, or when they criminalize political differences outright.
What I'm bringing up here, and I'll read more of this to get into the meat and potatoes, is that our Civil War was atypical.
It wasn't actually a Civil War.
Civil War is defined as two factions fighting over control of one government.
The American Civil War was actually a secession from the Union, and Southern states forming a separate Union, or a Confederacy, and then the North saying, no, you can't leave.
The South wasn't trying to gain control of anything other than their own territories and forming their own states, so it was very, very different from what other civil wars tend to be.
What they actually tend to be is regions align, and then fight, and then slowly different groups gain different territory, and eventually one wins out.
Let's read a little bit of this.
In 1920s Spain, the newly formed Communist Party, the socialists, anarchists, and various regional separatists spurred each other's hostility toward the country's Catholic royalist population.
Where the left won local elections in May 1931, hey, kind of like the left winning local elections in 2018, Mobs of its supporters ravaged churches, raped nuns, and beat conservatives with impunity.
While not as extreme, we are seeing a decent amount of widespread attacks from the left on Trump supporters.
As leftist violence spread to the rest of the country after the June national elections, conservative localities retaliated and the army began to plot against the republic.
The Spanish government turned conservative in 1934, which I think we're going to see Trump win re-election, and we're following a similar path.
That led to the Popular Front Alliance, consisting primarily of radicals, which narrowly won the 1936 elections.
In the aftermath, a militant leftist squad leader was killed.
As the police searched for the killer, one of their entourage murdered the country's leading conservative politician, Jose Calvo Sotelo.
The army struck back.
The atrocities committed by ordinary people on ordinary people dwarf the army's horrors.
Viva la muerte, long live death, is the ensuing war's most memorable saying.
It all starts with getting people accustomed to hating each other, and that starts at the top.
Saying hateful things about one's opponents is a time-tested way of stoking supporters' enthusiasm of building support for one's own side.
But when blood is spilled, someone then, uh, someone, then everyone else, tends to use it as a pretext for inciting more violence.
That's the meaning of blood feud.
I call it the cycle of hate.
Revenge begets revenge, hate begets hate.
I have had conversations with leftists.
I have friends who are on the left.
I was down there at Occupy Wall Street.
Interestingly, there's been a bifurcation in this community.
I've seen Occupy Wall Street people supporting the president and becoming extremists.
But I want to make something very clear about where I am, my position, and why.
When talking about the potential for violence and conflict, What I've heard from the mainstream left and from former leftist activists who are on the street, say at Occupy Wall Street, is akin to what I've heard from groups like, the rhetoric like you'd see from groups like Adam Waffen.
I'm not talking about conservatives and liberals, but I'm talking about the craziest of the right-wing extremists, ultra-traditionalists, nationalists, racists, etc.
The rhetoric they espouse is similar to the rhetoric I hear from left-wing activists, and to me, is what is most disconcerting and alarming.
Reza Aslan tweeted about the eradication of Trump supporters.
I'm not seeing Trump supporters get anywhere near that.
Are there a lot of Trump supporters saying stupid things?
You betcha.
There was a rally where someone said, shoot him, in reference to illegal immigrants crossing the line there.
There's several instances like that.
Trump mocking, body slamming someone.
So it's not like Trump doesn't contribute and Trump supporters don't contribute for the most part.
But when you look to the leadership, Trump will say something like, we need to bring unity.
They'll attack him for it.
The left will then say something like, Trump is causing the problems, and he needs to be removed by any means necessary.
Trump isn't necessarily saying that.
Perhaps because he's in power.
But regardless, I don't think anything really matters other than I am seeing a growing extremist faction on the left.
We saw what happened in Dayton.
And I don't see anything being done to stop it.
And I see articles like this, and I've actually been doing research, I've been tracking, you know, where we got to the point we are today, and why things may be happening faster than they did in the past.
And it looks to me like the likelihood of some kind of civil conflict is extremely high.
In my opinion, I don't know if anything can be done to stop it.
I really don't.
There was a poll recently where they found 10% of America thought it was extremely likely there would be a civil war, and around 30 to 33% thought it was just likely, like it's gonna happen.
