Trump Announces Ban On All Immigration, But Its A TRAP And Democrats Have Fallen Right Into it
Trump Announces Ban On All Immigration, But Its A TRAP And Democrats Have Fallen Right Into it. Last night president Donald Trump announces he would sign an executive order banning all immigration into the US. Almost immediately democrats and media pundits called this a distraction. Trump had done such a bad job lately he needed to distract the public with unrelated but crazy policy, right?NoThe Democrats have been running ads against trump calling him weak on China and ineffective. Biden's latest ad said Trump's travel ban didn't go far enough so Trump responds in perfect Trump fashion.Total immigration ban.This isn't a distraction, it is the opposite.Trump wants the spotlight on him, he wants to be seen as taking drastic action, of going too far.So later when they run ads claiming he failed he will say the Democrats attacked him for suspended travel, he is one upping the Democrats.Republicans face a potential uphill battle in November in the House and Senate but one thing they have is unity, Democrats not so much.I guess we can only wait and see.
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President Donald Trump has announced he plans to suspend all immigration into the United States.
And almost immediately, Democrats have called him the xenophobe in chief.
They have smeared him.
They say this is a distraction.
Donald Trump failed on the coronavirus, and now he's trying to distract all of us.
Or, some say that maybe it's because oil prices are collapsing, the economy is in dire straits, and Trump must distract us from what's really happening.
The classic Donald Trump move.
And while I'll admit, It actually is a classic Donald Trump move to tweet something bombastic out to try and distract us.
There's another point that should be made here.
Donald Trump may actually be just taking advantage of the chaos.
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has been able to do a bunch of things he's wanted to do.
Maybe not necessarily always wanted to do, but certainly things he wants to do, and no one stood in his way.
In fact, they argued he should use more executive authority.
But here's where it gets funny.
Donald Trump suspended travel from China to the U.S.
I believe this was January 31st.
And the Democrats and the media said, Donald Trump goes too far with his travel ban.
Well, only a few days ago, we heard from Bill Maher and many other people over the past several weeks saying, Donald Trump's travel ban doesn't go too far enough.
So sure enough, when Donald Trump then expands this to the logical conclusion, ain't nobody coming in this country, they now call him a xenophobe.
There's clearly nothing this guy can do that they're going to agree with.
Now, you can argue immigration and travel bans are very different, and that's fair.
But if you're gonna complain that people can still come into this country because they have passports, which is what many of these Democrats were doing, well then don't be surprised when Trump says, you want it, you got it, we're gonna shut it all down.
They say he's just being xenophobic.
But you called him xenophobic when he banned travel from China, and now we have the coronavirus pandemic, you're calling him xenophobic again?
If every single thing he does is wrong, certainly you must be wrong, because Trump should be right on some things, right?
Here's what I find funny.
When they claim this is a distraction because of the coronavirus, they mention, you know, I got one story from the Washington Post that Donald Trump's polls are falling.
And we've seen this from CNN to the New York Times, Trump's worst polling ever, worst polling ever.
And it's interesting because Donald Trump's polling is actually pretty good.
It's slowly trending up, it dips, it rises, it slowly is going up.
And even Joe Biden is adopting Trump's rhetoric on the travel bans.
And some in media at the Atlantic are calling him out saying, Why would Joe Biden try and beat Trump on China?
Trump's been tough on China for a decade.
So now we have this very confusing Democrat narrative.
Donald Trump will be suspending immigration, so he's a xenophobe, but Joe Biden agrees that he should have banned more people, so he's weak?
Look, man, I don't know what you think is really going on.
I don't know what you want the man to do, but I'll tell you one thing.
Y'all are confusing me.
So here's what we're gonna do.
Let's break down what the New York Times says about Donald Trump's intentions with suspending travel, and then we'll work through what's going on with the latest cycle with commercial ads of Joe Biden.
I mentioned this a couple days ago, Joe Biden now accidentally going full MAGA.
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you would like to support my work.
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But let's get to the news.
Trump plans to suspend immigration to the U.S.
The president portrayed the measure, his most wide-ranging attempt yet to seal off the country from the world, as a bid to save Americans' jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic.
I mean, that actually makes sense, right?
Unemployment is through the roof.
We probably shouldn't have more people coming in to take our jobs.
Now, I don't know about tourism immigration or marriage immigration, but let's read.
The New York Times reports President Trump said on Monday evening that he intended to close the United States to people trying to immigrate into the country to live and work, a drastic move that he said would protect American workers from foreign competition once the nation's economy began to recover from the shutdown caused by the coronavirus.
In light of the attack from the invisible enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our great American citizens, I will be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has used health concerns to justify aggressively restricting immigration.
Even before the tweet, it had expanded travel restrictions, slowed visa processing, and moved to swiftly bar asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants from entering the country.
Alarming immigration advocates who have said that Mr. Trump and his advisors are using a global pandemic to further hardline immigration policies.
Full stop right there.
They're calling it a distraction.
They're saying Trump is xenophobe.
But this has been Trump's agenda the whole time.
Now, you can insult him and call him hard-line, far-right, whatever.
But it seems to me that Trump isn't necessarily distracting us, although it is a key Trump move to do.
Seems like Trump is taking advantage.
And you know what?
He's kind of rubbing it in their faces.
You want to complain doesn't do enough?
He'll go all the way.
And now you're going to complain about that?
He's just made you look like a fool.
And the American people are going to see it.
Is this a distraction?
You know, at first I said it really does seem like Trump's making a desperate move, throwing red meat because the oil prices are tanking and this is bad.
There's going to be a major ripple effect, crashing our economy.
And then I actually read how the New York Times reported it and I was like, wow.
It actually seems like Trump is just doing what he's been doing, and I've said this from the get-go.
Trump is getting so much of what he wants.
He's shut down the borders of Canada and Mexico.
So you want to talk about Trump securing the borders, he's bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., things he's wanted to do for a long time.
The president is getting what he wants.
You can call him all the names in the world, and even if this results in Donald Trump losing in November, he's going to make ridiculous gains in a short amount of time.
Let's read more.
They say, the president's late night announcement on Monday signals his most wide-ranging attempt
yet to seal off the country from the rest of the world.
A formal order temporarily barring the provision of new green cards and work visas could come
as early as the next few days, according to several people familiar with the plan.
So I guess if there's no, well, just green cards and work visas, so tourists can still come?
I'm pretty sure they can't, but let's read on.
Under such an executive order, the Trump administration would no longer approve any applications from foreigners to live and work in the United States for an undetermined period of time, effectively shutting down the legal immigration system in the same way the president has long advocated closing the borders to illegal immigration.
It was not immediately clear what legal basis Mr. Trump would claim to justify shutting down most immigration.
Workers who have for years received visas to perform specialized jobs in the U.S.
would also be denied permission to arrive, though some workers in some industries deemed critical could be exempted from the ban.
The people familiar with the president's discussion said, The number of visas issued to foreigners abroad looking to
immigrate in the United States has declined by about 25 percent to 462,444 in the 2019 fiscal
year, from 617,752 in 2016.
Several people familiar with the president's plans at the Department of Homeland Security
was separately weighing a large expansion of travel restrictions
that already prohibited travelers from Europe and China.
The restrictions would significantly shrink the number of people able to come to the United States for short-term visits, and it's already gotten a lot harder.
So again, I'm going to throw it back to the criticisms when they insult Trump and say he's not going far enough.
Bill Maher just did it.
He was complaining that American passport holders... Maybe he just didn't understand what he was saying.
But Bill Maher threw this line out that many people have in media, that 40,000 people came from China after this ban.
And he said it wasn't airtight.
Well, that's a problem beyond the Trump administration.
I mean, it was people with green cards and passports.
They're allowed to enter.
They were arguing.
Bill Maher was arguing Trump didn't go far enough.
Now he's going as far as he can.
Even Just regular travel, it seems.
They say Mr. Trump and his advisors have argued inside the White House that doing more to bar people from other countries from coming to the United States, either for short-term visits or to live and work in the country for longer periods, could help limit the number of infected people who arrive from potential coronavirus hotspots around the world, and they argue that it could relieve pressure on the American healthcare system.
I'm sorry.
They're right.
You can criticize the motivations, the ideology, whatever, but China has seen reinfections as people return from abroad.
Now, that's even further than what Trump is saying, because that's China's own citizens.
But there have been tourists... I don't know if they're necessarily tourists, but there have been people coming back to China after they lifted lockdown who have been infected, and there have been reinfections.
That resulted in China actually locking down again.
If you look at that and look at this in context, I would say Donald Trump's taking advantage and he's getting a lot of what he wants, but there are real reasons to do what he's doing.
Not that I necessarily agree completely if this goes beyond the short term.
Thinking long term, we really got to make sure that these policies and these emergency powers are restricted, are limited.
They say Mr. Trump's primary focus appears to be on protecting American workers as the virus ravages what had been a rapidly growing job market.
Even before the pandemic, the president and some of his most hardline advisors had been eager to reduce legal immigration, arguing that Mr. Trump's America First campaign pledge should be seen as protecting native-born Americans from having to compete with foreign workers.
This is interesting to come from CNN.
I'm sorry, from the New York Times.
It's interesting because the New York Times has been, I don't know, critical of the president and his policies and his agendas.
But to say right here that it seems like his focus is protecting American workers, I actually agree.
The Democrats don't, however.
Now let's get into the fun stuff.
Xenophobe-in-chief Democrats blast Trump's plan to suspend immigration to the U.S.
The president could sign an executive order closing off the country as early as next week.
This is from NBC News.
Congressional Democrats slammed President Donald Trump after he announced that he plans to suspend immigration to the U.S., arguing that such a move does nothing to protect Americans from the coronavirus and deflects attention away from his handling of the outbreak.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries tweeted that Trump is the xenophobe-in-chief, and he's got periods between each word.
This action is not only an attempt to divert attention away from Trump's failures to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, but an authoritarian-like move to take advantage of a crisis and advance his anti-immigrant agenda.
We must come together to reject his division, tweeted Rep.
Joaquin Castro of Texas, Democrat, Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
I actually agree with the second part of that.
I don't think it's... Well, you could argue both.
I think it's fair.
It depends on how critical you get.
Does Trump really need to distract us from the coronavirus?
No, not at all.
His approval rating has been going up, up, up.
Up until the media actually took attention away.
I would argue that the media was successful in their campaign when they said, stop showing Trump's press briefings because Trump was seeing, he was seeing great numbers.
Take a look at this.
While Trump was doing his press briefings, his approval rating started from 40 on March 7th and peaked around 50.6 going positive with his disapproval down.
If anything, Trump wants more attention on the things he's doing to protect us from the coronavirus, which is why I think it's not a distraction.
Donald Trump's announcement of an immigration ban is highlighting what he's doing.
I think he wants the attention back.
Look, if the media came out and said Donald Trump didn't go far enough, so he goes as far as he can, he's gonna get the press attention.
The New York Times says he's trying to protect American workers.
This is good for the president.
Call him a xenophobe, call him whatever you want, but if you keep ignoring the fact that he's making these gains, you will lose.
The Democrats are fractured, and I think that's why they will lose.
We got this tweet from Steven D'Souza, who says, On Trump tweeting about suspending immigration, Bill de Blasio
says, what I saw was bluntly and very sadly just a brazen
political move by the president.
He's going to his all time favorite distraction, immigration,
which he uses as a campaign weapon all the time. You don't get it. He does distract.
He does.
But he wants the attention right now.
He wants people to see what he's doing.
Trump did a whole video series trying to prove he was taking this seriously.
And the latest criticism is that he didn't go far enough.
Let me show you this article.
The utter futility of Biden's China rhetoric.
The Democratic candidate tries to outhawk Trump, but trying to beat Republicans at their own game is pointless, even dangerous.
Joe Biden just came out with an ad saying Donald Trump didn't do enough to restrict travel.
