Ocasio Cortez SLAMMED For Violating First Amendment, Rejects Federal Court Ruling
Ocasio Cortez SLAMMED For Violating First Amendment, Rejects Federal Court Ruling. Over the past few years Democrats, far left activists, and a First amendment institute have been in a legal battle with Donald Trump over his right to block people on Twitter.In now multiple rulings federal courts have decided that public officials can not block people as it would violate their first amendment rights. Trump has vowed to fight back and issued a challenge on an appeals court ruling. However, he did unblock many people following the court order.But Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has refused. She continues to reject the rulings of the court and in fact is using the exact same argument that Trump is using. AOC is currently being sued by a former Democrats and a republican house candidate and youtuber joey Salads.It seems to be just another "rules for the but not for me" scenario where a ruling won by leftists results in leftists refusing to abide by the rule they got put in place.
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A lawsuit was initiated against Trump several years ago.
He lost.
They said, you can't block people on Twitter anymore.
He appealed, he lost.
He's challenging another court ruling, and we have an update on Donald Trump's lawsuit from just a couple days ago.
But guess what?
This is backfiring on the left because now Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and some other Democrats have no choice but to unblock their critics.
But AOC is refusing and she's giving some pretty weak arguments.
Now something interesting happened.
Columbia University, the Knight Foundation, I believe it's the Knight Columbia, some journalistic enterprise, They put out a tweet a while ago saying you have to unblock people.
She didn't.
They've now sent an open letter saying your arguments are wrong, you've lost, and you must abide by the court rulings.
Which draws up this huge issue Of why you think you can sue the president, not her personally, and then cheer and celebrate when you win, and then refuse to play by the same rules.
It's a double standard and it can't exist.
So AOC must abide by this.
She's actually being sued by several people, including YouTuber and now congressional candidate Joey Salads.
Well, let's take a look at the latest update here from Newsweek.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez must unblock Twitter users because it is unconstitutional, First Amendment group tells Democrat.
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But let's read.
They say, AOC and President Donald Trump have at least one thing in common.
They like to block people on Twitter.
But a First Amendment foundation at Columbia University is advising the freshman New York Democrat to unblock users on her personal account because the act by a public official violates the U.S.
Constitution based on a recent court ruling involving Trump and an appeals court defending the ruling.
Now, before we move on, I want to point out this really interesting thing.
Trump and AOC are fighting the same fight right now, and strangely enough, they've done this in the past.
I had this stat, I don't know if it pulled up, but there was a stat that I had based on how often a politician sides with Trump's agenda.
And Ocasio-Cortez actually sided with Trump's agenda more than any other of the progressive Democrats, but not for the same reasons as Trump.
Notably, I don't know.
funding the government.
Trump said no, AOC said no for different reasons, but this is a common thing we see.
Perhaps it's because there's some kind of populist idea behind each, but one's more
left wing and one's more right wing.
I don't know.
Let's read on.
Newsweek says, While there may be reasonable restrictions that don't go to
the specific views that are being expressed on Twitter, at the end of the day, the
First Amendment prohibits public officials like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez from silencing critics
because of the views they're expressing.
Kerry DeSalle, a staff attorney for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University,
told Newsweek.
DeSalle is one of several legal experts from the New York School who signed a letter that was sent to the freshman Democrat on Wednesday warning her of the constitutional violation she's committing by blocking Twitter users because she disagrees with their views and criticism.
Now, of course, interestingly, AOC is trying to play the hate speech angle, saying it can lead to real consequences.
They must be banned.
But I don't see her arguing that same thing for Donald Trump, who's the president, who actually has serious security issues.
So there's a real problem here, that it's not just a rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me, but it's a double—it's twofold.
It's multiplying itself.
AOC believes she shouldn't have to unblock people because they're harassing her and it's her personal account.
Well, it's a similar argument Trump made.
But the Knight Institute said, no dice.
You talk about policy on your Twitter account, you don't get special treatment.
But then she talks about how hate speech and harassment leads to real threats, but you don't say that for Trump?
No?
Okay, well, let's read on.
They say, former Democratic New York State Lawmaker Dov Huykend and GOP New York Congressional hopeful Joseph Saladino are in the midst of separate federal lawsuits against Ocasio-Cortez for blocking them on the social media platform.
As of Thursday afternoon, both men confirmed to Newsweek they remain blocked.
This practice is unconstitutional, and we are riding in the hope of dissuading you from engaging in it, DeSalle and her colleagues wrote to Ocasio-Cortez.
Now here's the thing.
Ocasio-Cortez responded to the news, but we'll get to her tweets directly, where she tries playing this double standard game.
Let's read on a little bit more.
They say Ocasio-Cortez's office did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment.
A federal appeals court ruled last month that Trump cannot block users on Twitter, despite it being through his personal, real Donald Trump handle.
Because the digital platform is viewed as a public forum for officials.
The account is used, quote, to conduct official business and to interact with the public, the court ruled, rendering the president unable to bar the general public from accessing the information he disseminates.
The Knight Institute represents the plaintiffs in the case.
Wow, wait, whoa, really?
That's right.
Yes, actually, I have that pulled up.
I didn't know that that was, um...
The ongoing Trump thing was still with Knight.
So this is really interesting.
Knight is the group, actually, that has filed the suit.
Check this out.
On July 11th, 2017, the Knight Institute filed a lawsuit in federal court against President Trump and his aides for blocking seven people from the real Donald Trump Twitter account based on their criticism.
of his presidency and policies. They say, as of now, July 9th, 2019, in a 3-0 decision,
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's holding that
President Trump's practice of blocking critics from his Twitter account violates the First
Amendment. The government petitioned for a re-hearing en banc on August 23rd, 2019.
So that's the latest update, and I'll get to that. There's a lot going on here.
But I want to just stress, as we move into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's statements on the matter, I'm sick and tired of the double standard.
Why is it that they can call for banning people they don't like and talk about how hate speech is a problem, and then when the law comes down and says, fine, they refuse to play by the same rules?
Well, Trump unblocked many people, and my understanding is not everybody.
So he said, fine, but he's fighting back.
AOC said, I don't care, but it's the left that went after Trump.
Well, I will say the left is absolutely not unified, even the far left.
There are many disparate factions on the far left, and certainly the moderates are going to war with the far left Democrats.
This is more of a resistance side of the left going after Trump.
But AOC is one of the biggest critics of the Republicans and Trump, and it seems like she's avoided weighing in on this, specifically Because she's in the wrong.
So here's what we have.
Columbia University sent this tweet out saying, late yesterday, Knight Columbia sent this letter to AOC
urging her not to block Twitter users on the basis of viewpoint. She said, I have 5.2 million
followers. Less than 20 accounts are blocked for ongoing harassment, please. Zero are my
constituents. Harassment is not a viewpoint.
Some accounts, like the Daily Caller, posted fake photos of me and abused my comments to spread it.
No one is entitled to abuse. Sorry, AOC.
That's not abuse and it's not harassment.
Blocking a Democrat, a former Democrat, or current, and a House candidate, Joey Salads, because they criticize you is not harassment.
More importantly, The Daily Caller is a news outlet.
Sure, they're partisan.
Fine.
But now you're violating the press, not just your critics.
They are absolutely allowed to report on whatever they want.
I think there are some limitations, but for the most part, yeah.
Actually, no, I think they can publish basically anything, right?
Like even government secrets.
Journalism is protected under the First Amendment.
So why does AOC think she's even beyond speech and now moving into the grounds of the daily caller shouldn't be allowed to engage with her tweets?
That's a step over the line.
She said, people are free to speak whatever bigoted comments they like.
They do not have the right to force others to endure their harassment and abuse.
And this is the game we often see that I find so personally offensive.
You're not being harassed.
You're being criticized.
And you're a public official with 5 million followers.
Welcome to the real world.
It's an arena you chose to enter.
And one of the things that makes this country so great is that we can tell politicians like you to screw off.
And we can tweet at you all day, every day.
There are limits.
You can't send threats.
You can't incite others to violence.
But I can tell you whatever I want.
No.
Blocking Joey Salads is not stopping harassment and bigoted speech.
You're just blocking someone who's a critic of yourself because you can't stand it.
We cannot.
There's a reason why we have the First Amendment, okay?
Because the Founding Fathers understood we don't want to live in a world where you can't walk up to a politician and give him the finger.
No.
We are not a country of kings, okay?
We are a country of people.
For the people, by the people.
And you are just another person.
And you might not even be in office in 2020.
Maybe you'll get re-elected.
I don't know.
We will never, or at least we should resist at all costs, a future in which we are not allowed to criticize politicians, especially a news outlet.
So no, you don't get to claim, oh, but they're harassing me.
Well, here's what she says.
