Democrat's Pro Union Law BACKFIRES On Journalists, Sparking Panic And Outrage
Journalists FURIOUS Over Democrat's Pro Union Law Effectively ENDING Freelance Journalism (UPDATE). Yesterday I covered a law that was pushed by Democrats in California to protect jobs and defend unions. The conflict is centered around freelance journalists being told they can only write 35 articles per yer for a company, effectively ending freelance journalism outright.Journalists have been waging an online feud with the Democrat who pushed the bill stating that she was going to cost them their financial security and would harm the news industry.Democrat Lorena Gonzales pushed back saying it will protect good newsroom jobs and pressure companies to hire freelancers.In reality, newsrooms are collapsing, mass layoffs are commonplace, and digital journalism has been at the front of the line in terms of collapse. This law will only expedite the end to which we see these digital media outlets by forcing them to cut off the people producing their content. If a digital outlet can't afford to hire someone and now they can not legally buy from third parties then they will struggle to produce content, make no money, and eventually collapse.This law is only in California so it mostly affects CA based writers and freelancers, but if this mentality around gig economy jobs continues it could spell the end for the modern digital news industry.Some argue this could be a good thing, bringing the end of content mills and fake news. But it could also cause journalists to become more desperate and escalate the hyperbolic, hyperpartisan, and far left activist journalism content leading to a worse political divide.As we have seen with the Veritas leaks, not even CNN is safe from the hyperpartisan nature of news. Outrage rules all and the culture war is an easy outrage generator.
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Freelance writers scramble to make sense of new California law.
A law that was proposed, pushed, by a Democrat and signed into law by a Democrat.
The goal being to protect union jobs in the newsroom and to protect gig economy workers.
But in turn, it may have effectively ended freelance journalism as we know it.
This individual, the woman who wrote this bill, wanted to incentivize newsrooms to hire on staff instead of just bringing on cheap freelancers, gig economy essentially, and then firing their union staff.
What they don't realize is that technology has changed and the value of an article has diminished.
Newsrooms are laying people off, shutting down.
Yesterday, I reported on Huffington Post being put up for sale.
Vice News merging with Viceland.
It is the end of an era.
These companies are collapsing.
And some of them only get by because they're willing to hire people who work freelance.
And many of these freelancers work very, very hard to make a living.
The law sets a limit on the amount of articles a freelancer can write to 35.
And they believed that would incentivize the newsroom to hire them.
No, it'll probably incentivize newsrooms not to hire anybody at all.
Now, I covered this yesterday, but there has been a dramatic escalation.
There are now journalists on Twitter going after this Democrat who insists they must protect unions and prevent union busting.
But in the end, I believe this may be one of the greatest strikes against the news industry, and possibly The most blatant sign that the news industry is on the verge of collapse.
7,200 layoffs this year so far in news media, and now this bill sending journalists into a panic.
There's a lot to go through.
I'll start with a little bit about the Hollywood Reporter and how people are freaking out, but I want to show you a ton of the comments made by these journalists to the Democrat and why they're angry that they're not being listened to.
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But let's read from The Hollywood Reporter.
Everybody is freaking out.
Freelance writers scramble to make sense of new California law.
Now, I know I covered this yesterday on my second channel.
I will be brief and move on to the crux of the escalation.
A new bill that caps freelance submissions may make writing financially unsustainable for many workers, even though the legislator behind the law insists The goal is to create new good jobs and a livable, sustainable wage job.
Now, this has sparked an ongoing controversy.
The bill was meant to protect gig economy workers like Uber and Lyft drivers.
It was something called the Dynamex Decision, which set restrictions on what makes someone an employee versus a gig economy worker.
In it, there was an exception.
Freelancers.
You can be a freelancer, but if you write more than 35 articles in a year, you must stop.
The idea was that weekly columnists working part-time should be hired on full-time.
But here's something important.
Right away.
If I'm hiring somebody, or I'm sorry, if I want a weekly column, that means one day where you write an article, I'm not going to pay you Monday through Saturday just so that you can work on Sunday.
Now throughout the week you may do some work in writing your column and do some investigation and stuff, but it's certainly not a full-time gig.
It is just paying someone for a product.
What's interesting about this law is that it's trying to determine two things which I believe are unconstitutional.
Telling someone they can't freely trade a good, putting a hard restriction on the amount of those goods they can choose to sell.
First, if I create a product and I want to sell that to a company, how can you say I can only sell 35 per year?
It's my product.
I can sell it to whoever I see fit.
Secondly, though, it's probably a violation of the First Amendment telling a news organization, a journalist, freelancer, or otherwise, and the organization itself, you cannot say a certain amount of things.
I don't think that will pass muster, and I think it will eventually fall apart.
But in the end, I should say, for the time being, it means that journalists are in serious trouble.
Because already, although the law hasn't gone into effect, many people are already losing their freelance gigs.
That means that people may be expecting to bring 1,000, 2,000 bucks this month.
We're just told straight up, we're letting you go.
So let's start with some of these tweets.
And I do have a lot to get into because we're going to talk about the general demise of media.
But first, some of the criticism.
One Twitter account... I'm sorry, this tweet shows you the kind of precarious situation.
Back in July, someone tweeted, disappointed to see freelance writers exempted from AB5.
As layoffs in the news industry occur, more and more publishers are switching to freelancers as cheaper labor to sustain their business.
This individual was actually angry, saying that these newsrooms are laying people off And they're hiring cheap labor to replace them.
You should not exempt freelancers.
They should not be allowed to do this.
The lawmaker is Lorena Gonzalez, a progressive Democrat in California.
She said it's not a full exemption.
We tried to balance the ability of workers to submit freelance work with protecting newsroom jobs.
This woman responded, would you be able to quickly summarize the rider exemption?
At this point in July, she's had 25 submissions.
It's now been raised to 35.
But I show you this so you can see.
Before the bill was signed into law, newsroom journalists who had been laid off or have seen layoffs were outraged, saying, don't exempt freelance journalists.
End it, period.
But now that the bill was signed into law, freelancers are pushing back, showing a major rift in the journalism community itself over what this law should have been.
And now the ire is focused specifically on the Democrat herself.
Yashir Ali, who is considered to be a well-respected journalist, says, California Assemblywoman Lorena S. Gonzalez has launched a direct attack on press freedoms with her bill.
I'd say she should be ashamed of herself, but knowing her, shame is not a sensation she's familiar with.
Woo!
Hard burn, Yashir!
Lorena said, I didn't realize we had met.
For background, we worked for months with a coalition of freelancers to create what we thought was reasonable relief from Dynamax while protecting staff media jobs.
It isn't perfect, but the coalition we worked with said it was okay.
Molly Knight, I believe she's a sports writer, said, former freelance writer here, your bill is horrible and will hurt the people you say you're trying to protect.
Now, there's a lot of this, so I'm not going to read through literally every single thing, but there are some important points.
We have here Sonny Bunch, who calls this out as a pro-union bill, saying, I had just kind of assumed the anti-freelancer bill in California was bought and paid for by unions, but it's nice to get confirmation.
And he highlights one of the tweets from Molly.
She said, I suggest letting freelancers write as many pieces as they want.
My industry is hemorrhaging full-time jobs because people expect to read content for free on the internet, not because of scabs.
There are no jobs.
The bill chokes off the only safety valve.
The Democrat responded, Freelancers can write however much they want, but should we let, say, the LA Times hire as many freelancers as they want to bust their union, or weaken their great new contract, or keep folks from organizing?
Freelancing can hurt staff jobs.
While Sonny Bunch is making the argument that it's bought and paid for by unions.
I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying it's an important point to bring up.
Because right now we're seeing freelancers, who do not want to be in a union, or maybe they do, but for the most part, are doing work and they're doing the work that can be afforded.
Look at it this way.
Take writing off the table.
Let's say they're whittling little rowboats out of sticks.
If I whittle a little rowboat out of a stick, I can make as many as I want and sell as many as I want.
And if somebody buys them from me and then sells them, how can you tell me I'm not allowed to do that?
You're demanding that my buyer hire me as a staffer.
Freelancers are their own bosses.
They pitch a product and sell that product.
The Democratic bill in California has effectively ended or I guess they're trying to end the private transaction of a good from a writer to a company that would like to buy that product and then sell.
Now there is an alternative here.
There is some pushback.
Some people, notably, some people believe this is a good thing outside the journalism community for one reason.
What we see with freelancing is not news organizations who are desperate, hiring what they can, but the expansion of content mills.
There are websites that produce trash articles loaded with tracking software and ads.
You ever go to one of those websites where it says, like, the 25 celebrity, you know, ugly photos, and every time you click next, it's a new photo?
They're targeting that.
Because, you could argue, each page is a new submission, or how would you quantify that?
But more importantly, companies hire cheap freelance labor to write cheap garbage articles and mass-produce them because the idea is quantity over quality.
There's one argument that by cutting off freelancers, you will force newsrooms to hire on staff who are writing quality over quantity, or at the very least, creating a cohesive work structure.
And while it's really bad news for these freelancers, and as you can see, there are many, many people who are outraged, Well, some people still argue in the end, it is a good thing.
I don't know what the right outcome should or shouldn't be, other than I do think what we're witnessing is part of the demise of the news industry as a whole.
What you need to understand, more importantly, more than anything, Is that, as of September 18th, 2019, 7,200 people have lost their jobs in a media landslide.
It is one of the worst years ever for journalism.
The bill in California, whether you think it's good or not, will have one big impact.
It will mean more people in media can expect to lose their financial stability, their income, I don't want to call it their job, but their gig.
Let's say you know a company like Vice, for instance, is going to contract 50 articles this month from you and you can keep writing away and submitting them and they pay you for them.
Can't do that anymore.
You get 35, and you're out.
And if they couldn't afford to hire you in the first place, they're not going to.
They may hire one person to write a substantial amount of articles.
So here's what I think we can expect.
Freelancers, California, are done.
Companies are going to avoid this at any cost, because they're going to have to start tracking how many articles someone's writing, and it's easier just to hire a low-wage college grad to just crank out articles.
It's also going to result in the journalists who are currently working for these companies being overworked.
Otherwise, what can they do?
If they need to maintain certain content, or, I will say, something substantially worse.
It could result in the total collapse of the remaining news industry.
Now this is just California, mind you, okay?
So these companies can still contract freelancers outside of California.
