Democrats Launch Formal Impeachment Against Trump, This Is A Huge Mistake
Democrats Launched Formal Impeachment Against Trump, This Is A Huge Mistake. Jerry Nadler has announced that formal impeachment proceedings against Trump has officially been started. The Washington Post adds that they may have actually begun in July with the Democrats requesting information on the Special Counsel's investigation.The move by the Democrats to impeachment runs afoul of the polls and voter demand. Polls show that even among democrats only 39% favor starting impeachment proceedings and among independents 51% oppose impeachment proceedings.Voters are not currently asking for this and it seems like a last ditch effort to keep Russiagate in the news. After years of an empty investigation into russian collusion against Donald Trump Democrats don't seem to want to let 2016 go. Instead of focusing on policy issues like the 2020 Democrats are, House democrats seemed intent on pushing forward with proceedings that will undoubtedly fail if they even reach the Senate.To make things worse, 30 or so House Democrats are in districts won by Trump and risk losing their seats in 2020 if voters feel betrayed or if they feel the democrats are moving too far left.
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The Democrats have begun formal impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, and the Washington Post reports this may have actually started in July with some court filings where the Democrats were seeking information about Trump, and we'll get into all of that.
But let me just say, as I've been tracking the data and looking at other stories, I feel like this is a huge mistake for the Democrats, just my opinion.
And this is based off of Trump's job approval, his favorability, as well as the fact in polls Most people do not want impeachment.
And not only that, most people don't care.
I don't quite understand why this is the attack factor Democrats are using to try and win 2020 when it doesn't show them to be, it doesn't show any substance from the Democrats.
They're not doing anything for the American people.
Just, I guess they're satisfying the emotions of those who really don't like the president.
But in the end, they're not promising the American people any hope or change or progress.
They're simply saying Orange Man is bad.
And they don't even have every House Democrat on board.
They have the majority now, but they don't even have every Democrat agreeing this is the right course of action.
So why do it?
I don't know.
Today, let's take a look at this, as well as other stories in how action from Democrats is actually benefiting Trump.
And look, it's been said time and time again, Trump is on track for a 2020 victory.
By many economic forecast models, the incumbent advantage, the economy is strong.
It doesn't mean he's guaranteed, but I'll say this.
If this is what the Democrats are presenting in terms of opposition, I do not see them winning 2020.
But maybe, maybe Orange Man Bad will be enough.
I can't say for sure.
I'm not psychic.
So let's read this story and then go through some of the data.
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.
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But let's read.
The Washington Post reports House Democrats have begun impeachment proceedings against President Trump, a key Democrat admitted as much Thursday.
Quote, this is formal impeachment proceedings.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Gerald Nadler, told CNN on Thursday after weeks of dancing around whether his committee would formally consider impeaching Trump.
Quote.
We are investigating all the evidence, gathering the evidence, Nadler added.
And we will, at the conclusion of this, hopefully by the end of the year, vote to vote articles of impeachment to the House floor.
Or we won't.
That's a decision that we'll have to make.
But that's exactly the process we're in right now.
His statement makes clear what a lawsuit filed Wednesday by his committee states, that, quote,
the Judiciary Committee is now determining whether to recommend articles of impeachment
against the president on the obstructive conduct described by the special counsel.
In fact, Washington Post says, Democrats may have already begun an impeachment inquiry without most
people noticing and without the fanfare and potential political backlash of a big announcement
that it's happening.
In a court filing in late July to get the full unredacted Mueller report, The Judiciary Committee argued that it needed the information because it is conducting an investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment.
Since then, Democrats' language has only become stronger in court filings culminating with Nadler's statement that impeachment proceedings have begun.
But you know what?
Let me just say, it doesn't mean a whole lot right now.
When they get to the point where they want to vote on articles of impeachment, I'll be listening.
But admittedly, this is, you know, it's not going to be like one day you wake up and it's happening.
This is kind of that.
But the Democrats have been moving towards impeachment for a while now.
The rhetoric has been escalating.
News reports a week or so ago about how the Democratic House now has a majority that want to seek impeachment, though not every Democrat is on board.
So yes, this is entirely predictable.
And in my opinion, it's a really, really bad idea.
Let's read a little bit more, but then we'll move on.
They say, What that means, Democrats are taking the first step in the process.
They have launched an impeachment inquiry to investigate what, if any, quote, high crimes and misdemeanors Trump may have committed.
If the investigation concludes he has, the committee will draw up articles of impeachment, and the Judiciary Committee, and then the House, will vote on it.
If they get to the step of voting on articles of impeachment, we don't know how that would fare.
There are 30 Democrats who represent districts Trump won in 2016.
Only one of those backs an impeachment inquiry.
More than 100 Democrats don't even publicly support an impeachment inquiry.
Many of them represent swing or Republican-leaning districts.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted informal impeachment proceedings because she fears it could cost Democrats the House next year.
And she's right.
I don't— Look, you know, I look back at the statement Bill Maher made recently, where he said, Do I want Biden to be president?
Not really.
But he's the only one who beats Trump in Ohio.
And that kind of resonated with me.
I don't like Nancy Pelosi—uber-millionaire-corporate-Democrat-type personality—but she's right.
It's bad for the Democrats.
It's bad for those who want to see principled opposites into Trump.
To come out and just wiggle your arms near screeching impeachment.
You're not doing anything.
But I have data to back this up.
We'll read a little bit more though.
They say still getting to this early stage in the process is the last thing Trump wanted.
I don't necessarily agree.
They say not that he is in any real risk of actually getting kicked out of office.
That I agree with.
For that to happen the Senate would have to hold a trial and two-thirds of the 100 members would have to vote to convict him.
The Senate is controlled by Republicans largely loyal to Trump.
But when Democrats took back the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections, his team feared getting tied up in time-consuming investigations launched by House Democrats.
Investigations that have the potential to air some of Trump's dirty laundry.
They say impeachment proceedings are the most intense and dramatic kind of congressional investigation, and a waste of time.
We've been through Russiagate.
I'm so over this!
Man, I would love nothing more than Democrats to come out and say, here's our three-point plan to target Big Tech, or something like that.
And I will praise Elizabeth Warren to no end for her calling out Big Tech.
Big Tech is a serious problem, and we need to get people focused on actual problems.
And I will give the respect to those who actually do it.
I will give respect to Ocasio-Cortez for also calling out Big Tech and the surveillance apparatus.
I'm going to criticize them for their insane nonsense, and I'm going to criticize them for this impeachment stuff.
Granted, this is Nadler, but still.
Get back to policies and I'm right there with you.
But when you do this, it's just… Now, let's talk about why it's a bad idea.
Check out this article from the New York Times from two days ago.
Millions of America who did not like the president in 2016 now say they do.
Isn't it really funny?
I'm not one of those people.
But it's okay, I've never been a crazy person.
I've admitted to, and actually, I'm proud of the fact that when Trump won, I laughed about it.
That's not the end of the world.
The orange man, it's, we're not in Weimar, Germany.
Trump is, my view is like, you look at the media, and it's so insane what they're saying about this guy.
And I'm like, he's just another president doing the same old president stuff.
You can criticize him the same as we criticized Bush and Obama.
He is not worse than either of them.
He's boorish, sure.
Call him out for that.
But is he as bad on foreign policy as Bush was?
No!
And as of right now, he's kind of on track to what Obama was doing with immigration and foreign policy, albeit Trump has kind of done a little better in some areas.
So look, I don't have to like the guy to recognize he's not that bad.
It's so crazy to me.
There are people, before the election, did not like him and afterwards, more did.
Because these are the people who realize, Orange Man, not that bad.
It's just that simple.
You can go all day and night and say, look, he has less than 50% favorability.
I get it.
Let's pull up the data.
I get it.
Favorability polls show that Trump is not within the majority of the country, but he's still gaining.
Before the election, less people liked him.
Look at this.
Like, what is this?
In August of 2016, 33.6%?
Is that a percent?
I think it's percentage-based.
And he's gone up.
Afterwards, more people like him today.
And that says to me one important thing.
Although his approval rating Has gone down in the past week or so.
It's still higher than it's been for a long time, which means if Trump was able to win with a lower favorability and a lower approval rating, then what does that mean today with his favorability and approval higher?
It means he's likely going to win, okay?
Unless you can come up with real strategies and real policies to actually confront and beat him.
But here's the thing.
I'm a centrist, right?
I lean a little to the left.
The far left types, they correctly label me a liberal.
This is what I love.
And I want to give credit to these far-left anarcho-types and antifa-types that... the real ones, not the weirdos on Twitter.
Like, you actually talk to these people, they'll call Tim Poole a centrist liberal because they understand why they don't like me.
I'm a reformist.
I'm not good enough.
I say Orange Man bad, let's vote him out of office!
And that's it!
And I recognize that the system has produced a Trump, and I say, well, you know, people voted for this.
I don't, it doesn't mean I'm in a favor.
I like what the government does by no means.
But I also think that destroying everything just makes it worse and it makes life worse for everybody.
It's not a solution.
So I sit back and say, hey, Hillary and Trump play by the same rules.
Trump won.
We got to deal with it.
And we've got to be reasonable about coming out with strategies to get someone else elected.
But in the end, what do we really get?
Impeachment proceedings?
Come on, man.
I've been through two years of Russiagate.
It's technically been longer.
And it's just, I'm watching them spin their wheels and the data doesn't show this will do anything for them.
Check this out.
From NBC News, support for impeachment falls as 2020 heats up.
Look at this poll.
It's from July 7th to 9th, so admittedly, you know, it's a little bit old, about a month old.
Attitudes on impeachment.
Begin hearings now.
39% of Democrats say do it.
You don't even have the majority of Democrats saying to do this!
Independents, 21% say go for it, and 3% of the GOP say go for it.
18% of Democrats say don't impeach.
