US and China WAR May be Inevitable, As Economy Collapses And Democrats And GOP Fight, War Approaches
US and China WAR May be Inevitable, As Economy Collapses And Democrats And GOP Fight, War Approaches. The Thucydides Trap says that whenever a rising power moves to displace the existing superpower war is inevitable.5 years ago The Atlantic wrote that not only was war with the US and China likely it was way more likely than anyone realized. They wrote that something could happen that will cause a cascade affect resulting in total war.And now many people are bullish on war.A series of military confrontations, China's attempts to cause us harm during the crisis, the collapse of crude oil prices, and the economic collapse have put the world in the most dangerous position it has been in yet.Nuclear weapons stand at the ready and no one is willing to back down. As more people in the US, not just Trump but now Democrats and joe Biden, move to blame China it seems that it is only a matter of time when full scare war breaks out.Or maybe it won't, maybe this is just hype and media sensationalism, maybe the real war will be an information war.
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In what may be some of the most shocking breaking news we've ever seen, U.S.
oil prices just turned negative for the first time ever.
Now, there's going to be a ton of analysis and opinion around this and what it means, and I can't speak to the economic impact for the most part.
What I can say is that demand is gone.
Because of this, suppliers now have to actually pay to get rid of this oil.
We are facing not just a pandemic, but an economic collapse.
And it's so bad, we're seeing stories like this.
But of course, everyone wants to know who to blame.
Ultimately, I don't think it matters who is to blame.
But of course, many people say it's China.
They knew about the pandemic.
They didn't tell anyone.
In fact, they weaponized it, spreading disinformation to hurt people.
Some have called this an act of war.
And the question arises then, will we actually face a hot war with China and its allies, Russia, Iran, and potentially other countries, potentially Latin American countries?
And some have concluded the answer is yes.
In an op-ed, Majid Nawaz says that we are facing Thucydides' trap.
As China seeks to gain global dominance, they are facing up against the U.S., and the only outcome could be Full-scale war.
Not light war, not skirmishes, but total warfare.
Even arguing they're preparing for it.
In a piece from the Atlantic, they said, back in 2015, 12 of 16 historical moments in the past 500 years, where a rising power challenged a superpower, war erupted.
We have several stories over the past couple of weeks that have made many people wonder whether or not war is coming.
I want to show you what Majid wrote in saying that China, yes, is preparing for total war.
But first, let me show you some of these stories.
From the New York Post, April 15th, U.S.
military planes spotted after China sends naval ships past Taiwan.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt was mostly disabled, docked, with 80% of its personnel being evacuated due to the coronavirus.
Another aircraft carrier was docked as well, and the US did an elephant walk, a show of force.
At the same time, China sent a strike group near Taiwan.
Then we saw a US plane fly by.
We had Iran sending a bunch of small boats to swarm and harass U.S.
naval ships.
In fact, Iran's guard acknowledges encounter with U.S.
during a drill.
This was, this is being reported today.
Russian jet flies within 25 feet of U.S.
spy plane in unsafe maneuver, Navy says.
And while these stories, I want to say, may just be highlighted because of the escalating tensions, we do have other stories that show us that China has been trying to cause us and our allies harm.
Perhaps it's because of the coronavirus negatively impacting their economy, and it's an act of desperation.
Or perhaps because they realized they can weaponize the crisis for massive political and global economic gain.
The Associated Press reported, China didn't warn public of likely pandemic for six key days.
In this story from Foreign Policy, China isn't helping Italy.
It's waging information warfare.
The populist Five Star Movement has become China's chief enabler as Beijing spreads disinformation about the origins of the coronavirus while sending aid shipments to EU countries where it seeks influence.
As it turns out, much of this aid didn't actually work.
In this story from Politico, Russia and China push fake news on coronavirus crisis report claims.
We have another story.
Chinese trolls are spreading coronavirus disinformation in Taiwan.
And the New York Times says, As virus spreads, China and Russia see openings for disinformation.
The two powers amplify discredited conspiracy theories and sow division as they look to undermine the United States.
Which brings me now to the first story we'll actually read through.
Has the U.S.-China Cold War now begun?
This story from the end of March.
And how long from there do we enter a hot war?
As Majid writes, China is preparing for it.
Before we read this, I want to head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
There's several ways you can give, but the best thing you can do, share this video.
I want to make sure it's clear that the stories we're hearing about military skirmishes and being, you know, ships being lasered or strike groups floating through these certain areas, Perhaps we're just focused on this because we're in a crisis.
But I also want to highlight that these things still happen.
Just because we ignore them doesn't mean we aren't facing the potential for war.
And as more and more people face collapsing prices, oil prices, a loss of their savings, a loss of their jobs, and desperation, they're going to seek someone to blame.
And with these stories, they're certainly not going to blame themselves.
They're going to look at what China is doing with disinformation tactics to hurt us and our European allies, and they're going to blame China.
and they're going to demand action. Or regardless of any of that, Thucydides' trap, as China seeks
to gain power against the US economic superpower, then war seems inevitable. Real Clear Politics
wrote back at the end of March, Among the biggest victims of the coronavirus pandemic is the fiction of amicable US-China relations.
Those ties have been worsening for years, even before President Trump decided to call out Beijing's predatory behavior starting in 2017.
With the crisis now pitting America and China openly against each other, It seems impossible to salvage the old working ties.
Washington now faces an unambiguously adversarial relationship with Chinese Communist Party, one in which global ideological blocks may be drawn.
Losing this new Cold War would be a grievous blow to global transparency and liberal order.
It would also threaten a significant reduction of American power and influence abroad.
They say, even just a few months ago, it appeared that traditional engagement between the United States and China might survive.
The trade agreement was the most visible sign that elites in both countries wanted to return to some level of normalcy.
Outstanding issues such as Huawei and 5G were slouching towards a state of permanent irresolution.
The imprisonment of a million Uyghurs was largely forgotten, and cultural and student exchanges were escaping any serious interruption.
A stalemate in the South China Sea was also emerging, with the Trump administration dramatically increasing the number of freedom of navigation operations.
But with the Chinese dug into their new military bases, all that has been swept away by the coronavirus crisis.
I asked, I think a couple months ago, at what point do we take action against China?
The theft of our intellectual property, the violation of rights in Hong Kong, and the concentration camps in which they've imprisoned a million-plus Uighur Muslims and harvested their organs.
A lot of people on the left in the US like to say, Think about, you know, people often think about what they would do during World War II faced with, you know, Germany and the horrible things they were doing.
And they say, whatever you think you would have been doing then, you're actually doing right now.
And they point the finger at Trump.
And they talk about the border and these illegal immigrant detention centers.
But what they don't talk about is what China's actually doing.
And what they're doing is much closer to what Nazi Germany was doing.
Or perhaps it's all propaganda.
Perhaps we don't really know for sure and that Western media has been funneling this information because we're preparing for war.
I don't care for conspiracies.
I'm not going to entertain that idea.
All that really matters is these ideas exist.
We know or we believe that China is doing very, very horrifying things.
Then we get the outbreak of the coronavirus.
China knows of human-to-human transmission and withholds that information, causing a slowed response in various countries, including ours.
They then launch disinformation campaigns, which result in mass death.
There's no one really to blame in the US, for the most part.
Other than China.
When we look to what happened in New York, we can say Bill de Blasio did a bad job.
But as Dan Crenshaw pointed out in his now viral video, we were all operating with the same information.
And unfortunately, maybe we trusted China a bit too much.
Or maybe the government didn't really trust them, but they knew there was nothing we could really do.
When you see that Joe Biden is now launching campaign ads blaming China, it stands to reason left and right are basically in agreement.
Most people in the United States are going to blame China, as are people in Europe, as they're already pointing out.
The equipment that was sent by China was faulty, slowing their response, whether good intentioned or not.
But they have been launching disinformation campaigns to slow their response, which says to me that they knew the equipment was likely faulty, or at least these companies that were sending it, they knew it was faulty.
The New York Times has written about the escalation of tensions between the U.S.
and China.
The New York Times writes, this is back on March 18th, China defends expulsion of American journalists accusing U.S.
of prejudice.
Back in March, U.S.
journalists had been expelled.
And in response to this, the U.S.
pushes for expelling suspected Chinese spies at media outlets.
But the story about Chinese spies in the U.S.
is not a new one.
The United States, in the United States in 2017, a panel accuses Chinese journalists of spying for Beijing.
A lot of these stories we're seeing about the tensions have been ongoing.
There's also many stories now about U.S.
academics that were taking money from China and then lying to US authorities about it.
I think we've got a serious problem in this country as we're facing a serious threat of war, an escalation of tensions, China trying to actually cause us harm, but you have the US media and academia Defending their positions.
I mean, CNN literally ran communist Chinese propaganda as news.
This is not an exaggeration.
They took a press release from the Chinese army and then just basically wrote it verbatim and published it.
When they were called out for it, they immediately went in and quietly edited it.
But it was a huge embarrassment for CNN, who has been Effectively helping China.
One of the big things pointed out during this crisis is the name of the virus.
Early on, the New York Times, CNN, many outlets were referring to it as the Wuhan virus.
Until China started to push for this major campaign and the World Health Organization and other NGOs saying that it was bigoted and racist to call it the Chinese virus or the Wuhan virus.
Why in the US?
Why are our institutions entertaining Chinese propaganda?
Zika, Ebola, West Nile, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome.
We call these viruses by where they're from.
But when it came to China, they passed the blame onto us.
While many Alternative media outlets were getting suspended and banned for pointing out that this virus may have emerged accidentally from a biolab.
The Washington Post and CNN later reported this, as did Fox News, and the media companies, these social media companies, did nothing negative to them.
You can see how this bias is going to impact our response to whatever is going on, because In our weakness, for whatever reason, our media companies, our social media companies are just agreeing with the Chinese propaganda narrative because of, I guess, social justice and political bias.
But this brings me now to the main story.
The first thing I'll point out.
Trump warns China could face consequences for virus outbreak.
That I think we understand.
But then we see this, the op-ed from Majid Nawaz.
Is China preparing for war?
The big question everyone wants to ask.
Before I start reading this, I want to point out, I don't know.
Maybe there won't be war.
Maybe I am hyper-focused on these negative stories.
But I think when you go back to 2015, the signs were there.
China is becoming a very powerful superpower.
And in doing so, they are going to challenge the US.
And as Thucydides' trap says, war is very likely.
We'll read this though.
Majid Nawaz.
You may know him.
He's an intellectual dark web personality.
He hosts a show in the UK and he writes for UnHerd.
China is on a war footing.
While the COVID-19 outbreak has exposed some grave political miscalculations behind decades of international strategic relations with Beijing, the depths of our problems are only just beginning to dawn on us.
Fueled by our desire for ever-cheaper goods, the world has collectively sleepwalked into a supply-side dependency on the People's Republic.
The gamble has been pitched as a trade-off.
China was expected to evolve democratic norms and embrace relations with the international community, while we got richer from globalization.
But we have been played.
Whether it's clothing and factory fashion, personal protective equipment, or hardware parts, too many of our manufactured goods today rely on made-in-China supply chain.
At the same time, as it was busy taking control over our manufacturing, China has been busy cloning Western software via her lackadaisical respect for international copyright rules.
And while the world relies on China for hardware, China avoids software dependency on outsiders by creating substitutes.
TikTok to replace Snapchat.
Weibo instead of Twitter.