And I think so.
A lot of people say things like, you know, oh, the right will win.
I agree.
From what I'm looking at, reading stories like this, looking at the history, I've watched a couple documentaries, like quick mini-docs about, you know, the precipitation of violence and the escalation of civil war in other countries.
I've read articles like this.
We see the DSA.
And people make fun of them.
The hatred spreads.
The Democrats just said on MSNBC Trump is trying to ex- I'm sorry, I shouldn't say Democrat.
But an MSNBC personality just said Trump was trying to exterminate Latinos.
We have gone from concentration camp rhetoric, overt acts of terror, straight to Trump wants to exterminate Latinos.
It's happening faster than I thought it would actually happen.
Now, where it crosses over into wide-scale violence, I'm not entirely sure.
I think something might kick off on the 17th.
But I don't know what else to say other than, you know, A lot of people have an optimism bias.
It can't happen here.
A lot of people have an aversion to taking care of their families over a fear of being mocked or ridiculed.
On the Joe Rogan podcast, I said I believe this will lead to civil conflict.
I blame Twitter a lot for this.
Facebook more so.
And I said I was building a van.
And a lot of people left.
But surprisingly, not as many people as you might think.
You know, 10, 20 years ago we made fun of preppers.
When I say on the biggest podcast in the world, one of the biggest, I think Joe Rogan's the biggest, that I think we're headed down a path of civil conflict and I'm building a conversion van that can have independent power and water stored in it.
Oh, the immediate reaction wasn't, you're insane.
The immediate reaction was, well, oh, well, mm-hmm.
The immediate reaction wasn't, it's crazy to do.
It was, I don't think that could happen here.
No one has said to me, Tim's crazy for building a van.
Nobody.
You might think so, that's fine.
The reason I built the van was because it serves several purposes if I'm wrong.
It's a good thing to have.
I can produce content, I can travel around, I can do interviews.
But in the event things truly go crazy, I have contingency plans.
I wouldn't say I'm anywhere near what a prepper is.
I built a van because I saw YouTube videos and I thought it was cool and I thought it would be a great thing to have in the event of an emergency.
But I do see that emergency becoming more and more likely.
The point I want to make is, I don't know what you should do, I don't know what you shouldn't do.
I had a conversation with someone the other day, an older person, who said that some of the things, so I don't want to give away too much information because I don't want to expose anybody, but I had talked with someone several months ago and I had explained to them what we were seeing and what I thought was going to happen.
I said, you know, look, the politics, the rhetoric is escalating.
I wouldn't be surprised if we get to the point where we see low-level insurgency, you know, people coming out with guns and things like that.
We've already sort of seen that in other places with some of these, you know, events like in New Zealand.
And they said, wow, you know, I don't watch the news and I don't pay attention to this stuff, so I had no idea.
And then what do you think they said when, you know, I spoke to them in the past day?
You told me all of this stuff, and then we saw El Paso and Dayton, and I'm thinking, my God, what's happening?
That's right.
Whether or not the manifesto in El Paso was legitimate, somebody in El Paso went out for overtly political reasons, we assume, and took action.
Somebody in Dayton, with a far-left extremist background, went out and did something we don't quite understand.
Regardless, these are in line with what I've been saying is going to start happening.
I'm not making hard predictions like I can guarantee this will happen at this point.
What I'm saying is the rhetoric has escalated beyond anything recognizable in a modern civilized society as far as I'm concerned.
When former CNN hosts say eradicate them, When high-profile personalities with a million-plus followers says, we need to end this by any means necessary, and then praises a terrorist, and Twitter does nothing.
When Twitter bans the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, for calling out threats of violence, but leaves up the calls for genocide, I think we're getting to that point.
Wouldn't you agree?
Maybe I'm wrong.
I'll leave it there.
I've got a couple more videos coming up for you in a few moments, so stick around, and I will see you shortly.
Vox published an article which, in my opinion, is kind of insane and it shows the desperate need for social approval from many people on the left.
The article is titled, Is Wealth Immoral?
I was born into the 1%.
I think having this much money is wrong.