I get it.
A bigger group of Democrats say go for it, but it's not even the majority, so why waste your time when 51% of Independents are saying don't?
Only 21%.
So you're trying to win those 21% while losing the 51%?
I just don't see how this makes sense.
You know, I feel like there's somebody behind the scenes telling them to do all these things and it's just a waste of time and it's nonsense rhetoric.
85% of the GOP says don't do it.
Well look, I can understand why the Democrats don't think they're going to win GOP voters, that's fine.
But look at the independents!
51% are saying don't do it.
And here we are.
I'm one of these independents.
No problem saying that.
I have absolutely no problem saying, don't move for impeachment.
It is hollow, it is a promise of nothing, and it will never succeed.
It's like...
They know it's a futile effort.
They know it can't be passed.
They know it can't be done.
So instead of trying to win back the House with sound policy, this is what they do.
And the Washington Post brings up a very important point.
30 of these Democrats are in swing districts that Trump won.
These are moderates.
You're going to lose the House majority by targeting districts that like the President.
Uh, I know I sound frustrated, but, you know, it's just, I, this is what I see every day.
So, so let me kind of just like chill for a second.
I'm not really that frustrated.
I'm all, I'm kind of jaded.
I'm kind of just like, here we go again.
You know, this is what they're doing.
They tried Russia.
Now they're trying obstruction.
And it's like, none of that mattered.
None of it was true.
Why waste our time with this?
I want to hear about healthcare.
I really, really like the idea of universal healthcare.
I think it's very difficult to get to, and I think if we want to ever propose anything, we need to recognize there are a lot of people who are happy with private insurance.
There are half the country are conservative Trump supporters who don't want the idea.
So let's have a conversation.
Let's figure out a real a real way to protect those who are going into debt.
I mean health care is a huge issue for everybody.
Can you please talk about health care?
Seriously.
They don't.
Let's move on though, because I got some other stories.
The first I want to highlight this one is from July 28th, so not that long ago.
Why aren't 2020 Democrats talking about impeachment?
Because voters aren't asking.
Like, how is it so hard?
I don't, I just don't, I can't, I don't even know what to say.
I feel like the New York Times is telling you, the polls are telling you, and maybe they're all wrong.
I get it.
Maybe they're all wrong.
But to hedge your bets again after years on Orange Man bad, Russia obstruction, It just makes no sense.
But I do want to talk about some of the more less related but kind of ridiculous things that Democrats have been doing.
Check this out.
2020 spokeswoman Joaquin Castro's doxing only emboldened Trump donors.
If you're not familiar with what happened, Joaquin Castro, who is the brother of presidential candidate Julian Castro, tweeted out the names and employers of Trump donors.
Apparently some of those people actually donated to Castro, and apparently one of those people was falsely accused of donating to Trump, and it's caused nothing but problems.
So the Trump campaign is saying, you're pouring fuel on the fire and you're inspiring people to come forward, that's absolutely true.
I mean, come on, don't you know what reverse psychology is?
There are going to be a bunch of Trump supporters saying, dox me, do it, do it, dox me, and now people are going to go donate.
It is the opposite of what you expect to happen, and it's only hurting innocent people.
Why would you do this?
Look, I understand.
Donor information is publicly available.
You can search my name and see my donations.
Yes, everybody can know this.
But he took the step of making sure it was easier to access.
So, I don't think I'm as bullish on, like, doxing as many people are.
I think it was wrong of him to do.
I think it does cross into doxing to an extent, but it's mostly about him targeting these specific individuals.
One of which, who was wrongly outed as a Trump donor, is forced to go through situal awareness training with his wife because they're actually being put in danger by this.
And this is what we're seeing from Democrats in the 2020 race.
And I gotta tell you, man, look, I talk to people, my friends, like the people I hang out with, they're not conservatives.
As much as everybody's gonna, you know, these far-left wackos on social media claiming, that's true, it's not.
The real far-left people that I know correctly insult me as a liberal and a centrist.
Thank you.
They understand that I'm a centralist liberal reformist.
You're right!
I am!
Guilty as charged.
I understand the plight, and I sympathize with their mentality, but authoritarianism and smashy-smashy solves nothing.
I'm sorry, the ends don't justify the means.
Therefore, I'm more about, hey, can we have some civility and win back those we lost?
No.
The left has moved too far to the left.
And now I am politically homeless, as are many people.
And I think this is partly why you see the expansion of the intellectual dark web.
When people say things to me like, man, what happened to you, Tim?
Like people I've known from Occupy.
And I'm like, hold on, let me ask you a question.
You know, I think a really good example of what happened to me is to actually look back at, like, the Vice years, when I worked for Vice.
Remember what Vice used to write about?
Edgy, dark, and offensive content.
And then one day, something switched, like a lightbulb, and all of a sudden, Vice is now a woke company, and a lot of the original people have left.
So you wanna say I changed?
Nope!
Still a huge fan of George Carlin.
Still love offensive comedy, Family Guy, The Orville.
Still pro-choice, still pro-progressive tax.
My politics have moved a little bit more to the center.
Because, you know, on the issue of, like, universal healthcare, I used to be very, very for it, like, just do it.
And then I realized, it's like you're not gonna win.
And so I'm still very much for universal health care as an end goal, but I believe the right approach is to start with a public option and sell it.
You have to convince people why this program can make sense and how we can effectively implement these policies, and in the end if you can't, well then you lose and that's the way it should be.
But I would still advocate for this, but for the most part I haven't.
I'm looking at the Democrats doing nonsense insanity and I can't quite understand it.
Check this out.
Chrissy Teigen and Jonathan Van Ness have now cancelled their Equinox memberships over the Owners Trump fundraiser.
Chrissy Teigen said she got an auto-reply to a cancellation email saying they were experiencing extremely high volumes of emails.
They're cancelling- what is Equinox?
Equinox is like a workout place, right?
They say celebrities are now saying they are cancelling their Equinox memberships in droves after it was revealed the company's owners is hosting a lavish fundraiser for President Donald Trump's re-election campaign.
I just don't care.
That's so silly!
You know what, man?
I will eat Chick-fil-A.
It's delicious.
It was like a couple people who donated $25,000.
I'm not going to boycott Chick-fil-A.
I'm not going to boycott Equinox.
I'm not going to boycott Gillette.
I'm not going to boycott Nike.
You know, for the most part, I just don't care.
Actually, I do take this back.
For me, I think it's silly when partisans point the finger at one company and abandon ship and ignore the others.
My policy in the past has been very much so, if a company decides to enter the culture war, I'm out.
You do not need to get political.
I don't want to have anything to do with this.
But I guess I should walk that back a little bit.
Because as much as it, you know, kind of, ultimately doesn't really make sense, because there's behind-the-scenes politicking you can't really get away from, and perhaps in the end, I should care a lot less.
And I think that's what I realized with, like, Gillette and these other companies.
Like, dude, I'm not gonna buy Gillette in the first place, but I don't care if they make a stupid commercial.
You know, it's not, congratulations, you've convinced me to do nothing.
When I see these other companies start putting out woke tweets and woke content, my response has always been, hey, you know what?
Do your thing.
I'm not going to buy it.
And I think that's the appropriate response, and I want to make sure that's kind of where I've landed.
So Equinox is like, oh, you want to support Trump?
I really don't care.
It has no bearing on whether or not I can work out wherever.
And then there's something really funny, too, because I guess something happened with SoulCycle.
Where SoulCycle owner was donated to Trump and then faced public shaming, which resulted in this really funny and ridiculous thing from the right- gotta point the finger at the right-wingers here on this one- for not realizing that Michael Moore was making a joke.
Check out this story.
Left-wing gasbag Michael Moore claims he cancelled SoulCycle membership, but the exercise company doesn't offer them.
He tweeted, So the Daily Beast reported that Equinox and SoulCycle to host Trump fundraiser, and he said, that's it, just canceled my SoulCycle membership.
I think Michael Moore was actually just making a joke, that he's a very overweight individual who clearly doesn't exercise.
But I guess that, you know, went over the head of a lot of people who thought he was being serious.
But I think is very obviously not the case.
Look, I watched Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11.9.
It was terrible.
It was terrible.
But let's, like, we can chill out a little bit.
And you know what?
I can't necessarily say I can criticize the left for canceling all this stuff, because we've seen Trump supporters burn Nike gear and all that stuff.
I just think everybody should chill out.
Whatever side you're on, Like, it's the virtue signal, I think, that's really absurd.
If you quietly decide to cancel your membership, if you quietly decide to stop buying the products, I mean, you're free to do so, but it's just, to me, it's so silly how everything's gone so insane, right?
I think I have one more story.
I don't really care if people are boycotting stuff anymore, because I've just seen it so much, I'm like, yeah, whatever, man.
I do think it's bad.
You know, if we get to a point where partisans stop shopping at certain places, and we see a rift between society with fracturing economies and parallel economy-type things, I've talked about this before, if, you know, Twitter bans too many right-wingers and they go to different platforms, it's just gonna bifurcate society even worse.
So, you know, this is a kind of a derailment, but the reason I wanted to include these boycotting stories is because when I look at the impeachment stuff, it really seems to me like there's a disconnect between what makes sense, what will actually help you, and what you need to do, and I really don't see how the boycotting is going to do anything.
When the Trump people started burning Nike stuff, nobody cared.
Nike didn't care.
People laughed.
And now when they're boycotting Equinox and SoulCycle, nobody cares.
Everybody laughs.
And so I guess what I was seeing here is the impeachment stuff's a bad idea.
Trump's got a bigger base today than before he was elected.
His approval rating is higher than it was before he was elected.
He's on track to win.
We've got Steve Bullock.
Trump re-election more likely with each passing minute.
And this is from two days ago.
And I have to agree.
And this is a guy running for the Democratic nomination.
I have to agree, man.
You can look at the data.