WeChat and Renren for Facebook.
Indeed, there is an alternative Chinese version for almost any platform.
With manufactured goods and hardware made in China and software increasingly cloned in China, what of natural resources?
Though the Belt and Road Initiative, a 21st century silk road connecting China to Europe over a network of land and sea trade routes, the People's Republic has embarked on huge infrastructure projects in 60 countries, including loans and construction projects that secure key ports and mines as collateral to China for payment.
Look to Pakistan, Africa, or Southeast Asian nations to see China's rapid expansion in ownership of mines and ports.
Look to the UK and China's attempt to secure our telecoms industry via the Huawei deal, her recent purchase of British Steel, and her quest to secure the nuclear power industry.
Beijing even secured a deal to develop British nuclear station Hinkley Point C in Somerset, thus paving the way globally for China to enter the global market to dominate nuclear power.
Over decades, we have naively outsourced or lost manufacturing, software, natural resources, and critical infrastructure to China.
The economic benefits of globalization are well-trodden.
Yet as COVID-19 has shown, it has left our society vulnerable during a major crisis, unable to manufacture the most basic of necessities, such as PPE.
Meanwhile, China has achieved self-sufficiency.
I'll pause here and say beyond that.
Not only are we in the U.S.
and they in the U.K.
unable to manufacture these goods, we're now seeing a shift.
We're bringing these companies back.
China has withheld the export of much of these goods because they need them, weakening us.
I pointed this out, I think, a year or longer.
In talking about Trump's stance on China, that because they control so much of our manufacturing, they could snap their fingers and cut us off.
And if they declared war, we would be helpless.
No antibiotics, no vitamins, no medical equipment.
That would give them a major advantage.
Majid Nawaz goes on.
He says while pursuing economic dominance abroad, China's communist one-party state has centralized political power at home, gained unprecedented command over her own population via wide-ranging and well-documented spy tech, and placed anything between one to two million Uyghur Muslims in gulags.
Considering what we know of colonial history, there is little room for doubt that China is at a pre-colonial stage.
States at this stage attempt to centralize domestic power under a strong leader, dominate global supply chains and monopolize industry, all the while expanding abroad to secure natural resources.
China is aggressively pursuing total national self-sufficiency, and the question arises as to why.
Majid then says, my conclusion is that China is preparing for war, total, not limited war,
the kind that seeks to rebalance the world order, tipping it in her favor by replacing the US as
the dominant global power. Historically, major conflicts have arisen when the leading global
power is challenged by a rival, a problem known as the Thucydides trap, as China is expected by
some metrics to overtake the US as the world's largest economy this decade. Also, that and
crucially unlike us, China is preparing for the next type of war.
The People's Republic knows that she cannot beat the U.S.
militarily, and she knows that type of ground war is almost over.
Instead, by securing global supply chains, maintaining IT independence, and having a cast-iron grip over her own population, China can focus on building her cyber and biological war capabilities while remaining relatively safeguarded against the same herself.
Considering all of this, from steel to nuclear to telecoms, our policy towards China until 2020 can best be described as one of miserably failed economic appeasement.
From China's perspective, she has successfully gifted us a Trojan horse.
Whether or not you want to make arguments or conspiracy theories about the emergence of COVID-19, one thing that needs to be said, as an authoritarian regime, China can lock its people in its homes And protect them, protect its economy, much better than the U.S.
can.
Right now, people in the U.S.
are demanding freedom and liberty.
They want the economy to keep functioning.
And we have a constitutional right to do so.
But this does present a weakness we have.
We in the United States will not give up security in exchange for freedom.
We want our freedom.
It's our right.
In China, they don't have those rights.
Meaning, when a virus emerges, China will do anything to stop it.
Even suspending any... Well, they don't have rights, so just locking people up, barricading them in their homes, and even taking people and putting them in gulags, which they do.
This gives them an advantage, at least in the short term.
Their people will live more miserable lives and live under a boot.
But when it comes to the military, this provides them with a rapid and a powerful aggressive response.
They can, faced with this virus, protect themselves while everyone else around them gets damaged by it.
Meanwhile, as Majid notes, they've got access to natural resources and energy in various countries.
He goes on.
So what is the solution?
Do we take the bait and prepare for war too?
No.
We must first understand what happened, and grasp how it came that we so willingly handed China the very tools by which to defeat us.
For too long, China has had a strategy for dealing with us, while we have had no strategy for dealing with China.
We must urgently pivot our strategic relationship, one that entails assuming that China is in a cold war with us already, and ends our current naivety.
We must minimize our total global supply chain dependency on China, or any one nation for that matter.
Trade with China, yes, but we must ring-fence critical infrastructure, nuclear, telecoms, and natural resources such as steel.
As recent politicization of the WHO highlights, the World Health Organization, The post-war international community, supposedly governed by the UN, is no longer serving its purpose.
And perhaps more than ever, the UN faces a crisis in moral authority.
Instead, NATO-style, we must reorder our strategic and military alliances around the Pacific and build an international consensus against the broader expansionist desire of the Chinese Communist Party.
He does go on, but it's interesting to see.
That Majid Nawaz and many others are now adopting what appears to be Trumpian rhetoric.
Even Joe Biden, the Democratic Party, launched a commercial saying that Joe was stronger on China.
Perhaps, late to the party, they're now realizing that we are in a substantially weakened position.
Well, Majid argues that going to war is the mistake.
We can't, you know, get ready for that war.
We can't prepare In the way, militaristically.
But we do need to secure our own countries, and that's fair.
But I don't know if I agree.
Perhaps it's too late, and perhaps war is now inevitable.
Will China just do nothing as we shore up our strength, secure our borders, and bring back our manufacturing, if it's in their interest to not allow this?
Of course we're seeing disinformation campaigns.
They're trying to blame us for the spread of this virus.
They're investing in our technology and our real estate.
And right now, you can see propaganda from Chinese officials on Twitter just allowed to function perfectly.
Meanwhile, U.S.
citizens with a First Amendment right to speech are suspended and banned across the board.
Whether they're doing it on purpose or not, we are being weakened from within.
What do you think will happen then as the economy collapses?
Will America just stand back and do nothing?
I honestly don't know.
But so long as we stand divided, we're facing certain defeat.
I want to show you this story from The Atlantic, written in 2015.
It's called The Thucydides Trap.
Are the US and China headed for war?
They say in 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the result has been bloodshed.
The story was written nearly five years ago.
We have been predicting potential conflict with China for longer than that.
And now we're facing the real possibility that it might happen.
And people are actually saying, yes, China is preparing for total war.
Maybe not ground war, maybe they won't win.
Maybe they're a paper tiger.
Their military is too weak.
But maybe they can win strategically.
The Atlantic writes, The defining question about global order for this
generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides'
trap.
The Greek historian's metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers
when a rising power rivals a ruling power, as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece,
or as Germany did Britain a century ago.
Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations.
A team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record.
In 12 of 16 cases, over the past 500 years, the result was war.
When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger, but also the challenged.
They say, based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment.
Hindsight being 2020, we are now standing on the precipice.
They said, back in 2015, it was much more likely than you realize.
And here we are.
They go on.
Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not.
Moreover, current underestimations and misapprehensions of the hazards inherent in the U.S.-China relationship contribute greatly to those hazards.
A risk associated with Thucydides' trap is that business as usual, not just at an unexpected extraordinary event, can trigger large-scale conflict.
When a rising power is threatening to displace a ruling power, standard crises that would otherwise be contained, like the assassination of an Archduke in 1914, can initiate a cascade of reactions that in turn produce outcomes none of the parties would otherwise have chosen.
War, however, is not inevitable.
Four of the 16 cases in our review did not end in bloodshed.
Those successes, as well as the failures, offer pertinent lessons for today's world leaders.
Escaping the trap requires tremendous effort.
As Xi Jinping himself said during a visit to Seattle on Tuesday, there is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world, but should major countries time and time again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.
Will we see war with China?
I honestly don't know.
But let's look at the coronavirus crisis right now.
Certain studies are coming out saying that the mortality rate is substantially lower than we actually thought it was.
But we're still seeing thousands upon thousands dead.
In a press conference today, Andrew Cuomo said, we hit the peak, but how long will we now sit at this plateau?
It's entirely possible, with certain news coming out that people are seeing reactivations of COVID, that we can never leave this trap, that we are pinned down until a vaccine can be created.
In which case, the economy will continue to collapse and the U.S.
may just fall down to the bottom.
I don't know, you know, and not in the world necessarily, but that China can certainly pull ahead of us because we've been substantially weakened.
Or maybe the freedom protesters are right.
Maybe we reopen the economy and accept that we are going to see a major hit to our population due to the coronavirus.
I don't know the right answer.
Certainly not.
I know that crude oil is worthless.
I know that people are going hungry.
Food banks are running out of food.
The economy is tanking.
22 million people out of work.
And we have an escalating tension between the US, China, Russia, Iran, Europe, and all these other nations.
Do we just sit here and watch everything fall apart?
Or will eventually one nation in desperation strike?
I can't tell you.
I can point out, however, that while Europe and others are starting to blame China more so, we have this story, Germany sends China 130 euro bill for coronavirus.
It's actually, this is an exaggeration, it's kind of fake news.
It was actually a German newspaper that was calculating the damage and putting the blame on China.
But the story highlights that many in Europe are also putting this blame on China.
But regardless of whether or not China takes the blame, China isn't ready to win a war against America.
This is from nationalinterest.org.
As we saw in these other stories, perhaps China won't wage a traditional war.
Perhaps war as we know it with tanks and soldiers and explosions is not the way war is going to be fought in the future.
One thing I've pointed out in the past, Is that typically you occupy a city to gain control of that city.
But we don't need to do that anymore.
Think about the misinformation and the propaganda you are getting from the mainstream press.
How awful our president is, how he's evil.
And those same outlets then praising China or even running pro-China propaganda.
CNN, I'm looking at you.
They rag on Trump all day and night, sowing discord among the American population against their own president.
I get it, you can dislike the guy.
But he's still the US president, he's still the guy flying this plane.
CNN then runs overt Chinese propaganda.
I don't know if we're supposed to go out and question loyalties.
I'm not too thrilled about the prospects of an internal conflict.
But if there is no unification in the United States, we're in serious trouble.
At least for now, the Democrats have begun blaming China.
Perhaps now the left-wing activists will have no choice but to accept that China is to blame, and that we'll unify the left and the right in the U.S.
against a common enemy.
The worst-case scenario is that these media outlets, in their ever-desperate attempt to chase after the Orange Man bad narrative, creates two factions in the U.S.
that either hate the President or like the President, and then technically those in between wanting to stay out of it, and it results in a complete collapse from within.
I think it's going to be very difficult for the U.S.
to win any kind of international conflict, be it an information war or a full-scale military war, if you've got the media working against its own interests.
But that's a huge flaw in freedom.
We are not going to allow the government to take over and tell us what we can or can't do or say.
It's already kind of happening.
So therein lies the challenge.
Do we give up security?
I'm sorry, do we give up our freedoms in exchange for that security so we can win this conflict?
Or do we defend our freedoms because if we gave them up, what's the point of winning?
I don't know, man.
But perhaps we are on the brink of war with China, and perhaps we can only just wait and see.
I'll throw it back to that 2015 article.
They said it wasn't inevitable, but that it was more likely than anyone realizes.
And now, five years on, we find ourselves in this predicament.
