Jussie Smollett FINALLY About To Face Justice, Corrupt Prosecutor Lawyers Up As Ship Sinks
Jussie Smollett FINALLY About To Face Justice, Corrupt Prosecutor Lawyers Up As Ship Sinks. We all know the story of Jussie Smollett's unfortunate stroll into MAGA country. For a while it seemed like the story was dying down and he might actually get away with staging a massive hoax on the country.But now a judge has ordered Google to hand over a full year of data on Jussie Smollett and the prosecutor in Chicago, Kim Foxx, who let him off the hook has just hired a high priced politically connected lawyer to defend her.They are circling the wagons and it seems they are all about to go down with the ship.The incident was a nationwide smear on Trump and his supporters but it quickly unraveled as it was beyond poorly concocted. Many conservatives were quick to question the absurdity of the story but leftist in media and far left activists pounced on the narrative for political gain.Well it backfired and is about to worse for Smollett and those involved.
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Somehow, Jussie Smollett is back in the news with three different stories all affecting him and what's going on around him.
I gotta say, it's pretty surprising.
But now we're learning a few things.
The prosecutor in the case who dropped the charges against Smollett has just lawyered up.
They are coming after Kim Foxx, it would seem.
And a judge ordered Google to turn over a full year of data on Jussie Smollett.
That is sweeping and insane.
They're gonna get his search history.
There's also news that Jussie Smollett's not coming back to the last season of Empire.
Good riddance, I suppose.
But let's stop for a second.
I gotta read you- I gotta read through these stories and talk about what's going on, but for those that are unfamiliar, because it's been a year, Jussie Smollett is the dude who claimed that he was out for a Subway sandwich at like 2 a.m.
And two MAGA guys, guys in MAGA hats or something, maybe not MAGA hats, I don't know, yelled it's MAGA country, put a rope around his neck like a thin, like, clothesline, poured bleach from a hot sauce thing on him, and then, you know, punched him or something and ran off, and then he yelled, and then he, you know, went back and called the police, and it turns out it was all fake news.
It was most likely a hoax.
Now I say most likely because there's still an ongoing, you know, legal, um, Investigation into what he did, but yeah, he was charged and then ultimately charges were dropped by this woman Kim Foxx There is now a special investigation and the prosecutor who dropped the charges has lawyered up This is big.
So let's talk about this news and I want to talk about there was actually a story just last month I think last month in Washington Post about the Like, there's a lot of hate crime hoaxes, man, and we gotta talk about it.
But let's get started with the news about Jussie, because I'm sure you're so interested to know why a- why the state's attorney had to hire a high-powered lawyer from Washington, D.C.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash Dunnit if you'd like to support my work, but more importantly, I have a new show coming.
It's going to be general interest over at YouTube.com slash TimCastIRL.
Make sure you subscribe.
Or whatever.
I'm gonna start cranking out a ton of segments on a variety of stories from science, general news, things that don't really affect your life but are interesting nonetheless.
I think you know what I reserve for this channel is like high-level politics and culture.
My second channel is typically like bigger stories that have an impact on culture.
And then this channel is gonna be like, you know, I don't know, just these weird local stories that are funny and silly and we'll talk about it.
Let's get back to the news!
Chicago Tribune reporting, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Fox hires outside legal help in Jussie Smollett probe, won't say how much it's costing taxpayers.
That's right, when your state prosecutor lets a criminal off the hook and then gets investigated for it, they're gonna take your money to pay their legal defense.
Isn't that great?
Apparently.
But I think she may have said, to be fair, that it's private, but we'll see what happens.
Tribune says, With elections season in high gear, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx and her office have retained some high-powered legal assistance in the ongoing probe of Foxx's controversial handling of the Jussie Smollett case.
Ruben Castillo.
Or is it Castillo?
I don't know.
I don't know, whatever.
The former chief judge in the Northern District of Illinois and now a partner at the politically
connected law firm Ackerman has been helping the state's attorney's office for the past
three months to vet voluminous material requested by the state prosecutor, Dan Webb.
In addition, Fox has brought in well-known Washington, D.C.
attorney Michael Bromwich to represent her personally in the Smollett matter, which has become a flashpoint in the Democratic primary.
Castillo said in a telephone interview Wednesday that his team was retained by the state's attorney's office in October to handle requests from Webb, who was appointed as special prosecutor last year by Cook County Judge Michael Tooman.
Like any other entity, the state's attorney's office needed representation because of the breadth and scope of Judge Tuman's order that really authorized Webb to look at anything and everything.
And just wait, I'm not done.
They're getting all his Google data.
Everything Jussie Smollett googled.
So if he googled, you know, twine, rope, bleach, whatever, it's all Coming out this is huge and scary.
I got to be honest.
I'm gonna throw a little defense towards this Smollett guy You might get mad, but I got to push back on this Google stuff, man This is creepy, but let's get back to the why is why is why is Fox hiring high-powered politically connected attorneys?
They say Castillo, who worked for Webb as a young prosecutor in the 80s when Webb was the U.S.
attorney, confirmed to the Tribune that his firm has been billing the county a deeply discounted hourly rate of $250 to $375 for its work on the Smollett case, which he said is less than half what his firm typically charges.
And there it is!
Bravo!
Bravo!
When your prosecutor Basically, in my opinion, breaks the law, acts corruptly to get a friend off the hook through political connections, rest assured they're going to spend your money from the taxpayer pool to cover their legal expenses.
Isn't that great?
Don't we live in an awesome country?
I love these people.
This is why I don't live in Chicago anymore, mind you.
Asked why the firm took the case, Castillo said, Oh please.
I can tell you that no one is making big money here.
No, but it's certainly costing the taxpayer a ton of money.
He would not venture a guess at how many hours have been put in so far, but said he hoped his role would wrap up as soon as possible.
The payments would have to be approved by the Cook County Board of Commissioners.
Okay, so, you know.
A spokesman for Fox also would not disclose how much Costillo's firm was being paid, but said it was not unusual for the office to retain outside legal counsel, particularly in complex civil cases.
Bromwich of Steptoe & Johnson is a former Inspector General for the U.S.
Department of Justice, best known for presenting Christine Blasey Ford during the Brett Kavanaugh nomination hearings for the U.S.
Supreme Court last fall.
And there we go!
It all comes full circle, doesn't it?
You know, there's a conspiracy theory that Justice Millett pulled this off to try and bolster Kamala Harris's, you know, and Cory Booker and a bunch of people pushing this anti-lynching bill.
I don't care for conspiracies.
I'm mentioning it because of the Democratic connection with Brett Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford.
But, you know, I think it's important to say those things are bad ideas and I would argue it is not to push the idea but to attract it for those that actually, you know, think that.
Calm down.
Let the investigation do its course, support the investigation, and we'll find out what we can find out.
But speculating on this kind of stuff is a bad waste of time.
And even by me just mentioning this and asking you to please calm down, they will try and smear me over it.
Because that's what they did last time.
Tim's pushing conspiracy theories.
No, I'm doing the opposite, you lunatics.
Anyway, let's read.
A spokeswoman for Fox's campaign said Wednesday that Fox had personally retained Bromwich because that's what smart lawyers do when they're involved in complex litigation.
I mean, to be fair, yeah.
You know, if you got the money, hire the big guns.
But officials would not say how much Bromwich was being paid.
Neither the taxpayers nor her campaign are paying for Mrs. Fox's personal legal representation.
Bromwich was unavailable for comment on Wednesday.
Fox's team declined to make her available for an interview.
The hiring of Castillo and Bromwich was first reported Tuesday by Crain's Chicago Business.
Fox is facing three Democratic opponents in the March primary.
I'm not going to read through who these are.
And then there's two Republicans running for the position.
Get rid of Fox!
Okay?
I don't live in Chicago anymore, and this is partly why it is a crooked and corrupt place.
Okay?
You can vote these people out.
Please do so.
They say, although Fox has made criminal justice reform and the use of restorative justice practices her focus as a way of offering relief to African-Americans and Latinos who have been historically over-represented in the courts, jails, and prisons, her handling of the Smollett case is what has drawn national attention and continues to fuel criticism and calls for her to be replaced.
Yes, it's not about any of that.
It's about her being corrupt.
This is her friend.
She was getting her friend off the hook.
The actor allegedly staged a hate crime and was accused of hiring two men to pretend to assault him while using racist and homophobic slurs and shouting that he was in MAGA country.
I love the MAGA country meme now because it's like everything's MAGA country.
Nobody said that before this hoax.
There's no roving band of Trump supporters hooting and hollering and spinning around lassos screeching that we're in MAGA country.
In fact, I'll tell you this.
Most Trump supporters and conservatives don't go out for political events.
They go to Trump rallies.
But they wait in line, and it's very orderly and rather boring.
They don't go around marching through the streets with MAGA hats on, screaming about MAGA country.
It just doesn't happen.
Aside from, like, the Proud Boys holding their marches and rallies, I suppose.
And that's actually a new thing.
One of the first times I covered an actual, like, Proud Boy event, I was surprised, because I had never seen conservatives march like this before.
So the idea that at 2am, in the freezing cold dead of night of Chicago, there's MAGA hat-wearing dudes marching around, you just have to I happen to have a noose and a Tabasco bottle full of bleach shouting about MAGA country.
I'm sorry, man.
If you think that's true, I've got a bridge to tell you.
But more importantly, if it is true, I'm going to go buy myself a lottery ticket.
I'm going to buy myself like 10.
Nobody believes it.
And so when it came time to prosecute Smollett because the cops were like, we think he did this.
She gets him off the hook.
Now she's being investigated.
Everybody's mad.
Look at this.
Here's a statement.
Who's this Conway guy?
Her handling of the case drew outrage from Rahm Emanuel and police superintendent Eddie Johnson, and is currently under investigation.
The move also rallied Fox's detractors, who say it is evidence that she's soft on crime.
They say on Wednesday, Conway said taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for Fox's office's legal defense.
I agree.
Kim Foxx gave a politically connected celebrity a sweetheart deal.
Hiring a high-powered criminal defense attorney will never erase that stain.
Now she's forcing the county to cover the costs of defending her two-tiered system of justice without even disclosing how much Chicagoans will end up paying.
It's not right to stick taxpayers to the bill for this high-priced legal team to come up with the excuses for the inexcusable as she runs for re-election.
And let me stress, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump, this is a long story, okay?
I'm gonna jump now to Justice Millett having his data seized, basically.
But let me tell you, The ivory tower knows no color.
The privilege argument is an excuse from high-powered, politically-connected individuals to force poor people to fight against each other.
Kim Foxx and Smollett are powerful, wealthy, politically-connected individuals, and he was gonna get away with it.
She was gonna get him off the hook, okay?
Meanwhile, down below at the base of the ivory tower, the peasants are revolting, and up top, the highest echelon of this tower, they know no race.
It's all a scam.
They're gonna claim, oh, poor Jussie Smollett is being oppressed.
I'm sure with his millions of dollars, he's being oppressed.
With his political connections to Kamala Harris and the Obamas, and him getting his charges dropped, and now he's free to go, basically.
I know people on the south side of Chicago of all different races who are treated like dirt, who are living in squalor, and you want to talk to me about privilege.
This is why I can't stand these left-wing identitarian types.
Now we got some, this is actually pretty scary, I'm gonna be honest with you.
A Cook County judge has ordered Google to turn over Justice Smollett's emails, photos, location data, and private messages for an entire year.
As part of the special prosecutor's investigation into the purported attack on the actor.
That's scary.
That's scary, man.
Look, I'm not a fan of what Smollett did, well, accused of doing, but we all think he did it.
I'm not a fan of this, but I'm also not a fan of, man, you know Google has data on things you don't realize they have data on, right?
You know Facebook knows when you go to the bathroom?
Facebook knows where you're going to eat before you do.
I'm not exaggerating, man.
We've talked about this.
People don't realize, when it comes to data tracking your existence, there are factors you don't realize are connected.
So there used to be these online quizzes and they would ask, like, what's your age, what's
your race, what's your gender, things like this.