It's just not there.
So, I'll say this to everybody.
Boycott whatever you want.
I think it's kind of a waste of time, but you know, by all means do it.
That's just my opinion.
But if you really want to defeat President, if you really want to beat Trump, if you want to get the nomination, this is not how you do it.
This is how you hurt yourself.
So anyway, like, I don't know.
I felt like including those last stories does kind of make sense, but I'll leave it there.
Impeachment.
It has begun.
Welcome to Russiagate round two.
They're extending the Mueller inquiry to say not Trump-obstructed, and now they can stretch out the entire nonsense where... I'm just gonna say it.
They're sore losers.
They lost.
They refuse to let it go.
Please do something else.
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up at YouTube.com slash TimCastNews starting at 6 p.m.
and I will see you all there.
A potential mass shooter was stopped by a good guy with a gun who held this man at gunpoint until the police arrived and arrested him.
Story as a guy showed to a Walmart with body armor, a rifle, and over 100 rounds of ammunition.
And now I'm seeing this story kind of go all over the place.
I see a lot of conservatives pushing it out saying, see, a good guy with a gun stopped this guy.
However, I'm not entirely convinced this was going to be a mass shooter.
Actually, I think after looking over the story, I don't believe that to be the case.
And what I actually see here is an erosion of Second Amendment rights.
Period.
This, after reviewing the evidence, looking over the stories, I think this is actually really, really bad news for conservatives and for gun advocates.
Right now, you have the Daily Wire and many other conservative outlets pointing out that a good guy with a gun, a handgun, stopped a guy with a rifle who was arrested, like it was a good thing.
However, it's my understanding that in Missouri, walking around with a rifle and ammo is not against the law.
And therein lies the problem.
What laws did this man break?
Why was he arrested?
What was intent?
We really don't know.
Now, I certainly think we have a problem here in this country if you literally can't stop a mass shooter if he's doing everything in the law up until the point where he lifts his gun up and starts shooting people.
So, you know, look, I lean more left.
But I highlight this because it's kind of interesting to me to see so many conservatives praising this, while at the same time, this is likely to actually harm gun rights.
Let's read the story.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash Dunnit 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 is share this video Look, I guarantee you this video will be demonetized and deranked because I'm talking about guns and gun rights.
That's a fact.
You know, YouTube has straight-up demonetized gun channels.
They've, in one instance, Google Shopping banned the word gun, so you couldn't even search for, like, anime called Gundam.
Like, just the word, the three letters, yeah, they don't like it.
So, if you do, please share.
But let's read the story.
Ryan Saavedra writes, an off-duty firefighter who had a firearm with him stopped a potential attack from taking place at a Walmart in Missouri after a 20-year-old man showed up to the store with a rifle, body armor, and over 100 rounds of ammunition.
His intent was not to cause peace or comfort to anybody that was in the business.
Lt.
Mike Lucas with the Springfield Police Department said, in fact, he's lucky to be alive still, to be honest.
And that's true.
He is.
Although it's not yet clear what the man's intent was, Lucas said, we definitely have some crimes.
I'd be interested to know what those crimes are.
Again, my understanding is he didn't do anything illegal.
Walking around with a rifle in public is legal.
Maybe trespassing if Walmart says no guns allowed?
I don't know.
Lucas said there may have been a Facebook Live posted by the suspect, and that law enforcement officials are conducting an investigation and looking through the suspect's social media.
KOLR News Anchor tweeted, 20-year-old man with a rifle, handgun, and body armor arrested at Walmart on Republic.
SFD police say he had 100-plus rounds of ammunition.
Off-duty firefighter with concealed carry held him at gunpoint until officers arrived about three minutes later.
The Springfield Police Department released this statement.
At approximately 4.10 p.m., Springfield police officers were dispatched to 3150 West Republic Road to a Walmart neighborhood market.
An armed white male in his 20s was detained by an armed off-duty fireman until officers arrived on scene and took the suspect into custody.
No injuries were reported and no shots were fired.
At this time, the investigation is ongoing and we are working to determine his motives.
The incident has ignited the latest round of calls for gun control from the media and the Democrat Party, demanding an assault weapons ban and more background checks.
An independent study commissioned by Justice Department's National Institute of Justice found that the 1994 Clinton assault weapons ban did not reduce violence, and a recent report from CNN noted that changes to background check regulations would not have stopped the tragedy.
I have more news.
According to CNN, the man was pushing a cart and recording himself walking through the store with a cell phone when the manager pulled the fire alarm to notify customers to escape.
And that's when they go into the quote.
His intent was not to comfort anybody.
We can see this photo.
It's kind of hard to make out for those watching, but it's the man outside with body armor and the rifle with his hands up.
So I popped over to Wikipedia.
Let me zoom in here.
And this is gun laws in Missouri.
And we can see here, permit required for concealed carry, no for long guns, no for handguns.
Owner's license required, no and no.
Firearm registration, state permit, no, no, no, no.
Permit required for open carry, no, no.
Well, there you go.
Assault Weapons Law.
No, no.
Magazine Capacity Restriction.
No, no.
NFA Weapons Restricted.
No.
Peaceable Journey Law.
I'm not sure what that is, so I could be missing some context here.
Not a gun person.
The point is, it sounds like he's allowed to have these magazines, he's allowed to have this weapon, it sounds like he was allowed to do all of this.
What I think this actually is, is a Second Amendment audit.
In March, we saw this video, March 31st, 2019, 1.2 million views on YouTube.
This is a video where a man, I guess it's news now, OKC, with, you know, about 20,000 subs, this man went to Edmond, Oklahoma, and he was carrying what he said was a pistol, and I believe he is absolutely correct.
This right here on the left is what he describes as a pistol, and this on the right is the officer's weapon, which is a rifle.
And it's actually, the guy is correct.
So here's what happens in this story.
This man shows up with a camera filming, walking around a park where people are playing, with this weapon.
And people called the police because, my understanding is, the police say in this, and they could be wrong, I don't know, a rifle, you're not allowed to open carry a rifle in this place.
However, he then states, because there's no, you know, he mentions the stock and the foregrip and how this on the left is designed to be held with one hand, legally classifying it as a pistol with a shortened barrel, He's right.
He is within the confines of the law and doing everything legally.
The police come up and question him and here's the important thing about the potential crime in the first story.
The police say there may be some crimes here and that his intent was not to, you know, calm people or whatever the issue is.
In this video, one of the first cops walks up and says, why are you doing this?
And he says it's a second amendment audit to which the cop responds, I appreciate you causing a panic.
Now we've got a problem.
We've got a couple problems.
If you were an advocate for the Second Amendment, then I imagine you would be like, hey, this guy did everything right.
Peacefully walking around, carrying his weapon within the confines of the law, doing everything legally, and the police come up to him, you know, they have their weapons drawn, they're trained on him, they surround him, they start asking him questions, he puts his hands up, they take the weapon from him, they check it, they give it back, say, why would you do this?
Should that have happened, Could you imagine if the First Amendment was treated this way?
A guy sitting on a street corner, you know, talking, and all of a sudden a bunch of cops come up and surround him and say, what are you talking about and why?
And he says, oh, I'm just like, I'm doing a First Amendment audit.
So we actually do have First Amendment audits, too.
And I think all of these situations, first of all, The First Amendment audits are a lot of people, like, going up to cops and security guards and, like, getting as close as possible and kind of, like, pushing it.
Let me ask you this, like, before I actually go on talking about this.
Do you think this guy is right to do this?
Here's the difference between how I see the First Amendment audit and the Second Amendment audits.
In a lot of these First Amendment audit videos, they walk up to cops while the cops are doing something dangerous and the cops are agitated, like, please back up.
With a Second Amendment audit, this guy was just walking through a park.
And he's legally allowed to.
The Constitution says he can, and he was following all of the laws that were written.
Why should the cops stop him when he broke no laws?
Now, you could argue probable cause, because from a distance, that does not look like a pistol.
And if you can't carry a rifle, expect to be stopped.
And so the guy on camera says, we're just hoping to educate people, to which the cops respond, why don't you call us?
Let us know you're going to be carrying around a pistol that looks like a rifle.
And when people call, you can explain it to them.
And he says, maybe we'll do that in the future.
But I think part of this is about presenting the image, and I don't want to say it's about causing panic or causing a scene, but it kind of, it's in that vein.
So here's what I think about this story right here with this guy.
We don't know if this guy was a mass shooter.
We don't.
And I think there absolutely is kind of a problem.
If that person with a hundred plus rounds of ammo and a rifle and body armor can legally walk around and do whatever he wants, and we only can stop him up on, like, he's legally allowed to do that up until he lifts the weapon and starts shooting people, it's kind of like, man, we're dancing close to the rager's edge on this one.
But with the Second Amendment, with gun rights, what's the solution?
You can't tell people they're not allowed to wear legal body armor with a legal weapon in a legal open carry state with legal ammo.
So I will stress, To all the conservatives that are dancing around saying, aha, a good guy with a gun stopped a potential mass shooter, it's like, actually, a guy who was panicked over the recent news pointed a gun at a guy who didn't break any laws.
We have a problem.
We have a serious problem.
I don't know what the answer is.
I can't.
But I'm confused as to why I'm reading articles, and it's not just this, but I'm confused as to why I'm reading articles where, in this circumstance, gun rights proponents are going like, wow, good for them, they stopped him.
Well, this is an erosion of gun rights.
Maybe you guys agree.
Don't ask me.
I'm, again, not a gun person.
Never been.
Maybe we shouldn't allow people to carry around, you know, AR-15s in public through Walmart.
The thing about the crime that he mentions, and what I was going to mention in the other video where this guy does it, is that causing panic could be the problem, right?
The idea that the police could say, disorderly conduct.