The only reason you think having that much money is wrong is because other people around you make fun of people for being rich and you didn't do anything to earn it and you don't do anything responsible with it.
Instead, Instead, you offer platitudes and hollow promises and give your money to nonsensical causes.
Yes, so in a sense, I could technically agree.
You having that much money is a problem, but in reality, it's not immoral to have that much money.
The issue is, you didn't earn it, you don't understand the power behind it, and you don't do anything with it.
That's the problem.
Certainly there are people who have too much money, but whether or not Jeff Bezos has a yacht has no bearing on whether or not you can afford to buy milk.
Jeff Bezos isn't buying all of the milk in the world so you can't have any.
That's just not how wealth works.
But as somebody who grew up not understanding how the world works, partly because you grew up wealthy, You don't seem to understand this.
For poor people who work really hard and claw their way up and sacrifice, they do understand it and they are, at least as my understanding is, they tend to be more responsible.
It's kind of a graphical article.
Let's read it.
He says, My name's Adam, and my family is in the top 1% of the U.S.
economy.
Correction.
His family is, my understanding is the top .1% of the U.S.
economy.
The top 1% are people who make something like $350,000 a year.
A lot of money, and you can live very comfortably, but a massive difference between somebody who's making $10 million a year or who inherits a million dollars, like this guy did, and then apparently inherited more.
A family that's making $350k a year.
Can start saving, but can still be put in the poorhouse through unexpected medical bills, expenses, a home fire.
You make $350k a year and your house burns down and you are not going to be as well off as this man is.
So you want to talk about the 1%?
Let's stop for a minute and recognize this guy's well above that.
If you have millions of dollars and your house burns down or you get an unexpected medical bill, you still have millions of dollars.
So someone making $350k Not really going to be like that.
If you grew up in a family like that, you are privileged.
Don't get me wrong.
I could definitely consider the top 1% rich.
But there's a big difference.
Let's move on.
Growing up, I wasn't super aware that my family was wealthy.
And I understand that.
I grew up poor, and I had friends who were rich, and they really did not get it.
When I'd be asked questions like, hey, do you want to fly with us to Europe this summer?
I'd laugh and be like, dude, my bank account has $30 in it, and that's because it's a good week.
And there were some points where I was homeless and was, luckily, making something like $100 a month.
At one point, I was busking in the subway of Chicago, and I was making a decent amount of money, actually, about $500 a month, using half of it to pay my rent, and just playing guitar.
Not that bad.
Still kind of comfortable having an apartment in Chicago.
Maybe that was because we were surrounded by other super wealthy people.
That's true.
My family's wealth was more hidden.
And we can see here, certificate of title.
Country day school, paid for by grandparents, helped by inheritance, no fancy vacations, and here's a woman saying, oh no no, we'll just be hanging out at the local beach this summer, taking it easy.
Learning my family's wealth was more of a slow awakening.
Here's a text message that says, see you tonight.
Nah, can't afford it.
Gotta hit the dining hall.
Unhappy face.
I think that's kind of weird, but it also shows his perspective.
When I would go to the dining hall, I wasn't sad about it.
When I would go to the community college cafeteria, I was like, you wanna go eat?
The fact that he puts a sad face shows his perspective.
That he thinks the dining hall is a bad thing.
I actually really liked the College of DuPage cafeteria, whatever you want to call it.
They had some pretty good food.
Wasn't that bad.
They had soup, they had sandwiches.
It's actually better than fast food.
So, anyway, moving on.
He says, what's work study?
He goes on.
As I got politicized, and there it is.
Around things like wealth inequality, climate change, war, and the forces connecting them, I didn't connect it too much with my own family history.
And we can see these stories.
Exxon to the world, drop dead.
Climate panel sees global warming, impacts on all continents, worse comes, yadda yadda yadda.
He says at a certain point, though, I got the talk.
Son, it's time to look at this.
And he's handed a family wealth management portfolio.
Okay.
It turned out, what had paid for my education my whole life, it felt like was money from the very same industries I found myself ethically opposing.
This money had been passed down by my family over the generations with a couple simple messages.
Don't spend it and don't talk about it.