And then they would ask you a series of questions and they found that some of these questions
are meaningless.
There would be one where it's like, which do you prefer?
And it would be a picture of, like, you know, a giraffe and a picture of a rhinoceros.
And for some reason, you know, men would tend to pick one, women would tend to pick another.
People over 40 would tend to pick one.
And they would ask you these innocuous questions.
And at the end, they would accurately predict your, what demographic you fit in based on
very subtle and thick, like, there would be one where it's like, pick a shape.
And it would be like a square, circle, and like a diamond.
Sure enough, that question was enough to provide data to, like, for them to guess how old you were, what your race was, what part of the country you live in, whether you live in a city or the country.
You might not realize, but you are heavily influenced by so many things.
This to me is really scary because, you know, to a certain degree, I'd like to, you know, first, I'd like to see Justice Smollett brought to justice, but the amount of information that Google has now being, you know, ordered to be given over by the legal system, I mean, they're gonna know everything.
But there was an article talking about how Facebook can predict when you go to the bathroom.
They can predict where you're going to eat based on where you were at what time of the day, where you've gone before.
So like, every time you travel and you got the messenger app, it knows where you are.
Your phone's tracking everything.
And so they just create a map and people don't realize is maybe...
Maybe you sent the word, you know, um, banana to a friend.
Well, Facebook's AI knows that for some reason, just for some reason, people who say banana have a 70% chance of going to the bathroom in an hour.
I'm not saying that's true, I'm just saying it's things like that, you'd be like, how does that even make sense?
How's that related?
For some reason it is.
There's weird stuff we can't predict.
So this is scary stuff, I gotta say that.
At the same time, I'll tell you this.
Look, you're responsible for your data, okay?
I don't like the idea of Google knowing everything, but you can also use browsers like Brave.
You can use DuckDuckGo, which I use, you know, half the time.
You know, for like personal stuff, I'll use more... I'll more so use DuckDuckGo.
They don't... supposedly aren't tracking a lot of your data.
But you can use VPNs and you can protect yourself.
But let's read and see because this is going to be devastating, man.
The court's going to know every moment.
Listen, Google data includes, if he has an Android device or if he has Google Maps, they know where he walks to.
They're going to be able to see if he came to the scene of, like, so the police alleged they saw him on camera coming there and, like, scoping out the area where he was going to stage this event.
Google's going to have the data if he brought his phone with him.
I mean, he called an Uber, right?
That's what they claim.
Yeah, that data is going to prove everything.
I say this.
Two sweeping search warrants obtained by the Chicago Tribune provide the first public glimpse of the direction of the probe by Special Prosecutor Dan Webb more than four months into the investigation.
The warrants, filed last month in circuit court, sought a trove of documentation from Smollett and his manager's Google accounts.
Not just emails, but also drafted and deleted messages, any files in their Google Drive cloud storages, any Google Voice texts, calls and contacts, search and web browsing history and location data they got Everything.
They are going to have a dossier on Smollett and every action he's taken, everything he said, every email he sent, he could have Google-searched where to buy rope.
Boom!
They got him.
That's it, man.
Welcome to the future of the Panopticon, okay?
It's not going to be someone filming you do it.
It's going to be you filming and recording your own actions indefinitely, and they're going to have it.
That's a scary, scary future, man.
Look, I don't like this Smollett guy, but I'm warning all of you right now.
If they use this power, and they are, and it's hard to argue against, it really is, because Smollett, you know, he did something wrong, but I'm terrified of that precedent, seriously.
You know, I might want to see Smollett brought to justice for staging this hoax and pushing this insanity, but I'm more terrified of what this means for the future.
I guess the only thing I can really say is you're responsible for yourself.
Protect your data, seriously.
Investigators sought a full year's data from November 2018 to November 2019, even though the key events of the controversy took place between late January and late March.
Authorities could be looking for any incriminating remarks from Smollett or his manager, especially in the months after state's attorney Kim Foxx's office abruptly dismissed disorderly conduct charges against the then-Empire actor just weeks after his indictment.
Smollett, who is African American and openly gay, has declared the dismissal a vindication of his claims that he was the victim, excuse me, of a racist and homophobic attack.
The mysterious reversal by Fox's office coming after Fox herself stepped aside from overseeing the prosecution.
Full stop.
Lie.
Not true.
She did not step aside.
Okay?
Those are weasel words.
I'm sorry, Tribune.
You're usually good at this.
But she was called out because if it was a true recusal, she would have surrendered everything immediately.
Instead, what she did was she personally was like, oh, just don't talk to me about it.
It had her staff Keep moving forward.
That is not a recusal.
That is not stepping aside.
Sorry.
Not true.
An outside office should have come in.
Now there is a special prosecutor.
They say it sparked a public outcry that ultimately led to Judge Michael Tooman to appoint Webb as special prosecutor in late August.
Tooman signed off on the search warrants on December 6th, the records show.
In doing so, the judge ordered Google and its representatives, agents, and employees not to disclose his order to turn over the records, saying to do so may jeopardize an ongoing criminal investigation.
It was unclear from the file if Google has handed over the data on Smollett and his manager.
A Google spokesman said he could not comment on specific requests for records from law enforcement.
Tumen gave Webb a broad mandate to investigate all aspects of the case, not only its initial handling by Fox's office, but also whether to criminally charge Smollett again.
The search warrants make clear that Chicago police are assisting in Webb's investigation.
Anthony Guglielmi, a Chicago police spokesman, confirmed the department is working with a special prosecutor conducting follow-ups on its initial investigation, but Guglielmi declined further comment, referring inquiries to Webb's team.
Webb declined to comment on the search warrants or his broader investigation.
Smollett's attorney did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
So, we get it.
They now go into rehashing and explaining the context around just Smollett.
I'm going to tell you this right now.
With that Google data, Smollett's going down.
That's it.
I'm sorry, man.
You don't understand.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that this data is going to spell out every moment of his life.
You're going to be able to create like a psych profile on this guy.
When you wake up in the morning, you go to the shower, you know, you're looking at all that weird, creepy stuff.
I know what you guys are doing.
Yeah, a lot of people search for stuff and they don't realize, even in incognito mode, you know, to certain degrees, your ISP, this data's here, man.
They know everything about you.
They're going to know every sick predilection of this here Jussie Smollett.
They're going to know what he was thinking, why he was thinking it.
They're going to see his communications.
They're going to see what he was Google searching.
You know, hate crime laws, hoaxes, criminal charges, potential, you know, if he gets convicted, they're going to see it all.
They're going to see him Google searching hardware stores.
And they're going to see, you know, the two brothers, whatever their names are, Abimabola, I can't remember the guy's name, and they're going to see it all.
They're going to be able to create a pattern, showing from when he got the idea, all the way to when it was executed.
Now there is still a couple more little bits I want to highlight.
First of all, this one's not so important, but Justice Monolith will not return to Empire Finale, Fox exec says.
I can't believe they were considering it, are you nuts?
Apparently, they were considering bringing back Justice Monolith for the Empire Finale.
Well, he ruined the show.
Apparently people liked the show.
And that's his fault.
They should be mad at him for it.
And apparently a lot of them are.
I can't believe they're actually going to try and bring it back.
But now here's what I want to do.
I want to wrap up with this final thought.
This is a story from the Washington Post about hoaxes from December 5th.
And they mentioned two individuals with wildly different numbers.
And this is how the game is played.
This is how the left defends the fake news.
Let me show you.
They say this.
Riley estimates that as much as 15% of the hate crimes reported to the FBI are falsified.
Another researcher who has closely examined the subject, Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino, puts the hoax rate much lower, at less than half of 1%.
What accounts for the difference?
Levin and Riley diverge on what should be classified as a hoax.
Levin, a criminologist, counts hate crimes that are reported to authorities, such as the police or college campus officials, and later are shown to be deliberately falsified, meaning the ones we've proven.
Riley casts a wider net, including in his database various non-criminal incidents that initially generated speculation about hateful motives.
He counted cases where there was no hoaxer, such as the toppling of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery outside Philadelphia because of age and recent landscaping, or the discovery of a noose on a DC construction site that police determined was merely a rope used to move equipment.
He said his 15% figure is an estimate based on extrapolating from the dozens of hoaxes he has identified per year and inferring that many less publicized hate crimes must also be hoaxes that were never revealed.
So I think it's fair to point out, speculation, a bit tough.
But I also think it's fair to point out that while the criminologist has half of one percent, he's taking a very studious, stringent, and academic approach to the story that I don't believe is fair.
I think it's fair to say that if the media starts claiming people are toppling Jewish tombstones and they ignore all the other tombstones that fall due to age and erosion and rain, yeah, the media is putting out fake news and scaring people into believing these things are real.
It's really important to track stories like Outside of the, you know, what is proven to be false.
More importantly, we need to look at what's not, like, look, what the FBI can prove to be false is going to be rare, okay?
We need to look at things that we can discern to be likely untrue and give an estimate because otherwise what we're really saying is, if it's only things being reported to the police, are we going to ignore every single instance in the media where someone says I didn't want to report it?
Or every viral story where no one reported it?
No, that's stupid.
Of course they'll include those stories.
And then what about the ones where we pretty much figure out it's false, but Jussie Smollett's case was never proven false, so it probably doesn't fall in that database, but everybody knows...
believes that he faked it.
So right now there's no proof he faked it because the criminal justice system doesn't prove if someone faked it.
They convict if someone is guilty or not.
It's not the job of law enforcement to prove innocence.
And it is rare that they're going to actually prove whether or not someone made up a story.
They can accuse them of it, but how do you prove it?
Thus, the official academic number, of course it'll be low.
Anyway, I'll wrap it up there.
I can't believe I'm talking about Justice Smollett.
It's been a year, but you know what I gotta admit?
I'm looking forward to this guy getting what's coming to him.
It's my second channel, and I will see you all there.
Tucker Carlson has once again saved the world.
Yes, I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but to a certain extent, you could say Tucker Carlson literally saved the world.
Now, I tweeted about this, and some people were like, you mean Trump saved the world.
Okay, okay, okay, come on.
I'm being silly.
Donald Trump is the president, commander-in-chief, and there is tension escalating in the Middle East.
Donald Trump watches Fox News on more than one occasion, watching Tucker Carlson, who pushes for de-escalation, and Trump listens.
I get it.
It's not just Tucker Carlson, but he is one of the more prominent voices, and the New
York Times credited him in the past for doing a segment saying, if you go to war, Donald
Trump, you will lose re-election.
And Trump listened.
I get it.
Trump listens to other people.
Trump ultimately makes the decision.
But the reason why I'm doing a segment in this way is that I think the left is insanely
unfair to Tucker Carlson.
They accuse him of all these really insane things, when in reality he's fairly moderate, he's anti-war, kind of populist, kind of.
I mean, he himself is pretty elite, but he does champion very populist ideas.
And that's why a lot of people listen to him.
It's funny for me to see so many of the left on Twitter being like, I can't believe Tucker would say this.
What do you mean you can't believe Tucker would say this?
Tucker says this all the time.
Did you watch the debate between Tucker Carlson and Cenk Uygur?
It was excellent.
He calls Cenk a very smart man, respects him, and appreciates him willing to have this conversation with him.
Tucker's a pretty good guy.
I mean, he's got some bad opinions.
So does everybody.
But they smear him as like, A white nationalist and super insane because he criticizes things that are happening?
Look, if you want to criticize a problem, you're allowed to do it.
Proposing a solution is different.
You could have someone on the left and the right saying, there are too many poor people, we can't let them in.
Surprise, surprise, Bernie Sanders said that.
It doesn't make either of these individuals left or right wing.
What makes you left or right wing more so is how you assess the problem and your solutions to it.
This makes Tucker Carlson Conservative.
And it makes Cenk Uygur and Bernie Sanders progressive.
But they can talk about the same problems.
So, surprise, Tucker Carlson, regular American, opposes war like most everybody else.
Let's read some of the story because they do give credit to, you know, other people like Hannity and stuff like that because it's not just Tucker who is opposing war, it's even Sean Hannity.
