Trump Is WINNING Over The "Never Trumpers," Democrats And Media Continue Downward Spiral
Trump Is WINNING Over The "Never Trumpers," Democrats And Media Continue Downward Spiral. Many Republicans vowed to never support the president but now finding themselves doing just that.In a story from the New York Times they document how most of the prominent conservatives opposing Trump have now become some of his most ardent defenders and they cite many reasons why. But other stories and trends may shine a light on this.Perhaps Donald Trump is "not that bad," well at least relative to what the Democrats are offering.IN an Op-ed a never Trumper goes into detail about how leftists and Democrats are pushing unpopular ideas or ideas that already guarantee the Democrat vote. He argues that they are not focusing on the core issue of defeating Trump. I hear that.I've been saying the same thing the entire time. Democrats have not learned their lesson from 2016 and continue to try and court woke twitter and social justice feminists in order to win. But win what? The college primary vote and woke Twitter?There are even stories from Democrats saying they will actually vote Trump because of the absurd far left push from the Democratic Party and I completely understand that sentiment.You don't have to support the president but it would be prudent to calm down, talk policy, engage with civility, and work towards a solution for all of us. Perhaps due to the lack of civility we see people realizing that while "orange man bad" may be true to some extent he is certainly not as bad as the media portrays him.Impeachment is just another push in Democrats refusing to talk policy and instead focusing on minutia and its resulting in people bowing out of politics because, well, to be honest I think we are all sick of democrats crying wolf.
Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Donald Trump has won over many Never Trumpers, but apparently he continues to do so, at least
according to this New York Times story that says, "...the Never Trump coalition that decided, eh, never mind,
he's fine."
That's the actual title, saying, "...they signed open letters, dedicated a special magazine
issue to criticism of him, and swore he would tear at the fabric of this nation.
Now they have become the president's strongest defenders."
I find this story fascinating, especially in the context of an op-ed that was published
recently, in USA Today, about the LGBTQ town hall that CNN held recently.
This was fodder for many conservatives, but one of the most interesting things brought up by Tom Nichols, ex-GOP he says, Is that what?
Was the LGBTQ vote in danger of going to Republicans?
Why would they host this town hall and create fodder for culture warriors instead of rallying Americans behind a common message?
And that's kind of a point I've been making for a long time.
The Democrats don't need to push this far-left message.
They need to bring people together and explain why their position makes more sense.
I think this may be why many NeverTrumpers are giving in and saying they're going to support the president.
I think there's a lot to criticize the president for.
You know, one thing I've heard a lot is, you know, people are tweeting right now, there's one viral tweet where they say, the easiest way to be a grifter is just never criticize the president.
You don't have to be a supporter of him, but you can talk about issues and as long as you don't criticize him.
That's not true at all!
It's amazing that in, I don't know what, like 70% of my videos, I'll...
I'll specifically criticize something Trump has done.
The real issue is that I think moderates and conservatives are looking for just a good-faith approach to what's happening in our country.
So if you don't like the president, that's fine, so long as you have a calm, rational explanation for what you don't like about him.
Now we see in the media this absolute absurdity, a push to the far left, support of policies that are unpopular, and, look man, Russiagate, and then Russiagate 2 Ukrainian Boogaloo?
I'm not surprised people are fed up and finally saying, enough!
Let's read through some of these stories, and we'll talk about how these NeverTrumpers have now become some of the President's biggest supporters, but I want to highlight one more issue as well.
It's also that, you know, these NeverTrumpers are looking at who the Democrats are actually going to put in place, and maybe now they're realizing, wait a minute, you might not like the President, but is the Democrat going to be better?
Perhaps not.
Let's start with a story from the New York Times.
Before we do, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you would like to support my work.
There's a PayPal option, a crypto option, a physical option.
But of course, the best thing you can do is just share this video.
I'm competing with the likes of these big, massive corporate channels, and I don't have a massive marketing budget.
If you think that I do a good job and, you know, my content should be seen by others, all you gotta do is share it on whatever platform, and, you know, it's the best thing you can do.
But there's other ways to support my work, so let's read.
The Times reports, Eric Erickson could not have been clearer.
Donald Trump was a racist and a fascist.
It was no wonder Mr. Erickson wrote that so many people with World War II German symbols in their Twitter profile pics supported him.
I will not vote for Donald Trump ever, he insisted, adding his voice to the chorus of never-Trump Republicans this past week.
Mr. Erickson, a well-known conservative blogger, titled one of his pieces, I Support the President.
In three years, he had come completely around, a transformation that is a testament to President Trump's remarkable consolidation of support inside the Republican Party.
The effort to impeach the president, Mr. Erickson wrote, was a desperate move by people who have never come to terms with him.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, full stop.
You mean to tell me that a never-Trumper now supporting the president amid Ukraine-gates?
You mean another scandal comes out and he pushes back and supports the president?
I'll tell you what, man.
This is the point I've been making.
Okay, in the past few weeks I have said you are, what the Democrats are doing with the impeachment inquiry, with the far-left push, they are sabotaging themselves.
And here you can see it.
They needed to only say to these Republicans, listen, we're hearing you, let's work together.
Instead, they have gone off the rails with far-left policies that nobody likes.
You know, giving health care to non-citizens, etc.
And then pushing for an impeachment inquiry without a formal vote.
And now you've got never-Trumpers being pushed into a corner where they have to support the president.
You know what, man?
There's two ways to look at it.
That Trump really is the worst of the worst, and now they're realizing there is a worst of the worst worst?
Or it could be that the Democrats really are losing it, and Trump was never really that bad in the first place.
Perhaps so many never-Trumpers were never-Trumpers because of the fake news, because of the exaggerated claims about the President that are persistent.
And perhaps they saw that and said, You know what?
Maybe we've been misled.
I mean, we're watching what the media does.
Look at Russiagate.
I think Russiagate was probably a big wake-up call for so many people saying, this was just not true.
What's going on?
You don't gotta support the president to realize he's not that bad.
Look, man.
You know, they talk about how you can't criticize the president, and that if you do, his supporters will come at you, and that's not true.
If you have a good-faith argument against the president, the supporters will sit down and argue against you.
They'll tell you you're wrong, but they're not gonna try and destroy you, tear you apart, or cancel you.
You can be a Never Trumper and still have respect across the spectrum.
So, the people who say this are people who think that there is a cult-like following of the President that's only his supporters, and that's just not true.
I have had amazing debates and disputes with people who support the President, and get this, I'll tell you what, Principle is not a part of this feud going on.
I'll tell you this.
Because Donald Trump recently tweeted, we've got to end the senseless wars in the Middle East.
We then saw the announcement from the Pentagon that troops were being sent to Saudi Arabia.
I directly criticized him with a tweet, saying, how can you say we're going to end these wars, but then send troops to Saudi Arabia?
It's hypocritical.
I got comments from Trump supporters that were actually supportive.
And surprise, surprise, there are many people who are moderate and conservative who are acting on principle.
And actually, Trump got a lot of flack over the Syria issue a few years ago with the missile strike.
But Trump supporters were adamant, saying, no way, we're not going to back down on this.
But the weirdest thing to me, which proves the tribalism, I got insulted by the left for criticizing the president on this move to Saudi Arabia.
And I was just like, dude, how are you mad at me right now?
I'm criticizing Trump.
And it was the Trump supporters who were saying, let's talk about it.
And that's fascinating to me.
And I think the issue is, the reason Trump wins is because he attracted a large group of people who were critical thinkers, who begrudgingly accepted a guy with bad manners and bad attitude over what the alternative was.
Let's read a little bit more.
They say, Never Trump no more.
Conservatives have largely resigned themselves to a more accommodating state of mind.
Never mind Trump.
And their change in attitude helps to mute the much smaller group of conservative voices who remain highly critical of the president and have questioned his conduct.
But you can question his conduct.
You can.
So long as you sit down for a real conversation.
Glenn Beck, for instance.
They mention him.
The radio host who once called Mr. Trump an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity now says that his defeat in 2020 would mark the end of the country as we know it.
I sat down with Glenn Beck.
I thought he was a great guy.
We had a great conversation.
I think we really did disagree on fundamental political issues, but it was the way things used to be.
It's the way they were.
I mean...
We used to have these heated debates, but I was able to sit down and we disagreed on life versus choice, and then just kind of shrugged and smiled, we shook hands at the end of it, and we had a real conversation.
You can absolutely be critical, push back, and disagree, so long as you do it with the intention of an actual conversation about the results, the ramifications, the causes, etc.
Maybe now these never-Trumpers are realizing that.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who so bitterly feuded with the president during the 2016 primaries that Mr. Trump gave out Mr. Graham's cell phone number on national television, declared last week that impeachment was nothing but a political setup.
I will tell you this right now.
The Democrats have lost all of that favor, okay?
They took 2018 in midterms.
They attracted—the voters said, you know what?
I'm willing to support a moderate.
If Lindsey Graham is now defending the president over impeachment, it says to you that impeachment was wrong.
You have lost the support of even the Republicans who never wanted Trump.
I think now you're seeing people say Trump's bad, but he's not that bad.
When you look at what's going on with the impeachment inquiry, It can be difficult to remember that indignation and contempt for Mr. Trump once simmered in every corner of the conservative world.
In August 2016, dozens of the most senior Republican national security officials signed a letter warning he would put at risk our country's national security and well-being.
Female leaders of the anti-abortion movement joined together before the Iowa caucuses in 2016.
Issuing a joint statement, declaring themselves disgusted at his behavior, saying he had impugned the dignity of women.
National Review published an against Trump issue that featured essays from 22 prominent conservatives who all made a case for why he should not be the Republican nominee.
At least half of those writers are now on the record making supportive comments about the president.
That's crazy to me.
You know they made a meme about me?
Where, you ever see that meme with the cat?
It's like the woman screaming and pointing, and then there's the cat looking angrily at a plate.
And there's a red pill, so this is what they did.
They put a beanie on the cat, and they put a red pill on the plate, and the woman's yelling, like, eat the pill, and me looking all angry.
And they're like, why won't Tim take the pill or whatever and support the president?
Listen, man.
Donald Trump sent troops to Saudi Arabia, okay?
You gotta understand something.
The most important issues to me are going to be foreign policy and how we deal with this.
It's going to be There's a lot of issues I can get into, but let me just put it this way.
Tulsi Gabbard is anti-regime change war.
She has experience.
She's a major.
I tremendously respect that.
She's a lot younger.
That is a factor.
She's also against the war on drugs, as well as ending private prisons.
There are a lot of things I disagree with her on, and a lot of things I agree with her on, and I just lean slightly towards her on these issues.
When Trump puts out a tweet talking about ending the wars in the Middle East, but then, you know, we hear we're gonna be bolstering Saudi Arabia, you know, we're gonna be sending 3,000 troops, I'm not going to play that.
I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to get behind someone like Trump.
I also think it's very important to have... I think Trump is boorish, and I think that plays a factor, although I'll admit I had a really great conversation with Will Chamberlain, and he said something to the effect of, you know, so what?
So what if he has a bad attitude and you don't like him?
Our policy's working.
That's a great point.
It's a great point.
The economy's doing really, really well.
But listen, man.
This is the point I want to make.
These people, in my opinion, don't have to become Trump's most ardent supporters.
I think we need to all realize that while there are bad things about this guy, there are bad things about a lot of presidents, like most of them going back several decades.
I get it, man.
And Trump's attitude is certainly one of them.
But, are the policies working, and more importantly, are we going to find a way to move forward as a country?
And what we're seeing with impeachment?
This is truly terrifying.
No vote, no due process, Russiagate, Ukrainegate, it never ends.
This is not politics as usual.
