Leftist Celebrity Seeks Nigerian Citizenship To Flee Donald Trump's Policies Amid Iran Tensions
Leftist Celebrity Seeks Nigerian Citizenship To Flee Donald Trump's Policies Amid Iran Tensions. Cardi B says she is seeking Nigerian Citizenship amid the tensions between the US and Iran. Of course it was probably tongue in cheek its another statement in a long line of faux woke celebrities claiming they would flee the country in the event Trump got elected in 2016 and of course they never did.Currently people like Michael Moore are preaching about their progressive bona fides when in reality he is just pitching his podcast.Teen Vogue which is heralded as a bastion of democratic socialism ran a paid editorial spot on behalf of Facebook touting how they ensure election integrity.it seems like these woke socialists become unrepentant capitalists as soon as the money is good. In reality they were always self serving egoists who want nothing more than personal power.Woke celebrity activism is as fake as their plastic bodies.Most people don't even know where Iran, most people are not paying attention to the news, and these fake far left activists are just exploiting our good will in exchange for cold hard cash.At least we have Ricky Gervais to dish out criticism to the fake activism of the super wealthy.
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Rapper Cardi B announces that she is seeking Nigerian citizenship amid ongoing tensions with Iran.
Why, yes, she may actually flee the country because things are getting so bad.
Well, let's be real.
Not too long ago, Donald Trump gave a speech.
It seems like things might simmer down.
We don't know for sure.
But I got to be honest, so many people are giving their hot takes.
We got the left and the right.
I figured I would combine this story, kind of, with something we saw just this past week when Ricky Gervais gave a harsh tongue lashing to these fake woke celebrities.
Cardi B joins a long line of people who pretend like they're so outraged at what the president is doing that they must leave the country.
But as we know, all of these people who in 2016 were like, I will leave the country, never did.
And it's the same thing we saw with George W. Bush, where everyone's like, if he gets elected, I am leaving, and no one really did.
I'll let you in on a secret.
Celebrities don't actually care.
You know, Ricky Gervais said, you know, come take your little award, you know, then F off, because you have no idea what the real world is like, and I can respect that.
Cardi B notoriously talked about in her past how she would abuse men, and I'm not going to get too much into it, but no, she's no saint either.
It's the same nonsense we hear over and over and over again.
So here's what I want to do today.
Let's read about what Cardi B is claiming she's going to do.
I want to show you a list of all of the faux celebrities who claimed they would leave, but I've got a little special extra afterwards.
The fake leftist activism from celebrities, people like Michael Moore, who came out, tweeted that he was going to message Iran and ask for peace, but all he was really doing was promoting his podcast.
And we've got another little add-on as well.
Teen Vogue, bastion of socialism according to the New Republic, sold an editorial spot to preach how Facebook is helping save democracy.
I kid you not.
The nice little socialist magazine bends over backwards for cash.
And it's just another example of how many people in high-profile positions and in the media claim to push left-wing or progressive values when in reality they're just manipulating the public to gain attention That's just a sad reality.
And I got another story.
They don't even know where Iran is.
Let's read the story about Cardi B and why she's going to leave to Nigeria.
She won't.
But also, Nigeria responded.
I love this story.
Before we get started...
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But let's get back to the story.
And this is going to be a little weird one, but I'm going to rope in, like, some of the current events into this, like, general left-wing hypocrisy that we see.
And we'll start with this story.
Cardi B says she's planning to file for citizenship in Nigeria after taking a dig at President Donald Trump for his part in the increasing tension between the U.S.
and Iran.
The 27-year-old money singer took to Twitter shortly after Trump ordered an airstrike that took out Iran's top general, Qasem Soleimani.
and which sparked several memes and concerns of Twitter of a conflict between the two nations
and Cardi weighed in. Nah, these memes are effin emojis, whatever that means.
But S ain't no joke, especially being from New York, she wrote. The star went on to directly
criticize Trump for his part in making the US a potential target for Iran following the death
of Soleimani. It's sad this man is putting Americans live in live live in danger.
Dumbest move Trump did till date.
I'm filing for my Nigerian citizenship.
Although it's hard to tell the singer is serious about fleeing the US for fear of an attack by Iran, a Nigerian government official responded to the tweet, noting that she is welcome in the country.
Now, let me just say it was one sentence in a tweet.
It's probably her being somewhat silly I don't want to drag her too hard for it, but I do want to drag her because celebrities do this kind of stuff all the time.
And I've got a list for you.
Stick around.
Here's what the official said.
As one in charge of the diaspora for Nigeria, we can't wait to receive you again.
Our doors are open, sister, wrote Abike Dabiri Irewa.
I'm bad enough with last names.
Sorry, everybody.
Chair of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission and a former member of the Nigeria Federal House of Representatives.
And you need to talk a walk through the Door of Return in Badagry.
It's an indescribable experience.
That actually is kind of nice, you know what I mean?
This dude sounds really welcoming and warming.
How great would it be for Nigeria if a wealthy celebrity did actually show up?
And the Door of Return actually does sound like an indescribable experience.
That'd be pretty cool, you know?
Show up to a foreign country and see, like, this fancy thing they set up.
The artist's criticism of Trump comes amid her continued support of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders.
In addition to having a face-to-face interview with Sanders about issues like wages, she's tweeted her support for the 78-year-old in the past.
I got a question about, you know, people like Bernie, and there's a lot of good supporters of Bernie Sanders, a lot of, you know, good, honest people.
I can respect that.
You know, a lot of these supporters went to Trump in 2016.
But my question is, why is it that all of these wealthy celebrities pretend to be woke and rant about this stuff, and they support Bernie Sanders?
I think it's just because it's a path towards the youth vote.
Not so much the vote, but the youth market, right?
So we know that young people tend to lean Democratic.
So these celebrities trying to sell albums and generate attention, this is exactly what they do.
They pander to what they think they're going to pander to.
And because young people are less likely to be conservative, she's not going to care what people think about Trump.
So she goes on to say about how she's, you know, they include this segment on her and Bernie Sanders.
But let's move on from here.
Let me show you this first and foremost.
Why I have absolutely no respect for most of these people who all of a sudden pop out of the woodwork because Iran is the top Google trend right now and has been for the past several days.
Here's a morning consult poll that was published today.
Please identify Iran on a map.
Now, I'll tell you this.
If you accidentally put your little peg... There's a map of the Middle East and North Africa and there's little dots where people are asked to click on an unmarked map where Iran is.
It seems like a decent concentration of people knew where it was.
Only about 28%, however.
If you accidentally put that dot on, like, Iraq or, like, Afghanistan, you know, or Turkmenistan, I'm gonna forgive you and say, you know, I understand.
You know, most people don't know the land of the Middle East.
We're Americans, I mean, I guess.
And this is registered voters in the U.S.
So we're not spending all of our time.
But you're gonna have to convince me first that That Cardi B even knows where the country is, which the data shows us is likely just not true.
So here she goes with this stupid tweet, regurgitating talking points without having any idea of what's actually happening in the world.
And most people don't even know what it is.
But let me tell you something else.
How do you think Russia is Iran?
What?
Some people literally put their little dot in Russia, okay?
Some people put it in Ukraine.
How are you gonna think Britain?
Some people literally put the dot in the United Kingdom, in Spain.
Listen, man, I can understand not knowing geography, but thinking India or Britain is Iran is just absolutely beyond me.
Now here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to run through, I'm going to drag some celebrities right now.
Hopefully you'll find this entertaining.
But I do have some other stories, right?
This is a story from the Washington Times from February of 2018.
Hollywood activism hurts liberal causes as much as it helps, according to political scientists.
I'm going to wrap up with this because I want to call out Michael Moore and The View actually giving a shout out and applause to Richard Spencer.
Now, there's some interesting takes on here with what The View did with Spencer, but I'm calling out the celebrity left-wing faux activism.
And the first thing I gotta do, I gotta do this first.
I know it's older news, but I've gotta call out these celebrities to make this point.
This is a story from Syracuse.com.
Celebrities who said they'd leave the U.S.
if Donald Trump is elected president.
Really?
First, Amy Schumer.
My act will change because I need to learn to speak Spanish because I will move to Spain or somewhere.
How about Bryan Cranston?
I would definitely move.
It's not real to me that would happen.
I hope to God it won't.
Lena Dunham.
The Girl Star, 100% chance you'd move to Vancouver.
Samuel L. Jackson.
If that mother effer becomes president, I'm moving my black A to South Africa.
That didn't happen.
Amber Rose.
I can't think about it.
I'm moving.
I'm out.
I can't.
Barbara Streisand.
You know what?
I'm not even going to read these.
Jon Stewart?
I would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet because clearly this planet's gone bonkers.
No, no, no, no, no.
Full stop.
You can't drag Jon Stewart for that, okay?
Jon Stewart was joking.
No one expects anybody to get in a rocket and go to another planet.
He was making a joke.
Jon Stewart's actually been pretty good when it comes to calling out and, you know, And I'll give a shout out to Veritas.
Jon Stewart uncritically showed Veritas content.
He was explaining that Project Veritas, you know, made these videos, and he didn't accuse them of wrongdoing.
He just said, look at these videos.
So I got respect for Jon Stewart.
He can hate President Trump, but he's got a good history.
We got Miley Cyrus.
I'm not gonna read these.
Miley Cyrus.
We got Cher.
They didn't even put Cher's name in.
Who's this guy?
Ne-Yo.
I don't know who that is.
Keegan-Michael Key.
Look at all this.
Nev Campbell.
Oh, it goes on Al Sharpton.
Al Sharpton, I understand.
George Lopez.
Raven.
This list is ridiculous.
This is huge.
Whoopi Goldberg.
Whoopi Goldberg was on The View where they gave a shout-out to Richard Spencer.
Okay?
Now, I got a lot of talk about the Richard Spencer thing.
We'll get to that.
I'm just calling out them for their hypocrisy.
Eddie Griffin, Chelsea, you know what, man? This is this list is ridiculous. All right.
Check this out. Michael Moore has been tweeting up a storm about how he is so angry with Trump
over his escalation and that he is reaching out to to the Ayatollah in Iran to ask for peace.
Now, you know, Michael Moore is really doing. He's promoting his podcast.
It's his backdrop. He links it in a ton of these tweets.
He complains about the crimes of Trump and then links to his podcast and brags about getting a million downloads.
You know what Michael Moore is doing?
He doesn't care about Trump escalation.
Cardi B doesn't care about Trump escalation.
None of these celebrities cared about Trump getting re-elected.
What they really care about is virtue signaling.
And there are those beautiful, fancy words.
That's what it's all about.
None of these people... You know, I'll tell you this.
For a group of people who bash capitalism and praise socialism, they tend to be unrepentant capitalists when it seeks to benefit them the most.
Michael Moore, hey, watch my podcast!
Let me show you a really great example, and I'll come back to this Washington Post story.
Here's the New Statesman.
Sorry, did I say New Republic earlier?
It's the New Statesman.
How Teen Vogue became a champion of democratic socialism.
That's right.