Donald Trump flips the script and goes all the way out.
They call it a distraction.
They're blind from what just happened.
Their own party tried claiming that Trump didn't do enough.
Trump just stole the narrative back.
And in the eyes of the American people, as reported by the New York Times, Trump is actually helping the American workers now.
Here's what the Atlantic writes about Joe Biden.
If he wants to attack Donald Trump's response to COVID-19, Joe Biden has an embarrassment of options.
The presumptive Democratic nominee could slam Trump for ignoring his own advisor's warning about the potential severity of the virus.
Biden could skewer the president for his administration's inability to develop a coronavirus test.
He could blast the Trump administration for failing to adequately stockpile PPE.
He could condemn the large quantities of misinformation that Trump has propagated about the disease.
For the moment, however, Biden has chosen a different angle.
He's attacking Trump for knuckling under to Beijing.
Yesterday, the Biden campaign unveiled an ad filled with menacing images of Chinese soldiers claiming that Trump rolled over for the Chinese.
It follows another spot paid for by the pro-Biden super PAC, American Bridge 21st Century, depicting the incumbent as a stooge for Beijing.
Everyone knew they lied about the virus.
China, a narrator declares, against the backdrop of a fluttering Chinese flag.
President Trump gave China his trust.
On Friday, the Biden advisor, Anthony Blinken, told reporters that the President praised China and President Xi more than 15 times.
Sure, you can argue the President was trying to be diplomatic.
But Donald Trump wants to suspend funding for the World Health Organization because of the misinformation that slowed our response down as well as Europe's response down.
I don't get what Biden thinks he's doing because he's propping up Trump's message.
So I ask you again, do you think Donald Trump is trying to distract everybody from what he's doing?
Or do you think he's like ripping his shirt open and yelling like Alex Jones and waving a flag saying, look at me, I'm doing something about this.
If the attacks against him are that he doesn't do enough, he just went well beyond.
Here's what they write.
The Biden camp's logic is easy to understand. Trump has made China the primary scapegoat
for his failures. His supporters are running ads under the hashtag Beijing Biden.
So Biden and his strategists are meeting fire with fire.
They're answering the charge that the former vice president is soft on China by saying that
Trump is This is absolutely insane.
I'm sorry, man.
They go on.
This form of ideological jujitsu comes naturally to Democrats of Biden's generation, who in the 1990s tried to turn the tables on Republicans who had been painting them as anti-business, anti-military, and pro-criminal during the Nixon and Reagan eras.
In 92, Bill Clinton ran for president, promising to cut taxes.
In 2000, Al Gore proposed to spend more on the military than George W. Bush.
In 1994, after successfully shepherding Clinton's crime bill through the Senate, Biden crowed, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties.
The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 125,000 new state prison cells.
I'd like to see the conservative wing of the Democratic Party.
Wow!
You know what that says to me?
I've often pointed out that Donald Trump ran as a moderate.
That's not my opinion.
That was coming from Matthew Iglesias of Vox.com.
When Trump stepped up to run for president and said border security, something Democrats had long championed, he was playing by their strategy, to take their narrative and use it, forcing them to counter.
And thus the joke is, if Donald Trump came out in support of oxygen, Democrats would hold their breaths.
More worryingly, if Donald Trump cured cancer, they'd find a way to spin it negative, and then you have this potential treatment for COVID, and yeah, the media and Democrats sure made it negative.
But what we're seeing from here in this Atlantic story is that it's par for the course for Democrats.
Donald Trump just used the same strategy against them, and they responded the exact same way.
Or, I'm sorry, they responded in the opposite.
Instead of adopting those policies to try and win them over, they went all the way in the other direction.
Now Joe Biden is trying to go back to the way things used to be.
I'm going to take Trump's policy and beat him at his own game.
This has to be the most insane thing I have ever seen, as I mentioned in a previous video.
But I'm not going to harp too much on this, because you get the point.
I did a whole video on this.
Check it out.
YouTube.com slash TimCast, the channel you're on.
I got the whole video about it.
They're nuts.
Let's talk about Donald Trump's strategy and how he's going to go after the Democrats.
Yes, he's going after Joe Biden.
Yes, he's saying Biden is soft on China.
But man, do you got to see this commercial?
This is what I call shockingly good strategy.
Nancy Antoinette, Trump campaign ad, hammers Pelosi for having ice cream show-and-tell while small businesses ran out of money.
When I saw that Joe Biden commercial trying to claim that Biden was better on China, I laughed.
Trump has been smeared as a xenophobe for his harshness against China.
You think you're gonna beat that message?
I'm sorry, you're out of your mind.
Now, here's what we get.
Nancy Pelosi went on some late night show with, I think James Corden is his name, and she says something like, the Republicans wanted a quarter trillion dollars in 48 hours, not gonna happen.
She then shows off her $24,000 freezers full of all this really expensive ice cream, and she's like, I don't know what I would do without ice cream, hee hee hee!
The Trump campaign put a commercial together showing regular working Americans, people who have lost their jobs, these people show off their empty freezers saying, I don't know how long, you know, we can last.
We're suffering.
We need help.
And it shows Nancy Pelosi laughing and then it says, quote, let them eat ice cream.
Nancy Antoinette.
Now that is a slam dunk political ad.
I'm sorry.
Look, man, this is just reality.
Joe Biden thought he was going to beat Trump in his own game.
You're nuts.
But pointing out these Democrats are millionaire elitists, and Nancy Pelosi blocked the stimulus package, the expansion, which would have given small business loans another $250 billion.
They ran out, by the way.
He shows her laughing, eating ice cream, while people around her suffer, and she says no to the money they need to stay in business.
Yikes, man.
That is powerful messaging, I tell you what.
Now look, Joe Biden can't speak properly.
The media is lying and pretending this guy has the capabilities to be the president.
He mumbles and rambles on TV, and it's sad and scary.
And the media runs defense.
They complete his stories for him.
He'll mumble and mutter, and then some story will pop up saying Joe Biden has astounding plan to combat, you know, this, blah, blah, blah.
Here's Joe Biden's plan for Medicare.
It's not his.
The dude can't articulate these thoughts.
It's his team doing it.
Why they're defending him, I have no idea.
I don't think Joe Biden can win, but there is one way he might.
I don't believe Joe Biden's really running.
He's a placeholder for his VP.
Many people suspect as much.
Some people have jokingly said, it's going to be Hillary Clinton.
I don't think it's going to be Hillary Clinton.
But there is one person it could potentially be.
And I think if he chooses this person, you probably have already guessed by now, he could actually win.
And I seriously mean it.
If it's true that Joe Biden is a placeholder, and Michelle Obama joined his ticket, you would see Obama-Biden, then Trump-Pence, then Biden-Obama.
I think that would win.
People really like the Obamas.
They really, really do.
They are still some of the most popular politicians in the country, and I get it.
Conservatives don't.
But you've got to understand, a lot of people would flock full speed to Michelle Obama.
Will she actually take it?
I don't know.
And it's not a guarantee they're gonna win.
Some people might say we're well past this.
You know, 9.4 million people, I believe, who voted for Obama switched to Donald Trump.
Would they switch back with Biden in the driver's seat?
I don't know about that.
I do believe Michelle Obama will rally the Democrats, will help unite the party, and it would be one of the smartest things the Democrats can do.
So Trump supporters, take this seriously.
Now, Joe Biden says he'd take her in a heartbeat.
That's the quote.
But he does go on to say, I don't think she has any desire to live near the White House again.
Biden said he's still in the process of deciding whom to pick.
He again committed to choosing a woman, but did not commit to choosing a woman of color.
He says, I'll commit to that.
It will be a woman because it is very important that my administration look like the public, look like the nation.
And there will be committed that there will be a woman of color on the Supreme Court.
That doesn't mean there won't be a Vice President as well.
The former Vice President, who served under former President Obama, has previously said he would like Michelle Obama as his running mate.
At an Iowa campaign stop in January, he said he sure would like Michelle to be the Vice President.
She's a woman.
A woman of color.
And she's an Obama.
That's a path to victory for the Democrats.
Will they take it?
I don't know.
Because Biden is in the driver's seat.
Now I'm gonna get a little dark.
Joe Biden, I'm not saying this to be callous, but I don't know how much time the man has left.
And I mean that honestly.
He's beyond the average life expectancy.
I'm not trying to be mean.
I think it's time for the man to retire.
He's having trouble speaking.
He doesn't have the ability to do this.
So maybe people won't see him as in the driver's seat, but then who would be the VP?
If Joe Biden appoints or chooses Michelle Obama as his running mate and then bows out due to health issues, does she just become the Democratic nominee and then pick a new vice president?
Is it possible that she could be the first female president?
I mean, it is, but that would be one of the most outrageous circumstances we've ever seen in this country.
The president, too old, gets chosen, gets nominated, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the presidential nominee, then bows out, his VP, the wife of the last, the previous administration before the current one, that would be nuts.
But let me show you one last funny thing.
And it kind of breaks my heart to see it, but hey, what do you expect?
This is a new poll.
National correspondent for NBC News, Steve Kornacki, tweets.
In a new poll, 41% of Democrats say it bothers them that their nominee will be a white male in his 70s, and 59% say it doesn't, by race.
White people say 49% it does bother them.
51% say it doesn't.
Black people say it bothers them only 28%, and only 30% of Hispanics are bothered by this.
You have a very large contingent of white people who are, well, I'm gonna say bigoted, to say the least.
They are bothered that the nominee will be a white male in his 70s.
Well, okay, let me be fair.
I'm bothered by that too.
Not the white male thing.
The 70s thing.
I think it's time the media pony up.
Just admit to it.
Stop playing these games.
Joe Biden can't do it.
Everything you've thrown at Donald Trump, you have missed.
You have missed his plan, his plot.
You can't see it.
Donald Trump might not be playing 4D chess, but he's certainly playing chess while the Democrats are playing checkers.
I'm not going to pretend like Trump is this super genius mastermind, but he's got a strategy.
He's got smart people around him, and what he's done has worked so far.
Now it is true that Trump is seeing his polls go down, alright?
A story from the Washington Post.
Most rate Trump's coronavirus response negatively and expect crowds will be unsafe until summer.
This is from a Washington Post University of Maryland poll.
But it's one poll, and I'm very careful to highlight just one poll.
Because the truth is, while Trump may see bad news, ultimately his polling is still trending upward.
It's fluctuated greatly.
In the past couple of weeks because of COVID.
But while Trump was speaking to the public, his polls were skyrocketing.
So the media cut that off.
They realized it was working.
So they called him a liar.
They said, because of this, we won't show it anymore.
Well, we know that the New York Times lied to protect Biden.
We know CNN lied about Chris Cuomo being in lockdown.
So who am I supposed to trust right now?
Honestly, I couldn't tell you.
But Trump has a higher approval rating, according to Gout, than the media does.
So yeah.
And according to, I believe, CBS, Trump's trustworthiness is one point higher than the media.
So they cut him off.
I think Trump wants the attention.
I think he's gonna get it.
And I think that's the immigration plan.
Let them call it xenophobic.
Let them call it a distraction.
But Trump has been winning this whole time.
Here's the proof.
When he got elected, the media went after him.
His polls were in the high 30s, low 40s.
Over the past several years, Trump has been winning over the public and his approval rating has been climbing.
So, if Donald Trump was able to win with 46.3% approval in 2016, and he peaked around 47.4% recently, or higher, I believe, 47.4%, 47.3%, we'll see how things play out in the next several months.
If we come out of this one unscathed, Donald Trump will be, they'll look to him like a hero.
It's also possible that if we're stuck in this disaster, people will be too scared to see change, and they'll say, Trump's gotta see this through.
That's the battle.
It's not the Democrats versus Trump right now.
It's Trump versus the media.
The media is finishing Biden's sentences for him, because the man can't speak.