We should be talking about issues.
And that's what the moderates won in 2018, and that's why they're going to lose again, and that's why these people who detested Trump have now flipped to support him.
I don't need to support the guy.
I honestly, I don't really like him.
It's fine.
I'm not a mean person for the most part.
If I ever met him, I'd be polite, I'd be civil, we'd have a fine conversation, and there are a lot of people I don't like I've talked to.
I understand how these power dynamics work in this country.
And that means if I want to win, we've got to play like a game of chess.
And you don't win the game of chess by insulting, degrading, and attacking the people who like Donald Trump.
You do it by just trying to understand them and figure out how we can compromise on something to make a positive change.
And it also means you don't always win.
I say this to myself all the time.
Whenever you experience a failure of some sort, tell yourself you can't win them all.
But you can do better each time.
There's another quote.
You can't control the direction of the wind, but you can adjust your sails.
This means we've got to think strategically.
So if these people now truly support the president, I have nothing but respect for them and their opinions, and that means I'll try harder to be a calmer, rational voice for how we can move forward.
You don't have to like Tulsi Gabbard either.
I just think it's great when I sit down at a dinner table with some Trump people, and we find that area where we agree on, and I say, okay, this is it.
This is how we all learn to live together and avoid any kind of destabilization of what we all have together and how we can protect our interests.
Sometimes our interests don't align.
I truly believe most people just want the world to be a better place.
We just disagree on how to get there.
Let's move on from here, because I do have a lot I want to talk about.
They go on to talk about the Never Trump taint.
Still lingers, three and a half years later, National Review's editor Rich Lowry said regrettably that that week's magazine was remembered as the Never Trump issue.
I wish they'd never come up with the phrase, he said.
Mr. Lowry, who spent three weeks recruiting and assigning writers for the issue, still does not shy away from publishing or writing pieces that are harsh toward the president.
But he acknowledges that Mr. Trump has helped conservatives like him stress test your assumptions, and has forced him to rethink issues like the need to take a tougher approach to China.
And I agree with that, too.
You know, I think maybe the reason I'm not a TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome person, is because whenever there's an issue, I analyze the news.
I look into it and try to understand it.
I think that Saudi Arabia is a bad play.
I get it.
They're spending money on our, you know, in terms of weapons infrastructure.
It's good for the economy in a lot of ways.
I'm not a fan.
Not a fan.
When I take a look at what's going on in China, I'm really, really worried.
I don't know if Trump's winning, like doing the right thing, I just know that I'm glad someone's bringing it up.
And that's respectable.
But in the bigger grand scheme of things, I just lean not in that direction.
There's a lot of policy issues that I'm not going to agree with on the Republican side, and I get a lot of people trying to email me and debate me and stuff.
Listen, man, I read this stuff all day every day, right?
So I land just, you know, closer to Tulsi, and I think she's been rational and moderate on a lot of issues.
But you can see here, what they're realizing is, you know, Trump was right about a lot of things.
And a lot of things he's done, in my opinion, they've been bad, there have been consequences, they've been inappropriate, that's fine.
But you know what, man?
For me, it's politics as usual, to an extent.
I know Trump is very different, but to me it's kinda like, alright, Trump's gonna do this thing, the Republicans have the House, it's not the first time this has happened, it won't be the last, this is how politics is played, let's think ahead.
What's the next card draw gonna be?
What's gonna be revealed in the flop?
How do we do this?
You don't do it the way they've been playing the game in the media.
The media people want money.
They're going to fan the flames all day and night, and that's why they did this town hall.
So let's move from here.
I think we've gotten to the point on the Never Trumpers, and I want to show you another bit of Never Trumper commentary.
Saying, I will blame you if Trump wins.
And he's talking to the Democrats doing the LGBTQ town hall.
Now, I actually think it's a great milestone that CNN did this.
I thought it was fantastic.
I think CNN exploited everyone in this circumstance.
I think CNN invited people who would specifically be bombastic and generate controversy, and I seriously think CNN did harm to people.
But what you can see here is a really great point.
They don't need to win over the community that's already supporting them.
Basically every single Democrat is in support of all of these policies and issues.
They didn't need to, you know, they weren't at risk of losing the LGBTQ vote to the Republicans.
What's happening now is it's not about a debate on LGBTQ issues at all.
I certainly think it can and should be had because we need to push for civil rights for all of these people and make sure we're doing it right to protect everyone.
We're a country of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Individuality and the individual's rights to be free from discrimination, totally respect that, and I think it's important.
In the political context, however, this was a ratings drive.
This was an attempt at CNN to get ratings.
And I think they brought on bombastic people who ended up protesting and causing issues at the town hall.
And they did it because they want ratings, not because they don't like Trump.
And this is bad for the country.
It's bad for the Democrats.
He goes on to say that basically, He says this, Tom Nichols, we pledged over two years ago to join hands on this one issue, but now I worry that in your zeal to win the woke Twitter and college campus primary, you simply make the same mistakes you made in 2016.
Your nominee will crush it in the bi-coastal race to be the honorary governor of the new California Republic.
Blue cities everywhere will welcome you as liberators and Trump will laugh at you every day from Washington.
He's right.
Now, he's not taking the stance that he's going to defend the president.
He's still very much opposed.
But that's the rhetoric you see where people actually end up flipping.
I want to show you some more news, though, as to why people are finally saying enough to all of this.
I laughed.
This is an amazing commentary from Crystal Ball over at The Hill.
Defends praise of Yang.
I am not a Russian plant.
You see, Crystal Ball talks about Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, engages with the populist right, and, yes, gets called a Russian plant, or it's implied that she's supporting Putin, and that narrative is helping no one.
It's actually a quite funny take on it.
For one thing, she says, you know, when, uh, Now I have complicated feelings about this because, obviously, a fan's a fan.
Someone said Putin loved her commentary.
She says, and if Putin enjoys my work, who am I to say he's wrong?
That's a great point.
If Putin likes what you're doing, yeah, so what?
If you believe in what you're saying, then fine.
But she makes a few points.
You know, she's hosted Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Taibbi, Katie Halper, etc., and praised Yang.
And she gets called, you know, essentially a Russian plant fort.
We all do.
That's what people are tired of.
While CNN chases the insanity, while the media is obsessed with just going after Trump, pushing his conspiracy theories, and the Democrats are pushing Ukrainegate and Russiagate, we're over here, people who disagree on certain issues, having a real conversation.
Having a real respectful conversation.
What's amazing about The Hill, Crystal Ball, and the show they do, Is that it's populist left, but from a good-faith, respectable approach, to where you can have a real conversation about Bernie Sanders, his policies, how to enact them, whether they can be enacted, and that's something you don't get in these town halls where protests erupt and, in my opinion, CNN allows it all to happen.
So another important issue is that, you know, Crystal brings up, here's a multiple choice question.
Russiagate was Watergate times 1,000, Watergate times 1,000,000, incrementally more disturbing than typical corrupt BS that happens in our politics, or incrementally more disturbing than the typical BS.
Yeah!
Incrementally more disturbing than the typical BS.
That's where we are.
It's this political game being played, and that's one of the reasons I really just wanted to avoid Ukrainegate.
You know, after Russiagate, I'm like, listen, it's a mirror image.
It's the same thing we hear over and over again.
So I'll make a couple more points, right?
Check this out.
Maybe not Trump.
Never Trumpers insist they won't back Warren, right?
Because perhaps they're starting to realize that while Trump may be bad, He's not that bad.
Seriously, when you look at these town halls, when you look at these comments, when you
look at all the hands going up for what the Democrats are proposing, you realize they're
making Trump look good in comparison.
And that to me is kind of unfortunate.
But we don't have these strong Democratic personalities we need.
Admittedly, I do think Tulsi is, and the media just runs these hit pieces against her.
She really is a rational, she's progressive enough, she's moderate enough on certain issues, and she has, you know, look, she has the experience.
This is why I really do appreciate Tulsi being involved.
And that's someone I think could actually stand up against Trump and present these comments in good faith and real policy ideas.
But the media doesn't want to play that game.
I believe this.
I really do.
I believe that CNN and these other media outlets want Trump to win again because the ratings have been better than ever.
They're probably thinking to themselves, like, what do we do once Trump is out?
How do we get our ratings back?
Cable TV ratings are down for everybody.
Now they're up relatively, but overall the trend is downward.
I think, in my personal opinion, CNN knows that when Trump's out, man, those ratings are going to go down.
So I think they need to, you know, we can't allow Tulsi to speak.
She's popular.
I know she's not polling that high, but imagine if she got a fair shake, was presented in the media.
It's very similar to what Bernie went through.
Bernie broke through, and they still ripped it away from him.
The media was still opposed to him, and they still, the media is still very much anti-Bernie.
So look at this.
When you look at Elizabeth Warren, she's talking about a wealth tax, abolishing private health insurance, maintain Trump's quasi-protectionist trade policies.
The agenda is too liberal for many never-Trump Republicans, and they are poised to sit out the 2020 campaign or cast their vote for a hopeless third-party challenger if Warren, 70, wins the Democratic nomination.
Perhaps they didn't think about the ramifications of being a never-Trumper.
In the end, Donald Trump is probably going to win re-election.
And that means if you oppose him, did you really think the Democrats were going to become more moderate to find a good balance?
Did you really think that was going to happen?
The trend has been towards the far left over the past several years.
Now look, man, what concerns me the most about the far left is bad faith.
Same for the far right.
You know, these bad faith tactics.
Ocasio-Cortez demanding Trump, you know, praising Trump for wanting to withdraw from Syria and then criticizing him for doing it.
Fine, there's nuance there, I guess.
The Green New Deal being absurd and just making no sense.
These things are disconcerting.
And I would like to support someone who's more left, because believe it or not, my politics are very, very left, especially how I run my businesses.
The problem is the weird ideologies, the bad faith, the manipulation, the impeachment, nonsense, the bad strategy, the failures, the lack of charisma all piles up.
And so I can sit here and be like, I get it.
I get what Trump is.
I get why he won.
And I find myself in agreement with Matt Taibbi.
Trump won for all of these reasons that have to do with class issues and policy.
And you know what?
We have to address those issues.
We can't just demand Trump lose because we don't like him.
That's not how it works.
I'll tell you what, though.
The NeverTrumpers weren't thinking ahead.
When they said no to Trump, they assumed all of this, you know, what did you think?
What did you think was going to happen?
Yeah, you're not going to vote for anybody.
And that's fine.
I feel you, man.
I feel you.
I was never a Republican, right?
So I never expected to vote for a Republican anyway.
But I feel you when you say you're not going to vote for her either.
I'm like, yep.
We don't have any strong personalities.
So I'll do this.
I'll end this video with one more point.
Amid all of the chaos with the Ukrainegate, Trump's favorability is relatively static.
It's not shown any major swings.
And we can look at Trump's approval rating, and it did go down around the start of the Ukrainegate scandal, but it's still higher than the beginning of September.
These fluctuations still seem to be rather normal news cycle fluctuations, and as of today, even after a dip in his approval, it's higher than it was a year or two years ago.
Now when he first got elected, I know I always show this, it was higher.
So there's the thing, man.
Don't be surprised if we see more of this.
Never Trumpers supporting the president or just abandoning the Democrats outright.
Because, listen, the Democrats are going to go further and further left.
They don't care about you Never Trumpers.
They never did.
And you don't have to support the president.
I certainly won't.
And that's fine.
But I think now people need to realize that the Democrats are spiraling out of control, at least in my opinion.
And that means Trump will win again, for a lot of reasons having to do with class, and establishment, anti-establishment, and all of these things.
That, you know, listen.
You've got these Democratic candidates actually campaigning in Mexico.