Teen Vogue somehow became this far-left ideological rag.
Don't ask me what it has to do with Teen Vogue not giving fashion advice when you're telling people to praise Karl Marx.
I kid you not, they literally did.
But let me show you the latest news.
I had to pull up an archive, because Teen Vogue deleted this article.
I kid you not, you can see right here, it now goes to a 404 error.
This page does not exist.
Why?
Because Teen Vogue was dragged for publishing a story that said, how Facebook is helping ensure the integrity of the 2020 election.
My oh my!
Does that sound something like a true left-wing activist would say?
Let me say this right now.
In defense of actual leftist activists.
Okay?
Not Antifa.
People like Kyle Kalinske.
Okay?
He's allowed to be wrong.
He's been wrong before.
I can respect that.
But he's a good dude.
He's got his opinions, and I respect his opinions.
Because he actually, you know, stands, has some principles whether he's right or wrong.
But too many of these celebrities pretend to be on the left.
They don't pretend to be conservative.
They pretend to be progressives, socialists or otherwise.
They promote Bernie Sanders and all these ideas when they have no idea what they're talking about.
And it's all just, it's all just hot air.
When Teen Vogue, the bastion of democratic socialism, was offered up a fat paycheck from Facebook, what did they do?
They printed the article with no questions.
Look at this.
Editor's note.
This is sponsored editorial content.
You see, this is how these companies work.
These media companies, these celebrities, they pretend to be on the left, to sell a product.
They pretend to be socialists, but they're unrepentant capitalists.
No sane person OK, I'm being a bit mean here, but the average person is not going to look at Facebook and think they're doing anything right.
On the actual left, you have fears about what, like, say, Cambridge Analytica did.
On the right, you know that Facebook is censoring conservative voices.
So what sane person who actually supports Trump or Bernie is going to think Facebook is doing anything to ensure the integrity of the 2020 election?
Nobody.
Facebook will, however.
And Facebook will pay hard cash to make sure the socialist rag, Teen Vogue, runs it.
And then, sure enough, the magazine that's supposed to be a bastion of socialism takes the cash to run propaganda for a massive, multinational, billion-dollar corporation that doesn't care about the elections or election integrity.
And that brings me now to The View and their cheering for Richard Spencer.
First, I do think it's fair to make the point that just because Richard Spencer has opinions you don't like Just because he says things you don't like doesn't mean he's not right in other areas.
It's insane to me that we live in a world where you can have someone say a handful of things that are really bad, and a handful of things that are correct, and then the narrative must be that no, no, no matter what, everything they say must be wrong.
The issue here is the overt tribalism.
They don't care about Richard Spencer's opinions on Trump.
They care about Richard Spencer for cheering for their side.
And that's the criticism I have.
Richard Spencer tweeted that he regretted voting for Donald Trump.
And if he's concerned that Trump is escalating tensions or otherwise, then I think that's a fair opinion and I don't care about the rest of his opinions.
We can talk about his other opinions and we can tell him he's right when he's right.
It's insane to me that it's either the person is completely wrong on everything.
No, we're going to talk about ideas.
So there's a lot of people criticizing The View for somewhat the wrong reasons.
And they did the same thing to this journalist.
I don't know if, you know, I know a lot of people are going to get mad at me for saying that, but there's a woman named Rania Kalik who does very similar things to me.
She has political opinions.
She does news.
She has her biases.
She's very anti-war.
And Ocasio-Cortez was dragged for liking her tweet because Rania Kalik has a company which received funding, 50% of it, from Ruptly, which is funded through RT, which is Russian state media.
I don't care.
Rania Kalik has ideas.
If she's expressing them, counter her ideas with the ideas.
I'm not going to complain about who's funding it.
Because CNN is funded by what, like Budweiser or Colgate, or whoever sponsors that channel.
I'm not going to be like, this is just more propaganda CNN's pushing out from Big Cerveza.
No, that's ridiculous.
CNN puts their people on the air to do what they want to do, and if you have a problem with their ideas, you can call out their ideas.
I'm not going to go after sponsors or funding sources, because people do the same thing to me.
The point is, these people don't actually care what Richard Spencer has said about Trump in the past.
They care that today he's like, I regret it.
And now they're all jumping up and down and hooting and cheering as if they've won something.
It's like, do you even pay attention to what the guy has said in the past?
What his opinions are and why?
No, you don't care.
They don't care about his ideas.
They care about the tribal effort and some kind of symbolic victory and that everyone claps and cheers.
Listen, I think it's fair to say, if you agree that, you know, Trump is a bad president, it doesn't matter what other things, you know, Spencer has said in the past, but this just shows, at least in my opinion, they don't actually care about half the things they're pushing.
They do not care.
Cardi B is not going to Nigeria.
You can call it tongue-in-cheek fine, but the reason why I take it a little bit further and actually will drag her over this is because these leftist activists do this all the time.
You know what's mind-numbing to me?
They say things like this.
They say, if Trump gets elected, I'm gonna leave America.
And then conservatives go, hey, if you don't like it, you can leave.
And they go, how dare you tell me to leave?
Just because I'm critical of America doesn't mean I should have to leave.
And it's like, dude, half these people are claiming they will flee the country when anything happens, like Trump could kick a rock into a sewer and they would hear the splash and cower and say, time to run.
So you have this, like, Okay, let me read this final story for you.
This is from last year.
Hollywood activism hurts liberal causes, and this is exactly how I feel.
Okay?
It's kind of funny if Cardi B comes out and says, like, I'm gonna flee to Nigeria.
Fine!
Fine!
I just don't, I don't believe anything these people say, and so that puts me in a politically homeless situation, like many people have expressed.
The New Statesman, a socialist magazine, takes cash to promote Facebook.
Yeah, real activist-y and progressive of you.
They deleted the article.
Oops!
All the celebrities screaming that they're going to leave.
Everyone blaming Trump for everything that's happened.
And you know what's really frustrating about Iran?
Is that the tensions were escalating a long time ago.
Trump didn't wake up one day and say, I'm going to do something for no reason.
Yeah, as soon as something outrageous happens or as soon as this tension escalates, all of a sudden these people crawl out of the woodwork and are like, I better flee the country.
Where were you last month when there were tensions escalating in foreign countries?
Where were you during Crimea and any of that stuff and Obama?
Nope, none of that mattered.
Okay.
Now it's just, they want to fit the narrative and they want to pretend like they're part of whatever this clique is.
They have no independent thought.
And so they all say the same thing.
And that's why I can pull up a huge list of all the celebrities saying, I'm going to leave the country.
Okay.
Let's read a little bit of this old story.
And the only reason I'm pulling up something from 2018 is because it's political scientists making a point.
They say, Hollywood celebrities once again are gearing up to advocate and agitate for their causes as elections approach.
But political scientists and observers say liberal stars do as much to hurt as help their efforts.
Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence recently participated in a livestream event dubbed Unrig the System, a so-called bipartisan effort designed to clean up politics.
Her gig, however, didn't bolster a particular candidate.
I actually think that's fine, I guess.
You know, like, don't be partisan.
Meanwhile, a gaggle of late-night comedians has vowed to support glam-up the midterms aimed at increasing millennial voter turnout in time for the November election.
Spearheaded by confrontation comic Billy Eichner, the glam movement offers an apolitical meme for the moment.
But let's get to the point.
Princeton University politics professor Lauren Wright said celebrities' sway over the political system is generally overestimated, but still has perks for progressives.
Lauren Wright says even if Jennifer Lawrence isn't running, she can get attention to her topic.
Other people have pointed out it's actually not so good.
David Harsanyi, senior editor for the online politics culture magazine The Federalist, said midterm elections generally lack the sizzle to bring out the masses, with or without entreaties from the likes of John Oliver or Seth Meyers.
Despite their good intentions and enthusiasm, celebrities probably hurt causes with their activism, he said.
I wonder if the pushback against, look at these Hollywood elites telling us what to do, doesn't actually have any more of an effect on the conservative side of the ledger than as a motivating factor for the left.
Celebrities speaking their minds about politics and current events is nothing new.
We get it, we get it.
Let me wrap this up.
There's a reason why I wanted to do this.
I gotta be honest.
I recorded this segment later than usual because I'm looking at the news and it's the exact same thing over and over and over again.
Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran.
I don't care, okay?
every single hot take, every single pundit, every single person, and I'm sitting here
like, I don't want to tweet about this, man.
It's just like I look at my Twitter feed and it's 800 of the same thing, the left and the
right basically saying the same things.
And I'm like, can we move on and have a more nuanced discussion about what's going on?
And then I came across this golden story.
Cardi B, she wants to flee the country.
Excellent.
Let me rag on this tribalist BS system that we have, where everybody must virtue signal about whatever nonsense the tribe wants to hear.
It's all BS, man.
Nobody really cares.
Michael Moore.
Oh, he gets a shout out in this.
Yeah, Michael Moore promoting his podcast.
I don't care about that.
It's not activism.
It's a commercial endeavor.
The top Google trends right now are Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran.
You know what that means?
It means if you want to get attention, you need to track that keyword.
And here we are.
And so I said, I don't want to do it.
I don't want to make another video about this!
I recorded a segment at 1pm, and here we are again.
It's been ongoing tensions.
We have very little new information.
And, you know, I know Trump gave a speech, and here I am sitting here saying, this is what they're doing.
They've seen the trends on Twitter, they've seen the trends on Google, and they're like, let me just say whatever I have to say so that people give me likes and retweets.
I'm gonna leave the country, says famous rapper who's extremely wealthy and would not fare well in a foreign country that has an extremely low GDP.
Spare me.
I'm gonna flee to Canada.
No, you're not.
Okay?
You're all hypocrites.
New statesmen.
Socialists.
Take your capitalist bucks to support Facebook.
I get it.
I'm sick and tired of the fakeness.
I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy.
I just don't care.
These people are full of it.
It's not the first time I've called them out.
But whatever, man.
You know what?
You get the point.
I guess we can only hope that their faux activism actually hurts their causes in some capacity as kind of like a punishment for them just doing, like, for them, you know, pretending and pandering.
But it is, you know, it works, I guess.
So, whatever, man.
They're all full of it.
They don't actually care.
They... I'll see you all at 6pm at youtube.com slash timcastnews, where we'll talk about something else.
Covington student, Nicholas Sandman, has won his legal battle against CNN.
Now, you may be saying, no he didn't, Tim.
The headline says right there, CNN settles lawsuit with Nick Sandman.
It is my belief, based on the information we have pertaining to this lawsuit, other lawsuits, CNN's efforts, and the victories Nicholas Sandman had, and their statements before, that CNN caved in.
So let me explain.
A lot of people right now are saying, Nicholas Sandman has settled.
He's given up.
No, I don't think so.
I think they won.
And I think CNN paid out a massive and ridiculous sum of money to make this go away.
You see, CNN tried to get this suit dismissed.
So did the Washington Post.
The Washington Post failed.
And now this suit with Nicholas Ammon is moving forward into discovery against the Washington Post.