The media is smearing Trump, taking him off the air.
It's the media versus Trump come November.
We'll see how things play out.
Thanks for hanging out.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash Timcast News.
It is a different channel.
And I will just lightly address, you may have noticed I'm in the van, because I'm traveling right now in the van.
It's gonna be a lot of fun.
Thanks for hanging out.
I will see you all in the next segment.
The world is not fair.
People in power do not want to give up their power.
And people in power at various companies and in government do everything they can to protect each other.
On the front page of YouTube.com, as I've noted several times in the past few videos, you will see mainstream authoritative sources popping up.
This includes channels like CNN, who get hundreds of millions of views because YouTube props them up, because YouTube gives them exclusive interviews, because YouTube bends the knee.
They want to make sure they can get sweet, juicy advertisers, too, so they throw us under the bus.
They tell me I'm not allowed to talk about certain news items, and then when the mainstream press talks about it, YouTube doesn't care.
But I can't repeat what they say.
In fact, there is a name.
I say Voldemort, because I can't say the guy's actual name, because YouTube will ban me, even though many news networks, including C-SPAN, have already said the guy's name.
Now, CNN takes the cake in terms of being evil, liars, and well-connected.
You see, they get propped up, they get hundreds of millions of views, and they pump out fake news all day and night.
This is one of the most infuriating things in the news that I've seen in some time.
Chris Cuomo has been quarantined for some time now, I think like three or four weeks.
The only problem?
He's not really quarantined.
And we know he's not quarantined.
You see, Chris Cuomo and his family and some other woman, we don't necessarily know who these people were, it was two women and three kids, took a half an hour trip to a Hamptons property, which was currently under construction.
A dude on a bike rode by and saw Chris Cuomo and said, whoa, isn't that guy supposed to be quarantined?
And Chris Cuomo apparently started yelling at him, hey, who are you?
Chris Cuomo then goes on his Sirius XM radio show complaining about his job, saying he doesn't like what he does, he thinks it's ridiculous and all this other nonsense, but he confirms the bicycle encounter, saying, if some guy in a bike comes up, I want to be able to tell him to go shut up and go to hell and all that stuff.
Thus confirming, corroborating, what the guy on the bike said.
I mean, where else would Chris Cuomo encounter a guy on a bike?
Unless he was at, I mean, I certainly don't think he was sitting on his porch.
No, he went out on a trip.
He wasn't isolated, he lied.
Now, I'll tell you what.
If you want to claim you're under quarantine, and then secretly go off for Easter Sunday, Checking out your properties?
Fine, whatever.
The problem I have is that CNN won't admit it.
The following day, Chris Cuomo's like, I just can't wait to get out of this basement.
It's a lie.
They're all lying.
Let me walk you through the lies.
Check out this tweet from Cuomo Primetime yesterday at 9.38 p.m.
Here's the very moment Chris Cuomo emerged from his basement where he's been riding out coronavirus for the last several weeks.
Aw, look at the poor man.
I absolutely love this.
He emerges.
Let me see if I actually get to play.
Maybe not.
So they actually film him walking out of his basement.
He's like, this is the moment I've been... Okay, here we go.
Okay, I think I got it.
Yeah, so there he is.
Walks out of the basement.
He's all like, this is the moment I've been waiting for.
He then walks up to his wife.
She puts her hands up.
He gives her like a surfs up thing.
Can't touch you because you might be sick.
Fake news.
We all know it.
And I love that whenever, because I follow Stixhexenhammer, I don't know if you guys know him.
You probably all do.
Stixhexenhammer666.
Because I follow him on Twitter, his replies are always the top.
But he responds to this tweet, I rate this claim pants on fire.
That's right.
CNN lied.
And everyone knows it.
Here's a story from Fox News.
CNN's Chris Cuomo's re-emergence claim from coronavirus quarantine gets panned on social media.
Where is the great Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, media critics who often just rag on Fox News for being fake news?
Where are they?
Peddlers of fake news.
You know what, man?
I am reticent to say the word evil, but I must.
Now, morally and philosophically, I'm not someone who typically throws around the word evil because there's so much subjective morality.
I don't think all morality is subjective.
There are certain things that we almost entirely and exclusively agree on.
Like, you know, killing is bad.
But there are some people who hold moral philosophies where they think the ends justify the means, they are justified in lying because they're the heroes.
There are far-left activist groups that think they're entitled to use violence, they're entitled to use manipulation.
There are religious groups who feel the same way.
Well, CNN isn't doing that.
CNN is selling you.
You, the viewer, are their product, and they sell you to advertisers.
So they use fake news, reality TV trash to make money.
Now, the reason why I say evil?
CNN is both simultaneously telling you not to watch other channels like Brian Stelter has done.
They're telling you they're the fact checkers bringing you the real news while putting out fake news to manipulate you.
And it breaks my heart because there are so many people who are washed up in this stuff.
Can you believe not just CNN, but all these outlets still pretending like Joe Biden is mentally available?
Like he has the ability to communicate and be the president?
This is the craziest thing to me, outside of the Cuomo stuff.
That you get Joe Biden, who clearly can't finish a sentence.
I mean, the dude was on CNN, and he blanked out for like 20 seconds.
And what the media then does, is when Joe Biden grumbles and rambles with gibberish, they then piece together and say what they think he was intending to say.
They cover for him.
Evil.
They will tell you, Donald Trump lies all day every night.
Well, of course, come on.
Donald Trump lies.
He's a politician.
But is he really that bad?
Oh, of course not.
They're lying.
They are lying about literally everything.
So while there are real reasons to criticize Trump as administration, they once tried claiming that one of the dudes who worked for him was making a white power hand gesture because he was fixing his jacket.
That's the evil of CNN.
Now look, everybody has their opinions.
You come to my channels, you'll see my opinions.
But I'm not here to lie to you.
I'm just here to tell you how I feel.
And what makes this all so much worse is that CNN... I'm sorry, that YouTube protects them.
CNN should have no ratings.
Their ratings are in the gutter on TV.
But on YouTube, they have like 270 million views over the past month.
270 million!
That's about five times what I get.
Actually, I'm really impressed by that, so... I'm actually happy to say it's only about five times.
But it's because CNN is being propped up.
They run trash segments.
It's not news.
And they've admitted to it.
Let me see if I can... Here, let me show you the story.
CNN's Brian Stelter crawled in bed and cried over coronavirus, says it's okay to not be okay right now.
Let me show you another story.
Brooke Baldwin fighting coronavirus taught me about the gift of connection.
And what's this?
Richard Quest of CNN now saying, I have caught coronavirus.
I am blessed in that I have few symptoms, just a cough.
I am saving my prayers and thoughts for those less fortunate.
Stay in and protect lives.
Here's David Clinch and some other people, Victoria Arbiter, saying, sorry to read this, stay safe.
You know what?
Look, first and foremost, I really do think we have a serious problem with the coronavirus.
Hopefully, things get better.
You may have noticed I'm not in my studio.
I'll address that.
I'm in my van, because I'm not sure if I'd be able to fly, because we've got a serious pandemic.
So, it's actually much safer just to reduce contact by driving.
I'm driving across the country.
So, I'm doing my show on the road.
I don't believe Richard Quest, and I'm sorry to say it.
If he's sick, I really do hope he does get better.
But with Chris Cuomo lying about this, and let me show you more.
Let me show you more.
And Brooke Baldwin then saying, oh, I got sick too.
I don't believe any of it.
It's performative art.
It's reality television, and we all know it.
Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN.
I believe he's the president.
What was he doing before?
Did you know that he started The Apprentice with Donald Trump?
It's fake.
It's reality.
It's fiction.
Jim Acosta is playing a character.
He stands up.
He personifies all of the things wrong with the press.
Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy are slime.
They are evil people.
And I'm, again, I am ready to say that.
But for Brian Stelter to get up, he did a segment where he's like, don't watch The Spin, don't watch Fox News.
You gotta come to the authoritative news.
To then have YouTube prop this up when we know it is in our faces.
And they just, they run with it.
Fox News is not perfect.
They got opinion shows I'm not a big fan of.
Tucker Carlson's pretty good.
But they have straight news throughout the day.
All these other outlets have also published fake news, and it's incredible to me that it's lost on people, that they don't understand what's really going on.
It's that bad with the media.
One of the things I want to point out I find really funny is that just a few hours before Chris Cuomo claimed he was coming out of quarantine, The Washington Examiner published this op-ed by Beckett Adams.
Coronavirus spreader Chris Cuomo got a lecture for breaking quarantine and he's upset about it.
And then this was at 3.41 p.m.
And then what happens?
The tweet is from 9.38pm on the same day.
They put out complete and overt fake news.
And they know it.
Brian Stelter is now tweeting that, part of his segment, that we must channel the rage of the American people because it can't be seen.
And then I see a bunch of journalists who are supposed to be fact-checkers from companies like Storyful, saying things like, right on, Brian, that's right.
Do a rant hour on television.
There's no news anymore.
If you come to my channel, I'm going to give you my opinion.
I think first and foremost I'm doing political commentary.
But I do try very hard to make sure that my facts are sound and my sources are sound and everything is as legitimate as possible.
I want to make sure that when I have an opinion on something, it's based in reality.
CNN is doing the opposite.
They're actively lying on purpose, and they're getting away with it.
Will YouTube do anything about this?
No.
Because CNN has power, and that's all that matters.
They're a massive, multi-million, or billion-dollar company.
They're owned by, what, AT&T or whatever?
And so they'll keep doing it.
And they'll get away with it.
And they'll brag about doing it.
And they'll encourage more.
I'm not kidding when I say this.
When Brian Seltzer cries, he's not crying.
I don't believe him.
When Brooke Baldwin, look what they did.
Brooke Baldwin's an anchor for CNN.
And she comes out and she's got, you know, makeup on.
She's all nice in her house.
And she's like, you know, I really learned a lesson about coronavirus.
Let me show you this story.
See if I actually have it pulled up.
CNN host Chris Cuomo shares scary x-ray of his lungs showing excess fluid caused by the coronavirus, but no pneumonia, as he continues to broadcast from his basement during self-isolation.
Well, as we now know, this story is false.
Chris Cuomo was not really isolating.
It was all performance art.
But here's the funny thing about the story.
Excess fluid, they say.
Sanjay Gupta didn't even say that.
See, they published an x-ray of Chris Cuomo's lungs.
And there's nothing there.
Several doctors on Twitter started tweeting saying this is a normal chest x-ray.
I don't see anything.
Look what it says.
Chris Cuomo says, or the story says, he said without properly understanding what he was seeing, he was in panic.
Was he really?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent, said the x-ray did not show anything alarming, and that he did not appear to have pneumonia.
It looks pretty good.
Maybe a little bit of fluid, but not something that I would definitely call pneumonia.
Maybe a little bit of fluid.
Does that mean excess daily mail?
No, probably not.
Now, I'll give him this.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta could have hammed it up and been like, whoa, that's scary.
But it was nothing.
They planned the show.
They showed an x-ray.
Chris Cuomo says, I'm scared.
I'm so scared.
He was lying.
On Monday, April 13th, Chris Cuomo was wiping his forehead saying, I still got a fever.
It's been a couple of weeks.
And Sanjay Gupta's like, oh, I'm so sorry, Chris.
The day before, Chris Cuomo was out with presumably his family doing these things.
Here's what they go on to say.
Cuomo explained that his fever began to subside over the weekend, but he felt as though the illness had spread to his chest and he began to move around in an effort to combat the virus.
I now know that I can't just take it with this thing, he said, that when the fever spikes, you just want to curl up in a ball and stay there for the next six to seven hours, and you can't.
You've got to bundle up your clothes, you've got to start drowning yourself in fluids, you've got to take the Tylenol, and you've got to go after it.
If you don't want to get it in your lungs, you've got to force yourself to breathe.
You've got to get up off your A. You've got to walk around.