I'm not exaggerating.
You know, several of them actually went down to Mexico for campaign, you know, PR events.
They're not gonna vote for you, dude.
The votes you need to get are the Americans who want to know that their life is going to be protected, safe, made better.
That's what you gotta talk about.
And I think when you see the CNN town hall, when you see that they're not concerned with talking to the needs of the average American, yeah, the NeverTrumpers are probably realizing that.
It would have been great if you realized it a long time ago.
And again, I'm not saying, like, I'd actually say don't support the president, you know, let's hope for a moderate, you know, alternative, but I get it.
I get that people support him.
I get the controversies.
I get the criticism.
I totally get it.
And you don't win by being an anti-Trump by all costs.
Here's the thing.
These never-Trumpers were just always so negative on Trump.
And I've prided myself on never being this one-dimensional character.
When Trump went to North Korea and crossed the DMZ, I really do mean it that that was incredible, especially for me and my family.
Because Trump crossed into what is essentially enemy territory without protection.
Please understand, that's a symbol of something very important.
Now, people might disagree with me, fine, that's fine, whatever, I don't think I'm the smartest person in the world, but I do think you have to pay attention to these small moments, what Trump does.
Pulling troops out of Syria, I do think is a good idea, and I think it's all propaganda where they're trying to claim we need to stay and we need to do all these things.
Dude, dude, calm down.
It's complicated.
I get it.
I lean towards it was the right thing, but Saudi Arabia was the wrong thing.
We can't just be, you know, 100% always in support of and 100% always against.
We need to talk about what's actually going on and debate the core issues.
Otherwise, we're not going to actually solve the problems.
So there you go.
I'll leave it there.
I don't want to make a super long video.
Thanks for hanging out.
Stick around.
Next video will be coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews, and I will see you all there.
Yesterday in the early morning, just after midnight, an SUV crashed into an anti-fascist activist, killing them.
Their friends rushed this individual to the hospital, but they were pronounced dead.
After the vehicle struck the individual, someone fired shots at the SUV, which then crashed into the Oregon Democratic Party's office, their headquarters.
Now right now we don't know what happened.
We don't know who did it.
We just know that an SUV crashed into this person outside of Cider Riot.
Cider Riot is a very famous Antifa anarchist left-wing hangout.
The SUV crashed into this person killing them.
Someone shot.
They crashed into the Oregon Democratic Party.
So people are trying to say, what was this?
Is this just gang violence?
When we're looking at Antifa versus the Proud Boys, do we call it gang violence?
Do we say this is the escalation of our cultural divide?
Are we now seeing direct targeted violence against political actors?
Well, let me just say one thing before I read the story.
Looking into this, I can't tell you definitively the person driving the SUV was any political affiliation.
We don't know.
Nobody was arrested.
But I'm gonna have to say, if shortly after midnight an SUV crashes into an Antifa person, an anti-fascist, and they die, and someone shoots at the vehicle, the vehicle then crashes into the Oregon Democratic Party, that is too coincidental.
Okay?
There are too many coincidences for that to be an accident.
The simple solution is, it seems like somebody targeted Antifa and potentially the Democratic Party.
That should be terrifying to everybody.
We've seen violence at these rallies.
We've seen Antifa show up and protest Trump supporters and beat people and set fires.
This comes, I believe this comes just shortly after we saw everything go down in Minnesota.
We see people in Minnesota stealing hats, 40 or so, punching and slapping people, torching these MAGA caps.
And this is just the beginning.
It's been worse, and it will likely get worse as campaign season starts ramping up.
But I want to stress, we'll read the story, and I'll give you the straight details right from this article.
We don't know.
We don't know.
My opinion?
The simple solution is targeted attack.
The likelihood with everything going on, the Democratic Party office, this person, this antifa getting shot at, it seems like an escalation.
Let's read.
OPB.org reports.
Portland anti-fascist activists killed in hit-and-run outside Cider Riot.
Portland police say a prominent anti-fascist activist was killed early Saturday outside Cider Riot, a northeast Portland club and a popular gathering spot for left-wing protesters.
Sean D. Killeher, 23, was hit by an SUV a little after midnight.
He had been at the club earlier in the evening.
Friends drove him to the hospital, where he died.
Someone fired shots at the SUV after it hit Kielaher, and the vehicle crashed into the headquarters of the Oregon Democratic Party.
The hit-and-run is being investigated as a possible homicide, and police are asking anyone who has information on the incident to contact them.
No arrests have been made so far.
So let's entertain some possibilities.
First, stressing, there's your news story.
I read it for you.
Anything beyond this is speculation.
My opinion.
It's possible.
Some Antifa dudes actin' a fool.
We know that Antifa dudes, and Proud Boys, can get rowdy.
That, you know, they rough and tumble.
Let's say maybe you got a bunch of young dudes coming out of a bar, maybe a little drunk.
There's an SUV driving down the street.
Somebody had a gun.
Maybe the SUV panicked.
Maybe the guy was in the middle of the street doing what Antifa does.
Telling, you know, flicking somebody off?
Who knows?
We don't know.
It's entirely possible these dudes were crossing the street, and the SUV accidentally hit them, so they shot at the vehicle, and the vehicle then crashed into a building nearby that just happened to have been the Oregon Democratic Party.
I'm gonna entertain the possibility nothing happened.
I have to.
But let's think about all of those circumstances.
Now, we don't know.
We don't.
We don't.
We don't know.
But the issue is Cider Riot was the scene of... Cider Riot is a very famous left-wing cidery.
We have this story from Oregon Live where they talk about the context.
Let me read you the context here.
They say, Cider Riot, the establishment Keeleher had been leaving, is at the center of two high-profile legal cases stemming from a May Day brawl between left-wing patrons and members of a right-wing group, who authorities say came to provoke them into a confrontation.
A chaotic scene erupted during the May 1st brawl with shouting, swearing, brawling, drinking, throwing, uh, drink throwing, rock throwing, and people using pepper spray or mace on others.
Patriot prayer leader Joey Gibson and five other affiliates were eventually arrested in connection with the brawl.
None of the pub's patrons have been arrested or charged in the incident.
Now I want to stress, Antifa wears masks.
They wear masks on purpose.
In the New York City brawl between the Proud Boys and Antifa, Antifa would have been charged.
The police said as much.
But they refused to cooperate, they put on masks, and they ran away.
Or they were wearing masks, they didn't cooperate, and they ran off.
The Proud Boys don't wear masks, and they did cooperate, and they all got arrested.
That's why Antifa wears masks, and that's why they're free to fight another day.
Cider Riot owner Abram Goldman Armstrong also filed a lawsuit against Gibson and his associates seeking $1 million in damages.
The cidery itself is up for sale, according to a listing on ProBrewer.com.
Up for sale, huh?
Interesting.
Goldman Armstrong previously told The Oregonian, Oregon Live, the Clash Outside Cider Riot and the months of headlines it generated had nothing to do with the decision to sell.
Investigators think people have information about Saturday's incident and the chain of events preceding it, police said.
A memorial had cropped up Saturday in front of the Democratic Party of Oregon building on 9th Avenue, where a bloodstain could be seen on the sidewalk.
The Democratic Party of Oregon building is a two-minute walk from Cider Riot.
So I will stress, it is entirely possible that this person accidentally crashed into that building.
Now, I gotta say, man, That seems... That doesn't... I don't... I don't know.
I don't know what to tell you.
Do you want to believe in the coincidence?
An SUV killed an Antifa guy and then crashed in the Democratic Party building?
Or do you want to believe that the escalation is getting worse?
Because I'm sorry, man.
After everything I've seen... You know, look.
One thing I've said over and over again is that when it comes to the fringes of the right, they are substantially more lethal, and I mean this in the utmost disrespect, effective in what they do.
Utmost disrespect.
What I mean by that is, when it comes to violent action, these fringe elements of the far right know, they act with precision.
I mean, not perfect, but they execute people.
They commit extremely violent, sharp-edged tactics.
Antifa is a blunt object.
They smack several people, leaving everyone alive but in pain.
They sow fear.
There's a difference.
We see much more Antifa violence, but it's low-level, spread out.
On the fringes of the far right, we see much more directed, targeted, and extreme violence.
But it's rare.
It's much more rare.
That's why, when I look at this, I think it's entirely possible that some fringe element of the right... I mean, look, you got Portland.
Portland has neo-Nazis, man.
They really do.
It is... Portland is a crazy place.
I would not be surprised if this was targeted.
But you know what, man?
It's tough because I don't want to sit here and fan the flames and be like, ooh, the end is nigh, everybody freak out.
But at the same time, I mean look, what's the logical assumption?
It could just be an accident.
Let's read more.
Mayor Ted Wheeler tweeted, This is alarming and heartbreaking.
Our deepest sympathies go out to family and friends of the victim.
Art Edwards tweeted, Flowers placed outside a building in northeast Portland.
Police say 23-year-old Sean Keeleher, known as Armenio, was killed last night.
He was a known activist.
Police still searching for those responsible.
So they say the vehicle crashed into the building, but where?
I mean, at least in these photos.
Police ask anyone who has information to contact Detective Scott Broughton.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
You can't flee the scene of an accident.
Nah, I get it.
Portland police and detective Rico Beniga and I would absolutely concur.
Anybody who knows anything, this person needs to be brought to justice.
In the event that this was an accident, yeah I'm sorry, you can't flee the scene of an
accident.
Now I get it, hold on.
The SUV was shot at, they report.
In which case, perhaps the SUV driver might say it was an accident and then they started shooting at us.
So we took off.
But I'm gonna go ahead and bet that's not the case.
I'm not gonna speculate on that.
I'm just gonna say this.
Believe whatever you want.
Perhaps it was an accident, perhaps it was targeted.
Whoever hit this person, we need to find out who it was, and they need to be brought to justice.
One of the biggest problems we're facing in this country is the rapid escalation of violence.
And if this turns out to be an accident, it's important we know.
And if it turns out to be deliberate, it's important we know, and it's important whoever did it is brought to justice.
We need to make sure we tell people we have no tolerance for violent actions, especially at some 23-year-old kid at a cidery grabbing a drink.
Now, I don't know what they did.
There's probably more to the story that I don't know.
Perhaps these activists did something.
Perhaps the driver did... I don't know.
I don't know.
Let's find out.
Let's find out.
Let me look at this tweet.
I want to take a look at this photo.
Because they say the vehicle crashed into the building.
But at least from this photo, I don't see anything.
So maybe there was a different part of the building that got hit.
But I will say...
Man, this is worrisome.
This happened... You know, so here's the thing.
The story broke at like 3 in the morning, okay?
And it broke, I think, on Oregon Live.
That's where I saw it.
But I didn't see it at 3 in the morning.
I was sleeping.
I wake... And that's 6am here, I think.
Whatever.
So, I wake up and...
When I first, the first story I saw was nothing.
It was something like, shots fired on an SUV, and it was like, I didn't even think anything about anything.
Like, literally didn't even notice the story, for the most part.
Like, it's just like another story, right?
Later in the day, they started issuing updates.
The first update was that it was an activist.
Or that it was an individual leaving site or riot.
When I saw that, I was like, oh dude.
This sounds like it was targeted.
The first report was that the vehicle crashed into a building.
That was it.
And now here we are.
More details emerge.
Antifa.
Leaving a known Antifa, you know, hangout.
SUV crashes in the Democratic Party.
So these updates started coming in, and I'm telling you this, because yesterday was the day I made two videos talking about the fears of civil war.
We've got Donald Trump resisting the impeachment, demanding they hold a formal vote.
We've got the Democrats saying they don't need to and they're gonna subpoena people.
We've got Matt Taibbi.