I guess we'll see what happens.
Next segment's coming up at 6pm, youtube.com slash timcastnews.
Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you all then.
Now, this has to be the easiest way to understand that the media is absolutely full of it.
And it's really hard to quantify what the media is.
Obviously, I'm a member of some kind of media distribution.
But you look at these big, powerful corporate entities, and not only are they several months behind where we are in terms of actually tracking the news, and I mean like CNN, because if you actually follow the reports coming out, you'd have heard the story about the Wuhan Biolab.
I'm not going to get into that, but now, several months later, the media reports on it.
Well, we got a few doozies of a news story.
First, we heard, you know, for years that Donald Trump is a fascist.
That Donald Trump is a fascist, his followers are fascists, blah blah blah.
You see, then, as we moved into this cycle with the pandemic, all these media outlets were outraged Donald Trump would not use his authority under the Defense Production Act.
I mean, it's like they were telling Trump, use the executive authority.
He was saying, no, he wouldn't do it.
So they wrote an article saying Donald Trump is an authoritarian weak man.
I kid you not.
Then, we got this great piece from Huffington Post that said, let's face it, Donald Trump is running this country like a dictator.
So first he won't use the power, so they smear him.
Then, when he still doesn't, they said, you know what, whatever, call him a dictator anyway.
And now we get to the best part.
New York Times, Maggie Haberman, y'all know her.
Trump, head of government, leans into anti-government message.
What?
Donald Trump has gone full Antifa, opposing the government.
Now, moving from authoritarian weak man to dictator, to inciting insurrection against the government.
Okay, maybe they just are taking things out of context, and I think that's fair to say.
Donald Trump was asked about roping the economies and stuff like that, and he said, I have total authority, and he was wrong.
He doesn't.
I think it's the 10th Amendment that the powers not given to the federal government remain with the states.
Blah, blah, blah.
Donald Trump was talking specifically about opening up economies, and he was incorrect about that.
He wasn't talking about total authority to, I don't know, arrest everybody.
But I gotta say, this has been a particularly difficult time for our good friends over at Antifa.
Yes, I know Antifa is not a singular group.
It is a bunch of different people of similar ideology acting on their own, of their own volition.
But as Donald Trump starts leaning into anti-government message, I noticed many of these Antifa accounts have slowly stopped tweeting.
It must be a very difficult position to be in, because now you have to support the president.
Hey, if the media's right, that Trump is calling for insurrection, wouldn't you agree?
Or perhaps, there's many Antifa people sitting back saying, hey, wait a minute, let's just sit back and say nothing and let, you know, the fire burn out.
Just keep going, right?
Well, the interesting thing about what we're seeing from these protests sweeping the world, actually, is that when it comes to certain demands, you'll see support from the left or opposition from the left.
Now, for many people on the right, for the most part, they're going to say, go out and protest.
That's fine.
And my position is basically, you got a First Amendment, go ahead and use it.
And if you're in a different country, I don't know what your rights are, but we have this story.
Land of the free, healthcare workers are heckled as they stand in front of anti-lockdown protesters' cars in Colorado, and more demonstrations erupt across the U.S.
So these photos and these videos have gone viral of, I must say, presumptive healthcare workers because, you know, they're wearing masks and scrubs.
We can only assume they're healthcare workers.
I gotta be honest.
I mean, it could be a person who's put on scrubs to counter protest, but assuming they are, it's fine.
They're allowed to protest.
I got no problem with this.
If you want to come out and protest and say, open up the economy, and they want to protest and say, no, keep it down, you know, keep it shut down.
I mean, that makes a whole lot of sense.
The nurses and the doctors and the medical workers are in the hospital seeing this firsthand, and they're freaked out about it.
The people in these cars are holding signs saying things like, my business is dying.
I want my business back.
See, people are experiencing different things and then making demands based on what they want.
Now, the problem with the Antifa message right now is that, well, there's many left-wing protests that are happening.
People are going out in their cars.
They're doing social distancing.
But we are seeing anti-lockdown protests in Israel, in France, many other countries all across the U.S.
Now, when it comes to these left-wing protests, they're demanding things that make, quite honestly, no sense.
So I can't say I'm surprised to see Antifa is supporting left-wing protests when people are going out, breaking lockdown rules, and then criticizing the right, you know, protests.
You just can't do it, man.
Look, the left wants to come out and protest for, like, rent freezing and stuff like this.
Look at all these stories you see about these, like, conservatives in their cars protesting.
How come we didn't get this wave of negativity when the rent strike protesters were standing out in New York City side-by-side?
No one said anything.
The media won't call out left-wing protesters.
I bet most of you didn't even know those protests were happening.
That's right.
There was a big protest where a bunch of leftists wanted rent and mortgage freezing and food stamps and other benefits, and they went out in their cars.
There were other protests in New York City where people were standing side-by-side and holding up signs saying, you know, rent strike and things like that.
There have been many of these protests.
Yet the media said nothing.
Now that conservatives are coming out and saying we want the economy back, the media bends over backwards to make them look bad.
Here's the best part.
You see, it's happening all over the world.
Anti-lockdown riots break out in Paris amid anger at police heavy-handed treatment of minorities after Macron extends social distancing to fight COVID-19 until May 11th.
Look, man, in the United States, These leftists are so desperate to be the opposition party.
They don't have any real principles.
They're just contrarians.
I will put it this way.
You have a right to protest.
If you are a leftist who wants to do no work and get all the government taxes, go out and protest for it.
If you're a conservative who wants your business back, go out and protest for it.
You've got two different issues there.
People not agreeing with each other.
But when I saw these videos go viral, Everyone's cheering for these nurses.
I'm like, yeah, well, they can protest the same as anybody else.
So I really don't see anything here other than two good Americans standing up for their right to do their thing.
This guy is yelling at him.
This guy's looking away.
And I don't think anybody got violent.
So hey, welcome to how politics works in this country and how it probably should work.
People shouldn't get into fights.
And this dude's just standing there.
Now, I do want to point out some things that are kind of funny.
How are we supposed to know, like, this guy right here is a protester?
They say he is?
No, no, they put the driver was angrily approaching the nurse.
This dude doesn't look like he's protesting, and he doesn't look like a conservative.
I think he was just trying to drive the worker, you know, drive somewhere, and he's blocked by these nurses.
So anyway, the point is...
You're all allowed to protest, all right?
You can do what you want.
But when it comes to what's happening in the world, there's this viral photo from Israel showing these, like, they put white lines on the ground so that everyone could stand in a mass protest, but six feet apart from each other.
And it goes viral.
They're protesting the lockdown.
Over in France, they're fighting with the police to have the economy open back up.
Why aren't they being called fascists and bigots and Nazis and all that other crap?
The funny thing about all these Antifa accounts is they're not necessarily saying the conservatives shouldn't be protesting, but they absolutely are tweeting out a ton of really negative information about those that are protesting.
It's like they can't come out and agree with the conservatives, so they have no choice but to ignore their own principles and support the government's authoritarian measures.
There's a video from MSNBC.
Apparently, I mean, and we've known this, a bunch of jurisdictions are using drones.
Sending out drones flying over people's houses to see them between buildings and in their own backyards.
And then yell at them about social distancing.
That's nightmarishly dystopian!
We should protest that stuff!
Oh, it's that?
You don't like the fact that conservatives are protesting, and there it is.
They don't actually care about principles, they're just tribalists.
We'll come back to see what's going on in Paris, because I want to point out what's going on in Paris, because it's not a right-wing thing.
But I gotta show you this.
I don't know what Antifa Seven Hills is.
I can only assume it's legitimate, but there's so many fake Antifa accounts, you never know.
And when I saw this post from them, I had to assume it was a parody account.
You're protesting... Wait, this is opposing all of the protests around the world demanding the reopening of the economy, and here's what they put.
No work.
Suspend work obligations.
Guarantee food stamps and sick pay for all.
Then they said no paying.
No debt.
Suspend all rent, mortgage, utilities, loan, foreclosures, evictions, and parking enforcement.
Free the prisoners!
End bail for jails, deactivate ICE, release detainees, and stop all sweeps of homeless camps.
Homes for all!
Open up unoccupied homes to anyone who needs one.
This has to be a parody account.
Maybe it is.
If this is a parody account, you got me, guys.
I got trolled.
Alright, what do you want me to say?
I got trolled, alright.
Maybe it's not, I don't know.
But let's just think about these ideas, because I'll tell you what.
Whether or not this one's meant to be fake, it is a perfect example of a lot of what they're saying.
They're saying, no one do any work.
Okay, so nothing is being produced.
But then they want food stamps.
Nobody's working, there's no food, dude.
No paying, no debt.
Suspend all rent.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so nobody gets paid for anything.
And then what?
Oh, the government has to give out food stamps.
So people can't work, even if they want to.
They can't make money, if they want to.
They can only sit back and say, please government, give me food.
Who's gonna make the food?
No one's working.
Like, food comes from work.
Did you know that?
I love this.
Free the prisoners.
And homes for all.
Okay.
Open up unoccupied homes to anyone who needs one.
There are a lot of unoccupied homes that aren't just magically closed for no reason.
Like, I don't know, condemned buildings and foreclosures?
Maybe they're talking about investment properties.
Alright, we'll see how long that lasts.
They're basically not advocating for anything other than just destroy everything.
Burn it all to the ground!
Alright, well, I mean, that sounds like antifuss, so what do you want me to say?
Now listen, we're hearing from all these people.
If you go on Twitter and you look at US press, they will tell you that it's MAGA chuds and Donald Trump's sycophants and cultists that are going out and protesting, saying, you know, uh, liberate, blah, blah, blah, and that Trump is inciting insurrection.
You got this dude right on horseback with the American flag.
And that's the story from the New York Times.
Trump, head of government, leans into anti-government message.
Yeah, uh, sure.
What Maggie Haberman is really bad at is giving you context.
And that's like the biggest crime in journalism.
Donald Trump's aggregate polling is some of the best he has ever had, period.
Which means he gained a bunch of support over the past couple of months.
He's kept it.
Yes, there was a big rally where I saw a major spike.
It went down.
It's still really high.
It's still nearing the highest he's ever had.
It's still well above the average for his entire presidency.
So why is Trump leaning into the anti-government message?
The polls are saying right now that people don't want to go back to work.
And I'm really confused by this.
There's a lot of things to talk about here.
I do want to make sure I read about the Paris protests, keep in mind.
But we see these polls saying like 70% of people think it's too soon to go back to work, yet when they open up the beaches, people flood them.
Maybe some people just don't want to work.
I don't know.
Or maybe it's just that those 30% are the ones who rush to the beaches as soon as they're open.
But you do have a lot of people who want their jobs back.
They want their lives back.
They don't like being locked up in their houses.
They don't like having cabin fever.
And I've seen like these Instagrams of people in New York, man, that is torturous.
Being in that tiny cubicle box apartment for a month plus, you can't go anywhere.
Yikes, man.
There was one photo on Instagram I saw where it was, like, this woman saying that she was walking back and forth from her kitchen to her living room, which is, like, 10 feet apart, and she did it, like, 15 or 16 times, you know, in the past hour, because you're just locked in a box.
You got nothing to do.
So Donald Trump is in agreement with many of these protesters, but check it out.
Anti-lockdown riots are breaking out in Paris.
The Daily Mail says, police used tear gas and baton charges in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, I can't pronounce French words, northern Paris in the early hours of the morning as fireworks exploded in the street.