This is from back in May, when someone was talking about the issue of hate speech and things like that.
She says, what people don't, maybe do realize, is when organizations air these hateful messages, my life changes because of the flood of threats they inspire.
I've had mornings where I wake up to the first thing I do with my coffee is review photos of the men who want to hurt me.
I don't even get to see all of them.
Just the ones that have been flagged as particularly troubling.
It happens whenever Fox gets particularly aggressive and hateful too.
Young interns have to constantly hear hateful messages, far beyond disagreement from people who don't even rep.
Now, that's wrong, okay?
Harassment is wrong.
The problem is, Ocasio-Cortez and many people in her tribe, whatever you want to call it, Conflate criticism with harassment.
Maybe it's because they're just soft and fragile and overly sensitive people who haven't, you know, actually seen the real world.
So when someone says a mean word, they say, help, help, I'm being harassed.
Or it's likely they probably get some really, really nasty phone calls.
However, if any of these phone calls actually crossed the line into illegality, she works for the government.
They would go after these people.
Many of us who don't have that luxury of government security details and government protections have We have to endure the brunt of this kind of speech all day every day.
But you know what?
You very rarely ever hear me talking about it, and I have a combined... I don't have as many followers as she does, but I've got, you know what, like 1.6 million across Twitter, YouTube, and like Instagram, Facebook.
So it's a lot.
And I get a lot of comments, and I get a lot of tweets, and they are horrible.
And you know what I do?
I ignore them.
I ignore them.
People tweet at me all day and night.
They respond to my tweets all day and night.
So be it.
I'm not even a public official.
So look, Trump shouldn't be blocking people, okay?
And neither should she.
But she says this.
All of this is to say that words matter and can have consequences for safety.
For those who believe in quote free speech, whose free speech do you believe in?
Because some folks using free speech to defend racism are also supporting folks passing laws to allow running over protesters.
That seems absolutely absurd and I have no idea what she's talking about.
But I believe in free speech for everybody.
Even the people I don't like.
Even the people who want to, you know, they want to shriek Orange Man bad all day every night, and it makes me, it's so annoying when I go to Trump's tweets and I see it, but you know what?
They're allowed to.
I don't really get that upset by it, but all of this stuff backfires.
It backfires over and over again.
And I want to show you some instances where her idea of policing speech won't work, But I want to make sure I get to the latest news about Donald Trump.
See, here's the thing.
Trump and AOC, they're fighting the same fight, whether they want to acknowledge it or not.
Donald Trump challenges a ruling that prevents him from blocking Twitter critics like Chrissy Teigen and Rosie O'Donnell as DOJ officials argue it's a personal account.
That's literally what Ocasio-Cortez argued as well.
But the Knight Institute made it clear.
In their open letter, they say this.
In pending litigation, your attorneys have argued that the AOC account is not subject to the First Amendment because it is a personal account.
As we have explained above, that characterization is incorrect.
Further, while we understand that you have another account that is nominally your official one, the fact remains that you use the AOC account as an extension of your office.
Notably, the Second Circuit rejected President Trump's argument that his account is a personal one even though he has other accounts at POTUS and at White House.
So guess what?
are nominally official.
The court wrote, quote, the First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes
a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise
open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees.
They go on to say we urge you to unblock these people.
So guess what?
Trump is wrong too.
Trump is wrong and so is AOC.
And that's okay.
You know why?
Well, Trump did unblock a lot of people, and he's taking the issue to court.
AOC, however, is being sued because she is refusing.
Now, I'll admit, Trump is also—my understanding is Trump hasn't unblocked everybody.
But he's unblocked some people.
I could be wrong.
So at least Trump's given a little bit, and he's taking it to the courts to try and win.
But in the end, as it stands right now, both Trump and AOC need to unblock everybody.
That's true for all politicians, and I believe even public officials.
Let me read a little bit into what Trump is doing.
They say in court papers filed late on Friday by the U.S.
Justice Department, Trump sought a rehearing by the full 2nd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, calling the 3-0 decision fundamentally misconceived.
Both Twitter, Inc.
and the White House have declined to comment.
Now, here's the thing.
I have talked to some lawyers about this and what I've heard for the most part it is it's a terrible ruling and they're surprised it's happening this way because Twitter ultimately controls who can and can't go on this platform.
What's interesting about this debate is that Twitter can ban You.
And then you can't engage with Trump.
So how does Trump create a public forum for everybody, but a private company can keep them out?
It's like, if you brought it to the real world, it would be as though Trump was holding a rally, but a private company stopped you from entering, thus preventing you from participating in the democratic process.
I can't speak to the legality of that.
I mean, it sounds like the courts are saying that's fine.
To me, it's disconcerting.
Everyone should be allowed to engage with the president in a conversation, And as technology permits.
At a Trump rally, you can't sit down and yell at him.
He can't hear you.
On Twitter, though, people can respond.
So everyone should be allowed to engage in this process.
The argument we hear from AOC is, but they're not her constituents.
And that's another scary argument as far as I'm concerned.
I don't care what your district is.
You're a federal politician in the United States of America.
You are not immune from criticism from other people who live in this country.
Not only that, anybody can go to your district and just, you know, well, not anybody, but people can move in and out.
You know, in this country, you can freely move between states.
If you are a politician in the U.S.
at the federal level, and you are enacting policies that impact everyone you are, then everyone has a right to criticize you.
If AOC votes yes on a law that will pass federal firearm restrictions or something like that, well then someone in Montana has a right to criticize her for doing that and all other politicians.
So yes, they still have a right to criticize you.
And I refuse to live in a country where I can't criticize a politician.
That makes America so great.
But let's do this.
I've got a couple things I want to show you about how it all just backfires.
And if you were smart, you would stop pushing these suits.
The Knight Foundation filed the suit in 2017, and it hit the left.
Perhaps we should just respect the First Amendment.
Admittedly, Trump shouldn't have blocked people.
They filed the suit against Trump, and now you reap what you sow.
The interesting thing here is that we're facing court precedent.
Before the suit came down, a lot of people said Trump absolutely has a right to block people.
Now that the courts have ruled, you know, first the federal court, then the appeals court, well then, there you go.
Everyone's gotta play by the same rules.
But as we see, this old story, nine months ago, PayPal unfairly lumps Antifa with the Proud Boys.
Well, what did you think was going to happen?
When you pass these laws, it will be applied on everyone.
But these, you know, people like AOC believe they have special privileges.
That the rules are only for everyone else, and not for them.
Now I'll admit, I dug through Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter history to try and see what her opinion was on Donald Trump blocking people, and it seems like she didn't really have one.
Because I think, in the end, Ocasio-Cortez completely agrees with Donald Trump.
Trump's been involved in the lawsuit before she was, and it was only because of Trump's suit she now is challenging people.
You know what that means?
It means that AOC and Trump agree.
She agrees with the president.
She is siding with the president.
Congratulations, AOC.
You are now an ardent defender of Donald Trump's Twitter policy.
Why?
Because it benefits her too.
And this is the nature of power.
You know, these people on the left can scream and cry all night about Trump doing something
wrong until they want that same power.
Then AOC jumps right up to defend Trump's position.
Now is she tweeting out, you know, Trump should be elected?
No, no, no, no.
She's arguing literally the same things.
They are standing side by side in different courts arguing the same things.
Well, I'm sorry.
If you want to sue the president, you got to play by the rules, too.
And again, AOC isn't the one suing him, but...
You know, she's on the left, and this is it.
The law is the law, the precedent is precedent, and there you go.
Will Chamberlain responded saying, Sorry AOC, Second Circuit law is clear.
If you use your account for government business, you can't block anyone.
You blocked only 20 accounts.
You think they were harassing you?
Doesn't matter.
You don't think you're above the law, do you?
Well, apparently she does.
And she is being sued as of last month.
The last thing I want to say on the issue of free speech and censorship is How these policies actually impact people.
Because sure enough, we can see this story from Rico just a couple weeks ago.
The algorithms that detect hate speech online are biased against black people.
They say a new study shows that AI models are 1.5 times more likely to flag tweets written by African Americans compared to other tweets.
This is significant.
Because when you lead a campaign, when you sue, when you take activist action, as the left likes to say, it will be the marginalized voices that are silenced first, those with the least amount of power.
They have a right to speak too.
And that's the point all of us free speech people have been trying to make.
You are going to take rights away from people when you do this.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the perfect example of the left progressive ideology backfiring on itself.
They go after Trump, they call him all the names in the book, they sue him, they win.
Who gets hurt by it?
Why?
None other than a woman of color.
A progressive, socialist woman of color is also facing the brunt of the actions taken by the left.
I'll end by saying one thing.