It hurts.
You don't want to do it.
Everything in your body is telling you not to do it.
It's lying to you.
And I know that now.
And the more I do, the more I push myself to do, the better I'm getting.
So I'm going to take faith in that now.
Here's what I see.
Chris Cuomo acting like his lungs hurt.
You can't get in your lungs.
It's hard to breathe.
And Sanjay Gupta's like, your lungs look totally normal.
I can respect Sanjay Gupta pointing this out.
Now, I will say, where is the media reporters of CNN?
Where are the other news outlets to call this out?
This is why I didn't want to work in media anymore.
This is why I barely want to today.
It feels like I'm trying to knock down a skyscraper with a ball peen hammer just chipping away.
And no matter what I do, I'm making no dents.
Nah, I get it, man.
A decent amount of people watch the content I produce, and I'm very grateful to all of you.
I don't care for political parties.
I don't care for who wins elections.
I care about knowing how things work.
Knowing what's going on.
That's what I like.
I grew up watching shows like Star Trek and, um, you know, Battlestar Galactica, I watched that.
Not growing up, that was like a while ago, but I watched that.
Many shows where you have this idealistic version of a future where things can be better.
And I thought to myself, the best way to solve the world's problems are first identifying the fault lines, the problems, and then once we know where they are, we can fix them.
That means we need an accurate data set.
And so, early on, I was working for non-profits, and I thought, if I go out, I can help change the world.
This was, you know, ten years ago.
And then I realized these nonprofits were lying and muddying the issues, making it harder for people to understand what the problems actually were, because these companies felt the ends justified the means.
I didn't want to have anything to do with that, so I quit.
A few years later, I started, you know, I realized we're talking to some friends and then being on the ground and doing social media, that the best thing I can do is help create accurate data sets.
By going on the ground and filming live and filming raw and uploading this stuff, people could actually look back and say, here's what happened, at least from one perspective.
When you're on the ground, when you're doing journalism, when you're covering stuff like this, people see things in many different ways.
And you've got to get all of those angles to try and figure out what's going on.
So let me tell you why I think CNN is evil.
They are the antithesis of what I hope for and what I want to do.
Do I get things wrong?
You better believe it, I get things wrong a lot.
Do I miss things?
Of course I do.
I try to find the best sources, I try to break the stories down, I try to make sure that I don't leave anything out that's important to the context of what I'm seeing.
But then we get CNN, and we get outlets like them, that do the opposite.
They try their hardest to manipulate, to create a fake version of reality.
How are we supposed to create this idealistic future?
To create all this beautiful and wonderful technology, if we can't identify what the real problems are?
When you have people like Greta Thunberg, for instance, who comes out and rants about climate change and all this stuff, But ignores these other countries like India and China.
I mean, we got to take all of these things into consideration.
But you have smear merchants, you have deceivers, liars, and their only goal is to manipulate you so they can sell your eyeballs to the highest bidder.
I make money off advertising.
I know, like everybody knows, bombastic sensationalist nonsense makes cash.
It really does.
And there's things that I could do that I don't want to do and I won't do it.
CNN has no scruples.
They'll do it.
When I worked for these big media companies, they wanted me to play this game.
I didn't want to do it.
And because of this, I ended up... well, I left.
You know, these companies never really gave up on me, because I think they understood that I have some kind of good vision for technology, methodology, where media is going, and I've been rather successful in predicting this.
Early in the day, like in 2011, I started doing mobile live streaming.
One of the first people to do it.
And it was groundbreaking.
All these journalists were cheering for it.
So all these companies wanted to hire me.
But I didn't want to use it in a way that would be sensational.
I'll give you an example.
People used to say that with live streaming, there's no way you could fake this.
It's purely live.
And I said, that's not true, man.
These news organizations can send a fake person out to say a fake thing, and you wouldn't know.
Just because you're filming live doesn't guarantee it's true.
And sure enough, what did CNN do?
During some protest, CNN used their own cameraman to pretend to be a protester supporting, I think, Hillary Clinton or something like this.
Now, I'll give some respect to Don Lemon, because he was like, uh, I know that guy.
He's a cameraman.
And the camera guy's acting was terrible.
So sometimes CNN won't play the game, but it seems like there are people at this company who do it all the time.
Now the problem is, I can look back at this and see Don Lemon call out their camera guy pretending to be a protester.
And I can say, okay, they didn't get away with that one.
And props to Don Lemon for calling it out.
I'm not a big fan of Don Lemon.
Right now we have Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, Oliver Darcy, all the producers at the highest levels.
Chris Cuomo is their big show.
They know he's full of, they know he's lying.
Now you're going to have people seeing CNN and believing it's reality.
And then we're not going to be able to actually vote on how to solve problems.
We're not going to be able to actually solve those problems.
And I look to, you know, people like Elon Musk, right?
CNN just published this ridiculous fake story about him saying that he didn't deliver any ventilators when he did.
And there's emails and tweets from people saying he did.
And then they argued the ventilators he sent because they were non-invasive weren't real ventilators.
They didn't give us any context.
They didn't tell us what was really going on.
They didn't help us understand the situation.
They just wanted to attack Elon Musk.
Why?
Elon Musk is one of the most famous people in the world.
He's a billionaire.
And it gets them ratings.
And you know why this really bothers me?
First, let me point out Elon Musk has tons of problems.
A ton of problems.
The dude kind of messes things up quite a bit.
He tweets things out, gets in trouble for them, but the dude's also building a gigantic spaceship, and that's really cool.
And while we don't want to give the dude a free pass on his screw-ups, we don't need to lie about them to make things worse.
CNN's goal is ratings.
You know, I'm blessed.
I'll tell you why I'm blessed.
So long as CNN exists, I got something to rag about, right?
You can come to my content and I can make 50 videos like, oh, CNN is doing all this stuff.
That's not what I want.
That's not my goal.
In fact, I would much prefer to just take my van off on the road and go fishing up, you know, fishing on a lake down in the woods or something.
And I brought this up several times.
I've repeatedly said, if I ever got banned, I'm not gonna go nuts, I'm gonna get in the van, I'm gonna go down to the water and just go fishing.
And just say, you know what?
And part of me is just so sick of this, because it seems like it's an impossible fight.
How am I supposed to do anything to CNN?
YouTube has got me under a boot.
YouTube says, here's what you can and can't say.
Here's what you can and can't monetize.
CNN gets all of the breaks in the world.
They get special access to advertising.
They get special access to the front page.
And they will lie in your face and spit on you because you are their product.
And YouTube says, you're the B-tier.
You?
We don't trust you.
Let me tell you a story.
There was something reported by the Associated Press, and this guy lied to the press, and it was a very obvious lie.
I reported that it was a lie.
YouTube took my video down.
Two days later, the Associated Press retracted the story, and YouTube then put my video back up a day later.
Why should I have to be working under certain special provisions, and the Associated Press does not?
I don't know.
Or CNN, I should say.
The AP gets things wrong.
That's fine.
I like the AP.
I do sometimes use CNN as a source, typically CNN.com, because that's stuff I can fact check.
But what their TV stuff is, is just fake news, reality TV, put together by Jeff Zucker.
And it's making people see a false view of the world.
It's actively making things harder for us.
It's making it harder for us to improve the world, to actually solve these problems.
It's causing panic.
And I'll give one last shout-out, because I could rant in the media for 50 years.
Bill Maher recently said, this panic porn is going to get Donald Trump re-elected.
I absolutely think so.
Because here's what they do.
They know that these stories do well.
They know that Orange Man Bad does well.
And so, the easiest way to explain it, let's say 15 polls come out.
Five of which say Donald Trump's polls go down, and ten of which say Donald Trump's polls go up.
That means you have an upward trend for Donald Trump, and that's literally what's happening.
But you'll get websites like, or companies like CNN, they'll say, once again, Donald Trump's approval rating is tanking.
And right now, there's a story from the Washington Post saying, you know, Trump is panicking because his polls are crashing.
But his polls are higher than they've ever been, in the aggregate.
Donald Trump's approval rating was in the high 30s and low 40s a year or two ago.
Today it's at 46 in the aggregate, nearing an all-time high.
It recently broke an all-time high.
So he's still doing better than he's done.
The New York Times said back in, I think, August or October, that Trump's base is bigger than it is today.
When you ignore these things and only say Orange Man bad, then regular people see the news and think, Wow, things are going really, really bad for Trump.
Because they're not seeing the good news, the things that benefit Trump, then they end up with a skewed version of reality.
So I'll tell you what, the last thing I'll say on this segment before we go, you know, you gotta watch more than just me for sure.
And I guess a lot of people have come back to me when I've suggested some other channels, progressive channels, they say, no, because these other channels are just obviously, you know, either like party loyalists or just wrong in their assessment.
Maybe.
Maybe I'm that good.
I certainly don't think so.
I think if I really was that good, I'd have 10 million followers, something like that.
Steven Crowder has way more followers than I do.
And I think there's a confirmation bias that people seek out.
Most of the people who watch my stuff tend to be moderate.
I tend to be moderate.
Makes sense, right?
So, I'm not ragging on Crowder.
I think Crowder does a fantastic job.
I think he's conservative, and I think he has his biases.
Well, I actually think he does a really good job in terms of getting his facts straight, and I think he's one of the more honest people when it comes to content.
So, you can watch... Actually, I'll do this too, because a lot of people have actually criticized me for this, saying that while I often say, like, you should go watch David Pakman or Jimmy Dore, because I'm trying to tell you to go, like, watch more progressive channels, they're like, you never recommend any conservatives!
Like, that's a good point!
So, uh, but that's not fair.
I think I recommend Styx X Enamor, like, all the time as one of the best.
He really is good.
And, uh, Steven Crowder, obviously.
You gotta watch what you can.
And that's the good thing about YouTube.
As much as I can complain about them giving these benefits to CNN, the reality is, at least I'm able to do what I'm doing.
So I'm gonna wrap it up there.
Otherwise, I'll talk for five hours.
I got so much more to go through today.
There's a lot of stuff happening.
Stick around.
Next segment will be coming up at 1 p.m.
on this channel.
And before I go, I will just briefly address this again.
I'm in the van, finally, on a cross-country trip.
We are gonna be moving very, very quickly, because I'm a crazy person.
There were fears that if I tried to fly, for one, a lot of contact.
You know, I don't want to get sick.
So this is the best way to maintain social distancing.
I'm in like a big empty parking lot at a rest stop.
Nobody's here!
Everything's shut down.
Still access to food and fuel, so it's fun.
It's probably the most fun way to do it.
It's going to be stressful, to say the least, because I've got to work, I'm working in the van, but I'm really, really glad I have this opportunity, and I'm glad that the work I do affords me the ability to have things like this.
So as much as I can be a naysayer, I can say, YouTube has been a tremendous opportunity for me.
Leaving these mainstream media companies, where I was under the rules of these companies that wanted me to lie, That's horrifying, and now with YouTube, I don't have to do that.
So while YouTube still is putting pressure on me, they afford me so much more freedom.
The reality is you always work for someone.
And right now, I can say what I want, I can do what I want, I can make a video, I cannot make a video, but I have to abide by YouTube's rules.
The one thing I promise you is that I will never ignore a high-profile, major breaking news story because YouTube says I can't talk about it.
If it means I get demonetized or banned, I'll do it.
I'll take the precautions I have to take, like sometimes I'll say Voldemort, but I did make several videos saying his name.
They told me I couldn't talk about COVID, I still made 50 plus videos, and they demonetized every single one.
We'll see how things work out in the future, but I'll leave it there.
Stick around, I'll see you all at 1pm on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out.
Some reports said that we could expect bankruptcies for hundreds of oil companies, meaning mass layoffs.
That's going to be devastation and it's going to ripple through the entirety of the economy.
It won't just stop with one industry.