Well-known, established journalist, writer of several books, contributing editor to Rolling Stone.
This guy is not some fringe element.
This is an established journalist saying that the intelligence directors are staging a coup to oust our duly elected president.
And that, to me, was shocking because Taibbi's on the left!
It's on the left.
And I saw that story from a leftist.
This is a day that I said, listen, if Tayibi is right, and you have these political actors trying to remove Trump, it's not gonna be a small clique in Washington, D.C.
doing this.
There are real street ramifications.
On the same day I made two videos about it, this news was beginning to emerge.
I'll tell you what, man, I hope it was an accident.
I hope the SUV was just some drunk moron And this all turns out to be apolitical.
Some people think it might be unrelated, some people think it's just, we'll call it gang violence.
When these right-wing and left-wing people start fighting, it's nothing to do with the rest of us.
But I'll tell you what, man.
I'd be willing to bet in left-wing circles, they're already saying, you know, we know.
You know, we know.
And I'll tell you this.
It doesn't matter.
The truth doesn't matter.
And I hate to say it.
That's a scary thought, but it's true.
It is true that the truth doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter that I think it.
It doesn't matter that you hear it.
What matters is how people feel.
People react based on their feelings.
People are going to see this, and I assure you, they're going to say, I know what happened.
I don't need to research.
They're going to know all the facts.
They're going to know that it was a far-right, you know, neo-Nazi, whatever.
They're going to blame Trump.
But whether or not they come out in the press and say, we know.
The fact is, these far-left fringe elements are going to be riled up, and you're going to hear them say things like, either we know it was them and we need to defend ourselves, or they're going to say, well, even if it wasn't, it's a good reason why you need to be armed.
This is an escalation in any light, because an Antifa person was killed.
This is why I'm bullish, to an extent, on some kind of, you know, civil war.
I think I should probably call it, like, some, like, you know, extremist insurgency, because civil war makes people... People just don't seem to understand anything about war, and it's the most frustrating thing in the world to me.
Like, every time I bring this up, the response is, like, the average person doesn't care.
The average person never cared, okay?
Understand this.
The average person never cares.
Not even in the war for independence in the United States.
It was like what, a high 30% that were in favor and like high 20's that were opposed and most people said leave us alone.
Or the bigger faction was the Leave Us Alones.
Most people are not Democrats or Republicans.
The biggest faction in this country are independents.
The average person never cared.
It has always been the more politically extreme elements that foment conflict and crisis.
They are the belligerents, not the average person.
The average person says, leave me alone.
I just want milk, bread, and eggs, and I want to sit with my friends and family watching the game.
And I can respect that to an extent, right?
I do think people need to be responsible in some sense for the world around them.
But when I talk about whatever this conflict is, it's not this insane idea of two big armed factions marching towards each other in the street dividing lines.
No, it's this!
Now, assuming this was actually someone on the fringes of the far right attacking someone on the fringes of the far left, it's going to draw everyone else into that conflict.
Because you have the diehards, the crazy fringe element, of which there are very few, and that includes Antifa and Neo-Nazis.
There are very few, relative to the rest of us.
But it's like trickle-down extremism.
You'll then get run-of-the-mill Democrats being like, oh no, a Nazi killed, you know, an Antifa person.
And the people on the left view Antifa as just good old activists fighting a good fight.
Now, nobody likes Neo-Nazis.
But you're still gonna see that regular old Democrats are going to start protecting Antifa, defending them, and that's gonna result in moderates and conservatives recoiling in anger and fear, like, are you insane?
Now I think it's fair to say everyone can condemn this, and everyone should.
I mean, except for the extremists.
But trust me when I say, look man, a couple years ago, it was like a year and a half ago, When I was- Actually, yeah, it was two years ago.
And I was talking about the potential for civil war.
I stress, every single time, it will not be these big armed factions dividing like, New York is blue, and Texas is red, and now they're gonna march towards each other.
That's insane.
Okay?
Warfare is different.
But what I said we will see.
Things like this.
Skirmishes, street violence.
Don't be surprised if in a couple years you see armed factions of Antifa running through the streets in the middle of the night and insurgent violence.
Look, in the 70s we had the weather underground.
It happened before.
It can happen again.
When I look at this, I'm a hammer.
Looks like a nail, right?
You know, they say to a hammer everything looks like a nail.
To the average person, they may have just heard a story about an SUV hit-and-run, and to them it's a regular hit-and-run.
Maybe that's the case.
But to me, this falls in line with everything I've been saying over the past few years that the escalation is going to result in street skirmishes and insurgent violence and things like this.
This is outside of a political rally.
I mean outside of, in the context of, there was no political rally.
Somebody was leaving a bar.
If this truly was an act of violent escalation, then to me it's right in line with my confirmation bias.
It's what I expected to happen.
I mean, they slammed into the... So let me say this.
They crashed into the Democratic Party building, which is a two-minute walk.
So I'd imagine that was like a block or two.
It's fair to say maybe the SUV, it was coincidental they crashed into this building, but a two-minute walk, I mean, that's still what, like a block or two blocks?
So after they fled, that seems too, uh, nah, I don't buy it.
I think somebody wanted to crash into that building.
We already saw somebody show up to an ice facility with weapons.
They lost their life.
They were trying to escalate.
We've seen shots fired at ice buildings.
I feel like it's easy for me to look at all of the things happening in the world, and I'm finding these pieces.
And it could just be that out of the million circumstances that exist, there's enough for me to say, aha, I see a pattern.
And it could very well be static, but I'm just looking for those pieces.
I kind of, you know, I want to make sure I make that clear.
Perhaps all of this will blow over, I was wrong about everything.
It could also be that this is political escalation, but it fizzles out at some point because people can't take it anymore.
But I'll tell you this, man.
When you experience a violent act like this, the police can't stop it.
They can't.
What are we going to do, put police in every corner?
No.
If this truly was an act of violent escalation, What's the solution?
I'm sorry, there isn't one.
You can't call the cops before the crime takes place.
And after you call the cops, they're minutes away.
Now, it may be possible the detectives find out who did this and bring them to justice to prevent it from happening again.
But come on.
We've got millions of people who are angry and outraged.
And any one of them.
So what do you do?
You can arrest that one person, but we're talking about politics here.
We're talking about people who want the president removed.
We've even got, like, left-wing anti-war journalists now saying this is a coup against a duly elected president.
Admittedly, they hate the president, which is really interesting.
They say he's a terrible, evil man, but he was elected, and he was elected for a reason, and that's the system that we have to maintain.
That was amazing.
It was shocking to see.
But you've got people who want to remove the president, and you've got people who think that should not happen.
What do you think comes next?
I mean, that is a serious question.
You can comment below.
What do you think comes next?
Because now we're seeing it hit politics.
It started culturally.
It started with people in the streets at rallies demanding free speech, anti-fuss, starting fires, attacking people.
But now it's happening in politics, where the executive branch and the legislative branch are butting heads.
Here we go.
Constitutional crisis plus street violence.
We'll see what happens.
You get the point.
Man, I just don't know.
I just don't know.
I'll see you guys in the next segment at 1 p.m.
on this channel.
This tweet was published by Forbes.
Why Pakistan should be on every solo female traveler's bucket list.
And there is so much wrong with that statement.
Now, this got ratioed and sparked an outrage, mostly among moderates and conservatives, of course, saying, if it is on your bucket list, it will be the last thing on your list.
You can see it was ratioed.
For those that don't know the Twitter world, ratioed means out of 3,000 retweets, people sharing it, 7,000 people chimed in.
So here's what happens.
Forbes changed the name.
I'm sorry, changed the title.
It's possible.
The title was different before.
I don't know.
The title is different from the tweet.
It says, A very different statement.
female travel vlogger thinks Pakistan could be the world's number one tourism destination.
A very different statement.
However, the point is still clear.
This is not the first article that is trying to encourage women to travel the world alone
into very dangerous places.
Make no mistake.
You can travel the world and be safe.
Be fine.
Many people do.
It is not a guarantee you will be hurt.
However, there are many terrifying realities to traveling the world, and you must be prepared.
Take my word for it.
Right here, on this wall, you can't see it because of the way it's cropped.
I have a certification for, it's called, they call it heat training, I mean the training
is redundant because the T means training, but a hostile environment and awareness training
or you know, people call it different things, but basically, I've been, I've witnessed revolutions.
I've been in countries, I've been detained in creepy windowless police buildings, and they were very serious and real dangers.
I was in Morocco for a conference, and in the wee hours of the morning heading back to the airport to catch my flight, the driver in this beat-up old car from the 70s was speeding, blowing every stoplight, and I said, I was like, hey man, we're going to the airport, right?
And he was like, yeah, yeah, sorry for speeding, you know, basically.
He said, if we stop, they kill us.
The point was, where we were, when you stop at a red light, that's when they jump out from the sides of the streets with guns and maybe not kill you, but the guy was like, you know, don't worry, don't worry, we're gonna be safe.
And he would blow past all these lights.
And for me, I'm just kind of like, hey, whatever, man.
That's great, right?
Because I understand the risks of traveling.
Now, here's the thing.
You can travel the world.
I don't care who you are.
If you want to travel the world, you go do it.
This popular solo female traveler thinks Pakistan could be... Hey man, go to Pakistan.
Do your thing.
She was apparently there for like 10 months.
What I take issue with is this uninformed, the world is candy and rainbows, this view of the world where you can just go.
Let me tell you something.
I've got a bunch of stories pulled up that I'm probably not going to show.
I probably won't show them.
Women getting attacked with acid.
You know about that story in Morocco?
The bicyclists in Tajikistan?
How many stories do we get where it's like, hey man, maybe you shouldn't do this?
Now let's be real though.
I also pulled up a bunch of stories about attacks in the US.
Tourists who come here.
The reality is, the world is dangerous.
Naturally, you know, first world countries and developed nations are less dangerous in many ways.
They're still very dangerous areas.
I mean, I think, like, Baltimore might be one of the most dangerous areas in the Western world.
But you can go to the U.S., you go to the right place, you'll be okay.
Imagine this.
Imagine a tourist, solo female, decided to go check out the United States.
You know, let's say she's from New Zealand.
So she chooses Baltimore.
You'd be like, look man, you can come to the U.S.
and it's a big place.
So maybe you want to focus on states because states are pretty big.
There are a lot of places you can go to.
You can go to Baltimore and be okay, right?
Let's say they chose Chicago.
And then inside Chicago, they said they wanted to go to, I'm not going to call out a specific Chicago neighborhood because I don't want to get anybody mad.
But let's say they chose a specific South Side territory where crime is ridiculous.
Absolutely ridiculous.
You'd probably question why they were doing it.
You'd also probably question if it was respectful to enter this conflicted territory, gang territory or otherwise.
You'd probably advise them it was a bad idea.
But for some reason, when it comes to these other countries, it's like you should totally go and do it.
I'm gonna levy some harsh criticism right now.
Not to this woman.
So this popular YouTuber, her name is Eva Zubek.
Hey, look, man.
I am extremely impressed, and I respect your ability to travel the way you do.
Check out her YouTube channel.
It's actually really, really impressive, but I'm going to criticize her.
She went to Aleppo.
She went to Damascus.
She's gone crossing the border throughout the Middle East.
And I think that's, you know, so long as she knows what she's doing and she's keeping herself safe, tremendous respect.
That's actually really, really impressive.
I know a lot of people who travel the world and understand those risks.
The issue I take is that I would never, never encourage someone to do the same things as me.
Like I mentioned, I have this sheet on the wall.
I have the wall of knickknacks behind me, right?
One of them is a special training program I went through that, you know, for me, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I felt was kind of redundant.