You know, if you want to carry this around, it is your right, but you still have to, like, give people a heads up.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't think you legally do, but the cops can charge you for disorderly or some kind of other, you know, I don't know.
The bigger question is, what do we do about this?
And do we come to a point then where we say, we need a long gun, you know, restrictions on long guns?
My understanding actually in places like Chicago is that long guns are less restricted because of hunting laws and things like this.
And I also will stress too, I'll try and keep this one short.
Look, a lot of people don't know anything about guns, and that was the point of the Second Amendment audit.
In this story, here's what we know about the Walmart thing.
A guy was wearing armor, he had a gun, he had 100 rounds, he was filming himself pushing a shopping cart around, and then he left the store and then got stopped.
So it doesn't seem like he was intending to do anything.
But he was still arrested, and I have to wonder why.
So, one of the big problems in the gun debate is that many people on the left don't understand anything about guns, which is why the Second Amendment auditors did this, why he had a pistol, which looks like a rifle, and then everyone called the police.
Because they don't know.
But I mean, I pulled up the screenshot on purpose, because we have a problem.
If this is legally a pistol, and this is legally a rifle, what's the difference in the long run?
And that's a big problem that we're having with all of these laws.
The assault weapons ban will ban handguns.
Like, literally, at the federal level, I went through this in the March for Our Life, it would ban, like, a semi-automatic pistol.
And when you ask regular people if that should be completely illegal, they say, no, of course not.
They're concerned about AR-15s.
And, you know, they don't seem to understand that the main issue with an AR-15 is not the fact that it's an AR-15.
It's just a semi-auto rifle.
And there are a bunch of other kinds that wouldn't fall under the assault weapons ban that would still be... It's just...
You know what, man?
You know what bugs me about this is I'm absolutely open to talking about reasonable gun control.
Maybe it's background checks.
Maybe it's like, you know, we ban on certain things.
Maybe there's something we can do.
I'm saying maybe because I honestly don't know.
The conversation needs to be had.
The problem is the left is so damn sure we need to do it and they haven't even read the bill.
They don't even know what an assault weapon is.
They interchangeably use rifle and weapon.
They're not the same thing.
An assault rifle is illegal.
They've never been legal in the first place.
I read about this.
So I'm sitting here trying to be like, okay, this is a problem.
These two weapons right here are not legally the same thing.
This is a pistol.
This is a rifle.
You understand why that's going to cause a panic.
Should that matter?
I honestly don't know, but I think panic is bad, and if people are freaking out, what do we do about it?
We're not going to curtail someone's rights because people are panicking.
Imagine what would happen if someone went outside and yelled a swear word and people started panicking and calling the police.
We can't tell someone you can't speak because people are panicking.
So in this story, which I'm just baffled by this, Why is anybody celebrating a guy who broke no laws being arrested and held at gunpoint?
Could you imagine if you were speaking and someone came up to you and detained you and the police came and arrested you to figure out what you were saying and why?
The problem I see is that people are on edge.
There are mass shooters.
I don't know what the solution is.
It's very different from just speech.
But they're both in the Constitution.
They're both guaranteed rights.
So, right now, I cannot say, based on where we are as a country, this was a good thing.
Obviously, if he was a mass shooter, it absolutely was.
But what if it's a guy exercising his constitutional right, filming himself, and leaving a store, and someone illegally detains him at gunpoint?
I don't know, man.
Isn't this just so nuts?
But I will say this.
I'm not really super frustrated about any of these conversations or how we're supposed to move forward and what the solution's gonna be.
Because this is what we do.
This is what society does.
We develop new civics.
We develop new laws and new rules and new customs and things change.
Maybe this will result in people being more armed.
I don't think so.
I think people are moving away from weapons, away from armor.
You know, I saw this video, and it got me thinking about how, what would have happened a couple hundred years ago if somebody was walking around with pistols or swords or something?
Nobody would say anything.
Like, if a guy was walking around with a weapon, wearing, like, thick protective clothing, not necessarily armor, but maybe, like, leathers or something, a lot of people would be like, yep, out in the middle of the woods, wild animals, got himself a weapon, makes sense, gotta protect yourself, right?
Today, people have given up so much authority or expectation of authority to police that they're shocked when there's a guy walking around with a rifle.
So I ask this.
I have a few questions that I can add to this.
I don't quite understand why it is the left hate cops, say things like, all cops are bastards, but then think cops should be the only people with weapons.
I don't understand why it's the left that claims that police brutality is a serious, egregious problem.
I think it's a problem, but they act like all cops are bastards.
I'm not saying all liberals.
I'm saying it tends to be the left saying cops are bad, and it also tends to be the left saying only the cops should have guns.
I get it.
You're not going to shoot a cop.
If a cop is breaking the law and corrupt, well, you're kind of screwed, aren't you?
But this is one point brought up by a ton of people.
How could we be at a point where you have the left shrieking, orange man bad, fascists are taking over, the police and government are fascists, I know, let's give them all of our guns?
That's really weird, isn't it?
Well, I will add one more thing.
We are seeing the rise of left-wing gun groups, like the Socialist Rifle Association or the John Brown Gun Club, Redneck Revolt.
So don't be surprised.
The left is starting to embrace guns.
So that's why I say maybe people will actually start arming themselves more.
Maybe that's not a good thing.
Honestly, I have no idea.
But take a look at this.
For those who haven't seen the podcast, it's a cop holding up two weapons that look very similar to the untrained eye, but one is legally a pistol and one is legally a rifle.
And how do you deal with that?
What's the appropriate solution?
Did the police have probable cause?
Should the police have probable cause to stop someone exercising their constitutional right and breaking no laws?
I honestly just don't know.
This is too damn complicated for me to be the moral arbiter of.
But I can point out principle and the current system in place.
I would state, based on the current rules, the police should not have stopped this man.
In fact, I should say the police should have went up to him and asked him a few questions and then been on their merry way.
But you know what?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's tough, right?
Maybe the police did the right thing.
Asked them a couple questions.
Checked the weapon.
Gave it back to them and went on their merry way.
Maybe that's the right thing to do.
But I can't imagine people would be accepting of that if the cops did that every time someone talked in public.
And they said, we're checking your free speech to make sure it's in line because certain things aren't... I'll put it this way.
The First Amendment guarantees the right of the press, the speech, religion.
Imagine if there was a Muslim praying, and the cops came up, surrounded them, not at gunpoint, because I'm trying to, you know, make an analogy work, and they said, what religion is this?
You have freedom of religion, but we've restricted some.
The Second Amendment doesn't specify exactly what weapons you can or can't have, but we have regulated weapons.
We have regulated speech to a certain point as well.
So, you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
You know, look, if you're outside and you're yelling death threats at people, then the cops are gonna come and stop you.
You know what I mean?
So...
I don't know what to say.
Final thought, because I don't want to rant on this forever.
You know, I saw this story, Good Guy with Gunstops Potential Attack.
I think the Daily Wire should have done a little digging before they wrote this.
Because when I saw this story, I looked it up, and it turns out the guy was pushing a shopping cart, leaving the store, and he got stopped.
He didn't do anything.
In which case, the story should be a guy legally carrying was stopped illegally, and arrested illegally, right?
I feel like I'm losing my mind.
Hey, it's not a problem.
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up at 1 p.m.
on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out.
I will see you there.
BuzzFeed brings up a good point.
After hundreds of employees were arrested in an ICE raid, the bosses went home without a charge.
Unlike the immigrants detained in a massive sweep this week, their employers weren't criminally charged or arrested.
It's unlikely they'll face prosecution.
Why?
Shouldn't they be?
Shouldn't our laws say if, like, okay.
We have a problem with illegal immigrants in terms of displacing low-level jobs.
But more importantly beyond that, I think we have a cultural problem where millennials are entitled and lazy and just don't want to work.
Not all of them.
There are millennials who work.
I'm just saying there's a problem with people I know who are like, I refuse to work a low-level job.
Here's the thing.
I think college is a huge problem.
We'll get into this.
I have another story from Vox, where they say, Yes, there's a demand.
Because, from what I've seen, there are many millennials who are like, I refuse to do that kind of work.
But you have to start somewhere.
workers to fill low-skill jobs in America.
Yes, there's a demand because from what I've seen, there are many millennials who are like,
I refuse to do that kind of work.
But you have to start somewhere.
And it's almost like, the first question I want to go through is obviously, why aren't
the employers being punished at all?
They play a role in this.
If you can't find someone to work these jobs because it's low skill, you gotta pay more money.
And that's gonna be better for the economy.
I'm not an economist, but the general idea seems to make sense, right?
How do you increase wages?
Demand.
So here's the thing.
You've got to start somewhere, right?
And a lot of people, a lot of young people refuse to start somewhere.
I think of it kind of like, you know, you play a video game, you get really far, and then you die, and you lose your save, and then all of a sudden you're like, I just don't want to start from the beginning.
There are people who look at low-level jobs or low-skill jobs as beneath them, and they refuse to get started.
So I'll tell you what happens.
You need that experience.
You need to develop.
These are a lot of jobs that young people normally took.
That way, when you grow up, you start somewhere and you build from there.
But now we have these people who are 22, 24, who are getting out of college and being like, I refuse to work a low-level job.
Okay, I understand that you went to college, but you have no experience.
Like, you know, if somebody asked me, can I work for you?
I'd say, what's your experience?
And if they said college, I would say, that's not experience.
At all.
You have none.
But anyway, we'll get into that.
The bigger question is, why aren't people being charged for employing these guys?
Or these people, I should say.
So, BuzzFeed, of all outlets, actually digs into this and brings up the interesting question.
Before we get started, though, let's head over to TimCast.com 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 is just share this video.
And I'll make one little funny point I tweeted about this.
I love how there are people who accuse me and others of being grifters.
And let me just get one thing straight for all of you.
If my goal in doing this was money, I wouldn't dedicate all of my time with no days off for years talking about politics, which gets demonetized relentlessly and can get you banned.