But if the Dynamex decision and laws like this expand, where they basically say, you are not a freelancer, you're an employee, therefore they must hire you, or cut you off, Then you can expect that many of these struggling digital media outlets, look, they're trying to sell Huffington Post.
Think about that.
I guarantee you a ton of HuffPost content is not staff content.
Or I would assume.
I know from my experience working at Vice, most of the content they put out, at least that's my understanding, came from submissions from freelancers.
They struggle to make money off that content as it is.
Imagine if you're now saying you can't have that content at all.
Well, now they're going to be put in a deficit position.
They have no content and they're already struggling?
Well, now they're going to completely collapse.
This list from Business Insider, about 7,200 people losing their jobs, is periodically updated.
It's the same article I've cited over and over again.
But the layoffs keep getting worse and worse and worse.
And they show us every time it happens.
They've been updating it.
Check this out.
This is an article from July.
Journalism job cuts haven't been this bad since the recession.
Reporters become bartenders and baristas while looking for work.
This is, this is huge.
You can understand why so many journalists are outraged and for their, you know, Yasha for instance, For his calling out of the Democrats who are pushing this law, who have pushed this law and defended it, he is being smeared and attacked.
They're calling him names, they're insulting him, they're telling him to get help.
But in reality, we can see that there are many, many journalists calling this out, saying you are wrong, you are not helping those in need, you are simply damaging the news industry, and this will backfire.
So, in the end, I think it's fair to say everybody is freaking out.
You know, perhaps it'll be a good thing.
Perhaps the content mills and the rage bait will officially come to an end.
We've seen several companies collapse in this past year.
Notably, Splinter.
I mentioned this.
Actually, I did mention this yesterday.
Splinter News.
The remnant of Fusion, where I worked, officially ended.
Well, if they're shutting themselves down, you have to understand, in California at least, this industry is coming to an end.
Maybe it's what we need, though.
Let me leave you with one more thing.
When it comes to news, we have mass production due to the lowering of the cost in the production of the news.
And then you have where it used to be expensive to do an on-the-ground report.
You now have people who simply recycle stories.
If we get rid of that, maybe we'll have a lot less news saturation.
This will result in a much slower, or I was going to say it would result in a slower escalation of the culture war, but it may actually result in a retraction of what's happening in the culture war.
One of the things people do to create articles that make money so they can keep selling is push outrage.
In fact, Brian Stelter of CNN did a segment today talking about the shock cycle, saying it's not a news cycle anymore.
It's a shock cycle.
Every day we're shocked by something more.
And then something happens and everyone on TV has to pretend to be shocked by it.
And then someone else is shocked by their shock.
And the outrage over outrage continues.
The president says something, everyone's outraged.
Then the president retracts it, and everyone's outraged over the retraction.
And that's what the media cycle has become.
A shock cycle.
I think Brian Seltzer would do well to recognize the criticism towards himself a bit more, but at least he does recognize the media's role in this.
We're all playing the same game.
But in the end, if we shut down these freelance articles, perhaps it would be a good thing, and there will be an incentive not to mass-produce shocking articles that escalates political tension, but to produce real quality journalism because you have to pay for it.
But in the end, I think the end result may be... I believe the end result may actually be worse, because think about it.
If they can't afford journalists as it is, if journalists are already freaking out, the tensions are going to get worse.
The desperate plea to stay on staff or to get hired will result in more shocking content, a faster and harsher escalation.
These people know.
That the competition now has become fierce.
There's a small handful of staff jobs.
Freelancers are getting cut off.
I gotta up the ante.
I gotta up my game.
And they're gonna write the most hyper-partisan, hyperbolic nonsense, desperate to win out against everybody else.
So I can't tell you what the future will hold.
What I can say is...
This may be the biggest slash to the news industry we've seen thus far.
Is it a death blow?
Not necessarily.
It's just California.
But if trends like this continue, if Democrats keep pushing laws based on, say, the Dynamex decision that gig workers need to be brought on staff under certain conditions, then you can expect to see many of these digital media outlets ceasing to exist.
They're already collapsing.
Even big newsrooms are already collapsing.
Local news is dying.
And now digital media is dying.
And this was a major, major strike against digital news.
We'll see if this expands.
But I'll leave it there.
Thanks for hanging out.
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up at youtube.com slash timcastnews at 6 p.m.
And I will see you all then.
Laura Loomer was banned from every major social media platform.
I believe all of them.
And yet, according to the Epoch Times, Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer outraces incumbent Lois Frankel in third quarter.
How can that be?
I was told that deplatforming works.
If you're not familiar, deplatforming is this idea that by banning someone from social media or by stopping their speech, you will shut them down and they won't be able to do their work.
Now obviously, to a certain extent, yes, obstructing someone's work can inhibit their progress.
But will it work in the long run?
No.
I would actually state this is proof that by deplatforming Laura Loomer, they've made it harder to track her and figure out what she's doing, and now she's actually raising more money.
So congratulations.
All you've done is given her cover.
Here's the thing.
When Laura Loomer's on social media, she will tell you what she's working on, and activists who don't like it can challenge it.
Now they can't, because now they have no idea what she's doing.
You see the problem here?
They like to point to, like, my Leonopolis and say, but that proves it, but I can debunk that as well.
Deplatforming does not work.
This might be a little longer than normal.
I've got a bunch of sources to go through, but let's read the first story from the Epoch Times.
Now, before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
There's multiple ways you can do it.
Of course, the best thing you can do is just share this video.
If you think I make a good point, and you think other people should, you know, hear what I have to say, if I'm deserving of it, share the video.
Otherwise, let's read on.
Epoch Times reports, Laura Loomer, who is running for a U.S.
House seat in Florida, has outraised incumbent Rep.
Lois Frankel, a Democrat, in the third quarter.
Loomer's candidacy has attracted attention outside of the state because she's one of a growing number of people who have been banned from multiple platforms, such as Twitter and PayPal, an effort by big tech companies that has brought increasing criticism from federal lawmakers and officials, including Donald Trump.
FEC, Federal Election Commission records show, Loomer raised $154,311 in the third quarter despite being without a platform on major social media websites.
How can that be?
How is she doing this?
Perhaps what these people, these activists, don't seem to understand is that Twitter is not real life.
And while I fully, fully believe that they are dominating the commons, Taking over Town Hall and the water cooler, and we should fight back against it.
You also have to realize that a universe exists outside of social media, and there are still grassroots tactics to getting attention and raising money, and all you do when you ban someone is cover what they're doing.
Listen.
You look at cancel culture as a whole, and there is something good in this concept, and it's that we can now see what people think on a regular basis.
Back in the day, you could only hear what someone thought for a few minutes or a few seconds in a soundbite on TV, and you didn't really know what they were all about.
Now we have a clearer picture because people tweet all the time.
And that means when Laura Loomer tweets stuff, if you agree with it or disagree with it, you can see that.
Their fear, I guess, on the left, is that she rallies a base because of it, but she could do that anyway.
Think about it.
If I go door-to-door, I only have to say positive things about myself, and who's going to say otherwise?
On social media, you can show, hey, look at this thing they said that you might not like.
I'll put it this way.
I'm running for office, and there's the, um, we like riding bicycles and we like skateboarding.
Both different sides of town, and they both hate each other.
Skateboarders and BMXers, ooh, it's a fierce rivalry.
Not really, but I'm making a joke.
I can go to the skateboarding side and be like, I too dislike skateboarders, those rapscallions.
And the biking people will be like, that's really cool, and they'll sign my, you know, petition or donate.
Then I go to the skateboarding side, and I say, ah, you know, those bikers, man, their pegs destroy ledges, and we gotta do something about that.
And the skateboarders say, oh, and they sign my... You see, the thing is, on social media, if I wanted to tell the world what I think, I can't play that game, because it's gonna be available for everyone to see immediately.
This is the benefit to society, but it's also a detriment, in that you might say something, and then years later, all of a sudden there's no skateboarders anymore, all the BMXers then see you ragging on BMXers, and they're like, how dare you challenge our bikes?
So there's a good thing in that social media has democratized and opened up our ability to speak.
It also allows us to expose those we don't like.
Let's read on.
They say Frankel, 71, raised about $104,000 in the third quarter.
Frankel has raised $435,191 since the beginning of the year.
Frankel represents Florida's 21st.
She has been in Congress since 2013.
She was a member of the Florida House of Representatives from 1987 to 93 and 95 to 03.
Loomer, 26, a political activist and journalist, announced her run for Frankel's seat on August 2nd.
They say, the fundraising total indicates Loomer is the top Republican candidate in the race.
Michael Blumling, Jr., a combat veteran, came in second in fundraising on the GOP side, but managed just 20,937.
Look at that!
Laura's raising, what, seven times, more than seven times what this second place contender raised.
All without social media.
So I think this should be fair, it would be absolutely fair to say, We can see here banning her did not stop her in any way.
She's raising tons of money.
She still has tons of support.
And now there is nothing.
There's nothing to challenge her.
You have made a grave error activists.
Now I understand, you know, Laura did rely on the, on these platforms in a lot of ways.
And she was extremely angry at being removed because she has opinions that these tech companies don't like.
I'm not here to talk about her politics or anything like that.
I'm simply pointing out that while yes.
You know, getting banned is massively detrimental.
There is an advantage she now has.
They have effectively thrown a cloak over Laura, providing her with a stealth cover, and they can't track what she's doing anymore.
So listen!
In the end, it's pros and cons.
Ultimately, I think the loss of the social media platforms is substantially worse, and just because Laura is able to get by through alternative means doesn't mean she is not being inconvenienced and facing a large challenge.
It's possible she could have raised more money if she was on social media.
But the point is, Now they can't do anything about it.
Something like 80 plus percent of America is not on Twitter.
The only thing you accomplish when you ban someone or deplatform them, particularly from Twitter, is you take them out of the press.
This is what's funny, right?
I was thinking about this deplatforming.
And because Twitter is primarily, like, one of the biggest communities is journalism, it makes sense.
Twitter is great for news and sharing and things like that.
When someone's on Twitter, journalists see them and then assume it's important and they write about it.
When that person is not on Twitter, all of a sudden they're like, oh my god, they're gone.
Take a look at Milo.
When Milo was banned from Twitter, they said over and over again, de-platforming Milo worked.
And it's like, the dude had millions of followers on Facebook.
And I'm like, no, he's still doing the same thing.
You just aren't paying attention because you live on Twitter.
Well, then Facebook banned Milo, and Laura, and Paul Joseph Watson.
And, you know, Milo has expressed, you know, he's been upset about it, and there is some bigger news on the Milo side.