Armed police were seen moving through the areas as groups of protesters congregated.
It comes after a 30-year-old was critically injured in the neighborhood in a collision with an unmarked police car.
President Emmanuel Macron has extended France's social distancing measures until May 11.
Its daily death toll from the virus fell to the lowest level in three weeks today, as 395 deaths were recorded, bringing the total to 19,718, though deaths are typically underreported over the weekend.
We can see all these photos and then here's a tweet, which it's French, I'm not gonna read.
Fireworks dyed the sky red.
Bins were also filmed being set ablaze.
Yeah, yeah, we get it.
The early morning violence followed prosecutors opening an inquiry after a 30-year-old motorcyclist was critically injured.
We get it.
The very badly injured man comes from an Arab-Muslim background, said a source close to the case.
A local police spokesman said, police and their reinforcements have been the target of rioters who have thrown stones and fireworks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I guess that's the gist of it.
You know, we get it.
They say that last week, prosecutors in Béziers in the south of France announced that officers were facing criminal charges after a father of three died while under arrest for breaching the coronavirus lockdown.
Three officers were videoed.
Okay, yeah.
So it's a variety of stories.
Look, I gotta tell you what, man.
You tell me there's protests and riots in France.
I'm not gonna flinch about it, because it's a common thing.
It sounds like this was mostly about someone being killed by a cop, I guess.
But, uh...
Yeah, so it looks like this protest is more about the individual being killed by cops, but they're still violating social distancing.
Over in Israel and in many other countries, we have seen people protesting, specifically the government lockdowns.
So, when you see these photos in the United States, I have to wonder why it is that it's conservatives waving the American flag demanding freedom, and I'm wondering why it's not the left and Antifa coming out and joining them.
You'd think that they would stand up next to them and say, drones spying on me in my backyard is a bad thing.
You'd think leftists would come out and say, yeah, we shouldn't have complete and total government lockdown.
Something I noticed, and I tweeted this to a few people, and boy were they not happy, is that progressives have fully embraced fascism.
I mean, not all of them, of course not.
I just tweeted, I've seen so many progressives embrace full-on fascism, it's the weirdest thing ever.
unidentified
And all of a sudden I get pushbacks saying, no, we're just being smart, blah blah blah.
If you got the government telling you you can't go outside, just trust us, there's a virus, it's dangerous, you're just trusting the government.
If the government deploys drones and the police to stop you from working and going outside, and there's massive unemployment and food shortages, yeah, you got fascism, okay?
You got a problem with this.
Now look, I think there's good reason why we should be locked down.
I do.
Let me show you this from The Economist.
This is New York City confirmed weekly deaths.
Deaths attributed to COVID-19 in red.
All other deaths.
There's some interesting data here.
We can see that, for the data extended to, what is this, week ending April 3rd, we have substantially more deaths than were projected in a normal year.
I talk about this all the time.
We can see that the estimated deaths in the dotted line, for those that are watching, Around a thousand per day in New York City.
That's actually a lot more than I thought.
So they say all other deaths expected is around a thousand per day.
And they have excess deaths and, you know, like, so excess deaths could be negative or positive.
Typically, they were within, you know, tens or a couple dozen of the expected death range.
Around the start of the COVID pandemic, we see this major spike.
And now we have 3,372 excess deaths for the week ending April 3rd.
So the important point here is why I'm showing you this is to say first and foremost, Look, man, if you want to go out and protest and you want your job back, do it.
To it.
One lady said life is, or death is a natural part of, you know, our existence and it's time to stop fearing it and start living and things like that.
Recognizing, well, you know, you might die.
Yeah, you might get sick and die.
Give me liberty or give me death.
Personally, I'm already a homebody.
I'm not going to go out.
I don't want to get sick and I don't want to die or end up in a hospital.
So, uh, I'm going to mind the social distancing.
I also think there is certain responsibilities we have to make sure other people don't get sick, but you know, don't go out and spread this.
But I can't speak on behalf of those who are struggling and desperate and lining up at food banks.
22 million people.
We can see the data shows.
We got a bunch of people dying for some reason.
We don't know why.
All right?
We can only say coronavirus.
What I mean to say by we don't know why is that a lot of people have said we don't know.
A lot of people have said that the numbers are exaggerated.
If that's the case, then why are all these people dying?
Yeah, I think it's fair to say coronavirus is killing lots of people.
Check this out, though.
Some pushback.
We can see that the week ending March 27th, we had way more non-COVID deaths in the expected category.
Or I'm sorry, we had way more non-coronavirus deaths.
I'll put it that way.
And so this makes sense that they saw this and said, hey, look at these, you know, couple hundred people who were dead, and we don't know if they had coronavirus.
So it seems like they then attributed those deaths to coronavirus, and now we can see the red is dipping beneath the dotted line.
That says to me, That we are now misattributing non-coronavirus deaths to coronavirus deaths.
Whatever that means, you roll with it.
Anyway, the point of this segment was, you know, I see Maggie Haberman and these leftists, who are supposed to be anti-fascist, they're supposed to oppose fascism, now supporting it.
We've flipped completely around.
Trump is the anti-government guy.
The left has become pro-government.
Antifa has just shut up and is now attacking protesters and criticizing them.
Nothing makes sense.
I have no idea what anybody wants, but I'll tell you this.
I've talked about the potential for civil war or whatever, and a lot of people still think it's coming.
Listen, when you see healthcare workers standing in front of conservative protesters, this is not government versus protester.
This is people versus people.
This guy doesn't even look like a protester.
So this guy is going to go out and block cars for people who are protesting the authoritarian lockdown.
No one's on any side, I guess.
They're on their own sides fighting for their own thing, but this is people versus people.
This, I think, will lead to bad things, but more importantly...
When Antifa supports left-wing protests out in the street, rent strikes, and things like that, and mocks, belittles, and insults conservative protests, you can see they don't actually care about opposing fascism.
What they care about is their tribe winning.
No work, free money, government control, it's what they want.
So the people demanding the government stop, they will say are stupid, and the people going out saying the government should be bigger, they will say, here, here!
That's what they're after.
This, to me, says the potential for civil war has never- it hasn't gone away.
It's just been kind of quieted.
But as tensions rise, and people get desperate, I think we'll start seeing some dangerous escalation.
Eh, whatever.
You get the point.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 1pm on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you all then.
Well, I hate to say I told you so, but here we are.
Facebook shuts down anti-quarantine protests at state's request.
That's right.
Protesters challenging their government using their First Amendment right are having their events shut down on Facebook because the states are asking for it.
Facebook straight up said if the government doesn't allow it, we won't allow the events.
The government can't restrict it.
They don't have the right to do so, but they're doing it anyway.
And you know what?
Here comes the media to gleefully insult all of the people fighting for their constitutional rights.
Why?
Eh, they're conservatives.
Was the media ragging on the rent strikers or the labor strikers?
No, they weren't.
When protests started earlier this month and late March from, say, Lyft drivers or janitors or rent strikers, the media didn't say anything about social distancing.
I mean, very little.
Now that Trump supporters are coming out and they're saying it's time to lift the lockdowns, all of the media, they can't help but say, look at these dumb people.
They're going to get sick and get me sick, and so are everyone else.
But the big issue right now Our ability to speak.
You see, the First Amendment restricts what the government can do pertaining to speech.
So, something miraculous happened.
I'm not going to insinuate that it was intentional, like there's some globalist plot.
But as Facebook became more and more powerful, it began to monopolize how we speak to each other.
The same is true for YouTube.
Now, both of these platforms do afford me the ability to actually speak to you, so there is a greater net positive than a net negative.
Without YouTube, you wouldn't hear this at all, so at least we have that.
But the problem we're faced with is that the government knows they can't shut down these protests, but they can request a private company shut down our ability to communicate.
They have monopolized how we talk to each other.
We used to go to the water cooler, to town hall, to the churches, to the community centers.
Now we're on Facebook, and people aren't doing those other things as often.
Organizing is taking place on social media.
Social media then bans whoever they want.
Very politically biased.
And they can.
And yes, these people supposedly on the left who are supposed to be fighting for civil rights do just the opposite.
You know what the best example is?
There's an organization called Free Press.
I kid you not.
And they actually advocate for the banning of alternative media they don't like.
I'll put it that way.
Recently they wanted the FCC to actually like regulate some news media and the FCC was like, we're not going to do that.
So they're the opposite of the free press.
That's what you get.
They claim to fight for liberty, but they're authoritarian as they come.
They have been defending Facebook and YouTube and Twitter the entire time these organizations have been silencing and censoring people.
And they're still doing it.
It's not just Facebook.
YouTube has basically said, if you go against the World Health Organization, you are in violation of their guidelines.
And there we have it.
An organization that even Wired Magazine has said was lying to us, who is having its funding cut off because the U.S.
government has said they were providing us with misinformation.
YouTube is now saying, if you don't listen to what they say, you're in violation.
Alright, we'll see how long this lasts.
Maybe I won't be on YouTube for that much longer.
I want to show you this.
All these stories.
Facebook shuts down anti-quarantine protests at states' requests.
The social network has already removed protest messages in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska.
They say Facebook is blocking anti-quarantine protesters from using the site to organize in-person gatherings in states that require residents to stay in their homes due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Require?
The world's largest social network has already removed protest messages in California, Jersey, Nebraska from its site at the urging of state governments who say those events are prohibited by stay-at-home orders, a company spokesman said.
No, they're not, you fascists.
That is not how this country works.
I want to see lawsuits.
I didn't organize the protests, but I want to see people sue.
The government requesting Facebook remove these protests, I would believe would still violate the First Amendment.
Now, they're not directly intervening in the protests, but they are intervening in protest activities, which includes posting messages on Facebook.
So please, if you're involved in this, why don't you stand up for it?
They say, quote, Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook.
For the same reason, events that defy government's guidance on social distancing aren't allowed on Facebook, the spokesperson said.
Absolutely disgusting.
Protesters have gathered in state capitals around the country in recent days to push back against the government's decisions to close non-essential businesses and requiring students to largely isolate at home as the nationwide death toll from the coronavirus outbreak approaches 40,000.
Those protests have been fueled in part by President Donald Trump.
Who has wavered between urging governors to reopen their economies and deferring to state leaders to make such calls.
In a series of tweets last week, Trump issued a call to liberate Michigan, Virginia, and Minnesota.
Well, I want to show you all these other protests, but first, take a look at this story from Reclaim the Net.
YouTube CEO.
Anything that goes against the World Health Organization is a violation of YouTube policies.
YouTube is also giving legacy media outlets and public health organizations billions of impressions.
I love it.
Yep, listen.
If you go to YouTube.com, you might see, typically this is where people find these videos.
I'd be willing to bet that many of you found this video by going to YouTube.com and it pops up on the homepage.
Now, I earn that to an extent.
YouTube chooses who they think is good content, and they choose what they think you might like, and they put it on the front page so that you can see it, and if you click it, YouTube actually gives me more reach.
So, if the thumbnail is good, and I don't really put thumbnails on these videos, but the title is good, people click it, and they watch it for a certain amount of time, YouTube weighs that against other content.
So it is a meritocracy.
But of course, as we know, when it comes to major corporations and cronyism, the major media networks, they get guarantees.
They get rules for me and not for them.
So if you go to YouTube.com, you'll see CNN, MSNBC, CBS, these big networks, they get their own special section where live coverage is skyrocketing.