No, I'd focus on Minecraft or Fortnite.
And I would dedicate seven days a week, six videos playing video games in which I'd make a lot more money and be a lot safer.
Now, the reality is, I talk about these things because I'm passionate about it.
I find these stories important.
They're interesting questions.
And then I say, hey, the content is free.
If you like it, you can support my work.
No, I'm sorry.
That's the opposite of drifting.
That's me saying I'm doing this no matter what, with or without money.
Anyway, I wanted to get that off my chest.
But you don't have to donate to me.
It's not a huge concern.
Just share the video.
Let's read.
BuzzFeed writes, While hundreds of suspected undocumented immigrants were arrested Wednesday in a series of workplace raids that split up families and left communities terrified, their employers went home as if it were any other business day.
Federal authorities haven't said whether the employers of the 680 people detained in Mississippi in one of the largest raids—I get it, BuzzFeed, please—will face criminal charges or even fines for hiring the workers, but the likelihood of their facing prosecution is slim.
The ICE operation hit seven worksites.
If you're not following the story, the quick gist is one of the biggest ICE raids ever.
680 people arrested, seven locations, around 100 people per site.
Mike Hurst, U.S.
Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, declined to say if any of the employers would face charges for hiring undocumented workers, citing an open criminal investigation.
The employers are still not in the clear and could be subject to fines or charges in the coming months, but data shows the likelihood of prosecution is extremely low.
They say an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found that during April 2018 and March 2019, only 11 employers, individuals, not companies, were prosecuted for hiring immigrants without proper documentation.
During that same period, 120,344 people were prosecuted for illegal entry or illegal re-entry.
Totally different issues, BuzzFeed.
We're talking about employment.
So, I guess, you know, I don't know what else... I don't think they're being charged for working.
They're being charged for being here illegally.
Since criminal penalties for employers were first enacted by Congress in 1986, few employers have ever been prosecuted.
The track analysis said, fewer than 20 prosecutions have taken place against employers in a single year, except for brief periods under President George W. Bush and the first year of the Obama administration, the data shows.
That's because U.S.
immigration laws restricting the hiring of undocumented workers are heavily skewed in favor of employers, and in most cases they are never charged, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute Office at the New York University School of Law.
It's only a handful of employers who have gone to jail.
Federal law doesn't penalize employers for hiring undocumented workers, he said.
Instead, it goes after the employer for not checking people's documents or knowingly hiring unauthorized employees.
I call it the knowingly loophole.
It's the knowingly that provides the employer a major defense in such actions.
You can always play dumb.
Essentially, the argument is, these employers just say, we didn't check.
It's not our fault.
We didn't know.
They lied.
They said they were citizens.
Well, if in some circumstances these people are working under the table, perhaps, well then you've got a big problem.
And many of these undocumented workers are under the table.
In this instance, perhaps they weren't.
But I gotta say, I'm really, really confused by how employers get away with this, because don't they have to pay taxes?
And if you're paying taxes, don't you have to fill out the forms?
I don't even know how it's possible to have someone without paperwork working for you.
You're paying taxes, claiming to be a citizen.
How does that even make sense?
They need a social security number, right?
Do they give you a fake one?
Maybe they go and get fake ones?
I have no idea.
But I will say this.
A lot of people on the left don't seem to understand the problem that we're facing when it comes to illegal immigration and our workforce.
Low-skill jobs are being displaced.
We also don't have young people working jobs anymore, or at least it would seem that way.
I'm not pulling up the data and stats on whether or not 16-year-olds are working at McDonald's.
I got a job as soon as I turned 16 at a fast food restaurant.
It was not fun, it was tedious, and I did it because I was 16 and I needed a job and I made some money and then I eventually quit.
But now what I'm seeing is a lot of entitled, DSA-type, you know, progressive leftists with undergraduate degrees who have never worked a day in their life claiming to be the working class, and you're not!
You're the pseudo-bourgeoisie.
It's a new class that's in between the landlords and labor.
I guess there's technically the merchant class.
There's like that pyramid or whatever.
The point is, these people are doing labor, but they're displacing the demand, which means There will come a time when we don't have the workers and the companies say the only way to get the chicken processed is to pay more money and that will cause a dramatic shift in how our economy functions.
Perhaps it will be a bad thing, I don't know.
What I can say is two problems.
Supply and demand drives the market and our supply is seemingly infinite if we keep having people come here without proper documentation and without limitation.
There will never be a demand and there will never be good wages for low jobs because Like, a business is gonna say, hey, here's ten bucks, and then people are gonna argue over how low they go.
That's the point of the minimum wage.
You can't do that.
But in the end, we need the value of labor to be higher, which only demand can really accomplish.
Not completely.
I'm not an economist.
The main issue I see, however...
So, why aren't the employers being punished?
First question I'll ask as we kind of wrap this segment up and move into my final thoughts.
Why aren't the employers being punished?
Maybe they will be, but as we saw from Buzzfeed, it doesn't really happen that often.
Well maybe it should.
Maybe that's the problem here.
You know, I watched a documentary once about how some of these companies encourage undocumented
workers to come and then tip off ICE on purpose so they don't have to pay.
All of these people got arrested.
Guess what?
No payout from the employer.
They're not going to have to worry about paying any of these people.
They're gone.
They've been deported.
Now, they are going to lose money in trying to find new people, but that's a different issue.
In the end, they just got free work.
I don't know exactly how it works, but maybe we should just say, how about you get in trouble when you do this, and it is on you to make sure the people who are applying have social security numbers and IDs.
Now here's the thing.
Maybe they did.
And maybe that's the problem.
And then I can understand that.
And maybe that's the bigger issue.
Maybe that's what I'm missing here.
Outside of all that, we get the point, I just want to stress.
Working in a chicken processing plant.
Yeah.
People should take those jobs.
There are so many people who are doing nothing.
And I'll say this too.
To the young men who are sitting around playing video games and feel lost.
You might not want to do it.
It may feel beneath you, but I assure you a good day's hard work is great.
Get a job at the lowest tier.
Just go do something.
You know, I always say to people, like, the millennial generation needs... We have a problem on two sides.
A lack of responsibility and a lack of purpose.
And that's how I see kind of the culture we're forming.
You have young men who have nothing to do because...
We're wealthy!
People sit around playing video games.
It's triggering dopamine.
It's fulfilling and, you know, what else should I do?
I don't want to go work at McDonald's.
Maybe you need to.
Maybe humans need a function even if it is tedious.
I don't care if you're going to work at McDonald's or Starbucks or if you're in your backyard building a shed.
You need to get up and go do something.
To quote Jordan Peterson, find the heaviest thing you can carry and carry it.
And perhaps that's working a really crappy job that you don't really need to work but you should because being in a workplace allows you to socialize, you'll meet new people, you'll
experience new things, and you'll build something from there. You're not gonna
start a video game with god-tier abilities and stats. No, you start...
many games you start off very weak, but over time your character develops and becomes
stronger and by the end, you know, like an MMORPG, all of a sudden you're a badass.
That's how the real world works too.
Life imitates art imitating life. If you start somewhere in a few years, you will be
endgame tier, top tier, one of the best.
On the other side, we have these privileged urban elites with degrees who are like, I refuse to work that job.
I'm above this.
I need... No.
No, you're not.
You're not above it.
No human is above anything.
I'm not above working at McDonald's.
Nobody is.
You do what you can do, and you work from there.
And if you're sitting around dumping, you know, complaining about your student loan that you're not working, Find anything to do.
That's like the big thing.
People need purpose.
And without purpose, I feel like Americans are losing their minds, and this is part of that problem.
The immigration stuff is all part of that problem.
So, I bring this up because of this story from Vox, where they claim there's a high demand for low-skill jobs.
There is.
And this is a cultural crisis among millennials and just people in general who are refusing to do low-skill jobs when they don't have any other skills.
I'm sorry, your interpretive dance degree, I'm glad you learned about this, but it's not a skill you can use in a workplace that's going to translate into value unless you go and teach other people interpretive dance.
Now hold on.
Maybe.
Once you've learned interpretive dance, you can actually put on a show and charge people to come and see it.
That's starting a business.
And maybe that's not beneath you, so go do that too!
Just do something.
There's too much ideology and activism because people are bored and life is boring, so they're playing video games or they're going out and joining ridiculous political groups for ridiculous reasons.
Here's my advice, man.
If you're not doing anything, Whatever it is you're sitting around not doing, do something else.
Even if it's working at a processing plant for a low wage.
I guess the real conundrum is multifaceted.
Because these companies hire illegal immigrants for low wages, the wages are being artificially suppressed.
If they weren't hiring these people and they were being punished, wages would be higher, and then you'd have people saying, well, you know, I think it's beneath me, but hey man, pays 20 bucks an hour, I'll take it.
Then I can play more video games.
Instead, they pay the bottom of the barrel, and you can't compete with that.
So maybe something needs to be done.
Maybe the employers need to be punished.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment will be at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews.
Thanks for hanging out.
I will see you all next time.
You know they say that a broken clock is right twice a day, but maybe what we're seeing right now is people actually realizing that what we have been saying for the longest time is correct.
We need to engage with young men who are distancing themselves from society, who are becoming reclusive, playing video games.
We need to reach out, build community, help these young men who are falling through the cracks.
And Jordan Peterson has talked about that.
I certainly think the man is worthy of criticism in certain areas, and he would agree.
That's why people like Jordan Peterson.
That's why they like the Intellectual Dark Web.
Smart individuals who recognize their faults.
This is an article from The Guardian.
That reads, after El Paso and Dayton, the left needs to reach out to men and not condemn them.
A lot of young men seem to be lost and disenfranchised, but only the likes of Jordan Peterson are engaging with them.
Dare I say it, they're making an excellent point about Jordan Peterson and what he's doing.