There's standard oil, my family involved in early oil industry, Pennsylvania banking ties, wealth continues to accumulate, stock holdings include large military contractors.
Basically things that are not necessarily, have a lot of faults, absolutely.
Military contractors, I am the last person who's gonna praise any of these companies, the military industrial complex, or banking, or the oil industry, I'm an environmentalist, but I'm also not a crazy person.
I recognize that Energy is one of the core components of the value of a dollar, if not the true value.
How much energy is required to get something done then translates into the value of the work done and the value received, and it's a complicated process, the economy.
The point is, you might not like oil, but if you got rid of it overnight, farming would shut down and everyone would starve to death.
Perhaps we shouldn't have had oil in the first place and the population wouldn't have exploded the way it is, but I don't know what you want to do now.
So you may ethically oppose them, but to act like humans did something wrong because... Actually, no, no, take that back.
Humans did a lot of wrong things.
We fixed them.
We can look back and regret, or we can say we have a chance to make things better.
I understand that's what he thinks he's doing.
I happen to disagree because he's embracing overt identity politics instead of actually doing... I don't know.
I don't know what he's doing, but anyway, let's read on because I want to point out a lot of things about this false perception of wealth and how it's tied to social behaviors.
He says, all of this begged the question, what should I do?
Actually, it doesn't beg the question.
That's the improper usage of beg the question, but I digress.
Begging the question is a reference to circular logic, not asking the question or resulting in the question of what should I do.
And what did it mean about me?
Don't get hung up on where the money comes from, my grandma.
I spent my 20s carrying around these questions.
And then here's someone saying, anyway, long story short, turns out she's just some idiot rich kid with a trust fund.
Can you believe it?
During Occupy Wall Street, many of the people at the park, not all of them, not the majority, just many, there was a small handful, were trust fund kids.
Overly privileged, had no concept of hard work, and felt that they were smarter and better than everyone else.
And that's what this person is doing.
He had an awakening.
He realized, with all this power, I should be doing something better.
He thinks he knows better than everyone else.
He thinks the oil industry is bad.
He thinks everything that came from it is bad.
He thinks.
And he has power.
And doesn't recognize it.
It's actually kind of a conundrum.
It's paradoxical, in a sense.
He is calling out the fact that he's wealthy.
But it's demeaning and belittling to regular people who do work hard.
But he brings up some of these points.
I'll be fair.
Let's read on.
As a result, I got real weird about money. I'd barely spend any of it.
That makes literally no sense.
Money in the economy just means someone has money to spend.
It's a complicated situation, but not spending money doesn't mean anything.
Even today, I tend to put each of my expenses through a kind of advanced moral screen.
Movie theater popcorn.
Consumerism.
Climate change.
Oh, come on, lighten up.
Partial down payment on a house.
Gentrification.
Feels different if I'm doing it with my partner.
$300 a month for mother-in-law's diabetes meds.
For someone else, U.S.
healthcare system is screwed.
And?
And so he puts a checkmark.
I guess, I don't know what the checkmark means for him buying medication to keep someone alive, but if you can do it, you probably should.
What's wrong with buying popcorn?
Look, if you're going to waste it, I get it.
But he brings up some other points that I really want to get into, and I don't know, it's kind of a weird video, but I like going through this stuff.
He says, sometimes I try to offset them.
30k partial down payment on a house, 30k towards community land trust here in Boston.
He'd buy popcorn and then just drink water, I guess.
You shouldn't drink soda anyway, it's bad for you.
These are imperfect individual actions in an economic system designed to extract more and more profit for the sake of a wealthy few, while leaving most people overworked and struggling.
That's not true.
The system isn't designed to do that, but it is falling towards that, in my opinion.
The solution, however, isn't far-left identitarian politics and socialism.
In an immoral system like this, is there any amount of private wealth that is moral?
Yes, I believe there is.
I just believe we need government to restrict and regulate what people can and can't do.
When they become too powerful, I should say.
Let me make sure I clarify that.
I'm very much so in favor of liberty.
It's one of the most important things to me.
But when someone has billions and billions of dollars, we have laws on what you can and can't do with those billions and billions of dollars to make sure power doesn't become too centralized and take things over.