YouTube has said that they're seeing a 75% increase CNN gets to be authoritative even though they're doing performative nonsense.
CNN doesn't even have real ratings except for YouTube.
And it's funny because guess who it tends to be?
CNN CNN gets to be authoritative even though they're doing
performative nonsense CNN doesn't even have real ratings except for YouTube. This
is the most annoying thing YouTube is is shaking in their boots because they could
lose advertisers when the media writes bad things about them
So they give extra power to these media companies.
It's insane.
Just stop doing it and let them die off.
But sure enough, here's what they say.
In terms of specific YouTube stats, Wojcicki said, There's been a 75% increase in views for authoritative sources since the start of 2020.
Public health organizations have had over 10 billion impressions.
That means nothing by the way.
The coronavirus news shelf has been viewed over 10 billion times.
That means YouTube is giving billions of views to mainstream media who is late on this and who is authoritarian.
So I will say this.
I don't normally say this in these videos, but if you like my content, I need you to help share because YouTube actively suppresses content like mine and many other independent commentators.
If you think we do a better job than the mainstream media, well, they're getting put on the front page.
The only way to bypass that, the best way, is through direct sharing.
If you share this video, then that's one person sharing a video to their 300 friends or whatever, is substantially more reach than YouTube just putting someone on the front page.
It's really powerful.
Wojcicki also touched on controversial changes YouTube has made over the last couple of years, which have resulted in many creators being demonetized, having their content removed, or even having their entire channels deleted.
The YouTube CEO framed these changes as progress, and said they've created an environment where if you talk to most people, it's really hard, if not possible, to find misinformation.
Well, if that's the case, then I guess I can appreciate them basically saying my channel is not misinformation.
During the second half of the interview, Wojcicki praised YouTube's use of machines to review and take down content and claimed that they have been able to continue to be really effective during this time.
A reversal of the platform's previous sentiment that relying on automated systems during the pandemic will result in more deleted videos, including those that don't violate community guidelines.
But, so that's the other part.
She says, when it comes to determining what YouTube class is as misinformation, Wojcicki said that anything that would go against the World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy.
The World Health Organization was recommending we don't lockdown travel back in January.
So yes, I got demonetized when I criticized them.
And it took like two months for them to remove the restriction, even though I was right.
They're doing a terrible job.
CNN is doing a terrible job.
YouTube, stop propping them up.
You are actively hurting society.
I'm not even going to get into the whole authoritarian versus libertarian argument in this point.
If you want people to actively shelter in place to avoid the coronavirus pandemic, you gotta stop showing CNN, because they've been wrong about this.
The Washington Post, all these outlets were saying Trump was wrong.
They were criticizing the lockdowns.
So if you've got a problem with Trump's attitude, and I think it's worth criticizing, but you wanted to see us locked down sooner than we did, sooner than any other country, then you gotta get rid of these people, because it was independent commentary on your platform, YouTube, that was saying we needed to do something.
It was Senator Tom Cotton in January saying we needed to do something on Facebook in a viral video.
Yet they propped up the mainstream media and the Democratic establishment who were wrong about this.
Nancy Pelosi, February 24th, encouraging people to go out into Chinatown, Bill de Blasio on March 3rd doing the exact same thing.
And where was YouTube to stop misinformation?
Peddling it!
So no, I'm not going to sit here and just accept this.
What else can we do?
YouTube is on the wrong side of this because they are scared of weak, pathetic outlets like performative CNN.
Let me show you what's going on.
I like local news outlets, by the way.
I often praise them because they're not playing the national politic BS.
Here's a story from KQED.
Coronavirus shelter in place.
April 6.
Oh, I'm sorry.
SF janitors protest cuts to working hours during coronavirus shelter in place.
Headline got cut off.
You can see these people, one without a mask, standing outside before April 6.
Many people wearing masks saying they get a bailout.
We get robbed.
Look at all these people blocking the street.
Where was the media to say these people are risking coronavirus?
Oh, where was the outrage?
Where were the protests and the condemnation from mainstream press?
Did not exist.
Let me show you more, man.
I got it for days.
Here's Hyde Park tenants threatened a rent strike as many struggle to pay due to impact of COVID-19.
And of course, you have people, let me see if I can show some of these shots of people, out protesting.
Now, I understand these protests aren't the biggest protests in the world.
There are dozens of people at many of these, but there have been a bunch of protests, and I pointed this out in the previous segment, standing on street corners, not social distancing, many not wearing masks.
And where was the media to say something about all of these articles?
Because there's more than, I pulled up like seven or eight or more, and that was a cursory Google search.
Where was the media?
Well look, as soon as the Trump supporters come out, as soon as they wave a Gadsden flag, all of a sudden it's Nazis, it's fascism, it's morons.
Yeah, they won't criticize the rent-strikers on the left because they're not- the conservatives aren't the only ones protesting.
To be fair, to be absolutely fair, Trump tweeted about this, creating a national spotlight.
Before this, the media was criticizing these protesters, and they were substantially larger than the rent strike protests.
But I'll tell you what, right now, if your analysis is going to be protesting for the freedom to catch the coronavirus, the Reopen America protests are the logical conclusion of a twisted liberty movement.
What about Antifa?
That's not liberty?
Are you admitting now that the Antifa protesters who went out demanding we don't pay rent, that they're actually fighting for authoritarianism?
Why aren't they included in your op-ed?
Because they were protesting first.
And they were protesting similar things.
Government authority, right?
Saying that we should... Well, actually, no, they were protesting for more government authority, so I was wrong about that.
This article I find rather fascinating.
Because he basically just brings in Alex Jones.
And it's a really short article where he talks about these protesters are being manipulated by a right-wing media machine into going out.
Did you even bother talking to these people?
There's a left-wing activist media group called Unicorn Riot.
I'm friends with one of the founders, I believe.
And I think they've actually produced many misleading videos.
They once showed a protest in Portland, and it was a guy waving his hand at somebody, and they claimed he was doing a Hitler salute.
Yeah, or whatever you want to call it.
So, Unicorn Riot goes out to a protest, I believe it was in Minnesota, and actually interviews some of these Trump supporters wearing Trump hats.
One of the protesters said, be careful, they're very, very anti-Trump, looks to the camera guy and says, you guys do really good work, but they are anti-Trump.
And I'm like, there you go, right?
Respect from the protesters.
And they show this in their video.
So my respect to Unicorn Riot for showing this.
The protesters basically say we think the pandemic is real and it's very serious, but we have a right to work.
We have a right to live.
So where's the rest of Antifa to come out in support of these people?
Why are you bending over backwards to the authoritarian machine that is censoring our speech?
You know what my problem is with all of these far-left protesters is I got no problem standing side-by-side with you when you protest the government and their authoritarian overreach.
But when you've got people that are being censored on social media, what do you end up getting from these far leftists?
They agree with the establishment Democrats and the left because they say, oh, well, look, these people are pro-Trump.
Now Antifa is in an interesting position.
They can agree with the right to protest and push back on government authority, but that puts them in line with Trump and his supporters, and they won't do it because they care more about tribe.
So when it really comes down to the line of whether or not you're going to oppose the fascist overreach of these massive corporations shutting down our right to protest in alignment with the government who requested this, oh, now it's embarrassing.
Yeah, if you really were anti-fascist, you'd be speaking up against all of this.
The nurses have a right to protest.
The Extinction Rebellion have a right to protest.
You want to block a street?
You want to protest for this?
You will be arrested, but I agree with your right to do so.
You want to go march for Occupy Wall Street?
You want to chant 99%?
I agree with your right to do so.
You want to go out and protest against the patriarchy and white male privilege?
I agree with your right to do so.
You want to put on a pink pussy hat, march around in DC?
I agree with your right to do so.
If you want to wave a Gadsden flag, an American flag, and demand an end to the shutdown because it is your right to live how you see fit, waving a sign that says, my body, my choice, I agree with your right to do so.
What about Antifa?
Antifa has berated and insulted and slammed the protesters, calling them far right, Nazis, accusing them of all this mishmash nonsense.
Because they are useful idiots for the authoritarians.
They go around beating people who disagree.
They push fringe ideology.
And now, when it matters most, when these tech companies are shutting down protest organizers, but it's astroturfing, they say, don't care.
I don't care who's setting it up.
The government has no right to request this.
At a time when the government is deploying drones from Chinese companies to spy on us in our own backyards, where is Antifa?
Where is the far left?
Nowhere to be seen, it would seem.
Standing by, insulting those that would challenge government authority.
Yeah, we know who the real fascists are.
Look.
When the democratic establishment and their allies in media come out and say stupid things and, you know, and say like, it's good that these private companies are censoring people or outright deny it, even though they're the ones who report it in the first place, I roll my eyes.
I get it.
They're authoritarians.
But Antifa is supposed to be anti-fascist.
So why would they stand in alignment with authoritarian establishment figures?
Because they're not really.
And that's just the sad reality.
They claim to be anti-fascist.
They're not.
They claim to oppose racism.
They're racist.
And we don't actually have activists fighting against the authoritarian takeover.
I mean, actually, I would argue if you wanted to get to the root word of what anti-fascist really meant, just opposing fascism, These Trump-supporting conservatives waving Gadsden flags are the most anti-fascist protesters we actually have.
Because right now, the government, multiple governments, state-level, are manipulating our right to speech through a loophole.
Well, the government didn't shut down your protest.
You're allowed to protest, but we sure made sure no one would find out about it by requesting a private company stop you from speaking about it.
And there you go.
Now, I still think what the government is doing, these requests, will be a violation of the First Amendment.
I think a judge will recognize states have no right to intervene to prevent a protest.
That's what I think.
I could be wrong.
And we'll see if this goes to lawsuits, and it should.
And then we'll have some precedent, and maybe in the future, the government won't be able to do what they're doing right now.
But the government is locking everything down by decree.
And they don't have the right to do so.
And these moron police who are going out and enforcing these ridiculous rules are playing into their hands.
So no, they're not defending the Constitution.
If somebody, let me tell you something.
If somebody goes out to protest and a cop comes and arrests them, you know what?
That's civil disobedience, these things happen.
But there is a difference between someone standing on a sidewalk, minding their own business and getting arrested for arbitrary reasons, which I have always stood against.
In fact, back in, I believe it was the end of 2012, There was a photographer who was standing on the sidewalk and he got arrested for arbitrary reasons.
They said obstructing a road.
He wasn't in the road, he was on the sidewalk.
And a lawyer group, an activist lawyer group, used my footage to exonerate this man.
If you are marching down the street, the police should have no right to arrest you or stop you.
Now, if you go in the street and you block traffic and you're obstructing traffic, yes, you'll get a warning, you'll get another warning, you'll be arrested.
That's normal.
There's varying degrees to civil disobedience.
What we're seeing right now are regular Americans who want their jobs reopened who have been standing on the sidewalk Doing things they are legally allowed to do and being arrested for being out.
We have seen people walking down the street minding their own business get arrested.
We have seen people on their own property having a get-together get arrested.
We have seen a man paddleboarding by himself get arrested.
Now that is so far beyond what could be considered reasonable.
I'm surprised it happened in the first place.
But where are the great saviors of liberty, freedom, and cooperation, Antifa?
Yeah, nowhere to be seen.
Welcome to the dystopian nightmare.
Drones are flying overhead, spying on us in our backyards, telling us that we must remain inside for our own safety.