But I want to show you one thing really quickly before we read this.
This is a really great, uh, uh, Tucker Carlson did a really great segment.
It's very smart.
Just the other day...
Tucker Carlson lets 2007 Trump make the case for why it's time to leave Iraq.
I gotta tell you, man, while Trump is conservative, Trump supporters are mostly conservatives, mostly.
Believe it or not, there are actually some former liberals and progressives who switched for Trump for a variety of reasons.
Tucker Carlson is conservative, and while I personally don't agree with all of their opinions because I'm more of a moderate with a slight left, you know, bent, I will say I am absolutely glad That Trump listens to Tucker Carlson because he did this segment where he shows Trump from 12 years ago, 13 years ago now, and Trump is explaining it's time to get out of Iraq.
Well, guess what?
You watch that show, Trump's going to see himself and be like, maybe it's time to leave Iraq.
I'll tell you this, man.
I am less concerned right now about what kind of taxes people want to impose, how they feel about bathrooms.
I am much more concerned about why we have soldiers stationed in the Middle East.
So you know what I'm willing to do?
I'm willing to say to Tucker Carlson, yes, thank you sir, please encourage the president to pull out of the Middle East.
I don't care if it's Tulsa, I don't care if it's Trump, if they get it, done.
So I think this is why you see Tucker Carlson having Tulsi Gabbard on the show all the time.
Because they're talking about the same problems.
And guess what?
Moderates, conservatives, liberals have a similar solution to the problems in the Middle East and it's leave!
Except, of course, for the establishment Democrats who are still clinging to power and desperately want to be over there in escalating tensions.
It's really funny to me.
How the media, the only time they sing Trump's praises is when he jumps on the Neocon Warhawk game.
And then when he starts pulling back, all of a sudden now they're like, oh, harumph, I say!
Oh, harumph!
Trump's gonna pull our soldiers out of Syria!
We can't allow this!
What's wrong with the man?
Yeah, okay.
Then you get Vox the other day saying Trump had a chance to truly end the conflict, but he made it worse.
Oh, please!
Trump, you know what, man?
They want Trump to go to war.
They want it.
Well, I'll tell you what.
There's the anti-war left.
There's the populist left.
There's the populist right.
None of us actually want this.
Nobody wants war.
Nobody wants to waste money over there.
And one of the problems I have with the Democrats, and this goes for Republicans too, but the Democrats are the ones campaigning right now in the primary, and this is why I like Tulsi.
Please, stop talking about taxing the rich or a wealth tax.
Please talk about the amount of money we waste over there in the Middle East.
Tucker Carlson's doing it.
Why can't the Democrats on the debate stage?
They're so like, the rich people are bad and they're hurting America.
I don't care about Jeff Bezos.
I don't care.
Let him run his business.
I don't care about his tax incentives.
A lot of people are employed.
I want to see wages go up.
And I want my tax dollars to stop going to this.
Why are you complaining about Bezos' taxes when a good portion, I think it's like 25%, will end up going to the war machine anyway?
How about we get all that money back first?
Why is Tucker Carlson saying this on TV and the Democrats can't stand on the debate stage save Tulsi Gabbard?
You see what gets me really riled up?
Because I'll tell you this, man.
During Occupy Wall Street, you get Michael Moore coming down, you get all these occupiers holding up signs saying, tax the rich.
And I'm like, That's like the third priority, man.
That's like the third priority.
The first thing we need to do is stop this.
Dude, we can have a strong military.
Totally okay with that.
Totally okay with a $220 million drone.
Just not convinced it should be flying around over some other countries that we have nothing to do with.
Notably, Yemen.
We're not even at war with Yemen.
Why are we staging commando raids and supplying this stuff?
I don't think that's what America should be doing.
I understand the vacuum argument.
A lot of people say, Tim, you don't understand.
If we get out, you know, Russia comes in.
So what?
So what?
If you think that's a legitimate reason, then you should be advocating for an intervention in South America and Africa, where China is filling the vacuum.
But you're not.
So I don't care about any arguments about vacuums in the Middle East, as long as we're not doing anything about any other countries in the entire continent of Africa.
It's a fake argument.
Okay?
I can understand the valid points of it, for sure, but it doesn't make sense.
Okay?
Because the world is complicated.
It's complicated, right?
OK, I should probably read a little bit of this.
Because BuzzFeed writes, Trump, a source said, has been watching the network's analysis with interest.
I'm glad he is.
I'm glad Tucker brings on Tulsi.
Because guess what?
When she goes on the air and she says, you know, Trump was bad for doing this and he shouldn't do it, and Tucker agrees, Trump goes, okay, maybe I should listen to that.
He takes Tucker seriously.
Apparently Tucker had like ridiculous ratings when he did a segment saying no war.
Americans don't want this.
Left, right, center, top, down, whatever.
Americans don't want this.
The only people who do are the old school neocons and the weird neolib Hillary Clinton types who are clinging to power.
I'm hoping Bernie Sanders, should he get the nomination, is going to be very, very vocal about the war machine.
But so far, Tulsi Gabbard seems to be the only one.
I think Andrew Yang is mentioned a little bit.
But I want the focus to be this.
I want them to say, like, well, over the past, you know, 20 years, we've spent several trillion dollars.
Let's take that and propose how we can spend it on American infrastructure and expanding our jobs, instead of proposing new taxes that nobody wants.
You know what?
You get the point.
I don't want to raise it.
I want to make another point here.
It's really annoying to me when I see all of these leftist talking points that apply to literally no one.
They're like, Conservatives, they vote for billionaires because they think one day they'll be rich.
No they don't!
Where did you make that up?
It's such a weird fake talking point.
People vote for Donald Trump because he's a successful businessman.
Have you ever talked to a Trump supporter or a conservative?
I have, and they say, They don't expect to be billionaires.
They don't want high taxes on their middle-class businesses.
They don't want expanded regulation.
Not because they expect to be rich at any point.
Because they like their job.
Because they're worried about high taxes on the bosses and the companies trickling down in a negative way, you know, stunting wages and causing layoffs.
Guess what?
The minimum wage hikes in many areas are resulting in this.
It's not perfect.
Sometimes it can work.
But it is happening.
That's what they're scared of.
I've not met a single person who's like, well, once I'm a billionaire, I don't want taxes.
I've never heard that.
It's almost like the left has these arguments for themselves that don't apply to any conservative.
It's like that Jameela Jamil woman or whatever her name is.
She was like, all of these pro-lifers care about the baby in the womb, but not after it's born.
It's like, what are you talking about?
There's tons of conservative charities taking care of orphans and babies.
Like, where do these fake talking points come from?
They smear Tucker Carlson, and Tucker Carlson's guilty of having, I don't know, bad opinions?
Same as Rachel Maddow?
I'm not saying I personally feel that way, I'm saying the worst argument they come up with against Tucker Carlson is, I don't like how he feels about immigration.
Okay, well Bernie Sanders criticized immigration too.
What's the issue?
I don't quite understand, other than They make things up.
They just make things up.
And I'll tell you this, this is the problem I have with Democrats.
And first of all, simply by criticizing what the left is, it's like, I call it the grifter class, right?
And of course, I'm going to say it, yes, there's right-wing grifters, there's a lot of them.
But when you look at the activists on the left, they push these talking points that apply to no one.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
When has anybody ever said that?
When has a single free speech advocate been like, I should be allowed to say things with impunity and no one can do anything to it?
No, we know consequences exist.
We just draw the line at when someone comes to the crowbar and bashes you over the skull, or the government comes and arrests you, or a massive private corporation worth billions of dollars with foreign investors is shutting down political speech.
There's a limit.
You want to say something?
Other people can react, but getting banned and silenced is a line.
They make up these fake arguments and they talk amongst themselves and I'm sitting here confused as to what the left is supposed to be.
So it's also frustrating too because the right has their talking point where it's like, Democrats and the left ideas are all evil and Tim Pool should abandon all of his thoughts on economics and just get Red Pill.
That's insane and annoying too, man.
Listen.
Tucker Carlson stands up.
War bad, he says.
I say, thank you, Tucker.
You're correct.
Tucker gets up and says, diversity is not a strength.
I say, Tucker, actually, you're wrong.
Tucker exemplifies why diversity is good by bringing on a collective of various voices to his show to debate ideas.
That's what diversity was supposed to be.
That's real diversity.
And I get it.
We call that diversity of thought.
But the general idea was that people from other parts of the world would hold different perspectives, and different languages allow a different understanding of the world.
It's kind of a cool phenomenon.
And so we have these people talk about ideas so we can get new perspectives.
The left took that idea and turned it into the color of your skin because they're racists, okay?
But diversity is a good thing.
Tucker Carlson says multiculturalism is bad for a variety of reasons, but he's taking this view where you take American culture side by side.
What multiculturalism can be is that under an umbrella of the American Constitution, we have a variety of different cultures that are more so subcultures, and that's normal.
So I understand the arguments, The point is, you know, when I look at the left, I see these people like Jameela Jamil.
They just, it's a word vomit.
It doesn't mean anything, you know.
And there are some conservatives too I've criticized.
I've criticized Candace Owens over her flag-burning stance.
You know, Charlie Kirk I've also criticized.
And look, I'm more than willing to accept that Charlie, Candace, and Jameela, and other people, they really do believe what they're saying.
But, you know, sometimes they need to be heavily criticized for a lot of their positions.
Now, I can criticize Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens for the, you know, I think Charlie does this way more than Candace does.
I don't think Charlie's a bad guy.
I don't think Jameela Jamil is a bad person.
But for the most part, I'll try and clarify too, I think there's been a few things I've criticized Candace for, you can find it on my Twitter, and Charlie for.
And I probably criticized Jamila Jamil less.
It's been like one or two things.
But I see this so frequently on the left.
Most of these leftists don't vote.
And don't take my word for it, right?
This is coming from the Hidden Tribes report.
I've shown it a million and one times.
And the conservative base is 25% of the country and the progressive base is 8%.
And all the liberals don't pay attention, don't vote, and don't care.
They show up and they say, Democrat good!
And I'm like, listen man.
When they come out with these fake talking points accusing conservatives of things conservatives have never said, okay, you can't vote based on that.
You can't vote on this idea that conservatives don't care about babies.
Of course they do.
Churches provide a ton of services to the community.
And conservatives are literally about American community.
Of course they care.
There's just, like, this fake narrative that persists, and I think it's because, like Ricky Gervais pointed out, people who don't know how the real world works, and they go up on stage and they spit word vomit at people, and it just becomes a narrative.
It's hollow and fake.
And the problem I have with Bernie is that he started embracing this word vomit.
When he went up on stage in 2016, if you're white, you don't know what it's like to be poor.
Oh, shut up, dude!
Why would you even say that?
That's ridiculous.
Nobody thinks that.
I'm just so sick of, like, All of these high-profile leftist celebrities that dominate, that are thought leaders on the left, they spit nonsensical word vomit that makes no sense.
It's just trash.
And the actual left is a withered husk of what remained to be some kind of social liberalism.
It doesn't exist anymore.
We've got the identitarian left shocked to find that white nationalists are joining their protests.
Oh, heavens, they say!
Why are the white nationalists agreeing with us?
Because you believe basically the same things, dude!
The only difference is whether or not you like or don't like white people.
And they're shocked by it!
So they try and change the definition of words to protect themselves from the fact that they're racial identitarians.
And that's what we have on the left.
Social liberalism, things like, we should consider whether or not our system has been oppressive to certain groups, or holds them back, or breeds ghettos.
Consider.
Maybe think of some policies, maybe think of some solutions, but take an even hand, and don't push the pendulum to swing the other direction.
Today what we have are progressives who are like, it's our turn now, and they whack the pendulum with a mallet to make sure it swings as far as possible, while they spit on other people.
Like Bernie Sanders going up on stage, white people don't know what it's like to be poor.
Most poor people in the country are white.
This is the insane rhetoric that we're getting now bred by this fake class of leftists.
It's just turning into an anti-left rant.
It was supposed to be about Tucker Carlson saving the world.