What people seem to forget, particularly people like Ocasio-Cortez, as she mocks these people who lost their jobs, is that when the economy tanks and people become unemployed, People start dying.
It's not just about suicides, which is sad and scary, but it's also about people losing access to resources, people losing access to insurance.
Now, for sure, I think it's dumb that we tie insurance to our jobs, but it's also about just not having money to pay for anything.
People lose their lives.
You gotta think about what comes around these oil price crashes.
It's not just going to be the oil industry, it's going to ripple and hit everything.
Mass deflation, this is going to rapidly destabilize everything, and it's going to stress international relations, and we are sitting on the precipice of major conflict.
Now, to the main segment, where we won't talk about, Ocasio-Cortez deletes tweet, cheering oil crash that will result in scores of lost jobs.
Look, I am no fan of playing this game where, you know, Ocasio-Cortez will be the caricature of pure evil of everything we oppose.
But she is a socialist.
And you can see that she cheers in the suffering of others.
The reason I bring that up is...
So, these democratic socialist types like to say, we're not like the socialists of Venezuela, or Cuba, or Russia, we're not the communists, we're democratic socialists.
Meaning, we just want you to vote for these policies.
But they cheer and revel in the suffering of others, if it means they're getting what they want.
You can only imagine what they would do with this power.
Before I read this, I just want to say, Ocasio-Cortez has done some really great things.
She really has.
Look, you can slam her, but I do not want to prop her up as some kind of caricature.
Of all that is wrong in government, there's a lot to criticize her for.
I think she's actually pretty bad.
But she did work with Ted Cruz, or at least to some degree, on stopping the revolving door of lobbying.
That's a positive.
She's also talked about mass surveillance from social media companies.
Major positive.
And I've got another story here about her not wanting to support economic stimulus, and it's a 50-50 thing.
I think AOC is well-intentioned.
I do not think she should be held up as this caricature of evil.
We shouldn't say Ocasio-Cortez bad.
And I do believe a lot of people have Ocasio-Cortez derangement syndrome, for sure.
But she is the face of the new wave of Democrats.
And I do think she is particularly bad.
The only reason I'm giving her the compliments now is because You know, look, I make a lot of content ragging on the far left and people like AOC, and I really am not a fan of the hyper-focused Orange Man bad narratives or Ocasio-Cortez bad narratives.
I do have legitimate criticisms for her, though, so... I just want to make sure that's to the best of my abilities, what I can say.
So here's what happened, right?
The Daily Caller reports, Democratic New York Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, and then quickly deleted, comments that appeared to show adulation over the price of oil dipping below zero dollars a barrel, which will ultimately lead to job losses and more than that.
Ocasio-Cortez on Monday reacted gleefully at news. The price of oil had dropped below zero,
saying that such a milestone would mean the United States was ripe for a mass transition
to green energy. The comments appear to suggest that Ocasio-Cortez was unaware of the job losses
that would accompany the drop in price or simply didn't care. I think she just doesn't know, man.
The tweet also suggested that she didn't understand consumers would be less likely
to transition to expensive renewable energy sources while oil is cheaper than it's ever been.
This is the problem I'm talking about.
She doesn't know what she's saying or doing.
Here's what she tweeted.
In response to Brandon Smith, saying, Oil prices now at negative values, meaning oil producers have to pay people to take it off their hands and store it because when demand plunges like now, that is less expensive for them than building more storage and or shutting wells down.
She said, You absolutely love to see it.
This, along with record low interest rates, means it's the right time for a worker-led mass investment in green infrastructure to save our planet.
But this is another perfect example of what these socialists, like real socialists, end up doing.
Oh, they're well-intentioned.
They say, the farmers, the laborers on the farm, should own the property!
We should own the means of production!
So they get rid of the landowners, the farmers, who know how to farm.
And then the people who take over don't know how to run the farm, and then food dries up.
The Daily Caller brings up a really, really good point, too.
You absolutely love to see it.
See what?
The collapse of our economy, the ripple effect, which could destabilize our entire way of life and civilization and lead to World War III?
I mean, that's a rather hyperbolic way of putting it.
But yeah, this is gonna lead to dramatic tensions.
Serious.
Like, you're gonna look at all these oil-producing nations, now with negative income.
These companies, these OPEC nations, Saudi Arabia, look, they sell oil.
It's where their money comes from.
If oil's going negative, at least in this one particular, it's the May contracts, there's other contracts that are not negative, well, they're going to get desperate.
We're already seeing now Russia and other countries are suspending exports of wheat.
Tensions are running high.
But the funniest thing they bring up is that AOC doesn't realize gas is going to be cheaper than ever!
Look, all of this gas is now available.
People are going to be spending and buying, and it's going to be a lot harder to convince someone to invest the tens of thousands of dollars in personal solar when they're like, why?
Gas costs nothing!
You know, if you want to get your house fitted with solar energy, which is really, really great, it's really expensive.
If you want to create these massive solar plants and offset carbon emissions, it is really expensive.
The return on investment for this takes a long time.
This is what people like AOC don't understand when they try to implement these policies.
Oil exploration and production has a very high return on energy investment, meaning the amount of energy we put in, we get more energy out.
To build solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, whatever kind of renewable energy requires a massively larger investment of initial energy and revenue to get a smaller or longer-term benefit.
I think it's a good idea.
I think we want to get past our short-sightedness as human beings, where we often just play short-term gain games.
We do need to invest in green energy.
Now, I'm not going to revel in the fact that the economy is on the verge of collapse, because guess what?
If nobody is working, if oil isn't being sold, you use the oil to build the wind farm.
You use the oil for the trucks that come in that bring the solar panels.
If the economy is on the verge of collapse, we will never get past this.
We will end up like Mad Max.
You ever watch that?
Or Waterworld.
Everything is going to be gas-powered.
No one's going to build expensive new technologies.
When the economy collapses, they're going to fight over what we've got.
She doesn't get it.
The result is, people like AOC then end up pushing for policies that result in...
Mass death, mass harm, and mass suffering.
Let's read a little bit more.
The progressive lawmaker deleted the tweet, but not before it caught the attention of social media and was archived permanently on the internet.
Now, I'm going to be fair and say this is just her being really, really ignorant and naive.
The problem, though, is that she is in a position of power and she's pushing things like the Green New Deal.
She doesn't understand the destruction she is advocating for, and that's dangerous.
A child with a loaded gun, not something you ever want to see.
Ocasio-Cortez, outside of ousting a powerful House Democrat in the 2018 primary elections, is largely known for her Green New Deal proposal, which seeks to dramatically transition the country's energy sector away from fossil fuels and toward renewable forms of energy, such as wind and solar.
Amid the global coronavirus pandemic, oil prices plunged into the negatives on Monday, which suggests that those who have oil to sell were willing to pay others in order to get rid of it, as barrels continue to be stockpiled in any available space companies can locate.
Thousands of workers in the Houston area alone could lose their jobs amid the plunge in oil prices, with more job losses across the country to be expected.
After deleting her initial comments, she said the predicament was a turning point for the climate agenda.
This snapshot is being acknowledged as a turning point in the climate movement.
Fossil fuels are in long-term structural decline.
This, along with low interest rates, means it's the right time to create millions of jobs transitioning to renewable and clean energy, a key opportunity, she tweeted.
She is wrong.
She doesn't know what she's talking about.
If we were using wind and solar, we would not have a demand for that either.
And the price of these things would drop so dramatically we could not invest in them.
That's the problem.
What don't you get?
The reason fracking became viable is because the cost of energy had gone up to the point where the amount of money they could invest in actually doing the fracking was less than the gains they would make from the natural gas and shale or whatever they get from it.
I think it's mostly natural gas, I could be wrong.
The point is, it was not economically feasible to frack until the price became higher.
And as oil prices drop, it becomes too expensive to do fracking.
If we said, we're going to build solar panels, and wind, and geothermal, well right now, they're looking at how much money goes into it, and they're like, well, because the demand for energy, I'm not talking about oil, the demand for energy period has dropped dramatically.
We can't afford to build solar plants, because if we build them, we will get nothing.
No one will buy the energy from us.
What doesn't she get?
It's all tied together.
The reason oil is being sold off is because there's no demand for the product.
So how can you pay someone?
Well, she's a socialist, I guess, so you know what she wanted?
She wanted the government to just do it.
This brings me to the next story.
This is about the economic stimulus.
Now, a lot of people are going ham against AOC.
The Hill reports, Ocasio-Cortez comes out against interim coronavirus relief bill, and in comes the outrage.
Now, this is actually more of a 50-50 thing.
AOC is not entirely wrong.
There's a good argument to push back against her for doing this, but there is something important to talk about when it comes to these relief bills.
Now, as I said in the past, when it came to the first relief bill, the Democrats were blocking it.
And this was not the time.
We are facing a major economic crash.
Don't do it.
When it comes to the extension, the Republicans wanted to add another 250 billion dollars to the small business loans.
Should have done it.
But there are problems that should be pointed out.
I think because of the emergency, you guys got to grin and bear it and you got to understand we're going to regret this.
We don't just sit here and argue about the right way to do it.
We say just splash the water and we'll figure things out as we go.
I think that's the tough call.
Now AOC is saying she's opposing this because she wants to see more states, localities, get access to this funding as well as individuals.
And we just saw a major Well, a major mess up.
Publicly traded firms get 300 million dollars in small business loans.
Companies like Shake Shack, Potbelly, and what else?
We have Shake Shack, Potbelly, and Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.
Weird name, by the way.
But why were these major publicly traded companies that have 80 plus million dollars in their coffers getting access to the small business loans we need?
I'll throw some shade right at this program.
I think it was still the right thing to implement, and now we've seen Shake Shack has actually given back $10 million, because people were like, why are you getting this money, of all people?
Let me tell you something.
When this Paycheck Protection Program came out, I run a small business.
I got a handful of employees there.
My friends, they work with me.
They help me do a lot of these things.
And I have a responsibility to them.
I do my show, but I also am asking them to take a risk on me and my small business that they have a job, they can work for me.
I essentially poach people from other industries.
Some of you who've watched the Tim Castellaw Podcast know that, you know, Adam, who co-hosts a show with me, was doing his thing.
And I said, come out here, upend your life.
I've got a job for you.
What happens now that the revenue is crashing?
We're getting scary close to the point where we dip into the red.
I'm smart, all right?
Well, hold on.
Let me walk that back.
I don't want to brag, but I say I'm smart in the sense that I've saved money so that in the event of downturn or, say, YouTube banning me, I'm not going to put the risk on the people I'm asking to work with me.
I'm going to make sure that they're going to be taken care of.
When the Paycheck Protection Program became available, I started talking with my accountant about how do we do this.
And I'm a small business.
I don't have nearly the means of these major corporations.
So these big companies snap their fingers, their legal departments get on it, and boom!
They instantly get access to these loans.
Not me.
It was more difficult for me to figure out.
I didn't know if it was the right thing to do, what it meant in the long term, will it be a risk to my business, and I don't have the resources to just dump money on a legal team and take care of it for me.
So you end up with these major companies getting access to all this stuff.
Fair criticism.
And I'm on the short end of that.
I'm on the stick end of this whole thing, right?
I'm not enjoying what happened.
So I think it's fair that right now we're looking at the next relief package.
We need to get this, uh, so, actually let me read this for you, make sure I have the context clear, because I am still going to be criticizing AOC.
Like I said, there's some good points she's making.
It's a difficult position to figure out, you know, what's the right side?
Should we scrutinize these big businesses and say it was the fault of Senate for passing this bill in the first place?
No.
Look, $300 million went to these big companies, but $349 billion went to small businesses.
So, that was good.
We should have given them more.
We can complain about this screw-up, but to obstruct this, I think, is a bad idea.
So right now, it does make sense that we want to get, in the next relief package, more money for states, more monies for localities and individuals, definitely.
I don't think blocking it necessarily makes the most sense, because we're going to see problems no matter what we do.