Meanwhile, you know, these people in media are just acting like the bad guys are the ones who want to be free.
If you want to call it, New York Times, if you want to say, protesting for the freedom to catch the coronavirus and Sure.
If you want to go out and you know the risks, why would I stop you?
Why should it be that we should have the government mandate no one can go outside instead of saying, if you don't want the coronavirus, you don't go outside.
And then they say, oh, but you're putting the elderly at risk.
Well, then the elderly can just not go outside.
I know they are being put at risk because even then you're going to have contamination across the board.
But how do you solve this problem with the existing Constitution?
The problem you seek.
I don't know if there's a way to do it.
You can't tell people that you can't violate the Constitution just by decree, which they've done.
And you know what?
As time goes on, the Constitution means less and less.
And you know why that's worrying?
As confidence erodes in the government, then eventually the government becomes illegitimate and people stop following its orders outright.
We've already seen in Los Angeles, in New York, and other places, people are defying the lockdown orders.
There were the photos of people rushing up to take pictures of the boat, violating lockdown orders.
In California, traffic was re-emerging.
These states couldn't keep people in their homes.
They don't view them as legitimate anymore.
And the more you trample on the Constitution, the more people will just disregard what you say because they have no faith that anything will be upheld anyway.
And that's how you breed chaos, and that's when things fall apart.
At the same time, China is ramping up, and there are fears that they are preparing for war.
Maybe I'll talk about that later tonight.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment will be at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash Timcast.
It is my main channel.
It's a different channel from this one, and I'll see you all there.
Right now, everybody is freaking out because of the collapse of oil prices, but no one really knows what it means, and I'm not entirely convinced this CNN article knows what it means either.
Suffice to say, the economy is in serious trouble if oil prices have gone negative and people have to pay to get rid of the oil.
What they're saying now over at CNN is that hundreds of U.S.
oil companies could go bankrupt, and if they do, We are talking about major economic strife.
Oh, man.
I don't know what to expect, but if you watched my main segment over at youtube.com slash timcast, war?
I mean, desperation, economic collapse, 22 million out of work or running the banks?
I have no idea.
What I can say is that the whole segment I did was on something called Thucydides' Trap, which says that when a rising power challenges the dominant power, war becomes inevitable.
I'm not going to speak too much on that.
You can go check it out if you want.
But let's read what at least CNN is saying about what this negative oil price means.
They report, the American oil industry is facing a doomsday scenario.
The coronavirus pandemic has caused oil demand to drop so rapidly that the world is running out of room to store the barrels.
At the same time, Russia and Saudi Arabia flooded the world with excess supply.
That double black swan has caused oil prices to collapse to levels that make it impossible for US shale oil companies to make money. US crude for May
delivery turned negative on Monday, something that has never happened since NYMEX oil futures
began trading in 1983.
It was easily the oil market's worst day on record.
record.
crude for June delivery is still trading above $20 a barrel, but even that's disastrous.
$30 is already quite bad, but once you get to $20 or even $10, it's a complete nightmare, said Artem Abramov, head of the shale research at Rystad Energy.
Many oil companies took on too much debt during the good times.
Some of them won't be able to survive this historic downturn.
In a $20 oil environment, 533 U.S.
oil exploration and production companies will file for bankruptcy by the end of 2021, according to Rystad Energy.
At $10, there would be more than 1,100 bankruptcies.
At $10, almost every U.S.
E&P company that has debt will have to file Chapter 11 or consider strategic opportunities.
OPEC cuts failed to end panic.
The most stunning part of the record low in oil prices is that it comes after Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to end their epic price war after President Donald Trump intervened.
OPEC Plus agreed to cut oil production by a record amount.
Trump said the OPEC Plus agreement would save countless jobs and much-needed stability to the oil patch.
This will save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States, Trump tweeted on April 12th.
I would like to thank and congratulate President Putin of Russia and King Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Apparently it wasn't enough.
And now these companies actually have to pay to get rid of the oil they don't want to take because they got nowhere to put it.
It's actually kind of shocking.
When you have, I don't know, Greta Thunberg and these environmental activists saying, stop oil production, stop its use now, we got too much!
We got too much oil.
We went so far in the other direction, oil went negative.
So, I think it's silly.
It's crazy that we're in an economy where the goal is to stop producing it.
What are you gonna do?
Pay the companies not to pump oil?
That's actually one of the things being proposed.
Let's see, we have this chart here.
This is amazing.
It went negative.
I was sitting here watching it happen.
I don't think anyone really knows, for the most part, what it means.
Or how long these companies can survive with no opportunity to make money.
I mean, you gotta understand.
Companies, they sell the oil.
Now they have to pay just to get rid of it.
How are they gonna have any cash to pay their employees?
Will this result in massive unemployment?
I honestly have no idea.
I think we're going to see, at least for now, my limited knowledge of the subject, a bailout, I suppose, for the U.S.
energy industry?
CNN continues.
Yet crude has kept crashing, in part because those production cuts don't kick in until May, and demand continues to vanish because jets, cars, and factories are sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic.
The hope in the oil industry is that Monday's negative prices are somewhat of a fluke caused by the rolling over futures contracts.
The record low in the May contract comes on very thin trading volume ahead of Tuesday's expiration.
That's because there are concerns that there will be no room to store those barrels delivered in May.
The June contract, however, only dropped around 10% to $22 a barrel, and Brent Crude, the world benchmark, fell just $5 to $26.50 a barrel.
Still, oil contracts roll over each month, and they don't crash to record lows.
There will be a lot of companies that don't survive this downturn, said Ryan Fitzmaurice, energy strategist at Rabobank.
This is one of the worst on record.
Donald Trump wants to reopen the economy.
Donald Trump wants people to protest and demand the economy be reopened.
Perhaps this is why.
You can't just stop a train dead in its tracks.
You know what?
I was watching that movie Hancock.
You see Hancock with Will Smith?
He plays, it's about this superhero, and he's a drunk, and he's a bad guy.
Like, he's a good guy, but he's kind of a bad person.
Well, in the opening scene, there's a train coming about to hit a car.
And so he flips the car out of the way, and then stands there and the train slams into him, stopping dead in its tracks.
He thinks it's fine, and then it shows the rest of the train as every cart and all of that energy is thrown off the track and it derails, crashing and exploding, because you can't just stop all of that momentum.
See, people didn't seem to understand this when it came to the economy.
That when you stop the machine, it's not just slowing to a grinding halt.
Everything behind it is still coming.
Waves come afterwards.
I explained the damage that would come from the rent strikes.
Look, you shut everything down mid-March.
People don't have paychecks.
They can't pay their rent.
Then the rental companies, the management companies can't pay their staff, the maintenance.
They can't pay taxes.
They can't pay their employees who then get laid off.
It creates a ripple effect.
It keeps going.
Then the demand for everything else drops.
The farms take a hit.
They start dumping milk.
Then the oil industry takes a hit.
It won't stop.
The train is crashing and flying off the rails.
Trump was hoping to get it kick-started before this happened.
Unfortunately, it couldn't be done.
It will get worse.
The ripple will hit.
What are we looking at?
Total and complete unemployment?
I mean like seriously, like 50-60% unprecedented historical levels?
Look, what jobs can you have today?
Dude on internet ranting about stuff?
Yeah, that's one, and that tends to be a lot of the work being done.
I guess marketing and stuff, but you gotta understand man, even I'm taking an economic hit.
I may be one of the last to go because I'm an internet complainer guy.
And the same is true for BuzzFeed and Vox.
We're all the industry of internet complaints.
We whinge online for money.
But advertising revenue is collapsing.
If there's no oil companies.
If there's no rental agencies.
If there's no products.
If there's nothing to sell, there's nothing to advertise.
At a certain point, even I lose my job.
And then when people like me stop producing, all of a sudden there's a major backlog in internet service providers.
YouTube has already been sending people home because of the pandemic.
It's an artificial collapse of the economy.
But it's a collapse of the economy nonetheless.
Let's read a little bit more and then I'll keep ranting about the economy.
Unprecedented stress in the oil industry.
Signs of stress abound in the oil patch.
The S&P 500's energy sector has lost more than 40% of its value this year, despite the dramatic rebound in the overall stock market over the past month.
Whiting Petroleum became the first domino to fall when the former shale star filed for Chapter 11 protection on April 2nd, but it certainly won't be the last.
Rystad's $20 scenario predicts more than $70 billion of oil company debt will get reorganized in bankruptcy, followed by $177 billion in 2021.
And that only accounts for exploration and production companies, not the servicing industries that provides the tools and manpower to drillers.
Oh man.
The tools?
They're out.
The people who make the tools, they're out.
Their rent is out.
The milk they buy, gone.
Everything they buy, gone.
People line up at food banks more and more by the millions, and the food banks are already collapsing.
Boy, this is gonna get rowdy.
Man, I don't know what to predict.
I don't know what to expect.
I've already had a lot of people tell me it's time to bug out.
Totally legit.
Like, dude, they told me to bug out a while ago.
And I'm like, nah, nah, nah.
See, here's the thing.
Here's the thing, right?
I'm well prepared within reason.
You know, my friends and I, we got supplies.
We thought about, you know, what we're going to do as things, you know, tensions escalate and things are collapsing.
And even within all that, we still have an optimism bias.
We still don't want to just get up and leave.
I mean, we do a show here.
We have a job.
If we were to up and leave, we'd have to figure out another way.
Now I do have mobile production capabilities.
But man, with the collapse of the oil industry, because of collapse in demand, you realize it's not just going to be oil, right?
I mean, there are other natural resources we need.
The farmers are already shoving food back into the dirt because they can't do anything with it.
The milk is already being poured out and just spilled on the floor because they can't do anything with it.
And now they've got nowhere to put oil.
The train has stopped, and now it's flying off the tracks.
The toy's being produced.
The TV's being produced.
Everything will stop.
No one will buy anything.
And then what happens?
No jobs.
Total breakdown.
And then what happens when people are hungry and there's no food?
People riot for food.
I don't know what to tell you, man.
I can say is one thing.
We got too much oil, so that's not so bad.
You know, I think about these Mad Max type scenarios.
You ever see like Waterworld or something where it's like gasoline is extremely rare and hard to get?
Eh, not here.
You know, when the apocalypse happens and everyone's out of work, at least we'll have cheap gas.
Hey, we'll all be like Venezuela.
Perhaps the government will step in and start sending the food from the farms to the food banks to make sure people have food, and then you get complete communism.
But we'll have cheap gas!
So that'll be a good thing for us.
Maybe this is nothing.
Maybe it's a fluke.
I don't know.
I think war.
I do.
I think war.
I think desperation.
I think dwindling resources.
I think economic strife.
And then I think war.
There's also a possible the inverse happens.
That we all start working together over this common enemy, the coronavirus.
That could be something good.
That we decide to band together, we share resources, and it creates global unity.
Yeah, I don't think so, though.
You know, the U.S.
and many other countries, we have different cultures, and our ways of living are very, very different.
I mean, we have a constitution, we have a freedom of speech, China doesn't.
So who's going to give up?
Who's going to give in?
I don't know.
But boy, is this scary.
I'll tell you what.
You know, I think this is all predictable.
Let me end by saying this.
They say the next dominoes.
The oil crash is sort of a guessing game about which companies will be next to succumb to bankruptcy.
The most vulnerable companies are the ones that piled on too much debt, face looming debt maturities, and can't generate cash flow to even make their interest payments.
So who knows?