We're putting on an event in the Philadelphia area, and we played by every rule they asked for.
Every rule.
More female speakers than male, proportional people of color, headliner, famed activist who opposes bigotry.
And then the activists launched a harassment campaign.
And I differentiate between protest and harassment campaign because they're sending threats.
And guess who was disproportionately affected?
Why?
It was the female speakers who are concerned about their safety and security, and they don't have the luxury of being, on average, taller, stronger, and for whatever reason, they're the ones who are being disproportionately affected.
And that's the left.
And we see it here as well.
So perhaps fairness Free expression, free inquiry is the way to move forward so that a woman of color like Ocasio-Cortez won't be subjected to what she views as harassment.
If the left didn't sue Trump, AOC could continue blocking whoever she wanted.
You were reaping what you have sown.
I will leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up at youtube.com slash timcastnews at 6 p.m.
It is a different channel, and thanks for hanging out.
I'll see you there.
Donald Trump has caught the leaker.
Or a leaker.
Maybe there's more than one.
I honestly have no idea.
But in the story of the New York Times, we learn that Madeline Westerhout is stepping down and she has been with Trump since day one.
I have to imagine a lot of people are heartbroken to discover that she was leaking private details about the administration and his family to the press.
Now here's what's really interesting about this.
We'll go through the story.
Well what truly fascinated me when I heard is that just what like two days ago three four days ago Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire said did Trump suggest nuking hurricanes to identify leakers where he believed the most likely scenario was that Trump was purposefully putting out ridiculous information to see who would share it.
We'll get into this but basically I made a video talking about the concept of coloring the water where When you have three cups, and they're all full of water, and there's water at the bottom of each cup, you don't know which one's leaking, you put specific colors in each one, and then whatever color on the bottom, you know, emerges, you know where the leak came from.
So the general idea is, did Trump purposefully say something ridiculous in front of this woman?
That way, when it went to the press, he was like, it was her.
Now look, look, I don't want to play conspiracies here.
Well, I don't know what's happening, but I gotta say it is a tremendous coincidence that Michael Knowles was able to suggest this.
And at the very least, I will say this to you, Michael, if... Go buy a lottery ticket.
Go buy a lottery ticket right now, because if you were wrong, you guessed right.
You know what I mean?
Like, the possibility that Trump wasn't intentionally doing it, but then here we go a few days later, and the leaker has been outed.
So, uh, Knowles nailed it.
Whether it is true or not, it was in the right direction.
You know what I mean?
Whatever.
Go buy a lottery ticket because you nailed those numbers.
Well, let's read this story about Madeleine Wester out, and, uh, it's actually, I gotta admit, I'm sure there's probably a lot of people who are really sad to hear this because she's been with Trump for so long.
Before we do, however, In the description below, there's a link for a new channel, TimCastIRL.
That means in real life.
Because my van is nearing completion, and I will be traveling about the country doing, you know, honestly, whatever.
Who knows what I'll be doing?
But it'll be a lot of behind the scenes footage, it'll be driving around.
That's the goal for now.
Subscribe to this channel, it's also a backup channel, but it's gonna be more field reporting type stuff, if you like that.
The link is in the description below.
But let's read the news from the New York Times.
President Trump's personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president's gatekeeper since day one of his administration, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said.
Now, I don't know if these other anonymous sources or two people, are they, are there more leakers?
Or is it, you know, I guess I'll say this, I have no idea how you get some people who
can share information about what happened so that the New York Times knows without there
being more leakers.
Unless of course Trump said, hey, go tell the press.
Westerhout's abrupt and unexpected departure came after Mr. Trump learned on Thursday that she had to indiscreetly share details about his family and the Oval Office operations she was part of at a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters staying at hotels near Bedminster, New Jersey, during the President's working vacation, according to one of the people speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House personnel issues.
So, it seems like… There are still more leakers?
But again, again, it's possible that this anonymous source may have been authorized to do it, but it seems like this woman certainly wasn't.
The breach of trust meant immediate action.
Ms.
Westerhout, one of the people familiar with her departure said, was now considered a separated employee and would not be allowed to return to the White House on Friday.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Mrs. Westerhout did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
They say Westerhout, a former Republican National Committee aide, also worked for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, reportedly cried on election night because she was upset over Mr. Trump's victory.
That's weird.
Why hire her?
As such, the president at first viewed her warily as a late convert to his cause who could not be trusted.
But some of Mr. Trump's top officials, like John F. Kelly, Who has since left as Chief of Staff, tried to turn Ms.
Westerhout into an ally who could help them manage Oval Office traffic.
They hoped that she could block individuals from reaching the President on the phone or in person, and that she would report back on the calls and meetings that made it through.
Ms.
Westerhout's power in the White House came almost entirely from proximity.
She is not a name-brand White House aide, and has never appeared on television, unless it was an accidental shot of her hovering behind her boss.
Well, while she was not a decision-maker, she enjoyed unique access to Trump.
So it would seem that they brought her in specifically to help with, you know, she has skills, right?
But they were trying to convince her that it was the right thing to do.
I gotta say, it doesn't sound complete to me.
I can't imagine that the people in the White House were that Stupid?
To bring on someone who cried when Trump won from day one thinking that she would do a good job when in actuality it seems like she may have been working against him this whole time.
She also often shared snapshots on her private Instagram account of her life in the West Wing, including travel to rallies and Trump properties, and in one post she joked that she had been responsible for printing out a piece of paper that Mr. Trump held up and referred to at a public event.
So she's out.
I gotta admit, it sounds like there's more leakers.
You know, Trump has had a pretty rough administration with losing a lot of people.
People have been quitting, people have been resigning.
You end up with people like Scaramucci who worked there for what, like 11 days and then got fired?
For my company, when there's a problem, I take responsibility.
So I'm going to say this.
I have no problem saying I think Trump has a responsibility to bring on better staff and do a better job.
But I will also admit, I find this kind of sad because it really seemed like Trump didn't trust her but was willing to, you know, extend like an olive branch and give her an opportunity.
And now it sounds like this whole time she had no interest in being loyal to the administration or to the president.
That's kind of sad.
It's kind of sad.
I wonder how Trump feels about it, I really do.
I know the left won't try and act like Trump is a callous and evil man, but you gotta wonder if this woman, who is sitting outside his office for several years now, and then it turns out she was the one, or at least one of the people leaking information, that's a bit of a bummer.
But I want to highlight this, so I can give props to Michael Knowles, because, you know, Right now, the Madeline Westerhout is trending on Twitter.
And I thought, OK, what's the big news, right?
And she resigned.
But it's this.
If you're not familiar, Trump nuking the hurricane thing is one of the stupidest stories I've ever heard.
And that may be intentional.
It may be intentionally stupid.
Axios published a story where they said Trump entertained the idea of nuking a hurricane before it formed.
Now, a lot of people have asked that question.
And I will say this.
I don't think it's a stupid question.
I just, you know, think the average person doesn't understand how hurricanes work.
Or that they're actually the size of, like, states.
You know what I mean?
Like, there's a lot to consider.
And most people, I think, would overestimate the power of a nuclear weapon.
Or actually, in many circumstances, underestimate.
But the point is, I'm not surprised someone like Trump, who doesn't know much about, you know, the blast yield of a nuclear bomb or the formation of a hurricane, would suggest.
Is that possible?
But the story is stupid because it shouldn't be news in the first place.
Who cares?
Unless...
Trump was purposefully trying to find a juicy story that he knew the media would latch onto.
I'm going to say I don't think it's true.
I can't call Michael Knowles wrong though.
So here's what he said.
Michael said there's three possibilities.
The media lied.
Trump actually said it.
Trump is trying – let me just read it.
He said, The third possibility seems most likely – that Trump raised the strange idea to ferret out leakers.
For years, the president has invaded against leakers as traitors and cowards, vowing to find out who they are.
How could a disgruntled staffer resist spilling news of a prospective nuclear attack on storm clouds?
Just this past February, the White House suffered its worst leak yet when a staffer sent the president's private schedules to journalists.
Is it mere coincidence that Axios broke that story as well?
Maybe not.
The president has a leaker in his hands.
Perhaps his nuclear rhetoric targets not any sensational deluge, but the steady drip, drip, drip of damaging press.
I still have an optimism bias, right, that I can't imagine Trump actually planned this out and it worked.
But when I see, you know, I can say at the very least, Good guess on Michael Knoll's part that this may be the intention and it may just appear this way.
It may be entirely coincidental that Trump, you know, that the story came out and then this person got, you know, forced out because she was leaking.
But we don't know if the story is true or fake, right?
That's the most important thing.
Did Trump really offer to nuke a hurricane?
Maybe he did.
Axios claims he did.
They say they have a source.