I don't know.
You get the point.
Here I am, as an old-school liberal, you know, somebody who, like, I thought Obama was speaking some good stuff, talking about ending war, talking about, you know, social programs and things like that.
And then the left just went, like, just fired off like a rocket.
And now they're shocked to find Tucker Carlson actually has, like, Let me end with one thing, because I don't want to make this super long.
Tucker Carlson said in a debate with Cenk Uygur at Politicon, this was just over a year ago, Cenk was saying, like, here's the thing about illegal immigration, you know, crime isn't going up.
We have more illegal immigrants, but crime is going down.
And so if you say it's an issue of crime and fear, I think, you know, a lot of people are going to consider that it's actually about race.
And Tucker said, I can understand that.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for debating.
It's nice to have a conversation with a smart person about this.
And then Tucker said, the issue is multiculturalism, is that we have to have shared values.
Otherwise, the country will break apart.
And that's what we've learned from history.
And Tucker is correct.
We do need to make sure there is an overarching culture to what America is.
And the problem is, as I've pointed out, too, from a more moderate position, is it's not so much about curbing ending immigration.
It's about, and this might align with Tucker as well, We need to make sure that the amount of immigrants coming in doesn't, you know, essentially overflow and start creating pocket cultures, because then you see ghettos, you see stateless areas, and you see conflict.
And we've got to avoid that.
And you avoid it by making sure that people can assimilate properly, otherwise you look at what's going on in Sweden.
I'm not exaggerating, man.
They try to cover up, they try to pretend like nothing's happening, but Sweden's getting bad.
More bombings in Sweden than, more bombings there than in any other country that's not at war.
Grenades going off, IEDs.
There's a lot of conflict escalating because of the failure to assimilate people 20 or so years ago.
So Tucker Carlson has a point about cultures clashing.
I think we can easily bring in, you know, Chinatown and other, you know, kind of areas.
You know, Chicago's got a bunch of areas.
It's got a Polish neighborhood.
It's got Greek.
It's got Ukrainian.
It's just so long as everyone adheres to an overarching culture.
So that's a good point.
And I think what ends up happening is you see a lot of people on the left, like when Cenk was arguing with Tucker, they have this fake view.
I was talking to a friend and she said, you know, what's one reason why someone should vote for Trump?
And I said, there's a bunch.
I mean, I assume if you're concerned about terror, you'd be looking for a more, you know, heavy handed individual like someone like Trump was very aggressive.
And it's true.
A lot of people do feel like Trump has done a good job with national security.
And my friend said, no, I think it's just because they don't like brown people.
And I was like, you really think?
That's just not true.
That's just really not true, okay?
That's not the case.
And she was like, no, I think so.
I think that's an excuse.
And I'm like, no, man.
It has nothing to do with the color of someone's skin.
Because religion isn't race.
And I assure you, these people who are concerned about the propensity of certain religions to commit certain acts wouldn't care about whether they're from, you know, Indonesia or from Michigan.
You know, it's an issue of security and ideology.
And I was like, and it's not just that, it's general security.
There's support for police, and so we've got a lot of, you know, Europe's got a bunch of, you know, terror across the board, and people are concerned about it.
But my friend, who's progressive, doesn't believe it.
She's convinced every single Trump supporter is just a racist.
I mean, probably not so much, you know, today, after we had the conversation.
But that's kind of like this idea they have, where I think like what happens is, the easiest way to explain it probably, It's how they showed, Jack Dorsey said this, it's changed, but he said in 2016, liberal journalists only followed liberals and conservatives followed both conservative and liberal.
So conservatives understand the perspective of liberals.
Liberals don't have any idea what conservatives are talking about.
And then I, as a liberal who also follows both, understands a lot of the points being pushed out by conservatives and by liberals.
And because of that, because I would counter the strange narrative pushed by the left, they're like, clearly you're not in our bubble.
I'm gonna leave you with one final thought.
This went longer than I thought it would be.
Today, people were tweeting about 409K because Trump tweeted 409 instead of 401.
And I can see all of the usual people on the left, the verified blue checks, making stupid jokes that were barely funny.
And it reminds me of that video on YouTube you've probably seen where the Turkish guy pulls up in a car next to a bunch of turkeys and he goes, and then the turkeys gobble back.
And I'm like, that's what you were watching on Twitter.
Trump gobbles and all the turkeys go right back, right, right back at him.
Are they paying attention to what's actually being said in the debate?
No, they're concerned that Trump typoed.
They're literally doing trends because Trump had the sniffles.
Trump had the sniffles!
I don't care!
Oh man, you know what?
How am I supposed to sit down with people and have a sane, rational argument when they're like, did you see Trump sniffling?
And it was a worldwide trend.
It was like number two.
I don't care.
I don't tweet about this stuff.
I don't care that Trump had a typo.
How am I supposed to have a conversation with people who are supposed to agree with me on policy when they're concerned about Trump getting the sniffles, which literally every human being gets, and they're complaining about the fact that Trump put a nine instead of a one.
We're never going to have sane You know, socially liberal and progressive policy when the left is concerned about being in their stupid bubble and tweeting about the dumb words the president accidentally tweeted instead of talking about what we actually need to do to move forward.
So anyway, Tucker Carlson speaking sense, and Trump apparently listened, so I'll leave it there.
Yeah, 20-minute rant.
Whatever.
Get some frustration out.
Well, I got news for you.
In the next segment at youtube.com slash timcast at 4 p.m., guess what?
The economy is amazing.
Some amazing fast food companies are now paying six figures.
I'm not kidding!
You know what?
Bloomberg?
He's coming out saying the economy's bad.
Whatever.
YouTube.com slash TimCast 4 p.m.
That's what I'm working on and I will see you there.
We've got major, major breaking news.
We now have U.S.
and Iraqi confirmation that the Ukrainian International Airlines flight that crashed just shortly after Iran fired several missiles at U.S.
forces, it was Iraqi military bases, We are now learning the U.S.
believes that it was an Iranian missile system that shot down this plane.
This is a very, very serious and dramatic escalation.
Most of us suspected it was true.
I made a video saying all signs point to anti-aircraft systems.
But now we have Pentagon and senior U.S.
intelligence officials, as well as Iraqi intelligence, telling not just Newsweek, but CBS also confirming that, for now, This is what the U.S.
believes.
Now I'm being very, very careful.
The international community has not yet come in.
And what I mean by that is there are other countries that are investigating.
Iran is investigating.
I don't know if we should trust the U.S.
or Iran in this one because these are the belligerents in the conflict.
However, an Iraqi official as well.
And the trouble here is whether or not Iraq is independent, a US ally or an Iranian ally.
So we do have an Iraqi official here.
Let's read the news.
This is very, very serious.
And I'll talk to you about what I think this could mean moving forward as people are actually trying to de-escalate.
Newsweek reporting, Iranian missile system shot down Ukraine flight probably by mistake, sources say.
The Ukrainian flight that crashed just outside the Iranian capital of Tehran was struck by an anti-aircraft missile system.
A Pentagon official, a senior U.S.
intelligence official, and an Iraqi intelligence official told Newsweek that is three sources confirming this is legit reporting.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 of Boeing 737-800 en route from Tehran Imam Khamenei International Airport to Kiev's Boryspil International Airport stopped transmitting data Tuesday, just minutes after takeoff and not long after Iran launched missiles at military bases housing U.S.
and allied forces in Iraq.
The aircraft is believed to have been struck by a Russia-built TOR-M1 surface-to-air missile system known to NATO as Gauntlet.
The three officials, who are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told Newsweek.
Now, Trump, as I'm recording this, is in the midst of a press conference.
He was asked and he said...
He has his speculation, but he doesn't want to say just yet, though it does seem like he's suggesting this intelligence is correct.
And I think most of us expected that.
The general theory right now, outside of this official confirmation, is that after Iran fired these missiles, they put their anti-aircraft systems on high alert in fear of a U.S.
retaliation, potentially targeting airports.
Because of the high alert and hair trigger, They accidentally targeted a commercial airline and 170 people lost their lives.
176 people.
Let's read more, but I have some more news.
This is not, we're not done here.
Iran, Ukraine is actually, before this was announced, it was reported Ukraine was investigating a possible missile strike.
There are photos surfacing now of what people are claiming appear to be images of a missile.
I think, you know, look, it's possible, this is not the case, it's possible, we're still preemptive here, but it seems like all signs point to this plane being shot down by Iran.
This has a devastating impact for the international conflict.
Let's read more.
They say, One Pentagon and one U.S.
senior intelligence official told Newsweek that the Pentagon's assessment is that the incident was accidental.
Iran's anti-aircraft were likely active following the country's missile attack, which came in response to the U.S.
killing of Quds Force Commander Qassam Soleimani.
U.S.
Central Command declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Newsweek.
No reply was returned from the National Security Council or State Department.
They say the incident was first reported by the Iranian semi-official media outlets which cited the country's Red Crescent Society as assessing that the initial cause appeared to be mechanical failure.
The Ukrainian embassy in Tehran shared this view in a statement but later retracted it with Kiev warning not to draw conclusions from preliminary assessments.
Images began to circulate Wednesday of what appeared to be fragments of a TOR-M1 missile said to have been found in a suburb southwest of Tehran.
Ukraine Security Council Secretary Oleskiy Danilov said Thursday in a statement that contact with a TOR-M1 system was among the potential causes for the plane's destruction that his country was looking into.
Other potential scenarios involved crashing with a UAV, or some flying object, or a potential attack from inside the plane.
In a rare call, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne spoke with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to whom he stressed the need for Canadian officials to be quickly granted access to Iran to provide consular services, help with identification of the deceased, and take part in the investigation of the crash.
Champagne said that Canada and Canadians have many questions that will need to be answered.
Now we have another report from CBS which appears to independently confirm.
They say CBS News has learned that U.S.
officials are confident that Iran shot down a Ukrainian jetliner in the hours after the Iranian missile attack on U.S.
targets.
176 people were killed including at least 63 Canadians.
There's a lot more I want to go through before we start getting into potential speculation.
There may be an open window to the situation.
I know it's horrifyingly tragic, but as they say, God closes a door, he opens a window.
We'll get to that.
But I want to show you this story first from the New York Times.
The Iran plane crash.
Ukraine will investigate possible missile strike.
Right now we have three independent sources, according to Newsweek, and two news outlets now reporting That this was believed by the United States to be an accidental missile strike, but Ukraine was actually investigating the possibility.
Now I want to call out the New York Times for this very, very inappropriate headline right now.
I have been investigating this since last night.
I've been talking with people who actually are in some of these countries to try and figure out what's going on.
And there was a report from Ukraine that they were investigating four possibilities, one of which was an Iranian missile strike.
One, they weren't saying it was likely, they were saying, we're looking at four scenarios, an internal attack, some kind of explosive, mechanical failure, crashing into a UAV or some other object, as well as an anti-aircraft missile strike.
It now seems that the US, based on, I believe, did they mention that they got, there was one report, let me see if I have this.
There's a report that they detected.
Here we go.
Chris Van Cleave of CBS News says U.S.
officials are confident Ukrainian Flight 752 was shot down by Iran, U.S.
intelligence picked up signals of the radar being turned on, and satellite detected infrared blips of two missile launches, probably SA-15s, followed shortly by another infrared blip of an explosion.
The current thinking is the plane was mistakenly targeted.
Remember, it took off just hours after Iran launched its missile attack, and the world waited to see if the U.S.
would respond.
So we now have the stories from earlier.
The New York Times is saying, oh, they're investigating a missile strike, but please.
It would have been much more appropriate to say, Ukraine is looking at four possible scenarios.
However, at this point, it seems like the assessment was accurate.
Now, take a look at this.
I highlighted in my past coverage first, the launch site of the attack from Iran onto the bases in Iraq was much further south than Tehran.
And the plane took off, so many people were curious, how could this be related?
As I said, the fear was that in the hours after the strike, the U.S.
would retaliate targeting airports, so they had anti-aircraft missile systems ready.
Now you can take a look at this image.
For those that are listening, I'll explain it.