I mean, they're talking about oil.
Think about every other company, every other manufacturer.
Think about this.
Samsung, manufacturer of electronics.
My understanding, I could be wrong, but I've never pulled up, but they're like the most, the massive, the majority of the economy of South Korea.
What happens when no one buys TVs anymore, or phones, or computers?
Because they got no money, and they're prioritizing food instead.
What will South Korea do?
I think war is coming.
We'll see.
I got a couple more segments in a few minutes.
Stick around.
I will see you shortly.
Well, we've been talking about the end of the world and the economic collapse and war and all that really awful stuff.
But at least I can bring a little levity to the conversation.
Trump tweets satirical video of Obama shrugging off awkward Biden comments.
I could not believe it.
The madman has done it.
I love that, by the way, calling Trump the madman because like even his own supporters recognize the dude does unthinkable things.
Well, Donald Trump tweeted a video in which there are four black men, one of them being Barack Obama, are sitting in the living room watching, I think, some kind of a sporting event, football, when all of a sudden it cuts to commercial and the guys go, oh, another commercial, and it plays the clip of Joe Biden talking about little kids rubbing his legs and his hair, you know, then goes up or something, and how he loves little kids sitting in his lap.
And then the three men all very slowly look to Obama, and Obama goes, What?
Because Obama just endorsed the guy.
Let me just say that Joe Biden has been credibly accused of sexual assault, and he has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, then Barack Obama.
So, it was not produced by the campaign.
It parodies an Allstate commercial showing the insurance company's spokesman, Dennis Haysbert, watching a basketball game.
Ah, see, it was basketball.
With his friends before a commercial of Haysbert advertising, Allstate appears on the screen.
In the original ad, Haysbert's friends implore him to change the channel, which he does, only to find another Allstate ad starring himself.
In the video, Trump tweeted, Obama's head is obviously superimposed on Haysbert's, and instead of an Allstate commercial, a fake Biden ad appears on the TV when the basketball game goes to commercial.
I don't want to read this quote from Biden, man.
But he basically says the kids used to go up and reach in the pool and rub his legs down so that it was straight and watch the hair come back up again.
And then he says that he learned about roaches and learned about kids jumping on his lap and he loves kids jumping on his lap.
Fox says the ad might be fake, but uses a real quote by the former vice president from June 2017.
Yeah, we know that.
This segment isn't just to talk about Donald Trump being a madman, if not the ultimate mad lad himself, but to talk about the media and the freaky games they play.
Look, Joe Biden said these things.
He is a lunatic creep.
And he said these things.
Over the past six months, his decline has gotten exponentially worse.
And I think anyone who denies that is lying.
I'm not a medical expert.
I am not a doctor.
But I can tell you this.
I've watched Joe Biden debate, and I've watched him talk on TV.
And you know what I've noticed?
He can't speak.
In a recent segment on CNN, he just disappeared for 20 seconds.
20 seconds of... Yep.
Nonsensical gibberish.
And Anderson Cooper is just like, oh, what do we do as Joe Biden?
But I realized something.
You know, I was looking at Donald Trump's approval rating and what did I see?
That it goes like this.
It goes up, up, up, then down, up, up, up, then down, up, up, up, then down.
And I started thinking about the news stories that you get.
Now, if you watch my content, when Donald Trump reaches all-time highs, that's right, I'll make a video and I'll say something like, Donald Trump reaches all-time high approval rating.
These segments don't do that well.
Most people don't really care.
But when the aggregate polling has Trump at the highest he's ever been, I think it's significant because of all the negative press that comes out around him.
What the press does with this negative press is inverted.
You see, when a negative story comes out about Trump's approval rating, they run it, even if it's an individual poll.
I started realizing what the media is doing is tricking Democrats into believing they're winning because they only ever see the bad news.
Now, there's some good news for Democrats.
Their polling is up for the Senate races.
They're raising more money.
It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to win.
That I can't predict.
But think about it this way.
If a story comes out that says Donald Trump does well, does the media go nuts with it?
No, it's usually a blurb, right?
So the easy way to explain it is obviously they are reporting on it.
But I think because of the propensity of Democrats to share the negative stories, those are the ones that get highlighted and then ultimately get prioritized for ad revenue.
So I've seen stories from, say, The Hill, and it'll have like 50 shares, and it'll say, you know, Trump approval rating does, you know, breaks records.
Trump supporters will share it.
But then you look at, check out this story right here.
Everyone is in denial about November from the Washington Post.
And it's a very confusing article, but it basically says that anything Donald Trump does is pointless because he's going to lose.
At least that's my general understanding.
They say that Trump's response on the coronavirus was so bad he couldn't possibly win.
All of these stories, they actually highlight stories that are, like here's, let me read this.
He says over the weekend, the hardworking staff here at Spoiler Alerts read a lot of analysis about what the Trump administration was thinking about doing about reelection.
What all of this analysis had in common was a refusal to acknowledge some brute facts.
My personal favorite is this headline on an American press story.
Coronavirus could complicate Trump's path to reelection.
I know the AP is as straight-laced as possible in its coverage, and to be fair, the story is straightforward in describing Trump's challenges come November.
Still, this is the equivalent to a headline on December 8th, 1941 saying, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor could complicate America First's desire for isolationism.
Basically saying, it's inevitable.
You can't do anything about it.
Or it's not going to work.
Your plan's not going to work.
The New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post all ran stories over the weekend covering the Trump campaign's belief that it can attack Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as being soft on China.
This guy's writing a story that's basically saying Trump can't win because his coronavirus response was horrifying.
That's insane.
Trump for over a decade has been the anti-China candidate.
The media has reported relentlessly that Trump is scapegoating China.
So here's what the media is doing.
Go back to what I was saying about Trump's approval rating.
It's like Trump does well, Trump does well, Trump does bad.
Trump does well, Trump does well, Trump does bad.
That means you're slowly going up.
Two steps forward, one step back still means you're moving forward.
Now, as these leftists in the media only report on the step backwards, what do Democrats see?
Donald Trump does bad.
The context they're missing is that Trump's approval rating is substantially higher than it has been on average for his presidency.
It's not the highest it's ever been.
It did peak about a week or two ago.
But as they like to report that Trump is doing worse, every day they say, oh no, Trump lost his rally, Trump's approval is down.
What they're not showing you is every time Trump's approval is up.
Now, it's not necessarily the fault of the media.
Because as I mentioned, the media does report, you know, Trump going up and going down.
But it's about what's getting shared and what's getting prioritized.
It's about stories like this from the Washington Post.
It's about confirmation bias.
You see, Democrats tend to trust the media, and Republicans don't.
Democrats tend to just read left-wing mainstream outlets, and Republicans read both left- and right-wing outlets.
Moderates read slightly more left-wing outlets.
So I think what you actually see is not that Democrats read the left, it's that those who read the left or trust it tend to be Democrat because they're being fed this information.
What ends up happening?
If I have, you know, I guess it's the easy way to explain it.
If I have 10 stories saying Trump is doing well, but you only share, you know, five stories that say Trump is doing bad, you say, wow, look at all these stories saying Trump is doing bad.
He must be doing really bad.
And then if you come over to my side and I say, here's 10 stories that say Trump is doing well, and five stories that say Trump is doing bad, you go, huh, Trump's doing okay, I guess.
Not great, not the best.
That's the problem with the media.
Why does this guy think it's inevitable that Trump is going to lose?
I think that's what he's trying to say.
The dude doesn't really articulate his thoughts really well.
He says, So you're basically saying Trump's gonna lose no matter what.
narratives, they will not alter the brute facts of this campaign.
So you're basically saying Trump's going to lose no matter what.
It's funny.
I can look back at stories going to 2010 to see Trump has been strong on China.
How do you think Joe Biden's going to win when he's been credibly accused by some woman?
There's these creepy videos of him talking about little kids sitting on his lap and rubbing his legs down.
Jon Stewart of the Daily Show criticized him with a segment called the audacity of growth.
Do you just avoid all of these things?
Let me tell you.
I'm not saying that Trump is immune, but I will say if one of the principal attacks against Trump is bad behavior, Joe Biden has that in spades.
He's got a credible accusation from some woman.
I don't necessarily believe it.
I'm not a fan of these old accusations, but when we're playing by their rules, how would that not apply to Biden?
What has been the response from Joe Biden then?
The Democrats have tried to go the anti-China route, and they've been attacked by the progressives for it.
Do you think that all of a sudden now flip-flopping on the issue of China is going to be enough to win?
I think that's insane.
I think it's absolutely insane that they're now trying to out-Trump Trump.
Because Trump supporters, when given the option of, is Joe Biden, you know, going to stand strong against China?
Well, Donald Trump, they're going to be like, ah, dude, Donald Trump for a decade, yeah, he's been talking about it.
Joe Biden, I guess.
And then the progressives are going to say, Joe Biden's a racist.
He's trying to be Trumpian.
That's what we're getting.
So, look.
When Donald Trump tweets out... Here's why I showed you the first story.
Let me link this together.
You see, when I saw this tweet from Donald Trump about Joe Biden, I looked in the comments and what did I find?
Was anybody defending Joe Biden?
No.
They weren't.
Because you can't!
You can't defend this guy.
He's creepy.
What were they doing?
They were ragging on Donald Trump.
That's all you got.
So let me tell you something.
If right now the best thing you can muster in response to this tweet from Trump is that he's an immature baby, and that's what they were saying, immature baby tweet on Twitter.
And you got a guy like Joe Biden, who is seen in a video talking about little kids sitting on his lap and rubbing his legs down shortly after he was credibly accused.
Y'all got a real problem here.
I'm sorry, calling Trump immature I guess.
I agree.
But am I going to pick the diddler over the immature guy?
I'm going to pick the immature guy.
Is it the best you have to offer?
I'll tell you what.
A lot of people, they don't really watch my videos because I've said numerous times over the past several months that it's becoming easier and easier to see, you know, a path towards voting for Donald Trump.
And one of the things is, aside from the fact that he's done a pretty good job on the coronavirus, as much as the left would try to lie and say he's not, I didn't say he's perfect by no means, but you've also got Well, for one, Joe Biden.
I mean, the dude's clearly nuts who would vote for that guy.
You gotta be insane.
But the Democrats aren't making any arguments.
I'm gonna sit down right here, and I want you to tell me why I should vote for Trump or why I should vote for Joe Biden.
When Donald Trump tweets out a video of Biden, they just rag on Trump.
I'm sorry.
Insulting Trump is not an argument for Joe Biden.
And so I have to choose between the guy who can't talk straight and likes touching little kids in creepy ways and a guy with a potty mouth.
Ah, you've made no real argument for why I shouldn't vote for the potty mouth guy, but I know why I'm not gonna vote for that dude.
Now Trump, I think is a creepy guy too, in a lot of ways.
He's certainly been accused by women.
But you haven't made any arguments.
Calling him an immature baby and corrupt and all that stuff, it doesn't mean anything to me.
Come to me and tell me what your policy plan is.
I know what Trump's is.
Talking about securing the border and going up against China.
Well, he was right about China, look where we are.
What's your argument?
Oh.
You don't have one?
Orange man is bad?
Okay.
Sure.
That's not enough.
I'm sorry.
I guess we'll see how things play out.
I got one more segment coming up for you in a few minutes.
Stick around.
I will see you all shortly.
Donald Trump has been accused of mansplaining.
This is it.
He's done for.