The Hill reports, AOC said Monday that she opposes the latest version of an interim relief package to address the coronavirus pandemic, while acknowledging the legislation hasn't been finalized yet.
We have not seen the final text of this bill, but what I can say is that if it matches up with what has been reported, I will not support this bill personally.
It is insulting to think we can pass such a small amount of money in the context of not knowing when Congress is even going to reconvene, and pass such a small amount of money, pat ourselves on the back, and then leave town again.
I actually don't entirely disagree with that.
But the problem is, what's a small amount of money?
How much money do you need?
We don't know.
We really, really don't.
They go on to say, Seems like the number's arbitrary.
Is that enough?
to also include funds for hospitals, state and local governments, and food assistance.
According to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, the emerging measure would include $300 billion
for the Small Business Paycheck Protection Program, $50 billion for the Economic Injury
Disaster Program, $75 for hospitals, $25 for testing. They want more. Seems like the number's
arbitrary. Is that enough? I honestly don't know. Right now, the Republicans have been
trying to just increase the money going straight to small businesses, and the Democrats obstructed
That's a mistake.
Now, for that measure, period, the Democrats are completely in the wrong on this one.
They need to just get the money to the businesses, and I'm saying that as a small business owner myself.
The money's gotta come to these people so they don't get their jobs lost.
You know, Nancy Pelosi's going bragging about her ice cream.
That's... You know, not the time, man.
Really not the time.
Now, beyond that, beyond the small business loan thing, sign that.
We all agree on that.
Let that go through.
Then negotiate everything else.
And that's been the big problem.
What I believe they're talking about is muddying up the actual small business relief And that's a mistake.
People are losing their jobs.
So Michelle Caruso Cabrera, who I believe to be, and presumably the real frontrunner challenger to AOC in this upcoming primary, said, outrageous.
AOC is now opposing the latest COVID relief package, which includes critical funding for small business lending.
She needs to work with Cuomo, Pelosi, Schumer, and get a deal done now.
Enough of AOC's division, now is the time for unity.
I actually, I gotta agree with Michelle Caruso Cabrera.
While I think it's fair to give AOC credit because there were serious problems how this money went out, now really isn't the time.
And like I said, it's like a 50-50 thing, so I'm leaning more towards, you know what?
Michelle's correct.
We're in an emergency.
Things are not necessarily getting better as of right now.
They're getting worse.
Unemployment is getting worse.
People are suffering.
People are protesting.
We're either going to open things up or we're going to accept we need emergency stimulus right now.
AOC doesn't get it.
When you look at the initial tweet that I was dragging her over, reveling in the suffering of others, Naively or ignorantly, not realizing it, you can see how she really doesn't understand how obstructing this could lead to substantially more suffering.
She wants to get her ideological gains.
It's childish and immature.
AOC is inexperienced.
She lacks worldly understanding of things.
She needs to travel more.
She needs to travel the world, meet people, and understand how things really are.
She needs to go and work for some of these small businesses in middle America, not at a bar in New York City.
She needs to understand how other people live.
I know everybody's arguing, and everybody thinks there's a right and a wrong way to do things, and it's hard to know who's correct.
But here's what I see.
The Republicans just wanted to increase the fund.
It's the easiest, simple solution.
Rubber stamp, more money, put the Band-Aid on.
We'll negotiate other things later.
That makes sense to me.
The Democrats, I believe, are just trying to appear useful.
Because the Republicans were right.
Just give the small businesses the loans.
Sure, some of these big companies got money they shouldn't have gotten.
Some of them are giving it back, but it was 300 million.
I believe that was the number the AP said.
And that's awful!
That money should go to small businesses, but we had 350 billion, alright?
So it's a small fraction of what went out.
We're gonna see hiccups.
We're gonna see mistakes.
We're gonna see criticisms.
Get the businesses the money they need.
Stop sitting around and pretending like people can wait.
People are looking at empty refrigerators.
They're lining up at food banks.
I mean, we're in dire straits with the oil collapse.
The economy is crumbling like dominoes.
Get the bill done.
Now is not the time for moral grandstanding.
So listen.
I'm gonna end this again by saying what I said in the beginning.
There's a lot to criticize AOC for.
Nancy Pelosi.
Schumer.
I actually think that AOC is better than Pelosi in a lot of ways at this point.
But I think they're mostly just pretending to be useful.
AOC doesn't seem to really know where she is or where she fits in anymore.
She's been endorsing mainstream candidates.
Now is not the time.
We really got to get things done.
But she is not the caricature of evil that people make her out to be.
She's just a naive and immature person.
And that's dangerous.
Giving the power of government, giving a loaded weapon to a child is not something you want to do.
Without direct supervision.
Sure, you got a young kid, you can get them started and teach them how to use these things.
That would mean like AOC being an office assistant, not being in Congress, working for another politician to learn the ropes, not being handed a powerful weapon and just dropped in the battlefield.
Then she's gonna go around spraying.
I'll tell you what, man, there was a story about someone who gave, it was, I don't know what kind of weapon it was, but it was a small, full-auto handheld.
I guess, I don't know, I'm not a gun person, so forgive me.
They gave it to this little girl, and when she pulled the trigger, the recoil flew back.
She hit somebody in the head.
And that's what you don't want to do.
AOC has much more power than she knows what to deal with, and it's dangerous.
It really is.
I'm glad you deleted the tweet.
So, you know, look.
Pencils have erasers.
She didn't get it.
She corrected it.
I accept that.
But when you see that tweet from her, you recognize that she really doesn't get it.
You know?
She figured it out after the fact.
She's learning as she's going.
And that's fair, and that's fine.
She's young.
But she is in Congress, she's in the major leagues.
Alright, if you want to learn, put on your training wheels and go ride around and have someone watch you, otherwise you're going to fall over.
But it's like we put a little kid on a mountain bike and dropped him down a mountainside, and now we can see her bouncing around, flopping around, getting hurt.
It's going to result in the bike falling down the mountainside, hitting some pedestrians, hitting some people minding their own business.
What she does will result in massive repercussions.
It's not just her though.
It's also Pelosi.
You've got some of the oldest and some of the youngest, and it is just... I don't know, man.
It's getting crazy.
Hopefully it works out for the best, but it's time to get this relief package pushed through.
The businesses... We can't wait.
I see things are reopening around the country, so that's good.
I guess we'll see how it plays out.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash Timcast.
It is a different channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you all then.
and nations are securing their borders and there's an escalation of military tensions the
Last thing we need is for North Korea's Supreme Leader to die.
But the story is conflicted.
We don't know exactly what's going on.
We have a story from CNN.
U.S.
monitoring intelligence that North Korean leader is in grave danger after surgery.
Now, some have contested this saying he's totally fine.
But Financial Times says Kim Jong-un has been absent from some very important meetings.
If this man loses his life or is incapacitated even, we could see a dramatic reaction.
We could see a lot of panic and fear at a time when things are already getting dangerous.
Let's read the news from CNN.
Yes, I chose CNN on purpose because they initially reported that he was in grave danger.
Now they've changed the headline.
But I've got Financial Times and Fox News to back up what they say.
So let's see what's going on.
U.S.
monitoring intelligence that North Korean leader is in grave danger after surgery.
The U.S.
is monitoring intelligence that suggests North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un is in grave danger after undergoing a previous surgery, according to a U.S.
official with direct knowledge.
A second source familiar with the intelligence told CNN that the U.S.
has been closely monitoring reports on Kim's health.
Kim recently missed the celebration of his grandfather's birthday on April 15th, which raised speculation about his well-being.
He had been seen four days before that at a government meeting.
Another U.S.
official told CNN Monday that the concerns about Kim's health are credible, but the severity is hard to assess.
National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien said the U.S.
is keeping a closer eye on reports about Kim's health.
We're monitoring these reports very closely, O'Brien said during an interview with Fox News Tuesday.
And you know, North Korea is a very closed society.
Daily NK, an online newspaper based in South Korea that focuses on North Korea, reports that Kim reportedly received a cardiovascular system procedure on April 12th.
Kim received the cardiovascular system procedure because of excessive smoking, obesity, and overwork, according to the news site, and is now receiving treatment in a villa in Hyangsan County following his procedure.
After assessing that Kim's condition had improved, most of the medical team treating him returned to Pyongyang on April 19th, and only part of them remained to oversee his recovery situation, according to the news site.
CNN is unable to independently confirm the report.
I'm going to go ahead and say it.
Somebody's got to call Dennis Rodman.
And I actually mean that kind of seriously.
Dennis Rodman knows Kim Jong-un.
He's familiar.
They seem to like the guy.
And he's probably an opportunity for a strong diplomatic connection.
But they're going to lie.
If it turns out this dude's sick, they're not going to want anyone to know.
And let's be real, man.
The guy's got health problems.
He's seriously overweight.
We've seen the photos.
It sounds legit.
And that could be worrying.
A South Korean source told CNN Monday that the country's top leaders are very much aware of reports about Kim's health status, but cannot independently verify details published by Daily NK.
The source acknowledged that Kim's issues related to weight and smoking are well known, but made clear they are waiting for more information.
South Korea's presidential Blue House said in a statement provided to reporters that they have nothing to confirm on reports about Kim's health and that no unusual signs have been detected inside North Korea.
South Korea's Unification Ministry and Defense Ministry have given no comment.
The National Security Council and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment when reached by CNN on Monday.
CNN has also reached out to the CIA and State Department for comment.
They say in the meantime, U.S.
officials have been reaching out to North Korean experts, particularly those who have studied the Kim regime, to talk about contingency planning, a third source familiar with the communications told CNN.
Still, the situation remains murky as gathering intelligence out of North Korea is notoriously difficult, one of the most challenging targets for U.S.
intelligence.
North Korea tightly controls any information surrounding its leader, who is treated almost like a deity within the country.
His absences from official state media often spark speculation and rumors about his health.
North Korea has no free press and is often a black hole when it comes to the country's leadership.
Analysts are heavily reliant on scanning state media dispatches and watching propaganda videos for any semblance of a clue.
Kim last appeared in North Korean state media on April 11th.
April 15, North Korea's most important holiday, the anniversary of the birth of the country's founding father, Kim Il-sung, came and went without any official mention of Kim Jong-un's movements.
Could it be that Kim Jong-un has already lost his life?
I mean, we're not seeing him.
I don't know.
It's hard to speculate.
It's hard to know what this means and what this will result in, but it would seem.
So first, let me show you this just as a kind of a backup for CNN.
Kim Jong-un's absence from ceremonies fuels health fears from a couple hours ago.
has extensive contingency plans in the case of Kim Jong-un death from Fox News.
Fox News reports that sources discussed these plans.
Amid conflicting reports about the reclusive North Korean leader's health, those same sources urge caution about these reports, which have claimed he's facing serious health issues after a cardiovascular procedure.
While his condition is unclear, a well-placed defense intelligence source told Fox News on Tuesday that the U.S.
government has extensive plans in place for when Kim is gone, taking into account all the complications that could arise from his eventual death.
The official described the likelihood of a huge humanitarian crisis within North Korea that could include millions of people facing starvation and a mass exodus of North Korean refugees into China.
Intelligence sources told Fox News that part of the plan would be to rely heavily on China to step in and help manage the situation on the ground inside North Korea, partly due to China's proximity and partly due to logistical challenges of the U.S.
providing humanitarian assistance.
The Daily NK, a periodical based in Seoul, which is run mostly by North Korean defectors, has reported that Kim, 36, was recovering from his April 12th surgery at a resort county villa on the East Coast.
The report said Kim has been in bad health because of heavy smoking, obesity, and overwork.
I didn't know Kim Jong-un was 36.
That makes me feel weird.
He's like two years older than me.
But specifics on Kim's condition remain unclear, as North Korea has been notorious for withholding information.
This we understand.