I thought it was funny.
But boy, I'll tell you what, man.
We go to this place.
It was just a little bit north of New York City.
I think it was like Westchester or something.
And it's kind of woodsy.
And it's this big building.
It was a rental.
I don't think the company actually owns any of the property or anything.
And a lot of the lessons they taught us, I was like, dude.
I know!
I'm from the South Side of Chicago, man.
You don't gotta tell me what a gunshot sounds like.
But it's really funny.
You know, I've been in conflict zones where gunshots ring out.
And I kid you not, these journalists will look around and go, those fireworks?
And I tell that story all the time, but seriously, it happened twice.
Two different journalists I was working with in Ferguson.
And my response is the same.
Do you see people carrying fireworks?
No.
Do you see people carrying guns?
Yes.
Why would you assume it's fireworks?
Now, I get it.
Some people are just, you know, dumb.
But the point of that story is, even in a circumstance where you'd think it would be reasonably obvious people are shooting guns in random directions, people are just optimism-biased.
They want to believe it.
So while I can respect and am absolutely impressed by this woman's ability to travel, I don't, and I'll say this too, I don't want to make it seem like she's overtly, directly being like, everybody go, everybody go.
It may be Forbes, you know, creating this kind of more, do it, go do it.
Here's the thing, man.
I will not, I will not take people with me into certain countries, into certain stories, period.
I don't care who you are, what you do.
If you don't know, we are not doing it.
And I got two stories for you.
First of all, I don't know why she went down to Tahrir Square by herself.
was in Egypt. I'm gonna keep the details of the story light because it's sensitive.
But it was a big story and a young woman was gang assaulted to say the least. I don't know
why she went down to Tahrir Square by herself. And I understand Tahrir Square is very very
different from just traveling the world and going to cities.
I'll tell you what man though.
Going into Syria and Aleppo right now, well, things have improved.
She went there several months ago.
I think it's like, okay, okay, if you're gonna go now, fine.
There have been, you know, controlled areas, but things have toned down quite a bit.
Still, if I plan a trip into a place like Syria or Aleppo, even today, I will not bring you with me.
Period.
The only people who are going to come with me are going to be people with very, very extensive experience.
So the first story is the Egypt one.
And I had a female friend that I said, absolutely not.
If you come here, you are on your own, and I will not be there with you.
Period.
And the reason for this is, it was dangerous.
Very dangerous.
We're talking about conflict, okay?
This is Urban Conflicts Revolution.
It's not the same as just going, I understand that.
My point was, I cannot be responsible for your safety in a situation like this.
And they were greatly offended.
And I stand firm, absolutely.
There are so many places I would never bring a female, no matter what your experience is.
But however, you can come on your own.
I'm not telling you not to come, I'm just saying.
For me, understanding the risks, I cannot, I cannot absorb a risk that large in many of these countries.
It's just a fact.
When we did this training, you know what they had us go through?
They had us go through a training where they didn't tell us what was going to happen, and I guess technically I'm not supposed to tell people what the training is because they want people to experience it randomly, but you know what?
I'm going to tell you anyway.
We were riding in SUVs, and they told us we were gonna go somewhere, like, it was basically like, hey everybody, we're gonna take a ride down to this, uh, this building, we're gonna check out, like, some, you know, we're gonna do this kind of training, and they didn't, they told us one thing, and did another, on purpose, because while we were driving, all of a sudden, we, we get, we see a bunch of cars in the road, we stop, and the guys all have AKs, and, and other rifles, and they start yelling at us, just saying, get out, get out, get out, pull us all, all out of the vehicles, throw all the men to the ground, And take all the women.
And then we promptly heard all of the women screaming for several minutes while the guys laughed about how they were taking the women.
That was one of the training things, that was some of the training we went through.
Now I don't know what they did to the actual women.
I think they told them, start screaming.
But it's interesting because this was like a training for the guys.
It was something the guys were experiencing.
And the men around us with guns were laughing, saying, how does that make you feel?
They're not your women.
And yeah, that is something they train.
Now what's really interesting is there was kind of this PC moment that was rather shocking to me when someone asked if there should be considerate, like, you know, are there special considerations for women then?
And they stuttered and stammered like, well, you know, because of the threat of, you can get in trouble for gender discrimination if you say, yeah, women shouldn't be traveling in certain places.
So this guy who's running an American company has to say, No!
You know, it's like, just, you know, everybody, men can experience these kinds of abuses just like women, and I'm like, dude...
Cut the PC crap.
I actually, I said nothing, but like, in my mind, right?
I'm sitting here like, they're making me do it.
It was just that, they made me do it.
And, um, it's like insurance purposes.
They're making me do it, and I'm sitting there like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I roll, I roll.
Come on, dude.
We know what's in the news.
I've been on the ground.
And it was really funny to me, because like, one of the guys that was at this training
was a weatherman.
And I'm like, dude, I've been to Egypt, okay?
I've been to countries.
I have seen things, bro.
I have seen people lose their lives.
I have seen bullets fly past me, and this meteorologist is trying to act all tough.
Like, you know, I know, blah blah blah.
You don't know what you're talking about.
I'm laughing.
I'm like, dude, whatever you want to believe, man.
What do they say?
Those that say don't know and those that know don't say.
I don't care, man.
They're making me be here.
But, you know, it's kind of shocking to me that as part of this big PC narrative, they won't tell you the truth.
And the truth is, and it's very obvious, and I don't even need to tell you.
If you're a man, and you go traveling by yourself, you're on the risk of being kidnapped or killed.
In many circumstances, they might not want to kill you.
They might beat you up or something, rob you.
There are things called express kidnappings, where they kidnap you, and then you hand everything over, and they dump you out of the car, or they make you go to an ATM, things like that.
And it really depends on where in the world you are.
But I can tell you there is one thing that is pretty much universal even in first world countries, and that is abuse on women.
If you get what I'm trying to say, right?
That while sometimes can affect men, absolutely, there is a strong likelihood that a woman traveling by herself will experience very specific kinds of torture and abuse that men won't.
So this brings me to the next story.
I gotta admit, I really do like talking about world travel and things like this, and this story I pulled up following the other two was, Adventurous Alone Attacked.
The number of female solo travelers has skyrocketed, but amid Instagram-worthy escapades are tales of violence and death raising questions about how the world is greeting women who travel alone.
Even in our own country, things are dangerous.
But let me tell you another story.
I'm not saying it is only women who face restrictions when it comes to travel.
No, no, no, no.
I absolutely will discriminate against those with no experience.
That's all that really matters.
Now, there are certain circumstances where being a woman is a factor.
I'm not gonna play games, okay?
Safety issues outside of this world, regardless of law, you can't, like, listen, man.
Certain countries we know about, India for instance, come on.
I am not going to play this game like it is equal for men and women in these circumstances.
Absolutely not.
Women will be targeted with extreme, excessive violence, slavery, and it is torturous.
I tell you what man, some people would rather die.
Some women get sold.
The other story was that I was in Venezuela.
And they, a vice sent me down with someone who, I'm not trying to be mean, you know, the guy was a cool dude, but he had no experience in conflict.
He'd done like calmer, longer form documentary stuff, and here I am in Venezuelan uprising, gunshots, fire, Molotovs, and these guys that I was with, literally no experience.
So we were out on a shoot, and then once I realized what was going on, I said, no, we're done.
We're going back.
And I said, if you don't know how to handle yourself when bullets are flying, when people are screaming, I will not be there.
I will not go out there with you because I cannot be responsible for you.
The point of this video, and I really do mean it, I've got a series of, I have all these tabs on top, you can see like the URL.
All of the tabs from various stories that I've been researching, and many of them are extreme and graphic incidents affecting women.
Men get hurt too.
I'm not trying to say they don't.
I'm trying to say that, you know, when you're a guy, there's There are certain things that you won't have to experience, and it's just a sad reality.
There are also certain things that are potentially worse.
It just depends on your opinion, I guess.
Would you rather be kidnapped and tortured, or just killed right away?
You know, men, at least in my understanding and the training I've gone through, men are more likely to be beaten, killed.
Women, there's a bigger risk there, of like a life of enduring slavery, depending on where you go.
So one of the stories I have pulled up, which I can't show you the images, is about American tourists getting attacked with acid.
That's another serious consideration.
So anyway, here's the point I'm trying to make.
This tweet is insanely irresponsible.
Pakistan should be on every solo female traveler's bucket list.
Okay, you know what?
I don't care if you're a solo female traveler.
Again, I think it's inspirational.
I have tremendous respect.
Actually, I take that back.
Not inspirational.
I have tremendous respect.
I'm impressed by this.
Your ability to be aware, to be smart, to travel successfully.
Most people don't.
Let me stress something to you.
Whenever we would go to some of these countries, we did extensive security checks.
When it came to one particular country, a very dangerous, violent conflict zone, we had to figure out if we could pull it off.
And we determined, ultimately, that we couldn't.
We just couldn't do it.
And I see people traveling to these countries, and it's mind-blowing.
I had to get several vaccinations, or inoculation, whatever, I don't know, several shots.
That was fun.
I got like four in one day.
You go to this place, they say.
Here are all the diseases you are likely to get.
These places are dirty, filthy, dangerous.
Yup.
So I went.
Got a bunch of shots.
Oh man, that was fun.
That was fun.
And bandages and, you know.
So there's diseases.
We then had to conduct a general, you know, what is the crime rate?
What is the language?
What is the perception?
What do you look like?
So I'll make another point.
You can have all this PC stuff in the United States because we're a relatively safe place.
Relatively.
We still have hate crimes.
We still have, you know, violence based on identity and all that stuff.
For sure.
But there are certain countries you can't go to if, say, you're white and you look like an American or something like that.
So for me, I was lucky enough when I went to Egypt in that they all thought I was Egyptian.
For one, I guess the hat kind of looks like some hats.
Some people told me that it looked like an Islamic kind of hat.
I don't know, it's a beanie.
And I have long facial hair because I'm just lazy and I don't shave.
And I don't necessarily look... I'm kind of ambiguous in some capacities.
So when we were in Egypt, The guy I was with, who's very much a white dude from Vice, was like, we gotta be really, really careful, and all the Egyptians were like, no, no, Tim's cool.
I got to actually walk around Nasser City during the Egyptian Revolution.
Nasser City was where all the Muslim Brotherhood was at, and they were praying and everything, and I had no problems.
In fact, it's a funny story.
I had one guy come up to me thinking I was an imam, and he was asking me where, you know, the mosque was and stuff like that.
And so I just pointed to my fixer, you know, the local who speaks the language, and he explained everything to him, and then he started laughing.
He goes, the guy thought you were like an imam.
That's amazing.
It doesn't matter if you're male or female.
It matters that in certain places, there are certain identities that are at risk.
And so what I want to say is, For me, personally, and this is not anybody else, I will not assume the liability that you will bring if you have no experience, and if you are of a certain identity in a certain place, because the world is a dangerous place.
People want to talk about how anyone can do anything and all that stuff, and it should be that way.
And you know what?
Like, when it comes to issues of employment and everything, we follow the letter of the law, okay?
So if we're gonna send somebody out, you know what?
We don't take into consideration certain race, gender, or anything in terms of hiring reporters.
Absolutely not.
Me personally, if I'm gonna travel, if we're gonna do a vacation or something like that, I have no problem saying no way.
Now here's the big problem.
When we look to hire people, right?
I say we like me and other journalists.
What legal room do we have to actually say a woman in India is at substantial risk?
A woman in Arab Spring nations during this protest will be at substantial risk.
Is it the choice of the woman to go on her own?
Fine.
But then do we have to assume the liability, the insurance, and the liability of their well-being?