The plane takes off and there's a straight line coming out of the Tehran Imam Khamenei Airport.
They say the last signal was received two minutes after takeoff, but the plane crashed much further away.
The side of the crash is very far away.
That means the transponder turned off in midair.
The plane was going down with both engines failing in a fireball.
Because of this, many people immediately assumed this was an anti-aircraft strike.
It crashed in a suburb south of Tehran.
We are now learning the Pentagon, a U.S.
intelligence official, and Iraqi intelligence, that's three different sources, believe this to be the case.
There are other potential aspects they include in the New York Times story.
But I want to highlight the story was what was up.
We also have this one.
This is from five hours ago before we got the confirmation from from two different news sources and from different internal sources.
Ukrainian flight 752 was on fire and seemed to be turning back before it crashed in Iran and killed 176 people.
The first report into the disaster said now they were not not in this report.
They're claiming that a fire started.
And it caused it to crash.
They panicked and they turned.
But now I believe, and I believed this before, I do not believe that to be the case.
With U.S.
confirmation, this spells very, very serious ramifications.
Now let me start with the most dire.
Iran fired missiles at U.S.
forces and an Iraqi base.
That was their act of aggression.
The U.S.
did not retaliate, and Iran jumped the gun and took out a commercial airline.
There are going to be serious, serious ramifications from the international community on this one.
Iran did the attack, okay?
This is not U.S.
involvement.
There were people, progressives on Twitter, saying the U.S.
maybe accidentally shot it down because they were trying to now stop the missiles or something, but no, the U.S.
did nothing.
Trump came out and said, You know, Iran didn't hit any targets, so we're going to back out of this.
We're going to do sanctions.
But sure enough, now we're learning Iran, at least according to the U.S.
and Iraqi sources, again, potential bias because they're an acting belligerent in this conflict.
But I think it's fair to say we all knew it.
Okay, this is absolutely what seems to be Occam's razor would suggest.
I thought that was the case the other day.
We're now getting confirmation.
But let me tell you, there may be an open window.
Iran overplayed its hand.
Iran screwed up bad.
I can only imagine right now, based on the rest of the world, Russia and China are not going to be rushing to the defense of Iran after they overzealously Hair Trigger took out civilians.
A commercial aircraft.
You have to understand that it is extremely important for everyone in the world that commercial airliners are left to safely go about their business.
Because you've got politicians, oligarchs, flying private and commercial, and if civilians are being targeted, everyone's gonna freak out.
First, I'll point out, a lot of people are freaking out over the, you know, the death of Suleimani because he's a high-ranking official and most of these, you know, elites in politics and business
They want to feel safe, that even if a conflict breaks out, everyone agrees we won't target the wealthy elites because then they'll get targeted too.
With Soleimani being hit, Trump was saying, I don't care.
That if you are leading the charge, we'll come for you too.
And that means people in Russia and China are getting nervous.
High profile politicians do not want to go to war if they're on the list.
And that's one of the big fears about what Iran may retaliate with, targeting high level diplomats and politicians.
But by downing a commercial airliner, you know that we're going to see basically every country say, we need to fly.
We conduct business this way.
And if we are not safe because you're doing this, you need to be stopped.
Listen, we've had a few instances with 737 MAXs and people are already nervous.
This was already going to be really bad news for Boeing, but now you have people having to be scared that when it came to what was going on in Ukraine, you know, in 2014, and a commercial airliner went down, that you can't fly in certain areas, and that's really bad news because, you know, we have thousands upon thousands of flights every day.
I can only hope that through this tragic disaster, countries like Russia, China, and other nations agree that Iran needs to be, you know, no one should be jumping on their side for this one.
They screwed this up.
They're putting everybody at risk.
Okay?
A lot of people want to point to, you know, Soleimani and say Trump started it.
It's not true.
The escalation was going on for a really, really, really long time.
Okay?
I am no fan of what we're doing in Iraq.
I defer to Tucker Carlson.
We should have left.
We should get out now.
We shouldn't be there.
But I also can recognize our embassy was attacked.
Trump retaliated.
There's some speculation that Trump didn't realize Soleimani was in this vehicle because he was traveling covertly.
I'm not going to speculate.
I'm just going to say anybody who pushes the escalation bears some responsibility.
There have been threats from many journalists that are not sympathetic, but explain.
Iran has done a lot of bad things for a really, really long time.
And this mistake is probably one of the worst.
I think it's about time the international community takes a firm stance and says to Iran, enough is enough.
And I think it's about time the United States finally got out of the Middle East.
Maybe this can be the catalyst where everyone is shocked and the system is shocked so hard that people say, We cannot allow this to continue.
The U.S.
needs to leave.
Iran needs to stop.
And if we can get all of these other countries to agree, with the United States as well, that we're not going to allow this escalation anymore, it can turn into a good thing, I hope.
But there is a fear that there's going to be direct retaliation because people lost their lives in this, and this was Iran's fault.
Now, the U.S.
is saying it was an accident.
Most people think so.
It's tragic.
It's terrifying.
Hopefully no one wants to seek hardcore retaliation, but hopefully we see economics, you know, and political and diplomatic...
I'll leave with one thing because I know a lot of people on the left are going to point this out.
The U.S.
did accidentally shoot down an Iranian commercial jet.
I have the story from Wikipedia here.
This is the article.
been doing if you track their history. Now I'll leave with one one thing
because I know a lot of people on the left are gonna point this out. The US
did accidentally shoot down an Iranian commercial jet. I have the story from
Wikipedia here. This is the article I could have pulled up stories in 1988. It
was flight Iran Air 6655 was shot down from the US.
Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser from the U.S.
Navy.
The aircraft was an Airbus A300.
290 people lost their lives.
It was SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles.
So look, nobody's innocent, okay?
Right now the focus is on Iran.
We believe this was their screw-up.
I'm pointing out the past thing with the U.S.
simply because a lot of people on the left are already saying, yeah, well, the U.S.
There might be an open window here in that because Tehran screwed up, as this royally, screwed up this bad, this may be a system shock that finally gets people to say, we cannot allow civilians to be targeted, and it's time to stop.
I hope.
But I fear that this will lead to a dramatic escalation.
I don't know for sure, but I'll leave it there.
I'll give you one more thing.
I did originally record a separate segment.
That's being pushed back to six.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCast.
It's a different channel, and I will see you all there.
We've seen many of the metrics and economic indicators telling us that the current economy is one of the best economies we've ever had and is the longest economic expansion in U.S.
history.
Now, to be fair, it did start under Barack Obama, but it has rapidly expanded under Donald Trump amid all the naysayers saying if Trump would win, things would get really, really bad.
We've seen record low unemployment.
CNBC called the best numbers of our generation, of our lives.
And we have seen in minority communities unemployment going down, labor participation going way up.
But we have a new indicator that I think actually shows the real world.
Check this story out.
Admittedly, the story's meant to be a little silly, but I think it merits a walking through.
Taco Bell.
We'll test a six-figure salary for managers and roll out paid sick leave as fast food's war for talent continues to rage.
I kid you not!
Unemployment is so low, Taco Bell is offering now a six-figure salary and they're putting out paid sick leave.
All of these things the left has claimed that these companies need to be rolling out.
Are being rolled out naturally due to the excellent economy.
Now, at the same time, why is it that Democrats are trying to claim the economy is actually doing bad?
Well, it's because it's the only thing they have.
I gotta be honest.
Now, I've shown you the Vox article where they've said this.
Democrats, just tonight, we'll read through this again.
We've got Democrats actually advocating for Michael Bloomberg for president, championing the wealthy.
And now we have a Georgetown University professor saying Bloomberg actually wants to explain to people the economy is really bad.
And how about this?
Daily Beast saying, this is the narrative you need to maintain to win.
The economy isn't doing well.
Meanwhile, Taco Bell employees be getting six figures and paid benefits.
All of these programs the left wants to implement, forcing the government to roll out regulations, you know, forcing businesses to implement these programs, and all that really had to happen was, apparently, whatever Trump did to bolster the economy, be it the trade war, be it cutting regulations, I don't know, but the economy is doing so well, you didn't need the government to force it.
This might be one of the best arguments for just free market capitalism.
Now, I tend to be someone who leans a little bit to the left.
I think regulations can be fine, so long as you're willing to repeal them when they seem to be causing more harm than good.
And the way I explain it is that although there are left-wing policies that actually do make sense, the problem with the left is they never know when to stop.
Perhaps there is a time where you gotta pull back a little bit.
You're still leaning to the left on a lot of these issues, but there is a limit.
Let's read this story, and I know, again, it might be silly, but this is important, about Taco Bell giving six-figure salaries, because while, again, it is silly, like, who cares about Taco Bell?
This may be a huge talking point when you're explaining to your friends and family why the Trump economy is so good.
They say the wages are stagnant.
They say people are working two jobs.
Sorry, Taco Bell's gonna pay six figures.
Before we get started, Head over to TimCast.com slash Donut if you'd like to support my work.
There are several ways to give.
But also stay tuned to my new channel, YouTube.com slash TimCastIRL.
Make sure you subscribe.
New show coming in about a week, maybe a little bit longer.
I've got set design stuff coming in.
We're building out a new show.
It's gonna be news stories and topics that aren't, you know, shaping the world, but are interesting nonetheless.
So if you like what I do, you liked hearing me ramble, I'm gonna ramp up content like crazy!
Let's get back to the news and see what's going on with Taco Bell.
Business Insider reporting.
On Thursday, the fast food chain Taco Bell announced it would test a $100,000 salary for the general managers of certain company-owned locations later this year.
Taco Bell also said that all employees at company-owned stores are eligible for at least 24 hours of paid sick time per year starting January 1st.
In a press release, Taco Bell said it aimed to enhance restaurant performance and employee satisfaction, contributing to locations, recruitment, and retention.
Fast food chains are battling for talent as unemployment hovers near historic lows.
In November, the U.S.
unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in early December.
I gotta tell you, Listen, let me break this down for you.
Unemployment is so low that Taco Bell can't find employees.
So they have to increase wages to remain competitive.
Now, there is a fear that this could lead to inflation or as a product of inflation.
That's not the case.
Purchasing power is still good.
People are buying tacos.
Hence, they can afford to pay more, which means people can afford more tacos.
It is good economics.
Business Insider says major retailers have responded to the war for talent by raising wages, with companies including Amazon, Target, and Costco boosting their minimum pay.
Fast food chains have primarily focused on perks.
Shake Shack has tested a four-day workweek.
And Starbucks has added mental health benefits.
Oh, man.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I gotta do it.
The left has argued for a four-day workweek for how long?
And it's being implemented under Trump, of all people, without government force?
I gotta tell you what, man.
This economic spike, this long economic expansion, is the worst argument for the left ever, and it proves so much of the right, right.
Now, I think it's fair to point out there's a lot of subtlety, nuance, and complications in a lot of how economics works, but I think you'd be a fool at this point to argue that Trump isn't doing something right.
It'd be insane.
It's fair to point out this economic expansion started under Obama, You know, we saw a massive recession under Bush for a lot of reasons.
Under Obama, we saw a gradual recovery.
And now under Trump, it is spiking like crazy.
I'm not one to play these games where people say, oh, but you gotta look at the past president.
It's Obama's the one who fixed it.
No, no, no, no, no.
I give Obama credit for starting the economic expansion.
No problem.
But the current president takes the credit.
That's the way it works.
Trump's president now.
Things are going really, really well.
Trump's been involved in a trade war.
They said it was going to hurt everybody.
Trump's pulled back regulations.
They said it would hurt everybody.
And in turn, things are better than ever.
Let me tell you a story, okay?
I'm building out this set for this new show over at youtube.com slash timcast IRL.
I went to a furniture store.
Picked out the stuff we're gonna buy.
And the woman, I kid you not, this was just the other day.
And the lady asked me what I did, and she was in a good mood because I was buying set stuff, so it's expensive, and she's on commission.
And she was like, so what do you do?
And I said, I do politics.
I do political podcasts.
And she was like, so what do you think's going on?