South Korean officials downplayed the implications of these reports, noting no unusual activity in North Korea, while there wouldn't necessarily be.
They don't want anyone freaking out.
If there are signs that the administration, the regime of North Korea, is faltering, perhaps that's a signal of weakness.
We often see North and South Korea do these military games as shows of strength.
North Korea has been firing missiles, and there have been negotiations.
We've seen great strides between the two nations, which has left me hopeful.
Most of you know I have Korean ancestry.
My grandparent, actually, and her entire family.
And so I am very much interested in seeing, I don't know, some kind of, maybe not necessarily reunification, but some kind of resolution to what's been going on over the past several decades, 60, 70 years or whatever.
It's hard to know when and if this will end, but you know, Donald Trump, he crossed in the DMZ, so that's all good news.
But there is still, I mean, they're still technically at war.
That's my understanding.
I don't think North Korea is going to want to let anyone know if Kim Jong-un is sick or dead.
And so them saying, we don't see any unusual activity, it's not confidence building.
Perhaps they would expect to see at least some kind of unusual activity, meaning like some vehicles moving around, some shuffling in government.
It's also possible to say that if Kim Jong-un was sick, and maybe on his deathbed, which I doubt, he's 36, they probably wouldn't want to do anything out of the unusual to trigger their enemies.
Also, I want to point out, look, Kim Jong-un is overweight, but he is 36, so... I know North Korea isn't, like, a bastion of good healthcare, but Kim Jong-un is extremely wealthy, and they have means, especially for their Supreme Leader.
Look, they can build nuclear weapons, right?
They say, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said in response to the reports that it's not true and that there was no specific trend.
We have no information to confirm regarding rumors about Chairman Kim Jong-un's health issue that have been reported by some media outlets.
South Korean presidential spokesman Kang Min-seok said, Also, no unusual developments have been detected inside North Korea.
I gotta say, I think South Korea's got reason to downplay this too.
Because if Kim Jong-un goes down, War, man.
I mean, some people are going to clamor for it.
It is a sign of weakness.
There'll be desperation.
Maybe North Korea becomes desperate.
Maybe they attack.
I don't know.
But I think South Korea, they want to maintain the status quo.
Over the past several decades, South Korea has been rapidly growing and becoming more powerful, while North Korea has struggled.
This trend results in a South Korean victory.
But if war breaks out before then, North Korea's got a very large ground force.
So who knows what could happen?
Speculation often surfaces, we know this, whenever Kim Jong-un doesn't show up.
They say, meanwhile, sources told Fox News the White House is aware of the reports of Kim's health, but there has been no confirmation of his condition.
Talks between President Trump and Kim over North Korea's nuclear program have long stalled.
One source noted that during their last summit, foreigners who were in proximity to Kim noted unusually heavy breathing for someone his age.
Perhaps he's got the coronavirus.
Maybe he got COVID, man.
And he's got these underlying health factors.
This could be serious.
Look, China's heavily infected.
They've been lying about their numbers.
North Korea is right there.
Kim Jong-un, overweight smoker?
He could get COVID, man.
That could be it.
So I say he's 36, but he's in the high-risk group.
But this is something I think they should be considering.
So, a National Security Advisor to Robert Brown, Robert O'Brien, I'm sorry, said that they were watching reports closely.
You know, they said North Korea is very closed, there's no free press, we get all this stuff, I don't want to repeat myself.
While North Korea has not made clear who would potentially succeed Kim, some experts believe his sister, Kim Yo-jong, would step in as leader, at least during a transitional period.
Others believe North Korea could be ruled by the collective leadership of ruling party elites, similar to post-Stalin Soviet Union.
Very, very heavy on the news.
It's a very, very important story.
We'll see how things play out.
I don't know what to tell you, man.
Hopefully it doesn't... Hopefully... Man, I don't know what to hope for.
I hope for no war.
I got a couple more segments coming up for you in a few minutes.
Stick around.
I will see you all shortly.
In what may be one of the most shocking stories I have ever seen, BuzzFeed does good reporting.
That's the news.
Thanks for hanging out, everybody.
I'll see y'all next time.
No, I'm kidding.
But there's this viral story of people in scrubs standing in the street blocking cars.
The cars had protesters.
Not all of them, but some of them were protesting the lockdown.
And the news media has reported this far and wide as medical workers.
We don't know that.
There have been accusations that these people just bought scrubs and pretended to be nurses.
They're wearing sunglasses and face masks.
I'm going to call it like I see it.
I think it's fake.
Two people.
They say nothing, refuse to give any information to reporters.
We can't see their faces.
They're wearing no badges.
They're just wearing scrubs.
Yet the media has gone above and beyond to claim these were medical workers protesting these Trump chuds, these MAGA chuds.
Check this out.
Let me show you Google.
What happened when health care workers confronted?
You know, yeah, we got all the photos, you get it.
News has gone nuts showing all of this very same thing.
But it may be that it's fake.
Look what BuzzFeed says.
Much respect.
I gotta say, hey, when you do good, you get credit.
The photographer who took the viral photos of people in scrubs blocking anti-lockdown protesters in Denver described what happened.
Allison McLaren said one of the anti-lockdown protesters pushed his car against a man in scrubs who was peacefully blocking protesters in Denver.
Here's the photo.
Let me see if there's some more photos.
These went viral.
There's a man in scrubs.
There's a woman in scrubs.
In no way can we ever prove that they're actually medical professionals unless they came out and said they were, which they didn't do.
They declined to give any information.
When this story first broke, I passively mentioned this, because I wasn't focused on it, but I said, they're people in scrubs, I don't know how you confirm this.
BuzzFeed actually reports as well, they could not independently verify they're actually healthcare workers, so why is everyone reporting it?
Feel-good story, fake news, and that's one of the biggest problems with media, so hey, again, respect to BuzzFeed for actually reporting this properly.
Let's read what happened, and I'm gonna break down why I think it's fake.
BuzzFeed says, like millions of others in the U.S., Allison McLaren, a Denver-based freelance photographer, is out of work during the lockdown.
So she decided to go to the state capitol on Sunday to photograph hundreds of people who had gathered there to protest Colorado's stay-at-home order.
Violating social distancing?
Violating lockdown orders?
You're not working, are you?
Okay, look, she's a journalist.
I get it.
But come on, man.
You can't criticize one and not the other.
Fighting for civil liberties and your right to be out in the First Amendment?
Yes, we need that.
Okay, that's essential too.
The protest, dubbed Operation Gridlock, is part of a wave of similar demonstrations across the country by right-wing groups and conservatives who are calling for an end to lockdown measures implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
But McLaren soon decided to leave because many protesters at the demonstration didn't have masks on and weren't practicing social distancing.
I didn't feel very safe health-wise, McLaren said.
While walking toward her home from the Capitol, McLaren saw two people in scrubs and N95 masks standing in the middle of the street to block anti-lockdown protesters from going to the Capitol.
This is it.
This is what I needed, McLaren said, recalling the moment she witnessed the striking scene.
I want you to notice that quote she said.
This is what I needed.
That is a common mentality within journalism.
Her reaction wasn't, oh, this is interesting.
It was, this is what I need.
She knew what she was looking for.
She knew the story she wanted to tell, and she just so happened to come across two people wearing scrubs who refused to give any information to anybody.
Now, she's been accused of staging this.
She's outright denied that.
Maybe she did, maybe she didn't.
She says no.
What do you want me to do?
There's no evidence.
But I do find it telling that at least her mentality on this was she already knew the story she wanted to tell, and lucky for her, she got it.
It's really funny.
I'm not going to accuse her of staging this, but I will point out, you may have seen all these prank channels where they just so happen to get the perfect reaction on camera.
Because they stage it.
Come on, man, if you wanted to go out, and you said, I'm gonna find this story, and you found it, that's, that's luck.
Often, journalists will frame things on purpose, and look for evidence, instead of just telling what story that happened.
And sure enough, she found what she was looking for.
McLaren's photos of the scene perfectly captured the ongoing tension in the U.S.
amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Conservative demonstrators, supported by Donald Trump, are fighting against stay-at-home orders and demanding states be reopened, while health care workers are risking their lives fighting against the deadly pandemic that has taken more than 40 lives in this country.
They don't mention any of the strife and the turmoil caused by the shutdown, though, which is unfair.
There have been suicides.
So the argument, and conservatives are saying this, There's an argument that, like, if the shutdowns save one life, then it's worth doing.
But what about the lives already lost?
Because we've lost lives.
If the shutdowns cost one life, isn't that going too far?
McLaren said that people in cars were continually honking at the man and the woman in scrubs.
They both stood their ground, even as the light turned green.
One woman in a car holding a Land of the Free poster leaned out of her window and repeatedly yelled at the male counter-protester, go to China and other hateful things.
Hateful?
She said, if you want communism, go to China.
I mean, sure, you can go to China for communism.
Here's what he said.
I don't buy it.
Sorry.
I don't buy it.
a video of the woman screaming at the man who stood quietly through her tirade. Here's what he said.
Two nurses who have witnessed firsthand the toll COVID is taking Colorado stood up and
peacefully counter protested. Here is how they were treated.
I had I had to join them. I don't buy it. Sorry. I don't bite. You don't know their nurses.
These these people wanted a story. They perfectly found it and they joined them.
I'm calling shenanigans, man.
I don't know if they staged it, if you staged it.
You've provided no evidence.
But this story is going viral.
And everyone's acting like it's true.
We all saw what happened with Covington.
We all saw what happened with Jussie Smollett.
How hard would it be for someone to go buy scrubs and just do this?
Sorry.
I'm not playing these games, man.
You gotta prove it, or I don't care.
You got a video of a guy wearing scrubs?
I don't care.
Two people, no mass protest, a perfect photo op, and that was it?
Spare me, man.
I'm not buying it.
She says, go to China if you want communism.
The woman yelled, go to China.
You go to work, why can't I go to work?
I've saved people's lives, too.
The nurses stood their ground, McLaren said.
They were very peaceful, and I didn't hear a single word come out of the guy's mouth.
BuzzFeed asks, are you one of the counter protesters wearing scrubs in the pictures?
Email this reporter with the reporter's information.
The driver of another vehicle even bumped the front of his car against the man in the scrubs and began yelling at him.
McLaren said he was just really angry.
This guy's not a protester.
This guy certainly does not look like a Trump supporter.
He looks like somebody trying to go drive.
After the light turned green, police officers asked the two counter protesters to move out of the road, and they complied.
A spokesperson for the Denver Police Department told BuzzFeed News they were not sighted.
McLaren said that police officers were nice enough to let the counter protesters peacefully protest in the middle of the road during the red light.
Now, let me just say this while we're here.
Look.
We've seen all these viral TikToks of the nurses dancing and doing their thing, and I find it really cringy.
I really, really don't like it.
But, you know, I don't care, man.
Whatever makes you happy, whatever floats your boat.
Just because I don't like it doesn't mean you can't do it.
I'm just not gonna watch it, right?
We had a bunch of people seen dancing, and a lot of the criticism was that you're claiming to be overwhelmed, but you got time to do these funky dances?
And the doctors and nurses have said, we work with no days off.
So, before our shift, or yes, for a few moments, we'll dance to boost morale.
That's a good answer, man, and I agree with it.
Come on, you can't expect these people to be curmudgeons the whole time.
They're gonna have a 15-minute break to eat lunch and drink water, right?
And in that break, they can do a little dance for taking off their mask.
Calm down, everybody.
However, I thought these people were working with no days off because they were overwhelmed and needed to boost their morale with these fancy little videos.
Who were these two medical workers who just so happened to not be working so that they could go out and protest?
I'm sorry, man.
I don't buy it.
I'm not here to make a direct claim statement of fact.
I don't know.
But you better show me some evidence.
But you got all these media outlets saying, look at these brave front-line workers.
You got proof?