You know what, man?
It's one of the most annoying and complicated issues about the whole, you know, PC narrative we have in this country, is that when I was in this training, they stuttered and stammered over whether or not they could tell you that women face serious threats in various parts of the world, because it's a fact.
It's just a fact.
And, man, I'd be really interested to see how this plays out.
I'll tell you a story about Vice.
It was, I don't have the full details pulled up, but apparently some woman defied the instructions of Vice and went to a, I believe it was in Algeria, and went to a soccer match where she got attacked.
I think this is the story.
I could be getting it wrong because it's been a while, but, you know, Google this.
And she sued Vice.
And it's so insane to me that you could go to these countries where they flat out say women are not allowed at soccer matches.
Did you know this?
Like, this is the point I'm trying to make.
They're specific things.
These countries are not equal.
They do not treat women fairly.
And so, apparently this woman decided she was gonna go there anyway.
I could be getting it wrong.
I could be getting it wrong.
Look it up.
And then, uh, got attacked because of it.
And filed a suit against Vice over it.
And that, to me, is just nuts.
I don't know how you solve for this problem, man.
An American company is under a legal obligation not to discriminate when it comes to a job hiring.
But are you seriously going to be doing a story and you say, I'll tell you this, one of the stories that we were researching when I was at Vice was about female victims.
And I was told specifically, we will not have a man do this.
You cannot take this job.
That's not discrimination.
I totally get it.
Like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to go into this room full of all these female, you know, traffic victims and sit there and... No way, dude.
No way.
So we knew that there were certain stories, that there were certain realities to life.
Now, I get it.
You know, it's different if we're talking about someone making widgets at a factory in the United States.
You can be whatever gender identity or, you know, whatever.
We're talking about other parts of the world.
And we're talking about political nuance.
There were a lot of things that happened at Vice, particularly, that was very, very centered on race and gender and identity when it came to who was going to get to tell what story.
And what do you do about it?
I very well believe any one of these people could have sued for discrimination.
Because they're telling you straight up.
I've experienced the very same thing with Fusion working later on.
When they were preparing a big event and they said straight up, you're too white.
I was told that.
I was too white.
And I didn't get all bent out of shape.
I understood the political reality and said, yeah, man, there's no way I could... I mean, it's not true.
I actually thought I could do a good job in what they wanted to do.
But I was like, I get it.
I get it.
So here we are in the very, very complicated reality, this complicated world.
Where Forbes tells every solo female, Oh, it's in your bucket list.
You better go to Pakistan.
Okay.
Who's going to be responsible for those who are injured, burned with acid, beaten, kidnapped, whatever.
And again, I think it could happen to men too.
I'm just saying women experience a very particular set of violence and are more likely to be targeted for certain things.
Me personally, You gotta have the experience.
There are some places I wouldn't bring a guy.
There are some places I wouldn't bring a woman.
And I wouldn't travel with anybody who didn't have the experience and didn't have situational awareness and the training.
But I'll tell you this, man, it's complicated.
And this video ended up being really, really long, but I'll leave it there.
Because here's what I want to talk about.
When it comes to these laws in the United States about who you can or can't discriminate against, I actually agree with them.
And I've talked over and over again about why I do support these laws saying you can't discriminate.
We are a nation and we are all members of the public who pay in and we should have equal access.
But what about something like, we're trying to send somebody to go into this particular area where you will be killed if you are one of these identities.
Is it legal then to say, here's why we discriminated?
Yes, it was absolutely based on this, because they were threatened.
Honestly, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.
But I'll tell you this, man.
The world is not the same.
The world is not the US.
There are a lot of women who successfully do this.
Eva, I think what you do is really awesome.
This video is really incredible.
She went to Aleppo.
I think it was amazing and badass.
And I think it was awesome that someone got a video from there.
My bigger concern is, are they going to start telling other people to do the same thing?
My bigger concern is, Eva, do you have security behind the scenes?
Do you do security assessments?
Who do you consult with?
Who operates your camera?
Is it just you?
And do you do this on your own?
Because if that's the case, man, I am really worried.
I am really worried.
I've been around the world to dangerous places.
I actually think it's fantastic that she made it into Syria and Aleppo and these other places.
But boy, man, If you have security behind the scenes, and it hasn't been disclosed, I'm not saying it has or it hasn't, because admittedly I didn't go through the article, so I'm not trying to accuse you of anything.
If you do have security and do consultation and assessment, I seriously do hope you present that and tell people.
I have traveled to places without security assessments, and it was extremely risky and dangerous.
I ended up in a car with a bunch of dudes who had guns and started threatening us.
These things happen, man.
It's a complicated story.
I can't get too much into it because of potential security risks.
But yeah, we got shaked down by some dudes with a bunch of crazy guns.
And so we made our way out.
We ditched our vehicle.
We did a security assessment.
I was in Venezuela.
I was threatened.
I was forced to flee the country.
All of these instances, we have security and we have assessments to figure out the safest way to go about traveling.
And now with all of these stories, I feel like there's a trend among millennials to think the world is just all safe and everyone's nice and you can go and do whatever you want and you can't.
You can't.
I'm done.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m.
on the main channel.
YouTube.com slash TimCast is a different channel.
I'll see you there.
What do you get when you take one of the most privileged and wealthiest generations and raise them on a strict diet of making sure they never experience any hardship?
You get young people who are petitioning the government to allow them to die because they can't handle their unbearable mental pain.
So here's a story from the Daily Mail.
The clever, attractive, and physically healthy woman who is fighting for the right to die at 23 because she is plagued by mental health problems and crippling shyness.
So I read through this story, and I'll tell you what she's suffering from.
She's just awkward.
That's it.
And it's too painful for her to bear.
You know, I read through this and I thought, there are people who really do want to take their lives for similar things, and they do.
And there are a lot of people who grin and bear it.
I'm not saying everyone can or everyone should.
I'm just saying, we are now at a point where there is a young woman, who is fine, talking about her mental anguish.
And one of the things she talks about is that she invited friends over for a sleepover and they didn't come.
So she wants to die.
Because it hurts.
Wow.
Our generation has become so privileged we now risk young people just deciding not to live anymore because life is too hard.
This is what happens when you have bad parents.
When your parents don't, like, teach you what it means to be a life form, to struggle to survive, to live and understand, to be grateful.
Listen.
When I was younger, things were pretty rough.
As I get older, things slowly improve.
But what happens when your life is inverted and everything is perfect and you experience no hardship?
Well, the reality is when you get older, everything can only get worse.
And when you have young people who grew up on this wealth, Access to the summation of knowledge.
Look, man, I understand there are people living in poverty, but seriously, can we compare poverty to poverty 50 years ago?
People used to not be able to fly on planes because it was too expensive, it was prohibitively expensive.
Now everyone's got a refrigerator, air conditioning, they got a smartphone, and even the poor people have smartphones and access to the internet.
So I get it.
Poverty still exists, but that's because what is poverty, it changes, right?
The saying goes that a homeless person today has better access to medical care than Rockefeller did at the turn of the century.
You can be the richest person in the world, but technology improves lives.
So here's what happens.
When you grow up, and everything is perfect, and you play video games all day, and every single time you have a problem, your parents take care of it, your teacher's mad at you, your parent takes care of it, what happens when you're an adult living on your own, and you go outside and try to make a friend with somebody, and you're awkward, and it's painful, you can't handle the rejection?
This is the reality, in my opinion.
It's the future of the honorable mention award, the participation award generation.
They're told that speech is violence.
And that, you know, hate must be banned.
And then you end up with people just saying it's too painful.
Please!
I want to die!
Listen, man.
There are people who truly suffer from depression, mental anguish, and I respect and understand all that.
But this is not what she's describing, okay?
When someone has serious medical depression, like there's an imbalance in their brain, and they struggle, and they know they shouldn't be sad, and they can't do anything about it, and they try.
Well, we made medication for that.
We've made treatments.
Some people disagree, I get it.
But it works for a lot of people.
Then there are people who are just so overly sensitive because they had bad parents that their shyness results in them experiencing mental anguish.
Well, let's read the story.
Maybe I'm wrong, okay, in jumping the gun with the assumption, but we'll read the story about the clever, attractive 23-year-old.
They say...
Kelly is 23 years old.
She is a bright and thoughtful young woman with an attractive smile that flits across her face occasionally as we spend several hours discussing her background, her family, and her short life.
With her long, tousled chestnut hair and short checked red dress, she looks like many of the 50,000 cheerful students who throng the bustling Belgian city of Leuven, home to the country's biggest university.
Yet there's a big difference.
For this friendly woman sitting on the sofa beside me, someone younger than both of my own children, is telling me an anguished tale of deep personal torment.
When I look in the mirror, I see a monster.
She says at one point, although dark rings around her eyes are the only outward sign of her struggles, I really don't like what I see.
Okay, hold on.
Are you saying that you have some kind of like body dysmorphia?
That you have a disconnect between who you are and what you'd like to be?
Let's work through this.
She has her boyfriend here.
And interestingly, when I saw this, and I saw that she had a boyfriend, someone who's 44, I thought, how does this work if she wants to die?
What does her boyfriend think?
Ah, it turns out, her boyfriend also wants to die.
It's interesting because, listen, man, I understand people can be suicidal, but we actively try to prevent suicide, right?
We have programs that if someone is suicidal, you call this, we try to stop it.
Well, they have a program in Belgium where you can actually just call the government and get approval to end your own life.
Now it's complicated, because I see a few things.
For one, it's your life.
No one can tell you what you can or can't do.
Right?
And in a lot of ways, I'm actually in favor of these laws.
Say you've got somebody who's terminally ill.
Or is very old and crippled, to a certain extent.
Well, I think it makes sense that if you decide it's your time to go, and if we keep inventing new technologies that can just prolong your suffering, at a certain point it should be your choice to take off the machinery.
In this instance, it's not the case.
She's healthy.
She's alive.
So what are the options?
Just die?
Well, what about some kind of medication, treatment, therapy?
What can we do?
She talks about how she doesn't like what she looks in the mirror.
Let's read more.
Such words do not seem to match the person speaking them, but Kelly is plagued by mental health problems that she describes as being like a knife plunged in her chest, and we are meeting to discuss her determination to die.
It won't hurt, so I don't see the problem.
It's like going to sleep, yada yada.
In almost every place on the planet, this would be a huge problem, but Belgium is one of three countries that permit such euthanasia, making no distinction between unbearable physical and mental pain.
The other two are Holland and Luxembourg.
Yet even in Belgium, Which 17 years ago became the world's second country to sanction euthanasia, and the first to legalize it for children.
Psychiatric cases remain controversial, especially when they involve someone as young as Kelly.
Mental health patients account for about 3% of the 17,000 people killed since the law was changed in this country of 11 million citizens.
There were 2,357 deaths last year, 10 times as many as the first year euthanasia was legal in Belgium, and most involved elderly people.
Many psychiatrists, and most Belgians, oppose extension of euthanasia to mental health cases.
Some experts argue diagnosis is subjective, unlike severe physical illness, and insist the lives of distressed younger patients can improve with time, therapy, and medication.
You know what this reminded me of?
Futurama, where they have suicide booths, and you can just walk in, and you just, you know, and Fry thinks it's a phone booth, and he goes in.
You get it?
I think about a society in which they just don't care anymore.
They just say, you know what, fine, go in the booth and hit the button, and you're done.
We don't care.
And that's a strange future, I gotta admit.
Because, you know, when I read about people who say jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, you know what they invariably say?
That the moment they decided to end their life, they realized it was a mistake and wanted to live as they were falling.
And those who survive, that's what they tell us.
So I think about this, someone who's so determined.