They reference his book, and they reference it quite positively, it seems.
I want to read through this and make sure I get the nuance and everything correct.
But I have praised Jordan Peterson for pointing out some of these things.
The video on my main channel, the default for new subscribers, I think, is talking about how Jordan Peterson is a solution to one of the problems in society.
When he tells young men to find the heaviest thing you can carry and carry it.
When he says, clean your room before changing the world.
What he's saying is, get yourself in order, better yourself, and then from there move out and you can do more.
It's also a powerful point about how we can change the world if we all as individuals make positive changes.
Again, I think Jordan Peterson has said some kooky things, and I think he'd be willing to agree, which is why I respect him.
In an interview he did, I believe it was on Comedy Central, he was asked about his position on, you know, forcing a baker or something to bake a cake, and he said, find yourself a new baker, and they said, what about the civil rights movement, and Jordan Peterson went, Maybe I was wrong about that.
And I was just like, wow, wow!
To hear someone say, maybe I was wrong, just right then and there, he thought about it and said, yeah, maybe I am wrong.
Brilliant.
Respectable.
And that's all I ask.
Let's read this story.
The Guardian writes, this is from Iman Amrani.
Tremendous respect, I agree, we should reach out to these people, and the left should do this too.
She writes, A horrific act of violence takes several innocent lives.
A frantic livestream details the events.
Terrifying mobile footage spreads rapidly online.
Then come the tweets of condemnation from world leaders, followed by an onslaught of outrage split down partisan lines.
The way that shootings or bombings or knife attacks are politicized, depending on the backgrounds of the perpetrators and the victims, shows how successful these acts are in deepening the divisions of society.
And that is one of the intentions that the perpetrators share, no matter their race or politics.
Spot on.
Tougher gun laws would certainly help.
I disagree, but let's read.
But attackers will still use knives, lorries, or homemade explosives to hurt other people.
If that's what they set out to do.
And while President Trump's words have indisputably fanned the flames of hate towards marginalized minority groups, the anger and resentment he taps into existed long before he came along.
Thank you!
I've said Trump is not the cause, he's a symptom.
I don't think Trump is as bad as they paint him out to be, but I'm absolutely okay with them saying they don't like what Trump says.
I've criticized his attitude, his character, but I certainly don't think he is causing it.
He is the result of people saying, I've had enough, the political correctness, the demonization.
I spoke to so many young men in the campaign trail who said, I'm tired of being attacked.
I'm tired of the PC.
I'm tired of being scapegoated.
And that's why they voted for the president.
He was kind of something different.
The left needs to get off their high horse and recognize we all have to reach out to other people and not be as mean.
And while I certainly respect Iman's, I hope I'm getting your name right, Iman.
Her opinions.
I much more respect the willingness to have a conversation.
If you want to sit in front of me and say, I think you're a bad person, I think you're wrong, I don't like the work you do, I'm listening.
And I respect your opinion.
Just don't be mean about it.
I'm not perfect, I recognize that, but I try.
And this deserves nothing but praise.
So far.
Let's read on.
Surely the question we need to be asking runs deeper.
Be it anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim, anti-Western, anti-woman, anti-Black, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ, why are so many young men prone to being radicalized in this way?
I know that discussions around men and masculinity are just as politically charged as discussions around terrorism, which makes this a difficult area to address.
This is partially what led to me to make a Guardian video series on modern masculinity last year.
As a journalist, I have covered stories in male-dominated spaces, from culture and sport to knife crime and terror.
And I've noticed that conversations around the relationship between masculinity and violence were often dragged into a partisan debate where the left seemed to demonize men and the right claimed ownership over masculine identity.
This discussion has become even more charged with the rise of the MeToo movement.
And here it comes.
Jordan Peterson, whose book 12 Rules for Life is an international bestseller, and whose videos on YouTube have amassed millions of views, remains a problematic figure due to some of his ideas.
He has been accused of having an alt-right audience, it's not true, although I was surprised when I went to an event of his in Birmingham to see quite a few men in the audience who described themselves as Jeremy Corbyn supporters, lefties, and even Marxists.
Peterson's main tenet was that men and women need purpose and responsibility if they are to find meaning and direction in life.
In a Fox News interview last year, Peterson was asked why young men were shooting up schools.
Because they're nihilistic and desperate, he replied.
Life can make you this way unless you have a purpose and a destiny.
In a seemingly fractured world where organized religion is in decline, this point strikes me as an important one, especially when looking at the profiles of the men who are committing these horrific acts of violence.
Men who have grown up in disrupted families and gone through the care of prison systems have been more prone to radicalization.
Often they have little to no engagement with spirituality, politics, or religion earlier in life.
but are drawn to a vision of the caliphate posturing on isolated interpretations of the
Quran to legitimize murders in the name of some higher cause. Or, isolated white supremacists
imagine a race war that paints them as brave heroes on a great mission. These are, of course,
horrific extremes. But it's clear that these people feel lost and disillusioned,
there's a push that when they feel lost and disillusioned, there's a push towards tribalism,
finding belonging and purpose in a greater cause.
So I'll say this, it is as close to praise as I think The Guardian can get,
but pointing out something very true and important.
Look, Jordan Peterson does not have an alt-right audience.
This woman even points out, lefties are listening to what Jordan Peterson has to say.
Stop demonizing people.
But you know what?
It's the extremists who are threatened by Jordan Peterson and other people like him.
People in whatever this centrist space is.
They're threatened by the idea that we're willing to reach across an aisle and have a conversation with anyone.
Now, admittedly, I find it harder to do with the mainstream left than it is with even the fringes of the far right.
I think you can actually rescue people from the fringes of the far right by reaching out and having a conversation.
And I have seen many comments from young people who have said they were falling into that space until they found Jordan Peterson.
And in fact, The front page of the New York Times ran a hit piece claiming YouTube was radicalizing people, but in reality it showed that those who are watching right-wing content who got exposed to the intellectual dark web, like Jordan Peterson and people like Dave Rubin, de-radicalized.
I think that's why you see the extremists not like Jordan Peterson, because he is actually pulling away their base of support.
He's shining a light.
Look, I'm not here to blow smoke up this guy's ass and pretend like he's the best of the best.
But I'm sick and tired of the demonization of a guy who's simply saying, take responsibility, live your life, find purpose.
And I'm like, I agree.
And more importantly, someone needs to, like, figure out why... Look, I'll put it this way.
I've gone through the stories.
I feel young men are being demonized.
They say, young men are being radicalized.
They're the problem.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Sure, I understand what you're trying to say.
But how about we write what she's writing?
We need to reach out to people, invite them in, give them space, play some video games together, you know, crack open a beer, and just get people back together again.
So I'll go down a little bit.
She says, in the Fox interview, Peterson had noted how the shooters influenced each other, saying,
quote, it's like a psychological epidemic. These people keep track of each other and there's a
competitive element to it. Part of what drives them is motivation for notoriety. Notoriety is
better than being ignored. Whatever people feel about Peterson's politics, there is undoubtedly
something in what he is saying here.
Thank you.
People on the left tend to respond to him tribally rather than engaging with his ideas.
Thank you!
But there are times when this is surely counterproductive.
Peterson isn't the first to explore these questions of purpose and meaning, but the way he packages them has made him accessible to a huge audience.
In turn, This has allowed him to own the discussion around masculinity, which is not his intent.
He's just trying to address the issue.
His fanbase goes beyond the tribes.
Like you noticed when you saw Marxists in the crowd listening to what he had to say.
And this is the problem with how they even address Joe Rogan.
Joe is a lefty.
He's bordering on socialist.
He wants UBI.
But he will have a conversation and try and bring people back.
And he will say to people's faces, hey man, you need to calm down.
Respect to this crew of whatever it is.
They say his biggest critics accuse him of being a pseudo-intellectual and dismiss him as an alt-right icon.
Yet few on the left offer up well-developed ideas on the crisis of masculinity and the role of men.
Certainly, there is no one who is speaking to lost and disenfranchised males with anything like his reach.
It's not enough simply to call out the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, or misogyny.
Addressing the perceived lack of purpose and meaning in these people's lives would be a first step in engaging the worrying number of disillusioned young men whose frustration, fear, and anger is currently being harnessed by hardliners, be they jihadist recruiters or Trump.
It isn't about sympathy or excuses.
It is about identifying patterns and breaking them, and offering solutions.
The only way we can do that is to come off the partisan political script and ask questions about the complex issues surrounding men.
Until we do that, we will be stuck in the same never-ending cycle.
Iman Amrani is a Guardian multimedia journalist.
This is an incredible article.
I have tremendous respect for you, Iman, for writing this, and that needs to be said.
I, I, you know, I really don't, I've seen this on the left a lot, and I think, look, of course, I'm gonna say it, it feels more prevalent on the left to be knee-jerk and tribal.
But I've seen anti-SJW types espousing opinions that I think are just untrue and poorly researched, and I have no problem calling it out.
I think whatever this middle ground space is, which does include a lot of anti-SJW types, which of course Jordan Peterson is one of them, it's about being opposed to tribalism.
I think the left doesn't like the center, and they conflate the center with the alt-right, when in reality, Jordan Peterson, people like Sargon of Akkad, people like me, we're opposed to the identity politics and the tribalism for the most part.
Certainly none of us are perfect, and we're ripe for criticism, and it's respectable.
This is an excellent article.
Because while I disagree with a lot of, you know, how she frames things and views things, this is the conversation that we're trying to have.
And Iman wrote an article, which is...
I'm going to disagree here, but I appreciate you presenting your opinion and recognizing we need to bring people together.
That's what needs to be happening.
That's why I like Dave Rubin's show, right?
That's why I like Joe Rogan's show.
That's why I like what Jordan Peterson does.
Let's have a conversation.
The crazies on both sides, they should not be driving the conversation.