Many people said after that happened, CNN and NBC and these other groups and these other people better be scared because a judge is pushing this forward and discovery means they're going to be able to request documents, emails, messages from people involved.
Could you imagine what would happen if CNN journalists' emails got leaked where they were mocking Trump supporters or making fun of this kid?
It would destroy what little credibility CNN has.
Here's the other thing.
CNN knew they were going up against an ideological fight.
Nicholas Sam and his legal team said they wanted to go to trial.
So why would they settle if they had basically every single conservative, even the White House, behind them?
Because CNN paid out some big, bold bucks.
If CNN came out with a couple hundred thousand dollars, I'd be willing to bet they'd say, never gonna happen.
You know why?
If Nicholas Salmon put out a tweet, I need your help.
We need to raise money for this battle against CNN.
We need to raise a million dollars overnight.
What about CNN?
CNN knew every dollar they spend would be countered by every single conservative.
And they also knew that the courts had already ruled against the Washington Post and are moving into discovery.
So it seems to me No, you want to take this into consideration.
CNN weighs the cost of a legal battle, whether they could win or not, with the cost of paying out this settlement.
But why would Nick Sandman settle unless it was a massive number?
So it seems to me, discovery is more damaging to CNN.
And that's a scary prospect for a lot of people, discovery.
Like getting your private, you know, dirty laundry aired out to the public.
So I want to go through this.
I want to show you the timeline, some of the statements from these people involved, why I would say this is a major victory, although some people are saying Nick has given up.
No way, dude.
They won this one.
They're still fighting, and I'll tell you why this is not them giving up, this is them winning, because they're now announcing they are going to be suing Nathan Phillips himself, the Native American man, for five million dollars.
But the guy doesn't have any money.
They're not done.
They're pushing forward, expanding their fight, and going after, they say, 15 more defendants.
If this was them giving up, they'd say, no, no, no, we lost the fight, we're failing, sorry.
The court case against Washington Post proves they're on the offensive, they are gaining ground, and CNN conceded, and probably gave them a ton of money.
Because like I said, when they won against Washington Post, they knew they had the ground against CNN, and CNN did too.
So CNN probably said, OK, what do you want?
I bet this was a massive sum of money in the millions of dollars.
Let's read this, see what's going on with this story.
And there are a ton of other defamation suits.
Just last month, Devin Nunes sued CNN when they reported that he helped meddle in Ukraine or something to that effect.
And he says CNN is the mother of fake news.
The tides are turning.
And the tsunami is here against the fake news, their false framing, and their lies.
I have, I believe, four other stories of defamation suits against the media, and you're going to want to see this.
Before we get started, head over to timcast.comslashdonate if you'd like to support my work, but more importantly, subscribe to youtube.comslashtimcastirl.
My new podcast show will be starting up very soon in the coming weeks.
It's going to be conversations.
It's going to be general interest, weird kind of stories, guests, high-level stuff, some politics.
But if you like what I do, and you want to see things outside of cultural and political news, subscribe here because we're going to talk about science, we're going to talk about culture, movies, and I've got some really, I've got some high-profile guests talking about major political stuff.
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It means in real life.
Let's read the news from Fox 19.
Now they say, CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandman.
The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington, Kentucky.
Sandman's lawsuit sought $800 million from CNN, Washington Post, and NBC.
Trial dates are still not set for Sandman's lawsuit against NBCUniversal and The Washington Post.
The Post's suit sought $250 million The federal judge let a portion of the suit go forward after the Post filed a motion to dismiss.
Sandman's attorney Lynn Wood said this case will be tried not one minute earlier or later than when it is ready.
The lawsuits were filed following an incident in January of 2019 where the Covington kids, you guys probably know all of this story, they were smeared, berated.
You still have some of these really awful fake news smears by high-profile personalities threatening these kids and things like that.
It's disgusting.
They say, Wood said the damages were sought due to emotional distress Nicholas and his family suffered.
He also said the family had to move from their home temporarily and that Nicholas was not permitted to attend school.
A lawsuit is expected to be filed against Nathan Phillips, Wood said.
He indicated that lawsuit would seek $5 million, but the judge said that Phillips does not have as much money as other defendants.
We know it's going to be a symbolic lawsuit.
They also plan to sue Gannett, owners of the Enquirer, according to Wood.
He said he will bring that to the judge in the next 60 days.
Wood also said there's a maximum of 15 defendants.
Attorneys say the money they're seeking is not designed to compensate Nick, but to deter the defendants from doing the same thing that they're accused of in the future.
Now, You ask, how is this a victory for Nick Sandman?
He settled, there's no legal battle.
A lot of people thought a victory would be in a trial, and I'll tell you this, yes, absolutely.
If they went to trial, and the discovery was aired, then this would have been devastating for CNN, no matter what.
I'll tell you this, man, out of context communications will absolutely be damaging to CNN.
They would lose substantially more money than just paying out, so they found a happy medium, But with the advantage in Nicholas Sandman's corner, I can't imagine this was a small amount of money.
This must have been massive.
Like they were saying, they're trying to deter CNN.
I'm willing to bet CNN paid out a fat, fat paycheck.
Check this story out.
Let's go back in time to May 15th.
CNN files motion to dismiss.
Says reporting was factual, not defamatory.
Let me ask you a question.
If CNN was seeking to shut the story down, to shut the lawsuit down, why give in now?
They were going full steam back in May.
CNN actually said, you know what?
We're going to get you dismissed.
We're not going to back down.
We're not going to settle.
They went to war.
A settlement today means, in my opinion, CNN caved.
Let me tell you why.
The Washington Post tried to get this dismissed, and you know what?
They won.
And everyone immediately started mocking the Covington kids, calling them dainty little snowflakes trying to suit, uh, too bad!
And then a judge said, actually, at least a few of these claims are legitimate, and we are reinstating the suit.
I bet Washington Post started sweating bullets then.
CNN also, with their motion to dismiss, saw that they were going to lose because the judge had already reinstated several of the claims, which means CNN looked at, you know, they probably looked at their counsel and said, first of all, it's going to cost a lot of money.
Second of all, we're going to move into discovery like the Washington Post is, and that's going to air our dirty laundry.
So CNN calculated the cost of the fight versus the cost of defeat or even discovery in bad PR and said, what do we have to pay to make it go away?
And like I said, on the heels of a major, major victory, there's no way in my mind Nicholas Sandman and his team said, we'll take a small amount of money.
No, they were probably like, pay up, pony up the big fat cash.
And CNN said, okay, undisclosed, we don't want this going public, we want to end it now.
With that, Let me tell you, Nicholas Salmon's battle was an ideological one.
They want to deter the fake news?
Well, the best way to do that is to publish the dirty laundry of CNN, go to trial, and wave that figure in the air.
I think they got a massive payout.
I think they got a serious payout.
There was one post I was reading on Reddit.
They said something like CNN's got like $20 billion in profits or some ridiculous number.
I'm willing to bet CNN paid out more than you could possibly imagine.
This dude just jumped into the 1%.
Let me tell you that.
So let me go down.
Let me just show you a little bit from this Washington Post story.
Where they talk about CNN, they say that the judge reinstated, so a judge reconsidered Monday saying he would permit Discovery to proceed on three statements contained in Post articles.
Now that's specific to the Washington Post, but I have to say I believe CNN saw the light, you know, they saw the signs on the wall, they saw what was going on, and they said, end it now, end it now, and they caved.
So, Nick Sandman tweeted, yes, we settled with CNN.
Todd McMurtry, his legal counsel, said, I want to thank everyone for the many good wishes received today.
Now, L. Lynn Wood and I turn our attention to NBC, Washington Post, and additional defendants to be named soon.
Let me stress this point, okay?
I know I mentioned in the beginning, and then I want to go through some of these other legal actions that are taking place, and why people are now fighting back and winning, and why this is bad news for the fake news.
We are in a new era.
This is an ideological war.
These media companies use manipulative tactics to smear people and then claim it was just opinion!
Don't take it seriously!
Like this.
Rachel Maddow said That One American News was literally paid Russian propaganda.
Let me make sure I get the phrasing correctly.
Here's what she said.
Really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.
One American News is in court against MSNBC's Rachel Maddow in a $10 million lawsuit after Maddow said her conservative competitor, quote, really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.
That is a statement of fact as far as I could see, right?
Well, apparently, I think this case got dismissed.
She won this one.
You know why?
Because they argued that she's not actually speaking facts.
What she says on her show is just her opinions.
So don't take it seriously.
But she said, really, literally is paid propaganda.
What's the definition of defamation?
To me, that's nuts.
This is a story from December.
Caught in defamation suit, Rachel Maddow's legal team admits she should not be thought to be presenting facts on air.
If right now, okay, some conservative said they wanted to sue for fake news, I know Devin Nunes and Dan Magino probably wouldn't do this, Laura Logan probably wouldn't do this, but there are a lot of people online that could muster up ridiculous sums of money to win.
Ridiculous sums.
That's the point of the ideological battle.
And so these news outlets are being put on notice.
These GoFundMes are legit.
You are in the era of crowdfunding.
But here's what these media companies do.
Let me use the easiest explanation for the game these people play in media.
Many of you may be familiar with the dihydrogen monoxide hoax.
If you are, you know what I'm going to say.
I'm going to call it hydric acid.
Hydroxic acid.
That sounds crazy.
That's got an X in it.
Hydroxic acid, if you inhale a little bit of it, you could die.
It is used to clean corrosives off engines.
It's used in nuclear power plants.
It is found in cancer cells.
Basically every cancer has this in it.
And it is a leading cause of death.
People lightly inhale this stuff and you will die.
Yeah.
And it's in the plumbing of New York City.
And so, we gotta do something about this.
Everything I just said was true, but hydroxic acid is water.
That's the game they play.
You frame things in a way to shock and terrify people.
Then they freak out because you've taken something that's factually true, but just overtly misleading, and they think the wrong thing.
It's called the dihydrogen monoxide hoax.
Dihydrogen monoxide means, you know, H2O.
It's water.
And so you tell people all of the absolute worst things and scary things about it.
Did you know it can eat through metal?
Did you know it's used to clean car batteries?
It's just water.
Water rusts metal.
Yes, we get it.
It oxidizes.
And it sounds really scary.
The media plays that game, and that's how they win.
And then when they go to court, they say, Your Honor, that's all true.
It's true.
And what do the courts say?
You're right, it is true.
It is.
You know, we can't control framing.
So we've got a bunch of these stories.
I've got four stories I want to just briefly highlight.
Because I want to tell you one thing.
This war is not over.
Covington may have won against CNN, forcing them to back down.
Because I will stress again, listen.
If CNN said we're going to war and stuck to their guns, I'd say sure.
If the first thing that happened was CNN said we're going to settle because we don't want to bother with it, I wouldn't necessarily call it a victory.
But CNN countered back.
CNN said, OK, you want to go for us?
We're going to file a motion to dismiss.
Now it's normal.
It is.
It's the first thing they should do.
And when they saw that they were going to lose, they said, OK, OK, OK, what do you want?
What do you want?