You think we're gonna go to war and stuff like that?
And I said, nah, I don't think so.
I think things are simmering down.
And we got into talking.
She asked about, what do you think's gonna happen come later this year?
And I said, I'll tell you what, man.
Trump and the Republicans are going to sweep across the board.
And she was like, really?
You think so?
And I was like, listen, man, you know, for all the people who say they hate Donald Trump, they say orange man bad in public.
But when they turn around, they go home, talk to their wives.
They say green pocket better.
Trump has lined everyone's pockets with fat cash.
Who's going to deny that?
The orange man can be bad all day, but people want green.
That's the only color that matters.
And I said, I'll tell you what, man.
I said to this lady, the economy is just too good right now.
I was like, look at me, I'm coming in, buying all this stuff, expanding my business.
And she looks at me and she goes, I did make more money this past year than I've ever made.
And I was like, exactly.
And I was like, now I'm in here doing this big purchase to get my set design right, and you're gonna commission, you're making a ton of money, you're all happy.
And I was like, only reason I'm here is because the economy's doing so well, my business is expanding.
I get it, not everybody is doing that well.
We do have unemployment, we do have poverty.
But I was like, listen, for most people, man, they are seeing that green pour in, and that matters.
And I said, you know what's gonna happen?
They're going to come and they're going to complain all about, you know, Trump is the worst guy.
They're going to get in that voting booth.
They're going to look at their banking app and they're going to be like, and they're going to check R because they don't want the cash to stop.
Let's read a little bit more and then I'll show you.
Now I'll get to the anti portion of this, which is the Democrats.
They do mention there are some negatives.
Some workers have criticized the benefits when they're not coupled with higher pay.
That's fair, I think.
Something that could help set Taco Bell apart from the competition.
For example, some Starbucks workers have pushed back on subscriptions to a meditation app, saying they're instead seeking higher pay and an end to understaffing.
As Taco Bell expands its footprint, our responsibility to drive positive impact increases, Taco Bell CEO Mark King said in a statement on Thursday.
Our business growth in the last decade has positioned us to create change for good and implement creative solutions for our planet, our people, and our food.
Let me just drive this point home.
The left is calling for a four-day workweek.
The left is calling for higher wages and benefits.
And that's happening at these companies, and it's not through regulation, it's through the free market.
That to me is crazy.
The best argument now is like, well, Trump got it done.
Trump got you at least at Shake Shack a four-day work week.
Okay?
If that's what you want, we want more of whatever's going on now with a good economy.
But you may laugh, okay?
I know we're talking about Taco Bell.
It's kind of silly.
It's tacos.
None of this matters.
Check this out.
Do you know what the Big Mac Index is?
The Big Mac Index published by The Economist as an informal way of measuring purchasing power parity between two currencies and provides a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries.
It seeks to make exchange rate theory a bit more digestible.
Let me explain.
How many hours do you have to work to buy a Big Mac?
That's the question.
Because currency is meaningless.
Like, in some countries it's like a thousand, you know, units of whatever to buy a Big Mac, but you might make two thousand per hour, in which case a half an hour buys you a Big Mac.
The point is, for a single good most people understand, they say a McDonald's burger.
You look at Taco Bell.
Taco Bell is a low-skill job.
I get it.
Managers need some experience, okay?
But seriously, it's a generalist position.
You work at Taco Bell with no experience.
Eventually, you learn how to file paperwork and do what Taco Bell needs.
You can be a manager.
Well, now you can be making six figures!
So these lower skilled jobs, these generalist jobs, are starting to pay more and offer up more benefits.
That's how good the economy is.
You're going to have to argue to these people they should vote for somebody who's going to raise their taxes.
Never going to happen.
Because these programs people are claiming that need to exist.
Hey man, why am I concerned about health care when I got a fat paycheck in my pocket?
But you're going to be hard pressed to convince people to vote against this when they have disposable income.
Now something I have shown in the past.
This is a Vox article from December saying, Democrats 2020 Economy Dilemma Explained, where he goes on to say that at Thursday's debate back in December, there seemed to be a firm consensus among the candidates that the right path is simply to deny that the economy really is performing all that strongly.
The wealthy, very wealthy, are growing.
Ordinary people are not growing.
I don't believe it, man.
I went to a furniture store and a sales lady was like, I've made more money last year than I've ever made.
And I'm like, I feel it.
Not everybody, I get it.
There are going to be a lot of you there, you know, who are out there, who are concerned that you're missing this train.
And you know what?
I feel for you, I do.
I mean this sincerely.
And I understand there can be more that can be done.
But I'll tell you what, the economy is better than ever.
Okay?
Not everybody can get on the train.
That's a fact.
And it seems like the Democrats are trying to exploit the fact that sometimes people don't make it.
But I tell you this, man.
If unemployment is at 3.5%, okay, you've got a tiny minority of people who aren't riding this gravy train, and you're trying to get their vote?
Okay, you're the minority.
The economy is going well.
Bernie Sanders, I respect him for doing this, told the truth, I'm gonna raise your taxes.
I'm gonna raise your taxes, but your healthcare costs will go down.
Well, that doesn't make sense to someone like me.
So you've got a bunch of people who are, you know, mid-20s to late-30s, Healthy, don't need to go to the doctor, don't understand why I gotta have my taxes raised to pay for Medicare that I don't use.
Now the argument is it's communal.
We can drive prices down across the board.
People who don't need to go to the doctor pay taxes, a higher tax, but it helps people who are older and people who are younger.
I understand all that.
I like the idea.
But I do not believe you will convince the average person to give up their resources to fund people they don't know.
Call it selfish, whatever, but I'm telling you this, man, even liberals and progressives are looking over their shoulder thinking, like, I got cash.
I'm not voting against this.
So check this out.
The lie is just not working, okay?
The next day, CNN poll, U.S.
economy receives its best ranking in nearly 20 years.
So you want to come and tell all these people in the debate stage, your economy is bad.
You're being left behind.
And then a CNN poll comes out.
Actually, it's the best in 20 years.
You think people are falling for it?
They're not.
Because if a dude at Taco Bell is seeing his salary go up to six figures, he's not complaining.
And he's confused as to what you're saying.
Let's read a little bit of this.
They say, As 2019 comes to a close, the U.S.
economy earns its highest ratings in almost two decades, potentially boosting President Donald Trump in match-ups against the Democrats vying to face him in next year's election, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
Overall, 76% rate economic conditions in the U.S.
today as very or somewhat good, significantly more than those who said so at the same time last year, 67%.
This is the highest share to say the economy is good since February 2001, when 80% said so.
Now, of course, it's split between party lines.
They say 75% of Independents, 97% of Republicans, and 62% of Democrats, even the majority of Democrats, with all the orange men bad muster they can spew out, recognize the economy is good.
The independents do as well.
How can you say this, right?
Look at this.
December 20th, CNN puts out a poll saying, like, basically, 76% of people, yet the day before, or the same day that, you know, Vox put out the story about the previous debate, Democrats are telling the public the economy isn't working for you.
Uh, even CNN said that's not the case.
Who are you trying to convince when Taco Bell employees are getting benefits when Shake Jack employees are working four-day weeks, four-day work weeks?
I bring you now to the solution Democrats propose.
Why?
Jonathan Chait, the guy who apparently thinks Trump's been a Russian asset since the 1980s, says maybe nominating Bloomberg for president isn't a crazy idea.
That's right.
The weird independent guy Who claimed that people are too stupid to know what to buy, and that we should tax the poor, the guy who taxed sugary drinks because he doesn't like the idea of people choosing for themselves, who's dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the debate, I'm sorry, into the election cycle, to swing in his favor.
That's the guy we should support?
Bloomberg?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm not playing this game.
I agree with Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez for calling him out for dumping ridiculous money into the election.
Our system should not be this way, that a billionaire can spend 100 million bucks per month pumping in all of these ads to shut everyone out to dominate.
Now, according to FiveThirtyEight, in the aggregate, this dude's in fifth place.
When did the left become about propping up the multi-millionaire elites and the billionaires who can swing elections?
They complained about Trump for this, now they're proposing Bloomberg?
Well, I'll tell you what.
Another story I've shown you, just to exemplify this, to once again drive the point home.
Vox said Democrats are replacing Republicans as the preferred party of the very wealthy.
So I'll tell you this right now.
There are progressives fighting for control of the Democratic Party.
I can respect that, but you're not Democrats.
The Democrats is this.
They've always been this.
So I don't know what your plan is, man.
Why don't we just say the Democrats need to go away?
They're urban ivory tower elites with tons of money, swinging elections.
You know there's another story came out saying like the David Hogg stuff, the March for Our Lives, was predominantly funded by like 36 super wealthy individuals.
That is not a country I want to live in.
I get Trump's a billionaire and he's been accused of a lot of shady business practice stuff.
I'm not a fan of his either.
But Trump didn't dump ridiculous sums of money into the election.
He earned press by being controversial and the media loved it.
Bloomberg's doing something different.
Why would they prop him up?
Well, there's a reason I bring up Bloomberg.
Because according to a Georgetown University professor, Bloomberg wants to show Trump voters they're economically left behind.
Who are you trying to convince, man?
Even CNN is pointing out that's not the case.
CNN is pointing out the average person thinks the economy is doing great.
And people have cash in their pockets.
Look, man, I get it.
You're not going to be able to defeat Trump if the economy is doing really, really well.
It's the economy, stupid, right?
It's like the main metric that matters.
That people can spend money.
That they're paying for healthcare.
That Taco Bell is paying six figures.
Think about how many Big Macs you can buy per hour, making six figures.
Naturally, we see this story from January 2nd, The Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast being a more like establishment Democrat outlet, saying economic indicators are all good, but they say this, people are working two to three jobs to get by, wages are essentially flat, layoffs are on the uptick, and it's time the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates make this a top campaign issue.
Are you nuts?
Are you nuts?
No.
Unemployment is down at record lows.
Maybe in your industry you're getting laid off because the media is collapsing.
People are working two to three jobs.
They are.
But wages aren't essentially flat.
Taco Bell is raising their salary for managers up to six figures with paid benefits.
So you want to rally on this.
And they are.
You're going to lose.
You are going to lose.
You cannot push a narrative that no one believes.
I want to leave you with a couple more stories to drive this point home.
I gotta say, it's bad news for the left.
Now listen, I am not a far leftist.
I am not a socialist.
I am a moderate left-leaning individual, meaning I'm rather centrist.
I have no problem pointing out Trump's policies are working, and I have no problem pointing this out.
Brexit boost.
UK economy to surge as Boris's election victory ends uncertainty over Brexit.
Boris Johnson's election victory will likely continue a boost to the UK economy as Brexit looks set to be delivered on January 31st.
Now, this is not a message about Boris Johnson's policies.
I don't know if what they're going to implement will actually help things.
And admittedly, even conservatives in the UK are a bit to the left of uh... they're considered pretty left by by american
standards like they got NHS over there
but Boris Johnson and the conservatives dominated in the UK and immediately
afterwards the economy spiked the value of the pound spiked it was good news
across the board mostly because it ended uncertainty so here's what we can see
They said Trump would be bad for the economy.
You had that one journalist, I'm not going to name him, saying, sell all your stocks!
Stocks are way up.
30% or whatever.
People's retirement funds are way up.
The economy is better than ever under Trump.
You look at Boris Johnson winning in the UK and what happens?
The economy surges.
And now I'm going to play a silly, silly game.
I want to make sure I make this clear.
I'm not saying this is definitive data.
I'm not saying you need to take this all like a natural law or physical law.
Let me just tell you, Trump wins, economy boosts, everybody's doing better than ever, Boris Johnson wins, economy boosts, and recession fears persist among debt-laden Canadians' poll finds.
Yeah, unemployment in Canada is actually pretty bad.
And they say this in an end-of-year survey for Bloomberg News by Nanos Research Group.
55% of Canadians said there's at least a somewhat likely chance of a recession.
I am sorry, my neighbors to the north, up there in America Junior.
You're doing not too well.
And I can only really say that y'all voted for it.