Admittedly, I'm going to agree with Jordan Peterson on this one.
The left needs to know where to draw that line.
The right has done it.
Conservatives have done it.
The left, you need to start, because we've got Reza Aslan saying craziness, we've got Sean King saying craziness, and this is logic and sanity from the left, and that's what we need to encourage, and I respect it tremendously.
I don't care about your tribe.
I don't care where you come from.
Just draw the line, okay?
Stick around, I've got a couple more segments coming up for you in a few moments, and I will see you shortly.
Joe Biden's campaign says he misspoke when he said, quote, oh no, poor kids.
He said poor kids were just as bright as white kids.
Joe!
I understand you weren't trying to say that and make that implication.
It was a gaffe and a slip-up, and I think it's fine.
But of course, we live in a hell world of politics where anyone will take anything they can and weaponize it.
I absolutely will not play the silly game of blaming Joe Biden and saying, aha, he slipped up and the mask has come off and we know what he really thinks!
No, no, no.
He meant to say that poor kids are just as bright as wealthy kids, and he gaffed.
And that's fine.
But, man, do we see this all the time.
Every gaffe is just, nope, nope, you said it, it's done, you get no credit.
No, come on, come on.
We need to chill.
But you know what?
Sure enough, like, I'm hearing a story about some guy who made a rap video 15 years ago and he lost his job today because of it.
It's like, please, can we stop this?
Can we just engage in good faith?
Unfortunately, we can't have nice things.
But Joe Biden has addressed it.
So let's see what they have to say because they actually wrote an article about it.
And there's some other stuff here.
But I want to talk about the hellscape that is politics in this country as well.
So before we get started, head over to youtube.com slash subverse news.
And we've got a bunch of videos.
The video we just put out the other day addresses some of the comments I made just a moment ago when talking about Jordan Peterson.
It's called Young Men Are Becoming Isolated From Society.
Subverse News is going to be tackling just straight news, no opinion, original research.
Subscribe if that's what you want because, you know, my channels talk about politics.
I'm gonna talk here about Mr. Joe Biden.
Give my opinion on it.
But if you want to see original reporting without the bias or the opinion to the best of our abilities, youtube.com slash subverse news.
I will be contributing more on the ground reporting, which is why I've been, you know, a lot of people don't realize that in the past year or so I've been behind the scenes preparing all of this so that I can go on the ground That's what the van is for.
So very much so.
I have been doing research.
I have been planning stories.
I've got something coming up.
I'm gonna be heading to New Mexico and Texas.
It's gonna be great.
Real reporting.
That's where you can find it.
But let's get back to the news about Joe Biden and this just poor, awful gaffe that you know is gonna hurt him.
And it shouldn't.
Because we get it.
You misspoke.
Can we actually talk about the issues?
I don't think Joe Biden is racist.
Okay?
They're gonna try and smear him that way and it's just like...
Trump brought this up.
Didn't Trump say something like he was going to put a list together of all the people who are called racist?
It's like, I'm just so sick and tired of that being the go-to.
He said poor kids are just as bright as white kids.
Yes, he gaffed.
It was a mistake.
Let's read.
Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign says he misspoke when he told a group of Hispanic and Asian voters in Iowa on Thursday that, quote, poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids, before he attempted to correct himself.
Biden, who's been on a campaign swing through Iowa, was speaking on education at a town hall hosted by the Asian and Latino Coalition in Des Moines, Iowa.
Quote, We have this notion that somehow if you're poor, you cannot do it.
Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.
Wealthy kids.
Black kids.
Asian kids.
No, I really mean it.
But think how we think about it, he said.
They can do anything that anyone else can do, given a shot he added later.
Biden's verbal slip-up comes as he is campaigning in Iowa during the state fair weekend, where a recent poll shows he still maintains a lead over the rest of the field.
Biden has a reputation for making misstatements on the trail, and has even called himself a gaffe machine.
Quote, I am a gaffe machine, but my God, what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can't tell the truth, Biden said in December in reference to President Donald Trump.
Biden has been a gaffe machine as long as I can remember.
I could be wrong, but wasn't there something back in 2008 or whatever where they kept pointing this out, and then with Obama's re-election, they were like, man, the dude can't speak.
He needs a script in front of him.
Here's the thing.
I feel bad when I see nonsense stories like this.
When he said it, and then quickly said wealthy kids, black kids, and Asian kids, I bet he thought nothing would happen.
That was the end of it.
Nope.
You get a CNN story, you get all the rage bait popping up on Twitter and everyone pointing the finger.
Now I want to point out one more story too that I see popping up.
A young woman in Iowa approached Biden and asked him, how many genders are there?
And Joe Biden looks and says, there's at least three.
And there it is.
I'm sorry, Joe, that's the wrong answer.
And you may be wondering why.
Am I saying it's the right wing wrong answer or the left wing wrong answer?
No, it's wrong to both the left and the right, because the right believes there's two genders and the left believes there's infinity genders.
Sorry, Joe, you were wrong.
He then grabs the young woman by the arm, pulls her back and says, I was the first on board for marriage or something to that effect.
And this made this young woman very angry.
She didn't like the fact that he said, he said, don't play with me, kid, and then grabbed her and said, I was the first on board for marriage.
A bit stern, but I also want to point out there's a lot of outrage by this, and I just, I just don't think, look, Joe shouldn't have grabbed this young woman.
I don't have the article pulled up.
He shouldn't have grabbed her, he shouldn't have said there's three genders, and it was just, you shouldn't say, don't play with me, don't play games with me, kid.
Wrong thing to do, but it's not really that big a deal, none of this is.
But you know, Look, we're entering 2020 and we are going to see every hit in the books.
Joe Biden could have, you know, a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe and you better believe it's going to be a news campaign.
And then you're going to see like Kamala Harris be like, Joe, you had toilet paper on your shoe and you didn't recycle it.
And it's like, there we go.
Because any opportunity, that's what we're going to see.
And so the point I've made as we were entering this campaign season, like Amy Klobuchar eating Sal with a comb, I kid you not.
That was one of the hit pieces.
Amy Klobuchar was eating salad with a comb, and I said, if you think this is nuts, wait till you see what happens.
One of the biggest advantages Trump has right now is that Trump doesn't have Republicans tearing him down on stage during debates.
Biden does.
So after the primary process, when the Democrats make it through, We are going to end up seeing Trump point out everything that they fired at Biden all over again.
So when someone says, Biden, you did X, Y, and Z. Well, then we get over it.
Biden responds to it, right?
Then Biden wins, and then Trump says, X, Y, and Z. And it's going to make him look bad.
Trump has the advantage of the Democrats attacking themselves.
Let's read a little bit more.
They say Trump's re-election campaign seized on Biden's comments.
Oh, and here we go!
Andrew Clark, the rapid response director of the 2020 campaign, tweeted an edited video of Biden's comments.
Trump's campaign manager didn't say, I think Biden is a racist or anything.
He said, oh man, have fun.
Because you know what's going to happen?
The vultures, the media, they are swirling over Biden's head waiting for that juicy piece of meat to swoop in and just rip it to shreds.
They do it with Trump all day.
Is it really that they hate Trump?
No!
It's that they want juicy, juicy content to get those sweet, delicious clicks.
All those clicks.
You know, it's like the Click Donut dripping with glaze and then they see Joe Biden and he makes a gaffe and then their eyes glow red like laser beams and they dart straight to the earth and latch on and start ripping... Okay, I'll chill.
Let's read on.
Reacting to Biden's comments at the White House on Friday, Trump attacked the former vice president's intelligence and said that Biden is not somebody you can have as president.
Biden's campaign said the former vice president misspoke and immediately corrected himself, which he did.
But Trump brings out a point about gaffes.
This is silly, right?
Imagine if Biden was at a, I don't know, an intergovernmental summit to end nuclear proliferation, and he says something like, you know, we can't have these countries shutting down their nukes.
What we need is to arm ourselves with much more, much more nukes.
I mean, I mean, we need to disarm, I mean, and then all of a sudden they're like, the people hear the translation, hear him just going like this, saying, we need more weapons while we take theirs, and they're gonna be like, And then, you know, a gaffe like that can be really dangerous.
I'm not saying Joe isn't necessarily qualified.
I am saying Joe is quite old, however.
Joe Biden has spent his life fighting for civil rights and the dignity of all people.
The Trump campaign posting the video without the vice president's immediate correction is patently disingenuous.
That I agree with.
Show the context.
Let's not play this game.
And it's no coincidence this comes days after Joe Biden laid out how this president emboldens white nationalism and embraces racism.
No, no, no, Joe Biden.
You can't ask them to provide context and then omit the context.
And therein lies the silly game that is politics.
The Charlottesville lie.
Joe Biden claiming Trump said very fine people about people he didn't actually say that about.
It's complicated, I know, but let's be real.
Trump said these people should be condemned totally.
That's basically what he said.
If you are mad that someone took you out of context, well, it's because you took them out of context.
But I don't like the idea of a tit-for-tat.
You know, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
But here we are.
We get the leaders we deserve.
And this is what we're going to see.
Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, the only Asian-American man in the race, defended Biden, saying he was trying to convey a message and it came out the wrong way.
I dig this Yang guy.
He's not playing the games.
The fact is, there are many, many poor kids in this country who are underrepresented minorities, kids of color, Yang told CNN's John Berman on New Day Friday.
And it's Joe just trying to express an idea that came out the wrong way.
It wasn't the only misstep of Biden's time in Iowa.
He also accidentally referred to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher before correcting himself.
And during his soapbox speech at the Iowa State Fair, Biden flubbed his we choose truth over lies line instead saying we choose truth over facts.
Joe is a gaffe machine.
Oh man.
Look, presidents lie, presidents misspeak, they mislead, they do a lot of bad things.
Joe, I don't think he meant anything by this, but welcome to politics.