Certainly, this will be the end of the Trump re-election campaign.
Mansplaining female reporter.
How dare he?
No, let's be serious, though.
What we're seeing now, Trump, in the story, berating female reporter and tells her to keep your voice down, please, when she pushes him on why he didn't warn people about coronavirus being a wildfire in February.
Man, we've got so much wrong with this.
First of all, we got framing.
Why didn't Italy, Spain, or literally any other country know that this was going to be really, really bad?
Donald Trump knew it was really, really bad.
I'm not going to sit here and defend the guy.
I think he could have been a bit more serious and a bit more stern and warn everybody.
But the argument is simple.
What are you going to say?
He was trying to prevent panic.
Did he do a good job of it?
I don't know.
I guess he prevented panic to such a degree they're criticizing him now for it.
The point is, We have an answer.
That's what the journalists should be doing.
Before I read you this, I want to show you this here tweet from me.
It's a response to Brian Stelter.
Brian Stelter of CNN said, Many of the most revealing exchanges at recent White House briefings have been prompted by a new generation of correspondents.
They're not taking President Trump's not-my-fault routine for an answer.
They're pressing, following up, and fact-checking in real time!
Translation, activists with press credentials are more interested in arguing with the president instead of documenting his response and fact-checking it.
Here's what a journalist should do.
Here's what I would do.
If I was in front of the president and I had a question, I would say, Mr. President, you recently stated that you were well aware of the coronavirus pandemic and that it was going to be a wildfire.
For what reason or could you comment on why you didn't then provide a warning to the American people?
Donald Trump will give his response.
I will sit quietly, and if prompted, following his statement, I will give a follow-up question.
If not, I'll say, thank you, Mr. President.
Write down what he said, fact-check what he said, and then report what the President said.
And if the President says something misleading, something that's misinformation, I will say, well, Donald Trump has explained that this is his reason.
Critics have said X, Y, and Z. The journalist's job is not to argue with the president.
The journalist's job is to report what the president says.
But instead now, all we get are people saying no.
The job of the journalist is to assert their opinion?
To argue with the president?
A new generation fact-checking?
What if the facts are in dispute?
What happened to this?
I ask you for a comment, then I ask someone else for a comment.
They don't do that anymore.
So I could ask Donald Trump, then I could ask Nancy Pelosi, and then I would show you.
I would say, Ms.
Pelosi, Donald Trump said these things.
How would you respond to that?
Or I could ask the CDC or Dr. Fauci.
If Donald Trump gives you a response, and it's got a fact-based statement where Trump says something like, there were 12, you know, foxes in the road blocking me, and you found out there were in fact only 10, you could say, Donald Trump, while said there was 12, in fact there were only 10, according to documentation by the source.
If Donald Trump says, I knew, and I didn't want to cause a panic, then saying anything else is just your opinion.
And that's all they're doing.
But now we have the proof.
In another tweet.
Reliable sources, Brian Souther says, quote, it's time for journalists to channel the public's anger and
frustration and fear and show some of that outrage on the public's behalf.
That is probably the cleverest way to admit that you are rage bait.
That you just want to be angry to trigger people's emotions to provide some kind of emotional release.
I get it.
On YouTube, it's basically the same thing.
Most of the people who watch me aren't watching me because they want to get new information.
Most people just want their biases confirmed.
Unfortunately, that's the way it is.
Now, I gotta be fair, though.
I think y'all are actually a really good audience.
Because I've said some things that are, like, not popular, and I've seen the responses from some of the more far-left or far-right factions tend not to like me.
I've seen a lot of the comments they say about my stuff.
Milk toasts, fence-sitter, other derogatory statements, refusal, you know, to take the red pill or vote for the president, insults.
It's actually surprising me to see.
That, uh, we did a poll.
Most people who are watching, you might consider this of yourself, are fairly moderate.
Willing to entertain ideas they don't normally agree with because you're all mature adults.
There are a lot of people who are more entrenched.
This is more far left and more like die-hard conservatives.
And, for obvious reasons, the criticism I've gotten from more diehard Trump supporters, ultra-conservative types, has been... I don't know how to describe it.
Like, it's criticism, it's insulting, but it's acceptable.
It's like, yeah, I get it.
The stuff from the left is, like, nonsensical gibberish about white supremacy and bigotry and stupid things.
Like, the people on the right who have criticized me have criticized me for disagreements, and they've been harsh, to say the least.
Anyway, the point is, I make content, I talk about what I feel, and you know what?
Let's be real.
Most content on YouTube is like negative something, it's like anti-something.
I often complain about the press as I am doing right now.
And so most people who don't like the media and distrust it feel an emotional satisfaction watching me rag on the press.
Now I fully understand.
Channels that do better than mine, they do really well, are the ones who insult and degrade and berate because it feels good.
People love to hear.
Look, let's go to the original story.
People love this.
Trump berating these reporters because he's putting a smack down to these people who lie all the time.
And you finally feel like you're getting justice.
It's why instant karma on Reddit.
These videos do so well to see justice delivered.
These journalists lie so often and often about you.
And so Donald Trump steps up and he says, you are fake news.
And everyone goes, yes, it feels good.
They're doing the exact same thing and they admit it.
Here, I'll tell you what, man.
Donald Trump's one man with his opinions.
Opinions he's entitled to.
The job of a journalist is not to be Donald Trump.
It's to give us the facts.
And so they claim, we're fact-checking.
No, you're not.
You're arguing with the president.
You're standing up and saying, no, no, Trump, you're wrong.
No, you're wrong.
If Trump gave you his opinion, then you accept his statement.
You publish his statement.
If his statement is wrong or misleading, you can highlight that.
But even that gets murky.
If Trump says, I was always tough on the coronavirus and always believed it to be, you know, a serious threat, what do you say to that?
Depending on which tribe you're in, you'll have two sets of answers.
The first is that Donald Trump was absolutely not soft on this.
He said it was like a bad flu.
It was going to go away.
Oh, he's lying.
The pro-Trump is that Trump, of course, was always serious about it.
He formed the task force.
He banned travel from China.
The fair assessment, the best one I can make, is that Trump did consider this a threat.
I think it's obvious.
He started the task force.
He banned travel from China.
But he could have taken it more seriously.
I definitely think so.
I don't say, more serious isn't the right way to frame it.
He could have been more somber and more serious in how he explained it to the American people.
Instead of saying, it's going to go away, don't worry about it.
He could have said, well, as a nation, we are facing a serious threat.
For the time being, we're doing everything we can to make sure things seem stable.
And I can tell you this right now, it doesn't seem like we're in serious danger and the risk is low.
And we did hear a lot of those statements.
But of course, there's pushback to that, that Trump was trying to keep people calm.
That's the best way to report it.
I think that's the best I can do, which is why a lot of people have said, I guess I do that well.
I'm not trying to convince you that Trump is good or bad.
I'm just trying to explain to you to the best of my abilities what's really happening.
People on the left who don't like me don't like that I do that.
Many of them want the lie.
They believe the ends justify the means.
Many of them are rage-bait grifters, and their whole gig is to just be that character.
Jim Acosta is the perfect caricature of fake news.
But the people on the left love it because he's delivering that catharsis to them.
When he stands up and yells at the president, they feel good, like, ooh, there he is yelling at Donald Trump, I hate that orange man!
So as long as we have hate in our hearts, then people are going to be drawn to content that gives them the emotional satisfaction.
I don't like it.
I think it's addictive.
I think it's dangerous.
Unfortunately, the onus is on the media, not on Donald Trump.
Trump is a braggart, bloviator.
He's an arrogant dude.
Come on, man.
You know it.
A lot of people love him for it.
In a lot of ways, he's been freakishly honest.
In a lot of ways, he's been freakishly dishonest.
It's a weird, weird thing.
But he's one guy.
He's allowed to be himself.
The news media is supposed to break down these things, not engage in reality TV-style fights.
What we end up seeing, you know, what Brian Seltzer points out, The reason he's saying this is because he's justifying him crying.
He published this thing where he's like, I cried for all of us and the people are angry.
We must channel that anger.
No, you don't.
That is not what you do.
That is not your job, Brian Stelter, to channel the anger of people.
It's to tell me what happened.
A dog crossed the street this morning and then the milkman drove by.
What about this?
Donald Trump was speaking at a press briefing and played a video that was criticizing the press.
The press responded in outrage and responded in kind to the president.
That's a thing that happened.
I'm not going to tell you who was right, who was better, or worse.
But what you get from them is, Donald Trump goes propaganda!
He's freaking out!
He's melting down!
Yep.
So what did I say?
I said CNN's having a meltdown.
And you know why?
I love it.
First of all, I'm an opinion guy.
It's what I do.
I do try to make sure my opinions are educated and based in fact.
And I will tell you, the reason I think CNN is having a meltdown is because Donald Trump is Donald Trump.
Calling it a meltdown?
Why?
He's being himself.
It's not melting down if he's doing what he always does.
Like, imagine if you had, like, a nuclear reactor that was- the core was always liquid.
You'd be like, it's melting down.
No, the core is always liquid.
The thorium salt reactor is melting down.
No, it's literally a liquid thorium salt reactor.
Donald Trump is doing what Trump does.
It's not a meltdown.
It's just what he does.
Now, granted, he's bombastic and there's a lot of issues with him, but when the media gets dragged into the fray, and they play right into Trump's hands, and they start crying, oh yeah, that's a meltdown.
At least that's how I see it.
That's my opinion.
Now, of course, they have their opinions.
They say Trump is evil and all these other things, but I'll tell you what, man.
I don't understand how we can exist in a place where Politico says Trump is an authoritarian weak man who won't use authority, Huffington Post then writes a story saying Trump is running the country like a dictatorship, and then the New York Times writes that Trump pushes an anti-governmental message.
You can't live in that reality because there's no cohesive structure to it.
None of it makes sense.
So, cognitive dissonance will reign supreme on that side of things.
Over on the Trump side of things, there's a pretty much consensus on what objective reality is.
The orange man—many diehard Trump supporters say Trump is the best.
Then you have more moderates who say, you know, Trump's kind of bad, but he's not that bad.
And, you know, to some people, they say he's worth voting for because the economy is doing well.
And we all know the media lies.
We all know Fox News has its faults.
And we all know that every other media outlet has its faults.
Seems like we're in the more rational, reasonable position.
So here's what I'll wrap up by saying.
It feels good when Trump rags on these reporters.
I get it.
And that's probably why you clicked it.
But I try to do a good job of at least trying to break down what's happening so my kind of will be a little different.
But look, I get it, man.
We're all playing the same game.
I'll say it a million times.
I'm just a guy with an opinion.
In the end, my final assessment is, conservatives seem to be more open to hearing contradictory opinion and argue against it.
They love it.
I get messages from conservatives all the time, smack-talking me, telling me I'm stupid, and saying, you know, like, here's why you're wrong.
The left, however, goes for violence, insults, ad hominem, or just outright doesn't engage at all.
What do you expect then?
I can have, as I've always done, I can have an argument with a conservative.
That's been life growing up, but the left has been corrupted by this fringe ideology and it's just become garbage.
And the media has fallen victim to it.
Maybe it's Trump's fault.
You know, maybe Trump was the catalyst for this ridiculous behavior.
But there's no excuse for the media doing this.
Because Trump can be a nasty, you know, bad man all day and night.
It's my choice whether or not I become a nasty bad man back at him.
All these journalists Well, they should know better.