Now down here, people voted for Donald Trump and the economy is better than ever.
A lot of people have probably flipped to now being Trump supporters after seeing how the economy has done so well.
Up in Canada, you may get the ideological or moral victory, but you've got some recession problems.
You've got debt problems, unemployment.
I think their unemployment was like 7%.
I could be wrong.
Maybe it'll mention this here.
But there's a specific reason why I'm showing this story, and it's that 55% fear a recession.
Now, it's not one for one, but I showed you that according to CNN, 76% of Americans think that the economy is doing great.
It's not the same question, but I think there is a correlation.
There is a relation to these questions.
Americans don't think a recession is coming.
They think things are going great.
They got fat paychecks, Taco Bell's paying six figures, but up in Canada, No, the majority is scared of a recession.
Unemployment is pretty bad.
And they lost jobs.
Okay, that was like one of the latest reports.
Canada lost?
I think so.
I could be wrong about that.
In fact, check me on that one.
But the U.S.
is gaining record jobs.
The best numbers of our lives.
The economy is killer.
It is amazing.
Now, we have about 10 months, okay, in Trump's re-election and congressional elections.
And we'll see.
We'll see what happens.
You know, there's a problem of riding a high.
Things are so good right now, they say, you know, the bigger you are, the harder you fall.
And if the economy was growing slowly, and it grew very, very slowly into election, that's good news.
But people can be shocked by massive changes.
With the economy doing so well right now, if we see a hard fall to, like, December levels, things will still be really, really good, but people will feel hurt.
And that feeling will drive, you know, votes.
So the reason I bring this up right now is it's a long line of these stories just showing us how the economy is doing well.
It's doing great in the UK.
It's doing bad in Canada for a variety of reasons.
That's unfortunate.
And people are really happy.
And this is a warning to Democrats.
You can't pretend the economy is bad.
OK?
CNN saying straight up people don't think so.
When you get up on that stage and say the economy is bad, what do you think the average person is going to think?
They're going to think that's not true.
Who are you talking to?
You're not talking to me.
And then Trump's gonna get up on stage at this rally.
He's gonna be in Wildwood, New Jersey, blue state, rallying, and people are gonna be like, I got cash to spend on the boardwalk, man.
And Trump's going to call it out.
He's going to say, how many of you got disposable cash?
You're going to go buy some stuffed animals for your kids, spend money on the boardwalk, and they're going to raise their hands.
And they're going to be like, you can't deny it.
You can't.
So I'll leave you with one final thought.
The only color that matters come election time is green.
It doesn't matter if the orange man is bad.
It matters that the orange man hands you that green.
If the Democrats don't get on that, they don't pay attention to that, you continually saying the economy is not working, it's not going to work for anybody.
You're not going to win.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews and I will see you all there.
I want to start off by saying I have no beef against the CollegeHumor people.
They seem nice.
The content is not, like, super political or anything, so I'm not trying to be disrespectful or drag anybody.
But you may have heard, this is a big story, CollegeHumor is basically going under, and it's kind of crazy to me, because they have, like, 13 million subscribers, 13.6 million subscribers.
Uh, well, actually, I'm gonna tell you my thoughts, uh, and again, I'm trying to be nice, because I'm not, I have no beef with any of these people, but, man, the content is all really, really bad!
Like, I, I, I, you know, I heard some people complaining about College Humor being, like, progressive, millennial, whatever, and I don't know that to be the case.
They actually have a bunch of really, really funny segments.
Like, the really funny one they do is if Google was a guy.
And I kind of feel like they do that a lot because I've seen it before and it is funny.
But most of their segments are about the same people sitting around being like quirky millennials making really cringy things.
And they don't get that many views.
I mean, like, I'll be honest.
You know, they get like 200 to 300,000 for most videos and some of them get like 1.1 million.
But, you know, what's kind of confusing to me is that there's so many people shocked to find out that when you make bad content and run a bad business that you actually go out of business.
And now there are a lot of people shocked that there's going to be over a hundred layoffs.
And again, you know, this is not the same thing as like these media companies that, you know, chase after a political narrative to hurt people.
I think this is actually just an example of, you know, let's be real.
Sometimes your company fails.
CollegeHumor was very different back in the day when it launched.
It had really funny segments, I remember, but they were more like viral segments, and they're bigger ones.
And if you look now, there are actual, like, sketches that are unique, tend to do well.
like GoFundMe CEO or Jewel CEO or if Google was a guy, these are all segments where you have actual
individuals doing a bit.
And most of these other segments, maybe I'm wrong, but I've clicked a bunch.
You can see the ones I've clicked.
They're all like the same thing.
It's like these quirky millennials sitting around complaining about something.
And it's the same thing.
So what I wanna do with this segment is, I'm not trying to be like, I got no beef.
I'm not trying to be like, haha, you know, glowing or anything.
No, I'm bummed.
Because people were watching it, you know, and if you like the content, you know, rad.
It's kind of crazy to me that a channel can have 13.6 million subscribers but get around the same amount of views that I do on my videos when I have 600,000.
So I think you're doing something wrong, okay?
Like, you gotta figure out how you can get back to reaching a larger audience, and maybe it just didn't work out.
I feel like a lot of these bits are kind of funny, but they drag them out really long, and then it's just like, you get a chuckle.
Anyway, here's the point.
Adam Conover, who does that show, uh, what does he do, that show, he ruins everything.
Adam ruins everything.
Uh, you know what the problem I have with Adam ruins everything is that he actually gets a lot of things wrong all the time.
I think it's cool he's actually pointed this out before.
But he, like, the show actually does a decent job, like, you know, better, more often than not.
But he did this Twitter thread back in October.
That's kind of correct.
And I think kind of correct is the best example of what's wrong with, Adam ruins everything, and I think it's what's wrong with a lot of how people view business.
So here's what I want to get to first.
First and foremost, your business be losing money, and they acknowledge that.
This dude, what's his name?
Sam Reich said, while we are on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless losing money, and I have no money to be able to lose.
So, this is not the worst case of, like, spoiled and, you know, entitled individual millennial people kind of people complaining about, it's not fair, our company's going under.
No, they get it.
They don't got money, they gotta lay people off, they're gonna try and fix it, and I can respect that.
But I want to show you this thread from Adam Conover and I want to talk about how Google and Facebook are evil.
I want to explain what I was saying just now about college humor and why the system is screwed up.
Let me just start by saying this.
Look at this video you're watching right now.
How much effort did I really put into this video?
I gotta admit, not a whole lot.
I turned the camera on, there's a very nice microphone attached to it, and I can produce really long content stuffed with advertisements, and all I have to do is be me.
I'm really good at talking forever.
In fact, I'm quite annoying when you know me in person because I talk forever.
But that gives me an advantage based on the algorithm.
The problem that CollegeHumor made, and most of these businesses make, is that they're giving their companies to Google.
I am actively doing the opposite.
I started my company for the most part here, and I'm slowly moving out and branching out, and I fully recognize at any point, they could destroy me.
Like they've done to CollegeHumor, like Facebook did.
In this thread from Adam Conover, he kinda gets it right, just like his show.
I'm not trying to be mean, but that's, that's like, that's just, I'm, I'm not, you know, no beef.
I just think he kinda gets things right, meaning he kinda gets them wrong.
He talks about how Facebook told everybody, you gotta do videos on the platform because look how big the views are.
But it turns out, the metrics were inflated by 150 to 900%.
I was in a meeting in San Francisco, sitting down with some people from a variety of companies, one of which I worked for and some other companies, and they were all hooting and hollering about how Facebook video is so great, how the metrics are amazing, and how we can sell ads against this, and I kept saying, don't do it, don't do it.
Nobody uses Facebook.
You can't search for videos.
There's no core community.
It is a bad move.
Now, to be honest, I do put my videos up on Facebook.
I actually have a company that runs it for me.
Because there's no reason not to do it, but you can't focus your business there.
And to a certain degree, you can't focus your core business on YouTube either.
The problem, however, that Adam Conover only sort of got right in this whole issue, CollegeHumor is not going out of business because of Facebook videos or because of some plot by their parent company to cut them off.
You know, the company that owns them, IAC, is selling the company.
No, they're selling the company because you don't make money.
And the reason you're going under is not because of Facebook, partly, it's because you don't make money.
But here's why I say kind of right.
You see, Adam Conover talks about how Facebook convinced all of these companies to pivot to Facebook to launch video, you know, video channels, and they were no longer now linking to their own content.
He says this.
We posted links to Facebook, of course, but the links led to our site.
I specifically remember the fateful day someone said, you have to see the numbers native video gets on Facebook.
They're insane.
Too good to pass up?
So we started posting videos natively to Facebook instead.
The problem?
No way to monetize.
That's not Facebook's problem.
That's your ad sales department's problem.
You can monetize by doing native ads in the videos.
He says, in fact, instead of viewers coming to our site and seeing ads, Facebook's model is to charge you for access to your fans.
Site traffic plummeted, so did ad rates and thus video budgets.
Our FB views were awesome, but we now know those were a lie.
The result?
The beautiful constellation of independent comedy sites that represented a new emerging middle class of content creation shrunk and in many places collapsed.
All because of Facebook's falsified viewer data.
Technically true.
He says a few provosos.
YouTube was not the internet swallowing behemoth it became in those days.
It's quite possible that YouTube would have eviscerated the business in exactly the same way, but it was very apparent at the time that the real shift was Facebook.
Now let me explain something why this is wrong.
Facebook was deranking publishers anyway.
It wouldn't matter if you made videos or not, if you kept publishing links in the same way, Facebook was no longer sharing that with people.
What this means is, when you relied on Facebook's algorithm to drive traffic to your website, you were giving away your business.
And that's what Facebook did.
Now, I will solely point the finger at how evil Facebook is, because the real reason the company died is not because Facebook lied about video views, it's because Facebook has swallowed the internet, and most people find articles through Facebook, and Facebook now controls whether or not anyone can see you.
Congratulations!
But Google does the same thing.
And that brings me now to the final nail in the coffin for college humor.
In October, Adam Conover said, you know, the issue was Facebook video views?
Kind of right.
The real issue is that Facebook decided to end you.
They said, we don't care who you are, what you produce, we want people to stay on Facebook, not go to CollegeHumor.com.
Thus, you're gone.
And now that brings me to the end based on Google.
13.6 million subscribers.
Now there's two things to say here.
First, the algorithm changes.
What YouTube is going to promote is going to be very, very different as time goes on.
This includes me.
A lot of people are freaking out claiming political censorship on YouTube, and it exists.
We can see that several channels, including mine, this one, you can't Google search.
Yeah, that makes literally no sense.
If you search for TimCast YouTube, you'd think one of my channels would come up.
They don't.
The same is true for Sargon and Dankula.
So we know there is an effort to suppress certain kinds of content.
However, there's also general algorithmic changes when certain kinds of content starts dominating that they don't like.
Well, CollegeHumor produces videos that seem to average out to about four minutes.
They do seem kind of drawn out.
I gotta say, I think these are kind of cringy and I couldn't get past even the beginnings because most of these are the same thing.
So you've turned your company of 13.6 million subscribers from these higher profile, let's do this, let's sort by oldest and see where they came from and where they are now.
Back in the day, they made Street Fighter, Later Years, Nintendo, We Rejected Game Concepts, Girls Costume Warehouse.
These are all independent skits.
Today, they seem to be doing a ton of the same people sitting around doing quirky millennial things.
Yeah, eventually people don't want to watch that, at least that's what I think.
But then you end up with the bigger problem that the content they produce doesn't fit the actual algorithm anymore.
And this is the problem of dedicating your business to YouTube.
I, on the other hand, am continually launching new channels and new companies because the business moves.
To put it this way, imagine you opened a pizza shop and the city could move the streets around.
And now when you started your business, you were downtown and you had amazing foot traffic.
You're shocked.
The city, you know, press the button and your shop moved to the suburbs.
And now you're like, nobody comes here anymore.
What do I do?
Well, you have to move with the algorithm.
Okay, so while I mean no beef to call out, you know, college humor, look what they have here, right?