They try to claim, this is proof, once again, that deplatforming works, but I can easily debunk this.
First, we can point to Laura Loomer.
She's raising a ton of money, okay?
Now what are you gonna do?
You don't even know where she is, or who she's talking to, or what she's planning.
Congratulations!
You've just put her out of sight, you didn't do anything!
Granted, I understand that getting banned is a serious problem.
Check this out.
From last month, Milo Yiannopoulos says he's broke.
I can't put food on the table this way.
And many people on the left say this proves it.
Because a year before, they said, Milo Yiannopoulos' collapse shows that no platforming can work.
No it doesn't!
You're wrong!
You're not doing your research!
Vice!
Vox, all you have to do is a Google search.
But you know what?
It's all about the politics, man.
They don't like Milo.
Look, I've got some criticism for Milo that I've said over and over again.
Notably, that he was fat-shaming a guy in a gym.
It's like, dude, you won.
The guy agrees.
He's working hard to fix himself.
Stop bragging on him, okay?
But the problem with Milo is not that it was deplatformed, although that does have an impact.
I fully understand that.
Milo has 856,000 subscribers.
On YouTube.
You're gonna tell me that his woes are due to being deplatformed?
To an extent, sure.
But if Milo wanted to, he could easily just start making more videos.
Let me tell you something.
The last video he made, it says Milo and I on FreeSpeakTV one month ago got 21,000 views.
The video before that was just a 1 minute promo.
It's 40 seconds, then a 1 minute promo.
He did an hour and 13 minute straight Pride Parade thing with 93,000 views.
Milo and Sargon, 3 hours, 190,000 views.
Most of the videos he produces, look at this one.
He made a parody of Ilhan Omar for 10 minutes and got 267,000 views.
Do you know what the CPMs on YouTube are like?
I think they average like 4 or 5 bucks.
He would have made a decent amount of money if he kept doing this.
The issue with Milo has nothing to do with deplatforming.
It has to do with Milo.
And if Milo started producing regular YouTube content, yeah, he'd be fine.
The issue is not deplatforming.
And it's evidenced by the fact that while Milo is apparently saying he's broke, he still has nearly a million followers on YouTube, while Laura Loomer, who doesn't have any platforms, raised $154,000.
So you want to act like deplatforming is this big, powerful thing.
In the end, it's not.
And I'll tell you this.
I just decided to look this up, okay?
How can we de-radicalize people?
Is it true that deplatforming is better because of radicalization?
No.
Let me tell you a secret.
It's not really a secret.
I'm kind of being facetious.
Several years ago, I was invited by YouTube to a meeting Of a bunch of creators.
It was very progressive because all of the things YouTube does when they invite people down is progressive.
And surprise, surprise, YouTube's invited me to several.
I recently got invited to a handful of very progressive social justice themed events.
I couldn't go because I work too much.
But YouTube frequently invites me to these things.
The one I went to, man, this was years and years and years ago.
Maybe 2012 or 13.
maybe 2012 or 13, they were trying to figure out how to de-radicalize people on YouTube
and stop the expansion of extremist content. And all of these people had this idea of trying to
tell the people why they're wrong. And I said, no, wait, wait, wait, you can't do that. You
can't go to somebody who's radicalized and say, you are radicalized, you are wrong,
you must listen to me. They're going to be like, what?
No.
And whatever they believe, they're gonna say, you're trying to trick me, or I don't believe you, or you're wrong, or you don't know what's really going on.
Things like that.
So I said, it's actually quite simple, the way you de-radicalize people.
You treat them like people.
You don't approach them as though they're a different, strange other.
You don't silence them.
You don't punish them.
You treat them like you treat everyone else.
You bring them into society.
Because when you take a small group of people with crazy views and bring them into a larger, more welcoming space, they slowly start to adopt the wider culture of it.
There's a mix to a certain degree, but for the most part, larger culture consumes smaller one.
It's complicated.
I know that's going to spark a whole bunch of debate.
The point is, according to foreignpolicy.com, it's actually what they said back in November.
And it's been repeated over and over and over again.
There's a famous story of the Westboro Baptist Church woman who was de-radicalized by being on Twitter because she was exposed to ideas she was not exposed to before.
And in this, they basically say the same thing.
You need a cognitive opening.
You need a space for self... Here's what they say.
They say de-radicalization and de-radicalization studies.
David Kohler argues that de-radicalization can only happen when an individual has a cognitive opening and an environment that supports personal reflection.
In this kind of environment, a program could then initiate de-radicalization by applying and engaging what psychologists and researchers term the significance quest theory as one component of the de-radicalization process.
Now I admit, I'm not gonna read through this whole thing.
And it may disagree to an extent with my views and be more specific.
That's fine.
The point I'm trying to say is, you know, when I went to these meetings with YouTube, and the first one was interesting, because this was back in, like, I think 2012, right?
And there was one person who had the absolute correct way To normalize and de-radicalize.
And they said, why not make a show showing these people and showing them do normal things and interacting in normal ways in a humorous context that's relatable and an opening environment?
Like a sitcom.
And I said, that's it.
For people on both sides who might hate each other, we need to show the humanity and bring people together and find commonality.
When you start treating people specifically with a dividing line, well then you're strengthening the divide and you're building a barrier while demanding they get pulled on your side and they're going to say, you can't make me do this.
I went to another event a few years later that made me extremely angry because it was supposed to be about the same thing, but there was a great evolution at YouTube, and this was, I think, 2016, where they said, we're going to end hate and all that.
And what did they do?
They just made fun of Trump supporters all day.
And I got angry.
And I said, I don't want to sit here and have you claim you're ending hate and then you just mock and belittle people you don't like or don't understand.
That is the opposite of what I want to do.
I want to bring people together.
I want to understand and respect them.
And not everybody is deserving of respect.
There are left-wing and right-wing personalities who deserve none, who deserve nothing but disrespect.
Well, I shouldn't say that, I shouldn't say that.
For the most part, you know, I think you can dislike somebody, but the best thing you can do is at least try to give them some respect in some capacity if you want to communicate with them effectively.
And I look to Daryl Davis, famous for de-radicalization, because he was willing to give despicable people human respect and dignity.
And it worked.
And they respected him back.
And he helps pull people back.
And that's the perfect example.
So let me wrap this up.
This doesn't need to be super long.
If Milo wants to not be broke, He can start making YouTube videos.
He has a massive platform on a single channel.
He has more followers, more subscribers than I do.
You know, I understand combined my channels have like 1.5 million or whatever.
All you accomplish, though, when you ban someone from Twitter is that news stops talking about them.
So maybe that's a good thing for them, I suppose, but it doesn't mean they're not working.
It doesn't mean they're not successful, I would argue.
Laura Loomer raising this money shows that her ability to generate attention has not been diminished even after, well, to an extent it has, obviously.
But her ability to grow and become successful has not been diminished following the, or has not been stopped following deplatforming.
That while they may have restricted her in many capacities and made it harder, she's still, in their face, succeeding.
Well, congratulations.
Congratulations.
You're not solving the problem.
You're not engaging with people.
You're not creating dialogue.
And you know what?
I'm not gonna tell you what you should or shouldn't do.
I'm just gonna tell you that Deplatforming doesn't work.
Milo is not an example of deplatforming.
Vox, you are incorrect.
He has a massive YouTube platform.
He just doesn't use it, okay?
Laura Loomer doesn't have these resources, and she isn't broke.
She just raised more than seven times what Second Place raised, okay?
So I'll tell you what, man.
A world exists outside the Internet.
And you are not making life better by advocating for censorship and the restriction of these people.
In fact, you're making it so that they're segmented off to a separate space that will never bring people together.
You are strengthening the divide and making it harder for us to resolve the political divide in this country.
Well, there you go.
Well, I guess Laura is proving them wrong.
Regardless of what you think of her, your opinions, I don't care about any of that.
Deplatforming didn't stop her.
Okay, congratulations.
And it didn't stop Milo either.
As much as you want to think that, it didn't.
Whatever, I'm done.
Next segment will be at 1pm on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all then.
Donald Trump floated an idea, I believe last year, that the next G7 could be held at Trump Doral, a golf resort in Miami that's owned by his company.
Well, eventually, they announced that would be the case.
And Trump said that the general idea, I guess that was released in the press, was that, you know, each delegation is going to have their own unit.
It's going to be very beautiful.
He's going to know how to host them.
Trump supporters defended this as a home field advantage, that Trump was leveraging his assets in statecraft.
And there are a lot of people who agreed.
However, it seems that most people, most people, seriously, even some Trump supporters, were questioning whether or not this was appropriate.
Now, Trump has announced he will no longer be holding the G7 at the golf resort, and they say it's unfortunate.
Trump has blamed the Democrats and their allies in media for putting pressure on him and agreeing to do it.
So I'll say this.
Look, first of all, I've been critical on Twitter over this decision, and I think it's a fair point to make that it was not appropriate to choose Trump-Durell.
Given Trump's explanation, I think you can see there is a legitimate reason why it would be beneficial.
Unfortunately, I think we have conflicts of interest to deal with.
So let's do this.
I'll give you all my thoughts on it, but let's read through the news first and talk about Why Trump thought this would make sense and ultimately why he agreed to cancel it.
I believe Trump has done the right thing in canceling the use of Durell.
I know a lot of people are upset and there's been a back and forth, but in the end, I don't think it's about the media and the Democrats.
And I think Trump realized that.
And listen.
I know a lot of people want to defend Trump no matter what he does, but you've got to recognize that even Trump knows when he's made a mistake and he's going to rectify that.
When it came to the Iran strike, you had the media screeching, oh, you know, oh, you know, he's so bad.
He canceled it halfway through and said, we consider the loss of life to be too great.
Good!
As I will always say, when someone does the right thing, encourage that behavior, accept it, and say, you've done right.
But for some reason, they're still lording this over Trump and attacking him over it.
And admittedly, I see myself kind of in the middle because there are Trump supporters who are telling me I'm wrong for criticizing Trump over doing this.
No, I believe Trump was wrong to choose Doral.
And he was right, and he recognized it was the correct move to find a new location.
I believe pencils have erasers, and I respect his willingness to say, the pressure is great, let's move.
But let's talk about the ramifications.
Let's talk about what it means for Durrell, why Durrell was his choice, and ultimately why he canceled.
From the Daily Mail.
They say President Donald Trump has announced that Trump National Derail will no longer host the G7 Summit in 2020, blaming the media and Democrat crazed and irrational hostility.