We have election laws, financing laws, antitrust laws.
This is why I lean left, and it's why I'm not a libertarian.
Because I do think you need a government to prevent people like him from wielding his power in dangerous ways.
You can't trust people to have individual power like that.
It's why I'm not a laissez-faire capitalist.
How much wealth is too much wealth?
At a certain point, there potentially can be too much wealth, but he fails to understand basic concepts, and you can see it right here with how he defines the housing stuff.
I gotta keep this segment short, so we'll try and get through this.
Everyone should have this.
First home could be considered a public good.
I agree.
We want people buying houses.
We do.
People use houses as a store of wealth.
Young people should have homes.
People should be able to live in a building.
However, second home, not while others are homeless.
What about something co-owned?
Well, there is a reason why people might have more than one home.
It depends on the amount of work the person is doing.
It depends on what they're needed to do for the good of the community.
If there is a person who makes a lot of money because they run a, say, a B Corp that provides a social good, but has to divide their work between Los Angeles and New York, perhaps having two homes actually does make sense.
Perhaps you could open up your room to people at a low rate or a small loss because, for the most part, you have extra space.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with people maintaining more than one home if they need it for work.
You can help people by letting them move in, however.
Third, fourth, and fifth home?
Come on, no one needs that.
That's wrong.
It's absolutely wrong.
Having empty homes for the sake of investment?
Well, there's problems there, however.
When I was younger, I thought we could just put homeless people in homes.
Now I realize someone has to maintain that home.
Having someone invest in a property, keeping it maintained and available to be sold isn't a bad thing.
It's actually a good thing.
Perhaps there's something we can do to make sure people have more access to homes.
However, if he has five homes and he's paying people to make sure they're clean and well-maintained and safe, that's better than leaving them to rot or having them not exist at all.
And this is what these people who grew up this way don't quite understand.
A $20 million mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.
He says X. Why?
What's wrong with hiring people to build a big house?
Whether or not you have a massive house has no bearing on whether or not someone else doesn't.
You could hire people to build five houses and rent them out if you so choose.
Maybe that's the point he's making, but can they live there?
Who will maintain that house?
Will you?
Someone will have to do that work.
Now, you're living off investment.
Perhaps you want to let that money go towards that.
It's your choice.
But a lot of people don't seem to understand.
It's actually quite basic.
A house will gradually fall apart if left unmaintained.
And we have different parts of different cities that are collapsing that no one is fixing.
The plumbing bursts in the winter when the pipes freeze.
Someone has to do that work.
If you can pay them, the house remains available.
Perhaps the issue then is you as an individual not saying don't buy the houses, but actually putting your money towards investing in them to keep them clean, and then offering them for rent at a slight loss, meaning you will subsidize people to live there, if that's what you want to do.
But simply saying don't own the house doesn't make sense.
A $7.99 West Elm Lola sofa.
Why buy new when you can buy second hand?
I actually fought with my partner about this.
Any amount of yachts.
Well, I do disagree with the idea of yachts to a certain degree because they consume a ton of energy and I feel like it's a waste.
Let's also talk about free trade agreements.
When someone ships maple wood to China and then back because Chinese labor is cheaper due to free trade agreements, that's a serious problem where we're wasting energy.
Whether or not you can afford to have someone do the work for you is not the issue.
So, I've got to wrap this up.
The point I'm trying to make is, this is what we see.
He brings up this idea, just give it all away.
You don't need it.
Give more, that's not enough.
I internalized whole sets of message about this.
In the end, what he ends up saying, is he says Jeff Bezos is a policy failure, Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are policy failures.
That's not true.
Just because they have wealth doesn't mean they did anything wrong or we did anything wrong.
It's not a policy failure.
If you want to change policy today, that I understand.
But someone who does a job and makes money isn't a policy failure.
We recognize as we progress what is good and what is bad.
And Mark Zuckerberg is certainly bad.
And so is Bezos.
Bill Gates isn't that bad, but he's still kind of bad.
But to act like this shouldn't be allowed, that people shouldn't be wealthy, is just incorrect.