CNN backed down.
They gave up.
The fight was launched by Sandman and it was ended by Sandman.
CNN begged.
They said, please, we don't want to fight.
We're going to lose.
We're going to look so bad.
CNN claims, in this ridiculous report, that Devin Nunes flew to Europe to meet with, you know, some Ukrainians, and he posts photos, Devin Nunes posts photos, he was in, like, Libya, you know, and CNN didn't bother fact-checking, and they did this weasel word game where they said, CNN has been told by the lawyer for Lev Parnas that Devin Nunes did X.
And then they can say, that's true, your honor.
They did tell us that.
Did they fact check it?
Nope.
Just the other night, CNN claimed the president would make an address.
And the press secretary is like, that's not true.
They didn't even bother fact checking any of this.
CNN is a fake news mill.
They crank out insane lies.
And then Brian Seltzer has the gall to go on his show on Sunday morning and say, tune
out the spin.
Don't listen to other people.
Yeah, because they're lying to you.
Like, I think it was Jake Tapper who said, keep in mind, you know, you can't read WikiLeaks emails.
That's illegal, but we can because we're journalists.
Oh, please, dude.
CNN, you are trash.
Now I will give CNN some credit because they do employ some, you know, Republican voices.
They have some, some, some.
Not a lot.
And they do get dragged for that.
But CNN is complete trash.
The fact that they ran the story, it's pure propaganda.
It's insane.
And then I'm talking to, you know, friends and family and they're like, I heard that Devin Nunes was in on the take with Trump.
And I'm like, that's insane!
There's no evidence.
CNN ran hearsay for hearsay.
A lawyer said, that his client said, that this guy in Italy said that the Ukrainian guy met with Devin Nunes, and that's news?
So good, Nunes should be suing.
We also have this suit from Dan Bongino.
Suing the Daily Beast, because the Daily Beast said that he was fired, basically, basically fired, from NRA TV when he chose not to keep working there.
And people have done the same thing to me with when I worked for Fusion.
I tried leaving my contract.
They wouldn't let me.
They paid me a bonus.
My contract expired.
I said buh-bye.
And then all of a sudden, these people who hate me are like, whoa, Tim got fired, and they're spreading fake news because they want to make it seem like I was pushed out instead of I chose to leave.
Same is true for him.
But wait!
There's more!
Laura Logan, ex-60 Minutes correspondent, is suing 25- filed a $25 million defamation suit over Benghazi article.
They say...
The New York Magazine story stemmed from a 16-minute broadcast on October 27th about an attack on a U.S.
government.
Let me start over.
Laura Logan is seeking $25 million in a defamation suit against writer Joe Hagan and New York media for a piece published five years ago titled Benghazi and the Bombshell.
It's from New York Magazine.
And then we have one more, and this one's big.
I've got to be really careful about how I read this because YouTube will try and shut me down.
But a Mississippi professor back in August who went to Georgetown prep with Brett Kavanaugh is suing the Huffington Post because they made bold and false accusations about how they orchestrated an arrangement which ended in loss of life.
I'll put it that way.
They tried smearing him.
It was fake.
They don't get confirmation.
And it's about time there is a reckoning.
When I saw the news yesterday, I was happy.
Happy to hear that Nick Sandman has won.
And I'll tell you this, on a personal level, congratulations to the Sandman family, to the legal team.
Hopefully you got enough money that's going to make you feel better, make you more comfortable, make you more secure, because there's a lot of people who refuse to back down.
I see all, when the initial suit against the Washington Post was dismissed, all of these like far leftists and like establishment type leftists started gloating and like hoarding and you know like and they were all laughing and mocking this family and these kids were still getting threats.
This kid couldn't go to school, you know, they had to leave their home.
Well now they won.
Now they got cash.
CNN paid out.
And I bet not only did it cover the legal costs, I bet this was a massive, massive sum of money.
Like, I don't know, man.
I don't want to speculate.
I think it's in the millions, probably.
With the amount CNN was going to lose in a long, drawn-out fight, the bad press they would generate, the ideological, you know, like every conservative standing behind Sandman, they knew they lost.
They tried to fight.
They knew they lost.
So this is a very, very Cathartic, you know, moment, I suppose.
It finally, it feels good.
It feels like you can fight back against the machine when they're trying to destroy your life.
I had NBC News push fake news.
Seriously, NBC News, the Today Show, showed my face and lied about me claiming that I was pushing the Seth Rich hoax and stuff like that because I had commented on a Fox News article that claimed it was true, which they later retracted.
They take an out-of-context moment You know, at the time, Fox News publishes a story where they're like, this is true.
Someone asks me and I said, I don't know, man, 65% maybe.
Then they take that clip, now that we have the gift of hindsight and Fox News has retracted, and claim that I was always pushing it.
No, Fox News reported it.
This is the fake news game they play.
They put my face on the Today Show in the morning and smeared me and lied.
And absolutely lied.
Think about this.
That means every host who has ever said something that was later retracted, you could pull that clip up and say they pushed conspiracy theories.
That's the game they play.
Because they don't want competition.
They'll target you, they'll target your friends and family, and look, it's worse in other countries.
In Sweden, some of these reporters show up to people's houses, and they're doxing them.
There was one story about a Swedish newspaper that apparently got access to private data through a commenting system called Disqus, and then used it to track down people who are anonymous commenters on the internet.
These are not good people.
These are vultures.
Okay?
You look at the content they produce about Trump.
They're generating ratings.
They have no interest in telling you the truth.
They have an interest in generating shock content.
And let me tell you something.
There's a reason they're called vultures.
They know it.
I work in this industry and I know it.
And we are trying to upend the system and do something better.
Do real journalism.
But there's one thing most journalists don't want to say publicly.
They love war.
They love, love, love war.
I'm willing to bet there was a self-pleasuring parade, I have to use more family-friendly language, over at CNN last night with what's going on around the world.
I'm going to keep those subjects out of this video for the sake of the video, but, you know, some major escalations are occurring in other parts of the planet.
And I'm willing to bet the executives over at these big networks are cracking their cigars, laughing, Because every time something dangerous, something big happens, that means their viewership goes up and that's why they're obsessed with Trump.
So they couldn't be happier.
They want Trump in office.
They love, love, love Trump because...
They get to hate him.
Everything he tweets, everything he says is the Trump bump.
They can then rant and rave and say, oh heavens, heavens, look what the orange man is doing today to get those ratings.
And that's why Covington couldn't be let go.
They saw this out of context video and everybody had to jump in, every single person.
The first time I saw this video from Covington, I saw a Native American man banging a drum in the face of a kid.
And I saw all these people being like, oh man, Tim, oh man, what's going on?
And I'm like, I don't know.
I don't know what's going on.
And I'm like, I don't get it.
It's a video of a guy, like, banging a drum in a kid's face.
What's happening?
And then all of these other personalities, even Philip DeFranco posted videos like, man, I can't believe this.
We've got to call this out.
And I'm sitting here thinking, like, are they watching a different video from me?
I didn't see anything.
Like, even if the kid, like, was just sitting there smiling, I don't know.
Who cares?
Then another video comes out, and it shows the Native American walk up to Sandman, and then I see people saying all this stuff, and I'm like, I don't get it.
The Native American walked up to him, and they're like, yeah, but he's blocking his path.
Sure enough, I watched the two-hour stream, and I'm like, y'all are making this up.
It was just a mob.
You know what, man?
We live in a sick, sick society.
You know what I mean?
And I just watched this great clip someone tweeted at me about George Carlin.
And he said, it's not the politician's fault.
It's the public.
Seriously.
He says, if you have a selfish, ignorant public, you get selfish, ignorant leaders.
And that includes leaders in media too.
Yeah, we do have a sick, selfish, egotistical public.
Not everybody.
Not everybody.
There's a lot of people who believe in protecting the community and doing better by our country, but too many people are selfish and ignorant.
And that means they don't care what's true.
They saw a bandwagon and they had to hop on because that wagon was heading down the road and they don't want to miss that ride.
Me, I don't care.
I would rather live in a cave.
You know, wearing a loincloth, trying to start a fire with two rocks by myself, no resources than to ever play in this psychotic game.
So good on them.
They did what was right by them.
And let me stress one last point.
This is a victory because Sandman's team isn't backing down.
They're increasing their offensive measures.
They're targeting more defendants.
That says to me, They're winning.
They're gaining ground.
They're pushing forward.
They're announcing new attacks.
They just had their case against WAPO reinstated.
A settlement from CNN means CNN bowed and they bowed fast.
Good.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 1pm at youtube.com slash TimCastNews.
Don't forget to subscribe to my new channel at youtube.com slash TimCastIRL for general interest content.
It's gonna be, you know, I guess some people have said it sounds kind of like Joe Rogan.
Maybe.
I'm a huge fan.
But I think it's more so that, um...
Doing this new show allows me to talk about things that I talk about with my friends that I don't actually talk about when I do shows.
The stories I find are important.
They affect culture.
But there's a lot of stories I want to talk about that are kind of... not... don't matter.
But they're interesting, right?
So, anyway, stick around, 1pm, and I will see you all in the next segment.
I am never a fan of jumping the gun on stories where we just don't know what happened.
This morning I did a story on Covington on my main channel, youtube.com slash timcast, particularly because I wanted to wait as long as possible to figure out what happened with this story.
For those that aren't familiar, a Ukrainian Boeing 737 crashed after takeoff in Iran, killing all 176 people aboard.
My thoughts and condolences, seriously, to everyone whose loved ones were involved.
I've seen some stories on social media, and it's horrifying.
I believe, based on a lot of what's being speculated right now, that the simple solution is this plane was shot down.
Now, initially, it was reported, my understanding, that it was a malfunction.
However, video emerged showing a fireball fall from the sky, and these planes are capable of flying with a single engine.
Not only that, the plane stopped transmitting.
So, you take all of these things into consideration, and I'll run through it right now, because I want to make sure I'll just hit the point, and I'll go through the new information, some of the speculation.
Let me tell you this.
Typically, when planes suffer a malfunction, their transmitters alert, hey, this is what's happening.
Eight minutes after takeoff at around, I believe, 8,000 feet, the plane just stopped transmitting and was filmed in the air as a fireball.
People are assuming it's the flight and then crashing and exploding.
I don't want to say that it was necessarily a missile that took it down, but it could have been.
I don't know for sure, but I'll tell you this.
There's some reports, and again, I don't know if it's going to be included in these sources I'm using, I'm using BuzzFeed, that this is the first crash that Ukrainian international airlines have suffered since 1992.
I've seen some of that.
And regardless of whether or not when the last crash was, plane crashes are exceedingly and incredibly rare.
There are, what, like, tens of thousands of, like, a ridiculous amount of flights every day.
No crashes.
None.
You know, we had the 737 MAX had a couple crashes, people freaked out, but this is a 737-800.
Both engines failing, bursting into flames, transmitter going out like that.
Iran was firing missiles into Iraqi military bases the other day in retaliation.
There were no casualties.
Donald Trump just spoke recently.