But it's also possible, and considering the leaker was just outed, that Daily Wire nailed it.
That Trump purposefully put out this ridiculous story, said something ridiculous, conveyed it to his assistant, who may have overheard, and there it was.
And the people he was talking to, he knew, were loyal.
So when the story came out, that's the only person it could have been.
Now I will add a little, a little fun addendum to this video, but we'll wrap it up soon, in that April Ryan suggested, I'm gonna, I'm, we're going there.
She suggests, CNN had a segment where they suggested Trump wanted to nuke hurricanes because they form near Africa.
That's where we are as a nation.
First of all, why, Axios, did you think it was newsworthy to talk about Trump nuking a hurricane?
I don't care.
It's a dumb story.
But anything to make the president look stupid.
In reality, it may have been 4D chess.
You know, there's a lot of people who go back and forth on whether or not Trump is playing 4D chess, which is a joke, based on 3D chess, which is chess with three bo- like it's like an extra dimension.
And then 4D chess is like, through time and space, I guess.
But you know what?
This doesn't prove anything, but it'll absolutely fuel the fans of Trump saying, we know Trump is playing this game, we know he's doing this.
And I gotta admit, I'm curious as, like, when I read the story from Michael Knowles, I didn't understand why he thought that was most likely, that Trump was trying to weed out leakers.
And I love the concept of coloring the water, it's such a cool visual analogy that you can easily understand.
But then it happens.
So I'll say there will be a lot of coincidence theorists who are just going to say, you know, it has nothing to do with each other.
But I think if people are readers of the Daily Wire, they're going to say, dude called it.
Dude called it straight up.
So anyway, just to end on that last point about CNN, we have a media that wants to put out ridiculous stories.
After the ridiculous story comes out, you get someone claiming that Trump is targeting Africa.
And it's the most insane thing ever.
And it's possible that Trump understan- Well, no, hold on.
Trump does understand that.
He knows absolutely what the media is all about.
He plays them like a fiddle.
And that's why I start looking at this and I'm going...
Did Trump do this on purpose?
I know he plays the media like a fiddle.
I made several videos about it where I got tricked.
There was a thing where, you know, he was arguing with the squad, and he put out these tweets about going back to their countries, and I was like, ah, you know what, man, this is exactly what I'm talking about with Trump's rhetoric.
And it is.
I don't like the rhetoric.
But then later I realized what he did.
He forced the Democrats to rally around the far left, damaging their image.
It was clever.
He knew the media would take the bait, and it worked.
If that's true, and even Ezra Klein of Vox said Trump does this, then I gotta lean towards Daily Wire was right.
Trump knows a ridiculous story will get picked up in the press.
He seeds ridiculous stories to select people when the ridiculous, you know, so he's got ridiculous story one, two, and three, and when ridiculous story two pops up, he says, that was you.
So, you know, I don't wanna make this super long.
I'll end by saying, If Trump really does know how to play the media, and that's been his career for a long time, I think it's easier to believe that this story about the hurricanes, or some story, was put out on purpose because he found Valika, and she's out.
Stick around, next segment will be coming up at 1pm on this channel, and I will see you all then.
The left is swimming in a sea of fake news, and this is another sign of an interesting phenomenon happening where it seems the left and the right are kind of switching places.
We've talked about how, you know, 10, 20 years ago, it was the moralistic right that wanted to censor things and didn't want, you know, naughty speech, and now it's the left.
And I've mentioned, I said something, I think I maybe said it in a video, where, you know, You have a bunch of smart, critical thinkers who develop a space and say, we want to talk about these things, and it becomes cool, forward-thinking, progressive.
Then a bunch of other people start coming in who don't really understand those concepts, and then eventually they outnumber the original creators who then move.
I don't know what the phenomenon is called, but it's been talked about before, but it may be happening in politics.
All I can really say is...
We're not coming to a point where moderates and comedians are being called far-right.
Dave Chappelle did a comedy special on Netflix, and they're slamming him as bigoted and all of these awful things, but Dave Chappelle is not right-wing.
So I think, you know, in maybe five or ten years, we will have a cool, hip, mainstream right wing.
Like the left was.
Take a look at this story from the Daily Wire.
What we're going to focus on today is how the left swims in overt fake news.
Occupy Democrats shares wildly misleading memes about Trump to millions of followers.
That's right.
Occupy Democrats, which is rated a conspiracy fake news website by many third-party rating agencies, or at least NewsGuard.
I believe NewsGuard gives them a bad rating.
They pump out all of this fake news, and they do it on purpose.
Personally, I think they do it for money.
I don't think it's necessarily political.
But take a look at this meme.
Trump, quote, I'm the king of Israel, I'm the chosen one.
Underneath it, the Antichrist will pretend that he is the son of Almighty God.
Except Trump didn't say that.
Now, you can criticize Trump for bolstering the people who do praise him like that, but the I am the chosen one, it's not a single quote.
They put some quotes.
That, it's not true.
Now here's the important thing.
We're going to break down the fake news they're pumping about Trump, pumping out about Trump, but I want to show you this.
This is from a study on hyper-partisan news from News Whip.
They say, Top Facebook pages for political posts.
The top Facebook pages for mainstream political content were Fox News and Occupy Democrats, by a considerable distance.
Both publishers have driven nearly 100 million engagements on their Facebook native content for 2018 so far.
So this is for last year.
Most of these pages are the Facebook pages of publishers, though one notable exception is the page of Donald Trump, which has almost 17 million engagements on content on the Facebook page for the year so far.
So the point is...
The right gets most of their news from Fox News.
Fox News has its problems.
They're biased.
They lean right on many, many things.
They are getting a ton of flak now from the president for going more moderate.
Occupy Democrats, however, that's where the left is getting its news on Facebook.
And to me, that's terrifying.
You can criticize Fox News for being biased.
I have no problem with that.
But Occupy Democrats is fake.
It's not real.
So there's a serious problem now, where you have regular people, centrists, moderate, right-wingers, watching Fox News, and some with a critical eye, and saying, well, you know, it's biased, I get it.
But then you have people on the left who just blindly believe fake memes, and don't take my word for it.
How about Snopes?
Snopes is not a right-wing group.
And they said, did Trump call himself the Chosen One or King of Israel or the Second Coming?
And they said, it's mostly false.
So here's what we'll do.
Let's dig into these stories, and we'll start by reading into this and how this is fake news, because for those that are familiar, Trump was joking when he said the Chosen One thing.
It was a rhetorical device.
Before we dive into it, though, do this.
YouTube.com slash Timcast IRL.
It is a new channel.
After this weekend, I will be in the van and will begin producing on-the-road content behind the scenes.
On a new channel.
And what's really crazy, and I don't know, maybe it's a bad thing, there's 43,500 subscribers already on one video!
So, YouTube might be looking at the channel and being like, something doesn't add up.
There's too many subscribers here.
But, this is gonna be, not only is it, you know, am I trying to diversify my channels and have different content in the event one channel gets taken down, I don't know how that works, but this is gonna be behind-the-scenes stuff.
So, YouTube.com slash TimCastIRL, but let's read the story.
The Daily Wire says that Occupy Democrats is pumping fake news to all these people on the left, but they don't realize this is the biggest source.
They say the second meme shows the same photo of President Trump, but reads differently.
They say, today Trump promoted the idea that he is king of Israel.
That's technically true.
Retweeted that he is the second coming of God.
That is technically true.
Then said he's the chosen one.
This isn't funny anymore, the president of the free world is mentally ill.
They go on to say, combined, these memes have been shared 36,819 times, and liked 41,000 times.
According to their official website, Occupy Democrats, founded in 2012, is a political organization and news website that provided an online counterbalance to the Republicans' Tea Party.
Since then, it has grown into the largest and most active community of Democratic voters in the world, and has spearheaded the resistance to President Trump and his radical supporters.
Here's the problem.
These memes are misleading, and even Snopes has ruled them mostly false.
Now, let's jump down to Snopes, and we'll take Snopes' word for it, because they're right, it is mostly false.
First, Trump said he was the chosen one.
They go on to say, Trump's chosen one, aside, was likely tongue-in-cheek, not a sincere profession of any belief in his own messianic status.
Separately, in a series of tweets, Trump quoted a radio host.
Who claimed that people in Israel admired the U.S.
president so greatly that it was as though Trump were the king of Israel or the second coming of Christ.
Trump never himself articulated any such belief.
What's really fascinating about how Snopes framed this is that I would have expected Snopes to actually side against the president by saying, while Trump didn't really say it, he was pushing the idea in quotes on his own Twitter account and he didn't have to blah blah blah.
Look, Trump quoting this guy is obviously Trump being a braggart and being boastful, but it's not true to say that Trump said this.