So this one's definitely going long, but he goes into talking about abolishing billionaires.
That won't change anything.
The ability of Mark Zuckerberg to buy a boat or hire a staff won't change anything.
It won't increase the amount of milk available to drink.
It won't increase the amount of houses available to live in.
It won't increase the amount of people who are out of poverty.
In fact, Mark Zuckerberg being a billionaire could actually do right on his own.
You can be a billionaire, and we can have policy put in place to actually help reduce wealth inequality and reduce this kind of rhetoric.
But in the end, what he ultimately talks about is giving his money towards leftist, intersectional... I don't remember exactly what he said, but he says, in the Members of the Racehorse Generation yada, I've given over 400k or about a third of my initial inheritance to movements for social justice.
And that's the main point I want to make, because this video did go long.
Social justice is not the solution.
I don't even know what that means.
But he's created a group to give money for political ideology.
It's not going to change the value of labor.
In fact, the ideology he's embracing may actually decrease the value of labor.
We don't know.
The point is, after everything he said, I can tell you one thing.
The fact that he has money is not good or bad.
The fact that he thinks he's morally right is the bigger problem, and the fact that he has power to back up his unjustifiable morality is what is bad.
Individuals have to fight to push for their ideas.
He is using his wealth towards what he thinks is morally correct, but it's not what everyone thinks is right.
I'm gonna go a little long on this one because I want to end with one final thought I had about this when I was reading this where he said he's gonna give money to social justice, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's just him not recognizing he's still wielding power over other people and potentially causing harm.
He doesn't recognize that.
Imagine a superhero universe, where people are born with superpowers and don't understand how privileged they are to have super strength and flight.
Then imagine someone embracing social justice and joining, say, the DSA, because they have superpowers.
Imagine what that person would do.
Imagine what would happen if you had someone like Sean King but had laser vision and super strength.
He'd probably do some very horrifying things.
And that's the point.
The problem with wealth isn't anything he pointed out.
The problem is in his ideology.
By all means, dude, be conscious about your purchases.
Fight for better causes.
But giving money to social justice movements might actually be a bad thing.
Not because social justice is bad.
I am not one of those people.
I think social justice is good.
But it's being perverted by authoritarianism.
So if this is the story about a wealthy, white individual who thinks he's the moral savior and he has money to back it up, he is now pushing an ideology held almost exclusively by white, wealthy progressives.
Surprise, surprise.
This is dangerous.
He's not ending the cycle.
He's perpetuating it.
Anyway, I don't know.
It was funny to talk about.
Stick around.
I got one more story coming up for you in a few minutes.
I will see you then.
This one kind of plays off the segment I did two segments ago about the DSA and why you shouldn't think they're nothing and they're going to fade away.
The Washington Examiner writes, Don't let woke insanity distract from the terrifying rise of the Democratic Socialists of America.
They right.
Over 1,000 delegates attended the Democratic Socialists of America convention this past weekend.
A few years ago, that would have been a huge chunk of their membership.
But now the far-left group's ranks have swelled to 56,000 strong.
Its political power, too, is on the rise.
The radical and popular Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, is a card-carrying member of the DSA.
And so too is her fellow squad member, Rep.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan.
Meanwhile, top-tier Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders proudly boasts that he is a Democratic Socialist.
Although he is not technically a member of the organization, he has helped make it a thing.
And they don't like Bernie, because he's a capitalist.
I want to come back to this, but I want to talk more about a series of tweets I put out, which I'm loading now, where I asked a question about socialism, which did well, for obvious reasons.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work as a PayPal option, a crypto option, a physical address, but of course, the best thing you can do, share this video, independent political commentary is being deranked on YouTube in exchange for corporate news.
So if you like what I do, please share it.
But I asked this question, as per the title of this video, Why are socialists always trying to get everyone else to give up their resources instead of going off and starting their own socialist community?
Someone commented, how come X people in my country that want thing I don't want don't just leave and make a new country is the dumbest line of argument I keep seeing this year.
It's just a more polite, well, if you don't like it, then leave.
Actually, it's not.
What I'm stating is that in the United States, you can actually get a group of friends, rent a piece of property, and agree to share all of your income.