And, you know, it looks like we may be heading towards de-escalation.
But a lot of what's being speculated and reported is that anti-aircraft sites positioned around airports were on extremely high alert, hair triggers, because there was a fear in Iran of retaliation by U.S.
forces that they would use drones to target airports.
There's been some speculation that a U.S.
drone crashed into it or something like that.
That makes literally no sense, but I've seen some people mentioning it.
drones fly at 55,000 to 60,000 feet in the air, well above where these, this is my understanding, I could be wrong, well above where commercial airlines are flying, plus they are at 8,000 feet.
I think what we're seeing is there was just a high alert and a system targeted it.
That's what I think happened.
Let's read the story and get some of the details because there's a few things that need to be pointed out.
For one, Iran is not going to be turning over the black box.
They're under no obligation to do so, but I think they should to an independent authority, not to American, you know, because, you know, it's a conflict.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I think it's fair to say, as an American, it should be handed over to an independent, you know, country or investigation unit.
Let's read.
BuzzFeed News says, Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 to Kiev crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport at 6-10 a.m.
local time.
Ukraine's embassy in Tehran initially blamed engine failure for the crash, but later updated its statement to say the cause could not be determined until an official inquiry had been carried out.
State media in Iran said the plane crashed due to technical problems.
According to Reuters, Iran said it will not give the plane's black box to Boeing.
Ukraine's foreign minister, Vadim Bristeiko, said he had spoken to his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, and agreed to coordinate investigations into the crash.
So, that's a good thing.
In a statement, Ukraine, as the, you know, they're the ones who have lost this fight, and Ukraine is fairly, you know, has good relations with Iran and the United States, I think that'd be fair.
In a statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a team of Ukrainian experts were flying to Iran to take part in the investigation into the crash.
Our priority is to establish the truth, And those responsible for this terrible catastrophe, he said.
Let me tell you something.
They initially said engine failure.
They walked it back.
They're suspending all flights now to Iran.
The FAA is suspending flights, you know, around Iraq.
Who's responsible for the catastrophe?
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Volodymyr Zelensky says, to find out who's responsible for this catastrophe, I thought it was a technical failure.
Who's responsible for that?
The manufacturer, I guess?
No.
No, I think this was a mistake.
I think Iran accidentally shot down this commercial airliner because they had anti-aircraft systems set up, hair triggers, and somebody made a serious mistake.
So the plane crash took place just hours after Iran launched a series of ballistic missiles against the U.S.
So once again, a couple hours afterwards, Iran's on high alert, scared of American retaliation, drone strikes against airports, plane goes down.
The Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S.
banned commercial flights from the region in response to the missile attacks.
The increased military activity and political tensions in the region would put civilian aircraft at risk if they were misidentified, the FAA notice to aviators said.
Ukraine's Prostyko said, I'm not going to read through.
I want to keep this stuff to the higher level stuff.
And again, my serious condolences.
People lost their lives in this.
But I want to stay focused on international relations.
They say the airline expressed its deepest condolences to the families.
According to the AP, the Iranian emergency official, Pir Hossein Kulivan, said all crew and passengers died in the fiery crash and that authorities were trying to recover the bodies.
The AP also reported that Qasem Bin Ayez, a spokesperson for Iran's road transportation ministry, told state-run news agency IRNA, the plane had crashed after a fire appeared to strike one of its engines after takeoff and the pilot lost control.
I do not believe that makes sense.
These planes can fly with one engine.
It took, it crashed eight minutes after takeoff from around 8,000 feet.
There's no reason, if an engine burst into flames, they would keep transmitting.
They would just stop.
Perhaps it stopped because it crashed, I suppose.
I suppose, you know.
The jet crashed near Paran, the city outside the airport, recording the flight radar.
Boeing wrote on Twitter, we are aware of media reports out of Iran, and we are gathering more information.
So I'll tell you this.
Boeing has a serious... Look, if it turns out this is a malfunction, Boeing's gonna flip out because they just had the 737 MAX grounded permanently, and that's a massive, massive loss.
If it turns out now that the 737-800s, which I think this was built in like 1996, it's been a long time, are now malfunctioning, Boeing's in serious, serious trouble.
So Boeing is incentivized to pass the blame onto somebody else.
But if this blame does fall onto Iran, then we are looking at We might be looking at some serious war because this was this is a civilian aircraft full of you know a bunch of International like different different countries citizens Canadians Iranians.
There are some British people I believe So I'll tell you this When you go over to Reddit... Now, I know.
Speculation is stupid at this point.
We don't know for sure.
And I think it's fair to say, regardless of what happens, everyone's going to tone it down.
Because the last thing they want, especially with, you know, Trump's speech saying, you know, he just gave a speech where he's like, we want peace, okay?
It looks like Iran is standing down.
We're hoping this is as far as it goes.
So nobody wants to hear that Iran accidentally or otherwise took out this plane, because that would mean serious retaliation from a lot of countries.
But it looks like that's at least what everyone thinks.
Now, I'll show you this real quick.
Everybody knows this.
Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at two U.S.
military bases in Iraq.
The speculation then is that, several hours later, they got scared of retaliation by the U.S.
and may have accidentally taken out a commercial airline.
Take a look at these comments on Reddit on the story.
I'll tell you one thing.
The plane did not kill itself, just like Jeffrey Epstein.
Iranian media, Al-Hadath, reported it was shot down by accident.
That's a pretty severe accident.
Well, I believe... I mean, it's up on Twitter.
A verified Twitter profile.
And it looks like they're based in Dubai.
We'll translate this tweet.
I'm not entirely sure what it means.
I'm just showing you.
Let's take everything with a grain of salt for now.
Ukrainian plane reportedly crashed as a result of accidental lying of an Iranian missile.
So I don't know exactly how that translates properly, what it means.
A country that threatens America's base all over the world.
You're making a plane wrong.
The suspicious almost said, take me.
It doesn't translate very, very well through Bing.
Thank you very much, Microsoft, for your translations.
Watch this out.
There was that one Redditor in another thread, before the crash, whose Canadian mom was in Iran.
People were telling him his mom should leave.
I'm hoping he's okay.
Someone put, crashed right into a missile.
I'm waiting for all the facts, but to me this is a reasonable hypothesis for now.
More so than mechanical failure.
Timing is a big coincidence.
Iran's air defense is presumably at air trigger alert.
No emergency communication from the pilot.
If the engine started on fire, the transmission would have come out, and the planes can fly with just one engine.
A plane described as a fireball plummeting to the ground, a bird strike might cause an engine to catch fire, wouldn't cause the plane to crash like that.
As I said, don't give up, don't forget that Iran is not giving up the black box for the plane to Boeing to investigate the causes.
Sure, but, you know, Boeing is, they're an American company.
My understanding, I could be wrong.
So I understand why Iran wouldn't want to do that.
They're under an obligation to do it.
The traditional rules, my understanding is that the investigating authority in the region takes the black box to investigate and keeps it secure.
There's a lot of mistrust over, you know, with Iran right now, so people are really concerned, but it looks like Ukraine will be coming in.
Ukraine is an ally of the United States, so I think Ukraine coming in is good news, but I think it's fair to say, you know, everybody thinks that this was an accidental strike.
So Ukraine's going to be involved.
That's good.
Let's see.
Let's see what else they got in these Twitter threads.
Dropped like a flaming meteor from 8,000 feet.
Immediately stopped transmitting.
Definitely not a mechanical failure.
Someone said, talk to a pilot buddy.
And we can't think of a single mechanical failure that would cause this unless we suspended reality.
My dad worked on aircraft for 50 plus years, including 22 in the USAF.
I asked him last night if it could have just been some sort of failure.
His response, no way in hell.
A lot of people are saying the same thing.
So let me tell you this.
I worked for American Airlines When I was 18, I started, I worked there for two years.
I did general ramp stuff and that's just basically like loading planes and like doing general, like connecting, you know, power units and air conditioning and stuff.
So nothing super technical, but at least my general understanding having worked at, you know, at least in this proximity is that this, this, this, what they're saying on these comments, you know, adds up.
Uh, no plane has ever been downed due to turbulence, my understanding.
Uh, planes can withstand it.
There's videos of engines bursting into flames.
Planes can fly with just one engine.
They do emergency landings.
The, the systems are, there's multiple redundancies to protect in the event that the engines go out.
They can still, you know, transmit, this is what's happening, we need help.
So it seems, at least, at least in my understanding, extremely odd that all of this happened at once.
And I think, you know, the reality is rather scary.
YouTube might take this video down because, I mean, if this is true, we could be talking about a serious, serious and terrifying escalation.
But I will also add, if that's the case, if Iran really did this, you know, accidentally or otherwise, I think it could result in a dramatic de-escalation.
Things have gone too far.
And Iran might have no choice but to totally just stop because if you get, you know, the China, if you get NATO forces, if you get China, if you get Russia, everybody's saying, you messed up on this one.
You're standing down.
That could ultimately be like a shock to the system, right?
That basically, you know, with as severe as this action was, every person of good conscience, no matter what the economics, no matter what the international relations is going to be, is going to say like, You're done.
You're done.
That's it.
So, you know, the scary thing about war is not what we're seeing right now.
What you've got to understand is that... Actually, no, I take that back.
The scary thing about war is the gradual escalation and the normalization of more and more extreme events.
It would be better In a certain sense, if there was one major shocking moment that forced everybody to just immediately drop their weapons and be like, no, no, no, we're not doing this.
And that's like a nuke moment.
Those are not good things.
But if you have a slow build-up, skirmishes, invasions, strikes, eventually you reach all-out war and everyone is just so hell-bent on things escalating that they're like, yeah, well, he did this yesterday, so we did this today.
And then the other side's like, well, look what they just did, so we're going to escalate.
If one side takes a move too far, it just shuts everything down.
It's possible.
So, you know, this person says civilians always suffer the most.
Why are they Canadian?
It looks like, uh, this is just, uh, is it still considered a crash if Iran shut it down, uh, accidentally?
This person says Iran accidentally shot the plane down and is now trying to cover it up.
If the Americans shot it down, then Iran would blast them all over the media for it.
Absolutely.
And that's actually happened before, uh, the U.S.
Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger airplane before.
They said the entire world would be blasting the U.S.
if the U.S.
shot down a plane thinking it was an Iranian attack.
The lack of intense outrage.
This is not the U.S.
I've heard some people speculating on Twitter and it seems absolutely absurd.
U.S.
drones Maybe, but why would a U.S.
drone be flying over Iranian territory right now?
Maybe doing surveillance, but I don't know why it would be locked with Reaper missiles or Hellfire missiles or something to go after a commercial plane.
It's possible, but I think the most plausible solution is that with the timing and everything, a lot of people are saying that Iran has amassed anti-aircraft forces around many of their airports out of a fear of retaliation.
And it may have been a mistake, man.
Look at this one.
Is it still a plane crash when all evidence coming out shows that it was most likely shot down?
You know what?
I'm gonna stop here, okay?
You get the point.
We've got this update.
Airlines rerouted or cancelled flights around Iraq, Iran after a missile strike on US troops.