Responding to accusations she had personally staged the photos, McLaren said, absolutely I did not.
She said she did not know if the two counter-protesters were actually healthcare workers.
Oh, but she called them nurses several times.
Maybe they're doctors.
BuzzFeed News has been unable to independently verify if they were employed at any local hospitals.
I don't believe that they are.
But regardless of who they are, it's more about the message they were sending.
Even the woman who took the photos does not believe they're actually medical professionals.
So how about all of these news outlets that latched onto this story shut up?
The woman who took the photo says, oh, I'm sorry.
I got that way wrong.
She said, I believe they are.
All right.
I was wrong about that one.
Okay.
Anyway, I'll walk that back.
I don't believe her.
You've got no evidence.
She said, I believe that they are, but regardless of who they are, it's about the message they were sending.
That sounds to me like kind of downplaying whether or not they were actually healthcare workers.
Well, I certainly got overly excited for misreading something.
I'll eat that one.
I deserve the criticism.
By all means, comment and tell me I'm an idiot.
I read it wrong.
She says it's more about these two roads colliding.
The nurses are trying to be peaceful and say, go home please, and the other side is stressed and angry and scared and they want to reopen.
No one's in agreement.
It's kind of telling this entire story of what's happening right now in one image.
McLaren believes the photos went viral because nurses are on the front line and everyone is so supportive of them and thankful.
Yes.
It was an obvious photo op.
We all knew it would work.
Why were these people wearing disguises?
You know what?
Maybe it's possible they really do work in healthcare.
Maybe they wore the disguises because they don't want to lose their jobs.
Or maybe it's because they don't.
They don't want to be identified.
They were wearing reflective sunglasses.
You couldn't see their faces.
You couldn't tell who they were.
A reporter on the scene says, Remarkable scene at 12th and Grant where two health care
workers from a Denver area hospital.
They declined to say which or give their names.
Are standing in the crosswalk during red lights as a reminder.
They say of why shutdown measures are in place.
So they're actually claiming they they are health care workers.
You know what man?
In a traditional news era, you know, before the age of the internet, I'd imagine they'd track down who these people were before reporting this.
But in the age of social media...
Photo's gonna go viral.
People are gonna eat it up.
So, I'll tell you what.
I've been tricked too many times.
Like I mentioned, Covington, Smollett.
I'm not gonna buy it.
You got these two people?
It's too easy.
I could put on a clown costume, go out and protest, and be like, look, clowns are opposing the protests.
It means nothing.
Put on your badge, tell us who you are, stand behind what you believe, otherwise I don't wanna hear it.
If you don't want to tell me what you believe and who you are or why you're here, I'm not interested.
Because you won't put your name on what you believe.
To me, fake news.
But I guess we'll see.
Or maybe we won't.
I got one more segment coming up for you in a few minutes and I will see you all shortly.
This may be one of the weirdest and craziest stories I have ever seen.
Buckle up, ladies and gents.
Put on your thinking caps.
We got a conspiracy afoot.
Mediaite reports White House hot microphone catches someone joking with Fox's John Roberts, quote, We've all been vaccinated around here.
I'm sorry.
Joking about saying it?
Nothing they said were jokes.
This is weird stuff.
At the White House press room, somebody was setting up a camera and streaming before anything started.
And Fox's John Roberts said some stuff.
A guy said, we've all been vaccinated.
They were having a conversation.
Ain't nobody was joking.
Let me read this for you.
Mediaite says, A White House hot mic picked up someone apparently joking with Fox News's White House correspondent John Roberts that, quote, we've all been vaccinated against the coronavirus around here.
As conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic abound, a hot mic exchange from before Monday's White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing could contribute to a surge in tinfoil protective headgear if it's taken seriously.
Why wouldn't we take it seriously?
They weren't joking, man.
When White House briefings are streamed live, some outlets carry the feeds, with audio and video, long before the events start.
On Monday, one such feed caught a sardonic-masked White House denizen, possibly another journalist, greeting Roberts as he emerged from the lower press office.
What do you know, buddy, the man asks Roberts, who tells him, you can take off the mask.
The case fatality rate is 0.1 to 0.3, according to USC.
Roberts was referencing a study that evaluated tests on a representative sample of 863 L.A.
County residents.
Roberts' offhand advice, also potentially exaggerated for humorous effect to take off the mask, is not included in L.A.
County public health officials' findings from the study, which included the need to continue broad social distancing measures.
I don't buy it.
None of the journalists were wearing masks.
Why are they trying to claim it's a joke?
That's weird.
John Roberts wasn't wearing a mask.
The other journalists aren't wearing masks.
We've watched the videos.
When Trump's speaking to the journalists, they're not wearing masks.
John Roberts was legitimately citing a study, which is true and does say this, and telling the guy to take his mask off.
Now, here's the weird thing.
Really?
That's reassuring, the man tells Roberts, then cracks.
Everybody here has been vaccinated anyway.
Without missing a beat, Roberts details some of the study's findings, telling him, USC and LA County Public Health came out with a study that found that there are 7,000 cases in California, but they really believe there are anywhere from 221,000 to 442,000 people who are infected.
As they both walk out of frame, the man jokes, so it was a hoax.
To which Roberts replies, no, I don't think it was a hoax.
Even by optimistic standards, if vaccine is not expected until sometime next year, watch above via NBC affiliate WPMI.
They're not joking.
The guy's genuinely asking if it was a hoax.
John Roberts is genuinely saying, no, I don't think so.
The dude, why would he arbitrarily say, oh, we've all been vaccinated anyway?
Was he talking about general vaccinations, not COVID?
I think that's the fair assessment.
People are going to look at this and they're going to run wild and say it's a conspiracy.
I've already had people send it to me like, dude, you got to see this.
I think the dude was talking about vaccination in terms of, we're not anti-vaxxers.
We've had all of our, you know, various vaccinations.
Not only that, but journalists who travel out of the country, I don't know about the White House Press Association, but I've gotten a ton of different shots like, you know, Hepatitis A, Typhoid, what else, like Yellow Fever.
They inject me all crazy, because if you want to go to these dangerous places, man, you gotta get a buff, right?
The doctor comes in, he gives you that protection, I go to Egypt, I don't get sick.
That's kind of the point, right?
I think maybe that's what he's talking about.
But I don't know for sure what he really means.
I mean, there's no vaccine for this as far as we know.
Could it be?
Confidentially, there is an experimental vaccine, and that due to the fact they're in the White House and around the President, they must have it?
Nah, I'm not gonna speculate, but I can tell you this.
They were not joking because the studies are real.
Check this out.
One-third of participants in Massachusetts' study test positive for antibodies linked to COVID-19 after giving their blood samples in the street at random.
Boston... I'm sorry, I don't know if it was Boston.
Let me just read this.
Nearly one-third of 200 Massachusetts residents were infected with antibodies linked to the novel coronavirus, according to a pilot study.
It's from a couple days ago.
Physicians at the Massachusetts General Hospital said they found evidence of widespread COVID-19 exposure in the city of Chelsea.
Chelsea, located just north of Boston, had the state's rate of coronavirus infections at 1,900 cases per 100,000 residents.
Researchers collected drops of blood from residents in Bellingham Square on Tuesday and Wednesday after advertising the study.
Of the 200 voluntary participants, 64 had antibodies created by their immune system to fight the coronavirus.
That means the mortality rate is ridiculously low.
Now, let me show you these other studies and then I'll tell you what this means.
ABC News says antibody test study results suggest COVID-19 cases likely much higher than reported.
This is what John Roberts was citing in that hot mic video.
The testing is a joint venture by USC and Los Angeles.
They found That the actual infection rate may be 55 times higher, maybe even 85 times higher.
Saying, after testing nearly 900 people, researchers estimate that as many as 442,000 people throughout the country of nearly 8 million adults had the virus as of April 9th.
That's just 5.6% of the population.
So we have a long way to go, lead investigator Neeraj Sood, a USC professor of public policy, told ABC News on Monday.
We're still early in the epidemic and more people will likely get infected.
The results were from the venture's first round of testing.
The study by USC researchers and the Public Health Department is ongoing and will test thousands more in coming weeks.
Based on the results of first-round testing, the research team estimates that approximately 4.1% of the county's adult population has antibodies to the virus.
Now, think about this.
If they're saying it's 4.1, but a random sample found a third of people, that means if we only know about, you know, 1,000... Let's do it by 1,000.
Let's say we know 1,000 people are sick because they're hospitalized.
Let's say, of those people, we extrapolate... I'm sorry, that's not how it works.
We test 1,000 people, We found 1,000 people are infected.
We find that 15 to 20% are hospitalized.
Of those hospitalizations, we see some deaths.
So ultimately they were looking at like 1.4 to like maybe even 3% of people would die from this.
That's really high, because the flu is 0.1.
Now we're learning from multiple studies.
Check this out.
Another study we have here, Live Science, says way more people may have gotten coronavirus than we thought.
Small antibody study suggests.
So we have Stanford.
We have Santa Clara.
We have Stanford.
We have USC.
This one's Stanford.
And then we have the random sampling out of Massachusetts.
That could mean that the mortality rate is actually just maybe on par with or higher, maybe double, the flu.
Double the flu is still really, really bad.
All right.
Here's the important factor and why lockdown is still important.
I'm sorry, why social distancing is important.
Lockdown, you could argue, because the economy and that, I think it's fair.
No immunity.
The mortality rate for this is potentially double that of the flu.
This is why we're seeing people die.
I thought long and hard about this, and I was talking to some people.
I'm like, if this is just a bad flu, like some have suggested, then why are we seeing all of these deaths?
Because in New York, it's way higher than normal.
In many places, it's way higher than normal.
Infection rate.
See, the coronavirus we have no immunity to.
So lots of people are getting it.
The mortality rate is substantially lower.
We're still seeing people overwhelm our hospitals.
It's really that simple.
With the flu, some people won't get it because they have partial immunity from having it in the past, or from inheriting some kind of immunity.
But, you know, I've had the flu a long time ago.
I haven't had the flu in a really, really, really long time.
I don't want to get the flu, so...
But when you get one flu, you might have potential partial immunities to other strains of a similar flu or something like that.
When it comes to the coronavirus, it's novel.
This is why everyone freaked out.
We thought the mortality rate was high.
That above of the Spanish flu back in 1918 turns out way lower according to three preliminary studies.
But we are still seeing lots of people die.
To me, this actually makes a ton of sense.
So far, we've seen 40,000 people in the U.S.
die, and that is horrifying.
And we've taken appropriate actions to try and save as many lives as possible.
We weren't able to save everybody.
A lot of people still died.
But I think...
Now we're learning the truth, and this is one of the reasons why we needed this testing.
To know who has already gotten it, so we can get a more accurate picture.
Guess what?
Now that we're learning the mortality rate is substantially lower, perhaps there's now a reasonable argument to be made that we can reopen the economy.
Look, people are going to lose their lives.
It's a hard decision to make.
But there's an equation, where when the economy is shut down for a certain amount of time, people will start dying from lack of access to resources, lack of access to healthcare.
When people get sick from coronavirus, they'll die as well.
It's a double-edged sword.
No matter what you do, you gotta grab it and you gotta do something.
We can't sit around doing nothing.
But this is good news!
So I don't know why they're trying to downplay what these guys were saying in this hot mic.
I think it's weird, the mentioning of the vaccines.
I'm definitely trying to explain it away.
I can give you no real answer for why the guy said we're all vaccinated here anyway.
So I don't know what else to tell you other than...
We got good news.
These studies are good news.
It means we're going to be safer than we thought, and people still lost their lives.
People will still get sick from this.
Take the entire population of the U.S.
You know, 327 million people.
Take 0.12% the low end of what the studies are showing us, and we're looking at hundreds of thousands dead.
I think we can lock down for this for a certain amount of time.
Until the equation dictates that we're going to do more harm than good.