That's a quote.
Trump bemoaned that the decision to no longer consider his own property for the massive summit came after he was blasted by intense criticism from the two parties.
It wasn't just one side.
He added, We will begin the search for another site, including the possibility of Camp David.
Immediately.
Thank you.
Well, good for you, Trump!
You know what, man?
What I don't understand is my criticism over the choice of Durell is not seeded in any just furious rage directed at the president.
I'm not a big fan of the guy, but I'm not going to pretend like everything he does is pure evil and wrong, and I'm not going to pretend like everything he does is right and should be justified.
If I have some criticism of him, I will absolutely state that, and that will be the case, and so I did on Twitter numerous times.
They're still lording it over him saying, I can't believe it.
It's a violation of the emoluments clause.
Hold on.
He said, Hey, Trump, don't do it.
He said, okay.
Congratulations.
Like the dude did what you wanted.
What are we, what are we upset about?
Let's read on.
The move followed a furious backlash over the announcement that G7 would be held at one of his own businesses.
Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had previously touted Trump's offer, claiming it was vastly cheaper than other venues because President was offering it, quote, at cost.
He did not mention the benefits that the prestige of the event and the connections it could afford his property would have on his business.
Now, I'll stop there.
And I want to push back on some of these arguments.
Well, actually, let's read a little bit more.
Trump's U-turn came just 30 minutes after he tweeted his reasoning for wanting to host the summit on his own grounds.
And that's what he said.
He said it would be near the Miami International Airport.
Every delegation would have their own, you know, 50 to 70 unit building.
And that is actually great.
And I think Trump was actually right.
I believe that offering Trump to rail at cost is wildly beneficial to taxpayers.
I think it would have been a very comfortable experience for the delegations.
And I think Trump saw that.
If you want to argue that Trump was seeking to enrich himself, I kind of don't agree with that.
Because, listen, they're talking about, first of all, he was offering it at cost.
Okay.
So he's not seeking profit.
That's fine.
They're saying that it still would have offered up great connections and prestige This is sort of true, but come on, man.
Like, the last person who needs press attention and connections is Donald Trump.
First of all, he was a celebrity billionaire before becoming president, and now he's the president.
If Trump wants to get someone on the phone, I don't think he's gonna have a hard time with it.
I do believe that, I'll put it this way, I don't see reason to argue that Trump was seeking to enrich himself.
I think it was just a bit tactless, in that I don't think Trump thought through the potential precedent and ramifications of choosing Doral.
One of the arguments I saw from Trump supporters was that Doral offers up a home-field advantage and a discount for the taxpayer, and that's fine.
But I'm thinking about long-term ramifications, and I'm also thinking about optics.
Right now, we have a controversy surrounding Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
And we want to get to the bottom of whether or not there was corruption there.
I believe that is warranted and important.
And right now, they're lording that over Trump, saying he was chasing a conspiracy theory and Biden did nothing wrong.
Okay.
Well, if you want to win that argument, you certainly can't award a contract to your own company, regardless of your seeking profit.
I do think the arguments they've made about about prestige is absurd.
Come on, man.
The dude's got his name on top of buildings around the world.
I don't think he's concerned about needing connections.
And the profit thing is out the window.
Now, I have some fair criticisms.
I have criticisms I believe are actually more fair.
The issue is precedent.
First of all, they say it was a violation of the emoluments clause because the emoluments clause says the president can't accept gifts from foreign leaders.
You got an argument there.
I mean, it's a bit of a stretch to say that a no-profit, at-cost, or zero-cost event is going to be a gift to the president himself.
The bigger concern I have is the conflict of interest in that the president shouldn't award to his own property, period, simply because it's not that his reasoning was incorrect.
It's that I believe there should be a very wide space between government contracts and, you know, a government actor and their companies.
The same is true for anybody in Congress or otherwise.
I don't like the idea that somehow all of these Congress people on a salary of $174,000 a year are worth tens of millions of dollars.
Yes, they absolutely do leverage their political power for personal gain within their families and everything like that.
So if you want to defend the president over this, you've got to consider a few things.
First of all, cost is irrelevant.
Put it this way, if Trump Doral is vacant, he still has to pay for staff, he still has to pay for electricity, he still has to maintain the grounds, and at cost, helps prevent a loss.
So there is still some benefit.
Now, Trump says he was willing to do it at zero cost, in which case, that would have been a net loss for Trump's company.
And I still think it's, I still think it would be not a good idea, in that, Think about what comes next.
Now, you've got people arguing that Trump and Ukraine and all this stuff, and they're saying, we've got to think about what happens after the president.
No, no, no, no, no.
Let's think about what happened before the president with Ukraine, you know, the Politico story about the DNC, about Joe Biden and this transaction, this use of leverage, quid pro quo in Ukraine.
Let's think about that and where we are right now.
And I want to know what happened.
Now people have argued, shouldn't we investigate the president?
It's more important.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
This, we spent the past several years in a nightmare spiral of Russia conspiracy nonsense.
And now we're getting wrapped up in it all over again.
My big criticism for the most part is how could Trump not see that this was going to cause a major outrage considering what's going on with Hunter Biden.
I think it was, it was a terrible move.
Terrible, terrible, terrible move.
I don't think it's going to solve any problems or benefit our country to try and accuse the president of trying to enrich himself when the dude literally left his billionaire celebrity career to reduce his salary to basically nothing as president.
I think it's absurd when people try and argue Trump is trying to enrich himself off the presidency, especially when you look at every past president who entered the presidency not millionaires and left as millionaires.
Trump is the opposite of that.
You don't have to like Trump, but there's this immediate insinuation that everything he does is based on evil, malice, or corruption, and I don't think that solves any problems.
I certainly don't think it communicates to Trump supporters how we set boundaries and how we decide what we're going to do moving forward.
I am concerned about what comes after Trump.
I talked about Biden and all that to make a point that it's fair for Trump, in my opinion, to want to investigate the origins of the 2016 collusion conspiracy nonsense.
Whether or not it's in Ukraine or otherwise, fine, look into it.
And we have an investigation with, I believe, John Durham, so good.
Now, we can look at what comes after the president.
If the president does award himself a contract for his own business, even if he's genuine, we have to be careful about the precedent it sets, because there still are ways people can benefit, and we could potentially create a loophole.
I think we need to set a hard, hard barrier, and say, even if your intentions are good, even if you believe Trump is doing right, we can have that argument, but at the end of the day, You should not be having a conflict of interest, period.
And you know what?
That may mean that the taxpayer will spend more money.
I understand that and I think that it does kind of suck, to say the least, if Trump was able to benefit this country using his own properties as leverage and then taxpayers pay less, he has a home-filled advantage.
I recognize that morally and ethically.
I say, you know what?
I know I can't speak for everybody else.
And I know, of course, I'm rather moderate on the issue.
I'm not shrieking and talking about how Trump is evil and impeach him over this.
No, come on.
Trump changed his mind.
He did right.
There was a lot of criticism and he said, okay, so good, good, good, right?
Isn't this supposed to be, isn't this how it's supposed to be?
I'm concerned about Trump leaving office.
We get somebody else who comes in and has some kind of business.
Maybe it's an analytics firm.
Maybe it's data tracking or something.
And they say, oh, don't worry, we're doing data tracking at cost.
And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Right?
So I don't see this as the worst possible thing in the world.
I wasn't crying and shrieking and punching walls when Trump announced Darrell.
I was laughing.
And I was like, oh, come on.
Here's the thing.
At the end of the day, if you're going to award your own company this contract, regardless
of what anyone believes, whatever the reason is for, you can't do it at the same time we're
trying to figure out what happened with Biden and Hunter Biden.
You can't do it.
Okay.
So, so, you know, ultimately, I guess all, I guess it's all irrelevant.
I know there's still going to be a lot of ardent Trump supporters who are adamant that Trump was correct to choose Doral, and he should be allowed to.
And you know what?
You're allowed your opinion.
You are.
But in the end, look at this.
While Trump may be upset, he may blame Democrats and the media, he's begrudgingly doing the right thing.
And so here's the big takeaway I get from this.
Iran, doing the right thing.
Did he have a bad idea with the strike in the first place?
I believe he did, yes.
I believe it could have led to catastrophic consequences.
Apparently he talked to some thought leaders on the conservative side, and he changed his mind.
The left attacked him for this.
And they were like, don't defend him, it was his idea in the first place.
And it's like, no, no, no!
When someone makes a mistake, You criticize it, respectfully, to the best of your ability, not always, okay, I'm not perfect either, but when they say, okay, you know what, fine, I will do something that you agree with, then you accept it and you give the respect that decision deserves.
You know, they talk about people being flip-floppers, and it was one of the most annoying things I've seen, when they're like, this politician used to believe X, and now they believe Y. Great, so you're saying they changed their mind and now supporting something that we like?
If they flip to support something you don't like, call them out for not liking it, not for changing their position.
People evolve, and we need to accept that pencils have erasers.
This has been one of the biggest points I've made over and over again, especially with people like Joey Salads.
Joey Salads, the YouTuber, did wrong.
And at first, I was very angry, and I was like, nah, nah, screw this guy.
And then I kind of had a...
I don't know, epiphany.
I was like, wait a minute.
If I don't accept someone doing better and give them respect for making the right choice, then they'll only do it, they'll only get worse.
So anyway, the point is, I disagree with Trump's choice of Darrell, but I think in the end, this shows you that Trump is absolutely trying to do, in my opinion, right by Americans to the best of his ability, even when it's Democrats and the media who are primarily leading the charge against him, especially in this regard.
Now I do think because of conservative pressure is why he ultimately said, okay, okay, maybe this was a step too far.
But, but think about the end result.
If you don't like, so I think Democrats just plain don't like Trump.
And they want to get rid of him no matter what.
So they're going to use this against him no matter what.
And that's disingenuous and that's bad faith.
If you want to see us pull out of whatever it is we're in, then what you need to do is let the pilot fly the plane, and if he's doing something you think is bad, like a hard bank, and you say, hey, stop this, and everyone on the plane says stop, and he says, okay, fine, I won't do that again, we say thank you for listening, thank you for understanding, and even if you're mad about it, at least, I mean, look, you got what you wanted, right?
You need to accept that people can make mistakes, okay?
And I just can't stand the assumption that literally everybody is evil all the time.
And I'm not just talking about Trump, I'm talking about activists, too.
They're evil people, they exist, okay?