Will she be thinking the same thing when she's sitting on the table and seeing the chemicals or however they do it going into her veins?
She might say, no, stop, please, no, stop.
Maybe that's something these people need to have a wake-up call.
Maybe there's like a placebo treatment to see how they truly respond to it and they do it in secret.
I have no idea.
They say, uh, it feels like discrimination.
She feels like it's discrimination because they won't allow her to die so young.
People look at me and they see someone so young, but I feel bad inside all the time.
It is not the age that is important, but the suffering of the person.
This woman so open and yet obviously troubled highlights the complexity of the issue.
So they basically, let me find this important point.
Check this out.
Her crippling shyness, they say.
And then, where do they find the sleepover thing?
Here we go.
I asked if she had ever been to a party.
Yes, I went once and it was awful, she replied.
She tried asking a few friends to her house for a sleepover around the same time when she was 16, but only one came, so I felt rebuffed.
Are these seriously the problems she's highlighting?
She says it feels like physical pain.
Yes, emotional pain can feel, can give you a physical response.
I'm sorry.
I understand it may be an instance of depression, but this really does seem to me... Okay, so they're going to say that she's attempted suicide, she's eating disorders, self-harm, etc.
I get all that.
But what she's describing seems to me like complete, just, frailty and weakness.
You know, some, like, when you look at these activists who demand words be censored, they can't handle someone having, saying a naughty joke or naughty words.
That seems to me like they are so fragile and weak that a word causes them to faint and then feel physical pain.
Yeah.
When you're younger and you don't experience these things, you don't develop a strength to combat against it.
And we develop a very, very weak and frail society.
I'm worried about this trend.
You know, perhaps she really does have a diagnosable mental illness, but would the solution then be for a 23-year-old to be euthanized?
Can't we provide her with a painkiller?
It's true that painkillers actually can help reduce emotional pain.
At least that's what I read.
That's what I read.
But I'm gonna say this.
Whether or not I'm right about this particular case, I will say, I believe it's very likely That there are going to be many more cases like this of young people who have had every obstacle plowed out in front of them.
And then once they're adults and have to take care of themselves, they're going to hear mean words, they're going to hear mean things, they're not going to know where to get their food, they're not going to know how to hold a job, and they're going to fall apart and think everything is awful.
Because relatively, it is.
You spend your childhood surrounded by a fortress that protects you with everything you could ever ask for.
What do you think you're gonna feel like when you're older and you gotta fight for yourself?
You're gonna be like, oh my god, this is the worst thing I've ever experienced.
Think about the inverse.
For me, I'm grateful for everything, because I've experienced hardship when I was younger, and I grew up and said, wow man, everything I have now is so great, everything is perfect.
Because I've been homeless.
So I don't know her circumstances, but I think if parents don't teach their kids hardship, if their kids don't have to learn how to survive, they will grow up frail, weak, and terrified.
I'll leave it there.
Let me know what you think.
Maybe I'm wrong.
I've got a couple more segments coming up for you in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
Now that we are well beyond opening weekend, we're gonna get more into the politics of Joker.
And the big takeaway here is that, after all of the fake news about Joker being an incel movie, the left is finally starting to realize what the movie is really about.
And they're embracing it!
Why, the Guardian writes, Joker isn't an ode to the far right, it's a warning against austerity.
It took you this long to realize it?
Perhaps those that were writing all the stories about incels were lying to you, and I don't know why.
Perhaps it is, you know, mob mentality, right?
You had this film, Joker, which I think is fantastic and amazing, and spoiler warning for those that haven't seen it.
Spoiler warning.
Stay tuned.
You had an award in Venice, an eight-minute standing ovation, it was critically acclaimed before it came out, but then all of a sudden, over on this side of the planet, Toronto Film Festival, they started saying it was an incel movie, it was dangerous, it was gonna inspire massive violence, all of these things.
Absurd.
You know what I think happened?
I've talked about this phenomenon before.
Here's what happens in media.
When Trump emerges, someone says, is Trump being racist?
And it gets a million views.
And they go, whoa, we got a million views, what do we do?
Well, we can't write the same story twice, right?
Trump is a racist.
And the next story, well, what do we write now?
Trump is the worst racist.
And Trump is almost as bad as Hitler, and then Trump is as bad, and then Trump is worse than.
You see where it goes?
So here's what I think happened with Joker.
The movie is seen by some critics and one person says, don't the incels or whatever like Joker because they use that clown meme?
Oh man.
And so they write it up.
They write up this blog and they say, the Joker is, you know, has some incel undertones.
Someone else sees that and says, whoo, they got a bunch of views.
I want those views.
Joker is an incel movie.
Ooh, but seriously, think about how it escalated.
Joker's an incel, you know, it's got incel, you know, it could be seen by incels.
Oh, it's a movie for incels.
He's a hero to the white underclass that created Trump.
And then finally, they are going to inspire violence.
That's the X. That's where they ended.
They chased themselves off a cliff.
In reality, the movie is about a dude who's mentally ill, and there's a scene where a woman of color tells him, you don't matter, they don't care about you, and they don't care about me either.
And he says, how am I going to get my medication?
I don't know.
And then later on, he's got some dudes at his apartment—guys he doesn't like.
One guy he likes.
And he's got this twisted look on his face, and they were like, are you taking your medicine?
And he goes, no.
That was a huge point of the movie.
The wealth inequality was the protests.
The austerity, shutting down his treatment, and not giving him his medication, and then he snapped, and he murdered people.
And they're now realizing it.
You know what, man?
The media is a sick, twisted beast.
They lie, they lie, they lie, and finally they go, wait a minute!
So this person actually can give some respect to, this Micah Utrecht, who's looking at this movie going, what?
How could anybody get that from this?
Thank you!
I certainly didn't.
Let's read.
Joker isn't an ode to the far right, it's a warning against austerity.
Midway through a screening of Joker this weekend at a Chicago theater, I leaned over to a friend seated next to me and whispered, is this the same movie that everyone has been talking about?
That's exactly what I thought.
That is exactly how I felt when I watched this film.
I was like, what?
There's one guy holding up a sign saying Thomas Wayne's a fascist.
What?
And he was the guy wearing clown masks.
I asked because what I was witnessing on screen bore little resemblance to the ode to angry young white incel men that I had heard so much about in media coverage of Joker leading up to its release.
Instead, we got a fairly straightforward condemnation of American austerity, how it leaves the vulnerable to suffer without the resources they need, and the horrific consequences for the rest of society that can result.
Yeah.
Yes.
If there is anything to take away, it's that Joker is not political.
The individual was a nihilist, and he felt validated when people latched on to something he did.
And because it made him feel validated and justified his experience, he went with it.
He went with it, painted his face, and he went with it.
It made him happy.
He liked being noticed.
That's about it.
The message is so blunt that even I, a Marxist and Philistine, found its message a bit too clobbering.
Thank you!
How mainstream commentators have missed it and drawn the exact opposite conclusion is baffling.
Maybe because they were lying for clicks.
Maybe when CNN wrote that story saying, Joker is an ode to the Trumpian world.
He is Trump himself dancing on that car.
I was like, what?
The guy joker dancing in the car was surrounded by anti-austerity wealth inequality protesters dressed like Antifa in which previously we saw a guy holding up a sign accusing Thomas Wayne of being a fascist and then somebody went and killed Thomas Wayne.
Are you nuts?
They called that guy Trump.
Yeah, this person can see it.
Arthur Fleck, the protagonist and eventual joker, is a poor young white mentally ill man who works as a clown and seems to enjoy it.
In the film's opening scene, he is beaten up by a rowdy group of teenagers, some of whom appear to be teens of color.
Watching this opening, I thought, here it is.
In the very first scene, teenagers running wild in the streets of New York, a classic right-wing trope in American cinema depicting a society and its racialized underclass in particular.
That is out of control.
We'll soon be told it needs to be reined in by some old-fashioned law and order and cracking of skulls.
And in the locker room of the clown agency, when a co-worker calls the teens animals and savages, Arthur explicitly rejects dehumanizing the teens.
They're just kids, he responds.
Bruises visible on his body.
A body for which Joaquin Phoenix lost 15 pounds out of- 52 pounds out of filming.
With a disturbingly protruding spine and ribs that is physically ravaged by the austerity-wracked society Arthur lives in, wasting away in front of our eyes, he defends his assailants and rejects his co-workers' racist epithets.
Yes, that's a little too far to the left, in my opinion.
Like, you're taking it a little far in your interpretation.
Calling them animals or savages can apply to anybody of any race.
But the fact that it's not about race, Okay, it's not.
It was just kids.
It just so happened to be that some of them were kids of color.
They push the fake narrative over and over again because they want it to happen.
They want the violence.
It is traffic.
They love Trump.
They love the Trump bump.
Calling Joker Trump.
Please.
Absolutely not.
That is absurd.
Since critics depicted this film as a... This is a film for the right.
Who's overtly racist views are well known.
I expected the depictions of characters of color to be bigoted, but interestingly, almost all of the violence he eventually meets out as he sinks deeper and deeper into a full-blown breakdown, save for the movie's final scene, at which point Joker's nihilistic brutality has fully blossomed, Now wanton and indiscriminate, it's against white men, many of them wealthy.
Yes, the people who get killed are wealthy white men.
How insane were these stories?
Thomas Wayne.
Dude, that scene when the guy walks up and says, okay, Spoilers, I warned you.
But that scene on the set of the TV show with Murray, and he tells the joke, what do you get when you cross, you know, a mentally ill man, you take away his medication, you get what you effing deserve, and then bang, who did he kill?
Wealthy white guy telling him, you don't, you don't know, you don't, you know, and then Arthur saying, you don't know how we live.
And what happens next?
Okay, the first, the three guys who get killed on the train?
White Wall Street dudes.
White males.
TV hosts, white male, and finally Thomas Wayne, white male, and the dude in the mask repeats what the Joker said on the TV.
Hey, hey, Wayne, you get what you effing deserve.
Bang.
Oh, that was, that was powerful, man.
It was powerful and well done.
And everything came together.
It was really, really well done.
My mind was blown.
I was sitting there the last few minutes of that movie just like, wow.
And how do you walk away from that thinking it was a far-right incel movie?
That he goes and kills white males.
You think that's something that a conservative's gonna write?
No, are you nuts?
And that's exactly what this person realized.
He defends the kids.
They're just kids, right?
And he goes after the rich.
Joker was a nihilist.
Joker didn't kill Thomas Wayne, right?
But in the end, he loved that people validated him.
And so he just... He's like a person who knows the shock will get him attention.
That's what it's all about.
You know what?
If I could compare anyone or anything to the Joker, it's the media companies themselves.
It's CNN.
The nihilistic drive for attention and validation that will say anything and do anything for those clicks.
A passing interaction with a neighbor, a single black mother who lives on his floor, leads to a disturbing and delusional romantic obsession with her.
And he goes on, yadda yadda yadda.
But in the end, all he does is when he goes into her house, and then she says leave, he does.
There's no violence, there's no racism, there's no bigotry, he just leaves.
There's nothing incel there!
Likewise, in a scene whose political message was so blunt that it could have appeared in a mid-century Stalinist propaganda film, his social worker and counselor, another black woman, with whom he has a tense but clearly significant relationship, is forced to tell him that due to recent budget cuts, their office would be shutting down.
Arthur asks her where he's going to get his medication.
She has no answer for him.
They don't give an S about people like you, Arthur.
She tells him, referring to those who cut the budget, and they don't give an S about people like me either.
The black female public sector worker is telling the white male public service user that their interests are intertwined against the wealthy billionaire class and their political lackeys who are slashing public services.
Across racial and gender boundaries, the two have a common class enemy.