But let me just tell you this.
Outside of everything we've heard already, I think it's fair to say If the plane just, if no one knew what happened, if there was no fireball, if it was just the plane was gone.
The plane crashed.
Let's just say the plane crashed.
People are going to say you have a missile strike and then a plane crashes.
No one's going to believe it.
The same thing happened in Ukraine.
We had that civilian commercial airliner crash and a lot of people were like, oh, it was a malfunction.
But I don't, I don't, I don't have the details on that one pulled up.
I think, you know, a lot of people think it was a mistake.
It was a people, there's a story.
Again, fact check me on this one, look into it because it's a different, totally different story.
I don't have the sources pulled up.
Uh, that they thought it was a military cargo plane that people in, you know, eastern Ukraine did, and so they shot it down.
And this might be the case.
I mean, you might have some young individual working in some capacity on this anti-aircraft site, pressed the wrong button, or forgot to put on some kind of safety, or it was a hair trigger, or they panicked.
These things happen, man.
So, naturally, I think it's in the best interests of Iran and the US to just call it a malfunction.
Now Boeing, on the other hand, they're not going to be happy with that.
Because a malfunction means people are going to be really scared to fly on their planes after what happened with the 737 MAX and now this.
But, um, let me end by putting it this way.
Occam's Razor suggests the simple solution tends to be the correct one.
Conspiracy theorists have a problem with choosing the most circuitous story that seems to make no sense.
In this instance, we have an active military conflict and a plane crashes.
Occam's Razor would suggest this was shot down.
Accidentally or otherwise, I'm not going to speculate.
But Occam's Razor's simple solution is commercial airliner flying in an active conflict zone?
Went down a fireball.
Stopped transmitting.
All these things add up.
A simple solution.
This plane was shot down, man.
So, this is all speculation.
This is all just a general hypothesis.
We don't know what's gonna happen.
And, you know, the best we can do is wait for the investigations to clear.
Hopefully, after Trump's speech, things de-escalate, so... Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m.
at youtube.com slash timcast.
I don't even know what I'll talk about!
On this channel... So, let me explain something to all you guys real quick.
You're still listening.
My main channel is under heavy scrutiny because it's in a special program where actual YouTube office employees watch my videos, and this guarantees monetization.
They're also extremely strict, meaning on this channel, this video will be initially demonetized, but by the end of the day monetized, because it's just general news.
The people who monitor this channel, because it's not in the same program, typically are more lax.
They're like, you know, I don't swear, I'm not bombastic, I'm not screeching, I'm talking about basic news everyone's already heard about, they monetize it, but it's initially demonetized.
My main channel, everything is monetized, but this video would absolutely be suppressed and shadow banned on my main channel.
Take it for what it is.
I don't know what to tell you, but that's why I separate them kind of the way I do.
So, on my main channel, we're going to see more domestic issues, and I might actually separate it this way.
I might keep my main channel as kind of my cultural flagship channel.
This will become international and high-intensity issues that are likely to be demonetized.
And my new channel, youtube.com slash timcastIRL, is going to be silly, fun shenanigans.
You know, some people have said it sounds like I'm talking about the Joe Rogan podcast, but it's gonna be more specialized than that.
Fully admitting, uh, Rogan and Crowder are big inspirations for me wanting to just, you know, work harder, do more content, stuff like that.
So, so stick around.
Next segment will be at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCast.
It'll probably be more of a domestic political issue, but, uh, we'll see, we'll see.
Um, cause, you know, shadowbanning isn't gonna help anybody.
But if there's more developments on this, on these, these stories, they'll definitely appear on this channel.
6pm, 6.15, 6.30 is my 6 o'clock segment, and I will see you all in the next segment at 4.
As much as many people might be angry that Donald Trump didn't start World War III, there are some people who are still taking advantage of the cycle, sending out fake text messages telling people they've been chosen for the draft, in what may be the stupidest news story I've ever seen, but I decided it'd be fun to read anyway.
Army warns of fake texts informing U.S.
citizens they have been selected for the draft.
So what?
Somebody randomly sends texts to random numbers saying you've been chosen for the draft?
Who cares?
Since when were prank phone calls and text messages relevant news?
I don't know.
But I thought it'd be a great lead to talk about how upset the media is that Donald Trump gave a speech basically saying we're gonna simmer things down, there's not gonna be World War III, and lo and behold, I... at least for now, I could be wrong, but at least for now, I was right.
Donald Trump did not start World War III.
Amid the escalating tensions and the strike the other day, Trump said it looks like they're standing down.
No announcement of retaliation other than some sanctions, so it could get worse, but...
I gotta say, this seems more like Trump is pulling back and doing it in a clever way.
There's also news that Iran informed Iraq we're gonna target these areas, just so you know, and my understanding is nobody lost their lives.
I don't know for sure because there's been conflicting reports.
But let's read the silly news first, and then I'll show you how sad Vox is.
Aw, Trump made things worse, did he?
ABC News reports.
The U.S.
Army advised Americans the military is not drafting individuals by any means, including through text messages.
Texts have circulated this week alerting U.S.
citizens that they have been selected for a military draft, according to a statement from U.S.
Army Recruitment Command on Tuesday.
Calling them fake, the Army said they want to make sure Americans understand these texts are false and were not initiated by this command or the U.S.
Army.
The draft was last used in 1973 during the Vietnam War.
Since then, the military has been an all-volunteer force, which is substantially more effective.
Stop pretending there will be a draft.
They're never going to draft.
The draft is a bad idea, and they learn their lesson.
If you have an unenthusiastic, resentful, and angry military, you're not going to function properly.
You have to have people who want to join, who are proud, and they're doing it for a reason.
Taking some 18-year-old kid who hates... Here's what I said before.
Could you imagine if they drafted some Antifa dude?
That'd be a disaster!
Who wants that?
Some purple-haired woman gets drafted or something.
Okay, they don't draft women, but you get the point.
The statement comes amid escalating tensions between Iran and the U.S.
since the killing of Qasem Soleimani, who led the Quds Force.
Soleimani was killed, we know that.
Okay, so the Ayatollah said, a vigorous vengeance, and cruelest of mankind on earth, blah blah blah.
Yeah, we get it, okay.
They say the Selective Service System, which holds a list of potential recruits in the event of a draft, said they are conducting business as usual after experiencing high traffic volumes amid the tension.
In the event that a national emergency necessitates a draft, Congress and the President would need to pass official legislation to authorize a draft according to a statement on Facebook.
Let me tell you something.
If the draft was truly necessary, it would happen.
But it's not truly necessary.
What does the US have, like 1.2 million ground forces, but also we have massive superior technology?
You know when the draft is going to be necessary?
It's going to be necessary when, like, Europe is invaded.
Okay?
Like, if Russia and China and Iran join forces and invade, you might see a draft.
You really might.
Right now?
Nah, don't be silly, dude.
Come on.
We've been in the Middle East for how long?
They've been targeting Iran for 40 years.
This is all part of their silly plan.
They've been working towards this for a long time.
I'm not trying to be conspiratorial or anything like that, but come on.
The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan has been a long time coming.
We know what the intention is.
Iran, it's going back to the 79.
They're talking about it on TV.
They've said it's been bad with Iran since then.
And so this is where we are today.
It's 40 years.
40 years.
Well, apparently Vox isn't too happy that Trump gave a speech where he kind of walked things back.
So I figure the funny draft thing would be an interesting launching point.
But let's see why Vox thinks Trump made things worse.
Now I'll tell you why I think Vox is saying Trump made things worse.
Because Vox has Trump derangement syndrome.
Yes.
Donald Trump didn't make things worse.
He actually made things objectively better with his speech.
Now, there's an argument it could still get worse.
But what I mean to say is Trump could have come out and said, in response to this, we're going to respond with a strike in these areas, like he said he would do, and he didn't.
Trump came out and said, basically, there's not going to be a hard military response, which is a pullback from the tit for tat that's been going on for the past month or so.
I mean, going on for decades, but you get the point.
Well, let's see with Vox how Vox wants to justify their orange man bad click-through rate.
Donald Trump had the opportunity of his presidency to stand at the White House lectern, look out on the country he leads, and declare to the world his victory over Iran after a deadly standoff.
He blew that chance.
What?
Trump did the bare minimum.
It's like, dude, they never, they wouldn't even give Trump one day.
Not one day.
Trump did the bare minimum in his Wednesday morning address, which was to recognize that Iran's weak attack on two American military sites in Iraq was a de-escalation.
Instead of specifically targeting U.S.
troops at Al Asad Air Base in Erbil, it appears Tehran may have missed them on purpose, leading to zero U.S.
or Iraqi casualties.
And Trump said it looks like they're standing down.
Let's calm things down.
He said, we are looking for peace.
How great would it be if we got a peace deal with Iran finally after 40 years?
What are we doing in the Middle East anyway?
Most of the conflict... Now, don't get me wrong, man.
Iran does bad stuff.
Yasher Ali did this whole segment about what, you know, Iran's strategy has been over the past several decades.
And he made a really good argument for why we need to stop them.
I mean, it was kind of scary.
Talking about targeting diplomats in foreign countries and stuff like that.
So, yeah.
And it was Obama, my understanding, who said this guy Qasem Soleimani was a terrorist.
So listen, if we could get peace, that'd be fantastic.
And we should leave, and maybe that would lead to it.
But a lot of people are concerned about the vacuum, that Russia and China would move in, and it's like, dude, how about we leave and just say, like, don't come?
Or we dramatically reduce our presence and keep minimal presence.
But anyway, let's read more.
Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world, Trump said.
But then his remarks took a turn.
He chose not to take the victory lap and used the occasion to boast about his diplomatic and military prowess.
You know what, man?
I'll give him one thing.
He dragged Obama.
He said the missiles they're firing, the funds they have were provided by the previous administration and it's unfortunately true.
Look man, I'm not gonna play games and rag on Obama for the sake of ragging on Obama.
Obama tried to appease Iran and I think to a certain degree I can respect the plan.
But to another degree I can say it feels like it would have been obvious they're not going to abide by what you're hoping they will.
Now there was some celebration, there was some hope that there would be an agreement.
That what Obama was doing would actually help simmer things down.
But in the end, it really doesn't.
And I think the main problem that can't be resolved is that Iran hates Israel, period.
There's nothing you're going to do about that.
Like, the U.S.
could leave, Iran is still going to hate Israel.
And it's been going on since 1979 or whatever, so I don't know what you could expect.
Obama thought he could pull something off, and unfortunately it didn't work out the way he had hoped.
While I can respect the efforts at peace and stabilization, It didn't work.
Now, I certainly don't think Trump is helping.
Like, if Trump can pull off a peace deal, I'll, you know, I'll eat crow or whatever the phrase is.
Like, I'll accept my being wrong, but I think for the time being, we're still in hot water.
And Trump is taking a hard approach.
And it's bad for us in the long run.
Now, look, Vox is complaining about Trump's statement.
No, no, Trump's statement was pretty good.
I can respect that.