You might not like the president, you might not like Hillary Clinton, you might not like... Well, actually, Hillary Clinton, let me get rid of that one because I really don't like her.
Um, but there are people that I think are very, very, uh, wrong and dangerous.
I don't inherently think all of them are evil.
Now, Beto O'Rourke, that's a whole other thing.
I think Beto's super evil.
I guess I should just wrap this up.
And the point I'm trying to make is Trump didn't stomp his feet down and say,
no, I don't care what you say.
This is not what a tyrant would do.
This is literally what a populist would do.
When people said, hey, don't do this, he said, fine.
Okay, we're done.
Congratulations.
And there you go.
Hopefully in the future, when Trump takes a serious action, which reaches popular criticism, he will also then say, okay, okay, I won't do this.
So, you know, in the end, I think it's a good sign.
I do.
I think it was a mistake, and I think Trump rectified the error, and that should be the end of it.
But again, don't be surprised if you see a lot of people on the left weaponize this towards impeachment.
So, yeah, that's about it.
That's my take on the Trump derail thing.
So anyway, stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCast, and I will see you all there.
I'll just start this video by saying, yes, obviously I read my own Wikipedia page, obviously I Google myself, I have a brand, people write stories about me, and I try to be aware of what's going on.
I get Google alerts when people write stories about me, and I also have people sending me things about me and giving me updates.
It's not because I want it to be that way, it's because sometimes people write fake things about me in an effort to harm me.
And that's the point of this video.
So, it's about smears and hit pieces and the facilitation of a hit piece and how... No, for one thing, they weaponize Wikipedia, but I also want to get into this idea I've been thinking about.
In terms of how the press functions and what they choose to write about and what is important.
I think it's fair to say that I have accomplished some things this year that are particularly newsworthy.
And I've got a kind of an interesting story about what's happened between me and the press.
Long story short, thanks to most of you guys who watch, there was a major milestone with Subverse.
It was rejected.
We raised over a million dollars in less than a day at a time when media's collapsing were expanding.
Nobody wanted to write about it.
But I do have that, and I'll talk about this.
So as many of you know, I've referenced my Wikipedia page on several occasions because over the past several years, it's been a nightmarish piece of trash.
I used to be a huge fan of Wikipedia, until I became more aware of what's known as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
For those that aren't familiar, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect is basically when you read something and you're not an expert.
You assume it's true.
When you read something and you are an expert, you then start to say, wait, what?
That can't be true.
But because we're only experts in certain fields, we assume most of the press we're consuming is fact-based.
Well, I'll give you the perfect example of this.
Wikipedia is the best way to understand galman amnesia and why I no longer trust any article that I read, for the most part.
And then, you know, Wikipedia is an aggregator.
But I'll give you an example.
I know, and I'll say this too, every time I talk about my Wikipedia page, naturally, because there's a ton of viewers, it goes into a battlefield and changes emerge.
People then are made aware of the page existing, and then controversy erupts, and then people are arguing, and whatever happens.
So, first of all, let's talk about gal man amnesia.
Timothy Daniel- and I wanna- the focus of this is the hit piece, the smear, and how activists weaponize fake news to smear you, and I can debunk some stuff.
They say that Tim Poole was born March 9th, 1986.
He's an American YouTuber, journalist, and political commentator.
He is best known for livestreaming the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.
I'd stop right now and say this.
Am I?
Did you guys know that I did a famous livestream of Occupy Wall Street?
I'd be willing to bet most of my subscribers don't know that.
I'd also be willing to bet that most of my subscribers don't know that I chose the first North American drone coalition testing facility for drone regulation.
Meaning, when the US government was working with universities to figure out what kind of laws should exist with drones, That I went down to, and I was the only one there at first, and then one other guy from the AP showed up, and, like, none of these other organizations showed up.
And it was me.
It was me, basically.
We had a conversation, we discussed the testing facility, and ultimately that was, like, the extent.
But I bring that up because I did a ton of work with drone technology.
I believe I did the first ever live broadcast via drone during Occupy Wall Street when consumer drones were first released, and we hacked it to stream what the drone was seeing.
I could be wrong about that.
And I could be wrong because nobody writes about it.
And this is one of the things I wanted to bring up.
The anatomy of a smear.
I'll tell you what they do write about.
Let's do this.
Down at the bottom, there is a political positions section on my Wikipedia page.
Media Matters for America, a left-wing media advocacy organization, has classified Poole as a far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist.
His political commentary has been variously described as progressive and conservative.
That I love!
I mean, I can't disagree with that.
That's spot on, right?
So Wikipedia, it does work.
Here's the thing, though.
I don't think there's anything inherently nefarious with Wikipedia, other than the people who care the most are the people who will edit it, and a bunch of stories are omitted.
More importantly, if the press doesn't write about it, how can it ever become public record?
And this is where the nightmare scenario emerges, and you start realizing how screwed up everything really is.
So, recently I raised a million dollars for Subverse, through all of you, the viewers who contributed and invested.
It's not in here at all, is it?
You'd think that would be newsworthy.
I pitched that to many people.
I said, hey, check it out.
We got a press release.
We just did this record-breaking thing at a time when these media companies are collapsing.
And I was told, yeah, interesting.
Pass.
Not interested.
Why not?
It's a record, right?
We did something.
They don't care.
I'll tell you what, though.
You'll certainly be able to find articles calling me a conspiracy theorist.
Well, I was actually surprised by that.
Conspiracy theorist?
Milk Toast, Fencit, or Tim Pool pushing conspiracy theories?
At the most, I'm debunking and telling everybody they're wrong and refusing to take that leap of faith.
So much so that I have been criticized for when Jacob Wall first claimed there was an accuser for Robert Mueller, I said, I need evidence.
And I was smeared for that.
They said, Tim Pool believes Jacob Waltz.
No, I said, you've got to give me evidence.
If he's making a claim and he says a person exists, then I'm going to wait for him to show me the person.
I'm not going to jump to any conclusions.
I detest conspiracies.
Well, how then?
Did I end up as a conspiracy theorist, according to Wikipedia?
And here is the smear.
The citation is Media Matters, and it's this story.
A baseless smear targeting Ilhan Omar made its way to Trump, thanks to Fox and these far-right figures.
Oh, heavens!
I'm far-right now, they say.
Well, certainly, I guess, according to them.
But if you watched my video the other day, Oh, no, I'll just search for my name.
If you watched my video the other day on my political compass, I'm actually kind of far left.
But here's what they said.
Tim Poole falsely claimed, Star Tribune claimed, that Omar may have married her brother.
Oh, is that so?
Oh, heavens.
They say, Tim Poole, a YouTuber with connections to multiple white nationalists and far-right figures, what?
They never talk about my connection to Hollywood celebrities, Antifa activists, the migrant children, the Soviet generals, everyone else I've interviewed.
So you can see now how they're trying to frame this with a lie.
Uploaded a June 23 video falsely claiming that the Star Tribune showed Omar, quote, may have married her brother.
It says, Far-left Democrat Ilhan Omar may have married her brother, says Pulitzer-winning mainstream newspaper, 343,000 views.
And there's this article, it says, new documents revisit questions about Rep.
Ilhan Omar's marriage history.
Wait.
So, Tim Poole lied?
He falsely claimed this?
Hold on, let's pull up the story and, uh, what is that?
Let's pull up the story and see what the Star Tribune actually said.
The Star Tribune said, new investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep.
Ilhan Omar and whether, hey, come on, come on, I'm reading here, and whether she once married a man, possibly her own brother, to skirt immigration laws.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on, hold on.
So they're arguing that my interpretation was incorrect.
I would contend that they're actually saying there is fresh life to lingering questions that Ilhan Omar may have married a man, possibly her own brother.
And we'll focus on this.
Possibly her own brother.
Let's first break down some core facts.
She did marry this man, right?
Okay.
Star Tribune said it's possibly her own brother, right?
Okay, great.
So am I wrong to say that the Star Tribune says she may have married her own brother?
No, it's literally the opening paragraph.
So how can Media Matters claim that I falsely claimed something that is in the opening paragraph?
And in fact, the video is me arguing against it!
Isn't that funny?
The video is me saying, we don't have evidence, don't jump the gun, it's interesting that Star Tribune is saying this, and I was highlighting it for critical effect.
To talk about it.
This is what's hilarious.
They claim that I'm pushing the conspiracy, that I'm far right, simply for talking about it in a critical context, while mentioning a mainstream publication is now entertaining the possibility.
I draw no conclusions.
I'm a milquetoast fence-sitter on most things.
While Media Matters writes it, And then activists put it on Wikipedia, and now the context is stripped, and no one knows the Star Tribune article is what they're referencing.
It literally exists.
I was semi-critical of the concept, and it just enters Wikipedia as far-right conspiracy theorist.
Amazing.
Well, I will give credit to Wikipedia, because I have no idea, for the most part, how, you know, they decide what they decide.
It says, his political commentary has been variously described as progressive and conservative.
I actually, I respect that, that's true.
I just don't respect that media matter somehow takes precedent and becomes prominent on my page.
And I fully understand that simply by talking about this, I know there's going to be another wave of people going, and I don't care.
Look at this, this is trash.
You know what, I'm sorry, they do mention the modified toy role control parrot AR drone.
for live streaming to a system called the Drone Stream.
So that's cool.
They mentioned my work with Google Glass.
But interestingly, you know, there are a lot of articles that come up about me
and they don't make it in here.
And so the issue I guess is, for one, I don't think I matter.
Really, I don't.
I'm like a weird ancillary character in this great story that is the universe.
I matter enough, however, for them to smear me as a far-right commentator, but not enough to write about my groundbreaking, record-smashing Subverse News crowd investment.
So this is Crowdfund Insider.
It basically just wrote up our press release.
Nobody wanted to cover it.
I don't know if this website is, but hey, they wrote about it.
I can respect that.
They have quotes from us.
And they say that we raised a million bucks in just 22 hours.
You'd think that would matter substantially more than the one time I made a passive comment about an article that was semi-critical, right?
This is how the media functions.
First, yes it's true there will be activists who are going to purposefully seek out negative information and write negative things about you.
And you know what?
That's unfortunate.
But you can also see that the media is not interested in milestones.
They're not interested in changes to the system.
I reached out to dozens, or maybe a dozen, a handful of journalists that I knew that cover this kind of stuff, and I said, big news, look what we've done.
And the response from most of them was kind of like, so what?
I'm like, so what, dude?