If Google was a guy five years ago, got 50 million views, and then what did they do a month ago?
They did literally the same thing, part 12, if Google was a guy.
You keep doing the same thing, and it worked.
5.4 million views, congratulations.
But at a certain point, it's not going to fit the algorithm anymore.
I don't blame CollegeHumor for this.
If people subscribe, people should see the videos.
It's also possible people just don't click them anymore because your videos went from being sketches to a group of quirky millennials complaining about stuff.
Maybe that's a bit harsh, but that's what I see.
I'll point out.
They've replaced you with me.
You see, CollegeHumor used to make videos that went viral because they were funny sketches that made kind of a certain point that people related to.
Comedy.
And then people would share it.
Facebook restricted access to certain links, so they're not going to share your videos or your website anymore.
Facebook doesn't want people to go there.
Then YouTube started saying, we want longer form videos.
That's not you guys.
Now you're out of business.
I don't think we can function this way.
Because while in the real world, if you own a shop, you can keep running your business.
Granted, if you make pizza and you eventually start making bad pizza, people are not going to buy your pizza anymore.
And I think that's what we're seeing with CollegeHumor.
It's also messed up that you can have a dedicated business and then somebody moves it.
Like the location moves.
But let me wrap up with this.
I don't know why they're doing these really highly produced millennial complain things, and I don't know exactly what they could do to solve their problem, but market competition is another massive reason why everyone suffers.
I'm one person.
I make content that fits the algorithm.
I get it.
And in the end, I can pay myself whatever I want.
So if you have five people to staff, two camera people, a sound guy, an editor, you're not gonna survive.
So this is the end of an era.
CollegeHumor probably should exist in some form, except, I gotta tell you, maybe you shouldn't because you're just doing too many of these quirky millennial complain videos.
But if you did better sketches, I would be sad to see CollegeHumor go.
They're going to survive now with around five employees, but it's partly end of an era.
And I know there's a lot going on here, but I'm going to wrap it up here, because you get the point.
The point is, one, sometimes businesses fail.
They're not, you know, freaking out about it.
They're pointing out that they were losing money, and I think they're, you know, they've been good sports about it for the most part.
Not like a lot of other companies.
I think they've got to clean up their content, but I also do think the biggest issue is that we're entering a business era where Facebook and Google own and control everything, and can snap their fingers and end your business.
For whatever reason, I wanted to talk about this because I saw it.
No beef to the CollegeHumor people.
This is not one of these videos where I'm like, leftist media is going down.
No, their content's fine.
It's humor.
But you know what?
It's too expensive.
You've got to cut your costs down.
And maybe they'll pull out.
Maybe they'll survive.
But I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
I've got another video coming up in a few minutes.
And I will see you all shortly.
They like to claim the left doesn't have conspiracy theories.
And I see this argument all the time.
It's just not true.
The left believes insane conspiracy theories as much as the right does.
So right now we have this story.
Far left internet thinks Mayor Pete is a secret agent.
I'm not kidding.
You search Twitter and people think...
Pete Buttigieg is deep state CIA infiltrating the Democratic Party.
He worked for McKinsey.
That proves he worked for the CIA, they say.
Oh, wow.
Here's one.
CIA has paid millions to a consulting firm with help in reorganization.
Is that it?
Pete Buttigieg worked for a very high-profile consulting firm that the CIA hired once.
Therefore, Pete Buttigieg clearly is a deep state operative sent to upend the Democrats and prevent What?
Biden from winning?
What do you think Buttigieg is supposed to be doing?
He's polling at 7%.
But sure enough, they think Buttigieg is a deep state spy.
Let me tell you something.
I think it's really funny when they like to rag on conservatives and the right saying they believe all these conspiracy theories.
And then you see like the high profile pundits say, you know, the left doesn't really have something like this.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
I was accused of being a CIA agent all of the time.
These people are nuts.
During Occupy Wall Street, one dude was marching around just making things up, claiming that somehow I made $80,000 off Occupy Wall Street, which was literally not true.
I was broke and homeless.
And other activists were like, what are you talking about, dude?
He's like sleeping in a tent.
No, man, he's got $80,000 as a very specific number, too.
$83,000, he was going around saying.
I was doing a speaking event.
The guy shows up and says, where's the money?
This is the problem, okay?
They believe in weird, hippy-dippy crystal crap, okay?
They got the same problems everybody else.
Look.
They want to act like conspiracy theorists are on the right because establishment mainstream Democrats protect the left.
But at least now they're pointing out far-left internet thinks Mayor Pete is a secret agent.
You know why?
Because this time they're targeting the crony Democrat establishment candidate.
Uh-oh!
Daily Beast to the rescue to point out, no, Pete Buttigieg is not a CIA agent working with the deep state to take over the Democrats and prevent Bernie Sanders or whatever from winning.
I suppose I should read some of this.
The Daily Beast says, the world is on fire, but for an increasingly vocal segment of extremely
online politicos, there is a greater geopolitical concern hanging over the election.
The fear that Pete Buttigieg is secretly an asset, officer, or agent of the Central Intelligence
I'm gonna, I'm gonna hire someone to write QAnon fan fiction, and we'll make this really
cool thing where like Q is like, you know, wearing like a dark trench coat and like a
hat and Pete Buttigieg is like coming after him and like he's the main villain.
Pete Buttigieg.
The main villain.
As Q tries to fight the deep state on behalf of Donald Trump, Pete Buttigieg works to stop him!
That'd be great.
The conspiracy theory that Buttigieg is a CIA plant has been congealing in the Internet's fever swamps for as long as profiles of the young candidate have fixated on a biography that, to the conspiracy-minded, seems almost suspiciously clean.
The perceived threats of neoliberal imperialists and the deep state converging in the unlikely form of a dweebish Midwestern mayor.
That's right.
He's too perfect.
He's not perfect.
He's, like, generic.
He's one of the many intelligence community operators working in government.
Steve Poikanen, host of the YouTube vlog series Slow News Day, said confidently in an April episode titled, Pete Buttigieg, CIA Democrat?
In a 13-minute video delineating the conspiracy theory, Poikanen breaks down what he sees as Buttigieg's Harvard to Oxford educational pipeline.
His service as a Navy intelligence officer in Afghanistan Listen, man, I'm not a fan of the permanent government concept, but Pete Buttigieg is not likely a CIA agent.
Security Project, and the more than 200 national security and intelligence figures who have
endorsed his candidacy, including the former head of the National Clandestine Service and
agency's former deputy director.
Listen, man, I'm not a fan of the permanent government concept, but Pete Buttigieg is
not likely a CIA agent.
Let me explain to you how it works.
I really, really hate the conspiracies because people think, like, you know, Fox News forces
people to lie and the far left media tells people to, must do, hold on, hold on.
Okay?
They complain about journalists working for, like, Russian state media.
No, what they do is they find someone who already believes and says what they want to say, and they hire them.
Why is Pete Buttigieg being supported by intelligence agencies?
Because Pete Buttigieg's opinions align with what the intelligence agencies want, not because he works for them.
Pete Buttigieg steps up and says, I think we should have boots on the ground in the Middle East.
They're trying to figure out where to carve their, you know, their hole out to make themselves seem unique.
You got Tulsi Gabbard saying, no regime change war.
Well, the establishment doesn't like that.
And then Buttigieg is trying to figure out what makes him unique.
And he's going for the mainstream corporate moderate Democrat type saying, You know, perhaps we do need soldiers in the Middle East.
And he happens to say what the intelligence agencies want.
Look, I get it.
He worked for McKinsey.
He did these things.
Sure, it's possible.
Lots of things are possible.
But there's no reason to play the game.
Who cares?
If Pete Buttigieg has bad opinions, talk about his bad opinions.
Don't play the stupid is-he-the-CIA game.
I'll tell you what.
When I was working for Vice, these crazy far-left activists started tweeting that I was working for the CIA, and someone in Venezuela saw that, thought it was real, and I had to flee the country.
These people are nuts.
They believe insane conspiracy nonsense, okay?
It doesn't matter if there's a conspiracy about the deep state or not.
You know, when it comes to Pete Buttigieg, it matters.
If he goes on stage and says, you know, we want war, or we want a presence in the Middle East, then you argue against the idea, and it doesn't matter if the CIA put him there, because you're arguing the idea.
What I really can't stand about all conspiracy theories is that it passes the buck off of what we should be really arguing about.
There was one story that came out the other day I criticized.
They said AOC liked a tweet by Russian state media and my eyes rolled so hard I got dizzy and fell down.
They were talking about Rania Kalik, an anti-war progressive, who has a company which received funding from Ruptly, which is funded through Russia Today, which is Russian state media.
And I don't care!
Not one bit!
I care about Rania's ideas.
If she puts out a video saying, here's what I think, I'm not gonna sit there and go, oh yeah, but you're Russia!
That's stupid!
That's literally what the establishment left has been doing the whole time to Donald Trump.
Some news comes out and they go, yes, but that news came from someone in Ukraine who actually likes Russia, therefore it's not true.
No, it isn't.
Okay, if you've got a document, it's signed.
We argue about the document and whether or not it's legit.
We don't simply say Russia.
But that's all they tend to do.
So this falls in line with a long history of deflection that doesn't actually get to the core problems.
You got a problem with Rania Kalik, anti-war progressive, calling out the U.S.
imperial machine or whatever?
Then talk about the U.S.
imperial machine, why you think she's wrong, and stop complaining that her company received funding from a company that's funded by Russia.
And it's so secure it isn't stupid.
Because, you know, so here's the thing.
What really frustrates me is I went to Sweden, I get a donation from Paul Joseph Watson, and the left starts hooting and hollering about how I'm working for InfoWars or something.
Dude, the dude donated to my GoFundMe.
What do you want me to do about it?
But sure enough, I get these fringe lefty journalists as a BuzzFeed guy saying, you planned the whole stunt, didn't you?
Nope.
I woke up, went to the deli, got a sandwich, came home, saw the tweet from Paul, tweeted at him, he tweeted back, and then he's like, okay, I'll donate to your GoFundMe.
That's about it.
No real conspiracy.
It was literally what he said.
And they actually said, they demanded, like, I turn over my DMs.
And I was like, I'm not giving you private messages.
I would never have a source again.
Who's going to want to do an interview with me if I'm passing out their private details and messages to other people?
And so I was told, well, we'll find them either way.
I'm like, OK, you do your thing, you, like, lunatics who believe in these crazy conspiracy theories.
So let me wrap this up, OK?
I'm not going to do a big deep dive on Pete Buttigieg.
I don't care.
I don't think he's a great candidate.
I think he's, you know, I respect him for his service.
I will always respect people who actually want to lead the country, the executive branch, and actually know what it's like to be on the ground and work in certain areas.
Tremendous.
I defer to the expertise.
Pete Buttigieg, in my opinion, is a generic Democratic candidate, not a CIA plant.
The CIA could do a much better job if they wanted to plant someone in the Democratic Party, but they don't even need to plant anybody.
It doesn't make any sense, okay?
The dude apparently said that at one point, they claimed he said he failed a CIA interview or something.
So, if somebody wanted to run for office, we have tons of former CIA officers who are literally in Congress.
You know what, man?
If you don't like Buttigieg for what he's pitching, you talk about the problem of what he's pitching.
I don't know what your complaints are, really, other than he's got support from rich people and he says moderate things that moderate Americans agree with.
If that's your problem and you're going to lose, I guess throw the Hail Mary and accuse him of working for the CIA, but guess what?
That won't work on moderates either.
No one's going to sit around and be like, really?
He worked for the CIA?
Better not vote for him.
In fact, most Americans might be like, wow, he worked for the CIA.
I respect that.
What do you think the average American's gonna think?
He's a guy who served the country, therefore he's bad?
So if you're preaching to the left, you don't need to!
You've already got your Bernie Sanders!
There's no reason to smear Buttigieg as a CIA agent!
Anyway, I'll wrap this one up.
The point is, I want to talk about this mostly because I'm sick and tired of hearing the left has no conspiracy theories.