This is the game.
And Joe, you reap what you sow.
You want to take Trump out of context?
Congratulations, now everyone else will.
And I'm gonna call it for what it is, of course Joe's not being racist, and of course Trump said condemn them totally.
Can we just cut through the noise and be honest about what's going on in this country?
Unfortunately, so long as tribalism persists, I just don't think we're going to see it.
Anyway, stick around.
I've got one more segment coming up for you in a few moments.
I will see you shortly.
Many of you may be aware that I appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast with the CEO of Twitter, as well as one of their top lawyers, Vijay Agade, in which I told this woman, if you don't correct these problems, you face regulation.
To which her response was something to the effect of like, no, I talked to these people, they like what we're doing, something to that effect.
It was very, in my opinion, came off as, I'm not trying to be mean, but she was very full of herself and she knew.
Well, I was right.
Of course I was right.
Because I'm watching this, and I have a broad view, and I'm being somewhat arrogant on purpose, so forgive me.
But here's the story.
So, of course I was right.
White House proposal would have FCC and FTC police alleged social media censorship.
And here it is, breaking from CNN business.
A draft executive order from the White House could put the Federal Communications Commission in charge of shaping how Facebook, Twitter, and other large tech companies curate what appears on their websites, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
I can't say it's a good idea.
I don't know a lot about it.
I can't predict what will happen from it.
But I'm just gonna say, listen, you were invited to the party.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
You were invited to the party.
We sent you an invitation.
Remember when we said, hey guys, why don't you do this right?
And you know what?
Much respect to Vijaya and Jack Dorsey for accepting at least the first portion of that invitation and sitting down and having a conversation.
But when we said, can we fix these problems, the response we got across the board was, what problems?
We're not biased.
Congratulations.
Now you have a draft executive order floating above your head like the sword of Damocles that
could come down at a moment's notice and seriously disrupt these platforms.
So I have no sympathy.
Am I concerned?
I am.
I am worried that there may be unintended consequences.
But if the social media companies aren't playing ball, I'm not surprised.
The draft order, a summary of which was obtained by CNN, calls for the FCC to develop new regulations
clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites, when they decide to remove
or suppress content on their platforms.
Although still in its early stages and subject to change, the Trump administration's draft order also calls for the FTC to take those new policies into account when it investigates or files lawsuits against misbehaving companies.
If put into effect, the order would reflect a significant escalation by President Trump in his frequent attacks against social media companies over an alleged but unproven systemic bias against conservatives by technology platforms.
CNN, why did you add that?
Unproven.
Actually, there's a lot of datasets.
Quillette published one, for instance, showing that of 22 high-profile suspensions, 21 were on one side of the political debate.
So yes, there is data.
I don't know how you claim it's proven or disproven, but they add these things like, without evidence, without proof.
No, please.
We have tons of anecdotes.
We have former staff members on the record.
We have numerous high-profile stories saying it happens.
Gizmodo broke the story!
We know it's happening.
Why do they say unproven?
We can say, you know, there is evidence to suggest, though it hasn't been completely proven.
I'd accept that.
Let's read on.
They said it could lead to a significant reinterpretation of the law that its authors have insisted was meant to give tech companies broad freedom to handle content as they see fit.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the draft order, but referred CNN to Trump's remarks at a recent meeting with right-wing social media activists.
During that meeting, and that's actually unfair too, I get it, he did meet with right-wing social media activists, but there were a decent handful of people who were not right-wing.
I mean, if you want to lay accusations against me, I think the far left is correct when they call me a centrist liberal.
Thank you for being correct.
But the CEO of Mines was there.
He's certainly not a conservative.
They say during the meeting Trump vowed to explore all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech.
Much respect.
According to the summary seen by CNN, the draft executive order currently carries the title, Protecting Americans from Online Censorship.
It claimed the White House has received more than 15,000 anecdotal complaints of social media platforms censoring Americans, American political discourse, the summary indicates.
The Trump administration, in the draft order, will offer to share the complaints it received with the FTC.
And I will stress, You can't tweet, demand voter ID.
We've seen people banned for that.
Not everybody, it's sporadic.
You can't tweet, learn to code.
You might be able to now, but for the longest time, even Jack Dorsey admits we were too aggressive.
But you can, as Sean King and Reza Aslan have shown us, encourage terrorism.
Don't ask me why, I have no idea.
But that's the game being played.
Now look, Twitter is biased against conservatives.
When I say this, you get a bunch of people on the left going, they've banned the left, they've banned the left.
A guy wrote a book, it was called something like Alt-America, where because the book cover had Klan hoods on it, they banned him from Twitter.
That was wrong.
I've talked about that too, but it more often than not targets conservatives over liberals.
They act like simply because I'm highlighting conservatives are being banned, it means I don't think they're being— No, of course they are on the left.
I get it.
Megan Murphy's a feminist.
Granted, she opposes— You know, she's gender critical.
But there are left-wing anti-war people and left-wing people who are critical of Trump who are getting banned, too.
It's just not the norm.
It's more likely to hit conservatives.
Let's read on.
They say.
The FTC will also be asked to open a public complaint docket, according to the summary, and to work with the FCC to develop a report investigating how tech companies curate their platforms and whether they do so in neutral ways.
Companies whose monthly user base accounts for one-eighth of the U.S.
population or more could find themselves facing scrutiny, the summary said, including but not limited to Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
The Trump administration's proposal seeks to significantly narrow the protections afforded to companies under Section 230, good of the Communications Decency Act, a part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Under the current law, internet companies are not liable for most of the content that their users or other third parties post on their platforms.
Tech platforms also qualify for broad legal immunity when they take down objectionable content, at least when they are acting in good faith.
From the start, the legislation has been interpreted to give tech companies the benefit of the doubt.
In a Senate floor speech last year, Ron Wyden, Democrat, one of the authors of Section 230, said his aim with the legislation was to make sure that internet companies could moderate their websites without getting clobbered by lawsuits.
Imagine how hard it would be to launch a platform that's open to discussion of any topic when even the simplest, most narrowly focused website on the internet can become a magnet for lawsuits.
And they're right.
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook couldn't exist if everybody was suing Facebook over my videos.
But that doesn't mean they have a right to be biased.
I believe there should be the distinction between platform and publisher, and that as a platform, you let people say what they want, and you let people decide what they want.
You don't intervene because you don't like the fact that a conservative referred to a trans person as he or she.
That's not your choice.
That is not breaking the law.
And that's the big issue.
While I certainly agree with using the preferred pronouns of individuals, which many people will think I'm wrong for, we should not be banning people because they disagree with that opinion.
You know, I look to someone like Blair White as a good example, and Ben Shapiro's opinion on the matter.
Ben says, for the sake of ease and norms, I will refer to a trans person by their preferred pronoun when it makes sense.
In public, for instance.
I think he's right about that.
And when I look at someone like Blaire White being a great example, a rational trans person, I absolutely respect Blaire and will use Blaire's preferred pronoun of she and her.
I have no problem with that.
But if someone doesn't want to, don't ban them!
That's ridiculous.
And that's crossing the line.
It's way different from someone inciting violence.
Let's read on.
They say, Did I read that already?
Oh, yeah.
By comparison, according to the summary, the White House draft order asks the FCC to restrict the government's view of the good faith provision.
Under the draft proposal, the FCC will be asked to find that social media sites do not qualify for the good faith immunity if they remove or suppress content without notifying the user who posted the material, or if the decision is proven to be evidence of anti-competitive, unfair, or deceptive practices.
That's difficult.
I don't know how they're going to do this.
In its current form, the draft order could lead to significant questions about the role the FCC and FTC can play when it comes to interpreting and enforcing Section 230, an area they have previously left largely unaddressed.
The effort to draft the order has been ongoing for some time, the people said, and the proposal remains subject to change.
It makes no sense to involve the FCC here, said Barron Zoka, president of the libertarian-leaning Think Tank Tech Freedom.
They have rule-making authority but no jurisdiction.
They can't possibly want to be involved.
It would be an impossible position.
I think it's tough to say.
I don't know exactly how they solved this problem, but I don't know if this is the right way to do it.
But hey, I'm not surprised.
Trump's base is being ripped out from the internet and he knows it.
The attempt to right the order comes as the White House on Friday prepared to meet with a number of tech companies to discuss their approaches to detecting and responding to violent extremism.
The midday meeting is expected to involve five-minute presentations from the companies on their respective policies and projects, according to copies of an invitation obtained by CNN.
The presentations will be followed by a group discussion on technology and the company's roles in fighting signals of violence while respecting free speech.
Some people close to the tech industry expressed frustration that the White House seems to be trying to have it both ways, excorciating tech companies for allegedly censoring conservative speech, a claim that platforms vigorously dispute, while castigating them for failing to block enough violent or hateful content.
The internal inconsistency of this is outrageous, one of them said.
However, I will stress, banning Paul Joseph Watson, who has repeatedly condemned violence, makes no sense.
And then leaving up on Twitter, for instance, someone like Reza Aslan, makes no sense.
You want to ban Gavin McInnes, I get it.
Why didn't you ban Antifa accounts?
They're like, on Twitter, an account that brands themselves in Antifa is no different, in my opinion, than the Proud Boys.
They're street factions fighting each other.
I get it, they're different.
You know, you're gonna have people saying one side's better than the other.
That's not the point I'm making.
I'm saying, if two factions fight in the street, and you say, because they're fighting, we're banning them, Antifa's doing it too!
It doesn't make any sense.
So you know what?
Something needs to happen.
I don't know if this is the right way to do it.
But you know what?
Like I said, they were invited to the show, they said, we're fine, you know, we're doing our thing, and they didn't get it.
Well, this is the logical outcome.
And I said it was gonna happen.
Anyway, stick around.
Next segment will be tomorrow at 10am.
Thanks for hanging out.
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