Thank you!
That's exactly what I saw.
Listen.
I don't think we need to ascribe these grandiose political messages to the film.
It may have just been that they cast this woman.
It wasn't meant to be anything in particular.
But the point I want to make is how these people walked away with this incel narrative when you actually have a scene that this Marxist is saying could have been in a Stalinist propaganda film of a black woman telling a white man, we have a common enemy.
And it's like the handshake.
It's like the DSA handshake.
You get it?
Across gender and racial lines, they don't care about us.
My mind, you know what, man?
The movie was fantastic.
I'm gonna wrap this up.
I do try, I do, I do always try to keep these short.
You guys know that.
Check this out.
Joker stays on top with a 55 million dollar second weekend.
The movie was amazing.
It was amazing.
You know, all of these things are happening.
And it does kind of feel a little slow in the beginning a little bit, but it's like, interesting.
I never felt bored or angry, I was like, you're just watching this man live.
And then things start coming together, but boy I'll tell you what, it started spinning up so fast in the end, when all of a sudden the pieces fall into place about Batman, Thomas Wayne, Joker, Oz.
So good.
I'll leave it there.
Thanks for hanging out.
Stick around.
I've got a couple more segments coming up in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
Well, she said it again.
Rashida Tlaib says Democrats have discussed detaining White House officials who don't testify.
And this is not from that video in the past.
This is actually another story.
Apparently in an interview, she said, yep.
This is just the first little highlight because what I really want to talk about is this story about Beto O'Rourke.
But I highlight that one as well because I want to show you the extreme position we're in.
So you see how we're getting to that crux, that point where they're actually going to take action.
But this is the big story about Democrats just sabotaging everything and burning it to the ground.
If there is one person on the Democratic side that I believe is truly evil, and I don't use that word lightly, I will stress again, Beto O'Rourke, I believe, is an evil human being.
Look at this story.
Democrats are going to regret Beto's stance on conservative churches.
The candidate seems not to realize that eliminating tax exemptions for certain religious institutions would be catastrophic.
Let me tell you why I think Beto O'Rourke is evil.
He is willing to do anything and say anything and burn everything down around him to get what he wants.
So that he can just stay in the light a little bit longer.
He is the worst type of weaselly, individual, self-centered, narcissistic egotist who just wants everything to be about him.
To the point where he will espouse such extremist and insane positions to make sure the cameras are pointed at his face.
I'll tell you what, man.
He reminds me of somebody else in a certain way.
Someone like Donald Trump.
But I truly believe Beto is worse.
I really do.
I really, really do.
I think Trump is boorish.
I think he's a braggart.
I think he's...
arrogant in a lot of ways, but I do think that Trump is concerned about making sure
he maintains a certain level of respect and love from the population.
I think Trump is the kind of person that wants his name up on the top of that building because
he wants everyone to really love him.
And that means Trump is willing to bow down to Democrats.
Absolutely!
There have been instances where he actually entertained certain gun restrictions that had the NRA and the conservatives be like, ah!
And Trump has done bipartisan deals because, at the end of the day, I think Trump wants to be validated.
Beto O'Rourke just wants the camera pointed at his face.
So there's a difference.
Trump I see as somebody with a bad attitude.
Beto I see as somebody who knows he's burning it down and he's laughing because the camera's on his face, because you can see him, that's all he wants.
I'll put it this way.
We could even argue that Trump may be driven by the same motives of someone like Beto, but because Beto doesn't have the spotlight, he's willing to burn everything down to get it.
Everything and anything.
Beto O'Rourke has said, tear down this border wall.
What?
Okay, listen, you want to argue that it's too expensive to erect border fencing, I'm listening.
unidentified
But why would you spend money to tear down the wall that already exists?
It's because he just wants to say whatever is shocking enough to get on TV.
And yeah, Trump did similar things, or was accused of it at least.
But in the end, There's a limit, I guess.
And I think the limit is Trump didn't destroy the Republican Party.
Trump won it over and reinvigorated it with new voters so you can criticize them all you want.
Beto, on the other hand, is destroying everything.
He wants to ban outright all guns.
Like, basically all guns.
I'll turn on the hyperbole.
Beto, what he's proposing with his ban would not just be AR-15s.
It would be almost all semi-automatic weapons, including handguns.
Beto now is saying he wants to remove tax exemptions from churches that don't believe in same-sex marriage.
Does Beto not understand that many Democrats are Christians?
That many people in the black community and the Latino community are Christians who believe in the rights of their church and the separation of church and state?
And that if their church wants to or doesn't want to believe certain things, that's the church's business?
Beto O'Rourke repeatedly pushes extremist positions that are so detrimental that they're repeatedly slammed on by Democrats.
When he talked about AR-15s, Democrats came out saying Beto O'Rourke's comments will haunt us for decades to come.
And this will too.
Let me read this story.
The candidate seems not to realize, or rather, the issue of gay rights and recognition and acceptance of the LGBTQ community has moved at warp speed, in political terms anyway, this past decade.
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I am not in favor of gay marriage, said the candidate Barack Obama in 2008.
At Thursday night's nationally televised forum on LGBTQ rights, candidate Beto O'Rourke showed how far and how quickly the Democratic Party has moved.
The former Texas Congressman caused quite a stir when he said he would support revoking the tax-exempt status of religious institutions, colleges, churches, and charities if they oppose same-sex marriage.
Though his swift yes in response to the CNN moderator Don Lemon's question received an enthusiastic response from the LA audience, Much of America, including those in blue-hued states, might see troubling ramifications of this that go well beyond O'Rourke's applause line.
He just wants attention.
He just wants the camera on his face.
I don't even think he wants to be president.
He's just addicted to all of that attention from the celebrities he got.
He was a nobody, and then he was a somebody, and they took it all away!
And it hurt.
I know it hurt, Beto.
After all that media dried up when you lost the Senate race in Texas, what could you do?
Except go insane and start pushing some of the most absurd and extremist policies.
I'll tell you what, man, what Beto said right there, pandering to a group of people who already have your vote, they're not going to go vote for a moderate or for a Republican.
But what do you think just happened to all those moderate House districts, those Democrat districts?
They won!
They won in 2018, even though Trump won in 2016.
They heard you.
And they just got scared.
You are insane.
You don't care about what they need.
You will be a bad leader and you are catering to a small group of people against others.
You are vowing to punish people instead of supporting people.
This is where things get truly insane.
For me, my thoughts have always been that at a law level, the law should be equal.
The rights of same-sex marriage should be identical in every way to heterosexual couples.
There have been people who have talked about civil unions and why marriage shouldn't be mandated or whatever, and they talk about how marriage is an Abrahamic institution.
Well, I'll stop you right there.
So long as we have the intertwining of the Abrahamic institution that is marriage, Or if we want to root it down to its general term, coupling, which exists in other areas, we say that marriage happens in a church, it's an Abrahamic institution, but it is tied to government law, tax, etc.
So initially there was this divide.
People like Obama said, I believe in civil unions.
And the idea there was to separate church and state.
You can't tell a church what they, you know, who they can or cannot marry or what they believe.
The problem is, it's not so much about what they believe, but what hits tax law.
So in my opinion, yes, marriage needs to be equal.
Because the Constitution, look, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, equality under the law, you know, period.
And if people want to do something in their own homes, their own lives, and who they love, they should.
But it becomes a problem, then, when you threaten to revoke tax-exempt status from these religious institutions.
Because now you're threatening to punish those who refuse to bend the knee to what you want them to believe or do, even if it violates the core of their being.
The challenge here, and the difference between this and my opinion on, say, like, whether or not a baker should bake a cake, is that a religious institution is literally the house of that religion, and you can get married in a courtroom.
Now, I understand there are a lot of people who think they should be deserving of the same ceremony, but that's between you and that particular church.
If a church doesn't want to do something, it is a church.
There is a difference between an institution that is about your existence, your belief, and your philosophy, And what you can make someone else do, versus another store that relies on public infrastructure you pay into.
It's complicated, but I'll tell you this.
There is a troubling overlap, and I'll entertain the argument, absolutely.
And I think it's a hard argument to actually present.
If a church is using public infrastructure, we can make the same argument.
The bakery uses public infrastructure, therefore, if the taxes go into supporting it, you should be able to get your service done there, right?
You should be able to bake a cake.
Essentially, you have the argument that same is true for a church if they're using sidewalks and infrastructure, etc.
I think there's a really good argument to be made about removing tax exemption status from religious institutions.
And I also want to make sure I push back on all of the religious institutions that are politicking.
Yes, there are churches that have signs that talk about Trump and conservatives and supporting politics.
No dice.
You can't do that.
You shouldn't be allowed to do that.
It should be separate on purpose.
And that means if a church decides what they are or aren't going to support something, We shouldn't be stepping in and threatening them to take away their tax-exempt status because they choose to believe something.
There's the line, right?
A business isn't about what you believe.
A business is about making cakes.
I understand the argument that a baker shouldn't have to if he doesn't want to.
I disagree for the most part.
Now, going to the Colorado case, I want to make sure I make it clear because everybody else gets, you know, angry about it.
This was an instance where he was actually saying, I will make you a cake, I just won't customize it.
And that's a trickier issue.
He ended up winning in the end.
But let's put it this way.
You have a brownie shop.
They make brownies.
If you walk in and they say, get out, no brownies for you.
Okay, well, hold on.
Right?
You can't do that.
I understand the issue.
However, if you say, I want brownies to read this.
Like, imagine if somebody went in to a, you know, a gay neighborhood and went to a bakery and demanded they write something from Leviticus.
Yeah, they'd probably be like, I'm not writing that.
It's like, well, you have no choice.
It's my religious freedom.
Where does the argument stop?
In this instance, I think, you know what, for the most part, don't consider it your speech.
I know it's your art, but you're a cake shop, not a speech factory or a philosophy factory.
Churches are different.
Churches are places of worship, where people hold fundamental truths about their existence.
So it's similar in my argument to the vaccine thing.
The government shouldn't mandate vaccines, but you should get vaccinated.
And if you want to go to a public building, like a school or whatever, they should be allowed to say, you've got to get vaccinated, right?
In terms of a bakery, it's different.
So anyway, I hope you get the point.
I don't want to keep repeating myself.
The point is, however, what Beto O'Rourke is proposing is punishing institutions who refuse to bend to what they believe.
The churches are literally about going to a place where you can express what you believe with others.
It is very different from going to a bakery.
And we have tax-exempt status for a reason.
So I'll leave this with two points.
The main point I want to make here is that Beto O'Rourke is burning everything down for his own personal gain so he can get 15 more minutes.
It's disgusting.
The other point is, he is proposing punishing places of worship for refusing to believe things they don't believe.
That makes no sense.
You can't do that.
Churches are not businesses, for the most part.
And I will also end with one more point.
We want to be consistent.
Churches should not be politicking and supporting politicians.
Period.
And there are churches that do it.
I think if you want to propose, start pushing your political ideology, what I mean to say is, if churches go around saying, go vote for this person, I'm going to stop you right there.
If you want to talk about what you believe, if you want to perform services and ceremonies based on what you believe, by all means go and do it.
If you want to start pushing politics, well, that's when you cross the line.
And even in the nonprofit world, you can't do that.
501c3s can't do that.
501c4s can.
And 501c3s are tax-exempt, and 501c4s are not.
These are the rules we all play by, and we need to keep it consistent.
But Beto O'Rourke doesn't mean anything.
I don't believe him.
I believe he is a twisted individual who just wants to be on TV, and that's—he's hurting Democrats bad.
I'll leave it there.
I'll see you guys tomorrow at 10 a.m., podcast at 6.30 p.m.