He could have responded with heavier tactics, with a tit-for-tat.
He did not.
Sanctions.
If Iran comes in, okay, could Trump have done better?
Well, absolutely!
I think there could have been a better approach.
But to act like Trump is making the situation worse is a silly attempt at generating clicks by playing the orange man bad narrative.
We don't know what's going to happen.
We don't know the correct course of action.
Obama tried appeasement.
It didn't work.
Trump is trying a heavier hand.
We're in hot water.
Maybe it'll get better.
I don't know.
I don't like where things are at.
But to act like what Trump just said was somehow making things worse is silly.
Yesterday, things got bad, okay?
Missile strikes.
A plane went down.
We don't know why.
Some people are speculating.
Trump could have come out and said, how dare you fire at our allies?
Instead, he said, okay, okay, all right.
Nobody lost their lives.
We're going to impose some sanctions.
That's a step back, okay, from the military tit-for-tat.
If we were following the same course of action, Trump would have responded with a military strike.
Instead, sanctions.
So we're good.
We're pulling back a little bit.
It's a good thing.
Let's encourage everybody to pull back.
It doesn't mean Iran will.
It doesn't mean Trump doesn't have his finger on the trigger.
I'm just saying, to act like this was making things worse...
They say Iran aims to force Trump to lift the sanctions campaign by bombing oil tankers in international waters, wrecking Saudi oil fields, etc, etc.
Yes, I understand that.
But they were doing that, and there have been sanctions on Iran for a long time.
It's insane to think that, like, The appeasement and giving them money, which they use to make weapons and build up their forces, was solving the problem.
They're just turning around and using them again.
I don't know what to tell you, man.
I'm not an expert on Iran.
I'm not going to pretend like I know about the history of Iran and the Middle East.
I got two more stupid segments coming up in a few minutes, and I'll see you all shortly.
You see, this is the problem with left-wing environmental activists.
They claim that we need a high-speed rail and we shouldn't fly anymore.
Heavens, the Green New Deal is our only hope.
Climate change, climate change, climate change.
But then they try and stop a high-speed rail from being built because it's going to go through flora and fauna.
You know what, man?
There's no appeasing them because there's not one faction of environmental or animal rights activists.
AOC and Greta Thunberg and whoever else can come out and say, how dare you?
How dare you?
But then when you actually say, OK, fine, we're going to build a high-speed rail, someone else comes out and goes, how dare you?
You're going to cut down the trees.
What do you want us to do, man?
If we've got to build a train, we've got to cut down some trees.
You know what?
There's no solution.
There really isn't.
Because the activists aren't part of, like, a unified group for the most part.
So they're at odds with each other while claiming to be part of the same fight.
And this is literally what you see in the streets.
They call it diversity of tactics.
So they can never really accomplish anything because half the groups, the only thing they agree on is they're gonna throw a brick through a window, but they don't agree on what their actual goal is.
HS2 begins evicting activists from protest site after two years.
What are you talking about after two years?
AOC put out that Green New Deal trash like two years ago.
Why would activists try and stop a high-speed rail project when other activists are claiming we need high-speed rails?
I give up.
Welcome to our absurd world.
Well, let's read the story from The Guardian.
Environmental activists say the controversial rail project is destroying flora and fauna.
Yeah, I'm sorry that's the case.
So here's what they'll probably argue.
They'll say something like, well then maybe you should allow us to determine where the rail can go through.
Oh, you want like a train that goes in like crazy directions and all that stuff?
HS2 has begun evicting a group of environmental protesters who have been living at a camp along the route of the rail project for more than two years.
Dozens of police and bailiffs are at the Harville Road site in the Colney Valley in the London Borough of Hillingdon.
The protesters are opposing the eviction and claim HS2 and the bailiffs are acting unlawfully as they have not served the demonstrators with high court eviction notices ordering them to vacate the land.
Three protesters have been arrested at the camp, which was established in October 2017.
Since then, groups of environmental protesters, many from the Green Party and Extinction Rebellion, have been a permanent presence on the site, monitoring HS2's work and documenting what they say is destruction of flora and fauna.
Opponents of HS2 have pointed to its spiraling costs.
Spiraling costs?
The Green New Deal makes no sense because it would cost trillions of dollars.
Okay, man.
Let's look to our neighbors across the pond.
When they tried to build a high-speed rail, and the left came out and said, it's too expensive, and you're tearing down the trees and hurting the animals.
Yet over here, they're proposing the Green New Deal resolution, of which no one voted for, funnily.
Or, fun- funny?
What's the word?
I've heard that- I've heard that word before.
I don't think it's a word.
Anyway, it's funny that they're going to propose getting rid of the planes to build high-speed trains, including trains to Hawaii, but then across- when they try and do it in the UK, look at what we're getting, man.
The Colney Valley Nature Reserve is home to a variety of fauna and flora, including bats, owls, and osprey.
Protesters claim that pile-driving into an aquifer, an underground layer of water bearing permeable rock on the site, which supplies almost a quarter of London's water, will cause serious damage to this water supply.
HS2 denies there will be any damage.
Now, I can respect this.
They're saying, look, man, you're going to go through this wildlife preserve.
What do you think a train will do?
What are you going to do?
Are trains going to go, like, make a huge 70-mile detour?
Yeah, you're going to build trains through some natural preserves.
Okay, that's one of the problems.
It's one of the benefits of having planes.
Planes go over things.
There's no, like, flora and fauna permanently structured in the sky that we have to tear through.
For the most part, the birds in the sky move around and they leave.
They say a report from Lord Berkeley, a dissenting member of a panel reviewing the HS2 project, claims the costs are completely out of control.
I can respect that.
If the costs are out of control, it's an excellent reason to reject this.
And that's one of the problems with the Green New Deal.
It is understood HS2 is carrying out two different kinds of enforcement action on the Colony Valley site.
One based on a High Court order obtained on November 28th, granting it possession of a particular part of the site.
And the second based on the HS2 Act passed by Parliament.
Which officials say gives them the right to obtain possession of the land from which they are evicting protesters.
The site is in the Ruyslip, Northwood, and Pinner constituency of the conservative MP David Simmons.
The constituencies of John McDonnell and Boris Johnson are in the same borough.
There are five anti-HS2 protest camps along the rail route.
Protesters fear that if the Colney Valley camp is demolished, the others will follow.
Speaking at the site, Sarah Green said, this eviction is totally undermining our right to protest
and freedom of assembly, which has been granted to us by the high court.
People are being made homeless without being given the opportunity to go to court to contest this eviction.
Green and a second protester, Laura Hughes, walked free from court last July after a prosecution
against them collapsed.
Both had been charged with aggravated trespass for protesting against HS2 work on the Colony Valley site.
Is it Colony Valley?
I'm probably pronouncing it wrong.
A district judge, Deborah Wright, dismissed the case after she said it was not possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the protesters were trespassing on land in possession of HS2.
I don't care about this.
Let's look at this.
America's trains are a drag.
The Green New Deal wants to fix that.
From February of last year, high-speed trains already compete with planes in many parts of the world.
They also have far lower carbon emissions.
Wow!
We should build high-speed trains!
Except the protesters will probably protest that too.
Check it out.
Ever since the midterm elections, there's been quite a bit of buzz about the possibility of a Green New Deal, a comprehensive national plan to tackle climate change, and inequality all in one.
Oh, inequality!
You see, that's why I oppose it for the most part.
Because it's so vague in its particulars, the resolution has become something of a Rorschach test as observers try to figure out how a Green New Deal would materialize in the real world.
They say it's hard to know what it'll look like.
There was an FAQ that was taken down.
Specifically, the section of the FAQ on transportation calls to build out high-speed rail at scale, where air travel stops becoming necessary.
The resolution itself doesn't mention air travel at all, but does call for the goal of investing in clean, affordable, and accessible transportation and high-speed rail.
Let me say something.
Let's say you have a high-speed train.
How many trains could be on it at once?
How many tracks will you need to build?
Did you know that, like, let's say Chicago.
They'll do back-to-back flights from, like, Chicago to Philly.
They'll do shadow travels all over the world, actually.
But there are probably, I don't know, hundreds to thousands of flights per day.
Now let's say you have train tracks and there's like 20 that go out of the city.
How many trains could leave at once?
See, the thing about planes is that though they take off from the same runway, they actually can diverge into three dimensions.
Above, below, at angles.
Trains can't do that.
Trains stay on the track.
So there's a much, it's much more expensive and limiting to do these trains.
Not to mention the bigger problem of activists trying to shut them down.
But I'm a big fan of high-speed rail, especially like long-range maglev or like hyperloop.
Let's do it, man.
I'm totally down.
We're not going to get rid of planes, okay?
But we can still improve our trains.
Like high-speed rails, the ones we have now are pretty crummy.
Let's read a little bit more.
They say, For a big, ambitious plan to fight climate change, it would make perfect sense to target transit in general, and air travel in particular.
Planes, cars, shipping is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Surging air travel demand helped fuel the rise in U.S.
emissions after years of decline.
And aircraft are extremely difficult to decarbonize.
Well, electrification is coming out for cars, trucks, and buses.
No battery or fuel cell is going to fly anyone across the Pacific anytime soon, and it's because weight to energy ratio.
But let's go back to what's happening in the UK.
See, I don't care about the particulars of what they're doing in court, but I want to read a bit about what they say as we wrap this one up.
They say a spokesman for HS2 said, Wrong answer.
said, this is a land that is legally possessed by HS2.
Protests such as this are costly to the taxpayer and are a threat to the security and safety of the public
and our workers.
Wrong answer.
What the spokesman should have said is that we are in line with the Green New
Deal and progressive activism in helping reduce carbon emissions from airplanes.
But these right-wing fascists want to ensure fossil fuel industries can survive.
That's the game they play, isn't it?
That's what they'd say about anybody else.
Spokesman went on to say, we understand people feel strongly about the project, and that they want us to hear their views, which is why we have numerous channels through which they can make their feelings understood.
Investment in state-of-the-art high-speed line is critical for the UK's low-carbon transport future.
You see?
We'll provide much-needed rail capacity up and down the country, and is integral to rail projects in the North and Midlands, which will help rebalance the UK economy.
How funny!
They literally are trying to reduce their carbon, and activists are protesting it.
Let me stress this point.
They are literally preaching about lowering their carbon footprint and activists have shut them down.
Why should anyone treat these people in good faith if this is what they're doing in the UK?
And therein lies the big problem.
How do we actually solve environmental issues if they're going to protest every single aspect of every single thing being done?
The answer is you can't.
You can't.
Vox can preach all day and night, but remember when Vox said a new labor rights bill is going to reshape the gig economy in California and protect workers, a victory for the progressive left.
And then a few months later when it passes, Vox lays off hundreds of employees.
Therein lies the big problem.
I want to help the economy.
I want to help the environment.
I want to improve things for people.
I want to get healthcare.
But come on, man.
I know the activists in the UK are not the same as the activists in the US, but if left-wing activists protest literally everything, they're literally trying to build the high-speed rails that AOC's been talking about, and activists came and said, yeah, well, you're not tearing down these trees, so what are we supposed to do?