I actually know people who have done this in the past.
In Chicago, for instance, people will rent a warehouse loft that's very large, several thousand square feet.
They've done this.
People do this all over.
And they will share chores, they will bring food, they will form little socialist gatherings, little communes.
The question is, why don't they do this on a larger scale?
Why is it that the democratic socialists of America are trying to tell us, the people in this country who are okay with the system, the capitalist system, to give up our resources to them when they could go start a co-op and build their own factory?
Why is it that we see these videos of DSA meetings where instead of creating a factory that's co-owned by everybody, of which these companies do exist, we see them advocating for policy to take things away from the existing system?
No.
I'm not telling you to leave America.
I'm saying get in your little car or whatever, bring a bunch of your friends, buy a farm, and make an agreement.
No matter what job you have in what part of the country, world, city, or wherever in the area, everyone pools their paycheck into one, and then resources are divvied up.
That's what I'm saying.
More importantly, I'm saying, why don't you start your own farm and share in everything you do?
Here's the thing.
Socialism and communism works really, really well.
It works really, really, really well.
I'm gonna keep saying it so you in the back can hear me.
Socialism and communism work amazingly well.
When you're with, like, five people.
You see, that— I'm sure there's a bunch of people getting ready to hit that dislike button, like, no, you're wrong, what are you saying?
That was the joke.
So if you hit the dislike button because I was joking, please revert that to a thumbs up.
The point I'm saying is, when you have ten friends, it's really easy to be a socialist or a communist.
Hey man, I grew a watermelon.
Who wants some?
And you share it.
On a larger scale, though, it's hard to do.
What happens when someone shows up to your farm and says, can I have some of that watermelon?
You're like, whoa.
You're like, we're all working together and making sure the farm stays afloat, and you just randomly walked up?
OK, fine.
I'll give you some watermelon.
It's still nice.
I don't know who you are.
You didn't contribute, but we can share, right?
That sounds fine, too.
Let's scale it up again.
Now 10 people walked past.
That one guy left and told everybody he had watermelons.
Now, 10 people show up saying, can we get some watermelon too?
And you're like, dude, I'm really sorry.
If I give you guys watermelon, I won't have watermelon for me and my friends.
And then they say, we demand socialism.
And you say, wait a minute.
We're the ones doing the work.
We're the ones with the agreement.
And we're the ones who are sharing the watermelon.
Who are you?
You don't work on the farm.
And that is the point.
The Democratic Socialists of America are the people who have come realizing that people doing the hard work have produced something.
And they're saying, why can't we have it?
Well, are you working?
They say they should own the means of production, and things should be nationalized.
Okay, but you can go do that.
So let me show you how things get really funny.
This guy Ronan Bertenshaw, who is the editor of Tribune Magazine, tweeted this, which is really weird.
Because capitalists, asterisks, own all the goddamn resources, and we have to rent ourselves to them to live.
So redistributing their fortunes makes a lot more sense than running off to found Neverland.
Whoa!
He just came out and said it.
To which I responded, I agree.
It's easier to take from others than to start your own companies.
His response?
The bottom 40% in the US owns no wealth when debt is taken into account.
They can't just, quote, start their own company.
Instead, they have to rent themselves to the top 20% who own 90% of the country's wealth to make a living.
You'd know this if you ever worked.
And there it is!
Look at the sky.
We're gonna go right into it.
Tim Pool, a mixed-race high school dropout from the south side of Chicago who was homeless on several occasions and used to do ramp loading for airplanes for two years, lifting about 50,000 pounds per day with calloused hands and damaged muscles and tendons, never worked.
And there it is.
The white, blonde-haired guy who is a socialist telling the mixed-race high school dropout, if only you'd ever worked, says the guy who works for Tribune magazine in the UK.
And that's what's so damn funny about the whole thing.
I did work.
I earned it for myself.
And you can too.
If you're sitting at home and you can't figure it out, you can start your own company.
It's this easy.
Get up.
Let's say you own nothing but the clothes on your back.
People tend to own clothes, even homeless people.
Go out on the street, put up a sign, and say, I'm trying to get started.