I mentioned this in a video a couple days ago.
There was a guy, I was out at a bar, and there was a guy who was like, can you believe it?
Trump said he was the king of Israel and second coming.
He called himself the chosen one.
And other people were like, I don't want to hear it.
I don't care.
But this guy was adamant.
And I'm sitting there thinking like, I'm not going to engage with this guy, but he's wrong.
And then you see how this affects people.
You know, one of the videos I did the other day about the escalation of Trump derangement syndrome, how you constantly have these stories, you know, pushed by, say, Occupy Democrats that are just not real.
And it makes people live in this fake reality where they really do view Donald Trump as this nightmarish, evil monster, demon from the depths of hell taking over, when in reality, Trump's just a boorish, crass old man.
That's like, that's Trump.
You can criticize his demeanor and his behavior, but when it comes to policy, he's very much like any other politician.
I'm pretty sure he's deported less people than Obama.
So, you know, I've got criticisms of the foreign policy stuff, because I'm, you know, I'm the hippie anti-war guy.
But that's why, you know, when I look at Trump, I think I have some kind of protective shield when it comes to fake news.
I don't think—you know, I always try to warn people.
Everyone is susceptible to manipulation.
Don't think you're—I'm not.
I can be manipulated the same as anybody else.
The moment—when you think you're invincible is when they get you.
And this is what happens.
These Occupy Wall Street people—I'm sorry, Occupy Democrats people—I think that's where it comes from.
really do believe that they're smarter.
They believe Fox News is fake news instead of actually engaging with both platforms.
So they'll only ingest Occupy Democrats to the tune of hundreds, a hundred plus million.
They won't watch Fox.
Here's the problem.
Fox is a news company.
They produce factual information with the conservative opinion.
Occupy Democrats just makes it up.
They purposefully misframe and mislead you.
So going back to my point earlier, the people who are critical thinkers see this and get angry and say, I don't want to engage with this.
You go to Fox News and you go, well, it's biased, but at least it's real.
And this creates a dramatic separation.
Those who don't think critically and investigate, and those who do, and look, admittedly, there are people who watch Fox News who aren't critical thinkers.
But now it brings me to the final point.
We don't work for you.
Fox News' Neil Cavuto rebukes Trump for slamming the network.
Yes, because Donald Trump keeps going on about how Fox News, what are you doing?
They're going too far left.
Listen, Fox News saw what I saw.
They saw a hole in the market.
When Fox News was created, my understanding is that it was targeting a hole in the market.
There was no news for conservatives.
And so they said, let's make it.
And a lot of people didn't like it for a long time.
I didn't.
But here's the thing.
As the left continues its downward spiral into fake news and chasing after occupied Democrats, Fox News realizes there are people like me—former Democrats—moderate—well, I don't want to say former because I'm actively supporting Democrats, but you know what I mean.
Like, I'm being pushed away.
People who are now moderate and conflicted on who they're actually going to be voting for.
You then see Fox News embrace more moderate lefty types.
They got Donna Brazile.
Why?
Because she was the status quo Democrat.
They know as the left goes crazy, they can move a little to the left and expand their audience dramatically.
And you know what?
It's working.
And it's good, it's good.
Look, I think Fox News is biased, but we have a serious problem if these are the two outlets people are consuming.
Occupy Democrats, conspiracy fake nonsense, it's like left-wing Infowars, right?
So, and then you have Fox News, a mainstream news outlet well-funded and certified as credible.
What do we do?
You know, honestly, I don't know what the solution is.
Because there are people who just don't engage.
And I'll tell you, you know, they constantly talk about YouTube radicalization.
No, no, let me explain to you why political YouTube exists.
It's simple.
The people who are interested in certain ideas and can't find it anywhere else find political YouTube.
And that's why there's likely to be an overlap.
There's no real agreement on a lot of the politics between channels.
I hold a lot of, you know, progressive and liberal views and some conservative views.
That makes me, you know, kind of moderate center-left.
And there are certainly people who might agree with me on some issues who are staunch conservatives.
And there are certainly people who are progressives.
Who actually agree with me on issues.
Actually, one of the most interesting things is that it turned out in a conversation I did live with David Pakman, I'm to the left of David Pakman on civil rights issues.
Because he believes that some protections, notably for religious groups, shouldn't be.
And I think they should.
I think people have a right to practice their religion, Muslim, Jewish, whatever it may be, and he argued that he doesn't think so.
So, look, political YouTube is not a unified sphere of the same opinion.
It's not a pipeline.
It makes no sense.
If you watch someone like David, you'll hear an argument against protecting religions, and if you watch my content, you'll see an argument for.
But if David is a more progressive guy all around, how does that pipeline idea make sense?
Political YouTube is built upon people who look to the mainstream and say they're not talking about the issues I care about.
So what happens then is people like us, who naturally talk about these ideas, will build an audience.
But more importantly, it's built upon the anti-establishment for one big reason.
These Occupy Democrat people do not search news.
They don't.
For the most part.
You know, to a certain extent.
And of course, there are people who watch Fox who don't search news either, but here's the thing.
When Occupy Democrats puts up this meme, they just share it.
They just share this fake image, fake information.
This quote doesn't exist.
And it's got, what, 3.3 thousand comments?
12 thousand shares.
Right here it says, on Facebook.
They don't fact-check it.
They don't try to figure out what actually happened.
They don't think critically and they don't engage.
Thus, they are extremely susceptible to fake news.
These same people, I imagine, would have been moralistic right-wingers in the 90s.
People who just hear something and believe it.
Well, now we have YouTube.
We have the intellectual dark web.
We have a contrarian section of academics and thinkers.
And so, when you hear Trump say this, you can search YouTube and try and find a channel.
And guess what?
People find my channel and others.
Or I say something like, hey, let's take a look at the source of this.
Whoa, we have a left-wing outlet fact-checking it, saying it's not true.
Therefore, you know it's not true.
It's really not true.
There's a reason why I like using Snopes and left-wing outlets like Vox and BuzzFeed.
If a left-wing biased source agrees it's fake, it's definitely fake.
Now, when you have, for instance, The Daily Wire, come out and say Occupy Democrats is fake, and they're the only ones calling it out, people will say, yeah, but they're biased.
Well, what happens when you have Snopes and The Daily Wire together saying the same thing?
Well, then you know you're being fed fake news.
Here's the problem.
The people who are going to watch this video are not Occupy Democrats' audience.
You know why?
Because the people who would share that meme have no interest in fact-checking, investigating, or doing a simple Google search.
And thus, we can see one aspect of the culture war and how this divide is taking place.
People who are more likely to be moderate or on the right are actually watching channels like mine and challenging the news they hear.
And people on the left just hear it and believe it.
So when you realize that they're getting all of their news from a crackpot conspiracy website, don't be surprised when they're just plain wrong.
When they're wrong.
There's an agenda driving a lot of this news.
And there's ignorance driving a lot of this news.
And if the left is getting their information from Occupy, Occupy Democrats, I'll tell you what the other result is.
They're going to be left-wing grifters.
Look, they exist.
I hate using the word because everybody accuses everybody of being a grifter, but I'm not going to accuse anybody directly.
They're absolutely people who push an opinion hoping to get clicks to make money.
The problem is, when most people live in a conspiracy crackpot world of Occupy Democrats, their confirmation bias will be towards fake news.
Then you'll have personalities who run a business and say, that's what the audience wants, we're going to side with the audience.
And then they're going to start pumping out ridiculous and absurd fake news, because Occupy Democrats is on top.
I don't know what the solution is.
I don't know how you make people think critically.
I really don't.
I'm not here to run defense for Fox News, but I absolutely have to point out the facts.
According to this study by Newswhip, and there may be others, this may just be one study, Fox News gets the most, and I believe the metrics are sound, I mean, it's just numbers.
Fox News gets the most traffic, and so does Occupy Democrats.
That means the right is receiving partisan news, it's unfortunate, and the left is receiving conspiracy crackpot nonsense.
I don't know.
I guess we're doomed.
Whatever.
Stick around!
Next segment will be coming up at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCast.
It is a different channel.
And I will see you all there.
I always start these videos by saying the MeToo movement has done some really important things.
A lot of creepy, disgusting, awful men have been removed from positions of power by the MeToo movement, and that is a good thing.
In fact, it's an amazing thing.
But there has been some backfiring.
The backfiring isn't as bad, necessarily, but hey, look, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
In this instance, we can see study after study showing that men are now refusing to work with women.
They don't want to hire women.
And we have another story.
This one from The Guardian.
Men now avoid women at work.
Another sign we're being punished for Me Too.
You know, being punished?
Here's the thing.
There's a fear over false accusations.
No one is punishing anyone else.
They're being more skittish and more cautious.