Okay?
Just stop traveling?
I don't know what to tell you, man.
I'll keep this one short.
I got one more silly segment coming up in a few minutes and I will see you all shortly.
Well, it's a new year, and as predicted, minimum wage is going up in many different jurisdictions, and while some people are benefiting, some people are actually quite upset.
I got two stories for you.
The first one talks about restaurants adding surcharges in Phoenix, and people are kind of shocked to see that they literally put on the receipts Prop 206 fee.
Now, left-wing activists are pretty upset, saying, you don't need to do this, you can just pay a living wage, increase your prices as you should, to afford, you know, to pay for the costs.
What they don't realize is that customers don't react that way.
Okay, when you go to a diner, and the food is a dollar more across the board, you say, woof, things got expensive, let's go to the other diner.
The other diner might have the same price increase, but it's destabilizing, you know, for everybody.
So they're trying to explain to you why the costs have gone up.
Let's read the story.
I got another story here.
This one is from WANDTV.
Which talks about central Illinois employees benefiting, but also the cost to employers.
And as per usual, I want to talk a little bit about the general minimum wage and why I think these localized minimum wage increases are actually a decently good thing.
And there are some net positives to a nationwide minimum wage increase pertaining to imports, but let's read.
They say.
Some unsuspecting customers have gotten a surprise.
Some unsuspecting customers have gotten a surprise while eating out as a result of a new minimum wage hike.
The wage hike, which raised Arizona's minimum wage from $11 to $12 per hour, is a result of Prop 206.
Each business is doing something different to respond to the wage increase.
But some in the Valley are passing the extra costs on to customers and putting it on to the receipt.
I mean, one simple solution, decrease the size of your product.
That's one thing they do.
At the bottom of the receipt at Tennessee Grill and Bar in Anthem, underneath sales tax, is a line that reads Prop 206 fee.
According to the restaurant's menu, a 3.5% surcharge is added to every guest's check to provide increased wages and benefits to employees.
Quote, what we have seen is that restaurants have added a surcharge, said Dan Bogert with the Arizona Restaurant Association in a phone interview.
Anywhere from 1% to 3% surcharge to help cover increased labor costs.
Bogert says this is one way restaurants are coping with the increased labor costs.
They say some restaurants are reducing employee hours, operation hours, and increasing the productivity of existing staff.
Basically, you're losing money, they're closing their stores earlier, and they're making you work harder.
Prop 206 was approved by voters in 2016 to increase pay across the state.
They say it requires the state to increase the minimum wage to a predetermined level from New Year's Day 2017 to 2020.
In 2017, the minimum wage was set at $10, increased at $10.50 in 2018, $11 in 2019, and now it's $12.
Bogert says 2020 is a big year because it's the largest increase.
You can imagine just a $1 increase from $11 to $12 an hour in 2020 is a 9% increase in baseline labor costs.
So I want to read this next story, but I want to explain to you, I've talked about it before, but what we can likely expect and why there is a net positive for a lot of people.
When they do, minimum wage increases, but how the left misinterprets it and it could actually become very damaging.
So this one's from Central Illinois.
And they first point out that a lot of people are actually happy.
There's another study that came out that said a $1 minimum wage increase can dramatically reduce suicide rates because it provides people a better opportunity to buy certain things they might need.
And I can respect that, but it's short-lived.
Because a base rate increase increases the cost of all goods across the board.
But there is a net positive for imports and products produced outside the area where they've increased wages.
They say, among the changes that 2020 has brought Illinois is a new minimum wage of $9.25 an hour, which is already making an impact on employers and employees.
Lexi Ross, a student at Milliken University, is one of many workers in the state seeing a bump in their paycheck.
Ross works two jobs that pay minimum wage, so her hourly pay went from $8.25 to $9.25.
She said prior to the increase, she didn't make enough to pay for basic necessities.
Here's the issue.
First, define basic necessities.
It's changed over time.
Today, we all have refrigerators and air conditioners.
Like, not everybody, but most people have refrigerators.
That was a luxury a hundred years ago.
So we're trying to make sure that minimum wages stay up to par with certain needs, but
as now, as we enter an area where most people to function in society need more products
like smartphones, it becomes hard to keep up with things.
But would you consider a high-end smartphone a necessity?
Not really.
You can buy a crappy smartphone for like 50 bucks.
I'm not exaggerating.
And it's got everything, internet.
One of the challenges is that the basic standard we all want to live is harder to achieve.
But does she have food?
Does she have shelter?
That's the question I think should be asked.
And I think it's fair to point out raising, you know, the cost of rent, it is hard to pay rent when you're making almost no money.
The challenge again, though, is that to what degree should you be paid?
What is the value of the lowest skilled jobs?
We can't force the value of these jobs to go up.
A minimum wage doesn't change the value of your labor.
I'll try and use this analogy, right?
Let's say I knew how to find gold.
Is my job worth the same as your job if you're making cheeseburgers?
The answer is no.
Gold is rare and extremely valuable.
So now, if we're claiming that you who make cheeseburgers, your rate's going to go up.
Well, if I want a cheeseburger, I don't care.
Like, the money doesn't mean anything.
The money just is a trade medium.
What matters is what can I buy with my labor, and my labor is worth more than yours no matter what.
It's never going to change.
Increasing the minimum wage just causes the floor to raise for literally everybody, but it is a ripple effect.
So there is an immediate net gain followed by, you know, it's short-lived.
Let's read.
They say, with minimum wage going up, I'll actually have a chance to somewhat be on time with electric bills now, and not have to struggle to make ends meet.
She said, $8.25 isn't a livable wage for literally anybody in the state of Illinois.
I've had to take out loans to make sure they don't turn off my electric.
So I think, you know, the challenge is, when it comes to, like, a lot of these lefty policies, they say, you hear this, and I sympathize, your electricity is going to get shut off?
Okay, that's a really bad thing.
But then you have to ask a question.
How much electricity are you using?
Do you have a gaming PC?
Are you cranking things out?
My electric bill's actually decently high because of the editing machines and the computers and the cameras and stuff that I use.
It's pretty high.
And, you know, air conditioning can be expensive.
But I also want to point out another issue that Loft brings up with, like, universal healthcare.
It's another similar analogy.
If you want everyone to get free healthcare, paid from the government to the taxpayer, but you eat Twinkies all day, Yeah, that's gonna increase the cost dramatically.
If we had a system where it was like, okay, everybody gets free healthcare paid for by the government, but you also have to participate in, like, a monthly physical, and if you reach a certain threshold of, like, blood pressure or something, your benefits get cut.
Now, I think it's fair to point out, like, there could be diseases causing a lot of ailments, not, you know, lack of physical activity.
The general idea is, hey, free healthcare for all if everybody consistently exercises and eats healthy, right?
Otherwise, you have someone saying, I can't pay my electric bill on minimum wage.
It's not fair.
Your electric bill's $1,000.
Why?
Well, I mine Bitcoin.
Okay, hold on, right?
That's an important factor in whether or not this person's electric bill is too high.
Are they watching TV?
Are they leaving Netflix on overnight?
These are things we should ask.
They say the state minimum wage will increase several times over the next five years, eventually becoming $15 in 2025.
While Ross is appreciative of that trajectory, she acknowledges there could be a downside.
I'm scared to see it go all the way up to $15, just because I know prices are going to start going up too.
Just because they're going to see that everyone's making more money.
If the lowest skilled worker can make one widget per hour, and everybody needs widgets, when you increase the cost of producing the widget, literally everything else goes up in a ripple effect.
The person who takes the widget and converts it into a widget system now has to spend twice as much money because they require double the widgets.
Or because widgets are more expensive, right?
So somebody who makes a widget, sells it to somebody who crafts widgets into a widget machine, and now they say, wow, I needed 10, but it costs an extra $5 per widget?
That means I need 50 more bucks.
That means the cost of that system is now up by $50, which means they need to charge more when they sell it.
All it does is dramatically inflate the cost of everything, but now I'm going to spend the last minute explaining, as I have explained in the past, I guess, but to wrap it up.
There is a net benefit if the product is made outside of this jurisdiction.
If only in one town they increase the minimum wage and products are made outside that town, the base cost of those products will not go up.
And that means the people who live in that city will see an equalizing effect.
It could be a good thing.
The problem with nationwide minimum wage laws is that it will just dramatically increase the floor for everything, rapidly inflating stuff very quickly.
But once again, it's actually a sneaky good thing.
No, seriously.
The United States sells U.S.
dollars, right?
Let's say we sell a dollar to China.
And what we do is we say, hey, we're going to give you a loan, like we're going to sell debt to you.
So, essentially, I'm probably butchering this explanation, but basically, we get stuff from China in exchange for them, like, buying and saving U.S.
dollars.
We have debt with China, right?
Let's say China expects one hour of labor in exchange for some kind of benefit we get from them.
If we increase the minimum wage and the cost of everything goes up, that debt we have with these foreign countries becomes worthless.
It deflates, it devalues the debt other countries are holding.
So the more we increase the minimum wage, the less valuable foreign debt becomes.
So there is a net gain to it.
Inflation can technically be a good thing in that regard.
But ultimately I think it's a chaotic force.
So we need to be careful about how it's implemented because when you do blanket sweep, like when you do these blanket increases and you do it too fast, you shock the businesses.
Walmart, Starbucks, these big corporations are fine.
Small businesses suffer.
So while there could be weird economic net benefits internationally, I don't know if it makes sense for the most part.
And we need to ask questions about, while I certainly don't like the idea of someone getting paid $9 an hour, who am I to argue what the value of their labor really is?
And when they say they can't pay certain bills, we are not scrutinizing what their bills are, and therein lies a big challenge.
Now Michael Bloomberg's response was it's important to tax the poor so they don't buy things that would kill them.
I disagree.
I think if you want to mine Bitcoin in your own home, that's your responsibility.
You're free to do so, but when that bill comes, don't complain you don't get paid enough to pay that bill.
Try selling the Bitcoin.
I know I'm kidding about the Bitcoin thing, but some people play video games all day and they rack up big electric bills, and then they're like, I can't pay my bills on this salary, and it's like, well, then stop using that much electricity.
It could be very well so that she's talking about basic heat and her stove or something and then I can respect she doesn't make enough.
So there is a serious challenge in that we have jobs in this country where you can't live at a certain standard like not even like even like below poverty levels where you're like I don't cook food in my kitchen because I can't turn the stove on.
I think at a certain level we need to make sure that as technology improves, we do gradually increase access to these technologies.
But I think it's also fair to argue that decreasing the cost of producing these things is the path towards getting the lower class access to these things and capitalism has done that.
Whatever.
I'll leave it there.
This is another stupid segment.
This is a stupid day.
The news is stupid.
All everyone's talking about is Iran.
I'm so bored with the whole thing.
So, hopefully, the news changes.
I don't know.
Whatever.
I'll see you tomorrow at 10 a.m.
I might do another livestream tonight at youtube.com slash timcast IRL.