Isn't it big news that we're watching the collapse of digital media and we just pulled this off?
That we're expanding, revenue is up, everything is going great?
And they don't want to write about it.
But I'll tell you what does get written about me all the time.
Smear pieces.
Attacks on my character.
And I think this is a sign of where the media is currently at today.
You know, I'll give you another example.
James O'Keefe.
Someone recently tweeted this.
I have deleted the tweet.
I retract the statement.
This is in response to James O'Keefe threatening to sue because someone pulled erroneous garbage from Wikipedia.
That's what James O'Keefe said.
You copied and pasted erroneous garbage from Wikipedia.
I will sue you.
And the journalist retracted.
So what happens now if someone cites Wikipedia calling me a conspiracy theorist referencing an article that doesn't call me a conspiracy theorist?
So I'll give you another example.
They say, Media Matters has called Poole a far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist.
The citation, they show, just says I made a false claim.
Okay, at the very, very minimum, can we just say, Tim Poole is wrong.
That's about it.
I incorrectly interpreted the first content of that paragraph.
Why then, on Wikipedia, do they say I'm a conspiracy theorist?
Well, I believe, first and foremost, Most people don't care who I am.
I'm not controversial enough, I don't have very strong opinions, I just talk a lot and for some reason people listen.
But there are some people who don't like me because I'm critical of their political faction.
I'm not talking about the left and the right, I'm talking about the more extreme factions.
So there's two things.
One, there are conservatives who are adamant about trying to frame me as a conservative.
Sorry, I donated a decent amount of money to Tulsi Gabbard and agree with a lot of her core policy positions, I have criticized her stance on nuclear energy.
I have criticized her stance on reparations.
I understand she's not perfect, but there's a lot of things about her that I find very important, particularly her stronger positions on private prison reform, the war on drugs, and ending regime change war, which As you probably know, my biggest criticisms of almost everything in politics is American foreign policy.
Because I was, for a long time, a journalist covering conflict and crisis, I have been overseas, I have seen some of these urban conflicts, and I do not like the idea that US, or otherwise, is staging these things.
And so that just means I live in my own bubble.
I'm not thinking about a lot of the things Tulsi has proposed because I, like everybody else, have a perspective bubble and I think foreign policy and culture are extremely important.
It's what I see, it's what I hear.
And I'm not perfect.
Not perfect at all.
But so I bring this up because there are conservatives who want to say Tim Pool is a conservative simply because we agree on free speech.
No, I'm sorry.
It's not a con... I mean, although I will say AllSides.com has now said it's a right-wing position.
So I think it's fair to say then that based on the evolution of modern politics, calling me a progressive and a conservative is absolutely, absolutely spot-on.
But there's a simple word for this.
According to AllSides.com, Tim Pool is In the center.
Yeah, because I agree with some conservative things and agree with some progressive things.
Most of my core policy positions lean left.
Some are far left.
I run my business in a rather left-wing kind of way.
I believe in a lot of left-wing core principles, and I'm in favor of the expansion of civil rights and social justice.
I oppose the authoritarian tactics and cancel culture and communism.
So I'm not going to say I'm, you know, I jokingly refer to myself as a communist.
No, I think in a lot of ways, idealistically and principally, I'm rather far-left libertarian.
It's a weird thing to say.
But look, in the end, I wonder why... Who interviews me?
Who talks about me and the work I've done?
Reason.com.
Libertarians.
You see smears of me, you see accusations against me, and this is what they... So let's... I've gone long on this, but I really think it's just something on my mind.
The media doesn't write about the fact that I gained over a million subscribers in six or seven months.
They don't write that I've gained hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, nearly 400,000 in only a span of a few months.
They don't write about, they don't interview me on my support for certain politicians, my political views, they just smear me and accuse me of being far-right or of being friends with people I'm literally not friends with.
Let me tell you something, man.
All of my friends, all of them, That's hyperbolic.
Cassandra Fairbanks is a friend of mine.
She's a center-right kind of person.
I would say that Will Chamberlain's a friend of mine.
He's an ardent Trump supporter.
I'm friends with a lot of people, but I am not friends with extreme—well, actually, I was gonna say, I'm not friends with anyone on the far right.
I'm not.
I just want to talk about anarcho-libertarian types.
Anarcho-capitalist.
I think I know like one.
But I actually do have friends who align with progressive far left.
I'm a skateboarder.
I grew up in that community.
But they try and lie.
And you know what?
I think there's a big problem in the media's refusal to address things that may be actually noteworthy, right?
Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend everyone should be writing about me.
No, I really, really respect Jon Stossel.
It was an amazing interview.
I appreciate it.
He refers to me as leaning left and having supported Bernie Sanders.
Thank you!
It's true.
And then people say, like, yeah, but you talk about, you know, you have right-wing talking points.
And so did Tulsi Gabbard, and so did Amy Klobuchar.
So did Bill Maher.
Okay?
Politics today is weird.
But the media... I'll give you the wrap-up on this, okay?
I apologize if this is a bit narcissistic, I suppose.
But I must say, there was a bit of frustration in the constant attacks on my character, and a refusal to acknowledge anything good that I've done.
And it makes me, once again, think that the media is slimy.
It's just all about outrage and shock.
And I'll give credit to Brian Stelter for pointing this out on his show today.
Credit where it's due.
He said it's an outrage cycle.
Yeah, I'll tell you what.
Media matters, of course they're gonna smear me.
But there have been, like, Vice tried, you know, aligning me as right-wing, and it's like, why?
Because I'm talking about certain things?
You know, when I talked about Trump-Durrell earlier, I didn't agree with the president.
I disagreed with what he did.
When I talked about Tucker Carlson and diversity, I disagreed with Tucker Carlson and talked about diversity being a strength.
They ignore every single time I bring up something that I believe to be true about my policy.
They ignore it.
And they seek out an out-of-context moment to try and claim I made it up when it's right here where Star Tribune says she possibly married a man that was possibly her own brother.
I didn't make it up!
I was actually surprised it made it to the mainstream press.
I said, okay, if Star Tribune's reporting it, I think I should talk about it.
I made no definitive, you know, that's what they write about.
That's the smear.
They never talk about the good things people are doing, and that's... I'm just sick of all of it.
I think everything's insane.
You know, but I will give credit to, surprisingly, Becca Lewis.
You know, you may be familiar with Becca Lewis.
She wrote the Alternative Influencer Network Report, which I believe was incorrect in many ways and misleading in many ways.
She followed up with an article that was predominantly about me, and I find it pretty shocking.
It was about me, Dave Rubin, and Blair White, but mostly cited my commentary and my videos and my on-the-ground reporting.
And actually, I have substantially more respect for her, having, for one, that she did a ridiculous amount of work to assess my content.
I'm seriously impressed by that.
Like 150 hours or more of all of my content to draw a conclusion.
I disagree with some of her assessments.
However, I bring this up because of all of the media that doesn't care about anything I've done, they don't care about what I believe or who I am, they just want a caricature of nonsense, conspiracy, fake news, and they don't care about nuance.
Here you get somebody who, although I had strong disagreements with, actually came to a simple conclusion, I don't know, when they said, Becca said, periodic reminder that Joe Rogan has given his massive platform to white supremacist Stefan Molyneux, Proud Boys leader Gavin McInnes, professional harassers Sargon of Akkad and Andy Ngo, and Steven Crowder, multiple members of the intellectual dark web, and whatever Tim Pool is.
And I sat there and I laughed when I saw that.
I'm like, I gotta say, you dedicated so much of your time to absorbing my content and your final conclusion was whatever he is.
I respect that.
Tremendously.
I think it's fair to say I don't know.
I think it's fair to call me a centrist.
Based on independent research and community feedback, with a medium confidence level, all sides calls me center.
Center doesn't mean that my politics are all in the middle.
It means that I sometimes agree with conservatives, sometimes with progressives, and that's actually what Wikipedia said.
So I can respect that too.
I absolutely do not respect any of this, because it is a false smear using an organization designed to smear people.
So in the end, I'm sorry for making this video so long.
My ultimate conclusion is, man, I apologize for making a video about myself in this capacity, but it's frustrating how, you know, I do so much, I work so hard, I've made tremendous growth and gains, and succeeded in so many ways, and the media does not care.
They do not care at all.
They don't have to.
I get it.
But it's frustrating then when all they care about is saying bad things about me.
Our society is sick.
Our news industry is trash.
I know I play a role.
I know we're all playing the same game.
I try my best.
I wish news organizations actually took interest in writing things that are potentially interesting, but I gotta admit...
Writing that Tim Pool, formerly of Vice and Fusion, has just shattered a crowdfunding record to launch a new digital media outlet at a time when media is collapsing, probably won't get you as many clicks, is calling me a far-right conspiracy theorist.
And that's the world we live in.
And even when I reach out to journalists I know saying, dude, this is a big deal, okay?
I know, I worked in these companies.
They say, eh, whatever, I don't care.
Instead, what do you see?
Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, media reporters for CNN.
They used to cover actual media issues, talk about fake news.
Now it's all Trump all the time.
Oliver Darcy, I...
You know, he interviewed me in the past and now I see him tweeting petty nonsense at Dave Rubin and I'm like, here we go.
We have devolved this degree.
I do my best to avoid petty squibbles.
I do my- and I'm not perfect.
I'm not perfect.
I'll throw an apology to Becca Lewis because I absolutely would state that, you know, when she wrote that AIM report, which I completely disagree with and believe was incorrect, that's fine.
I got mad about it, for sure.
And so I dedicated energy to it, and it's complicated.
It's complicated.
Long story short, I've decided it was a mistake.
And I've made many mistakes in my life, and I shouldn't be dedicating energy to this nonsense.
And if somebody has an opinion about me, I really don't care.
I just wish we had a media community, politics, that actually cared about The state of our country that cared about making things better, that cared about real accolades and accomplishments and advancements and developments.
And I know it exists.
Okay.
I'm just saying when it comes to politics and media, it is media versus media.
I think one of the reasons they don't want to write about it is because who wants to write, who wants to dig their own grave?
Essentially, my company is failing and this dude's taking off.
Let me write a story about it.
Yeah, I don't blame them.
And I'll admit, part of it's my fault.
It's my fault because since I've started this career, I have been extremely critical of the media and their failures.
I once, at a major news conference on stage, said every one of you should be fired.
And they did not like that!
And I said it's because technology has changed too much, and you don't know what's happening or why it's happening.