But because you want everything, you call it punishment.
Here's the thing.
If you want creepy... In the workplace, okay?
There is a dynamic between men and women.
It's different between men and men.
And it's one thing I've highlighted in many of these videos.
The best example, for those that aren't familiar with the point, is that a guy can talk about another guy's looks and pat him on the shoulder with no problem.
He can't do that with a woman.
A guy can say, wow, you're looking great, man.
That's a fantastic outfit.
And it can be taken very differently if it's a man and a woman or a woman and a man.
Get it?
So the point is, no one's punishing you, but this is the reality of life.
Men and women are different, and if women want to be protected, don't be surprised when men start behaving differently.
And, you know, Jordan Peterson said, we'll see what happens between men and women working together in the workplace, but if you think it's punishment that a man says, I'm gonna back away and give you space and not, you know, Well, that's what you asked for, for the most part.
So let's read this story.
They say a new study has found US men appear to be following Mike Pence's lead.
Maybe they're angry that Me Too ever happened.
No, that's insane.
But before we get started, I'm going to do something I rarely do, ever.
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Let's get back to the news.
The Guardian reports, It looks like Mike Pence is quite the trendsetter.
The U.S.
Vice President famously refuses to have dinner alone with any woman who isn't his wife.
And now working men across corporate America appear to be following his lead.
No, it's just a phenomenon triggered by a fear that a man will either offend a woman or be falsely accused.
Consider that maybe the reason men are avoiding one-on-one meetings with women is because women said, we don't like this behavior, and men said, I'm gonna back away.
I'm gonna back away.
A new study due to be published in the journal Organizational Dynamics has found that following the Me Too movement, men are significantly more reluctant to interact with their female colleagues.
A few highlights from the research include 27% of men avoid one-on-one meetings with female co-workers.
Yep, that's right.
Almost a third of men are terrified to be alone in a room with a woman.
For two reasons.
Either you could potentially offend the woman, or she could lie.
And consider this.
It is infinitely more likely, for many people, that the woman will just be made uncomfortable and then say, this guy said something inappropriate, and the guy will get in trouble.
Again, point.
A guy could walk up to another guy and say, hey man, you're looking good, you been hitting the gym?
He walks up to a woman and says, oh wow, you're looking good, you hitting the gym?
Guess which one gets you in trouble?
21% of men said they would be reluctant to hire women for a job that would require close interaction, such as business travel.
I can't blame them.
Because you don't know what you could say that would be offensive to a woman.
And every woman is different.
Some women will be okay with it, some won't.
And there's still a risk of a meet-two circumstance with a guy, but it's much less likely.
If you can't tell what a woman will be okay with, then what are you supposed to do?
This is the logical conclusion.
19% of men would be reluctant to hire an attractive woman.
Now, that one seems kind of weird to me.
I don't know what attractive has to do with it, but let's carry on.
Because apparently, women had the same reaction.
The data above was collected in early 2019 from workers across a wide range of industries.
Researchers had asked the same questions, albeit to different people and with more of a focus on future expectations.
In early 2018, Just as MeToo was in full swing, and depressingly, things appear to have gotten worse.
In 2018, for example, 15% of men said they would be more reluctant to hire women for jobs that require close interpersonal interactions with women, compared to 21% in 2019.
And there it is.
The main takeaway.
The MeToo backlash is getting worse.
And with this article, it will only continue to get worse.
It doesn't mean it's worse than the problem before Me Too.
That's the funniest thing.
Simply because I'm highlighting the backlash, I have people being like, Tim Pool is downplaying or insulting Me Too.
It's like, whoa, I think Me Too was overall a really great thing.
But we still have to talk about the ramifications, right?
We have to have the conversation, right?
Because now look, it's not just men who are afraid of women, by the way.
Women also appear to be increasingly wary of hiring women.
That's weird.
The 2018 survey results found that more than 10% of men and women said they expected to be less willing than before to hire attractive women.
Note, the 2019 results for women are not yet public.
Internalized misogyny really is a B. I have an extension now that blurs swear words.
Isn't that amazing?
Because of YouTube.
Hey, don't blame me.
There's been a lot of talk about gray areas in Me Too.
All this harassment business is very difficult for men.
We are told because nobody even knows what sexual harassment is anymore.
Men are afraid to even shake a woman's hand in case she thinks it's harassment.
Yeah, but please don't exaggerate.
The point I want to drive home is that I can pat a dude on the shoulder and say, hey, good to see you.
I can touch their elbow.
I can shake their hand.
I can give them a pat on the back.
And it's all fine.
But you can't do that with a woman.
Okay?
Now that that's clear, let's move on.
Easier to just avoid contact altogether.
Yes, absolutely.
What's really interesting about this study, however, is that it thoroughly debunks the argument that men are confused about what constitutes unacceptable behavior.
The very first thing researchers did was look at 19 behaviors, emailing sexual jokes to a subordinate, for example, and get people to classify it as harassment or not.
Surprise, surprise, both genders basically agreed on what harassment entails.
That is so... Oh my...
It's so... This woman clearly doesn't understand.
She can't see patterns, and it's really frustrating.
Most men know what harassment is, and most women know what it is.
Right.
And the point is, the same behavior isn't harassment if you say it to a guy.
I can tell a guy a joke, and it's fine.
I can't tell that joke to a woman.
Are we done here?
No, we're not.
They say, the idea that men don't know their behavior is bad and that women are making a mountain out of a molehill is largely untrue.
If anything, women are more lenient in defining harassment.
Yes.
And so a man has to choose.
Do I want to be able to laugh and pat someone on the back and make a joke?
Or do I want to hire the woman and not be able to do that?
If that's what they're saying in the study.
The point is, if men can say this to a woman and they know they're not allowed to, that's Listen, they answer their own question.
Why are men avoiding one-on-one meetings with women?
Why are men not hiring women?
Because they all agree they can't tell even a joke.
Netflix special with Dave Chappelle.
Huge.
Famous.
60 million dollar contract or something like that.
Ridiculous amount of money.
That's how big it was.
You cannot tell Dave Chappelle jokes, at least many of them, to women.
He made crude comments about women sexually.
But you can tell a guy!
Now, a guy can still complain, but I'll tell you this.
Most guys probably would assume a guy wouldn't care.
And maybe that's the real bias.
A bias that men don't care.
Well, men don't, for the most part, they say.
So there you go.
Most men are perfectly aware of the difference between a friendly hug and a creepy hug.
They are perfectly... What?
No, they don't.
That wasn't even part of the question you asked.
We're talking about jokes.
They are perfectly aware of what constitutes harassment and what doesn't.
Which makes you wonder why so many men are afraid to interact with women at work.
Because a woman is substantially more likely to complain about normal interactions that you could have with a man?
The answer to that question, perhaps, is that a lot of men aren't so much afraid of being accused of anything as they are angry that Me Too ever happened.
Oh, please spare me.
They're angry that they've been made to think about their behavior, made to interrogate power dynamics that always... You know what, man?
The biggest problem I have with the intersectional group is that they can't imagine, they can't imagine that there are other factors involved.
Literally everything that exists in their world is the patriarchy.
There was a really funny thing I read.
When a frat bro is at a club trying to pressure you into sex, it's not because he's trying to bolster the patriarchy.
He wants to get laid.
It's not because they're angry that you made them check their privilege.
It's because they're like, Bob loves these jokes, Sharon doesn't.
Sharon is not fun to hang out with.
End of story.
It's really that simple.
It's worth noting, I think, that the Harvard Business Review article previewing the study of 2019's results is headlined, The Me Too Backlash.
You see that phrase a lot, and the framing subtly implies that Me Too went too far.
It did.
That a backlash is only natural.
It is.
It's yet another form of victim-blaming.
It's not.
Another way to quietly put women back in their place.
It's not.
I'll tell you what it is.
It's people like Aziz Ansari and Chris Hardwick getting in trouble for doing literally nothing wrong.
And then you have guys saying, okay, if women as a whole don't like this kind of behavior, I won't interact with women.
They want men to say, I will just tell no jokes ever again.
Uh, no.
Like, if a guy wants to tell a guy a joke, he should be allowed to do it.
If you're offended by it, well, that's on you.
And yes, guys understand the difference of what makes something harassment, but they also know men are less likely to feel harassed than a woman will.
And if that's the case, don't be surprised as the backlash grows worse, because the stats show us it is getting worse.
But listen, that doesn't mean Me Too was bad.
It just means, look, you can't expect to take down the powerful people you did without something back, you know, without some kind of backlash.
Even when you fire a firearm, there's a recoil.
And there you go.
And you get covered in GSR.
Whatever.
Stick around.
Couple more segments coming up in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
In the last segment, we talked about the Me Too backlash.