Anything helps.
Guess what?
Panhandling works because people in this country actually are good-natured for the most part.
And you will get some cash.
Once you do, you need only save up $100 or so.
I get it.
You're homeless.
Times are tough.
You're showering in bathrooms.
Believe me, I've been there.
You can go to a pawn shop and find a crappy little guitar, and in a day, the average person can learn one or two chords.
Maybe you can't sing, maybe a guitar isn't the right choice, but you can do something.
You can start somewhere.
You know what I did?
I took a guitar, I went to the subway, and I started playing in the subways for people.
They assumed I was homeless.
I wasn't.
I started making money.
This was after my stint at the airport.
And there it is, though.
He doesn't seem to understand that debt is meaningless, for the most part.
Look, if you're poor and you're in debt, you know you could just be like... What's gonna happen if you don't pay?
We don't have debtors' prisons in this country.
I'm not saying don't pay your debt.
Don't let it get that bad.
If you're poor, and you have to choose between paying debt, paying rent, or eating food, I understand why you're doing what you're doing.
So your debt piles up.
But the debt's not going to stop you from being able to buy food or from going out and working.
This is a man who clearly doesn't understand.
First of all, I don't even think he lives in the US.
He works for a UK-based magazine.
But isn't it so funny?
And this is who I responded with.
It's an amazing response, actually.
It is, in fact, easier to take from others than to build your own.
However, you are under no obligation to rent from anybody.
I've been homeless.
I have survived on my own.
The reality is, working as a dishwasher is easier than farming.
And let's go back to this tweet he said.
Let's pop it open and see how he responded.
He said instead, they have to rent themselves to the top 20% who own 90% of the country's wealth to make a living.
Okay.
Let's say you actually have somewhere to live.
You live with your parents.
Let's say you're actually in a shelter.
You get a job at McDonald's.
You're getting paid 10 bucks an hour.
In a couple weeks, you have a couple hundred bucks.
You've started.
You've done something.
You can grow from there.
You've rented yourself out?
I did.
I worked for American Eagle Airlines.
It's American Airlines Regional.
I made a bunch of money.
Not that much, actually, but I say a bunch as in, like, I was making a couple hundred bucks a week.
Very little money.
Hard to live on.
And so eventually I said, you know what?
The amount of work I'm doing and the amount of money I'm making isn't allowing me to rent an apartment, own the car I need to drive to work.
It's not working.
So I left.
And then I started playing guitar on the subway, and it dramatically reduced all of my costs.
And this was a turning point for me.
My debt expired.
This was years and years ago.
I had very little, a couple hundred bucks.
But I couldn't pay it.
I was broke, and I was homeless.
And I turned things around.
And I said, I need to always make sure the amount I'm producing is greater than the amount I can consume.
And if there's a job that doesn't pay me that much, I can't do it.
And I eventually started working for myself.
I started playing music.
I actually started doing fundraising.
And then the amount of money I needed to fundraise was very little, and the amount they paid me was more.
And I moved up from there.
The point is, this is an excuse typically held, in my opinion, by people who tend to be the privileged elites who don't understand how the world works.
It doesn't matter if the 1% control all the wealth.
That doesn't change the fact that you can produce value.
Simply that because they're holding dollar bills doesn't mean you have to do anything for them.
I can go outside and I can offer to mow my neighbor's lawn.
How much do you want to mow your lawn?
Hey, well the mower guy charges 50 bucks a week.
I'll do it for 40.
Congratulations, you made 40 bucks.
You did work.
And you can grow from there.
These people don't seem to understand it.
He flat out says we have to take from them because they have.
No, you can go into the woods, hunt some feral hogs, eat their meat to survive, start a fire, grow your own vegetables, build your own little hut, and start from there.
But they don't want to.
So let me stress my last point.
When I was homeless and playing in the subway, I said to myself, if at any point this becomes harder than living in the woods, I'll go live in the woods.
But here's the reality.
Farming is hard.
Surviving outside of a city is hard.
Working as a dishwasher for a minimum wage is easier than surviving in the wilderness.
So make your choice.
Taking from other people doesn't solve that problem.