So in the end, I think it's partly because the media has always hated me for being the disruptor who's coming to take away their jobs, and that's still the case.
You have a politically charged digital media sphere.
And when I left, eschewing the injection of politics, they got mad.
So, of course, they're going to smear me across the board.
You cannot have someone in your ranks come out and say, I'm blowing the whistle.
You've done wrong because it damages your bottom line at a time when your ship is already sinking.
And there it is.
And that's what the media is today.
Long video, sorry.
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up in a few minutes.
And I'll see you all shortly.
Following up on my last segment, I also want to talk about another particularly frustrating problem when dealing with the press.
And the issue is, I'm ahead of the market.
I've always been.
I was told by a journalism professor, I have the unfortunate privilege of being ahead of the market.
What does that mean?
It means when I talk about things, they say, Tim, you're wrong, you're a conspiracy theorist and all this other nonsense, and then a couple weeks later, or a couple months later, they realize I was right, And then the story becomes mainstream.
So maybe instead of trying to be in front of everybody, I'll just hold what I know for a few months until someone else says it.
Check out this story.
Facebook isn't free speech.
It's algorithmic amplification optimized for outrage.
When did I talk about that?
A long time ago.
When was I ignored?
A long time ago.
Well, I get it.
I know you all who watch me probably think I do a good job because I usually have a bunch of thumbs up on my videos.
But when we get this narrative about YouTube radicalization, What they ignored was Facebook radicalization.
So I've been talking about this for a while.
They say nothing.
When I tell them that your claims about YouTube are incorrect based on the data, they ignore it.
Well, give it a few months.
Because the data is clear.
They're wrong.
And you've got people fabricating nonsense.
But this story is important.
This story talks about the radicalization of Facebook.
Facebook is a radicalization engine, period.
Let me give you a simple understanding first.
Is it possible that YouTube can open the door to new ideas and lead you down a rabbit hole?
Well, of course it is.
However, you have to choose.
You have to choose.
When you go to YouTube.com, you see on average between, I believe it's 10 and 15 videos on your front page.
You will choose one of them.
Afterwards, there is autoplay.
And autoplay randomly chooses.
Now that I can understand.
But autoplay would mean, is what?
You turn on YouTube and you walk away?
Some people do.
But in the end, while there is the possibility of being radicalized by YouTube, you ultimately choose what you want to watch.
If you watch a video about Superman, And then it autoplays a video called, I hate Superman and he's dumb.
You're not going to immediately hate Superman.
You're going to see that and you're going to be like, dude, oh no.
And you're going to exit out or back away and say, I don't want to see that.
In fact, that's what we hear all day and night.
Mozilla recently put up this thing about how people were, you know, given suggested videos they didn't want to watch.
And they chose not to watch them!
Let me tell you how it's different with Facebook.
Facebook gives you a feed of content where you see one post at a time.
And you can share them directly.
So when you see an outraged video on YouTube and you click it, you might have YouTube share with you some content.
And I admit, it exists, but it's not that big of a deal.
Because ultimately people might see something and say, I don't want to see it.
But what happens when someone you know shares something with you and it appears on your front page?
It says, shared by, and it's a video, and it autoplays.
Okay?
Autoplays.
The front page, your facebook.com, you didn't choose, you had one video placed right in front of you, starts playing.
What ends up happening is that companies realized what works.
Rage.
Outrage.
We got inundated with social justice content.
And then we saw the media say, this makes money, this gets shared, roll with it.
They say this week Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech in which he extolled giving everyone a voice and fighting to uphold a wide definition of freedom of expression as possible.
A wide as definition?
That sounds great.
Of course, freedom of expression is a cornerstone, if not the cornerstone, of liberal democracy.
Who could be opposed to that?
Now I know there's always people who get angry about the phrase liberal democracy.
Liberal democracy refers to individual liberties and democratic institutions, not left-leaning direct democracy.
The problem is that Facebook doesn't offer free speech.
It offers free amplification.
No one would much care about anything you posted to Facebook, no matter how false or hateful, if people had to navigate your particular page to read your rantings, as in the very early days of the site.
And there it is.
Facebook puts it front and center.
Now, I can criticize YouTube as well, but Facebook's worse.
When you go to YouTube.com, it might show you a video where you're like, hey, I hate that.
Don't click it!
You click the one you do like.
Or you can actually highlight it and say, I don't like this.
On Facebook you can too, but there's like two or three posts you see in your feed at a time.
But what people actually read on Facebook is what's in their newsfeed.
And its contents, in turn, are determined not by giving everyone an equal voice, and not by a strict chronological timeline.
What you read on Facebook is determined entirely by Facebook's algorithm, which elides much, censors much, if you wrongly think the newsfeed is free speech, and amplifies little.
What is amplified?
Two forms of content.
For native content, the algorithm optimizes for engagement.
This in turn means people spend more time on Facebook and therefore more time in the company of that other form of content, which is amplified.
Paid advertising.
Of course.
This is an absolute.
As Zuckerberg notes in his speech, Facebook works to stop things like hoaxes and medical misinformation from going viral, even if they're otherwise anointed by the algorithm.
But he has specifically decided that Facebook will not attempt to stop paid political misinformation from going viral.
I personally disagree with the decision, but I think it's something about which reasonable people can disagree.
Thank you, I appreciate it, because I do disagree.
However, I agree with Mark Zuckerberg's decision, I disagree with you, but I think it's fair to say it's reasonable.
However, I find it deeply disingenuous to claim that this is somehow about defending free speech.
If someone were to try to place a blatantly false political ad on any platform or network, would anyone seriously consider a decision not to run that ad and attack on free speech?
Wait, what?
Of course not.
And they shouldn't take the converse argument seriously either.
Some networks do run attack ads knowing, so you're incorrect here.
But I do think it's fair to point out Well, I disagree with this individual.
I think it's important they're bringing up this conversation.
There's a solution.
Eliminate the algorithms.
Seriously.
Reverse chronological order for everything.
Stop favoring anybody.
Seriously, just, we're done.
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, everybody wants to optimize for time on site.
Stop.
Perhaps what we need to do, and this has been proposed, I believe, by a Republican, eliminating algorithmic feeds.
And, you know, I've thought about it in the past, when I first saw it, I was actually impressed by the, it was like an older, I can't remember who proposed it, so I don't want to be disrespectful or anything.
But I was like, that's it?
If I tweet, you see my tweet when I tweet?
That's it.
Timing.
What are you gonna do?
If you are outside yelling about Donald Trump, and I'm at work, I can't hear you.
If you start yelling around the time I drive past you, I can.
That's normal.
That's the real world.
The algorithms change this.
The algorithms make it so that when you're yelling about Trump, they purposefully find you and bring you to my work so I can see you, right?
A place I wouldn't normally be at.
So the point I'm saying is, if I go to youtube.com, I shouldn't see what you think I want to see.
I should just see what happens to be there at the time.
Guess what?
This means bad news for me, because the algorithm treats me well.
In a lot of respects, you know, YouTube has deranked this channel and suppressed certain videos on my main channel, I get it.
But for the most part, YouTube still chooses my videos over others on the front page when people are coming at any given time.
Would it make more sense if my video only appeared at 4pm?
Technically, no.
It'd be bad, bad, bad for me.
Some people get on YouTube at 7pm, some at 8.
They would have to specifically choose to come to my channel to see my videos.
But you know what?
It's probably the best thing you can do.
That means that no one would be able to game the system.
Facebook or otherwise.
You couldn't create content you knew would generate outrage.
Actually, this would still affect Facebook to a certain degree.
Because shares can happen all throughout the day.
But think about it.
Right now, people can game the YouTube algorithm, because the algorithm exists, but they try to make shocking content, they try to make content with a long retention time, and admittedly, there's a format that works.
My channel and my commentary doesn't just work because I am who I am and I think what I think, it's because, to a certain degree, there's something about the time frame, the structure, that YouTube likes.
I honestly don't know entirely what that is, other than 10 minute long videos are preferred, because I watched a game theory video about it.
And so I said, okay, you know, but everybody knows about a 10 minute thing.
And more importantly, I gotta admit, I just talked for 20 minutes.
I try to keep my videos shorter.
You know, I try not to go over... So I've actually made... My main channel video was shorter today on purpose.
But here's the thing.
If it was all just time-based, you post a video, it appears, or in notifications, you would solve all of those rabbit hole problems.
But guess what?
YouTube and Facebook would lose money.
And that's what they don't want to do.
So let's push back on Mark Zuckerberg.
And let's push back on the far-left theory about rabbit-hole radicalization on YouTube and say, no, no, no, no, listen.
All that needs to happen for everybody?
Get rid of the algorithm.
Bring it back to meritocracy.
Do I deserve to have your attention?
I honestly don't know.
I'm just a dude with some ideas.
And that's why in many of my videos I say, if you support my work, consider sharing the video.
If you go to a burger shop and you like the burger, you can then go to your friends and say, dude, dude, dude, this burger's really great, we gotta go try it out.
Congratulations, you have shared the idea with someone organically.
Imagine!
If we had an algorithmic city, in which, because people started going to In-N-Out more than Whataburger, or whatever it's called, they started literally moving the In-N-Out closer to the downtown area.
Now there are, to an extent, certain natural algorithms in that capacity, and if you open a burger shop downtown, and the foot traffic is there, but nobody buys your burger, you go out of business.
Someone eventually opens a business that works, but that's organic and over time.
It would be strange If I made a great business, so the city moved a business out of a good location and put mine there, we would accept that.
So perhaps the solution to all of these problems, to polarization, to the exploitation of social media by these companies, and the incentive to create smear pieces and controversy and outrage, would be get rid of algorithms.
Because then you can't game the system, for the most part.
Outrage would still work.
People would still share those things.
But you couldn't force it down someone's throat.
On Facebook, and to an extent on YouTube, if a video hits those nerves, they share it for you.
Stop Facebook from choosing what to share with everybody and just show reverse chronological order.
But you know it'll never happen.
Because they make too much money.
So I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
I got one more video coming up in just a few minutes.
And I will see you all shortly.
Let me know what you think.
You may have seen a tweet from me if you follow me on Twitter, and I was pretty mad.
And I swore.
Yep, that's right, there was a swear word in that tweet.
And I basically said, Tulsi Gabbard's a progressive.
She's always been a progressive.
And she gets attacked relentlessly by the left.
What does that say about our current state of politics?
And what does that say to us, people who have historically voted Democrat, who are being smeared by the left as well?