And boy, do I talk about it a lot.
You know why?
A lot of data seems to show there is a big backlash to Me Too.
We have another story here, though, that's in a similar vein.
From The Guardian, University lowers entry score for female applicants in male-dominated courses.
University of Technology Sydney makes 10-point adjustment in hope to address gender imbalance in engineering, computing, and construction.
This is one of the most absurd things I've ever read.
They don't seem to understand these things are completely unrelated.
The reason women aren't going into STEM is likely because of their personal choices.
Now, if you want to argue society is pressuring women to choose jobs, I'm listening.
Let's bring the argument up.
If you're arguing that women are incapable and so you have to lower their score, you are a bigot.
I don't believe.
For the most part.
Because intelligence averages across the board are almost identical for men and women.
I don't believe the reason there are very few women in STEM is because they're not smart enough.
I think it's because you need to encourage them to join.
But here we can see how they actually feel.
They actually just think the issue is that women are dumb.
You know, I will stress though, maybe it's because they looked at the data and found that, you know, they have 30 female applicants and they just score too low.
So we'll read the story, because maybe they'll get into it, into this.
And maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe the data actually shows women tend to score worse than men.
But I don't think the issue is necessarily biological.
It's really easy to look at a base characteristic of someone and assume that's the reason, instead of digging into the root and trying to figure out if there's something else.
Namely, society.
When women are young, are they encouraged to go to STEM, or are they told to play with dolls?
That could play a role.
Now, I'm not trying to make the far-left, you know, only social construct argument.
I'm saying, we need to know all the factors, and it is possible that plays a role.
But it's absurd to me that they're gonna play this game of,
well, women just, we need to lower our standards.
You lower your standards?
No, no, I'm sorry, that is not equality.
That is pandering.
So, before we read the story, I'm gonna do something I rarely do.
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They're my first sponsor and they're basically the only company I ever really promote because they've stood by me the entire time and this channel, almost every single video is demonetized every single day.
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Back to the news.
They say.
The University of Technology Sydney is trying to encourage more young women to study engineering, computing, and construction degrees by adjusting year 12 entry scores for female participants.
The university has received approval from the, or is that New South Wales, NSW, Anti-Discrimination Board, wait, wait, anti-discrimination board to make a 10-point adjustment to
the Australian tertiary admission rank of female students applying for those degrees for the
2020 academic year.
I'm sorry, if you have a special class that assumes women are dumb, that's discrimination,
not anti-discrimination.
The university hopes it will address gender imbalances in those male-dominated industries.
UTS Women in Engineering and IT Director Arti Agarwal insisted the move would not lower standards.
We're not taking in underperforming students or doing tokenism here, she told The Guardian Australia.
Nobody is getting a free pass.
They all have to do all the degree requirements and internships.
Okay, let me point something out to you.
Let's say you create every program in the world.
to prop up people of color and women and those you deem to be marginalized.
You say, we're going to lower the standard so they have a chance to get in.
If someone scores, I don't know, a 1200 or whatever on the SATs and someone else scores a 13,
I actually don't know how the numbers work, so guess what?
Even if they both graduate, guess who is going to be hired?
The person who outperforms.
Your degree is meaningless, for the most part.
I get it.
You want to work in, like, a scientific field?
Then you probably need a degree to back it up.
You want to be a lawyer?
You got to pass the bar.
You want to be a doctor?
You definitely got to go to school.
But for the average person in a lot of these jobs, especially like coding and certain tech jobs, you don't need a degree.
A degree might actually hold you back.
But more importantly, if you can barely get into the program, that's something about you.
I think these people, you know, this makes sense.
They don't seem to realize That people are different.
Some people will be smarter, taller, faster, stronger.
Nothing you can do about it.
There are a lot of people in this world who have been dealt a really bad hand.
You know, guys who are short with, you know, crooked teeth and they have just, they're not that smart.
Yeah, these things happen.
And there are some guys who are born looking like Adonis.
They've done nothing but for some reason are six foot five and super ripped and chiseled and smart.
That's just the way it works.
People are different.
And if you start trying to change the program, you're not going to help the people.
You'll just end up with someone not smart next to someone smart.
They will both get a degree, and a company will talk to them and say, I'm gonna hire the smart guy.
Congratulations, you've done nothing.
Except assume women are dumb.
They say.
Agarwal said the move was part of the university's 30-year effort to improve gender equity in engineering.
Equity, huh?
They want equality of outcome, which includes primary school and high school outreach programs and mentoring for female engineers.
We looked at the performance of ATAR and the performance of grade point average, so a lower ATAR did not mean they would get a lower GPA.
A higher ATAR did not mean they were best in class.
Or maybe I'm just really dumb.
That's possible too.
She noted a large number of engineering students gained entrance into the undergraduate degree through other pathways, which often were lower than the 12-year Eder Minimum score.
What does that mean?
Like SAT score?
Egerwall said previously that on average females received 4-8% of UTS offers to study mechanical engineering mechatronics.
The university expects the score adjustment will increase female study offers by about 20%.
Why would it increase offers?
So let me get this straight.
You get them in the program, and they say, I got into the program, and you go, oh yeah, isn't that program that lowered standards and made it easier to get in?
Look, all that really matters is the company is going to talk to the people, and guess what?
It's like, if you ever see those coin sifters where you can pour all the random change into it, and then it slides down into a tray and you shake it, and it separates all the coins into different slots?
Or better yet, they have the automatic one where you pour the coins in and it spins.
You know how that works?
It's because the right size coin can only go in the right size hole.
And it starts small and goes to big, so the quarter glides over the smaller holes.
What I'm trying to make is...
That same process is what will happen here.
No matter how smart the women are, it doesn't matter if they have a degree, if you take nation-level statistics, and take a bunch of women and a bunch of men, and you're not seeing women enter the program, when you shake the sieve really hard, guess what?
More of the guys are going to fall through and find those programs than women, because that's what's happening, and simply saying we're going to lower the standard for women won't change that.
Because when it comes to the business, they're gonna choose the smart person.
And if you're scoring better on the tests, you will likely perform better in other places.
Now, it's also true some people might just be better at, you know, being personable.
And you can trick your way into getting a job.
But again, I gotta stress, when it comes to negotiating, it tends to be guys who are more, you know, I don't know, slick or arrogant, which plays into their favor.
I'm not going to read the stats on engineering and all that stuff, but let's move on.
They say, Engineers Australia's professional diversity manager, Justine Romanis, backed the UTS move.
We need to be disruptive.
What we have been doing to date is just not working.
I wonder why.
And I wonder why they think this will work.
She said, to attract more females to engineering, it was important to plant the seeds early with research backing career discussion with children as young as four.
Now, that I agree with.
Virginia Singh, who studied a double degree in mechanical engineering and science at Deakin University and now works in the defense industry, does not think it's a good idea.
There were two female students in her mechanical engineering course.
Singh's father and brothers are also qualified engineers.
I don't necessarily think that it's the score stopping females from joining engineering.
There's more so a stigma associated with it or STEM in general.
There's a perception that you need a strong STEM and technical background.
And although you need that, most of the day-to-day work is soft skills as opposed to technical calculations every day.
The UTS announcement has attracted some criticism on social media.
Like it is now!
Someone said, as a woman, I'm offended.
This move reinforces the myth that women are not as smart as men.
Thank you.
I agree.
Many universities allocate adjustment points based on disadvantage or illness.
But UTS Director of Women in Engineering or IT, R.T.
Agarwal, said she believed the university would be the first to base them on gender.
So being a woman is a disability now?
Yes.
Bad idea.
If you think the best way to get more women into engineering is to lower the standards, aren't you kind of openly saying you think female engineers aren't as good as male engineers?
Yes, that's exactly what they're doing.
The issue is marketing.
You want to get more women in STEM, advertise it, encourage it, and promote it.
And if women make the choice and pass the test, there you go, you've solved your problem.
However, just trying to make the numbers look good on paper So you have to lower your standards?
All you've really said here is that you think women are dumb.
And I take offense to that.
I believe that's not true.
I believe that women just make different choices.
And I think the data is clear that while there is a larger bell curve for genius men, on average, men and women are of the same intelligence.
And that's coming from Jordan Peterson.
So you know what?
I'll leave it there.
One more segment coming up in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
The Trump administration wants to start DNA testing undocumented immigrants in government custody.
A draft rule seen by BuzzFeed News said hundreds of thousands of people could have their DNA collected each year if it is fully implemented.
I love using BuzzFeed for sources and stories like this because it's actually, you know, BuzzFeed's kind of left.
And it's an interesting issue.
I'm interested in how they're going to frame this because my understanding is Trump can do this.
Now, here's the thing.