What the F do you want from us?
And, of course, the response from most people was total submission.
And they were saying it sarcastically, like, not sarcastically, but like, that's what they want.
They want total submission from you.
And I agree.
I'm sorry that the left is falling apart.
It's not my fault, I didn't make it happen, and saying so doesn't make me a conservative.
But I'll tell you what, we've got a couple stories I want to highlight in that vein, and then we'll talk about it.
Trump defends Tulsi, takes on Clinton over Russian conspiracy theories.
Man, you know the meme of the two arms linking?
I'm like, Tulsi Gabbard supporters, Donald Trump supporters, linking hands over being smeared as Russian bots and assets.
I feel you, man.
There's that meme going around where it's James Franco with a MAGA hat on and a noose, and it says, being smeared as Russians, and he's like, first time.
And it's like, not really.
I mean, because I've defended Donald Trump in many ways.
I've criticized him in many ways.
I lean towards, you know, not liking him so much.
But I'm not a crazy person, right?
So I find that a lot of the media attacks are disingenuous and, frankly, strange.
So they call me a Russian butt.
They levy accusations, not so much against me, right, for the most part, but against many people who legitimately support the president, say your Russian bot.
It's not true.
There's like a very, very tiny amount of actual Russian bots.
It's all exaggerated conspiracy nonsense.
But now, us Tulsi Gabbard fans can really, really revel in Hillary Clinton smearing us.
Well, they smeared her.
She called her a Russian ass that she's being groomed, and the bots are supporting her and things like that.
It was indirect.
But listen, man, I'm not a bot.
There's no apparatus behind me supporting me through the Russians.
That's ridiculous.
I put on an event, people showed up.
You know, I actually did think, I'm like, man, what if it was the case that all my views were fake and it was just Russians?
And that makes no sense.
That's a conspiracy insanity nonsense.
It's far from the simple solution to imply that.
I go out on the street, I get recognized all the time.
People come up to me, I shake their hands.
And it's just reality.
The reality is Donald Trump won the election.
The reality is disaffected liberals, moderate types like me, support Tulsi Gabbard, even though Tulsi does have positions I do not like.
She's against nuclear energy, and she's for operations.
And I disagree with that.
However, I have a lot of respect for her character-wise, and I think she's doing what she can to be amicable to those who do disagree with her, and that is probably one of the most important things we need right now.
Well, I'll tell you this, man.
I will give my respect to Trump for defending Tulsi Gabbard, because this is the kind of left versus right we should be having.
Someone levying weird conspiracy theories against Tulsi, and Trump coming out and saying, none of that.
Now, you can criticize Trump for the rhetoric he's used against other politicians and personalities, and I believe that would be fair.
But I think back to John McCain and Barack Obama.
There was a town hall meeting where someone called Obama a Muslim, and John McCain said, no, no, no, no.
He is a good Christian man with a family.
I just happen to disagree.
And that was incredible.
That was incredible.
I know people don't like John McCain for a lot of reasons, and I agree.
Warhawk, right?
Come on.
You know who you're talking to.
I got a lot of criticism because I gave him respect in passing, and that has more to do with human decency as opposed to, like, I don't like John McCain.
You're gonna be crazy.
He's like the epitome of Warhawk, you know?
But the point is, John McCain was still, for all the things I don't like about him, was still willing to give respect to Obama.
And what happened?
Right?
What happened?
Now I mean with Hillary, Trump's a Russian the whole time.
And Trump's like, what?
And Trump gave it right back.
I fully admit that.
But I like this.
I like the idea that Trump defends Tulsi over Clinton's conspiracy theories.
So there's a little bit more.
I'll read a little bit of this and I have another story because there's some updates.
Tulsi's issued another statement about Hillary.
So Trump tweeted, So now Crooked Hillary is at it again.
She is calling Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard a Russian favorite and Jill Stein a Russian asset.
As you may have heard, I was called a big Russia lover also.
Actually, I do like Russian people.
I like all people.
Hillary's gone crazy.
Do they have the next tweet from him?
I don't know.
He made another point where he said Jill Stein is a renowned environmentalist being smeared.
They say, it's no surprise Trump weighed in on the ongoing tiff between Congresswoman Tulsi and former Democratic presidential nominee after spending months embroiling controversy over it.
Months?
Years, you mean?
Clinton, after all, made it known that she suspected Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin had a hand in her 2016 loss to Trump just days after the results of the presidential election became final.
This is it.
We have Conspiracy Theory former Democratic candidate, the most prominent figure in her party, pushing conspiracy insanity.
Welcome to Conspiracy 2020.
Now fortunately, Van Jones?
Even Beto O'Rourke defended Tulsi Gabbard.
I'm sorry, Hillary.
You're out.
People think you've gone nuts.
People believe now that you've gone nuts.
They say, you know, last week Clinton said Gabbard was a Russian asset.
Gabbard fired back.
We saw that stuff.
Marianne Williamson chimed in.
Much respect to Marianne.
They say Yang tweeted that Gabbard deserved much more respect and thanks.
Thank you, Yang.
Yang's a good dude.
Marianne Williamson.
The Democratic establishment has got to stop smearing women it finds inconvenient.
O'Rourke told Reporter Saturday that Tulsi is not being groomed by anyone.
She is her own person, obviously has served this country, continues to serve this country in uniform in Congress as a candidate for presidency.
So I think those facts speak for themselves.
And I, if there's anybody I could say I hate, it's Beto O'Rourke.
But I will give him respect for that statement.
Because when you do good, you will get my respect.
And I will admit that fully.
I have no problem being wrong.
I have no problem giving, you know, credit to people where credit is due.
I am not super concerned about some ideological nonsense.
They say that Clinton hasn't spoke further on the smear.
Instead, pulling out of a planned event where she would have shared the stage with Gabbard.
Gabbard, on the other hand, has only benefited from her spat.
The Detroit News reports that Gabbard has skyrocketed to fame in Iowa, where voters can now identify her by name and no details of her background.
Donald Trump.
I would like to give Donald Trump thanks for giving recognition to Tulsi Gabbard.
And this is where the Trump supporter and Gabbard fans come into play.
I know diehard Trump supporters really don't like Tulsi because Tulsi's a bit far left.
Yeah.
I do like Tulsi.
I think there's ground to have a conversation with her on the policies I disagree with her on, but I respect her character.
I respect her willingness to defend people when they've done right.
When Trump was cleared of wrongdoing in the Mueller investigation, Tulsi Gabbard put out a video saying this is a good thing and we need to move on.
Respect it.
She's had impeachment.
She shouldn't have flip-flopped on it, so I'm going to criticize her for that, but at least she said people need to stop fundraising off of it and being so divisive and hyper-partisan when it comes to the inquiry.
I can respect the position, actually, that she thinks we have to check presidential authority if we have to, but you need to calm down and stop, you know, being so divisive about this.
I disagree with her on, you know, for the most part, I can respect the opinion.
I don't think she's being, for the most, for the most part, I think she's being principled, though I do think some of this may have to do with pressure from Democrats because they all want the impeachment.
But think about it.
What Trump just did right here helped Tulsi Gabbard.
Now, Tulsi helped herself.
Tulsi's statement was huge.
And it was praised by the left and the right.
And you've got even Beto O'Rourke, Yang, Marianne Williamson, they're coming to her defense.
Cory Booker put a tweet out like, whoa!
Tulsi pulling no punches.
So she did it to herself.
You know, Tulsi propped herself up.
But here's the thing.
A tweet from Donald Trump is substantial.
And Tulsi Gabbard is going to get a ton of name recognition because the president has acknowledged her.
Well, defending her may not be a good thing.
I think a world in which we have Donald Trump and a Democrat disagreeing, and Tulsi Gabbard has had choice words, very negative words for Donald Trump, and Trump still came out and defended her.
I think it's politically expedient for Trump to do so.
I think he would like to prop up Tulsi Gabbard, and I'll tell you this.
If you think... Hold on.
I don't think Tulsi can win.
I'm not trying to be mean.
I really do.
I'm a big fan.
I'm a donor.
I believe in her in a lot of ways.
And I really, really love these big, high-profile smackdowns she does in the establishment.
I don't think she'll win.
Okay?
And I know I'd be better off lying and being like, of course she can win.
Come on, man.
I'm a realist.
And I don't try to...
I don't try to pull the wool over anybody's eyes or try and play games for the sake of winning.
I understand that if you get enough people believing she'll win, it probably would help her, but I'm not gonna play that game, okay?
However, I think it's very important Tulsi Gabbard becomes more and more prominent, gains more mainstream appeal among Democrats and among the American people.
Because regardless of what her position is on Trump, we need to have politicians who are willing to say, okay, and sit down.
And I'll tell you this, the Democrats, the media, and yes, even me, we're critical of Donald Trump's decision on derail.
Trump backed down.
Trump backed down.
He doesn't always back down.
But at least he did this time.
I say, okay.
You made a mistake.
Pencils have erasers.
This means something important.
It means when the people are loud enough, Trump backs down.
Because I think the reality is Trump wants to be loved by everybody.
Trump has always been this person who wants everyone to know his name and he wants them to respect and love him.
And not everybody does.
In fact, I can't remember who said this.
May have been like Steve Bannon or something.
That Trump is going to hate running for president because he's a big celebrity now that everyone
loves, but as soon as you run, they will tear you apart.
And that's a fact.
There are some people now who probably like Trump who now just despise him.
I think Trump is somebody who if given the choice to be loved by everybody, he would
be a centrist.
I really do believe it.
And I remember someone was talking to me about how he was pushing forward with, like, Second Amendment control, gun control stuff, and the conservatives got mad, but the Democrats didn't give him the praise he needed to pull him to the center.
So he said, fine.
And he went with those.
He saw the bigger crowd of people waving and cheering for him.
That's what he went with.
I think Trump is a populist.
I think his intention is to cater to as many people as he can.
And I think Trump wants to be loved by as many people as he can.
And so he'll be nice to you if you're going to give him the mutual respect.
So I think Trump is going after what he thinks will get him that respect.
I think Trump recognizes the media will always hate him.
The left will always hate him.
And so because of that, he says, fine.
He goes for the right.
If we can create a world where you have Tulsi Gabbard on the left, where you have Democrats actually getting behind her, although many don't want to get behind her for stupid reasons because they're pro-war, I guess, but if the dominant personalities in this country were Trump and Tulsi, we would have two politicians coming closer to the center and catering to the majority of Americans and creating something more positive.