I think collecting DNA is really, really creepy.
I understand why they're doing it.
But as somebody who's traveled the world, I've noticed that when you're coming in through customs and, you know, CBP, immigration, you can see they can scan your fingerprints.
They can't do this for American citizens because of the Fourth Amendment, but they can do it for non-citizens.
And it's really interesting because In the U.S., non-citizens are still protected by the Constitution.
Yet, when you're about to cross the border, you're not, and they can take your fingerprints.
So I want to see what BuzzFeed has to say about all this.
But before we get started, go to youtube.com slash timcast IRL.
I have a new channel.
It's going to be travel and on the ground.
Better yet, there's a video that explains all of it.
On the ground reporting.
Surprisingly, this channel is, like, it used to be my gaming channel.
It's got 45,000 subscribers because I've just been telling people to subscribe, which is awesome.
Because after this week, I will be in the van, and it's gonna be travel, fun, adventure.
I'm hoping.
It might not be daily, but that's the end goal.
And so I'm working my fingers to the bone, and I'm probably crazy, but you know, whatever.
Anyway, let's get back to the news about Trump and DNA testing illegal immigrants.
Buzzfeed reports, I didn't see them complain about all the other biometrics they've been grabbing from, you know, what do they do, like iris scans?
argue that the government should not draw sensitive personal information from people
without being tied to a specific crime.
I didn't see them complain about all the other biometrics they've been grabbing from, you
know, what do they do, like iris scans and they do fingerprints?
All of a sudden now they care?
Look, I'll say it again, DNA, collecting DNA is always creepy as far as I'm concerned.
But it's just another biometric assessment.
Now how they collect it?
I don't know, they swab the mouth?
They say, administration officials estimate that CBP officials would spend more than 20,000 additional work hours on such a policy in its first year of implementation.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals could have their DNA collected each year if the draft regulation proposed by the Department of Justice is fully implemented.
While the regulation does not specifically say that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials would also collect DNA from people in their custody, it does not limit them from doing so.
So is that the issue?
That they're not really planning on doing it, but that they want the option to?
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, a DHS official said the federal agency is working closely with the Department of Justice on a path forward for DNA collection.
The official noted an ICE pilot program at the southwest border earlier this year in which the agency took voluntary DNA tests of those they suspected of fraudulently claiming to be families.
ICE has identified dozens of cases in which children had no familial relation to the adults accompanying them.
In the first operation, Operation Double Helix 1.0, 16 out of 84 family units were identified as fraudulent based on negative DNA results.
And in the second, Operation Double Helix 2.0, 79 of 522 family units were identified as fraudulent based on negative DNA results to date, the official said.
Well then, I think we have our reasoning.
It's really strange to me the argument we see from the left, typically the left, for whatever reason, I don't know where they've gone, because the left used to be for border security, but we don't want trafficking.
We don't want child trafficking.
So when you have an adult with a kid, how do we know the kid actually is the child of the adult?
The problem is, what if they're adopted?
What if somebody has raised this kid as their own?
What if a dad who was raising a kid didn't even know his wife cheated on him?
They do this test, they take the kid away.
So DNA isn't an end-all, be-all solution, but I will stress, it does provide some help.
You know what, man?
I don't know what's worse.
Trafficking or a father losing his kid.
Or a mother losing an adopted kid.
But I think I would lean more towards the trafficking being worse.
And this is a really difficult problem because we have heard the stories.
It's been reported by NBC that people are basically buying children to go to the border.
They will pay money to take a kid and claim the kid is theirs.
Well, now they're doing DNA tests, and it turns out, in the first test, that's a huge proportion.
16 out of 84.
The second test wasn't as much, but still over 10%.
In which case?
I'll throw it to you.
Look, I think DNA testing is creepy.
I think it's unfair to take a kid away because the assumption is you have to be the biological parent.
At the same time, I think trafficking is substantially worse.
So I don't know.
You know, hey, milquetoast fence it or no problem saying it.
I will stress that I believe they have the right to do this.
They've been taking biometrics anyway.
But let me know what you think.
You know, you comment and let me know what you think if this makes sense.
As long as it's not particularly invasive, I don't see what the problem is.
Might lean more towards being a positive, but in the end, I don't like the government collecting DNA and fingerprints of everybody anyway.
But they're not citizens, so let's read on.
They say proposed regulations are not immediately enacted and require a 60-day comment period.
Administration officials cite a statute, the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005, that allows federal agencies to collect DNA from individuals in their custody, including those who are not American.
But previous DOJ regulations exempted agencies under the Department of Homeland Security, including CBP and ICE, from conducting such collection in certain circumstances.
In 2010, then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano narrowed the exemption, saying people who were not detained on criminal charges and those awaiting deportation proceedings would not have their DNA collected.
But that's just an interpretation.
It's a rule that can be changed.
The current draft proposal would cut the exemption altogether, opening it up to include people who are awaiting deportation and those who are not charged with a crime, such as undocumented immigrants, for the collection.
Trump administration officials argue that the exemption is no longer necessary and that collection would aid border officials in better assessing the individuals who cross into the country without authorization.
The DNA results could then be placed into a nationwide database that contains millions of other profiles for hits on potential previous criminal activity, officials explained in the proposal.
So there's another point for why it makes sense.
If someone enters a country illegally, then they presumably under this law, you could take their DNA, and it's an easier way to track them, but also in the event of a crime being committed, Now, I don't mean to imply that literally every single illegal immigrant will commit some heinous crime that requires a DNA test, but it is true that every single illegal immigrant is a criminal.
There's an interesting point that I was having a conversation with someone, and they said, illegal immigrant is the wrong term because a person can't be illegal and it's an incorrect, you know, adjective.
And I agree.
I absolutely agree with that assessment.
Undocumented, however, is a political correct term.
What we actually hear from the Associated Press is an unauthorized immigrant.
However, somebody who enters the country in violation of the law committed a crime and they're a criminal.
So my response was, if illegal is the incorrect word, then would criminal immigrant be the right word?
Or, you know, criminal migrant.
I don't know.
I guess it's criminal immigrant.
And, of course, they got even angrier.
But criminal is a better descriptor than illegal.
Because, you know, the objection they have is that illegal immigrant means that the immigrant himself is an illegal act or something.
It's just a semantic argument that makes little sense.
So, for me, I have no problem saying illegal immigrant because I understand what they're trying to explain.
Criminal immigrant might actually be a better descriptor based on the left-wing argument.
I'm not trying to insult people or denigrate the criminal immigrants, but that's the point.
We have a law.
You can't do it.
You broke it.
You're an immigrant.
You committed a crime.
That is an act of criminal immigration.
I know I'm going to get a ton of angry people saying, how dare you say that?
The correct term is undocumented.
Dude, look, they've all broken the law.
And that's why you have people like Julian Castro or whatever saying we should decriminalize it.
Fine.
You can make the argument.
But for the time being, you cross the country illegally.
You're a criminal.
They can take your DNA.
And I'm not saying they're all going to commit heinous crimes, but that's another reason why it makes sense.
Now, they say former senior DHS officials said an expansion of DNA collection would likely achieve little, drain resources, and force agents to do work they'd rather not be doing.
And that's a really good argument against it, aside from it being creepy to collect DNA, I gotta admit.
In many ways, it's unnecessary from a law enforcement perspective, said John Sandweg, a former senior immigration official in the Obama administration.
I don't understand what you're going to get out of it.
The idea that some guy crossing the border committed a crime, returned, and then came back all undetected is very remote.
Well, that actually happens enough.
But admittedly, the better question is, does it happen enough that you need to DNA test people?
I kind of think you don't.
But, this doesn't negate the argument that they're tracking families.
And if someone has a kid, and they do a DNA test, and they're not related, there's a high probability that person might be a trafficker.
And that's worth stopping.
Sandwick said that there was little desire at either ICE or CBP to begin mass DNA testing during the Obama administration.
Such a proposal would also change the way immigrants are treated in federal custody, said Jonathan Meyer, a former Deputy General Counsel at DHS.
So, I gotta keep these segments short and I gotta do a ton of work because the event is coming up, so I'll wrap this one up.
They say the draft regulation states that DHS officials would rely on software that would allow them to quickly obtain DNA from a given person and cut collection time from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.
DOJ officials estimate that DHS officers will spend more than 20,000 hours the first year using the software, more than 40,000 people the second year, and 60,000 the third year.
But I do need to make one more point.
Because as we see here, the Trump administration is going to start DNA testing families at the border was May 1st.
So it's not a big breaking story.
And it appears they have stopped some, potentially, some trafficking.
So you let me know what you think about this.
Look, I'm gonna fall on DNA testing is creepy.
But it might make sense if we can stop trafficking.
